Mandibles

by Jeff Strand

  "Some guy went insane. Started shooting at the ants, if you can believe that. Son of a bitch hit both of us."

  "What about your nose?" Zachary asked the other one.

  "I tripped while I was running."

  For some reason Zachary wasn't convinced by this explanation, but he shrugged it off. He had more important things to worry about than a couple of injured punks. "The people we're pickin' up are a dentist and a dental assistant. It probably would've been better if you got shot in the teeth, but I'm sure they can do somethin' for you."

  "Thanks. We appreciate it."

  Zachary drove into the parking lot of the strip mall, and pulled up next to the door to Dr. Ruiz's office. Roberta and Dr. Ruiz were standing right there.

  "Get ready to open your door," Zachary said to the punks in the backseat. Then he gave the thumbs-up sign to Roberta.

  * * * *

  "Are you ready?" Roberta asked.

  "If my leg was chopped off, maybe there'd be a problem," said Dr. Ruiz. "A little bump I can handle, yes?"

  They rushed outside as Zachary leaned over and opened the passenger door and one of the guys he'd picked up opened the back door. She quickly slid in the back seat as Dr. Ruiz took the front, and they pulled the doors shut simultaneously.

  "Ant count?" asked Zachary.

  "None up here," Dr. Ruiz reported.

  "None back here either," said Roberta. She looked at the two men seated next to her. "My God, you're really bleeding," she said, opening the first aid kit. "Are those gunshot wounds?"

  The red-haired man with the bloody nose nodded. "It's been a lousy day."

  "I don't know how much I can do for you," said Roberta, taking out a roll of gauze. "I can patch you guys up, at least, until we can get you some real medical help."

  "Thanks. I'm Dave, by the way. My friend here is Stanley."

  "But you can call me Hack."

  "Is that short for Hacker?" asked Zachary, driving away from the strip mall.

  "Yeah, he's one of those computer geeks," said Dave. "Hey, traffic is barely moving, so I wouldn't drive onto the street, not that you'll be able to get in anyway. I don't know how bad the side streets are, but you're going to want to get out of this mess or we could be stuck all night."

  "Thanks," said Zachary. "How bad _are_ things out there?"

  "A lot of ants. You probably should have stayed inside."

  "They got in."

  Roberta handed Dave a wad of the gauze. "Here, tilt your head back and hold this against it. It doesn't look broken."

  "Doesn't feel broken. Just hurts." Dave took the gauze from her and did as instructed. "So you're a dentist, huh?"

  "Dental assistant," Roberta corrected. She pointed at Dr. Ruiz in the front. "He's the dentist."

  "I'm the guy who doesn't take good care of his teeth," said Zachary.

  "Dentist, huh?" asked Hack. "So are you a nice dentist or a sadistic one?"

  "A nice dentist," said Dr. Ruiz. "Unless it's a full moon."

  Hack chuckled. "Funny. I haven't been to a dentist in a few years. Maybe if the ants don't kill me I'll throw a little business your way. Did you bring any laughing gas?"

  "Left it in my other suit," Dr. Ruiz told him.

  Zachary was next to the main highway, driving parallel to it through the grocery store parking lot, as were a couple of other cars. "I guess we need a destination," he said.

  "Hospital," said Roberta.

  "The closest one is St. Joseph's," said Zachary. "But we're not gonna make it there through this traffic."

  "We don't need a hospital," Dave assured him. "As long as you don't mind a little blood in your jeep, we'll be okay. We just need to get out of town as quickly as possible."

  "You've both been shot!" Roberta protested.

  "Yeah, but we'd bleed to death just sitting in the emergency room, if we could even make it there. I'm guessing we've got a lot of ant sting victims crowding the place. We'll be fine."

  "You will _not_ be fine. You've been shot."

  "You've already made that point. No hospitals, okay?" Dave apparently realized how much he'd raised his voice and cleared his throat. "There's no reason to put the rest of you in danger. Let's just get out of town."

  "Well, apparently the ants haven't infested the entire city, so we may be fine once we get out of this area," said Roberta.

  "Haven't infested the entire city _yet_," said Zachary. "Everyone hold on, I'm goin' over a curb."

  There was a heavy jolt. Though she wasn't about to criticize their rescue vehicle, Roberta noted that Zachary really needed a better set of shocks.

  "Well, how many ants can there possibly be?" she asked.

  "I dunno. An hour ago my answer would have been 'not enough to fill up an entire parkin' lot,' so I'm tryin' not to rule anything out."

  "Okay, you've got a point," Roberta admitted. "Let's just get out of Tampa. Maybe head east. I'm sure Disney World has a state-of-the-art ant defense system."

  Hack chuckled again and gently patted Roberta's leg. "Don't worry. We won't let anything bad happen to you."

  * * *

  *-CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE-*

  Moni knew that she should be doing something, anything, but the most she could do was stand there in shock, gaping at Abigail's no-longer-visible body. Trevor and Abigail. Two people she saw every weekday, dead.

  Abigail had a husband and two children.

  Were they still alive?

  The three of them just stood there, unable to speak or react, until the silence was broken by the fire alarm.

  "What the hell...?" Jack glanced over his shoulder. "Did we miss somebody else in the building?"

  "Why didn't we think of that?" Moni wondered aloud, raising her voice to be heard over the alarm. "Even if we can't get through with the telephone, the fire alarm will bring help, right?"

  "What if the entire fire department is out on ant patrol?" asked Jack.

  "They've got to be out helping _someone_. Might as well be us."

  One of the rat-sized ants crawled onto a remaining shard of the broken window from below. Moni took a step back, and then noticed another ant crawling over the same filing cabinet that the one responsible for Abigail's death had come from.

  "We are _so_ dead," said Jack.

  Moni shook her head. "No way. Our plan doesn't change. We get out of here."

  "We need to find someplace in the building to hide," said Mr. Kamerman. "A broom closet or something."

  "We're not staying here," Jack told him, as they all moved away from the window.

  "I'm still the boss," Mr. Kamerman insisted.

  Jack shrugged. "Like I said, that doesn't mean -- "

  "Stop arguing," said Moni. "It's like _Night of the Living Dead_, where that idiot kept telling them they needed to lock themselves down in the cellar."

  "He was right, though," Mr. Kamerman pointed out. "And in the end the hero had to lock himself in the cellar to make it through the night."

  "Fine, whatever. Let's argue about it somewhere that doesn't have ants crawling in through the window. We need to get down to the second floor, at least."

  The three of them hurried down the aisle toward the exit door. Moni swiped her card, but the display light stayed red. She swiped it again with the same result. "Oh, crap."

  "Here, let me try," said Jack, swiping his own card. Nothing happened. "Wow, and everything else was going so nicely this evening."

  Mr. Kamerman half-heartedly swiped his own card, which didn't work either. "I can't believe this."

  "Ants are attracted to electrical wires," said Moni. "If there really is a fire that's probably what started it. They must've shorted out the electronic reader system, too."

  "Nice," Jack remarked. "So we're trapped in the top floor of a burning building with Godzilla ants coming in after us. Mr. Kamerman, if I'm not already fired for telling you that being head of the Corporate Accounting department doesn't mean shit, I quit."

  "Resignation accepted."

  "
We need to quit joking around and figure out a way to get out of here," said Moni, tugging on the door on the off chance that it might not really be locked. It was, of course.

  "Joking around is my defense mechanism," said Jack. "You either get jokes or you get me screaming at the top of my lungs like a girl. Pick one."

  Moni ignored his comment. "We have an emergency exit, don't we? We have to have one. They wouldn't be allowed to close in this area without putting in an emergency exit, would they?"

  "There's no other way out," said Mr. Kamerman. "We need to find a closet or a secure office and hide out. We'll be safe."

  "We _won't_ be safe," said Moni. "The building could be on fire."

  "And the fire department should be on its way."

  "You really think the fire department is going to take the time to search every floor? We're not the only group of people in peril here. They'll be sending in emergency vehicles from everywhere they can, sure, but who knows where we'll rank on their list? We need to get out of this place, and every second we spend arguing about this gives more of those ants a chance to get in."

  "And how on earth do you plan to get out of here?" Mr. Kamerman demanded.

  "The window."

  "Oh, you are completely insane! Do whatever you want. I'm finding a place to hide. Best of luck to you." Mr. Kamerman turned and stormed off.

  "The window?" asked Jack. "You can't be serious."

  "I'm very serious. I think there's an extension cord on the desk where that temp was working last week." Moni headed back in the direction of the window Abigail had broken through.

  "Maybe he's right," Jack suggested. "Maybe we should just hide out."

  "What if the fire's on the floor underneath us?" Moni asked. "What if there are a million ants pouring into the building? We can't just hide out; we've got to empower ourselves. Nothing is going to stop me from getting back to my husband, and let me tell you something, if I'm going to die anywhere, it's _not_ going to be at work."

  "Amen," said Jack.

  They reached the broken window. There was no sign of the other two ants, and a quick glimpse outside didn't show any more of the large ants crawling on the side of the building.

  It did, however, show some white smoke billowing from a first-floor window.

  "Kick out the rest of the glass while I grab the cord," said Moni.

  As Jack went to work, Moni ran past the next two aisles until she reached the shoddy workstation where they'd put the unfortunate temporary employee. The orange extension cord was wound in a nice neat circle, so she wouldn't have to contend with any knots, but as Moni picked it up she realized that it wasn't going to be nearly long enough.

  She returned to the window just as Jack finished kicking out the entire frame of glass. "Is that going to get us to the ground?" he asked, eyeing the wound cord.

  "No. We'll have to grab more cords and tie them together. Were you ever a Boy Scout?"

  "For a couple weeks. I was dishonorably discharged. But we won't be able to get extension cords tied into a good enough knot to hold our weight, will we?"

  "I'm not sure," Moni admitted. "It would've been nice if Winnie had been able to find some duct tape."

  "Maybe I should look. He's not exactly the most perceptive person in the world."

  "We'll split up and look for two minutes," said Moni. "If we haven't found anything by then, we'll come back and start tying these cords together. We've wasted too much time already."

  Jack walked around the corner of the aisle, but wasn't gone for more than ten seconds before he called out to Moni. "Come here! Quick!"

  She hurried down the aisle to where Jack stood, and then saw what he was looking at. Mr. Kamerman was standing against the far wall, frozen, with one of the rat-sized ants on his shoulder.

  "Did it sting you?" Moni asked.

  Mr. Kamerman gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

  "Well, brush it off!" Jack said.

  Moni stepped forward, but Mr. Kamerman's eyes widened and he spoke in a soft but forceful voice. "Stay back!"

  "What do we do?" asked Jack.

  The ant crawled onto Mr. Kamerman's face.

  Moni thought for a moment. "Wait here. I'll go get the crossbow."

  * * *

  *-CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO-*

  Dustin ran down the center of the highway. Since so many ants had been crushed under tires, he wasn't in nearly as much danger of being stung as he had been behind Seth's Quik-Stop. If they could get a few steamrollers out here, they might be in pretty good shape.

  "Hey!" a voice behind him called out, though he could barely hear her over the ruckus the stopped cars were making with their horns. Dustin turned and saw a middle-aged woman in her rusty Volkswagen, the window rolled down a fraction of an inch. "Need a ride?"

  An ant scurried over Dustin's foot. "No thanks!" he said, continuing his run. Locking himself in a car would keep him alive, probably, but it wouldn't take care of the ant problem. Of course, there was no guarantee that he'd be able to do anything even if he made it to the address on the note, but he at least had to try.

  He ran alongside a semi truck and then saw the reason for the traffic standstill. There had been a six-car accident in the middle of the intersection. A body dangled out of the open door of one of the vehicles, ants crawling over every square inch of flesh, and a second driver lay slumped against the steering wheel, a splatter of blood on the inside of the cracked but not broken windshield. The other two cars were abandoned.

  There were a hell of a lot of ants in the intersection.

  Dustin hesitated. He'd have to find another way around. Running across that intersection wasn't certain death, but it looked pretty damn dangerous. He'd just have to take a detour down one of the side streets. If he could get a car, he could just circle around the block and that would put him ahead of the accident, and then he could --

  He heard a baby cry.

  The sound was coming from the intersection. Dustin couldn't be certain, but the car with the driver slumped against the steering wheel looked like it _might_ have a child safety seat in the backseat.

  Dustin knew that running over there to save it was a bad idea. Somebody else would eventually get the baby out of there, right? There were children in danger all over the city. Risking his life to save this one baby could cost the lives of countless others.

  A bad idea.

  Unfortunately, while Dustin was far from the most courageous person he knew, he just wasn't the kind of guy who could leave a crying baby alone in a car to be devoured by ants. Call it a personality quirk.

  He ran toward the car, reminding himself out loud that it was a really bad idea.

  He took long strides, trying to keep his feet in the air as much as possible. The less time he spent touching the ground, the fewer opportunities there were for ants to get on him. This would've been the perfect time to be Michael Jordan.

  Instead of running to the door, Dustin leapt up onto the rear of the vehicle. There were ants up there, but not as many as there were on the pavement. Maybe climbing was difficult for them. Though it would only take a few seconds to get the door open, that was a few seconds too long to be standing still. He could see through the rear windshield that there was in fact a real live baby in the backseat.

  He did an impressive kick that sent an ant flying off the trunk of this car and onto the trunk of the car next to it. Then he crawled up onto the top of the car, reached down, and opened the back door on the driver's side, which was the opposite side from where the baby sat.

  Without hesitation he leapt off the vehicle, ducked his head down, and leapt into the backseat. He slammed the door shut.

  Not a single ant had gotten inside. Not bad for somebody who'd never gotten higher than a "C" in physical education.

  Of course, he still had to get _out_ of the car.

  He made various soothing noises at the crying baby, not that he really expected any of them to work. His only real experience with babies was cursing the
people who brought screaming ones to movies, but he didn't have to be a good surrogate daddy here, he just had to get this one out of the car safely.

  As he unfastened the seatbelt, he saw that the driver of the semi was frantically batting at something in his vehicle.

  Not good.

  Dustin took the baby out of the seat and held it against his chest. It was wearing a light blue Cookie Monster nightgown. A boy? He felt a pang of sadness knowing that the baby no longer had a mother, but forced that thought out of his mind. Get the baby safe, and then worry about its future.