Mandibles (16 page)

*-CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE-*
Hack let out a whooping battle cry as the jeep shot forward. "Yeah! Splat that ant!"
Roberta really wished she were wearing a seat belt. These guys were absolutely insane. When you encountered an ant the size of a large wolf, the traditionally accepted reaction was to _drive the other way_.
They sped past the ant expert, who was too busy staring at the behemoth to notice them.
The ant turned its head toward the jeep. Its giant mandibles, which looked like they could decapitate a human being with minimal effort, clicked together menacingly. If that thing stung any of them, the venom would be much less of a concern than the stinger jabbing all the way through their body and popping out the other side.
Though she'd always imagined herself to be more eloquent in dire situations, Roberta shouted the first thing that came to mind: _"Shit!"_
The jeep struck the ant.
* * * *

As the jeep sped past Dustin, it took him a moment to realize that it was actually driving toward the ant. Nobody could be that foolhardy, could they?

As he caught a glimpse of Hack in the backseat, he realized that yes, they most certainly could.
He fully expected the jeep to veer away at the last second, since Hack and Slash seemed like the kind of idiots who'd get their kicks from playing chicken with a giant ant, but the jeep didn't swerve.
It smashed into the ant, and the creature disappeared beneath the vehicle. For a second, Dustin thought that the jeep was going to run completely over it, but it stalled halfway over the ant and came to a stop.
There was a black woman in the backseat. Dustin had a strange feeling that she wasn't there of her own accord.
He gunned the motorcycle's engine and sped forward.
* * * *

The impact threw Hack and Roberta against the seats in front of them. The tires squealed for a moment, and then the jeep stopped.

"Did we kill it?" Hack asked, excitedly.
"It's under the jeep's tires," said Slash. "What do you think?"
"Yeah, baby! Score one for the humans!"
Slash pushed down on the gas pedal, but the jeep didn't move. He put the jeep in reverse and applied the gas again. No effect. It wasn't going anywhere.
"Well," said Roberta, "you two geniuses have certainly improved our situation."
Hack chuckled. "You can't tell me that wasn't cool. Let's find another ant and do it again."
"Whoopsie," said Slash, glancing up at the rear-view mirror. "Looks like Bug Boy's coming to pay us a visit."
"Want me to get out and kill him?" asked Hack.
"Nah, I'll do it," said Slash. "Make sure she doesn't go anywhere."
As the motorcycle pulled up alongside the jeep, Slash opened the door and got out.
* * * *

"Hiya, Bug Boy," said Slash. "Long time no see."

"Let her go," Dustin told him.
"Who? The ant? She's already dead. How can you tell it's a she?"
"I'm not playing around." Dustin got off the motorcycle, propping it up with the kickstand.
"You should play around once in a while. You're far too serious. You should embrace the pleasures that life provides you with, take joy in the little things. I bet you haven't smelled a flower all day, have you?"
"I mean it."
"Have you? A rose? A tulip? A daffodil?"
Hack and the woman were both watching them from inside the jeep. Dustin was a little annoyed to see that Hack's arm had been patched up. As the woman shifted, Dustin caught a glimpse of the gun Hack was pointing at her side.
The unloaded gun.
Or had it been reloaded?
What were the odds that somebody going in to rob a convenience store would bring extra ammunition?
Not very likely.
Hell, they didn't even have the guns fully loaded when they got there.
With his good arm, Slash reached into his pocket and took out a switchblade knife, grinning as he snapped open the blade and held it up for Dustin to admire. "Nice, huh? I won it at a fair."
Dustin figured that he could get back on his motorcycle and zoom past the dumb bastard without getting stabbed, but it would mean leaving the woman behind.
"The gun's unloaded!" he shouted at her, as he ran toward Slash.
* * * *

A brief flicker of unease across Hack's face was all Roberta needed to convince herself that the ant expert was telling the truth.

She punched Hack in the side of the head with as much force as she could muster. It hurt her hand so badly that she wouldn't have been surprised to see it burst apart in a shower of blood, flesh, and bone fragments, but Hack fell onto his side on the seat. He twisted around, pointed the gun at her, and pulled the trigger. He pulled the trigger several more times, the gun clicking uselessly, as if a spare bullet might still have been wedged in there.
Roberta opened the door and scooted out of the jeep just in time to see Slash take a swing at the ant expert with his knife.
* * * *

Dustin suddenly pulled back, the knife swishing in the air inches from his chest. He'd never had somebody come at him with a knife before, and while there had to be some effective moves to get out of this predicament, he didn't know any of them.

A second swing tore across his upper chest. Dustin knew right away that it was a superficial wound, but it hurt like crazy.
Slash winked at him. "See why they call me Slash?"
"Nobody calls you Slash but your imbecile of a partner," said Dustin, hoping to anger him into making a mistake. Slash didn't exactly seem like the type to fly into a rage over an insult, but Dustin figured anything was worth a shot.
Much more effective than the insult, however, was the black woman running around the front of the jeep towards Slash. As Slash turned to face her, Dustin charged at him, tackling him and smashing him against the side of the jeep. Dustin grabbed his wrist and slammed it against the jeep once, twice, and a third time until the knife dropped out of his grasp.
Slash leaned at him, mouth wide open, and Dustin yanked his head back just in time to avoid having his nose bitten off. He punched Slash in the jaw, hearing the loud _clack_ as his teeth slammed together, and then Slash tumbled backward and hit the ground.
The back door of the jeep opened. Dustin kicked it closed, bashing the door into Hack's head in the process.
"Hi there," he said to the woman. "I'm Dustin."
"Roberta."
"Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet _you_."
"I guess I'd be insulting your intelligence if I said that you should get away from these psychos as fast as you can," Dustin admitted, heading back to the motorcycle.
"Wait!" said Roberta, hurrying toward him with a brief pause to kick Slash in the side. "I know this is probably ridiculous, but the men said that you had some sort of shot, one that stopped the ant's venom. Were they lying?"
"Did you get stung?" Dustin asked. She looked so desperate.
"No, a friend did. A good friend."
Dustin sighed. "I'm sorry, but yeah, they were lying. If your friend got stung, there's nothing I can do. Get him to a hospital as soon as you can, that's all I can say."
Roberta wiped a tear from her eye, but shook her head bravely. "I don't even know if he's still alive. I guess I'd better go find him."
A vehicle approached from behind them, and Roberta's eyes lit up. "It's Zachary!"
The brown truck was in such sorry shape that Dustin wondered if supernatural intervention had been required to start the engine. It stopped behind the van, and a tanned guy of about forty got out, looking more than a little pissed.
"Where are they?" he demanded.
"They aren't a problem anymore," said Roberta. She walked over to the truck as she pointed at Dustin. "This is Dustin, the ant expert."
"Great! Does he have the shots, or was that a load of crap?"
Roberta's shoulders slumped. "It was a load of crap."
"I hope you killed those bastards."
"I think we hurt them badly enough."
Dustin got on the motorcycle. "Well, good luck, you two. I wish there was more I could do, but I have to get going. I may know who's responsible for this."
"Really?" asked Zachary. "So they might have a cure, right?"
Dustin considered that for a moment. "I guess if you were working with these things, you'd want to have some sort of antidote on hand in case you accidentally got stung. So it's possible. Doesn't mean they'll let us just walk in there and take it, though."
"So what are you gonna do to stop the person responsible?"
Dustin shrugged. "Depends what I find there, I guess."
"Need some help?"
"You'd better believe it."
"Great. Ditch that motorcycle and we'll take my jeep."
"It's not running," said Roberta, peering in the truck window at the Hispanic man slumped against the door. "It hit an ant."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You know those eight-inch ants?" asked Dustin. "They aren't the biggest ones, not by a long shot."
"No, I do _not_ know those eight-inch ants. When the hell did we get eight-inch ants? And what do you mean they aren't the biggest ones? How big are the biggest ones?"
Another ant the size of the one underneath the jeep emerged from around the corner, about a hundred feet away. If Dustin hadn't been so frightened, he would have admired its excellent sense of timing.
The ant stopped crawling and turned its head toward them. It seemed to be staring at them with its compound eyes.
"Holy Jesus," said Zachary, staring at the ant in amazement. "How ... how can they grow that big?"
"They can't," said Dustin. "I mean, they shouldn't be able to. An ant that size, its exoskeleton shouldn't be able to support its mass. It should collapse before it takes its first step."
Zachary nodded his understanding, then cupped his mouth with his hands and shouted at the ant. "Hey! Your exoskeleton shouldn't be able to support your mass! Get with the fuckin' program!"
The ant continued to watch as Zachary, Dustin, and Roberta quickly backed away.
Then it charged at them.

*-CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO-*
It felt like an incredible waste to have scaled all the way down the side of a four-story building only to end up sitting outside on a table surrounded by ants, yet that seemed to be the state of affairs. If somebody had asked her yesterday, Moni would have said that the idea of being surrounded by ants was nowhere near as disturbing as the idea of being stuck with Jack Lacefield, but she had to admit that their conversation was actually rather pleasant.
It was pretty hot in their jackets, though, and the tape was making her ankles and wrists itch horribly, which was only slightly less bothersome than the pain in her hands.
And of course, she had to ignore the fact that Abigail's dead body was being devoured right underneath where she sat.
She wondered what was happening to Mr. Kamerman's body up there. And Trevor's, if it hadn't already been burnt down to the skeleton. Most importantly, she wondered about Phil. Was he at home, worried sick about her? Was he on his way to Lavin, Inc. to rescue her? Was he still alive?
Yes, he was still alive. He had to be.
She looked down at her hands, which were swollen to an almost cartoonish level. She certainly wouldn't be doing much typing for the foreseeable future. If they wanted any corporate accounting to get done for the next few weeks, they darn well were going to have to buy her some voice recognition software.
"That's weird," said Jack. "I think the ants are running away."
They were. The ants were scattering, thousands of them running behind the building, others moving further down the front lawn. They were making weird noises, sort of the sound of wet shoes squeaking along a tile floor. Moni and Jack sat on the table and watched as the ants made a mass exodus from the immediate area. Within two minutes, there was a clear path to the short road that exited out to Trexler Road.
"Okay ... so ... that's good, right?" asked Jack.
"Looks like it. You think the queen called them back or something?"
Jack shrugged. "Could be. Either way, we won't find a better time to get out of here."
They climbed off the table and began walking across the lawn, Jack holding his arm around Moni's shoulder for support. Moni almost found herself looking back to see what condition Abigail was in, but resisted the temptation. It wasn't going to be pretty.
"Maybe you should go on ahead, see if you can find help," said Jack. "Who knows, they might have cleared out all the way to the street."
"What if the ants come back?" Moni asked.
"That would be bad. But here's a more important question: What if they were running from something?"
"Insecticide?"
"I could live with insecticide. That's much more appealing than what I was think -- " He stopped in mid-sentence. "Okay, I win."
Moni screamed.
A dark red ant stepped onto the lawn. It resembled the thousands of other ants she'd encountered this evening, except that its body was the size of her living room couch.
It stood there for a long moment, as if trying to decide if they should be construed as prey.
It began to crawl toward them.
Sweat cascaded down her sides, and all of the pain in Moni's hands was forgotten.
What in the world had created this kind of beast?
There was no place to run for cover.
"Moni, step away from me, slowly," Jack whispered in a voice that started out calm and steady but cracked on the word "slowly."
"Maybe if we -- ?"
"I'm going to try to draw its attention. If and when it comes after me, run in the opposite direction. Got it?"
What was he talking about? Jack wasn't planning to sacrifice himself, was he?
He limped away from her at a brisk stride, and waved his hands in the air frantically. "Hey! Hey, ant!" he shouted. "Over here! Come and get me, you freak of nature! I'll shove some Raid up your sorry ant ass!"
Moni remained frozen, praying the ant would just crawl away and leave them alone. Tampa was a big city; there had to be other people it could hunt down and kill.
"Here, antie antie antie! C'mon, you butt-ugly picnic whore! You're not so big! I feed things like you to my pet gecko! Let's go!"
The ant stopped crawling, waved its antennae for a moment, and then broke into a run, headed straight for Jack.
Jack lowered his arms and looked at Moni. "Tell Phil I said hi."
* * * *

Okay, so
this
was it. This was how he was going to die.

There were plenty of other ways Jack would have liked to go. Obviously, dying in his sleep after a night of passion with six or seven bikini models ranked pretty high up there, as did dying in the process of rescuing some children, nuns, puppies, and kittens from a burning orphanage/animal shelter duplex.
As it was, though, as long as Moni made it out safely and eventually got back to her husband, getting killed by a giant ant wasn't such a bad way to perish.
Doing everything he could to ignore the pain in his leg, Jack ran forward to meet the ant.
He closed his eyes.
* * * *