Micro - Michael Crichton [122]
Karen clung to the head as it rotated and beat her against the tunnel, the jaws crossing and snapping. She was getting a terrible thrashing. Even so, in searching for a grip, she reached behind the wasp’s head and managed to get her fingertips wedged in the occipital suture, the crack between the head capsule and the pleuron, the first armored plate of the thorax. This was the back of the wasp’s neck. There was a joint in the armor at that spot. Her fingertips felt soft tissue in the crack.
The neck was so narrow that she was able to wrap her fingers entirely around the wasp’s neck. She had gotten a stranglehold. Maybe she could choke the wasp.
At that moment, the wasp jerked backward into the tunnel, dragging Karen along. Now she was jammed in the tunnel, being crushed by the wasp’s head, which continued to hammer against her body. The wasp curled its body, and Karen realized it was trying to bring its abdomen forward and sting her. The wasp pushed her back into the room again, and began twisting, trying to throw her off its neck. But she held her grip. Having located the neck joint, she let go of the neck with one hand, grabbed her knife, then slipped the tip of her knife into the crack. Then she quickly ran the knife blade around the neck, following the crack and sawing as she went. All the way around.
The wasp’s head fell off.
It rolled on top of her, and she scrambled back into the room, followed by a spurt of blood.
The mandibles snapped twice and froze. The body exsanguinated fast, blood spewing out of the severed neck all over Karen. The wings of the headless body thumped against the walls in the tunnel, the wing-beats weakening and slowing down, until the corpse quieted and lay still.
Karen pulled herself away and knelt by Rick and took his hand. She was shaking badly. “I did it.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Rick saw movement behind her. He blinked his eyes and shouted in his mind: Look out!
The master brain inside the severed head had lost contact with the eight minor brains in the wasp’s body, but those minor brains were still sending out messages to the rest of the body. The wasp’s legs went into action, dragging the headless body into the room. The abdomen curled and thrust forward, and the stinger came out.
A noise at her back made Karen whirl around. Just in time she saw the stinger coming, and jumped aside as the abdomen slammed her into the wall. She struggled, trapped, as the sting waved past her face. She saw the twin blades working against each other, inches from her eyes. The sting palps popped out and tapped her cheek, and entered her mouth. But finally the stinger went still, lightly resting on Karen’s collarbone, the blades bared. A dewdrop of poison swelled from the blades and hung there. She could see her face reflected in the droplet of wasp venom.
She delicately extricated herself from under the sting, avoiding contact with the liquid and blades. Then she got down on her knees and wiped the dirt from Rick’s face. “How’re you doing, soldier?”
He seemed completely paralyzed. Rick’s face looked like a mask. Eyes moving, blinking, but no expression. The muscles in his face had gone AWOL and he had peed his pants. At least he was breathing, and his heart was beating. The wasp venom was tricky stuff, she realized. It had disabled some of his nervous system but not all of it. Was he trying to talk? She couldn’t be sure.
“Can you blink?” she asked. “If you blink your eyes, it means yes. If you don’t blink, it means no. Can you understand me?”
He blinked once. Yes. Then something trembled in his face.
“Rick! Is that a smile?”
Yes. Trying to.
“That’s a start. Does anything hurt?”
Yes.
“What hurts?…Never mind. I’m going to carry you. Will that hurt?”
He didn’t blink. No.
She lifted Rick under the arms and dragged him around the dead wasp, keeping their bodies away from the big droplet of venom that still hung from the wasp’s stinger. As she dragged