Morte

by Robert Repino

  “I believe in this,” he said, pointing to Sheba as she drank. “I remember my time with my friend. I realize that these things don’t last. But I will fight for them.”

  “Maybe we have much to learn from each other,” the Queen said.

  The water was finished. Mort(e) shook the canteen over his free hand until a small vial dropped out. He placed the canteen on the ground. Sheba tried to probe it with her snout. He rose, the vial in his hand. The Queen’s antennae extended from her head until they formed a perfect V.

  “Maybe,” Mort(e) said.

  He threw the vial at her. The sudden movement made Sheba bark. The glass tube shattered against the Queen’s face.

  The movement in the room halted again. The oleic acid from the vial sent its unmistakable message to the entire court: THE QUEEN IS DEAD. PURGE. DESTROY. The marching and the licking ceased.

  “Kill them!” the Queen said. But no one listened. Instead, the workers pierced her abdomen with their jaws. The room shook, echoing her agony. The smaller ants, who had covered the lower part of her body, now engulfed her thorax and head. The swarm on the ground surrounded the Queen. Together, the workers, the Alphas, and their tiny sisters forced their monarch toward the opening from which Mort(e) had entered. A pair of oversized workers tore open her egg-laying orifice and feasted on the contents inside. The creatures dragged her farther, splitting open her abdomen and allowing more eggs to spill out.

  Mort(e) picked up Sheba and carried her on his shoulders. Racing past the Queen’s writhing head, he climbed onto her abdomen and gripped the shell. He could feel Sheba breathing heavily into his ear. More ants from other chambers contributed to the effort. Each pair of jaws that pulled her along tore off another piece of Hymenoptera the Great. One overzealous Alpha pulled on her left antenna so hard it snapped, sending the beast tumbling backward. Unwilling to accept her fate, the Queen tried to fight them off. She gobbled up the small workers that covered her arms and claws. When an Alpha attempted to latch onto her neck, she bit viciously into the soldier’s face and tore away the mandible. The other part of the Alpha’s jaw flapped stupidly as she stumbled off to the side.

  The wounded Alpha collapsed onto the Queen’s back. Mort(e) tried to kick her away, but the creature lunged at him with her broken jaw. Sheba barked, telling the ant to please leave them alone. Sheba was the most reasonable one here, Mort(e) thought. But then, the Alpha lurched forward to bite Sheba in half. Sheba tried to dodge her, but the monster’s head slammed into her side, sending her sliding down the carapace, her paws scraping helplessly. Mort(e) shouted her name as she dropped off the side of the abdomen and disappeared into the crowd of snapping jaws and grasping talons.

  All those years without Sheba, all the awful nights spooning with Tiberius in trenches and tents, all the starving, mind-numbing marches—all those years of misery and despair descended upon Mort(e) again. He’d lost her again. It was worse than watching Daniel chase her away.

  And then, cutting through the earsplitting noise of the dying Colony, Sheba barked loud enough for Mort(e) to hear. Sebastian! she said. I’m over here!

  That was what he heard, anyway.

  Mort(e) raced to the spot in the crowd where Sheba had vanished. He was face-to-face with an Alpha. In a useless but deeply satisfying gesture, Mort(e) punched her again and again until his knuckles bled. You hurt my friend, he thought, and I will KILL ALL OF YOU! The creature snapped at him, but was too dazed by the oleic acid to hone in on her target. Mort(e) geared up for another roundhouse when Sheba barked again.

  He spotted her near the replica of the Martinis’ basement. There was an exit nearby, another tunnel that had opened up when the shape of the room had changed. Sheba had drawn away several soldiers, who were now regaining their senses. They surrounded her. She was on her haunches, growling, her white-and-orange fur darting about as she tried in vain to scare them off.

  Mort(e) could not take on that many Alphas. Perhaps he could create a diversion to get them away from her, but Sheba would not know how to get out. Frantic, he searched the room for the weapons. He found them right where the smaller ants had left them, near the tunnel where he had first entered the room. The gun and the grenade were thirty yards away, mocking him.

  Mort(e) took a running leap over the advancing horde of monsters, landing in an open space. Sheba’s barking alerted one of the soldiers. The Alpha’s head swiveled toward him. The mouth came at him first. Mort(e) dove to the ground. He felt the jaws catch his tail and then break away. A lightning bolt of pain shot up his spine. The last few inches of his tail were gone, leaving a bloody, mangled stump. Gritting his teeth, Mort(e) grabbed the machine gun, still covered with ants. The monster regained her footing and reared up for another strike. The other end of his tail dropped from the beast’s jaws. He remembered that the gun’s safety was still on. Lying prone, with the ants crawling over him to get to the Queen, Mort(e) clicked the safety with his thumb and aimed. When the Alpha dove toward him this time, she faced the barrel of a live gun. Shoot him, he heard the stray cats say in his mind. Like this.

  Mort(e) pulled the trigger, crushing several ants that had lodged themselves under his finger. The muzzle flash lit up the room like a strobe light. The bullets entered the Alpha’s neck and blew out the back of her skull. The creature tottered onto her abdomen, then fell over sideways.

  Mort(e) got to his feet and knocked away the ants that clung to his fur. They fell and continued scurrying off to the purge. To his right, the delirious swarm tried to carry his grenade away. He plucked it from them and ran to Sheba, trying to keep his throbbing tail still.

  The grenade was another one of the humans’ ingenious devices, invented far too late to make a difference in the war. Mort(e) pulled the pin, which released a burst of concentrated oleic acid. The ants surrounding Sheba spun toward the scent. Sheba continued barking at them, probably convinced that she had scared them away.

  The creatures crawled toward Mort(e), their antennae seeking out the bomb, the object that must be purged. Mort(e) lobbed it into the nearby tunnel.

  “Fetch,” he said.

  The metal pinecone bounced away into the bowels of the Colony. The ants rushed after it, stumbling over one another.

  “Okay, Sheba,” he said. “Let’s get out of—”

  Sheba sprinted past him. She, too, was chasing the damn thing. She thought they really were playing fetch.

  “Sheba, no!” he said. She kept running.

  Now they were all charging down the tunnel, drawn to the noise of the bouncing bomb. When he got close, Mort(e) dove to grab Sheba’s tail, sliding face-first. She had the nerve to growl at him. Mort(e) got to his feet, gripped her by the scruff of the neck, and ran back the way they came. When he made it to the court, he dropped to the ground again, shielding her body and covering her ears with his hands. The bomb detonated, sending a blast of hot air and debris from the tunnel.

  The explosion left his ears ringing, a noise like an army of humans yawning at once: Awwhhhhh. Mort(e) opened and closed his mouth to get his ear canals working properly, but the noise remained. Stumbling, he dragged Sheba to the Queen. There was a gap in the group of workers who were shoving the Queen out of the chamber. Mort(e) ran to it, tossed Sheba onto the Queen’s abdomen, and climbed aboard. His wounded tail left a streak of blood on her exoskeleton. From a sitting position, he pointed the gun at all the soldiers and workers. They were not concerned with him now. Blindly, relentlessly, they pushed the hulk into the main tunnel.

  The Queen’s daughters had shredded her wings, clipped her antennae, and amputated all but one of her claws, which still clutched the blue pill. She had protected it. He turned to Sheba, his expression asking, Do you see that?

  Mort(e) scrabbled up the carapace to the Queen’s shoulders. He reached for the pill. It was too far away. Suddenly the Queen’s head spun around.

  “Let me have that pill,” Mort(e) said, “and I’ll help you get out of here.”

  They were out of t
he royal chamber, so she could no longer use the walls as a translator. But she understood. She extended her claw to him. He swiped the blue pill and dropped it in his backpack.

  She was still facing him, waiting for his response. Mort(e) stuck the muzzle of the gun between two segments of her armor at the base of her skull. This would be her escape, to avoid seeing her own daughters destroy her. She did not resist. Her antennae went limp as she awaited this release, this unburdening. There was so much knowledge in this brain about to be destroyed. More than could be stored in all the books ever written, all the computers ever built. Billions of lifetimes. An eternity of memories, an endless treasure of visions of the future.

  Mort(e) fired once. The thorax and head went stiff, then sank down. All of it was gone, obliterated by a crude weapon fashioned by poorly evolved primates. No god would have wanted it this way. Except for the Queen, who was a god herself.

  They went uphill. Sheba crawled to Mort(e). He put her on his shoulders to keep her close in case he had to jump off. They made a series of turns before heading in a dead run toward an opening. Mort(e) could smell fresh air, and his whiskers pricked up when he detected salt. The ants intended to dump their mother into the ocean. Sheba gave a low whine, much like the noises she would make when her old master left her by herself.

  When they arrived at the exit, Mort(e) tried to get hold of the ceiling. It was too high. The overcast sky lit up the tunnel. He tasted the spray from the waves. The ants pushed the Queen halfway out of the nest. She slumped downward, her lone claw twitching as if wagging a finger at her disobedient subjects. Still holding onto the Queen’s carapace, Mort(e) peered over the side to see that they were about to fall almost fifty feet to a rocky beach below. Sheba squirmed on his shoulders. Their only chance was to try to latch onto the face of the cliff. Mort(e) hesitated. There was no way to tell from here if his hands would fail him now.

  Another forceful nudge from the ants caused him to snap to attention. Sheba barked impatiently. As the ants gave the Queen’s body one final shove, Mort(e) jumped onto the cliff. His fingers found a sharp edge that bit into his flesh. The rock shook as the ants ejected the Queen’s lumbering body from the tunnel. Seconds later, she crashed onto the stones below.

  He held on. Sheba remained still. I am not going to die because of my hands, Mort(e) thought. He began to climb, telling Sheba to hang on, that it would be all right. Blood dripped from his wounded tail and fell down into the sea like red raindrops.

  When he got close enough, he let Sheba step onto his head so she could climb onto the ledge above. He pulled himself up and rested on his stomach for a moment. His fingers were rubbed raw, but the callused skin had not broken. Examining the cliff, he figured he could climb the rest of the way.

  He sat up and let Sheba place her head in his lap.

  In the sky above, the first paratroopers from the Vesuvius began their descent.

  Culdesac wanted the soldiers to stay away from the crash site. But the new recruits gathered around the flaming wreckage like cavemen after a hunt. He shouted for them to stop. When that did not work, he ran out of the cave and emptied his pistol into the air. Several other officers did the same. Disappointed, the soldiers returned to their fortifications.

  There didn’t seem to be any poison gas from the crash. Besides, the humans had given up on chemical weapons years earlier because the ants were too quick to adapt. With no strategic advantage gained, Culdesac settled on this being a diversion at best, an insane example of human theatrics at worst. The Archon was praying at the end. The members of the resistance were probably running out of food in their airborne utopia, and it was possible that the Archon was another sacrifice to their bloodthirsty gods.

  Then the shout went up. “There’s another one!”

  Culdesac whirled around. The Vesuvius approached from the north, cutting through the clouds. The ants shifted toward it as they retreated from the impact zone of the Golgotha. This second wave was no suicide mission. The Vesuvius meant to strafe, or bomb, or drop soldiers. Culdesac hoped that it was the latter. He wanted to collect a few of them alive.

  While his officers ordered the soldiers to stand ready, Culdesac headed to the cave, keeping his eye on the approaching ship. There were objects dropping out of it, descending slowly. Parachutes. Was there no limit to the death wish these people had? Were they this foolish? They could not go extinct quietly. They needed an apocalypse.

  The translator in his ear began to buzz. He batted it with his hand, but the noise continued, growing stronger before changing into a series of rattles and clicks. It was picking up random signals from multiple Alphas, strong enough to interfere with his antenna from afar.

  The coyote walked toward him with the Alpha envoy directly behind her. “Sir,” the coyote said, “we’re getting a report of boats landing to the west. Should we—”

  She did not get to finish her sentence. The giant ant picked her up at the waist in her viselike jaws. The coyote made a choking sound as the beast thrashed her. Culdesac pulled out his gun. The raccoon in the cave ran out with his rifle pointed at the ant.

  “Shoot her!” Culdesac said, trying to reload.

  The raccoon fired, drilling holes in the ant’s armor plating. But instead of retaliating, the Alpha continued dragging the coyote’s body across the rocky ground. His gun now loaded, Culdesac fired. The monster ignored the shots that were ripping her apart. She seemed to be possessed.

  Other soldiers raced to the scene. It took four more rifles and dozens of rounds before the Alpha finally collapsed and died. The ant’s leg twitched once, prompting one of the soldiers to begin firing again.

  “Hold your fire,” Culdesac said, waving smoke from his eyes.

  He leaned over the coyote but did not bother to check her pulse. Her head was twisted almost completely around.

  With all the shooting, Culdesac had not noticed that the unintelligible clicking continued from the translator. Putting his hand to his other ear, he tried to make sense of the competing signals.

  “Colonel,” someone said.

  All his soldiers stared in the direction of the ants. There on the hilltop, Culdesac saw the visual manifestation of the gibberish clattering away in his earpiece. The ants had broken formation. They collided with one another, unable to control their bodies. Claws and mandibles locked onto each other, making it impossible to tell where one ant ended and the other began. There was the sound of scuffling feet and exoskeletons crunching and snapping. Some of the ants had been capsized, and their legs flailed helplessly as their sisters pulled them in different directions. An Alpha dragged a disembodied head and thorax in a great circle.

  A wave of ants crested the ridge and began charging toward Culdesac and his soldiers.

  “What’s happening?” Culdesac asked. But he knew the answer before he even finished. The Golgotha’s air supply must have been laced with a chemical that affected the ants. Something that made them turn on one another.

  He tore off the translator. “Fall back,” he said to the soldiers.

  They ran toward the foxholes. Behind him, Culdesac heard the unmistakable sound of a pair of jaws closing on the body of one of his soldiers. Hundreds of rifles were aimed in his direction.

  “Shoot!” Culdesac screamed, knowing that he was running right into their line of fire. It was better to get shot than be torn apart. A constellation of muzzle flashes opened up before him. Bullets whizzed by his head, the sound making his ears curl. He was about to hop into the first foxhole, but he could feel the creatures right behind him. So he jumped over it instead. He heard the ants pulling the soldiers out, tossing them aside, before a hail of gunfire brought them down.

  Culdesac bounded into the second row of foxholes. On either side of him, the soldiers continued firing. At his feet, a dog cowered under the lip of the trench. There was no time to discipline him, so Culdesac ripped away the dog’s rifle and began shooting. The next wave of Alphas rose over the carcasses of the others and continued to advanc
e. Some were so delirious with the poison that their tongue-like organs hung from their open mouths making them resemble giant mechanical dogs.

  Culdesac drained his first clip and inserted another. He aimed for the base of the skull. Things slowed down. He pointed and fired, the muzzle flash followed by flesh and shell bursting from his target. When one creature flopped over dead, legs in the air, Culdesac lined up the sight and found another.

  An Alpha attacked the trench to his left. The recruits huddled in terror as the ant straddled the foxhole. Culdesac fell backward as he shot the Alpha in her thorax and abdomen. Hot blood spilled onto the floor of the trench, but the monster kept moving. Culdesac rolled over and crawled away while the soldier behind him was snatched up.

  The colonel got to his feet and broke into a run. He made it to the far end of the trench and climbed out. To the west, he spotted a fleet of old yachts and fishing boats anchored near the shoreline. A new swarm spilled out of them, made up of his own kind, other animals who fought for the humans. They splashed through the knee-deep waves, rifles raised. To him, the invaders resembled a virus taking over a host cell.

  Culdesac’s soldiers were in total disarray. Everything broke down into split-second snapshots: an officer shooting a private for running away; a cat holding her bloodied, amputated tail as she fled screaming from an Alpha; two dogs carrying a wounded comrade—so mutilated that the species was unclear—only to be trampled by a rampaging Alpha with her head torn off.

  The Queen is dead, he thought. The Queen saw everything, but she did not see this. He was sure of it. The translator had linked him to her so intimately that he could sense her departure. Her absence created an emptiness in the universe, a void that would pull in everything he knew and believed and loved. It was not supposed to be like this. She was supposed to protect everyone, to make sure that the humans never hurt anyone ever again. He strained to hear her echo. He waited to feel the grip of her sadness around his throat, around his heart, the despair that he had the privilege of sharing with her. The burden that made him strong. He had promised to swallow her pain for her, to martyr himself so that she could be whole again. She told him that together, they were whole. But there was no hope now. She was gone. Culdesac, the bobcat with the forgotten name, was alone again, his people torn from the earth once more.