She reached up and handed him the bug vacuum. “Fair enough.”
Paul slid the vacuum through the hatch, along with the flashlight, and zipped his hood once again. “Wait till I get up there. If it seems safe, I’ll tell you to press the button. We’ll look for the queen floor by floor.”
Arms braced, Paul hoisted himself onto the roof of the elevator, landing on his chest and skimming across fifty years of dust and grease. He got up on his knees in the filthy white suit, surrounded by darkness and millions of imaginary legs racing toward him. He shivered and flipped the flashlight to lantern mode. The shaft became awash in light.
Paul stood ready to retreat, but the ants were fairly still. At least he saw no outward sign that they were preparing to attack, so he began looking around. The elevator roof was less than ten feet across. In the center, two thick cables operated the car from an electrical box at the top of the shaft, while four thin wires secured each corner for balance. The air was musty with a metallic odor of gears and machinery.
Paul grasped the grimy cable and moved to the wall, close enough to reach out and touch the ants if he wanted to. He didn’t. Yet fear turned to fascination when he observed the colony up close. The ants were passing bits of food, carrying eggs to a nest made from their own bodies and disposing dead ants into a makeshift burial site, formed by thousands of legs linked together. They were busy with all the duties of ordinary ants but Paul was watching them from inside the colony, and he found that extraordinary.
“What’s going on?” Kendra’s voice came from the elevator.
“Shhhh.”
“What do you see?”
“Would you hush?”
Paul shifted his attention back to the ants, with a glint in his eye and a growing sense of excitement. He examined them closely through the plastic window of his hood. At that moment, the Siafu Moto were not a weapon but a colony like any other. It’s what he wrote about, spoke about; it was his passion. A society based on equality and cooperation. If people could emulate ants in this regard alone, they could be saved from certain extinction. He wondered to himself if perhaps the ants were here to teach us a lesson.
“Do you see the queen?” shouted Kendra.
Paul’s thoughts evaporated. “Hold on.”
He orbited the beam of light over thick layers of insects. If they were anything like ordinary Siafu he would find the queen laying eggs under a large mound of protective soldier ants. The mound would be easy to spot. Sometimes they were as big as soccer balls. Paul surveyed the area for another minute, until he was satisfied that the lobby level was clear.
“Start her up,” he yelled softly down the hole.
Kendra pushed the button for the first floor. Instantly, sparks exploded from above. Like shooting stars, they soared gracefully through the air and then burned into cinders halfway down the shaft. Ants scrambled out of the electric box, where they bit wires and crammed gears.
Unaware of the malfunction, Paul rode the elevator car on his knees. When it stopped gently, he climbed to his feet and lifted the lamp to the wall, when a noise startled him. He turned to find Kendra pulling herself through the hatch.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She got to her feet, equally covered in grime. “You didn’t think I was going to miss this, did you?”
“No.” It was an honest answer.
Wide-eyed and mouth gaping, Kendra strolled across the roof of the car. “Just look at them,” she gasped. “This is what it’s like, being on the inside.”
“Yeah, I feel it too.” He smiled like a young boy finding the most remarkable bug for his collection. “I’d forgotten the allure of nature’s most coveted secrets.”
“Too busy cashing checks.”
“Ouch.” His face pinched. “That hurt.”
Kendra crouched lower, examining them closely. “They seem normal enough.”
“Yet for some reason, they’re oblivious to us.”
“So much for your theory they attack in groups.”
Kendra held up her flashlight to a nest, where hundreds of ants linked together to form an oval bed three feet across. There was no sign of a queen, but thousands of eggs were being coddled and licked clean by nurser ants: small, delicate capsules, waxy yellow in color, yet transparent enough to distinguish the wormlike larvae inside.
“Paul, take a look.”
Below the nest were broken eggshells and a multitude of pink, squirming newborns. Adults crawled over the brood, checking each one like a new mother trying to find her only child in a sea of look-alikes.
“Trophallaxis,” Paul said with a sense of awe. The ants were regurgitating liquids into the mouths of the juveniles. “Not something you see in the field every day.”
Kendra nodded. “Maybe if we observe them long enough, we’ll learn something useful.”
“I think we’re better off finding a queen and getting the hell out of here.”
There was a sudden knot in his stomach and he backed away. The light spread over a mass of crawling winged ants. They moved restlessly in circles over one another, occasionally lifting their wings and catching air.
“Alates,” he said anxiously.
Kendra took a closer look. Although the ants were indeed future queens, they were useless for her purpose, as their glands wouldn’t secrete the proper pheromones until the nuptial flight. “It won’t be long before they take off.”
“So now we have to worry about flying monsters.”
Both of them scanned the elevator shaft with renewed alarm.
Kendra stood on her tiptoes, trying to get a better view of mysterious movement along a section of wall. “Bring the light closer. There’s something here.”
Paul held the lamp over her head, illuminating a mound of ants in the shape of a football. They moved slowly, in a tightly packed huddle.
“Hallelujah. It might be a queen,” Kendra said.
“All right. You get ready with that bug vacuum. I’ll try to sweep them off.”
“Seriously?”
“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
She nodded and stepped out of his way.
Paul held up a gloved hand, pointed like an arrow ready to strike. He took several deep breaths and raised the lamp higher. Kendra swallowed hard and held the vacuum in a tight grip to steady her hands.
Paul struck swiftly into the center of the mound and scooped out a layer of ants. They felt soft and light against the white glove. He winced and danced on his feet as they all sprinkled to the floor like sand.
Ants scattered from the mound and the prize they coveted came into view.
It was a hand. A left hand, adorned with a platinum wedding ring. It was cut ragged at the wrist, the flesh chewed off and bones pulled apart.
Paul gagged and dropped the flashlight.
Kendra fell back in silence.
The hand plunged down the shaft.
“Well. That was fun.” Paul checked his glove for stragglers. He tried to wipe the sweat from his brow, but instead left a smear of grease on the plastic window of his hood. He walked to the hatch. “I’ll take us up a floor. You keep an eye out for Her Majesty.”
Kendra nodded, speechless, as Paul lowered himself into the car. She braced her knees and steadied herself as the elevator began to rise. She picked up the lamp and the bug vacuum, as the car passed the third floor, then the fourth, then the fifth.
“Paul, stop!” she yelled.
The car didn’t stop. In fact, it was gaining speed.
Paul was pushing every button.
“It’s not stopping, Kendra!” he yelled back.
Suddenly sparks were shooting everywhere. Kendra ducked as they pelted the elevator. Five floors from the top, Paul noticed the bright red Emergency button and pounded it with his fist. The elevator screeched to a bumpy halt.
They both fell to their knees.
“Shit,” he winced.
Kendra could hear pain in Paul’s voice, but it was another sound that k
icked up her heart rate. It started at the top of the shaft and traveled down in waves: the same angry chimes she’d heard in the street.
Kerka kerkosh keka kerkosh kerka kerkosh kerka kerkosh
In a flash, ants were streaming down the walls, the entire colony on the move. The sound bounced through the shaft and became deafening. Kendra pressed the hood against her ears and looked up to see ants spiraling down the heavy twisted cable, straight toward her. A few dropped to the floor, right by her knee, and she kicked them, brushed them away with her shoe mitts. She scrambled backward like a crab and her hand clipped the flashlight. It rolled to the edge and down the shaft, taking the last bit of light and leaving her in darkness.
Something grabbed her ankle. It was Paul, reaching through the hatch door and shouting something, but Kendra couldn’t hear anything over the ants. The elevator buckled and swayed and then there was the straining sound as the cable’s hanger began to give way. Smoke poured from the engine and then it shorted out with loud popping sounds and a burst of flames.
“Hold on—we’re going down!” Paul shouted.
Kendra held her breath, trying to make herself lighter. There was a thunderous snap as the pulley broke loose and the elevator began to free-fall.
Two corner wires snapped under the tremendous weight and the bulky car jammed against the narrow walls, metal against brick, slowing down its plunge and sending more showers of sparks into the air.
The ladder shot out from beneath Paul’s feet and his legs kicked helplessly in the air. His body halfway through the hatch, he held tight to the center cable and pulled Kendra toward the hole, dragging her across the roof and over broken cable wires.
Kendra cried out, tumbling through the hatch with Paul and hitting the floor, just as the elevator slammed to the bottom with a crash.
CHAPTER 34
PAUL AND KENDRA LAY flat on their backs in utter silence. The light flickered twice but didn’t go out. Paul was badly bruised, but remarkably, nothing was broken. Kendra too was banged up, but in one piece. They sat up nursing their aching bones. Paul unzipped his hood and flipped it from his sweaty head.
A shot of pain hit Kendra in her lower spine and she arched her back with a grimace.
Paul crawled to her. “You okay?”
“I think.” She threw off her hood and blinked hard. “Great. I lost a contact lens.” With a hopeless breath, she patted the floor.
Paul slowly got to his feet and limped to the door. He pressed all the buttons on the wall, but the elevator moaned like a beached whale. He tried to pry the doors apart but they wouldn’t budge. “We might be stuck here a—”
“Unnngh!” Kendra cried.
Paul dropped to her side. “What?” he cried. “What’s broken?”
She rolled onto her stomach, one hand reaching toward her lower back. “Here,” she winced. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
There was a thin tear in her suit, about the length of a pin, where the piece of cable had caught exactly onto the wrong spot, right along the zipper. It was the only part of the suit not made of woven steel.
Paul released the zipper and lifted her blouse. There was a streak of blood and … something else. He could feel his eyes bulge. “Listen to me, Kendra,” he shouted over her moans. “There are a whole bunch of ants on your back.”
“Well get them off, damn it!”
Paul reached for the backpack, knowing that any attempt to scrape the insects off by hand could leave the stingers intact. He took one huge breath to steady his nerves and fumbled through the pouch for his medical bag as his calm-doctor demeanor took over. He pulled out a scalpel.
“I need you to stay as still as possible.” He tried to steady her writhing body, climbing over her hips and straddling her legs, pressing a hand down between her shoulder blades.
Six ants were gathered in a row across the lumbar spine, clamped tight, as blood trickled between the vertebrae. A red rash covered Kendra’s back like welts from a flogging.
Paul could see the stingers working frantically up and down, and sprayed the area with an antiseptic that numbed the skin. The plan was to scrape the ants away with the edge of the blade, but the little bastards clamped on like Gorilla Glue, metal lodging between armor and skin. Three of the ants had already tunneled their way inside. He’d have to slice them off. Holding tight to the scalpel, Paul pushed the point a quarter inch into the flesh.
Kendra groaned as he started cutting, scooping out small chunks of tissue. She hissed through gritted teeth while Paul scraped the flesh into a glass vial, along with the ants, which locked on tight with a scissor-like grip. After the last of the ants was removed, Paul tried to control the bleeding with gauze and closely inspected the wound, making sure he removed every last bit of stinger. Even detached from the ant, a stinger could continue pumping poison into its victim and kill an allergic person in minutes.
And Paul knew Kendra was allergic to fire ants.
Gently, he turned her over, and immediately he knew there was a problem. Kendra’s pale face was feverishly hot and her eyes were droopy.
“Look at me, Kendra,” Paul mouthed the words loudly. He grabbed the medical bag and pulled out a syringe and two glass vials. “Don’t close your eyes, baby. Talk to me. I need to know—have you been taking your shots?”
He wasn’t getting any response. Cold sweat dripped from her forehead and her teeth chattered from severe chills. “Have you been taking your shots?” he yelled in her face. He tapped her cheek lightly and her eyes fluttered open.
She nodded and whispered, “Yes.”
Kendra had been giving herself shots of H-1 blockers for years, but it seemed to offer no protection against the Siafu Moto toxins. Her breathing became labored. Anaphylaxis was setting in fast.
Paul filled the syringe, striking the glass with two quick pings to get the bubbles out. The normal dose of epinephrine was .3 milligrams but he gave her twice the amount. He filled another syringe with an antihistamine. It was a dangerous thing to do, mixing large amounts of medications, but it was a last resort if she didn’t respond to the first dose, and she hadn’t.
As the needle jammed her arm, Kendra’s lips were turning blue and a hissing like a tire leak sounded from her mouth, signaling her throat was swelling shut.
All at once Paul was enraged with himself. How could he have taken such a risk? The truth was, he never seriously believed the ants could hurt them. That kind of thing happened to amateurs, not award-winning scientists. Paul knew ant behavior like the back of his hand and could anticipate any situation. But this time, things were different. They were dealing with something paranormal. Again, ego had gotten him in the worst predicament of his life.
“Stay with me, honey!” Paul took her pulse. It was 140 and rising. She was slipping away. Paul was not a religious man but he found himself praying, hard. He cradled Kendra in his arms and pressed his cheek against her forehead, feeling her skin burn with fever.
Come on, baby. Don’t do this to me.
Paul was panic-stricken. There was nothing he could do if she slipped into a coma. He laid Kendra gently on the floor and stood up, tense, shaking his fists with frustration, and let out an angry grunt. He began kicking in the door with all his might. He pounded the metal with his shoes until a sharp dent cut the door and the soles of his feet burned.
Paul gave up his fight and fell to his hands and knees. Kendra’s body lay still beneath him and he turned from her swollen white face. It was over, he couldn’t believe it. This was how it ended, right here, so suddenly. Tears filled his eyes.
There was a gasp of air.
He turned to her, startled. Kendra was breathing. Not just breathing, but moving.
Paul was overwhelmed with relief as Kendra curled up in a ball, hacking on a sudden influx of oxygen. He lifted her head and reached into his bag for the inhaler, and then shot two doses of antihistamine into her lungs.
She took hungry breaths.
Paul brushed the tangled hair from her wet face. The
swelling began to subside and color came to her cheeks.
“Was I … dead?” she asked.
Paul shook his head with a smile, relieved beyond words.
Kendra inhaled deeply through her nose and began to breathe normally. Paul helped her to sit up against his chest and their hands clasped tightly together. She nestled against his shoulder, suddenly freezing, teeth chattering, but his chest felt warm.
She asked, “So now what do we do?”
“We wait. I hold you and we sit here together. We wait until the drugs finish working.”
She nodded, not wanting to ask, What if they don’t?
“Let’s make a deal,” he said. “You don’t die on me and I won’t die on you.”
“Ever?”
“At least for today.”
They sat for a while, saying nothing.
“Hey,” she said at last, and plucked something off the ground. “I found my contact lens.”
Paul laughed and blew off the lens, helped put it back in her eye.
“Friggin’ ouch,” Kendra snarled, reaching behind her suit and drawing back fingers laced with blood.
“I had to cut the ants off your back.”
Kendra caught sight of the scalpel on the floor, smeared red with bits of flesh. She picked it up and raised a brow. “You enjoyed this, didn’t you?”
“What—playing doctor with you?” He pressed his fingers into her abdomen, looking for signs of soft tissue, and whispered, “I always have.” He sprayed the wound again with a soothing antiseptic and put on another layer of gauze and tape. “No sign of internal bleeding, but you’re not in the clear yet. Do you feel dizzy? Weak? Thirsty?”
She shook her head, squeezing her hands together to keep still. His warm breath sent chills up her neck.
“Nausea? Chills?”
“Yes. I mean no. I’m fine.”
Paul finished dressing the wound. He put several layers of surgical tape over the rip in Kendra’s suit.
She watched his hands tremble as they packed away supplies.
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