She heard a faint rustling behind her in the jungle and turned quickly, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest, her night vision temporarily lost from staring into the small fire. She stood up, peering hard into the dappled interior of the forest. Once again she heard a small sound, closer now. She felt a soft touch on her shoulder and whirled, almost screaming.
‘‘Some guard dog you’d make,’’ her friend said and grinned. ‘‘Could have been a herd of elephants for all you’d care.’’
‘‘There are no elephants in Mexico,’’ said Finn. ‘‘And just what are you doing skulking around in the middle of the night?’’
‘‘It’s not the middle of the night—it’s early morning. And I wasn’t skulking—I was snooping. ’’
Billy squatted down beside the fire. Finn followed suit, keeping her voice low.
‘‘Snooping where?’’
‘‘In the enemy camp,’’ answered Billy.
‘‘What enemy camp?’’ Finn asked.
‘‘You know perfectly well who I’m talking about,’’ snorted Billy. ‘‘You’re just as suspicious of El Doctoro Loco over there as I am and don’t deny it.’’
‘‘Snooping for what?’’
‘‘Whatever I could find.’’
‘‘And did you find anything?’’ Finn asked.
Billy reached into the pocket of his lightweight military-style shirt and handed her a strange object. It was plastic, had a clip on the back, and a two-inch-by-one-inch screen on the front.
According to the small label on the back, the item was manufactured by someplace called American Pacific Nuclear of Concord, California. Finn knew exactly what it was; she’d worn just such an item during her days as a postgraduate physical anthropology teaching assistant.
‘‘Do you know what it is?’’ Billy asked.
‘‘It’s a thermoluminescent dosimeter,’’ she answered. ‘‘A radiation detector.’’
‘‘Every one of Garza’s boys has one clipped to his pack.’’
‘‘Why would they need something like that?’’ Finn asked.
‘‘Same question I wanted an answer for,’’ murmured her friend. Suddenly Billy yelped and stood up.
‘‘What’s wrong?’’
Billy bent down and pulled up his pant leg. He grabbed something, crushing it between thumb and forefinger, and wrenched it off.
‘‘Bugger!’’ said his lordship. ‘‘What the bloody hell is that?’’ He held the object up into the light of the fire. It looked like an immense wingless wasp, fully two inches long and a blackish red color. Its jaws were immense and there was a brutal-looking stinger on the end of its segmented body. Billy sagged to the ground, groaning. ‘‘My leg!’’
‘‘Paraponera clavata!’’ Finn said immediately. ‘‘A tropical bullet ant,’’ she added, clearly frightened. She’d seen them years before, traveling with her parents, but never one as big as this. She crammed the radiation badge into her jeans and then whirled, dropping down and digging into her backpack.
‘‘What are you looking for?’’ Billy groaned, clutching at his leg. His ankle had already begun to swell terribly and there was a line of heavy perspiration on his forehead. He had gone bone white.
‘‘Benadryl!’’ Finn answered. ‘‘An antihistamine. It will take away some of the pain!’’
‘‘Hurry!’’ Billy moaned.
Then the screaming started. Hell had arrived on six legs.
19
Finn found the package of Benadryl, poked two capsules from the foil strip, and slid them under Billy’s tongue. He was fully involved now, curled up into a fetal ball, shivering, his face coated in perspiration.
Quickly, Finn turned away, gathered up an armload of kindling from the pile and threw it onto the dying campfire. The flames roared up almost instantly, revealing the scene of horror all around them.
Garza’s men came pouring from their tents. The sergeant, Mendez, stood in the flickering light of the flames, dressed only in his army-issue skivvies, his head tilted back, mouth wide open in a guttural roar of agonizing pain.
He was covered in an undulating cloak of the russet black insects. A sound could be heard beneath his rasping screams, a rustling like dried leaves in an autumn breeze, and there was a strange musky scent filling the air.
The enormous creatures twisted and curled, clawed mandibles biting into flesh as the stingers struck, pumping their deadly neurotoxin poisons deep beneath the skin. Finn stared, petrified with horror, watching as streams of the huge, vicious ants swarmed and skittered up the sergeant’s bare legs, disappearing beneath the loose boxers he was wearing.
As Finn watched, the soldier sank to his knees, and even more of the ants crawled up over his body as his hands flailed in front of his face in a vain effort to brush the never-ending horde of insects away. He tried to pull the creatures away from his mouth and eyes but failed, choking as they filled his throat and blinded him. Suffocating, he fell forward into a seething carpet of insects that was spread out around him in the jungle clearing, his voice abruptly stilled.
Two more of the soldiers appeared, stumbling out of their tents, screaming the way Mendez had. In seconds they were overwhelmed by the rolling, all-consuming terror coming from the jungle. The deadly insects were even coming down from the forest canopy.
There were tens of thousands of the creatures. They seemed to be moving in a steady phalanx across the clearing. Billy must have been bitten by one of the swarm’s forward scouts.
Finn caught movement out of the corner of her eye as Eli came out of his pup tent, struggling into his hiking boots. Guido lurched out of his tent as well, staring across to the other side of the clearing beyond the fire.
‘‘Mierenneuker!’’ whispered the bald-headed Dutchman.
Suddenly Garza appeared beside her, apparently unscathed by the attack. He had his backpack looped over one shoulder.
‘‘Bullet ants,’’ he said. ‘‘We must flee or be killed where we stand.’’
‘‘What about your men?’’ Finn asked.
‘‘My men are already dead. We are alive. We go.’’
‘‘You can’t just leave them!’’ Eli said, horrified by Garza’s matter-of-fact tone. He glanced across the fire; Mendez was nothing more than an inhuman lump on the forest floor, his body invisible under the seething, undulating swarm of deadly ants.
‘‘If you wish to be a hero you are welcome to rescue them. Make up your mind, young man. The creatures are almost upon us.’’
The Mexican was right. Another hundred feet and it would be too late for all of them.
‘‘Guido, Eli, help me with Billy,’’ ordered Finn, stooping down to her friend.
‘‘Leave him,’’ said Garza. ‘‘He will only slow us down.’’
‘‘Je kunt de pot op, aarsridder,’’ replied Guido. With Eli he helped get a sagging, almost comatose Billy to his feet, then slung him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. He turned to Finn. ‘‘Which way?’’
‘‘Doctor?’’ Finn asked.
‘‘There,’’ said Garza, barely hesitating, pointing to the northwest. ‘‘I can taste water in the air. A cenote. If we can reach it in time we may be safe.’’
‘‘Go,’’ said Finn, and with Garza in the lead and with one look behind, they went.
They found a trail through the forest almost immediately. It was narrow, almost to the point of nonexistence, probably made by some small mammals. The foliage on either side of the trail was a dense mixture of henequen, red ginger, and elephant ear, all ranged beneath the towering ceiba trees. As they raced down the path they could hear the screaming of the howler monkeys, disturbed by their frantic passage and the approaching legions of the deadly bullet ants.
Every few seconds Finn turned and looked back over her shoulder, but Guido seemed to be bearing Billy’s weight without too much effort, the only sign of tension being the hard expression on the tall Dutchman’s face. Ahead of her Garza ran on steadily, slashing at the encroaching f
oliage with his heavy-bladed facao, or machete.
Abruptly the jungle thinned and disappeared. In the darkness Finn could make out a crescent-shaped clearing, flat plates of limestone layered higher on one side of a large dark pool than the other.
Here and there a few mangroves clung to the stone, their open roots gnarled as the tendons of a corpse. On the far side of the cenote the foliage was much denser, bean bushes and hibiscus cascading over the edge in lush waterfalls.
They stepped out onto the stone slabs around the low end of the pool. The cenote was no more than thirty feet across, about twice the size of a backyard swimming pool. Guido gently lowered Billy to the ground. He seemed a little better but he was still woozy.
‘‘Can you walk?’’ Finn asked.
Billy shook his head. ‘‘Don’t think so,’’ he slurred. ‘‘Just need a minute or two.’’
‘‘We don’t have a minute or two,’’ said Garza bluntly. ‘‘I estimate that the swarm is at least a hundred meters wide and God only knows how deep. The average speed of an army ant swarm is eleven-point-six kilometers an hour. I estimate these creatures are making almost twice that. They will be here in a matter of seconds now.’’
‘‘What do we do?’’ Finn asked.
In answer Garza swung the backpack down from his shoulder and took out a large bottle of some clear liquid.
‘‘Tequila?’’ Eli said, astounded.
‘‘Close,’’ said Garza, grimacing. ‘‘Isopropyl alcohol. Drench your feet and ankles in it. Douse your clothes thoroughly. Señor Derlagen, ’’ Garza ordered, turning to the Dutchman, ‘‘I’m afraid you’ll have to lift his lordship off the ground when they come.’’
‘‘Why rubbing alcohol?’’ Guido asked.
‘‘It’s fatal to ants of all species,’’ answered Garza, unscrewing the bottle cap and pouring the fluid onto his boots and legs. He handed the bottle to Finn. ‘‘Now you.’’ She did as she was told, then passed the bottle on. There was a rustling sound from behind her and a dark musty scent filled her nostrils, so acrid she wanted to cough.
‘‘They’re close,’’ Finn said.
‘‘What do we do if the alcohol doesn’t work?’’ Eli asked. ‘‘Jump into the pool?’’
‘‘No good,’’ said Garza. ‘‘There’s a whole class of workers whose job it is to smooth the path for the others. Pothole fillers. They’ll cover the surface of the cenote and let their brethren walk over them to the other side. Then they’ll drown. Legionary behavior. Anything for the greater good even if it means death.’’
‘‘The Borg,’’ said Eli.
‘‘I have never heard of this Borg,’’ answered Garza.
‘‘Why am I not surprised?’’
‘‘They are here,’’ said Guido, staring back into the forest. He bent and picked up Billy again, hoisting him over his shoulder.
The ants came like a viscous flow of lava, oozing out of the forest with the strange chitinous rustling of ten million legs brushing against each other, the air filling with the pungent odor of formic acid vapor, the ant version of a battle cry.
They poured forward blindly but in perfect formation, three hundred feet across, climbing over small obstructions and each other, continuing in a terrible march. They pushed past everything before them, including skittering hordes of beetles, centipedes, cockroaches, and millions of spiders, all-fleeing from the all-engulfing army of two-inch sting monsters in their russet body armor, like the ancient Roman legions whose behavior the creatures mimicked eerily.
‘‘They’re all gigantic,’’ whispered Finn, staring into the darkness. She put her arm up over her mouth and nose to stifle the overwhelming chemical stench as her eyes began to water. ‘‘This isn’t right.’’
‘‘They’re mutants, culled through more than four hundred generations.’’
‘‘You seem to know a whole hell of a lot about ants, my friend,’’ said Eli. ‘‘Especially these ants.’’
‘‘Be still,’’ ordered Garza. ‘‘They are upon us.’’
And all around them, as well, rolling forward inexorably, even pouring into the water to make enormous crustlike rafts of themselves on the still water of the cenote, allowing their fiendish legions of companions to get to the other side.
Within less than a minute they were completely surrounded by the swarm, protected by the small zone of alcohol spread on their clothes and sprinkled on the bare limestone around them.
The formic acid vapors became almost suffocating, their throats stinging with it and their eyes streaming with tears. The horde seemed never-ending, but after almost ten minutes the numbers began to thin and then, miraculously, they were gone and the forest became silent, empty of the smallest cry, whatever creatures that had survived stunned into silence by the terrible passage of the immense marauding swarm.
‘‘Okay,’’ said Finn, unable to hold back the fury in her tone. ‘‘Enough of this. Tell us just what’s going on here, Garza. And don’t try to feed me any crap about being an archaeologist. Just who the hell are you?’’
20
The sun was rising, bringing hot mists rising from the jungle’s humid floor and sending blinding stabs of light through the heavy canopy of ceiba trees and thatch palms. Eli and Guido had ventured back to the old camp to see what could be salvaged.
A bed of palm fronds and huge lurid green leaves from the elephant ear plants that grew beside the cenote had been made by Finn and Garza for Billy, who seemed to be sleeping comfortably now, the swelling in his lower leg gradually subsiding. They’d built another fire, this one well out on the limestone shelf.
The surface of the water was still clogged with huge floating masses of the dead bullet ants sacrificed for the common good of the swarm. The air was still filled with the formic acid stink of their passage, but the smell seemed to be keeping the mosquitoes and other bugs away, which was a relief.
A green jay, which was actually bright yellow except for its black-feathered head and neck, scolded them from the twisted branches of a calabash tree, and a tyrant flycatcher made a reconnaissance pass over the cenote and the masses of drowned, half-submerged ants that floated on the surface. Somewhere in the forest a mot-mot bird let out its croaking, far-reaching call. Every now and again the surface of the water splashed as curious fish tasted the free breakfast above them.
‘‘Is your name even Garza?’’
‘‘Yes, Ruben Filiberto Garza.’’
‘‘But you’re not an archaeologist.’’
‘‘No. I am an operations officer with CISEN, the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, the Center for Research on National Security. Like your own Central Intelligence Agency.’’
‘‘Well, that makes me feel a whole lot better. ’’ Finn grimaced. ‘‘How come you know so much about ants? Doesn’t seem like much of a subject for study by a spy. And what does it have to do with me?’’ She glanced over at Billy on his makeshift bed of greenery. He seemed to be stirring.
‘‘Almost ten years ago an entomologist named Esteban Ruiz from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México campus in Merida noticed an upswing in mutations among several species that seemed to be concentrated in the Yucatán Peninsula.’’
‘‘Not just ants?’’
‘‘No. Spiders, mosquitoes, several kinds of beetle. Many. The same thing had been noted in the cenotes, except it was not insects, it was fish and small crustaceans. And there was degradation of some fungi and bacteria as well. It was very perturbing because it seemed to have no source.’’
‘‘Ten years ago?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘And nothing was done about it?’’
‘‘In Mexico it sometimes takes a great deal of time for these things to rise to people’s attention.’’
‘‘Not just Mexico,’’ said Finn. The Internet had been invented in 1973 by a computer scientist named Vinton Cerf and an engineer named Robert Kahn, but no one really paid attention for the better part of twenty years. Eins
tein figured out the famous E=MC2 equation in 1905 but it took another forty years to invent the atom bomb. ‘‘What happened?’’
‘‘At first the mutations were seen as singularities, perhaps caused by sunspots or the degradation of the ozone layer.’’
‘‘But?’’
‘‘The mutations persisted. Not only that, they seemed to regularize, useful mutations weeding out the bad. This seemed to point to a large, central point of origination.’’
‘‘Two-inch bullet ants,’’ said Finn.
‘‘And their massive colony size. Prior to these mutations the ants were local foragers with very little social organization; now as you have seen they’ve developed the mass hunting traits of army ants.’’
‘‘Could it have been some kind of inbreeding between the species?’’
‘‘They say at the university that such a thing is possible but very unlikely.’’
‘‘And this is the reason your men were all wearing radiation badges?’’
‘‘You knew?’’
‘‘Billy was curious.’’ Finn turned to her friend again, then turned back to Garza. ‘‘His curiosity may have been what got him bitten. He was on your side of the camp just before.’’
‘‘Too bad.’’
‘‘What exactly were you doing up at that time of the night?’’
‘‘Satisfying my own curiosity. It seemed far too much of a coincidence that your destination was so close to what we consider the center of the mutation effect. Ground Zero, if you will.’’
‘‘We told the government officials the exact truth, Dr. Garza. . . .’’
‘‘Colonel, actually.’’
‘‘Colonel Garza then. We didn’t try to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes. We discovered a copy of an ancient Codex that indicates, mostly by way of astral navigation as the Mayan people knew it, that there was a hidden temple close to the GPS point we indicated.
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