by Jeff Strand
She threw open the door and tossed the extension cord loop at the ant's head.
And missed.
She quickly yanked the cord out of the cage and closed the door as the ant rushed at it. The ant's head struck the door before she could get it shut all the way and it began to push the door back open. Moni braced her side against the door and helped push, and after a few seconds of strain they managed to get the door closed again.
The ant prod fell out of Moni's mouth. Roberta picked it up and replaced it, then stepped to the side of the door. "I'll try to get this around its neck as it comes out of the cage," Roberta explained. "If I miss, you be ready to zap it."
Moni nodded.
Roberta increased the size of the loop, pulled the door open, and then held her arm out over the doorway, dangling the loop like a snare.
The ant rushed out of the cage.
Its head went through the loop.
Roberta gave the cord a tug, and it tightened around the ant's neck. The cord popped out of her hand as the ant rushed forward, trying to find a way out of the lab, yanking Moni behind it. The other ants started slamming their heads against their cages.
Suddenly Roberta wanted to slam her own head against something. "I can't _believe_ this! We should have opened the door to the building _before_ we got the ant! We won't be able to get it open if the ant's in front of us!" She headed for the door. "Don't get killed. I'll be back."
She ran out of the lab, closing the door behind her, and then sprinted down the hallway. She reached the door at the end, swiped the card, and pulled it open. This led to a smaller corridor, maybe ten feet long, which ended at another door.
She swiped the card and threw the door open.
Dozens of ants scurried out into the hallway.
She turned and ran.
* * * *
The ant was going berserk, and Moni was scared that it was going to rip her arm off.
Too bad Jack wasn't here. He could ride it.
The door flew open and Roberta entered. She grabbed the ant prod out of Moni's mouth, then picked up the canister and tucked it under her left arm. "Try to get it out the door!" Roberta shouted, moving back into the hallway.
The ant didn't need any convincing. It ran for the doorway, and Moni realized with horror that it was turning in the wrong direction.
Roberta jabbed it in the side with the prod. The ant's head flew back, and it turned the other way.
Moni was jerked out of the lab, and the two women struggled to keep up with the stampeding ant.
It was working!
The smaller ants were running back toward the building. If they could keep the ant moving forward through the bottom five levels of the building, they might actually be able to destroy them all!
No, wait.
The ant was moving too fast. The smaller ones couldn't possibly outrun it, no matter how strong the signals were.
Moni stopped running and tried to brace her feet against the floor. Instead, she slid for a couple of seconds, and then was pulled off her feet and onto her stomach. The ant dragged her down the hallway, her chin scraping painfully along the tile before she could get her head up.
It was definitely not the most comfortable she'd ever been in her life, but it seemed to be slowing the ant down.
* * * *
They entered the building.
There was a layer of dirt on the floor, but it didn't seem to be thick enough for the ants to tunnel through. Instead, the building itself, with its eight-foot-high ceiling and ten-feet-apart walls, seemed to be a tunnel. Roberta was sure that this was nothing like the nests normal ants built for themselves, but then again, these were far from normal ants.
As she ran, Roberta shone the light from her miner's helmet around the area. The ants _were_ moving. Thousands of them, scurrying away from the giant ant that was dragging Moni through the dirt.
The ant started to run up the slope that curved around to the second floor. Roberta was thankful that there weren't stairs, for Moni's sake, but then realized that Moni was still going to be slammed against the wall.
* * * *
Moni couldn't see much of anything, and decided that was for the best. She'd just let it drag her along and be the navigator and hope that she didn't hit anything.
"Watch out!" Roberta shouted.
Moni looked ahead and the light beam, and saw that even though the ant had turned left, she was headed straight toward the wall.
She contorted her body, doing her best to keep the point of impact away from her head.
The side of her body smashed into the wall, and then continued being dragged up the slope to the next floor.
Moni was sure she'd broken a rib or two.
Oh well. She only had to go through that five more times.
* * *
*-CHAPTER FORTY-*
Moni spent most of her time on the second floor working her body into a seated position. So when she slammed against the next wall, she hit it feet first and the pain wasn't nearly so great.
* * * *
Roberta realized that she was falling behind, and forced herself to pick up the pace. The canister felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.
Mid-way through the third floor, the ant stopped.
It began to turn around.
"Prod it!" Moni shouted. "Prod it quick!"
Roberta dropped the canister and ran at the ant, ducking out of the way of its mandibles and poking the rod into its side. The ant jolted forward and continued its run. Roberta hurried back to retrieve the canister and followed, legs aching so badly that she thought a few more steps might cause them to shatter like glass.
On the fourth floor, she dropped the metal rod. She knew that if she stopped running long enough to pick it up, she'd never get going again, so she left it.
On the fifth floor, Roberta lost her balance and fell. Moni, already far ahead, slid up the next slope and out of sight.
* * * *
Moni slid more and more slowly until she stopped.
She was on the top floor, but it was completely dark.
She could hear the sounds of things scurrying around. Thousands of things. Millions of things.
They were also making the wet-shoes-on-tile sound she'd heard when they ran away from the Lavin, Inc. lawn. It wasn't quite fingernails-on-a-chalkboard painful to hear, but it was close.
The ants were probably packed so tightly onto the sixth floor that there was no place left for the giant ant to go.
Where was Roberta with the canister?
* * * *
Roberta got up but fell again. The dirt kept the canister from rolling away, but Roberta didn't think she could pick it up again.
She had to. She was so close.
Moni was up there with all of those ants.
Maybe dead.
Roberta picked up the canister and ran.
* * * *
Some ants began to crawl over Moni's legs.
She hoped that Jack and Zachary were doing better, not that it mattered much once these things got loose.
She couldn't see her watch, but figured that the door was probably rising at this very moment. And the fact that ants were crawling over her body right now proved that the giant ant could only hold them back for so long.
Then she saw a beam of light.
* * * *
Roberta nearly dropped the canister as she entered the sixth floor. It was as if they'd taken a snowplow and just pushed the ants all the way to the top. The creatures were piled almost all the way to the ceiling.
Even if the Heaven didn't work, she figured at least a floor's worth of ants at the bottom of the pile had to have been crushed anyway.
She set down the canister, and then slammed her foot against the nozzle.
A white mist jettisoned from the canister with such force that it shot backwards, striking the wall.
The ants closest to the mist died instantly.
Actually, they did a hell of a lot more than just die.
<
br /> They burst.
Exploded in a splatter of disgusting slime, as if their bodies just suddenly liquefied.
The mist continued to fill the room, and the ants continued to burst. The giant ant exploded, showering Moni with its black, pulpy insides.
Ants were exploding by the hundreds.
Then by the thousands.
"Moni," said Roberta, "we really, really, really need to get out of here."
They ran down the slope to the fifth floor, but the flood of ant goo caught them before they made it halfway across. Both women screamed as they were swept up and carried away in the current.
Roberta held out her arms and struggled to keep from being pulled under the surface. The smell was more putrid than anything she had ever encountered, making the patient's breath this afternoon seem like sugar-coated roses in comparison.
She slammed painfully into the wall and then was carried down to the fourth floor.
What kind of stroke was best for swimming in ant guts?
Moni went under, and despite her terror couldn't help but think that it was a pretty ridiculous way to drown.
* * * *
Roberta lost track of which floor she was on, until she saw a light ahead.
The second wave had officially started, but instead of an ant invasion, the city of Tampa was getting an ant river.
As she was carried toward the light, Roberta suddenly remembered that the doors were supposed to open on both the first and second floors.
She jettisoned out of the second story opening and screamed as she flew through the air, finally smashing into the grass below. She lay there, hurting all over, as thousands of gallons of ant gunk poured down upon her.
The ant slime waterfall quickly subsided to a shower, and then to a dripping.
She sat up.
Moni was lying facedown, about ten feet ahead of her.
"Moni? You okay?"
Moni rolled on her side and spat out a mouthful of goo. "Not really."
"You alive, though?"
"If you can call it that."
"Lot of dead ants, huh?"
"Yeah."
"You know, if the Heaven for the first wave has the same effect, I think Florida's tourism industry is pretty much screwed."
* * *
*-EPILOGUE-*
Moni, wrapped in more bandages than she could count, snuggled against Phil as they sat in the Orlando waiting room. Jack walked around the room, practicing with his crutches while Zachary watched television.
"I'll be damned," said Zachary. "Our friend Tyler turned himself in to the police. You think maybe he had somethin' to feel guilty about?"
"Yeah, but now he gets to be a celebrity," said Jack. "I'd be a celebrity, too, if somebody had taken a picture of me riding that ant. From now on I'm not going anywhere without a digital camera."
Roberta walked into the room. "Did Dr. Ruiz's family show yet?"
"Not yet," said Zachary.
Roberta grinned. "Well, it's good news. He's going to be just fine."
"Of course he is," said Moni. "He's not the one who got washed down the river of ant splat."
Planes were spraying the Heaven all over Tampa, and Moni couldn't imagine what the cleanup budget was going to be like. The city had been evacuated, and since they were going to have to treat each individual structure, it didn't appear that anybody was going to get to go home any time soon.
But that was okay. She'd been wanting to visit her mother in Arizona anyway.
She tried not to think about Trevor, Abigail, and Mr. Kamerman. There'd be plenty of tears for them, but for right now she was just glad to be alive.
* * * *
"Good Lord, look at those things!"
"We're not here to look at them, we're here to burn them."
"You better believe it. Whoa, baby! Feel my heat!"
"Will you quit playing around? Be careful with that thing."
"Aw, don't be such a ... whoa, look at _that_! You think he's still alive?"
"Of course he's not still alive. Just torch it."
"I don't know, man, maybe we should just make sure it can't get out. They may want to study it or something."
"Those aren't our orders."
"Aw, come on. This could be our big shot at fame. We'll leave it in there, and we'll do something with it after we've finished up everything else."
"That's gonna be days."
"So?"
"Fine. Do whatever you want."
_I'm not dead_! Slash tried to scream through the webs as the men left, but he couldn't move.
He could see, though.
He could see the spider crawling slowly over what was left of his leg.
And while he couldn't scream with his mouth, he could scream in his mind.
He screamed and screamed as the spider continued its leisurely meal.
-The End-
* * *
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