The Swarm

“He’s coming round now.”

Rob Bailey woke up to see a careworn, elderly woman bending over him, dabbing his face with a damp cloth.  He tried to sit up but burning pains in his back, left leg, and right arm stopped him.  He felt woozy, so he lay back down.

“Careful, young man” the woman said.  “You’ve had a rough time of it.”

“Hornets,” Rob gasped as his memory returned.

“It wasn’t hornets,” she said.  “You were attacked by drones.”

“I know, I know” he said.  His breathing slowed and he recovered his composure from the pain of trying to sit up.  “We call them hornets because they attack in swarms and they’ve got a hell of a sting.”

“You’re lucky we found you,” said an old man who had walked up beside the woman.  “We were out on a foraging expedition when we saw you curled up in a drainage culvert.  It was raining pretty hard and the water was rising.  You would have drowned if we hadn’t pulled you out.”

“It wasn’t raining when I crawled in there,” Rob explained.  “I was trying to get away from the drones.  I guess I passed out.”

“You must be pretty brave to be outdoors when it ain’t raining,” the old man said.  “Either that, or pretty desperate.”

“I wasn’t expecting hornets,” Rob said.  “The war is over.”

“We were wondering about that,” the man said.  “We don’t get any news here, but we hadn’t seen any planes or heard any explosions for a long time.  But the drones were still here so we didn’t dare go out in the open.”

“They’re autonomous,” Rob said.  “They keep doing what they were programmed to do.  They shoot anything that moves.  Or at least, anything of ours.  The reason you don’t see any planes is because the hornets took ‘em all out.”

“Those little things can shoot down a plane?” the man asked with amazement.

“They’re not fast enough or powerful enough to shoot down a plane,” Rob explained, “but they hide near air bases.  As soon as a plane tries to take off or land, hundreds of them come from all directions and swarm around it.  You can’t shoot ‘em all down.  They get sucked into the engines, smash holes in the canopy, and destroy the plane.”

“Who won?” the man asked.

“Won what?” Rob asked.

“The war.”

“Oh, we did.  Or at least, that’s what they say.  Hard to tell with all the destruction.  No power, no water, no communications, no transportation.  My commander gathered all of us who were still alive and told us we were discharged, as he didn’t have any way to feed us, and he had no way to communicate with headquarters.”

“We wondered about the uniform,” the old man said.  “We thought maybe you were a deserter.”

Rob shook his head no.  He felt exhausted after this brief conversation, and he soon fell asleep.

In a few days Rob felt strong enough to get up and hobble around.  The drones had some type of directed energy weapon that burned holes through clothing and flesh.  Maybe it was a laser, or maybe something else.  You couldn’t see it, but it left a searing wound.  One shot usually wasn’t enough to kill a man, but when they attacked in swarms . . .

The group that had rescued him consisted of a few dozen old men, old women, and young children.  People too old or too young for the draft.  They were the surviving residents of a small town that had been almost totally destroyed by the war.  They lived in the remains of a supermarket, sleeping on beds that had been salvaged from wrecked houses.  They threw out all the refrigerated food when it went bad, but there was enough canned food and nonperishables to keep them alive.  For a while.  They were trying to hang on until the government, the Army, or someone from the outside could come to their rescue.  Rob had the unpleasant task of telling them that probably wasn’t going to happen.  Not for a long time, anyway.

“You have no idea how bad things are on the outside,” he said.  “Everyone is struggling to find a way to survive.  They don’t have the time or the resources to help anyone else.  There are no communications, no power, no organization.  I was chased out of a couple towns before I came here because they didn’t have enough food to feed a stranger.”

There was a long silence after he finished.  Finally a woman spoke up.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.  “We might have enough food to see us through the winter, but after that we’ll starve.”

”We won’t be able to grow crops if those drones are out there,” a man added.

“Maybe we could work at night,” someone suggested.

“My husband Richard went out at night.  The drones killed him.”

“They killed the guy who ran the sporting goods shop at night, too.”

“Nighttime is more dangerous than daytime,” Rob said.  “The drones have infrared sensors that detect body heat.  They can see us at night, but we can’t see them.”

“What about rain?” somebody asked.  “They’ve never attacked us when it was raining.  Were we just lucky, or can’t they fly in the rain?”

“I’m not an expert on hornet drones,” Rob said.  “They were a surprise to us when the war started.  I’ve had a few ‘lessons learned’ briefings, but I don’t think anyone really knows much about them.  We were told that they seldom attack when it’s raining.  My guess is that they can fly through a light rain, but a heavy rain will break their propellers, or damage their electronics or something, and that keeps them from flying.”

“So what can we do?” the woman who first spoke up asked.

Everyone was staring at Rob.  The last thing in the world he wanted to do was to get involved in fight with hornets, but he realized these people were looking to him for leadership.  He was the ‘expert.’ He was the soldier.  And his life depended on getting rid of the drones as much as theirs did.  Finally he spoke.

“The drones have to return to their nest to recharge.  The nest is an array of solar panels, about the size of a basketball court, with storage batteries and a power station that wirelessly recharges the drones.  If we take out the nest, the drones will die in a couple of days.”

“How do we take out the nest?” someone asked.

“That’s a good question,” Rob answered.  “We used to call the Air Force and they’d take it out with an air strike.  That was back when they still had planes and we still had a way to call them.  We’re going to have to figure out a way to take out this nest by ourselves.  If anyone has any ideas, or if you have military experience, let me know and we’ll try to work something out together.”

There wasn’t anything more they could do as a group, so amid a buzz of conversation people drifted off to work on other tasks.  An old man named John with military experience offered to help.  So did a veteran named Karl.  Then a teenage girl named Megan, who had built and flown hobby drones, stepped forward to offer her expertise.  They became the planning team.

They soon realized they couldn’t devise a plan to take out the nest until they knew where it was.  The people in the town had never seen a swarm up close, just isolated drones.  Rob explained that the hive sent out scouts, who searched for an appropriate target, and then called for a swarm to attack it.  Rob suggested that if he opened fire on the scout, he might be regarded as an appropriate target.  The others could stay hidden and watch for an approaching swarm.  When they saw the swarm, they should note which direction it was coming from and how much time had elapsed since Rob had fired on the scout.  The briefings Rob had received said the drones had a maximum speed of about 30 mph, so by knowing the elapsed time they could roughly calculate the distance to the nest.  Karl and John offered to help Rob attack the scout, using rifles and shotguns from the abandoned sporting goods store.  Rob agreed the guns would be good to have as a backup, but he thought it would be best if he attacked the scout by himself.

“We just want to stir things up enough to call in a swarm,” he said.  “We don’t want to provoke an attack on the entire town.”

They waited a few days until it rained hard enough for them to retrieve guns and ammunition from the hardware store and find a good location to stage the attack.  There was an open courtyard in front of the town hall, with stores across the streets on the other three sides of the courtyard.  John, Karl, and Megan stationed themselves in these stores, so that among the three of them they had a 360-degree view to spot an incoming swarm.  They each had a shotgun, with strict instructions not to fire unless they were directly threatened by a drone.  Rob stationed himself in the town hall.  It had a concrete plaza in front of it and a recessed doorway, giving him a place to fire at a scout and as well as a quick means of escape.  He had his army rifle, as well as his body armor and helmet.  He had almost left them behind when his commander disbanded their unit, but he took them with him just in case he needed them.  Now he was glad he kept them.  He also had a large mirror he had found in the ruins of a department store.  He glued a handle to the back so he could use it as a shield.  He didn’t know if it would deflect shots from a drone, but at the very least it would give him something to hide behind and it might confuse the drone’s sensors.

The next morning dawned sunny and cloudless, exactly what they needed.  Rob suited up and walked into the middle of the plaza.  The other three waved to him from their positions, standing well back from their respective doorways.  They were in the shadows, invisible from directly above, but with a clear view of the horizon.  Rob scanned the sky, looking for a scout.  He had read about tiger hunts, where the hunters tied a goat to a stake in an open area to act as bait.  Now he knew how the goat felt.

Time passed slowly.  His body armor was hot.  His helmet was hot.  The concrete around him reflected the sun’s heat.  Suddenly Megan shouted “Behind you!”  Rob spun around and got a brief glimpse of a drone over the Town hall as he crouched behind his shield.  He reached his arm out and fired two shots in the general direction of the drone and then quickly tucked his arm in behind the shield.  He didn’t want to shoot down the drone so he wasn’t aiming.  He just wanted to threaten it.  He stuck his arm out again and took two more shots, but this time the drone was ready for him.  He felt a sharp, burning pain in his arm as he pulled it back in.  The shock caused him to stumble against his “shield,” and the mirror shattered into pieces on the concrete.  He made a mad dash to the town hall and slammed the door shut behind him.  He looked at his arm and saw that he was lucky.  The drone had burned a slit in his shirt and left a singed stripe on his arm, but it wasn’t a direct hit.  Later he would find three burnt spots on the back of his armor from when the drone flew up behind him, and one on his helmet from his dash to the door.  Now he just had to wait to see if a swarm appeared.

He didn’t have to wait long.  In a few minutes there were hundreds of drones above the courtyard.  Several zoomed down the streets, at eye level, but Karl and the others kept cool.  No one fired at the drones, and after twenty minutes they left.  Rob knew they’d keep a close eye on that part of town.  He was glad they’d picked this spot to stage the “attack,” as it was several blocks away from the supermarket where they lived.  When he was finally able to meet up with the others he found they’d gotten a clear view of the direction the drones came from and they time it took them to get there.  They estimated the nest was about three miles northeast of the courtyard.

Having a rough idea of the direction and distance to the nest was helpful, but it didn’t make the search easy.  The GPS satellites had been destroyed early in the war, and Rob had no way to charge his phone to use GPS anyway.  He found a magnetic compass in the remains of the sporting goods store, but the hilly and heavily wooded terrain northeast of town made estimating distance tricky.

Rob was the only one searching for the nest.  The late fall weather offered frequent rain which grounded the drones, but there was always a chance the rain could stop unexpectedly and let the drones fly before he could get back to a shelter.  Rob had body armor and a helmet, and a camouflaged thermal groundsheet issued to him by the Army.  The groundsheet provided some protection against the drone’s heat sensors, so Rob could hide underneath it if a drone suddenly appeared.  The others had no such protection, so Rob insisted they stay inside while he searched.

After several days of fruitless searching, Rob was climbing a steep hill when a searing pain in his right leg caused him to lose his balance and tumble down the hill.  He lay absolutely still.  It was pouring down rain.  He didn’t see how any drones could be flying, but the burning pain in his leg told him he’d been shot by one.  As slowly as possible, he turned his head to survey his surroundings.  He had tumbled through some bushes and landed in a shallow ravine, which was hiding him from whatever had shot him.  He carefully pulled the thermal groundsheet out of his backpack and covered himself with it, making a peaked “roof” that stuck out over his face.  Then he crawled to the edge of the ravine so he could survey the hillside.

He didn’t see anything, but it was raining so hard it was hard to make out details.  He guessed the rain was interfering with the drone’s sensors too, making it hard for it to find him.  On a hunch, he pried a rock out of the dirt beside him and threw it as far away from him as possible.  It landed in a bush, shaking the leaves.  Almost immediately there was a faint hiss, a puff of steam where an energy beam hit the wet leaves, and a few tiny steam puffs where the beam had passed through raindrops.  It was like a tracer, and early in his combat training he'd learned that tracers work both ways.  This one led back to the crest of the hill.  Rob scanned the crest of the hill with binoculars he’d found in the sporting goods store.  He eventually spotted the drone.  It was perched on top of three slender legs, almost like radio antennas.  It made sense.  They’d been briefed that the drone’s sensors and weapons were on its underside, as they were designed to locate and attack targets underneath them.  In good weather the nest was probably protected by drones flying overhead, but they couldn’t do that when it was raining.  So, they posted sentries on the highest ground possible, on extendable legs, so they could look down and shoot at any approaching threat.  Rob eased his rifle up to his shoulder, took careful aim, and fired.  The drone disintegrated into a shower of parts.

After surveying the ridgeline above him and finding no more drones, Rob climbed out of the ravine and carefully made his way to the crest.  Keeping well under the cover of his thermal groundsheet, he searched the rest of the ridgeline for drones.  Now that he knew what he was looking for, he was able to spot several of them.  The rain seemed to be preventing them from  detecting him, so he decided to leave them undisturbed.  No sense stirring things up.  Satisfied that they did not pose an immediate threat, he crawled onto the crest so he could look down the other side.

The hill overlooked a horseshoe shaped valley, and on the floor of the valley he saw thousands of drones.  They were clustered around an array of solar panels and a large metal trailer which he guessed held storage batteries and the charging electronics.  He could hear a faint hum which seemed to be coming from the trailer.  He eased his rifle to his shoulder and raked the trailer with a full clip of automatic fire.  He threw himself back off the crest and hugged the hillside immediately after firing.  He heard hissing and saw the steam of vaporized raindrops as a dozen or more energy beams raked the hilltop.  The rain may have hampered the visual and thermal sensors of the sentries, but it didn’t keep them from hearing him.

He waited a half hour before creeping to a different position and peering into the valley.  Everything looked the same, and he could still hear the hum of the charging station.  The rain made it hard to see details, even with binoculars, but he didn’t see any damage to the trailer.  If he had armor piercing ammunition he would have risked another burst, but he didn’t see any reason to take the risk with standard ammo.  He eased his way down the hill and walked back to town, blazing the trail so he could find the nest again.

When Rob described what he had found to his team, John said “Sounds like the old Thompson gravel pit.  A lot of houses around here are built on gravel and fill dirt from that hill.  Hasn’t been used in years, though.  There’s a dirt road that leads up to the east side of it.”

“It looked like an old gravel pit,” Rob said.  “And the road would give us easier access to it.  I hiked in from the west and didn’t see the road.  The question is, how can we destroy the nest?”

The obvious solutions all required weapons or explosives which they didn’t have.  Then Megan spoke up.  “Could we pour gasoline into the pit and light it on fire?  That’s how my dad used to get rid of yellow jacket nests.”

“That’s a good idea,” Rob said.  “It would take an awful lot of gas if we just poured it in.  Most of it would soak into the ground or run off in a different direction, but if we got a 55 gallon drum and rolled it down the hill, it would stop when it hit the trailer or the solar panels.  Then we could shoot holes in it, light it, and destroy the charging system.  Anybody know where we could get a drum and some gasoline?”

“I used to work as a car mechanic,” Karl said.  “We had drums of oil in the shop, and we drained the used oil into drums for recycling.  There are probably drums at the auto shops around here.”

“And there’s bound to be gas in the underground tanks at the gas station,” John suggested.  “But we’d need some way to pump it out.”

“The guys who took care of our lawn had a tank on their truck,” Megan said.  “I’ve seen them use a hand pump to refuel their mowers.  Could we use something like that?”

Rob suggested they discuss this with everyone at the supermarket, as they might know which local shops would be most likely to have the equipment they needed.  When everyone had gathered, Rob outlined the plan.  One person said he knew where several empty drums were stored, and another said he knew where to get a hand pump.  Several offered to supply gas cans, if they would be helpful.

“I think we could use as many cans as you’re got,” Rob said.  “I hate to ask anyone to go near the nest, but I don’t think we can roll a drum full of gas up the hill.  We’ll have to roll it up empty, and fill it from small cans we can carry up the hill.  That means we’re going to need a lot of people to carry gas cans to the gravel pit.”

“Why don’t you use a truck?” an old man asked.

“Trucks don’t run anymore,” Rob answered.  “An EMP weapon fried all the electronics at the beginning of the war.  That killed all our army trucks.”

“I got a truck that’s old enough it don’t have no electronics,” the man said.  “I’d just need a little help moving the rubble in front of the garage where it’s parked.”

“How old is it?” Rob asked.

“1929,” the man said proudly.

A smile slowly spread across Rob’s face.  “I think that’s old enough,” he said.

People immediately set off to gather the supplies they needed.  Rob, Karl, and John went with the old man, whose name was Bill, to get the truck.  They cleared the remains of a neighbor’s house away from the garage doors and swung the doors open.  A beautifully restored Ford pickup truck sat in the garage.  Bill climbed into the driver’s seat.  The starter groaned once and stopped.

“Damn!” Rob said.  “How are we going to charge the battery?”

“It don’t need chargin’” Bill said.  “It’s always like this when it ain’t been driven for a while.”  He reached under the front seat and pulled out a hand crank.  “This is why you need an old truck,” he said with a grin.  “New trucks don’t come with a backup starter.”

He walked to the front of the truck, stuck the crank through a hole in the radiator, and gave the engine a quick crank.  The engine caught immediately.

It was dark by the time they’d gathered all the equipment.  An empty oil drum and enough cans of gas to fill it fit neatly into the bed of the truck.  They tied several rags to the ends of sticks.  Soaked with gas, these would become torches to throw into the pit and ignite the gas that leaked out of the drum.

“If this rain keeps up we can start first thing in the morning,” Rob told his team, which now included Bill.  “If we’re lucky, the drones will still be grounded tomorrow.”

“Afraid they’ll move the nest?” Bill asked.

Rob shook his head.  “No, they couldn’t lift the trailer or the solar panels.  Those things are like land mines.  You plant ‘em, they stay put, and you hope the enemy runs into ‘em.  And just like land mines, they’re deadly long after the army that planted them has left.  The enemy was supposed to disable them when they left, but defeated armies don’t always obey orders.  What I’m afraid of is that since I took out one sentry today, they’ll post a lot more sentries as soon as they can fly again.”

It was still pouring down rain the next morning.  Bill, Megan, and John squeezed into the truck, while Rob and Karl stood on the running boards.  They stopped about a quarter mile before they got to the gravel pit, where they were hidden from the sentries.  Rob carefully climbed the hill and began taking out the sentries.  It took him a couple hours to work his way all around the pit.  When he was convinced he had destroyed all the sentries, he stood up on the ridgeline and walked openly along the entire rim.  If there were any sentries left, he wanted to find out before he let the others climb the hill.  Nothing fired at him.

He found the best spot to launch the drum and had the truck pull up as close to that spot as Bill could get.  It was difficult to roll the empty drum through the scrub brush and around the trees growing on the hillside, but they managed to get it to a level spot on top of the hill.  Rob was glad they hadn’t tried that with a full drum.  Carrying the gas cans up and filling the drum was tedious, but uneventful.  There were fewer bushes and no trees on the pit side of the hill, as the topsoil had slid down into the pit when it was being actively used.  They gave the drum a push.  It bounced and zig-zagged as it careened down the hill, but it crushed a few solar panels at the bottom and came to rest near the trailer.

They stood for a moment and admired their handiwork.

“One of the drones just flipped over,” Megan said.

Rob saw another drone flip upside down.  “Get down!” he shouted.

They ducked behind the hill just as energy beams began hissing through the raindrops.  Bill was swearing.

“Are you OK?” Rob asked.

“Yeah, I’m OK,” Bill said.  “My left leg burns like hell, though.”

“I didn’t know drones could do that,” Rob said.  “It’s a kamikaze move.  The ones that flip over will never fly again, but they can look up and shoot up to defend the nest.  Whoever designed these things was damned smart.  Let’s get this over with and get out of here.”

Rob wrapped himself in his thermal groundsheet, grabbed his rifle, and inched up the hill.  When he peered over the edge, though, he jerked backwards and slid back down.

“Damn!” he shouted.  He had a nasty burn on his forehead.  “Those things are deadly!”  He looked around at the rain.  “The rain’s letting up,” he said.  “Their sensors are getting more accurate.  I have to expose my face to aim my rifle.  If the rain lets up any more they’ll start flying.”

He thought for a moment.  “Any gas left in those cans?” he asked.

“Just enough to soak the torches,” Karl said.  “We put all the rest in the drum.”

“I could drain some out of the truck,” Bill suggested.  “It’s easy to do.”

“I just need a couple gallons,” Rob said.  “I need to blind those drones.  And get me a cup, or cut the top off one of the cans so I can throw gas over the top of the hill without exposing myself.”

Karl, John, and Bill scrambled down the hill to get the gas.  They came back with two cans of gas and a large travel mug which Bill had in the truck.  Rob tossed mugs of gas over the hill, soaking an arc around his firing position.  Then he lit a torch and tossed it over.  When the flames and smoke flared up, he stood up.  The heat and light from the fire hid him from the drones’ sensors.  He emptied two clips into the drum at the bottom of the hill.

They waited a full minute to let the leaking gasoline spread out, then Rob lit another torch and heaved it at the drum.  There was an immediate “KAWUUMPH” as an inferno spread across the pit.  As they were scrambling back down the hill there was a louder explosion and a giant fireball as the gas that remained in the drum exploded.

“I’ll come back and check in a couple of days,” Rob said as they reached the truck, “but I don’t think that nest is ever going to hum again.”

It was three days before Rob returned to the nest.  Bill drove him there in the pickup, but only after Bill assured him the truck could go fast enough to outrun the drones.  Bill seemed a little hurt that Rob would even question the truck’s ability to go that fast.

It was a clear, sunny day.  There were no drones in sight.  Rob had Bill stop before they came within sight of the pit, just as they’d done on the trip with the gasoline.  Rob donned his helmet and body armor and carefully worked his way around the ridge, looking for sentries.  They were still in place, but showed no signs of life, even when he threw rocks at them and stood where they could see him.  Satisfied that the sentries were dead, he had Bill drive the truck up to the pit.  Together they climbed the hill so Rob could show Bill what he’d seen from the ridge.

There was a large, burned area on the floor of the pit, filled with the charred remains of drones and solar panels.  The unburned panels were twisted and deformed from the heat.  The sides of the trailer were scorched, and the trailer was tilted because the rubber tires on the side nearest the fire had burned off the rims.  There was a stench of burned rubber and plastic.  The drones farthest from the fire appeared to be undamaged, but most were motionless.  The propellers of a few were turning slowly as they drained the last vestiges of power from their batteries.

Rob and Bill drove back to the supermarket and told everyone the good news.  They celebrated with a picnic outside, in the sunshine.  It had been many months since they dared to go outside in daylight.  They knew they had years of hard work ahead of them, but with the drones gone life could begin to get back to normal.