by Stu Jones
A worker ant, the size of a large dog, rounded the corner and came withing feet of them standing in the egg chamber. Startled, it shrieked and backed away, but Molly wasted no time as she pulled away from Kane, grabbed up the spear, and pointed it at the creature. Grasping the pole, she drove the blade downward and through the top of the worker ant’s head with little effort, destroying the nerve center. The creature gave a loud high-pitched shriek that chortled and ended in a strange repetitive clicking sound as its smallish jaws opened and closed reflexively. She withdrew the spear, watching as the clear, syrupy hemolymph spilled onto the cavern floor. She looked at Kane as the creature collapsed, his shock and confusion morphing into a deeper understanding of their situation.
Suddenly, in the surreal glow of the egg chamber, a strange, eerie chorus rose up from down in the depths of the lair. The sound rose and fell like the high-pitched, rapid screeching of a violin. The alien rhythm of it reminded Molly of a military base on high alert.
They were coming.
Jenna sat perched in a slumped position, half kneeling on a small ledge, her body tied to the left side of the fuel tanker as it rumbled down the debris-filled Interstate 75 into the ruins of Atlanta. The throbbing of her body was now replaced by a dull, burning ache that seemed to push vertically upward and into her chest cavity. Her hands were bound behind her back with a coarse rope that bit into the flesh of her wrists and connected them to her ankles. The unusual position had caused her feet to go numb long ago.
She squinted her eyes, as the sand and dust kicked up by the large tanker stung her face. Licking her cracked and swollen lips, she turned her head and looked over her left shoulder toward the back of the rig. There were about six other prisoners that she could see on her side of the tanker, but she couldn’t identify them, and none of them looked to be alive. Jenna turned her head back and tried to lick her lips again, but already her dry mouth was filling with more dust.
The gang rape and several beatings had almost caused her to give up, but all she could think of was how much she wanted her family back. She felt distant from herself. She was a stranger, foreign and numb to her own thoughts and feelings. Her circumstances bored a hole into her soul and reminded her that there was no longer anyone in this world she could count on. Not even herself.
If only she had done more—tried harder to support her husband, rescue her child, and fight for her own body. If only she could weep. She desperately wanted to cry out for her murdered husband and child, but she found that no matter how deeply she mourned them, the tears failed to come. She had nothing left. Exhaustion and dehydration began to take their toll as the dust and sand lashed against her beaten face.
“Why, Lord?” she whispered. “What is it that you desire to accomplish through this? I am ruined.”
With a hiss, the vehicle slowed and rolled to a stop on I-75 right in the city’s center, the gold of the capitol dome oddly scattered in pieces across the debris like an old treasure seeker’s hallucination. The caravan of other fuel trucks and vehicles slowed and came to a stop behind them. Jenna opened her eyes and took in the devastation around her. It was the first time she had seen any real destruction of a major city. Her eyes flitted back and forth. So it was true.
She sat in quiet awe of the fact that civilization as she had known it before no longer existed. She realized that her mouth was open as she stared at a scene that had to resemble Rome after its fall. Rubble, fire, ruined roadways and skeletal buildings mingled with twisted plumes of black smoke that rose from all over the city.
The driver’s side door opened and Dagen exited saying something to the passenger. “Yeah, they’re all going to be up ahead, guaranteed. There’s always a big group of the bastards in town.”
He slammed the door and began walking back to the tanker. “It’s coming up!” he yelled to the next tanker back.
The thug nodded and exited the vehicle, yelling the same message back to the next vehicle. Dagen stopped at Jenna and the other prisoners and laughed.
“You all look absolutely sorry! Are any of you still alive?”
He walked over to Stan Morrison, the man tied against the tanker behind Jenna, and shook him. The man flopped, limp as a rag doll. “This one looks dead,” Dagen said, as he pulled his knife and drove it into the man’s belly with a twist.
Jenna turned her head, wincing. Stan remained motionless.
“Yup,” Dagen said, as he withdrew the knife and a watery, bloody mixture poured from the bloated wound onto the ground.
The living hostages began coughing, gagging, and crying.
“There we are! I knew some of you were still with me. I am so glad you are, too, because we have a real treat coming up. Especially you,” he said pointing the bloody knife at Jenna. “I think you’re going to enjoy this.”
Jenna licked her lips and tried to force her swollen throat to swallow. Dagen turned with a sneer, moved back to the truck, and climbed in. She could hear the prisoners behind her crying and gasping as the truck rumbled to a start and began inching forward. As the large rig gained speed, Jenna thought she caught the faint smell of decay on the wind. She squinted her eyes, trying to see what it was he had been talking about.
As she blinked her eyes against the stinging wind, a strange swaying mass appeared to be congregated in and around the highway up ahead. The mass moved and seethed like waves on the open ocean. Jenna tried to blink the hazy dust from her eyes as the gritty particles bit into the corners of her eyelids. She looked again as they grew closer. The mass was a gathering of people, a whole lot of people congregating in the road. The rig dropped into a lower gear and groaned ahead, gaining speed.
As the rig approached, the mass began to separate, and the people started running. Jenna’s confusion turned to horror as she watched the strange behavior. The people were running, screaming with fury as they charged toward the rig.
In a flash, the rig collided with the center of the group, and broken body and bone exploded across the front of the truck.
“No!” Jenna croaked.
There was a terrifying clamoring as scores of the mad people flooded against the rig and caused it to slow. Wild, wicked screams flew from their mouths as they scrambled and climbed over each other toward the truck. They were tearing the dead man behind her from the tanker in pieces and stuffing parts of him into their hungry mouths.
With a spasm of terror, Jenna howled and bucked against the ropes that confined her. These were not people. They had become something else. Jenna continued to scream and thrash as the monsters came at her, their disgusting, ruined skin drooping and hanging off their bones. The crazed wailing of the other prisoners filled the air behind her as they were pulled and torn from the side of the tanker by the insane mob.
Amid the insanity, Jenna forced her eyes shut and prayed at the top of her lungs. “Save me, O God! Deeper and deeper I sink into the mire, and the floods overwhelm me. I am exhausted from crying for help; and my eyes are swollen with weeping, waiting for my God to help me!”
Multitudes of hands were grasping and wrenching her limbs now and pulling out fistfuls of her hair, but she continued to pray amid the chaos.
“Those that hate me are more numerous that the hairs on my head. God, rescue me! You are my savior, do not delay!”
They were beginning to pull her away from the tanker, their jagged nails digging into her flesh. She pinched her eyes together, shutting out the many ragged, moaning breaths that wheezed and smelled like spoiled flesh.
With a spine-jarring jolt, the tanker rocked and shook as it began to again gain speed. The monsters moaned and scrambled, falling away or under the large double tires as the tanker gained momentum. Jenna hung in a precarious manner away from the sidewall of the tanker and over the road as the last of the clinging monsters, a rotten, wretched female with a diamond-studded tennis bracelet, continued to grab and claw at her. With a desperate moan, the creature fell away against the receding pavement and under the rear tires as the vehicle stripped
apart the remnants of her fragile body. The ropes still bound Jenna, loose now, as she watched the roadway speed along under her, the tanker groaning with the effort.
“Thank you, Jesus! He who hears my cries and delivers me,” she whispered.
Jenna looked over her shoulder toward the rear of the tanker and glimpsed only blood and torn rope dragging from the side of the rig where the other prisoners had been. She closed her eyes and lowered her head as the truck continued on.
Minutes later, the rig slowed again and came to a stop, long clear of the maddened horde. Exiting the cab and slamming the door behind him, Dagen stormed back toward Jenna, the fury pouring from his features.
“You!” he growled. “How are you still here?”
“God is merciful,” she said with as much boldness as she could muster.
“Shut the fuck up!” Dagen yelled as he spat at her. “Why do you persist with this? I’ve had enough of hearing about God from you! Renounce him!” Dagen pulled his knife and pushed it to her throat. “He has done nothing but ruin you, whore you, and murder the ones you loved! Renounce him! do it!” He swore, pushing the blade harder against her throat.
“No,” Jenna wheezed in quiet defiance. “You can take everything from me but that. That, you can’t have.”
“Yes, I will,” Dagen said, regaining his composure as he cut her body and legs free and threw her to the ground. “Yes, I will.”
He took one of the ropes and tied it around her waist and attached the other end to the tanker. He then rebound her bruised hands in front of her as she lay on the ground gasping. Dagen lowered himself to Jenna’s face and spoke in a forced whisper through his teeth.
“You will renounce God, and I’ll drag you all the way to the coast just to hear it spill from your swollen lips.” He sneered and stood, walking back to the cab, starting the tanker once again.
Jenna rocked her body to the right and twisted onto her knees using her forehead and bound hands to stabilize herself. As she raised herself, her feet and calves tingled, stinging painfully as blood began to re-enter them. The engine roared to life, the exhaust pipes expelling long plumes of black smoke, as the great truck jostled and shook and began to move forward, taking the slack out of her rope.
“Praise be to my God, who hears me and gives me strength,” Jenna said out loud, as she began to jog.
Molly ducked her head and furrowed her brow at the overpowering high pitched screeching that now dominated the interior of the ant colony. Kane tore a section of cloth from his shirt and wrapped it tightly around the end of the spear. He poured some gasoline over the cloth.
“Got a light?”
Molly dug into her pocket and removed the lighter, handing it to him. As Kane lit the improvised torch, he was already shuffling toward the exit as he grabbed Molly’s arm. Molly struggled against Kane’s grip.
“Molly, come on, we’ve got to go!” he said.
With a twist she wrenched her arm free of his grasp.
Kane stood with a questioning look forming on his dirty face. “Molly!”
But Molly was not listening as she snatched up the gas can and ran with a slight limp to the far row of glowing pods. She tipped the gas can as she jogged down the long row. Fuel sprayed from the nozzle onto the larvae pods as Molly jogged. Kane now understood what she was doing. These abominations had to be destroyed.
“Hurry!” Kane yelled, as she reached the end of the third row.
He could feel the ground tremble as the monsters scrambled upward toward the pod chamber. Molly reached the end of the final row, ditched the gas can, and pulled three of the four pipe bombs from her satchel. While running back toward Kane, she tossed the explosives at the base of the three large columns that supported the ceiling. Just as she reached Kane, something moved in the darkness of the much larger opening on the far side of the cavern. They stared in terror as an immense pitch-black form pushed its way forward through the large hole. The giant, bus-sized queen ant stopped just inside the cavern and tossed her head from left to right, sensing the gasoline fumes and the pheromones from the dead worker. She swung her head slowly back and forth, hissing as she focused upon the intruders and the threat to her young. From around either side of the giant queen came four massive horned warrior ants, the queen’s guard. Each the size of a Kodiak grizzly, with cruel sharp horns protruding from their heads, backs, and legs, they were a vicious sight to behold. With furious shrieks, the four skittered forward with stabbing strides, advancing without remorse upon the threat to their queen.
Reaching into Molly’s satchel and removing the last pipe bomb, Kane tore the fuse short and lit it.
“We’re outta here!” he said, as he stepped into the throw.
Heaving the pipe across the cavern with everything he had, it tumbled beneath the queen. The flash of the pipe bomb detonation separated her at the midsection, the room bursting into flames as the fire jumped from pod to pod and enveloped the approaching warriors. The enraged queen emitted an ear-piercing shriek as she thrashed and flung herself against the walls before seizing and collapsing onto the flaming cavern floor.
The earth shook, and the walls began collapsing as Kane and Molly ran through the exit and up the darkened corridor toward the rope. Kane forged ahead, legs churning up the gentle slope, severing the darkness with the torch as flame and smoke poured from the pod room. Arriving at the rope, Kane looked up and pulled Molly forward.
“Go. And when you hit the ledge, don’t wait for me,” he said, as he pushed her to the rope. As she passed him she took his hand and placed the revolver in it, giving him what looked like the peace sign with her fingers.
“Two shots,” he said.
Molly nodded.
Grabbing the rope, she began climbing hand over hand, walking her feet up the wall as she went. Kane shuffled uneasily at the bottom of the rope as the undulating screeching continued to grow louder. After some struggle, Molly made to the ledge and pulled herself up onto it. Balancing the torch and taking hold of the rope, Kane winced as he flexed his injured bicep. Behind him, shadowed, twisted, screeching forms rolled up the tunnel toward him.
“Come on, Kane,” he said through bared teeth, as he began to hoist himself up the rope.
The healing gash in his bicep began to reopen with the pressure and strain of the climb. Looking up, he judged the climb to be not more than twenty feet. Molly leaned, perched over the edge of the ledge with her eyes fixed in fear and shock as she stared behind him. Halfway up the wall, Kane threw a quick glance over his shoulder and saw a violent, rolling mass of the giant bugs as they flooded the small room below him.
“Don’t wait for me!” he screamed, as he put hand over hand as fast as his body would allow.
Molly paused.
“Go!” Kane yelled again in desperation, as his muscles quivered with exhaustion and threatened to give way.
Molly ducked away into the darkness of the tunnel. He could hear them climbing, scratching, and clinging to the ceiling. It would be a matter of seconds before he was overwhelmed. The furious beasts surged up the wall below him, screeching and swinging their flat anvil-shaped heads. Kane kicked at the savage creatures as they came for him, his boots glancing off their hardened skulls. Groaning and bleeding, Kane drew himself over the ledge and into the angled tunnel. Spinning and digging his heels into the earthen walls, he drew the revolver and firmly held the torch forward.
The first warrior came scurrying into the mouth of the tunnel, slashing with its bladed jaws. Kane steadied his arm and fired one round into the creature’s right eye socket as it came at him. The fragmenting lead round had the desired effect—the beast crumpled and half rolled, sliding back into the darkness that had spawned it. The chamber below went wild with activity, fresh pheromones indicating the death of one of their own.
The ants pushed and jockeyed for position over each other, their long, black, spindly legs reaching and stabbing into the dirt as they skittered into the tunnel with their jaws locked wide open.
/> “One more,” he groaned. “Come on!”
Another creature forced itself through the narrow gap, and just as it began to crawl across its fallen brother, Kane fired the second round. The bullet struck the monster in the far right corner of its eye, punching through the side of its head. The ant went down, but was not dead as it screeched and continued to shake and drag itself forward. Kane dropped the gun and began shoving himself backward up the tunnel as the giant bugs pushed and yanked at their comrades’ body that blocked the tunnel. Turning and standing, Kane began running up the tunnel, coughing and sputtering on the smoke from the fires below that drifted, lost in its journey to the surface. As he ran, the smoke enveloped him, wrapping around his body and stinging his lungs as he labored for air.
He blindly burst forth from the smoke-filled tunnel into a larger chamber, stumbling to a stop as hundreds of the maddened beasts swarmed into the chamber from all directions. He was trapped. Kane pivoted, searching for a way out—something, anything.
To his left he could see a small, raised tunnel that showed the rope and a dim light coming from it, but it was too late. The creatures poured in and came in at him, their singing screams ringing in his ears. He sighed and closed his eyes as he raised the torch.
Hopefully Molly made it out.
The earth shook. With three successive concussions, the cavern shook and came apart as the ceiling rained down. The bombs in the pod room had detonated, and the blasts were bringing it all down. The floor in front of him caved in, taking a whole swath of the creatures as it went. Kane dropped the torch at his feet and with three steps jumped for the elevated tunnel, grabbing the rope as the entire room came crushing down on the giant bugs. Kane clawed and dug his way up the tunnel, choking and gasping in the dust and smoke. Blinded and terrified, he scrambled toward the daylight beyond as the tunnel came apart around him. Just as he neared the exit, something disproportionately large moved in front of it.
“Please!” was all he could mutter, as he held his hands up to shield his face.