The Colony: A Novel

by A. J. Colucci

  They headed west and turned the corner of Fortieth Street, where the intersection had clogged up quickly and the street was mostly clear. After vaulting over cars and obstacles, it felt good to walk on pavement again, but it was dead quiet. Sirens fell silent as entire city blocks lost power. Not a soul was on the street. Manhattan was becoming a ghost town.

  The quiet was broken by a police squadron bursting out of a diner. The men were armed with shotguns and wore menacing hoods like ninjas and sleek black uniforms with NYPD across the chest. They marched past Paul and Kendra, who halted their journey until the pounding of heavy boots grew faint. Then the two scientists continued toward Midtown, turning the corner onto a narrow lane where the buildings were old and expensive. There was a deceptive feeling of sanctuary among the flowering gardens and iron benches, old-fashioned gas lamps and cobblestone courtyards.

  Then they saw the first body.

  It lay curled on its knees and bloated in tightly stretched clothing with arms tucked beneath the chest and a bloody face pressed against the pavement.

  Paul rolled the man over and found no pulse in his neck. His skin was bone white and when he lifted the man’s undershirt, the entire torso was marbled in dark purple blotches: pools of thickened blood with nowhere else to flow. A penlight showed much of the skin was in motion, peppered with black bumps of ants tunneling just under the first few layers.

  Kendra rose to her feet unsteadily and stared down at the man’s pasty complexion. He stared back at her with protruding red eyes. It was a familiar memory that eased her into dark waters that she’d had no intention of wading in again. She began to shiver violently and cursed herself to keep it together, stepping back with arms wrapped tight around her waist.

  “Kendra?” Paul was looking at her with acute worry.

  She didn’t answer him.

  He walked slowly toward her, trying to make eye contact, but she seemed to look right through him. Paul grasped her shoulder, gave a firm shake and Kendra’s eyes snapped into focus.

  “Let’s keep going,” she said and turned on her heels, as if nothing had happened.

  Then they noticed the others.

  Lining the street were corpse after corpse: some curled up in the middle of the road, and others sprawled over steps and bloodstained walkways.

  Kendra stood rapt in front of a dead woman in a white slip, kneeling with her hands clasped in prayer around a NO PARKING sign. Globs of dried blood hung from her eyes, nose and lips.

  “I believe we’ve gone to hell,” Kendra barely whispered.

  “No,” Paul replied. “Hell has come to us.”

  Rounding the corner, a bearded old man walked in long strides, rising up and down like a carousel horse. His soiled raincoat flapped open with each step, revealing nothing but a jock strap. Over his shoulders, like a sack of rice, was a young naked woman, gray-skinned and obviously dead. Blond hair swung from side to side, out of sync with her limp arms. Bright red lipstick was her only trace of color.

  In the beam of Paul’s penlight, the man grimaced and stopped abruptly, making the young woman’s head flop back. She had pale eyes and a gash along her forehead.

  “You ought to pick up one of these bodies, mister,” the old man croaked. “If the ants come, you just throw it at them. Works better if they’re still alive, but the dead ones are all right.” He laughed as he passed them. “Trust me, it works.”

  CHAPTER 27

  DARK CLOUDS THICKENED LIKE sludge across the moon, blocking out precious light. The New York skyline was black against black. Paul and Kendra could barely see where they were going, but followed the ghostly white glow of the sidewalks. Paul paused on Second Avenue and dropped the heavy backpack on the ground, rummaged blindly through the front pouch and pulled out a couple of military-grade flashlights.

  Kendra turned hers on high beam and Paul set his on lantern mode, which illuminated the surrounding neighborhood in soft lavender. They walked in silence past high-rise office buildings, which soon gave way to older brick tenements and deserted fast food eateries, electronics and clothing stores.

  Paul’s mind was still on Kendra’s vacant eyes, staring at the dead man.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

  Kendra pretended she didn’t hear him. He was going there again, after she’d made it clear so many times that it was not a point of entry. She was rubbing the smooth, delicate spot on her wrist as if dabbing perfume. It wasn’t a conscious habit, but a reaction to the fluttery feeling of wings on her skin. Eyelashes. Butterfly kisses her mother gave her every night before bed. She still felt them, rather often. With that single image engraved in her mind, the haunting eyes of the dead man, Kendra rubbed her wrist on the kissing spot but it neither erased the fluttery feeling nor blocked out the memories that were so relentless.

  They were in Argentina. Kendra was seven years old, lying in a field of high grass under the plentiful shade of floss silk trees, which grew in clusters: green leaves shaped like fingers on a hand and trunks covered in thorns. It was hot, muggy like the tropics, with the occasional screech of wild birds and howler monkeys.

  Kendra could see the worksite from her perch on a small knoll. The fire ant mound must have reached over three feet high, because it came well past her father’s knee. He was an exceedingly tall man who reminded her of Abe Lincoln, with his narrow face and Amish-type beard. He had an overbearing presence, but was gentle and prone to clumsiness. Kendra took after her mother, who was blond and small-boned with light, playful eyes and even features. The two adults stood at the base of the mound in full gear, cutting a wedge out of the dirt and throwing the ants into a frenzy.

  Kendra was occupied as usual in a tenacious search for rare butterflies, an obsession since the age of five, but every so often she looked back reassuringly at her parents. She caught sight of a Malachite, hardly rare, but not yet part of her collection, so she snapped the net over its wings and plowed across the field on sturdy legs to show off her find.

  Her father was arguing with a man and two other men in a jeep. They were locals from the village where they were staying. Kendra’s mother pulled off her white hood. She had a worried expression and shooed her daughter away. Not used to being ignored, Kendra retreated with a scowl. She didn’t like hearing adults argue either, so she trotted back into the field and sat down and studied the incandescent green wings of the Malachite.

  She talked to it, played with it and named every part of its body. Then she explained to the insect that butterflies live only for a few days but not to be sad because three days aloft on graceful wings was better than seventy years of walking on boring feet. When it finally died she would stick a pin through its body and hang it on a board.

  This is where things got fuzzy for Kendra. There were several loud popping sounds and she may have heard a scream or maybe not. But something frightening made her look back at the worksite. She stood up straight, and the Malachite soared into the clouds. Kendra watched the jeep race away. She could barely see her parents lying on the ground by the ant mound, the grass was so high. Only the tips of their shoes and the thin white lines of their protective suits peeked over the green blades. Kendra wondered if they had fallen, and she became frightened and anxious to reach them.

  The site was not more than fifty yards away but it seemed like miles and now her legs felt heavy and hard to lift as she moved slowly toward the mound.

  The puffy white face of her mother stared up at Kendra and her swollen lips were slightly moving, telling her something. Her father too had open eyes, but expressionless. Neither of them wore head gear or gloves. Both were covered in ants and bleeding across their chest, or maybe the neck, or the hands; it was always different.

  Then someone grabbed Kendra and swung her over large shoulders. The last thing she remembered was the sound of her own scream, as her parents moved farther away.

  “You can’t deny the similarities,” Paul was saying and it snapped Kendra back to the present. “There’s such
a thing as post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “And there’s such a thing as bad psychology, Dr. Freud,” said Kendra, irritated. “My parents were killed over a few dollars. What we have here is the most catastrophic event in human history. I have every right to a freak-out.”

  He nodded, watching her rub her wrist, and decided to drop it.

  They crossed Thirty-eighth Street to what sounded like a street festival with no music. Halfway down the block, hundreds of people moved in the glare of police searchlights. Residents of the Emily Harding Home for seniors were being evacuated. There were no vehicles for transport so they had to settle for wheelchairs, gurneys, stretchers and even a few shopping carts, all pushed by a long procession of rescuers.

  A skinny, dark-eyed boy about twelve years old held the arm of a woman as she plodded toward a wheelchair. She was embarrassed, complaining about moving so slowly, and the boy kept saying, “No problemo. No problemo.” He eased her into the seat and set a bulky pocketbook on her lap. For a brief moment, his eyes locked with Paul’s. The boy smiled, and then rolled the woman down the street with the others.

  “Come on,” Kendra said in a low voice, and they continued down Second Avenue.

  They reached an enormous intersection by the Queens Midtown Tunnel where throngs of pedestrians clambered over cars and buses that clogged the arched entrance. Along the skyline, smoke poured from tall building fires as if from burning matchsticks. A fleet of military choppers were flying through the smoke and landing somewhere in Central Park.

  Paul and Kendra reached Thirty-sixth Street and found a long stretch of old brick residential buildings.

  “These look like ant hotels to me,” she whispered.

  “So we sneak up on them?” Paul asked.

  “Just close enough to grab a queen,” she answered. “Before they tear us apart.”

  “No way,” Paul said confidently. “These suits are top of the line. Jack the Ripper couldn’t get through.

  She raised a brow. “Think so, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I just wish we had some kind of warning.”

  “Perhaps we do. Some of the survivors say the ants make a chirping noise.”

  “Ants don’t make audible sounds.”

  “Maybe it has something to do with how they signal attack.”

  “Or maybe they bred them with crickets.”

  “Listen.” He paused and they heard a muffled tapping. Paul orbited his flashlight around the empty street. “Let’s not spook ourselves. What were we talking about?”

  “Our plan.”

  “Right. Find the best building and check out the most likely nesting spots.”

  “So, what’s the best building?”

  “I suppose whichever one has the most bodies around.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Washington, D.C.

  IT WAS A FORTY-FIVE-MINUTE helicopter ride from the United Nations to the White House lawn.

  General Dawson and Colonel Garrett were to lead an emergency meeting in the situation room at 3:00 A.M. Gathered around the table were President Andrew Davis, Attorney General Joseph Hastings, White House Chief Counsel George Bennington, Cabinet members and Joint Chiefs of Staff, the heads of Homeland Security, along with majority and minority party leaders.

  In front of each person was a black bound report lettered in red: OPERATION COLONY TORCH. The president and attorney general sat beside each other, red-faced and flipping through pages while Colonel Garrett summarized damage, projected casualties and estimated worst-case scenarios. Garrett’s mission was to get everyone in the room thinking alike. The ants in Manhattan could never leave the island. The lives of 300 million Americans were at stake. The colony had to be contained.

  Both Garrett and Dawson had agreed that Kendra’s pheromone formula would not be mentioned at the meeting. It was too much of a long shot and could delay approval of Operation Colony Torch.

  Hastings would be a tough sell. He was known as the president’s Doberman, guardian of the administration. Any proposal that showed the slightest trace of controversy was sniffed out by Hastings and snapped off with ruthless jaws. The election year was fast approaching and the president’s ratings were dropping even faster, ever since the ant attacks in New York. Something drastic had to be done, but as far as Hastings was concerned, Operation Colony Torch was political suicide. “Who the hell are you!” he bellowed at Garrett. “I don’t even know you.” He turned to the president. “These guys walk in here, tell us some South American secret weapon has gotten loose in New York and they want this administration to clean up their colossal mess?”

  President Davis was pensively leaning back in his chair, hands steepled under his chin. “I think we’re past the blame game, Joe. We have to take some kind of action.”

  Hastings was furious and vowed that he would die or be the last voice of reason. He slid his copy of the report to the center of the table and sternly reproached the two army officers. “Let me say this: even the suggestion of using nuclear weapons on our own country may be grounds for treason. You’d better have a damn good reason for recommending such an undertaking.”

  The statement was followed by a lot of head nodding.

  Dawson cringed at the monumental task in front of him. He barely had the support of his own colleagues at the Pentagon. No one wanted to touch this with a nine-hundred-foot pole. His fellow generals and commanders had jumped into action, focusing on evacuation, flying in supplies and medical needs, but no one wanted to be involved in the containment.

  Just hours before, Secretary of State Howard Sherwood was fuming that Dawson had put Garrett in charge of the operation: “You put a colonel in charge of coordinating logistics, coming up with a plan and recommendations to save America’s greatest city?”

  Dawson cringed at having to defend Garrett, but he was knee deep in the turmoil with no allies. “Colonel Garrett has more knowledge about these ants than anyone. Frankly, we need him.”

  Garrett addressed the group with confidence, summing up the first section of the report, which explained that no other means of destroying the ants besides nuclear bombs had been discovered.

  Hastings called for an immediate motion to bring the discussion to the Senate floor. “We need to get approval from the proper channels and clear this with both the UN Commission and the Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The president needs documentation, very detailed documentation, outlining all our options. At the very least it will take a week to get clearance on even considering your proposal.”

  “You don’t seem to understand,” the general stressed, “We don’t have a week. We don’t have a day. These ants are moving quickly. Even if we blow up the bridges and tunnels, there are juvenile queens ready to take flight. They can fly thousands of miles. The ants can cross water by joining together and making huge balls that carry them downstream, possibly across rivers or even oceans.”

  Senator Denise Sheldon of New York slammed both her hands on the table. “New York City!” she shouted at the general. “The most densely populated county in the nation. The financial and cultural capital of the world. Home to the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Madison Square Garden, Lincoln Center—not to mention outstanding museums and universities, along with nearly every major radio and television station, newspaper and magazine.” She was going to make a show of this and there was nothing stopping her. “Times Square. Greenwich Village. Central Park. These are places known by every person in civilized society. You’re talking about New York City, damn it!”

  Garrett shot back, “No, ma’am! Excuse me, ma’am, but it is not New York City. It’s Siafu Moto City. These insects have taken over, with no plans of ever leaving.”

  The outburst was startling and the group stopped breathing as Garrett’s eyes scanned the table. “Each of you must understand that we will never save Manhattan. Our only option is bomb it now or bomb it later. You need to start thinking about saving Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut and the rest of the nation.�
� This was Garrett’s stage moment. He was enjoying this, Dawson could tell, and he was revolted. The colonel had the floor and scrutinized each worried face, speaking in a patronizing tone, “This is one city, in one nation, on one planet. Right now, we have to consider the only feasible action to save the United States of America—and beyond.”

  There was a period of silence, and then the president cleared his throat and asked, “How many casualties are we talking about?”

  Garrett flipped opened his black folder, but kept his eyes locked on the commander in chief. “There are approximately one hundred and forty thousand people already dead from the ant attacks. Out of the three million commuters and tourists, almost all of them have left the city. Out of the one point six million residents, there are roughly one hundred thousand left. Most have gotten out on their own, by train or foot, by bridge and tunnel, fleets of ships and helicopters. We are still evacuating at a rate of twenty-six thousand civilians per hour. Hospital workers, doctors, nurses and patients, emergency crews, police and military will be the last to leave.”

  On the wall was a large map of the borough. Garrett rose from his chair and pointed to evacuation sites. He explained, “If we begin bombing at seventeen hundred tomorrow, there will be approximately six thousand lives lost—those civilians too wounded or too incapacitated to make it out.”

  He was actually talking about doing it, and his words swept panic over the room. Each set of terrified eyes shifted from one person to another. The smell of fear was erupting off bodies like steaming volcanoes, yet Garrett continued, unruffled, “There are going to be people we simply cannot reach. But everyone who is physically able will be flown or shipped out of the city, well outside range of any nuclear fallout. Right now we’re focusing on evacuation of the surrounding communities.”

  “Let’s talk about that,” the president said. “Damage at the hypocenter, and the extent of nuclear fallout.”