Infestation

by Timothy J. Bradley

“Sorry, Pyro, we don’t know what you’re …,” Andy said.

  Pyro sighed, exasperated. “Look, right there! That thing sticking out from the ceiling is a sprinkler head. All the rooms and hallways should have them. We use the sprinkler system to soak the bugs!” Pyro crowed.

  Andy laughed. “Brilliant!”

  Every hair on Gerry’s head felt like it was standing straight up. He couldn’t remember ever having been so absolutely terrified and fascinated at the same time.

  Whoever had changed … no, engineered these creatures had done an amazing job. They had everything they needed to survive, adaptations of both insects and vertebrates. They had what looked like an ant-type social organization, which was fairly sophisticated. He could spend the rest of his life studying these things. Of course, he thought, my life could be over in a matter of minutes.

  He’d been walking through the school’s hallways, trying to get a sense of how this colony or nest was set up. The bugs were everywhere, scuttling back and forth. He tried not to jump in fright every time a pair of antennae touched him, checking his “taste.”

  Gerry was getting bone tired. He’d just finish checking this corridor and head back. Another of Rachel’s favorite sayings popped into his mind: Don’t tempt fate.

  He saw a double doorway at the end of the hall. The doors had been ripped off their hinges. Young worker bugs, about the size of greyhounds, bustled in and out of the doorway. The ones going in were carrying whitish objects.

  They looked like eggs.

  He kept to the edge of the door frame as he eased past the busy workers. The room was huge, with high ceilings that disappeared into the darkness. Emergency lights in the corners cast a weak orange glow. He could see what must have been basketball hoops hanging from the ceiling.

  This used to be a gymnasium, he thought. Now it’s a nursery.

  Large, shadowy shapes were suspended from the dark ceiling. Tiny, quick-moving bugs crawled up and down the sacklike bundles, tending to them.

  Eggs were spread out all over the floor. The workers were busy rotating them, checking them, moving them to new locations, and bringing in more.

  Gerry moved slowly, cautiously, edging around the eggs on the floor. His nerves were stretched tightly. The bugs touched him with their antennae as they passed. The royalty chemical was still effective.

  A wet, ripping sound made him stop short. Something was happening to one of the body bag–sized sacks hanging in the room. He took out his key ring and pointed the tiny penlight at the sound.

  Several of the small bugs were perched on the sack and were methodically tearing it open. There was something inside, struggling. He moved carefully closer, fearful yet fascinated.

  The sack was some kind of cocoon or chrysalis. The bug inside hauled itself out and rested, hanging on to the now-empty sack.

  In the beam of the penlight, Gerry could see that this newly hatching creature was shaped differently from all the other castes. Its head was small, with large compound eyes that reflected the light. The middle section of its body, the thorax, was muscular. The legs were thin and long. Gerry could just make out the first pair of limbs, tucked under its head, twitching.

  Suddenly, it moved. Crumpled structures unfolded from its back. As blood was pumped through, the structures flattened and spread out, and became transparent.

  Oh, God, Gerry thought. Wings.

  His thoughts raced. There was a limit to the distance one of these bugs could cover on the ground. Sure, it might be tricky to track down the underground nests, but it wouldn’t be impossible.

  A winged form could potentially escape and, if these winged versions were egg-laying queens, start new nests dozens of miles away without being detected. It would take time to find them all in the barren New Mexico landscape.

  Gerry realized that simply escaping to warn the authorities about these lethal creatures was not enough. They had to be stopped here and now.

  He left the nursery and made his way back to the underground sanctuary.

  When he arrived, sweating and thirsty, the boys were dozing. Poor kids, he thought. They probably haven’t gotten any decent sleep in days.

  They had been busy while he’d been gone. Several new slingshots were sitting on a crate, and there were sodium-water “grenades” packed carefully in boxes on the floor.

  Several large glass jars were grouped together on the floor. They were sealed, with labels of EXPLOSIVE, DANGER!, and PYROPHORIC. Gerry thought back to his chemistry classes. An element that was pyrophoric would spontaneously ignite when exposed to air. He studied one of the jars more closely. There was a fist-sized glob of a silvery substance sitting on the bottom of the jar, which had been filled with some kind of oil. A sticker on the jar read CESIUM.

  Cesium was even more reactive than sodium. Why would anyone need stockpiles of such dangerous elements? Gerry wondered.

  Hector wandered over, yawning. “We found that stuff inside a crate. Pyro and Andy said we might be able to use it.”

  Gerry nodded. “Yeah, this stuff will be useful, if we can keep from blowing ourselves up.” He looked around the room. “Where are Andy and Pyro?”

  Hector looked uncomfortable. “They came up with a plan to help with our escape.”

  “Oh, no,” Gerry said. “They’re wandering around the school? We have to find them. Did they at least have the sense to splash some of the royalty chemical on before they left?”

  Hector shook his head. “I don’t think so….”

  “Wake everyone up,” Gerry said grimly. “Grab those slingshots and some of the sodium grenades. Those two are going to be in trouble. The bugs will be prowling.”

  Gerry picked up one of the jars with a chunk of cesium in it. His mind kept replaying the ferocious attack of the bug soldier on the unfortunate worker he had doused with the intruder chemical. If Andy and Pyro run into one of those things, he thought, no one can help them.

  “YOU THINK THAT’S IT?” ANDY ASKED.

  “Yeah, it has to be,” Pyro replied.

  They were looking out through a doorway that opened onto the roof of the school.

  Andy took a cautious step outside and looked around. The sun was just setting, and a cool breeze blew over him. It felt great after the hot, stifling air inside the school. He couldn’t see any bugs, large or small. He held the door for Pyro, and then saw a small block of wood just outside the doorway, along with a trash-can ashtray with many cigarette butts buried in sand. Andy used the block of wood to prop the door open, so they could get back inside.

  The two boys walked cautiously across the roof. Andy could feel the heat still rising from the tarpaper covering of the roof.

  There was a giant tank made of thick plastic resting on a metal framework across the roof. It was warm to the touch.

  “This has to be it,” Pyro said. He pointed to the sprinkler line that they had been following through the building. A short ladder led up the side of the tank. Pyro clambered up.

  There was some kind of filler cap up near the top of the tank, but it was locked.

  Pyro swore. “How are we gonna get that thing off?”

  Andy looked around the roof. There had to be something they could use to break the lock on the cap. He ran to get the aluminum ashcan, and handed it up the ladder. Pyro hit the cap a few times, and the cap started to crack. The thick plastic of the tank made a dull thwack every time it was hit. Andy took over, and with a few more impacts, the cap shattered and the filler tube was open.

  They each had lugged a bottle of the intruder chemical with them. They dumped it all into the reservoir tank.

  Pyro grinned at Andy. “Wait’ll those things get this stuff dumped on them …” Suddenly, he looked past Andy, eyes wide, the grin gone from his face.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” Andy asked. He turned and saw that several of the large bugs had climbed onto the roof and were approaching. Most of the creatures looked like the worker type he had seen the most of, but one of the huge-jawed soldiers had accomp
anied them.

  The boys were frozen with fear as the creatures slowly advanced.

  “If they had shown up about two minutes earlier, we would have had full jars of the intruder stuff,” Pyro cried. He threw the glass container at the nearest bug. It hit the thing in the head, snapping off one of its antennae. It stumbled slightly but kept coming, flexing its mandibles. The boys climbed up onto the top of the tank. The bugs were getting closer. One reached the ladder and started to climb up.

  A shout came from the doorway. “Close your eyes!”

  The creature on the ladder exploded. Andy and Pyro shielded their faces with their arms. Small slivers of glass stung as they flashed past.

  More explosions flashed, blasting legs, heads, and antennae to slimy, exoskeletal bits.

  The soldier was undamaged. It was still approaching single-mindedly.

  Andy saw Reilly and Shields emerge from the doorway that led to the roof. They were using homemade slingshots with the sodium-and-water grenades as projectiles.

  The sharp crack of the detonations and the hail of broken-glass shrapnel weren’t stopping the soldier bug. Its huge jaws bit down on the ladder railing and cut through the metal. Pyro was screaming, and Andy kept pushing him farther along the top of the water tank, trying to stay out of the creature’s reach. It was scrabbling with its claws at the plastic tank, but it couldn’t grip the smooth surface.

  Gerry pushed his way past Shields and Reilly out onto the roof. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted something, but Andy couldn’t hear what it was because of Pyro’s panicked shrieking. He grabbed Pyro and clamped a hand over his mouth.

  “Get behind the tank!” Gerry was calling. He held a glass bottle the size of a milk carton, filled with oil and some kind of silvery liquid.

  The giant bug was still trying frantically but unsuccessfully to climb onto the water tank.

  Andy grabbed Pyro’s arm and slid off the tank. They landed clumsily on the rough tarpaper that covered the roof. They both hugged the ground, trying to make themselves as flat as they could.

  They heard Gerry’s grunt as he heaved the jar, and the smash of the glass as the jar hit the ground.

  A thundering BOOM shook the roof. The sound waves hammered their ears.

  Andy looked up to see the soldier bug blasted over his head in several flaming pieces, falling over the side of the building. There was a heavy thud as the creature hit the ground.

  Reilly and Shields ran around the tank and helped Pyro and Andy get back to the doorway into the building. More bugs were climbing up exterior walls of the building and hauling themselves onto the roof, and they were ticked off. They scuttled across the roof, with mandibles snapping and abdomens held aloft, stingers at the ready.

  Gerry was at the door, waving them in frantically. “C’mon, c’mon! Hurry up!”

  “Geez, what was that stuff?” Andy blurted as he ducked through the doorway.

  “Cesium,” Gerry said, watching for any more movement out on the roof as Pyro and Shields squeezed into the narrow hall. “It explodes when it’s exposed to air. Very unstable. More dangerous than sodium.”

  “Wow, really?” Pyro asked excitedly. “Got any left?”

  Gerry pulled him in through the doorway and slammed the metal door as a couple of the smaller sentry bugs launched themselves at it. He could feel the impact through the metal as they bounced off.

  The boys struggled to catch their breath after the narrow escape.

  “What do you two think you were doing out there? Are you crazy? Those things were going to rip you to pieces — you’re lucky we showed up!” Gerry shouted. “What could possibly make you think you could just take a stroll through the middle of a nest of carnivorous —”

  “Wait, wait a minute!” Andy protested. “We came up with a good idea and figured out how to make it work.” He looked at Pyro.

  “We dumped a load of that intruder chemical into the building’s sprinkler system, so if we start a fire in one part of the school, all the bugs in that area will get soaked with the stuff. The rest of the bugs will tear them apart,” Pyro said. “All we have to do is start the fire.”

  Gerry stood silently for a moment, and said, “You’re right … that is a good idea. I’m just glad you didn’t get killed pulling it off. Let’s get back down to our headquarters; we have to figure some things out.”

  The boys grumbled about leaving the cooler hallways to climb back into the stifling crawl space in the ceiling, but the sight of the large number of bugs moving back and forth through the hallway stopped further protests. They waded through the creatures, being touched by flicking antennae and spiky bodies. Andy and Pyro were kept between the other boys, since they were not covered with the royalty scent.

  Gerry moved a chair from one of the classrooms out into the hall under the open ceiling panel. He boosted the boys up through the opening into the ceiling.

  They made their way through the cramped space, dodging metal crossbeams and power cables as they went.

  They emerged into the underground rooms, which were almost chilly compared to the ceiling crawl space.

  Hector was almost frantic. “Where have you guys been?! Look, look at this!” He grabbed Gerry’s shirt and dragged him to the far wall in the room. “Listen.”

  Gerry put his ear to the wall, and could make out the sound of the creatures grinding through the dirt and concrete. They were getting closer. He could feel a faint vibration on his cheek against the cold cement. “That’s not good,” he muttered to himself.

  “All right, guys,” he said, “we can’t stay here. The bugs are cutting through the concrete, and they’ll be here shortly. We have to figure out what to do.” He looked around the room. “Where’s Joey?”

  “He’s in the next room, hiding. Right after you guys left, he started talking to himself, real crazylike. I asked him if he was okay, but he just shoved me out of the way, and left. I think he’s scared,” Hector said.

  The other boys muttered among themselves. They had all been targets of Joey in their time at the Reclamation School.

  “I’ll check on Joey in a couple of minutes. In the meantime, here’s what we’re up against,” Gerry said. He laid out his theory about what was happening with the bugs.

  “I think what I stumbled on was some kind of nursery where a winged form of these creatures was emerging. These creatures are following a typical insect life cycle, but at an accelerated rate, probably due to genetic manipulation. I found a nursery where there were eggs, their first stage. There were also some grubs, like fat worms. That’s the larval stage. There are cocoon-like cases glued to the walls and ceiling, where I believe the creatures become pupa, and transform. Some are emerging from those cocoons. The technical term is eclose. The creatures emerging could be flying soldiers, or sentries … or new queens. They might be getting ready to make a break from this nest to start a new colony somewhere else.

  “I thought we’d have time to alert the police or the military, and it would be a straightforward task to destroy this nest, but if winged queens emerge from the cocoons I saw, they’ll go everywhere. It will be a whole lot harder to track them all down and exterminate them. Too many places for them to hide unobserved. We can’t even wipe out fire ants, and those things are tiny!” He ran a hand through his sweaty hair. “There’s even a species of ant that may be joining up into supercolonies in Europe and Japan! Imagine if these gigantic ant-things did that. They’d spread all over the world. I don’t know if it would even be possible to stop them at that point.”

  Desperate thoughts raced through Andy’s mind: images of bug colonies in major cities … armies of the world fighting these bugs hand-to-hand, obliteration of the bug colonies by atomic weapons, wiping out thousands, maybe millions of people.

  “Then we have to stop them now,” Andy declared. The other boys nodded.

  Gerry placed a hand on Andy’s shoulder and nodded. He realized that the boys had already been through a lot. He knew that going up aga
inst the bugs might kill some or all of them. He also knew that it had to be done.

  GERRY HAD ADVISED THE BOYS TO REST up for a few hours, and then they would gather the materials they needed for escape.

  Andy tried hard to get some sleep, but his mind was racing. They had decided to try to escape late the next afternoon, to take advantage of the cooler temperatures as the sun set.

  The other boys were asleep, exhausted by the panic and danger of the last several days.

  Andy sat up in the cool, humid darkness, trying not to wake the others. He could hear the muted digging of the bugs behind the walls. It sounded like they were approaching from different directions, getting closer by the minute. He heard a noise from across the room and saw a faint light.

  Carefully making his way across the room, he saw that Gerry was awake, writing in a small notebook and looking at some dusty papers. The light was coming from his cell phone, which was dimming rapidly as it ran out of power.

  He looked up as Andy approached. “Hey, you should be asleep.”

  “Can’t.” Andy shook his head. “What are you looking at?”

  Gerry tilted the notebook so Andy could see it. “It’s notes and drawings about these giant ants. My phone is almost out of power. My penlight ran out a few minutes ago. I wanted to take a closer look at these papers I picked up in the underground level.” He spread them out so Andy could see them. “Look here,” he said, pointing to the bottom right corner of several of the papers.

  Squinting, Andy could make out the words Hexapod Group. He looked back at Gerry. “Do you know what it means?”

  Gerry shook his head. “No, I’m not sure, but it might lead to whoever made these things.”

  Andy flipped through some of the notebook’s pages. “Do you think we’re going to get out of here alive?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do. That plan you guys figured out was brilliant. You may have just saved all our lives. That was good thinking. You’d make a great scientist, you know.” Gerry grinned.

  Andy ducked his head, trying to hide a smile, and looked at the notebook again. “Really?” he asked. He turned that thought over in his mind. Me? A scientist? He liked the sound of that.