Mort(e) was too far away to see the little fox on its leash.
The Colony had calculated exactly how many Alphas it would take to remove all the bodies in one sweep. These vulture ants marched in a line to the new mound, while the others went about the business of toppling the buildings one at a time. The structures collapsed in neatly executed implosions, like the splashes from pebbles dropped into still water. The ants carted off the lumber and then plowed up the dirt. By nightfall, only a muddy patch remained, in the shape of an equilateral hexagon. The Queen had blotted out the past, proving once again that nothing lasted forever. She alone could decide what remained and what would be discarded.
Mort(e) and Tiberius examined each other’s eyes for burst blood vessels. They gazed into each other’s open mouths, searching for purple lumps that would turn into lesions. They quizzed each other on basic things, using a recommended list of questions that Miriam had devised: What was your slave name? What was the name of your master? What was the first word you could read? What was the first word you could speak? Who is your enemy? It was Tiberius’s job to know the answers for each member of the Red Sphinx. The answer to the last question was the same for everyone and, after what they had seen in the town, was easier than ever. The humans were the enemy. Now and for all eternity.
They experienced no symptoms, not even a headache or fatigue. Thus they rejoined the Red Sphinx at Camp Delta. The camp was a wooden structure, also shaped like a hexagon, with walls made of forest logs and watchtowers at three of its six points. A scout spotted them and alerted the others. The entire Red Sphinx greeted them at the gate, cheering wildly. The two invincible cats had cheated death once again. They were living symbols of the pending victory over humanity.
When Mort(e) spotted Culdesac, the bobcat tipped his head, a signal that Mort(e) should enjoy this while he could. There would be work to do later. Culdesac had played the entire episode to his advantage. As far as anyone else knew, he had sent Mort(e) and Tiberius on a suicide mission, and their loyalty was so absolute that they agreed immediately. Some human traits, such as duplicity, came in handy every once in a while.
MORT(E) DID NOT talk about Sheba again for a long time.
He managed to survive a few more years of war. And thanks to the increasing need for EMSAH experts in the field, he and Tiberius became minor celebrities, important assets in the Queen’s experiment. The Red Sphinx could not stop at a base or settlement without some officer from the regular army asking questions about the quarantine. Under Culdesac’s orders, they downplayed the disturbing late-stage behavior of the victims, focusing instead on detection and diagnosis of the physical traits. Tiberius was invited to vivisect other animals, and he often asked Mort(e) to join him. Whether he wanted to or not, Mort(e) was auditing a medical education.
Tiberius died still believing he would find a cure. It happened during a raid on an underground bunker, which the Red Sphinx tried to infiltrate by crawling through a ventilation shaft. The humans detected them and began firing. Tiberius couldn’t run away. Mort(e) screamed his name over the noise but heard no answer.
After the humans were overrun and the bunker secured, Culdesac personally executed the survivors. The Red Sphinx buried Tiberius near a river and placed rocks on the ground in the shape of a medical cross. Afterward, Mort(e) began to accept that they were no closer to finding a cure, despite the constant news of victories on the frontier.
One day, the Red Sphinx passed through another settlement. Mort(e) was the only one who refrained from remarking bitterly about how good these civilians had it. He wanted what they had. He wanted to find a house and wait for Sheba to return, or else continue his search for her. He would explore life rather than death. There was nothing more for him to learn about the latter. There had to be some justice in the universe that would bring her back after the enormous price he had paid. But this was human thinking. The universe owed him nothing.
With the new settlements cropping up, there was talk of the war shifting into a “transition period,” when life would finally proceed as planned. The ants, speaking through their chosen animal ambassadors, assured everyone that their needs would be met while things were returned to normal. Accustomed to taking orders and living only for sustenance, the animals fell in line.
With this loyalty as a foundation, the Colony set up a quorum of elders for every species, each of which sent a representative to the Council. The first order of business was to establish a Bureau to oversee the dirty work of rebuilding: construction contracts, relocation assistance, adoption services for orphans, local policing, education, medicine. Weary from years of conflict, the animals embraced these mundane tasks. Veterans were returning home, and construction workers were arriving by the busload. Things moved again. Streets opened up. There was even talk about reestablishing cell phone connections once the network of towers was rebuilt.
Ignoring all these developments, Culdesac asked the Red Sphinx to stay together. The enemy was still watching them, he warned, and no one should relax simply because some politicians declared the war to be technically over. “The new order must be defended,” he said, sounding like some human propaganda broadcast. “Somebody has to protect these trash-pickers and schoolteachers.”
When a new settlement known as Wellbeing opened in the part of the country where he had grown up, Mort(e) quietly left the Red Sphinx. It was his right. He was the first one to do so while still living. Mort(e) had saved the lives of the others so many times that they dared not criticize him. But Culdesac could not hide his disappointment. He said he would never forgive Mort(e).
Mort(e)’s decision to quit came with another price. He relinquished many of the benefits of being a war hero and would have to go to the resettlement camps and wait with all the civilians. Still, he had options. Culdesac, on the other hand, had no home to which he could return. His entire life was combat. The Change had made him smarter, but the struggle would never end.
Living in the camps took some adjusting for Mort(e). The food was bland and repetitive, and he had to sleep in a massive auditorium with rows of pallets on the floor. He grew accustomed to the routine. After so many exhausting missions, his strength was returning, his mind clearing at last. And because he was a veteran, the administrators gave him prime real estate by one of the windows. They even let him browse the logbooks, though he could not find records for anyone named Sheba.
Mort(e) was snoozing in the dusty light, his thoughts dissipating among the echoing voices in the room, when the captain paid him a visit. Culdesac nudged him with his foot. Mort(e) rose to give a salute.
Culdesac put up his great paw to stop him. “Don’t bother.”
In his typical blunt fashion, the captain went through the list of those who had died on the latest mission, a raid on a fortified villa in the mountains. He kept his hands at his sides, his ears twitching at the sound of crying children. This camp, filled with weak, ungrateful civilians, insulted everything he stood for, everything he was. He needed the war. Peace, for him, was the equivalent of death.
“You’re going to get lazy and fat again with all these other pets, aren’t you?” Culdesac asked. “You’re going to take this new order for granted.”
“There is no new order,” Mort(e) said.
Their ongoing argument had grown more heated in recent years without Tiberius to act as mediator. The newer members of the Red Sphinx, unfamiliar with the long relationship between the two, would sometimes fear for Mort(e)’s life when he disagreed with the captain. For his part, Culdesac seemed to enjoy their debates. It was exercise for him, the same way a battle was something to prepare for and learn from.
“Has it ever crossed your choker mind,” he asked now, “that the Colony has bigger plans for you?”
“I’ve served the Colony,” Mort(e) replied. “The war is over. They can’t possibly have any other plans for me.”
“You were supposed to represent the best of the Change.”
Mort(e) burst into mocking l
aughter. “If that’s true, then we’re all choked,” he said. “What are you getting at? What is Her Highness telling you these days?”
Culdesac waved him off. “Never mind,” he said. “It just wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“We’re going to become like the humans,” Mort(e) said, as he always did. “I don’t care about this ‘aim true’ crap. Your Queen is wrong about us.”
Culdesac said that if Mort(e)’s predictions ever came to pass, then Mort(e) could punch him in the face. “And I won’t even kill you for it.”
“Okay,” Mort(e) said, “Then the next time we meet, you know what I’m going to do.” He balled his mangled hand into a knobby fist.
“Then maybe this should be the last time we meet.”
Somewhere in the large auditorium, two pups fought over a stuffed animal until an adult told them to stop.
“You’re going to try to find her again, aren’t you?” Culdesac said. “After all you’ve learned. After all I’ve taught you. You still think you’re going to see her again.”
Mort(e) considered this for a moment, letting out a deep sigh.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
Everyone gathered at the mouth of the temple. Animals of every genus and species, waiting for the latest appearance of the remaining humans on the planet, the last holdouts of the great war. This was the era of the final humiliation of humanity, when the crimes of that greedy species would be punished at last. The humans had prayed to their gods, they’d maintained faith in their technology and their governments, but nothing would save them now.
The Colony held a Purge every few months in Wellbeing. The people loved it. They loved jeering at the human prisoners as the Alphas frog-marched them from the depths of the anthill. No other event encapsulated both the anger and the euphoria of the animals’ new freedom. No other event brought things full circle. Here, the humans were the exotic ones, the playthings, the ones who could be discarded. In the days leading up to a Purge, people gossiped about who they expected to see—high-ranking generals, politicians, young children (for the humans were still breeding). People wondered—sometimes aloud, but mostly to themselves—if they would see their former masters. And when the prisoners were put on display, the spectators placed bets on who would cry first, who would scream first, who would pray first, who would fight back first, who would beg first, and who would say nothing at all and accept the fate that had arrived at last. The pomp reminded the citizens of what they had won, and how easily that victory could be taken away.
Mort(e), however, was tired of it. It had been over a year since he had walked out on the Red Sphinx, and a lifetime since the Martinis had driven away in their silver SUV. Unless this Purge actually produced his former masters or provided some clue about Sheba, then it was another waste of however much time he had left on this earth.
Things were supposed to be normal now, but Mort(e) knew that it would take another generation for everyone to get over what had happened. It would require the people of his time to die off, and the memories of their former lives to die with them.
The animals waited in the evening sun, into the dusk, and finally in the dark. The temple—a massive anthill the size of a pyramid—changed color from tan in the daytime, to brown as the sun descended, and finally to gray under the stars. At last, the mouth of the structure opened, powered by some biomechanism that only the ants could master. The aperture began as a hole the size of a fist and continued to widen like an iris. The anthill became like a basket placed atop a fluorescent lamp, with spears of light shooting high into the night sky.
Crouching on all fours, the animals got into position.
Alpha soldiers emerged from the entrance, standing upright. Their abdomens swayed from side to side with each step. Antennae waved like the arms of a marionette doll. Segmented eyes gazed at everything and nothing at once. Mouths resembled the parts of a machine, all gears and hinges and sharp edges. Coarse hairs sprouted from their exoskeletons. And crawling about their bodies were thousands of smaller ants, making it seem as though their skin somehow moved. Humans had once suffered through nightmares about creatures such as this. And here they were.
The crowd split down the middle to make room for them. Mort(e) waited several rows away, between two dogs who did not acknowledge him, and behind a pair of cats who arrived together but said nothing to each other. The dogs wore the orange vests of sanitation workers, and Mort(e) detected a faint odor of death masked by some kind of musky cologne that the humans had left behind. Mort(e) imagined that these workers had removed another stash of corpses—probably another bomb shelter with a desiccated human family inside. He noticed a pamphlet sticking out of one of the cat’s pockets. EMSAH SYNDROME, it read. BE ALERT FOR THE SIGNS. The disease gave these workers a sense of purpose as they did their part to reestablish civilization. If Tiberius had been there, he would have quizzed them on EMSAH trivia and scolded them for each question they got wrong. You mean to tell me you don’t know the incubation period?
As he did whenever he was in a public place these days, Mort(e) kept an eye out for Sheba. If he did it long enough, everyone resembled her until it seemed as though the entire crowd was mocking him. There was Sheba cradling a pup in her lap. There was Sheba removing a miner’s cap and inspecting the little light for the next day’s work. There was Sheba holding a pair of binoculars, awaiting a glimpse of the Alpha warriors and their human captives. Then, as always, Mort(e)’s eyes readjusted to reality, and his mind accepted that she was nowhere to be found.
Before Mort(e) could become completely lost in his thoughts, the first of the human prisoners appeared. The Purge was beginning. Everyone tensed up, craning necks, straightening spines and tails. Mort(e) was surprised to see so many prisoners. Most were American soldiers, still clad in their pixelated camouflage, faces muddied. There were always stories of humans hiding out in caves and sewers, using their awful machines of war to hold on to life for one more day. Mort(e) suspected that the Colony itself was the source of these rumors, which did such a wonderful job of keeping the animals on their guard.
One of the women prisoners carried a sleeping baby against her shoulder. This also surprised Mort(e), for it was common knowledge that the Alphas liked to eat human children.
While the soldiers had been grim, trying to ignore the sea of animals that spread out before them, the civilian prisoners whimpered. Mort(e) caught sight of one of them, a woman of about fifty. She had white hair and was still chubby despite years of conflict. A younger woman shushed her.
A phalanx of Alphas guarded the rear. The aperture in the temple closed behind them. Then a noise rumbled from the bowels of the anthill like a foghorn.
At the signal, the animals knew what to do.
All at once, they rose on their hind legs. The prisoners, including the most hardened among them, could not keep from being startled at the sight of it. The symbolism of the ritual was clear: the age of the humans was over, and all their attempts to extend life through science and cheat death through religion had failed.
All together, the animals lifted their arms and waved at the prisoners. Mort(e)’s hand was smaller than some of the others’, his fingers stubby but functional. He could still wave.
A scream rang out. It was a soldier, sobbing uncontrollably. Another soldier put his arm around the man. Then he faced the animals and spit. Soon almost all the humans were screaming. The animals cried out in response. It began as random taunts before coalescing into a sustained chant:
“Purge!” they shouted. “Purge! Purge! Purge!”
The crowd swelled around the prisoners, moving with them toward the ship docked at the river. The vessel resembled a half-submerged submarine made of a brownish organic material, like a combination of bamboo and mud. There were no windows on the hull, only a doorway on the side. A retractable gangplank extended through it, holding the corralled prisoners. From there, the humans would be ferried to the Island, the nameless place where the nameless war was won,
and where the Queen kept her royal court. The Colony’s official propaganda stated that Miriam and her staff would use the prisoners in experiments intended to find a cure for EMSAH. But Mort(e) imagined that at least some of the humans would become zoo exhibits. Perhaps they would be forced to breed so that their offspring would live through the same horror, producing generations of slaves for all eternity. It would be no different from what the humans had done to the animals, Culdesac had always said.
There was one last ritual to play out, a formality that the ants had instituted in all the resettled sectors. The elite soldiers of the animal army would be at the dock to preside over the event. To Mort(e), this ceremony was one of the Colony’s clumsy public relations efforts, intended to show that the ants were transferring power to the surface dwellers.
A tan dog—what the humans would have stupidly called a Great Dane—had the privilege this time of seeing the humans off. Wearing a maroon sash to indicate his rank of colonel, the dog stepped forward to a microphone mounted near the gangplank. The humans waited with drawn faces, apparently more annoyed than frightened by this point.
“The last days of this war go on and on,” the dog said, “but with this Purge, we are closer to final victory over the plague of humanity.”
A cheer rose up, followed by more chants of “Purge!”
The colonel lifted his hands to ask for quiet. “Final victory over the plague of humanity,” the dog emphasized. “And final victory over humanity and its plague.”
A Purge was never complete without mention of EMSAH. In response, the animals pointed at the humans and chanted, “Shame! Shame!” It was not in unison, which made it all the more disturbing.
“We have seen what your syndrome, your hellish weapon of last resort, has done to you,” the dog said, facing the prisoners. “And so, we say to you in one voice, ‘We stand united.’ ”
It was the opening line to the pledge that the animals recited at every Purge. Anticipating it, the crowd immediately joined in:
Morte Page 9
