‘Meat Bees’ – Dane Erbach (Clash Books)

 

Page Count: 270 Pages

As a kid, I used to be scared of flies (especially the big fat bluebottles) but that was a long time ago now. It took a little longer with bees but I got stung a few times and that pretty much got it out of my system. Wasps though… I fear and hate them in equal measure; angry, vicious grudge-bearing little bastards that seem to exist purely to make your summer miserable. And it has been a long, hot summer… :o(

In the (slightly altered) words of Kyle Reese, "They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!"

So when I heard that there was a new horror novel that was all about wasps… Of course I had to read it ;o)

Jaws with wasps.

By the time Scarlett Sutton arrives at her dad’s cabin in the Smoky Mountains, two locals have already been eaten alive by wasps. Of course, she doesn’t know this yet. All Scarlett knows is her mom finally checked herself into a hospital to take care of her mental health, leaving Scarlett alone with her dad all summer.

After he insists that she get a job, Scarlett accepts a position at nearby Stovetop Outfitters, hoping to spend as much time away from him as possible. She doesn’t expect to trip over a skeletonized corpse beneath the zip-line during one of her shifts—and definitely doesn’t expect to be thrown into a Netflix-style true crime investigation.

The local sheriff’s department is so overwhelmed by these unsolved deaths that when one of the Stovetop Outfitters employees disappears next, Scarlett and her co-workers set out to find him on their own. They discover something much more horrifying: a swarm of yellow jackets stripping the meat off his body. Scarlett never signed up to solve a disgusting mystery, but in order to protect her friends and family, she must defeat the mountain’s darkness and all these godforsaken wasps.

A little bit ‘Creature Feature’, a little bit ‘Body Horror’ (but not in the way that you might think) and what’s left over is a look at how the first two bits can combine and form a ‘coming of age’ tale to round things off. I’ll be honest, I was there for the horror, more than the coming of age stuff, but all in all, ‘Meat Bees’ was a hell of a read that I had a hell of a lot of fun with.

I think that with horror fiction, it’s always a bonus if you have a specific fear that ties into the book that you’re reading. ‘Meat Bees’ was the perfect storm then, for me, but that shouldn’t take anything away from what Erbach brings to the table here. I would have been on the edge of my seat, and a little grossed out, anyway. Erbach is just brilliant at building up the tension in ‘Meat Bees’; you know there’s something lurking in all that gorgeous scenery but you literally cannot see the wood for all the trees here. You just know that someone is about to be stung, repeatedly, and then dismembered by tiny little wasp mandibles (the hairs on my arms stood up while I was writing that…)

And then, at just the right moment, Erbach hits you with either ‘death by wasp’ or tantalising little hints that will eventually send ‘Meat Bees’ in a direction that I wasn’t expecting. I won’t spoil it but it’s a direction that keeps things fresh and helps ‘Meat Bees’ avoid becoming a little too much about the gore.

To be fair, I thought the ‘coming of age’ elements worked really well here; Scarlett Sutton was a really fascinating lead to follow as her past really informed the decisions that she made throughout the plot. And Scarlett had definitely changed, as a person, by the conclusion. A real hero who discovers that trauma can be insidious, as well as immediate, but doesn’t let it define her.

It wasn’t Erbach’s fault then, or Scarlett’s, that as a fifty-one year old guy, I probably missed out on a lot of stuff that would resonate more with my sixteen year old daughter than it did with me. That’s on me, damn I feel old etc ;o)

That was a minor thing though and there was plenty of terror to keep me ticking over in the meantime. And ‘chunks of human flesh’ that Erbach took time to remind us were cooking as Scarlett ran a home made blowtorch over them… I mean, I will probably still have a bacon roll, for breakfast, but it did make me think twice while I was reading ;o)

I left the house, yesterday, and almost ducked straight back inside when I thought I saw a wasp. That’s where ‘Meat Bees’ left me but I’m still really glad I gave it a shot. Highly recommended.