Wawa stood. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Save your Red Sphinx routine for the cadets,” Grace said. “You know why the strators need to handle this. We can’t have any more fuckups from Tranquility, like last time.”
Wawa knew what she meant. Tranquility took the blame for anything that went wrong. Only a few months earlier, Special Operations tried to establish contact with the Rama satellite, a device designed to harness sunlight and reflect it onto the earth. Paired with the new solar farms, the Rama would provide an additional source of energy. But the agents failed. And so, the device—a decade-long effort costing billions of dollars—orbited the earth silently, uselessly. From then on, the humans referred to it as the “ramen” satellite, which, Wawa was told, meant that it was cheap and worthless. And, to add salt to the wound, one of the strators—a short, stocky man named Harold Pham—suggested that the animals as a whole were to blame. “The people who knew how to work that satellite were killed in the war,” he said. “Murdered. Everything they knew died with them.”
“No need to dwell on the past,” Grace said. “All I care about is protecting the Prophet. Now, we’ve both reached the same conclusion about these murders, haven’t we? This latest victim has the same . . . background . . . as the others. Correct?”
“Yes. We tracked down his records last night.”
“Then the Prophet is in danger. I can’t leave this in anyone else’s hands. I just can’t.”
“Right,” Wawa said. “We can’t have animals running things, can we?”
“Don’t forget that every strator lost someone in the war,” Grace said. “All because some animal that they fed and cared for just turned on them one day.”
The humans were not supposed to talk like this. But the rules did not apply to strators. “I remember the last time I spoke with my family,” Grace said. She told Wawa about being stationed at Fort Hood, before the war. She received a call on her cell from her grandmother in Florida. Apparently, the old woman accidentally dialed the number. At first, Grace shouted, hoping someone would hear. “I said, ‘Mima, Mima!’ Nothing.” But then she settled in and listened as the family gathered around the dinner table and exchanged stories, the voices going from English to Spanish and back again. She heard the utensils scraping on the plates. She heard her Mima scold the younger ones who would not sit still. The call ended suddenly. Grace would not let herself cry. Until, that is, a few days later, when the ants overran four American cities, and blacked out most of Europe. She never got the chance to tell her Mima about it.
“I know you lost people, too,” Grace said. “But not like we did.”
“Of course not,” Wawa said.
Grace made it a point to lean in so that her coffee breath brushed the fur on Wawa’s face. “If anyone threatens the peace—even those people who don’t even realize what they’re doing—I swear I will make them regret it. Tell everyone in Tranquility if you have to.”
“Happy to share it, Grace.”
Grace placed her index and forefinger on her temple, tapped them on her chest, and extended her palm—a Blessing of Michael meant as a sign of respect to the Prophet. Then she twisted the cap on the thermos and walked away. Wawa sat on the bench and savored the last few minutes before she would have to go to work. She would waste part of her day thinking of what she could have said to Grace, and would probably end up in the morgue again to gawk at another body.
CHAPTER 6
Armor
The dog and the beaver waited, kneeling in the dewy grass, hands behind their heads. Castor whimpered. The husky remained calm, even with Sheba’s sword hovering under his chin. He placed his ID card on the ground and invited Mort(e) to inspect it. The card had the seal of the Sanctuary Union government, along with an illegible signature from the Chief of Tranquility. If not official, then at least an impressive forgery. Mort(e) would have preferred a wolf to someone from Hosanna, the human-run theocracy. He returned the card, and cursed his decision to build the ranch here rather than deeper in the woods.
The beaver blurted out a string of nonsense about some monster attacking Lodge City. “We had nowhere else to go, I swear.”
“Darling, we haven’t fed the ants any real meat lately,” Mort(e) said.
“No, we haven’t.”
One of the Alphas butted her head against the fence. Castor jumped.
“Please let me tell you why we’re here,” the husky said.
“Let me tell you a story first,” Mort(e) said. “Two people—a dog and a cat—survived the war, came out here to start a new life. And they promised that if anyone bothered them, they’d put the bastard’s head on a pike, human style. Our beaver friend here didn’t get the message, so we’ll have to be a little more forward.”
“If you give us a chance, I swear,” Castor said.
“No,” Mort(e) said. “No, I’m done.” He turned to Sheba. “Should we shoot them first, and then feed them to the ants?”
“Old Man…”
“You’re right. Alive then. The ants like to hunt.”
Sheba lowered the sword and gestured to the house, signalling that she wanted to take them inside. This had gone far enough for her taste. He pinned his ears to his skull, as if to ask, Really? She scrunched her snout. Yes, really.
“You, husky,” he said. “Tell her thank you for saving your life. Say it like you mean it.”
“Thank you,” the dog said with a bow.
“Now you,” Mort(e) said to Castor.
“Oh, yes, thank you. Thank you.”
Mort(e) gave Sheba another look. Happy now? She nodded yes.
They gathered around the kitchen table sipping a sugary drink that Mort(e) brewed from his honey farm. Falkirk the husky laid out the story of what happened to Lodge City. A new mutation, the kind that had been rumored for years, had seized control of the town. An amphibious spider nicknamed Gulaga, almost as big as the Queen but more mobile. Castor filled in the rest, giving names of people killed. Sheba asked about Chingachgook, and Castor said that he had gone missing, presumably trapped in the web.
When Falkirk admitted that Nikaya had revealed their secret, Mort(e) pounded his fist on the table. “I told you,” he said to Sheba. “Didn’t I tell you they’d sell us out?”
“You told me.”
Mort(e) asked about sending for help, perhaps by dispatching a bird patrol to the nearest outpost. Falkirk waved him off. “No time for that. We’re on our own.”
“What makes you think we can help?” Mort(e) asked. “You’d need an army for this. And don’t tell me you believe all those legends about us.”
“You mean the one where you’re ten feet tall, or the one where you walk on water?”
Sheba laughed. “Or the one where I’m the most beautiful dog in the whole world.”
Falkirk snorted, tilting his head in thought. This brief exchange between the two dogs triggered a gnawing sensation in Mort(e)’s gut, like a hand clawing its way out. His tail stiffened. In a quick flash, like images in a flip-book, he imagined this husky in his bed with Sheba, coiled around her, as his human masters had done years earlier.
“What did you expect to find here?” Mort(e) asked.
“Guns, mainly,” Falkirk said.
“It doesn’t sound like they’ll do much good.”
“They might. We have a plan.”
With that, Castor pulled a map from his satchel and unrolled it on the table. Falkirk pointed out the stadium, the heart of the web.
“What are those red dots?” Sheba asked. Mort(e) counted eight of them.
“Eggs,” the beaver said.
“Eggs,” Mort(e) repeated, dragging out the word.
“I would have expected the spider to keep them close,” Falkirk added. “But they’re spread out. Maybe as a defense system. Or maybe because if they hatch all at once, the young ones
will eat the mother.”
“This keeps getting better,” Mort(e) said.
Tracing the images on the map, Falkirk indicated the access points to the town—the river and an old highway exit—both of which might allow a person to sneak in. Mort(e) glanced at Sheba, who watched the husky as he spoke. She did not respond right away, so Mort(e) shifted in his seat to get her attention. When their eyes met, Mort(e) sarcastically stroked his chin.
“Are you listening?” Falkirk asked.
“Your plan is going to get someone killed.” Mort(e) slapped his palms on the map and spun it toward him. He pointed at the river. “You call this an entrance here? Let’s be honest. The only way you can get a clean shot at this spider is by using someone as bait. Say I get stuck in the web. Are you going to save me?”
Falkirk lowered his eyes.
“How about you, Bucktooth?” Mort(e) asked Castor. “If you have a chance to free your friends or me, who you gonna choose?”
Sheba let out a loud sigh.
“The way I see it,” Mort(e) said, “that town shouldn’t even be there. Maybe it upset the balance of things. For all we know, that spider is simply reclaiming her territory.”
“That’s not fair,” Castor said. “We were careful to make this a self-sufficient city.”
“Oh, really? So sufficient you had to kick the bats out, right?”
Castor and Falkirk turned to Sheba for help. She chuckled. “You got him started,” she said.
Castor tried to make another point. Falkirk held out his palm to silence him.
“You’re right,” Falkirk said. “My plan is terrible. I’ve never done this before.”
“No one has,” Sheba said.
“But there is another reason I needed to find you.”
“If the job of messiah is still open, I’m not interested,” Mort(e) said.
“It’s not that. It’s the murders that have been taking place in the city. You’ve heard about it from the merchants, haven’t you?”
Mort(e) looked to Sheba. She was the one who liked to hear gossip from the capital.
“Chingachgook told me about it,” she said.
Falkirk folded his hands and rested them under his snout. The table creaked as Sheba leaned in. “The murder victims have one thing in common,” he said. “Every single one of them has used a translator.”
The translator—the device used to communicate with the ants. It scrambled the brain, crippled the user. But it also provided access to the limitless knowledge of the Queen. The never-ending sorrow of hundreds of years of bloodshed. Mort(e) almost died trying to use one, and was never the same afterward. The overflowing information faded away, but whispers of it remained. He experienced déjà vu while reading, while listening to music or the noises of the forest at night, as though millions of other lives had been crammed into his mind. He had changed twice, really. The day he became sentient, and the day he became like the Queen. Like a god, only with amnesia.
“Why would someone try to kill people who used the translator?” Sheba asked.
“We don’t know. But there are plenty of people out there who view the Queen’s experiment as an abomination. Maybe they think they’re cleansing the earth of her presence.”
“If anyone comes here looking for a translator user, they’ll be sorry,” Mort(e) said.
“I hope you’re right. But whether you help us or not, you can’t hide anymore. The world will come looking for you.”
Another glance from Sheba, this one saying, he’s right.
“Your prophet, Michael,” Mort(e) said. “He’s used the translator more than anyone.” His voice trailed off. He pictured the boy the last time he saw him, a skinny child, too small for his age, incoherent and spouting nonsense. An odor of despair hanging over him.
“He’s safe,” Falkirk said. “An elite unit guards him. Human soldiers.”
Mort(e) shifted the map over to Sheba. He had trained her to seek out the weak points, the high ground, the escape routes, the way Culdesac taught him. He watched the disappointment wash over her eyes when she failed to find any of them.
“I’m sorry,” Mort(e) said. “You should never attack unless you know you can win. And this gulag as you call it is an unwinnable situation.”
Sheba’s head dropped as she slid the map toward Castor. “We can give you some rifles.”
“Sheba,” Mort(e) said.
Her head lifted, and her eyes drilled into Mort(e). “Okay, okay,” he said.
Castor rolled the map into a tube and stuffed it into his bag. The two guests stood up, their chairs squeaking awkwardly on the floor.
Sheba stayed seated, her hands folded in her lap. Mort(e) gave her a second to join them. When she remained still, he told the others to wait outside.
“You know I’m right,” he said.
“You’re always right, Old Man.”
Mort(e) led Falkirk and Castor to the garage. Inside, firearms of every kind hung on hooks attached to the walls. It took a few seconds for Mort(e)’s guests to take it all in.
A rack on the floor held six rifles with scopes. Remington 770s with bolt action. Mort(e) let the beaver and the husky each take one, along with two boxes of ammunition.
“Great,” Falkirk said. “Maybe I can shoot the hostages before the spider eats them.”
“That’s a good idea,” Mort(e) said. “I should mention as well that we have enough explosives to level the town.”
“We’re trying to save the town,” Castor said.
“Let’s go,” Falkirk said. “Thank you.”
They took the pebbled trail leading into the woods. Castor slowed and turned to Mort(e). “I heard stories about you,” the beaver said. “I heard that you helped people.” Castor told him where to find the refugee camp, in case he changed his mind. “Maybe you’ll remember what you were like, and you’ll come join us.”
“I’m remembering right now,” Mort(e) said. “Those stories you heard were meant to manipulate you. To get you to stop facing the real world.”
Castor pulled his goggles over his eyes.
“There are spiders everywhere,” Mort(e) added. “That’s the real world.”
With that, the two intruders disappeared into the forest.
Perched on the roof, Mort(e) used the claw of a hammer to pry away more rotted shingles. When the sun rose above the trees, Sheba stomped out of the house and mounted one of the stronger Alphas. They had a ritual when she took the herd out on a walk. He would say, “Be good to my girls,” and she would correct him: “Ladies.” This time the entire herd marched away from him in silence, all of them following the lead ant with the dog sitting on her thorax.
Mort(e) was ready to talk when Sheba returned a few hours later. But she would not acknowledge him. Instead, she led the ants into their pen, leaning over and patting them on the side to get them moving, all while speaking softly and sometimes even smiling at them.
She went inside. Mort(e) had replaced all of the tiles by then. Instead of joining her in the house, he went to the garage once more, a mausoleum decorated with the tools of his trade. He picked out a rifle at random and cleaned it. Before long, he had taken apart and reassembled a number of weapons, simply to pass the time.
···
Mort(e) entered the house at dusk. Sheba had left him some food from the cupboard. They usually took turns cooking. Tonight, there was a hunk of smoked Alpha jerky on a plate with a bowl of water next to it. The dried meat felt cold in his hands. It took five minutes to make it through two mouthfuls. He dropped the rest of it on the plate and went outside to find Sheba.
As he expected, she was tending to the Alphas. Using a shovel, she tossed piles of slop from the compost bin into the grazing area. Sheba emptied the bin once a month, providing a treat for the ants. As usual, the Alphas gathered in a formation, with the first in line collecti
ng her share of food and moving to the rear to let the others go next.
Sheba must have sensed Mort(e)’s presence, and yet she kept shoveling with her tail to him. One of the weaker ants, named Cromwell, was too hobbled to eat the food off the ground. Her legs shook whenever she lowered her head. Sheba let the ant eat from the shovel. As she chewed the food, Cromwell’s antennae came to life, probing Sheba’s arms. Sheba let her do it, ignoring an antenna that clumsily bumped her in the snout.
“It’s okay, girl,” she said as a cloud passed overhead.
When Cromwell finished, Sheba continued tossing the feed over the fence.
“Say what you have to say, Old Man.” She wouldn’t look at him.
“There’s nothing we can do for them.”
“I heard that already.”
“Those beavers brought this on themselves. They redirected the river. Carved out the forest. Exiled the bats.”
“Heard that, too.”
“Well, I guess I came out here to see what you had to say.”
Sheba threw the last shovelful over the fence and leaned on the handle. “Oh, now you want to hear it? Well, I sound like a broken record, just like you.”
“You’re not happy here.”
“Don’t start. I never said that. It’s just that we’ve isolated ourselves on this ranch, and you’ve put that ahead of everything else.”
“I’ve put our safety ahead of everything else.”
“Stop it.”
She slammed the shovel on the ground and walked past him, toward the house. The oblivious ants continued to feed, some of them licking the scraps off their sisters’ hides. Mort(e) watched her getting smaller, the way he had years earlier, when they were both still pets, still slaves. When he was too powerless to protect her. He had never been able to convey to Sheba the helplessness he felt in that moment, a mere house cat who barely understood what lay beyond the walls of his master’s house. He never made it clear to her what he was willing to do to avoid feeling that way again. To avoid failing her again.
“Hey,” Mort(e) said, running to her. “I’ll protect us from myself if I have to. Do you understand? I’m making up for a ton of bad decisions here. Going all the way back. Back to when I first met you.”
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