The day before Brad was to leave the hospital, a wizened man with a close-cropped gray beard came to visit him. The man wore a light blue shirt, tan slacks, and a brown sports jacket. He was pale and sickly looking, wearing glasses with thick black frames, glasses that a younger man would have worn for comic or ironic effect. He introduced himself, and Brad said, 'So, how am I doing? Do I still get to leave tomorrow?'

The man frowned, perplexed. 'I don't — ' He realized his mistake then and said, 'I'm sorry. I'm not a medical doctor. That's what I get for calling myself a doctor in a hospital. I'm a Ph.D. I taught at Baylor but I'm retired now.'

It was Brad's turn to look stumped. Dr. Michael Parkington introduced himself again. He said that he was writing a book on the desert and was particularly interested in unusual anecdotal material. He'd heard about Brad's encounter with a swarm of wasps, and he wondered if Brad would mind telling him about it.

Brad had nothing better to do — Meta was seeing her parents off at the airport and wouldn't be back for hours — and he was interested in what this man could tell him.

Parkington asked if it would be all right if he recorded Brad's recollections of the accident, and Brad almost said no, which was irrational, of course, but he would have preferred an undocumented chat. He'd heard his voice on a recorder once, and his voice sounded thin and full of complaint. But he said, 'Sure,' and the professor turned on a small, cellphone-sized recorder, and Brad told him everything he could remember, ending with, 'I got woozy standing out there on the road, and I just passed out, I guess.'

'How many times were you stung?' Parkington asked.

Brad shrugged. 'Maybe half a dozen times. I don't know. It's hard to keep count when you're flying through a windshield.'

Parkington smiled ruefully. 'Any welts? Any swellings or discolorations?'

Brad looked down at his forearm where he'd seen the wasp sting him. Nothing. His skin was smooth, unblemished. He lifted his hand to touch his cheek. No soreness there, and, shaving for the first time that morning, he hadn't noticed any redness or swelling.

'No,' he said, slightly puzzled. 'I didn't even think to look.'

Parkington turned the recorder off and put it in his pocket. 'I want to thank you for your time, Mr. Phelps.' He stood up.

'Sure. How many people have you interviewed?' Brad asked.

The professor sat down again. He took his glasses off, rubbed his forehead, and put the glasses back on. 'I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't say anything to Sheriff Winslow about my coming by.'

'Why's that?' Brad was starting to feel a little miffed. He hadn't wanted that recorder running, and he should have trusted his intuition, because. well, here was this guy getting all circumspect, enlisting him in some local intrigue.

'Winslow thinks I'm trying to stir things up. Truth is, he thinks I'm a crackpot,' Parkington said. 'He'd be pissed if he knew I'd come out here.' He looked at the doorway, as though expecting the sheriff to come walking through it on cue. He made a decision then. Brad could see it in the way he straightened his spine and narrowed his eyes. 'I haven't been entirely candid with you.'

The man leaned over and fumbled in his briefcase. 'I've already written a book,' he said. He retrieved a book and handed it to Brad. Brad knew a self-published book when he saw one. The title was set in a lurid, old-English typeface: Haunted Mountains: Atlantis in the Desert by Michael Parkington, Ph.D. Translucent ocean waves were superimposed over a photograph of a desert panorama, mountains in the background. This computer-manipulated image, murky and lurid, offended Brad's artistic sensibility while managing to instill a queasy sense of dislocation.

Brad looked up from the book in his hands and said, 'And what, exactly, haven't you told me?'

Parkington nodded his head. 'I didn't tell you that after interviewing some other people who encountered hostile swarm phenomena, I've come to the conclusion that these people were not attacked, not physically, in any event. I believe they all experienced a psychic derangement. I'm telling you that I don't think you were attacked by wasps, Mr. Phelps. I think you were the victim of an induced hallucination.'

Brad sighed, disgusted. 'The last week hasn't been one of my best, but I think I know what I saw.' Brad held out the book, but Parkington smiled and shook his head.

'You keep the book. Maybe you'll want to read it sometime. You know, not a single wasp was found in your vehicle, which is what I expected. I've documented five other cases of people being attacked by swarms, all within a half-mile of where you were found.'

Brad was silent.

Parkington held his hand up, fingers wide, and lowered each successive finger as he ticked off an attack: 'Birds, bats, rattlesnakes, ants, and — my favorite menace — moths. In all but one case, the subjects were driving down Route 9 when they were attacked. The drivers were all forced to abandon their vehicles as a result of an onslaught of bats or flying ants or sparrows or moths, and all the attack victims seem to have lost consciousness for some period of time. Your adventure was the only life-threatening encounter, although any of the attacks could have resulted in a fatal accident.

'I might add that I know about these attacks because other travelers along that lonely stretch spotted the abandoned vehicles or the confused, semi-conscious owners and stopped to offer assistance. It seems reasonable to assume that some other drivers suffered swarm attacks during times when traffic was sparse, came to their senses, shrugged off their weird adventures, and drove on.'

Parkington said that there was one man who was not in a car when attacked. A man named Charlie Musgrove was on foot when he found himself surrounded by rattlesnakes. Musgrove maintained that he was bitten by five or six of the creatures, but a sample of his blood revealed no toxins, other than the alcohol he habitually imbibed.

'He's a local, a homeless alcoholic,' Parkington said, 'and not a credible witness, but I'm inclined to believe him, because he was in the vicinity of the other reported incidents, and his account is consistent with them.'

Parkington said that, in every single one of these reported attacks, no sign of the attacking creatures was found, no birds, bats, rattlesnakes, ants, or moths. And in the case of the birds, the driver was adamant in her description of their thrashing and banging around in the car, feathers flying everywhere, much avian carnage, so one would think that the most cursory forensic examination would have produced some corroborating evidence. Nothing could be found. 'I'm guessing Sheriff Winslow hasn't told you any of this.'

'He hasn't,' Brad said. 'Probably because he is a professional and understands that it is not his job to share bizarre theories with someone who has just been traumatized by a near-fatal accident. Now my meds are kicking in, and I'm going to close my eyes and get some sleep. Thanks for the book.'

And Brad closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, it was dark outside his window, and Meta was sitting in a chair with the book on her lap. She looked up, smiled, and said, 'It says here that during the Permian age this whole area was under an ocean. That was 250 million years ago. Who gave you this book?'

'The ancient mariner,' Brad said.

* * *

They drove back to Austin in a rented Honda Accord. Meta did all the driving. Brad remained bundled in a semi-fog of pain meds, and a substantial cast girded his left leg. He'd been instructed in the use of crutches, but they were of limited utility thanks to his ravaged rib cage. A folded wheelchair, which would be his primary mode of transportation for the next six weeks, lay in the car's trunk.

Once home, Brad called friends and family, quickly wearied of telling his story, and cast a forlorn eye on the upcoming weeks of recuperation.

On the positive side, he accompanied Meta to an appointment with her oncologist, who was pleased to tell them that all tests were negative; there was no trace of the cancer that had shortcircuited their lives for the last year and a half. They had celebrated that night, with champagne and sex.

The sex had not been entirely successful. Brad had been struck with the intense conviction that, should he experience an orgasm, it would kill him; something vital to sustaining his life would be seized and devoured by his partner's need. This thought robbed him of an erection, but his failure to achieve orgasm was, paradoxically, a great relief, as though he had survived a brush with death, so it wasn't the worst sex he'd ever had, but it didn't bode well for his erotic future.

Brad called work and had to talk to the insufferable Kent, a completely insincere creature, ambitious and feral, who assured Brad that he could avail himself of as much time off as his recuperation required. 'I got your

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