by Stu Jones
The butt of the rifle slammed into the side of her head, her mind screamed a wash of noise as though her head were an old antenna-equipped TV. She stumbled or thought she stumbled, and became weightless, falling through the floor of the world, her husband’s words screaming in her ears: Jenna, I just want to make sure everyone is safe.
Through the stampede of human panic, Molly crawled toward the dune buggy. Her head throbbed and her heart slammed in her chest as she dug her fingers into the soil. Not in a million lifetimes would she have ever expected to see this. Giant ants swarming from the hillside, their shrieking calls ringing in her ears. The men around her screamed and ran as the sounds of sporadic gunfire intermingled with the terrible shrieking of the creatures.
Gasping, she reached the dune buggy and crawled under it, positioning herself to try to get a better look. Straining and blinking through the red dust she looked for Kane, but she wasn’t able to see him. The tattooed leader and some of his goons were making a stand against the creatures as they fired their weapons into the swarm of approaching insects. Molly watched in amazement as the bullets pinged off the heads and backs of the marauding monsters, their exoskeletons defeating the projectiles like plate steel.
The only creatures that appeared to fall were the ones whose bulbous black eyes were pierced by stray projectiles. They shrieked and collapsed, sliding across the red earth in defeat as their comrades scurried over them without concern.
The tattooed Ashteroth, who only moments before had held a fistful of her hair, was now screaming at his men and pulling his giant knife from its sheath. Molly watched, captivated, as the creatures descended upon the bandits, their jaws locked open, ready to strike.
Molly put her hand over her mouth as the giant insects collided with the small squad of men. The men screamed and struck at the beasts, the bladed jaws slashing and tearing limb from limb, splashing blood upon the dirt.
Ashteroth was yelling and swinging his large blade, striking the creatures in their eyes. Down went one, then another, as he fought them off with a ferocity born of true madness, but the creatures were too great in number.
One of the large black beasts came at Ashteroth from his right, snapping its jaws closed around his midsection. He shrieked and flailed, dropping the knife and banging against the creature’s head with his fist. The great beast shook him back and forth until his lower torso and legs separated and dropped free from the rest of him. The tattooed man continued to buck and thrash, wailing obscenities as his life flowed from him onto the earth. His movements slowed, his posture sagging. Without further concern, the uninterested creature dropped the bandit leader’s body and moved on to search the rest of the area.
Molly became acutely aware that Kane was still out in the open somewhere. She scanned the area and finally located his twisting form trying to free his hands about thirty yards from her. She croaked out loud as the creatures skittered toward him. Kane grabbed up a knife in the dirt and began cutting away the restraints on his wrists as a giant black ant noticed him and redirected toward him, screeching and alerting others around it.
Molly ground her teeth and moaned a desperate sound as she prepared to helplessly watch the death of her only friend. Kane snapped the restraints just as the monstrous insect came in, ready to attack. Kane ducked under the jaws, as they slammed shut, coming up and to the outside, as he drove the knife deep into its eye lens so that his arm disappeared to the elbow. Clear hemolymph exploded from the socket all over him as he grimaced and ground the blade in a scrambling motion around in the creature’s head. The creature screeched and stumbled, collapsing over and on top of Kane, and driving him out of Molly’s sight. More of them now converged on Kane and the downed creature, and Molly pinched her eyes closed. She couldn’t bear the thought.
Please, God, protect him, she prayed.
She lay as still as a statue as a group of the ants approached the buggy, their strange, alien-looking forms jerking this way and that. Their screeching varied in pitch and tone and sometimes had variations of a trilling and clicking sound. They were communicating, grid searching for every last enemy invader.
As Molly lay in the dirt beneath the dune buggy, she remembered what she had learned about these strange creatures in a not-too-distant college biology class. The screeching sound was either the stridulation of the insect’s gaster segments or via the mandibles themselves and was a form of communication. She knew that they would also be communicating by the use of pheromones, chemical messages that were used to communicate with the colony. Though generally having poor vision, their eyes, which were composed of many tiny lenses, much like a housefly, were able to detect movement very well. Molly lay motionless, just another body in the dirt.
If she was going to help Kane, she was going to have to know what she was dealing with and address the situation appropriately. Ants by nature were not extremely aggressive unless provoked or corporately defending the nest. That was assuming that these creatures had retained the same or similar instincts as their tiny brethren. She could not be sure, though. For one, their size had been altered by some chemical or radioactive interference, and their exoskeletons were now hardened to the point that bullets did not penetrate them. This alone was incredible, especially to have occurred in such a short time since the attacks. It would seem also that food shortages might have caused them to adapt from scavenging to a more predatory behavior.
The ants in the area were calming, now milling about in a busy sort of manner, as opposed to the attack frenzy that had just ensued. As some moved away from the buggy, they rejoined the group and began collecting their wounded and dead in twos and threes. Molly estimated them to range from eight to twelve feet in length, standing about a meter tall, with oversized scimitar-shaped mandibles that looked like double-bladed swords.
Trapped, Molly lay under the dune buggy for hours, watching the large ants mill about and conduct business as usual. After they cleaned up the battlefield, the large soldier ants retreated into the colony, leaving the smaller worker drones to repair the damaged hillside. Molly knew better than to try to exit too early. Her reemergence could be considered a threat to the colony and start a second frenzy. No, she was staying under the dune buggy for now.
In the oppressive heat under the vehicle, Molly felt her weariness take over as the slow, methodical rebuilding of the colony wall took place in front of her. She dozed, until sleep overtook her completely, her parasympathetic nervous system demanding control after the chaos of the day.
Molly woke with a start, feeling as if she had missed her alarm. She scanned the area for danger and saw nothing but stillness in the fading light of the day. Peering through the dimness, she saw the fresh colony wall built around the partially covered ambulance. She wiggled and began moving her stiffened body, wincing at the effort. Molly crawled from under the dune buggy and stood to take in the immediate area. It was shocking to see how much blood was soaked into the ground, and yet not a single body remained. She walked over to where she last saw Kane. To her dismay, she found a quantity of blood and the knife he had used to defend himself. She followed the blood trail with her eyes to the base of the colony and shook her head. They had policed him up along with the remains of the others to decompose and be used as a food source for the colony.
She clinched her eyes shut and wiped the tears from her face with a dirty palm. There was no use in trying to find him. He was dead like the others, and nothing she could do would help him now.
A pang of guilt surged in her chest. She thought over the past few days and recalled how many times Kane had modeled Christ for her by saving her and placing himself between her and certain doom. What kind of woman was she if she did not attempt a monumental effort to return the love and kindness her friend had displayed for her? Her favorite scripture verse stood forth in her mind: For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but one of power, love, and self-discipline.
She bit her lip her eyes focusing on the colony ahead. Hang on, Kane, she
thought, as that familiar look of determination set in across her dirty face. I’m coming.
Jenna Gregory stirred on the cold metal floor, as she began to come around. She was inside the reserve.
“Where,” she said out loud, “where’s my baby?”
She squinted her eyes as the dark silhouettes of rough men materialized from the walls of the pump control room like demons stepping through from another world, their shadowy forms drifting in the dim artificial light. The smooth voice from the courtyard spoke to her from the far wall.
“I told you before, I need your help.”
“My baby, where is she?” Jenna asked as she raised herself from the floor.
The voice spoke again. “I need you to listen—”
“Tell me where she is!” Jenna screamed.
The room fell completely silent, the men standing around her like stone pillars. It seemed that an eternity passed before Dagen spoke again.
“She is with one of my men, and in ten minutes he will suffocate her if you don’t do exactly as I ask. Time is wasting, so listen.”
Jenna’s mouth was open, choking on an invisible vice of despair that closed down upon her.
Dagen forced a smile. “Don’t mourn her yet. She still has almost ten minutes for you to save her.”
“What do you want me to do?” Jenna asked.
“One of your dead friends initiated a critical lockdown of the reserve. That means the fuel pumps are shut off. I need that fuel. Input your husband’s codes for the fuel release valves.”
“I don’t know them! Please!”
“Nine minutes, fifteen seconds.”
“I’ll do it, I’ll do whatever. You don’t need to hurt her. I’ll give you what you want.”
The soulless resolve in Dagen’s face shook her to her core. “Nine minutes.”
“I think I can find them in his office!” she said, the panic like fire behind her eyes.
“Tick tock,” he said, smiling.
She was up and stumbling out of the door and down the hallway, the thugs pacing behind her as she went. After making several turns and going up a flight of stairs to the second floor of the compound, she was in the administrative offices. She knew Charlie kept all his most important and confidential information in the safe in his office. As Jenna navigated the cubicles toward Charlie’s office, her head swam and pounded with injury, fear, and pressure. She burst into his office and dropped to her knees on the carpet.
“Oh, Charlie! What was it?” she said out loud as she fumbled with the combination lock.
32-17…something. He had been so concerned about forgetting it, he had made her memorize it, too. But now when she needed it, it wasn’t there.
“Please! I…I…I don’t…I can’t remember,” she stammered.
“Then baby’s gonna go nite-nite.” The thug behind her laughed.
Hyperventilating, Jenna grabbed handfuls of her hair. “32-17…32-17….” She cried, moaning and rocking back and forth on the carpet. “Six! It’s six!” Jenna yelled as she input the last number, and the bolts released.
Her arms swept without restraint over the papers in the vault, raking them out of the way as she looked for the red folder. She knew the codes were in the red folder. Seeing it, she snatched it up, stood, and ran back out the door past her dark guardians. Down the hall, down the stairs, and back to the pump room she streaked, her mind screaming. How much time had passed? She burst back into the pump room to find Dagen with his arms crossed, looking at his watch.
“I’ve got it…I’ve got it!” she said in breathless desperation, as she flung the folder open and dug the individual pump codes out. She moved to the first of three stations and pressed the numbers into the keypad. With a chime and a hiss, the red light turned green and she moved to the next pad. As Jenna typed the numbers into the pad, Dagen’s watch began beeping.
“Wait, I’m almost done. Please!” Jenna cried. Her hands shook as tears flooded her vision and terror began to cloud her heart. The watch continued to beep as she moved to the third station.
Her fingers twitched, and the flood continued from her eyes as she punched in the final numbers, followed by a chime and a green light. Shaken, Jenna sniffled and clutched her hands to her chest, unable to speak.
In a most sincere voice, Dagen spoke. “Thank you so very much,” he said, as he stopped the alarm on his watch.
“I did it. I did what you wanted,” Jenna stammered.
Dagen winced and sucked his teeth, a practiced look of sorrow on his face. “Yeah, you did, but you weren’t quite fast enough. We had a deal, remember? Ten minutes.”
“But—”
“If you really wanted to save her you, would have done it in the time I gave to you.”
Jenna’s body shook with the intensity of an earthquake. “Don’t do it!” she sobbed. “She’s just a baby!”
“Yes, she was,” Dagen said, stone-faced, as he moved from the room. He stopped and spoke to a thug at the door. “Is the fuel pumping?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Good.” He nodded toward Jenna. “When the men have had their fun with her, tie her up and take her out to the rig with the other prisoners.”
In that instant, the world changed. Whatever it had been before, it was no longer the same. Jenna’s knees buckled beneath her and she crumpled against the alien cold of the floor.
Her husband and baby girl were both dead because of her, and her own terrible fate was rapidly becoming all too clear. The racked, pitiable bawl of a tortured soul filled the room and shook the foundations of the reserve. And in the semi-darkness of the pump room, the shadows of far too many lustful men converged upon the body of the woman who used to be Jenna Gregory.
Molly stood watching the exterior of the ant colony. Though darkness had descended, the smaller workers still sometimes emerged from one of many holes in the hillside, carefully picking their way across the pebbled surface like strange sleepwalkers in the moonless night.
Molly ran a hand through her blood matted tangle of blonde hair and winced as she touched her face. She was banged up pretty bad. Between several beatings and a motorcycle wreck, she was sure she looked like the walking dead. Her right ankle still hurt from days before, and her shoulder and left wrist made clicking sounds that caused her a lot of pain when she moved them.
With a sigh, she moved and twisted her various muscles and joints trying to find points of weakness, but for all her small injuries combined, she seemed to be okay.
She remembered something her dad used to say all the time when she was a little girl: if you’re going to do something at all, do your very best, ‘cause nothing else will do.
She was going to do her very best, but she was going to need some equipment if she was going into that hill. She looked around and decided to comb the battlefield for weapons before checking the existing vehicles for other possible items of interest.
Molly walked to the area where Ashteroth and his soldiers made their last stand. Probing each dark silhouette with her hands, she felt for anything that might be useful, often jerking her hand back when she found a severed limb or a pile of organs. She grasped a slim metal object and ran her hands over it. It was a revolver. She crouched and fumbled with it to release the cylinder. Dumping the shells onto the dirt she felt them over individually. Some of them had round noses, and some were empty brass cases. Molly kept the two good rounds and reloaded them into the cylinder, snapping it back into place and shoving it in her waistband. She also snagged Ashteroth’s great blood-covered knife and made her way to the nearby vehicles.
A quick search of the first sedan revealed nothing of importance. She then checked the dune buggy and found a large, heavy coil of rope and a metal carry case behind the driver’s seat. Molly opened the case and found several cylindrical tubes with something protruding from their tops. She puzzled over them for a moment before realizing that they were pipe bombs—the same ones the tattooed bandit leader had thrown at them. She took the four that remain
ed and cradled them in her right arm, thinking that they could come in handy. She shrugged the rope coil over her shoulder and also pulled a half-full plastic gas can from the floorboard of the buggy.
Molly walked toward the ambulance, which still remained half-buried in the hillside. She paused only when a worker ant nosed slowly from a hole in the hill, resuming her movement when it reentered the colony. Reaching the back of the ambulance, she opened the double doors, hoping they wouldn’t squeal.
Though all the good stuff was looted long ago, with a little searching she found several usable items: a four-foot length of sturdy metal interior support pipe, a roll of heavy duty medical tape, an old used Bic lighter, and a used white sheet.
Stepping away from the ambulance, she worked as quick as she could, cutting the sheet with the knife and making a small cloth satchel that she draped over her head and shoulder. Molly then took the length of pipe and, with the medical tape, began securing the large knife to the end of it, creating a short spear. She also threaded a wadded strip from the sheet into the nozzle of the gas can and tipped the can over, soaking the cloth.
Dumping the leftover materials in the makeshift satchel, she stood and stuck the lighter in her front pocket for easy access. She took one end of the rope and tied it to the rear axle of the ambulance. The other end she tied around her waist. With the necessary equipment loaded up, Molly picked up the spear and the gas can. She moved with purpose toward the closest opening in the hill and began her descent into the unknown bowels of the earth.
Deep inside the ant colony, Kane lay motionless, cocooned in something. In his mind’s eye, everything was shrouded in fog, and he had the perception that he was sinking, drowning, as the waves of his memories threatened to lap over his head. Kane screamed and tried to stay above the surface of the dark waters. His mind tried to remember his situation. Was he dead? Or was this a dream, a taste of his own insanity following the psychological and mental strain he’d endured? As he lay alone and confused in the depths of his mind, a faint figure approached from the edge of his consciousness. A woman.