The following is an excerpt from The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young, available now from Keylight Books.
The Hive is a story of survival, sisters, and secrets.
Rural Missouri, a hot summer day on the Mississippi River during the Great Recession: the four Fehler sisters want to be more than “bug girls” in their family’s fourth-generation pest control business, but their path is fixed. When the patriarch suddenly dies, and his succession goes according to plan but not expectation, they each must plot a course for themselves in uncertain and changing times. Through it all, their mother, Grace, weighs her own choices, and whether her passion to save her family as a doomsday prepper also includes blowing up her world with a forbidden romance.
In their small town and around the dinner table, the Fehlers embody Midwestern resilience as they come together to save the company’s finances and the family’s future, and work to preserve what they have by evolving as a hive. Once again, Flood author Melissa Scholes Young has readers buzzing with the story of an unforgettable family, grieving, and rising again.
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Grace knew she’d be the one to save them all in the end. Certainly she couldn’t count on Robbie, but she’d be prepared. She’d rescue her daughters too, even if they were ungrateful. Grace made lists. She also made plans and contingency plans and worst-case scenario plans. Surviving was all that mattered. It was life or death, and Grace chose to live and to fight for her family because no one else would.
As a kindred prepper, sometimes Kate would join Grace on the front lines in the cellar basement and help with inventory. One time she’d even caught her favorite daughter watching Doomsday Preppers and Grace thought, Finally, someone gets me, even though most of the preppers on TV were just showing off. Some of them thought it was a game. It wasn’t. She preferred the term survivalist to prepper because surviving this marriage, this family business, and this life was a war she knew how to win.
The lists she wrote clarified the daily battle plan before she holed up on the front lines in her basement for real work. Most mornings she mentally prepped on her front porch with her notepad and a fresh cup of coffee. Survival schemes blurred into grocery lists and home repair to-dos and errands to run. She recorded the daily weather forecast for each family member’s location. Clouds, rain, flood stages, snow, and ice were her love language. It’s not that Grace didn’t notice sunshine, but she saw the threats to her family more acutely.
The sounds of the neighborhood soothed her as she plotted, especially the peaceful seconds after the school buses carried the kids away. The houses sighed. Nacho stretched out on the rug by the front door. The mat at their threshold read Welcome, but no one really was. When the bird feeder rush hour chatter began, Grace made a note to refill the hummingbird nectar. She understood their spastic energy and territorial intensity. The tornado of tiny wings calmed her. She checked her list again and saw duct tape crossed off. So why wasn’t it where she’d left it on her workbench? Nothing could highjack a day of prepping more than low supplies.
Grace yelled into the garage where she thought her husband was: “Robbie, did you take my duct tape again?” She didn’t bother checking, just opened the door a slit and screamed. “I bought a three-pack last week at Walmart, and two are missing!”
Robbie didn’t answer. He was probably there behind the tool bench, in a lawn chair with a beer, but she couldn’t see him without coming into the garage. Grace never came into the garage, and Robbie agreed not to go near the cellar. In the garage, Robbie usually busied himself with his ham radio, calling out to other operators as “Bug Guy”. Beside his handheld and microphone was the framed license he’d earned from the FCC that allowed him to communicate on the amateur bands. Grace would have been annoyed by his hobby, but she was counting on his skill in crisis. She’d read it was the ham radio contact that kept New York City agencies in touch when their command center was destroyed on 9/11. At least, it was a contribution.
In the cellar, Grace began where she always began by unpacking and repacking the Bug Out Bags. It was a daily, meditative ritual. Among friends, Grace called them BOBs. First things first: grab and run. The blogs claimed that hunkering down was the primary line of defense, but survivalists like her preferred an escape route.
Grace didn’t like the idea of relying on chemical concoctions, but the idea of being stuck indefinitely in a perfectly stocked cellar with her husband made her stash Valium. She’d peeled off the prescription label and wrote Emergency Use in a black Sharpie. Then she added MOM ONLY underneath.
Grace saw threats everywhere, which is what made BOBs so essential and challenging. Each BOB had the basics:
- folding shovel
- Marine Raider Bowie knife
- Gerber multi-tool
- fire starter items
- flashlight
- first aid kit (with QuikClot)
- crank radio
- rope
- water
- bottle with filter
- food bag (replaced once per year)
- hygiene items
- utensils
- bowl
- sewing kit
- work gloves
- extra socks
- tarp
- compass
- batteries
- Bible
- bullets
But she added a few extras for each:
- a journal with pencils for Jules, who liked to scribble
- a key chain stuffed animal for Kate, who, even at twelve, still slept with her army of dolls
- a romance novel for Tammy
- maps and markers to keep Maggie’s mind occupied
- a full flask for Robbie
- lipstick and night cream in the secret pocket of her personal BOB
She scanned the shelves again thinking maybe she’d already brought the duct tape down and had blamed Robbie for nothing. When she couldn’t locate the extra rolls, she fumed all over again, stomped up the stairs, and called the office.
“Fehler Family Exterminating, Jenn speaking.”
“Jenn who?” Grace asked, sipping a lukewarm cup of coffee. “Jenn-I’m-new-here-what’s-it-to-you?”
“Huh. You’re something, aren’t you? This is Mrs. Fehler. I need you to send over a technician with two rolls of duct tape.” She smashed the phone between her ear and shoulder and cleaned out the coffeepot with her free hands.
“You want to speak to Mr. Fehler?”
“No. I want you to call one of the guys from the back room. Trust me—whoever is back there isn’t doing anything useful. Put two rolls of duct tape from the stockroom in his hands, and tell him to drive to my house.”
“Hold on. I’ll get Maggie.”
Grace was in the basement loading the flashlights with batteries, testing them, and unloading them again, when Travis came down the steps ten minutes later. He hadn’t knocked. He paused at the base of the stairs, spun a roll of duct tape in each hand, and parked them at his waist like six-shooters. “Heard somebody needs to be taped up,” he said, blowing on a roll like it was smoking.
“Seriously, Travis? They sent you?” Her face twitched into a smile, but she busied herself testing the flints.
“Ain’t you glad to see me, Grace?” Travis pleaded like a puppy. His friendly, wide smile pulled down into a pout. He puffed up his chest and focused his soft brown eyes on her. He was good at sales. Getting him hired at Fehlers’ was surprisingly easy and mostly convenient. Robbie vastly underappreciated his skills, but Grace saw his value.
“I’m glad to see you—just not in my house.”
“Don’t see nobody home.”
Grace looked at her watch. “Kate and Tammy’s school bus will be here in exactly twenty-seven minutes.”
Travis closed the space between them, dropped to his knees in front of Grace’s waist, and offered the duct tape. Grace took both rolls and stacked them neatly. She leaned away to cross the tape off her list again. Then Travis rose, put his hands around her back- side, and laid Grace out on the workbench. “You are so strong,” he said, sliding his hands up her plump thighs. She kissed him back, thrilled that when the world ended, basic instincts would prevail.
She blushed to have someone else in control. She trusted Travis, and he made her feel safe in a world where she never felt safe. He admired her lists and carefully considered the details of each of her plans. When Travis had joined their local preppers assembly, she knew immediately that he took survival as seriously as she did. Robbie had been skipping the meetings for months, and Grace had to go alone.
Grace undressed him quickly to get the smell of his uniform out of her nose. The last thing she wanted to think about right now was the family business or the business of the family. This was about endurance and survival. Together, they could do both. Travis strengthened the hive, even as he threatened it. This was how she made sure her daughters would be safe. Her checklist fell to the floor, and the duct tape soon followed.