Book Excerpt: The Bee Sting By Paul Murray

The woods of Belarus are a maze, a green snow-laden maze that switches itself around whenever he turns his back. It’s winter: the cold is blistering, the enemy is everywhere, grey flashes in the branches, almost too fast to see.

Behind you! Nev calls.

PJ spins round just in time to see a rifle pointed right at him, a shadowed figure fix him in his sights—

Incoming!

He hurls himself into a hollow as the grenade comes down, rolls with the blast, crashes against a tree trunk, hauls himself to his feet and runs without looking back, into the trees, the light.

This way! Nev calls, going the wrong way.

Light slams through the branches, it twists and needles, knives of light, rivers of light, walls of light that turn and flip and bear down on him – the faster he goes, the more his chest feels like it’s going to burst open.

Incoming! Another grenade lands at his feet.

Wait a second, PJ says, coming to a stop. Are you throwing those at me? It was a sniper, Nev calls back. Because you’re so slow.

Snipers don’t throw grenades, PJ says. But Nev has disappeared into the trees ahead. He starts after him again but his lungs are burning, and his feet are on fire too, screaming like he’s running on razors. The sky, red and purple, shrinks and darkens into a ball, a whirling black ball of pain. He drops to his knees then collapses back onto the soft earth, reaches for his inhaler.

The sky opens up again. The forest stops being on fire. He unlaces his runners, pulls them off as delicately as he can. It still feels like most of his skin comes with them.

In the distance he can hear Nev crashing through the undergrowth and nearer by, something scuffling. Scuff scuff, rustle rustle, right by his head.

Holy shit – it’s a squirrel, a red squirrel! Perched on a log, quite motionless, like it has materialized there from another world. Which maybe it has: the woods are full of greys, but he has never seen a red squirrel here before. Hey there, buddy, he says. From its log the squirrel considers him. Very very very slowly he reaches into his pocket and withdraws his phone. I’m just taking a picture, that’s all, he tells the squirrel. The squirrel cocks its head amicably, as if to say, We cool.

Incoming! bellows a voice. A rock thumps down in front of him. When he looks around the squirrel is gone, like it was never there. What are you doing just sitting here? Nev stumps up. You can’t just take a break when you’re on a mission. In real life I could actually shoot
you for disobeying orders.

I saw a squirrel, PJ says. I was trying to take a picture of a squirrel and you scared it away.

You think in World War Two they stopped to take pictures of squirrels? Nev says. I thought we were searching for our base.

All right, all right, PJ says.

It was your idea to play this stupid game, Nev reminds him.
Okay, I’m coming, PJ says. He reaches for his runners.
Jesus Christ, Nev says. What’s wrong with your feet?

In fact it’s summer, not winter. For weeks the temperature’s been off the charts: it almost makes PJ wish he really was in Belarus, even with all the snipers and grenades. All day long the heat rises and rises, like water in a flood. At night-time it’ll fall back, a little bit, but then come morning it starts up again, and soon it will be higher even than it was the day before, leaving you submerged at the bottom.

Nobody’s allowed to water their lawn. The fire brigade keeps having to go up into the mountains to put out gorse fires. In town everyone’s acting happy. ‘Isn’t it great?’ they tell each other, the butcher, the barber, standing around outside their shops in the shimmering air, but under their arms dark patches appear, and silver sprinkles of moisture break out over their scalps, and you can tell that inside they’re feeling thirsty and tired and mean.

It would be fine if he could just stay indoors. One time they went on holidays to Egypt and whenever you stepped outside it was like someone was incinerating you with a magnifying glass. So they ended up not going anywhere, not even the pyramids, they just stayed in the hotel and swam in the pool and watched Egypt documentaries on the hotel TV and in PJ’s opinion it was one of the family’s best ever holidays. 

But this summer they are not going anywhere and though the house is cool and there is a TV just waiting to be watched, fat chance of doing any of that. Instead every morning it’s, Are you kids just going to lie in bed all day? Then soon as he’s up it’s, Would you kids ever get out from under my feet!