“No, no,” Mort(e) said. “The name fit. Because I could go either way, depending on how things sort themselves out. I could be the normal person, reuniting with my friend. Or I could become Death. I’m trying really hard to avoid that, but I guess I’ve developed a habit.”
Wawa chuckled. “Thank you, Mort(e),” she said.
“Now can you get to sleep, or do you want another bedtime story?”
“I’ll sleep,” Wawa said, rolling onto her side. Her tail wagged a little before coming to a stop.
A minute later, she said, “Don’t worry about me, Mort(e). That business won’t happen again.” He caught it in her voice—the slow crumbling of another one of her beliefs.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.” He sat under the stars and waited.
THE MESSAGE FROM the Vesuvius was short and to the point. It gave a set of coordinates, followed by a simple, persuasive word: Run.
Mort(e) found the coordinates on his map. They intersected in an open field at the edge of an abandoned town. It was a perfect rectangle, probably a football field. He understood the instructions well enough. Driving a car was out of the question, even if they could find one that still worked. They would have to leave the road, and taking a vehicle through the dirt would create so many vibrations that the Queen herself would hear them. So they would have to do it on foot and hope that they were not too loud to attract attention, and that there were no bird patrols passing through the area. Calculating the time needed, Mort(e) figured that if they began moving now, they would reach the field by dawn.
Wawa gathered up the remaining water bottles. Using a discarded belt, she fashioned a strap for her axe, which she wore over her shoulder. Moments later, they were running across the dead fields, leaping fences, hopping over craters.
Their journey took them across another highway, this one with an even more bizarre sight than the last. Instead of being lined up in a traffic jam, the vehicles were piled haphazardly in an artificial mountain, a pyramid, the faint moonlight shining through the windshields and reflecting off the paint.
More running. Past trees. Over a shallow stream. The sky above changed. Soon, they were sprinting under a purple canopy that brightened to red. And then, finally, the sun rose in the east. They were behind schedule, but the town was in sight.
The place was virtually untouched. An exit ramp curved onto the main street, toward abandoned shops and church steeples. Though the buildings blocked the view, the map showed that the field was on the other side.
Mort(e) picked up a scent and sensed the vibrations in the ground. Wawa, whose hearing was even more acute, noticed it as well. She sniffed, then let out a whine to indicate danger. They stood still. Something moved in the soil under their feet.
Wawa was about to speak. Mort(e) raised his hand to silence her. He tossed a bottle of water so that it skimmed across the dirt, away from the ramp. It went about twenty feet before the earth around it ripped open. The armored skull of an Alpha soldier squeezed out of the fissure. Three others emerged, along with a churning river of smaller ants.
Mort(e) and Wawa broke for the ramp, vaulting the barrier and landing on the asphalt. Behind them, the earth tore open. The air was thick with the smell of freshly plowed dirt, and the sound of clicking jaws and skittering feet.
They would have to run through the town. They were safer on cement than the dirt, but there was no telling what was inside the buildings. If there were humans waiting at the field, they were probably already dead.
A row of cars on the side of the road overturned as the Alpha soldiers burst through it. A cherry-red convertible tumbled into their path. Mort(e) ran around the vehicle while Wawa bounded over it. Alphas poured over the barrier. Ants rose from their underground tunnels, sending up geysers of dirt.
They approached an abandoned military roadblock. A burned-out army truck was parked beside a row of sandbags and barbed wire. Seconds after jumping over, Mort(e) heard the ants explode through it.
The first building they passed was a post office. A sign on the front door had a drawing of an ant, with a message underneath that said, INSECT BITES TREATED HERE. At the intersection, to his right, the street was filled from sidewalk to sidewalk with Alpha soldiers. All of them completely still. Same thing on his left. The soldiers came to life, their movements synchronized, an undulating wave of armor and claws. Wawa yelped.
The glass storefronts shattered outward. Alpha soldiers spilled onto the street. Others emerged from second-story windows and rooftops, dropping to the ground and aiming their antennae toward the two fugitives. Dozens of Alphas now cut off their escape.
They had been lured right into a nest.
Mort(e) pulled the gun from its holster. Wawa unhooked the axe from its strap and ran with the blade over her shoulder.
Mort(e) picked out the closest Alpha and fired. She kept coming at him, shrugging off the gunshots. Mort(e) emptied the clip until he hit the base of her neck, cutting off the ant’s brain from the rest of her body. The Alpha stumbled forward and landed hard on the pavement, part of her jaw breaking off. Mort(e) jumped onto her back and grabbed one of the claws. Placing his foot on the joint, he snapped it off. Now he had a club. Another Alpha drew close. Mort(e) swung the claw and connected, caving in the beast’s compound eye. A second later, Wawa’s axe chopped off the ant’s antenna. With the ant prostrate before her, Wawa swung again, severing the vulnerable neck. Bits of carapace flew off as the creature collapsed.
Two more Alphas charged at them. Mort(e) crouched and lifted the abdomen of the dead one. He squeezed until a blast of acid shot out, catching the two ants in the small explosion. The monsters clawed at their melting eyes. In their confusion and agony, the ants crashed into one another and fell over. The others stepped over their writhing bodies and continued to advance. Mort(e) slashed at them with the broken claw to slow them down. He could sense the rest of the swarm closing in from behind.
Suddenly the ants stood still, their antennae pointing straight up.
A great shadow blotted out the sun, spreading over the entire street—a gigantic silvery whale swimming above, ready to swallow up the entire town. The Vesuvius. Painted on the bottom of the command gondola were a massive black cross, a crescent moon, and a six-pointed star. Cannons extended from the windows. When the guns opened fire, the Alphas standing in their path burst apart. Heads, limbs, and antennae skittered along the ground. Several Alphas were cut in half. They tried to crawl to safety as their organs spilled from their ruptured abdomens.
Letting out a high-pitched whistle, the ship fired rockets at the buildings. A fireball engulfed the row of shops, the shockwave knocking Mort(e) to the ground. As debris rained down, he felt Wawa grab his arm and pull him to his feet. He spit the dust out of his mouth.
They kept moving. An amputated claw grabbed Wawa’s ankle, and she hacked it away. The ants gave chase, even as the cannons cut them to pieces. They stepped over their dead sisters, ignoring the gore coating their armor.
As Mort(e) ran, he tried to keep up with the cross above. The Vesuvius was headed for the field. When the firing stopped, a cable descended from the ship, a man in a black jumpsuit harnessed at the end of it. He touched down in the school parking lot. His large tinted goggles made him resemble an insect. Behind him, the entrance of the school crumbled, revealing another nest of Alphas. They emptied from the destroyed building, rolling over one another before finding their footing. The Vesuvius opened fire on them, but there seemed to be a never-ending supply, a hellish waterfall of six-legged monsters.
Mort(e) and Wawa reached the man with what appeared to be the entire Colony closing in.
“Hold on to me here, sir,” the man said, pointing to two handles on the front of his harness.
“What about her?”
“We can only take one of you.”
Mort(e) glanced at Wawa. She understood right away that he could leave her. Sheba would have looked at him like that. No, Sheba had looked at him like that.
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br /> Mort(e) grabbed the man by the throat.
“Okay,” the man gasped, “we could try both.”
They hooked their arms around his shoulders while clasping the handles. “Hold on,” the man said.
The cable lifted them. Mort(e) could hear the propellers on the ship increasing speed as the zeppelin ascended.
The town below them was a sea of demons. The spot where they had vacated seconds earlier was now flooded with ants, all straining their claws toward the escaping mammals. The remaining buildings resembled volcanoes, spewing the ants from their underground city.
The cable stalled and then dropped several feet. Mort(e) felt the vibrations of the motor as the gears strained.
“The winch may be broken,” the man said.
The cable gave again, dropping them farther. The zeppelin was not rising fast enough. They were only ten or twenty feet above the outstretched claws of the swarm.
“It’s not going to work,” the man said.
Wawa and Mort(e) faced each other, each waiting for the other to say something.
“Sir,” the man said, “it is an honor for me to give my life for you.”
“No, don’t give me that,” Mort(e) said.
“It’s okay,” the man said. “I know where I’m going. The gates of hell are closed forever.”
“Wait!”
The man undid the buckle on his harness. He slipped out of it and fell. He sank into the mob of Alphas, not even screaming as they tore him apart.
The zeppelin rose higher, until the ants seemed tiny and inconsequential, as they had before the war. The town resembled an abandoned picnic overrun with hungry insects.
“That was death-life,” Wawa said.
“That was death-life,” Mort(e) repeated.
The cable twisted, causing them to spin helplessly. The painted cross turned round and round, a hypnotist’s bauble beckoning them to come forward. The farmland spread out below, bathed in the morning light like a half-remembered dream.
The Queen saw everything. The world, once so terrifying to her people, had been reduced to a viscous liquid poured into her, where it would be studied, manipulated, and conquered. There was no fear of the dark. The Queen was the darkness now, pulling in all beams of light like a black hole. She could not turn back or make peace, for this burden forced her to keep going until everyone was dead, until the only life left was the hint of her chemical trail drifting in a dry wind.
The Queen always brooded over the future on mating day, the annual event when the fertile males and females would be launched from the island, joining their bodies in midair and returning to the ground to establish new outposts of the Colony. Because she never slept, the Queen could not visit the future through dreams. Piecing together the days to come was one of only two escapes from the constant flow of information—the other being that brief flash of her mother before killing her. The future had a perfection that the past would always lack. The time to come was a perfectly crystallized snowflake, a chemical trail leading toward a hazy but brightening sunrise.
Mating days were always frantic, the air charged with multiple signals, shouting help, or here, or go, relayed to the Queen’s lair so she could observe. Thus the Queen relived the experiences of every eager yet frightened participant. From millions of vantage points at once, she could see the rocky landscape flutter with a galaxy of silvery wings. It was the way of her people to gather in a frenzy and risk exposure to the outside world in order to renew their species. In the wild, during the age of the humans, the ritual had an element of desperation. Every mating day could be the Colony’s last. Predators of all kinds were driven to the mounds, attracted to the scent, or the sound of wings, or perhaps even a change in temperature as the ventilation shafts released hot puffs of air in the days leading up to the ceremony. Mammals, reptiles, and birds would paw at the earth. The workers, obeying orders, would keep hauling the fertile ones out to their doom until the soldiers intervened, grinding their teeth into the intruder’s flesh, or firing acid into the predator’s eyes and nostrils. Human interference added a new, unpredictable element. Sometimes they were simply curious and would carelessly scrape away the top layer of dirt to expose the writhing ants. Thousands of children over the years had been driven away squealing after plunging their hands into the soldiers’ quarters. Other humans would attempt to destroy the nest, usually for what seemed to be mere pleasure. Several mating days had to be aborted during a human attack, the fertile ones going senile and dying in their chambers before having a chance to fulfill their purpose. Still other humans would camp out the day of the mating. They would pluck the fat females from the horde, tear their wings off, and drop them into buckets to be cooked and eaten later. Sometimes the males would desperately hurl themselves toward the buckets and mate with the wingless would-be queens as they bled to death among their sisters.
The Queen relived all the previous mating days, the successes and the setbacks, as she collected information on how the latest event was proceeding. The males were marched out first, wet and shivering, but warming in the sun. The workers prodded them toward an opening near the western side of the island, where they would be shielded from the brunt of the sunlight. They still had to gain their footing, though their main skill was to fly. The clumsy ones who tumbled over were gently righted again, if for no other reason than to get them to stop sending anxious signals as if the entire Colony were under attack. It was an amusing contrast to the mammals, who were in the bad habit of putting their males in charge.
And then the winged females emerged. Sleek and menacing angels. More beautiful than any other creature on earth. The future of all life. The females marched out from their chamber, thronged by soldiers and workers who would give their lives to protect them as though they were queens already. The males waited, their wings shaking off the last drops of moisture.
Many would die. Almost all, in fact. They were so tiny, and even though their archenemies had been driven toward extinction, so many things could get them killed before, during, and soon after mating. Errant winds, a poorly timed landing, getting their wings wet and collapsing from exhaustion as they tried to flap them dry again. They would be cut off from the Colony unless they succeeded in establishing new outposts, and even then it would be their responsibility to reconnect with the island. Because she became queen and then mated under emergency circumstances, Hymenoptera was fortunate to have avoided the massacre, for even her intellect would not have saved her from the random cruelty of the world.
For now, there was hope. Until the fertiles took flight, every male was a father to a successful line, and every female was a queen who would spread the range of the Colony to new lands. Their people would build, farm, hunt, and protect. They would move tons of earth, construct massive cities, and produce an endless supply of crops, bending nature to their collective will. This mating day would help to redeem all life in the wake of the human scourge.
A signal started as a whisper and soon turned into a siren. The workers released their grip on the females. The shiny black angels took flight. The Queen, though buried in her lair, flew with them. The island dropped from beneath her. All around her, wings flapped, pushing the clean air onto her face, brushing it through her antennae. The sun passed through the clouds to ignite the horizon. The convoy moved away from the light and toward land in the west.
Then the males ascended to join them. Rather than launching, they wobbled as they rose, like bubbles climbing to the surface of a pond. They were more delicate, and a slight breeze would tip them sideways. They bumped into one another and yet kept rising, an airborne colony unto themselves. The Queen flew among them as the safe ground lowered out of sight. And then it happened, the music of their species. The two masses intertwined in midair. Claws dug into carapaces. Strong females shrugged off the unworthy, sending them tumbling. The most determined, desperate males alighted on the lead females. Some were so aggressive they bit into the females’ necks to keep them still. And then they united,
their bodies coiled against one another. Every successful union resulted in both partners remaining still, not flapping their wings. They plummeted. There was a terrible yet beautiful moment when almost all of them stopped flying at once and dropped to the water. Blissful spirits, no longer afraid of death, falling, the shimmering sea welcoming them. Until at last the act was done, and the females spread their wings again, knocking away the hapless, exhausted males. Some of the drones were so spent that they continued to dive until they splashed down in the salt water, belly up, legs shaking. The females glided west to land. Toward the future.
The chemical trail faded away for the Queen. Her antennae begged for more. Her maids had nothing left to offer. It always ended like this, with the most ecstatic moment disintegrating too soon. Even if these new queens died, every last one of them, they were still the lucky ones. They could escape this place and choose their own destinies. They could unite with another in a moment of madness. They would never feel the responsibility of Hymenoptera.
The frantic noise, the thick scents, all ceased, replaced with the familiar smell of the chamber, the sound of the workers moving about, cleaning her, plucking eggs from her abdomen. Life continued.
SOME TIME PASSED. It was getting harder to tell how much. She could always confirm simply by concentrating and accessing the right memories, but the motivation for it sometimes waned. Especially in the days after a mating, when the Colony returned to its daily business of conquest.
A steady stream of chambermaids delivered reports throughout the day. There was a reliable method to this. These specialized workers would spend hours cleaning off the Queen’s exoskeleton before moving toward the rear of her massive body, where they would take care of the constant supply of eggs that fell from her, large and small. Once they collected and prepared enough eggs, the chambermaids transported the cargo to the nurseries. On the way back, they gathered information from the others. Upon reentering the Queen’s lair—which required a special scent to get past the guards—the chambermaids would commune with the Queen, sharing the latest news. Then they would repeat the cycle by again going to work on the Queen’s relentlessly decaying carapace. She had endured hundreds of moltings by then, and it was getting more painful each time. The last molting required her daughters to pry away the dead skin, scale by scale, flake by flake, like the stubborn shell of a hard-boiled egg. Her old exoskeleton was brittle, and yet it clung to her fresh skin. Her maids, in their zeal to remove the old shell, sometimes pulled off chunks of living flesh. The smell of her blood sent alarm signals throughout the room, summoning all the Queen’s attendants to the afflicted area. They circled around the wound and protected and cleaned it until it healed—yet another bodily function that was not as reliable as it used to be. The Queen resigned herself to the possibility that she would never molt again. No matter what she did, her skin would never be truly clean. It would be only functional enough to keep her from dying when the final victory over the humans was so close.
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