Morte (30 page)

She did not answer, even though she had to be awake.

“Lieutenant?” he asked. “Do you want the explanation?”

Wawa moved into a sitting position. “I would like that,” she said.

“It’s from a book I read.
Le Morte d’Arthur
. The death of Arthur. I thought about changing my name to Arthur, but I imagined there were already a few of those. I liked the word Morte. When I was hiding in the ruins of the city, I would say the name to myself.”

“So your name means death?” she asked.

“It’s not death,” he said. “Not really. I was starving. Eager to find my friend. By the time the Red Sphinx caught up with me, two things had happened. First, I decided that I didn’t want to be called Death anymore. I wanted to be a normal person when all this madness was over.”

He let go of the medallion. It flopped against his chest. “Imagine that. I actually thought all this would be
over
back then.”

Wawa laughed and raised an imaginary drink in the air.

“The second thing that happened was that I forgot how to spell the damn thing,” he said.

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I forgot if it had that
e
or not. So I put it in parentheses when Culdesac asked.”

“So your weirdo name comes from bad spelling.”

“No, no,” Mort(e) said. “The name fit. Because I could go either way, depending on how things sort themselves out. I could be the normal person, reuniting with my friend. Or I could become Death. I’m trying really hard to avoid that, but I guess I’ve developed a habit.”

Wawa chuckled. “Thank you, Mort(e),” she said.

“Now can you get to sleep, or do you want another bedtime story?”

“I’ll sleep,” Wawa said, rolling onto her side. Her tail wagged a little before coming to a stop.

A minute later, she said, “Don’t worry about me, Mort(e). That business won’t happen again.” He caught it in her voice—the slow crumbling of another one of her beliefs.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.” He sat under the stars and waited.

THE MESSAGE FROM
the
Vesuvius
was short and to the point. It gave a set of coordinates, followed by a simple, persuasive word:
Run
.

Mort(e) found the coordinates on his map. They intersected in an open field at the edge of an abandoned town. It was a perfect rectangle, probably a football field. He understood the instructions well enough. Driving a car was out of the question, even if they could find one that still worked. They would have to leave the road, and taking a vehicle through the dirt
would create so many vibrations that the Queen herself would hear them. So they would have to do it on foot and hope that they were not too loud to attract attention, and that there were no bird patrols passing through the area. Calculating the time needed, Mort(e) figured that if they began moving now, they would reach the field by dawn.

Wawa gathered up the remaining water bottles. Using a discarded belt, she fashioned a strap for her axe, which she wore over her shoulder. Moments later, they were running across the dead fields, leaping fences, hopping over craters.

Their journey took them across another highway, this one with an even more bizarre sight than the last. Instead of being lined up in a traffic jam, the vehicles were piled haphazardly in an artificial mountain, a pyramid, the faint moonlight shining through the windshields and reflecting off the paint.

More running. Past trees. Over a shallow stream. The sky above changed. Soon, they were sprinting under a purple canopy that brightened to red. And then, finally, the sun rose in the east. They were behind schedule, but the town was in sight.

The place was virtually untouched. An exit ramp curved onto the main street, toward abandoned shops and church steeples. Though the buildings blocked the view, the map showed that the field was on the other side.

Mort(e) picked up a scent and sensed the vibrations in the ground. Wawa, whose hearing was even more acute, noticed it as well. She sniffed, then let out a whine to indicate danger. They stood still. Something moved in the soil under their feet.

Wawa was about to speak. Mort(e) raised his hand to silence her. He tossed a bottle of water so that it skimmed across the dirt, away from the ramp. It went about twenty feet before the earth around it ripped open. The armored skull of an Alpha soldier squeezed out of the fissure. Three others emerged, along with a
churning river of smaller ants.

Mort(e) and Wawa broke for the ramp, vaulting the barrier and landing on the asphalt. Behind them, the earth tore open. The air was thick with the smell of freshly plowed dirt, and the sound of clicking jaws and skittering feet.

They would have to run through the town. They were safer on cement than the dirt, but there was no telling what was inside the buildings. If there were humans waiting at the field, they were probably already dead.

A row of cars on the side of the road overturned as the Alpha soldiers burst through it. A cherry-red convertible tumbled into their path. Mort(e) ran around the vehicle while Wawa bounded over it. Alphas poured over the barrier. Ants rose from their underground tunnels, sending up geysers of dirt.

They approached an abandoned military roadblock. A burned-out army truck was parked beside a row of sandbags and barbed wire. Seconds after jumping over, Mort(e) heard the ants explode through it.

The first building they passed was a post office. A sign on the front door had a drawing of an ant, with a message underneath that said,
INSECT BITES TREATED HERE
. At the intersection, to his right, the street was filled from sidewalk to sidewalk with Alpha soldiers. All of them completely still. Same thing on his left. The soldiers came to life, their movements synchronized, an undulating wave of armor and claws. Wawa yelped.

The glass storefronts shattered outward. Alpha soldiers spilled onto the street. Others emerged from second-story windows and rooftops, dropping to the ground and aiming their antennae toward the two fugitives. Dozens of Alphas now cut off their escape.

They had been lured right into a nest.

Mort(e) pulled the gun from its holster. Wawa unhooked the
axe from its strap and ran with the blade over her shoulder.

Mort(e) picked out the closest Alpha and fired. She kept coming at him, shrugging off the gunshots. Mort(e) emptied the clip until he hit the base of her neck, cutting off the ant’s brain from the rest of her body. The Alpha stumbled forward and landed hard on the pavement, part of her jaw breaking off. Mort(e) jumped onto her back and grabbed one of the claws. Placing his foot on the joint, he snapped it off. Now he had a club. Another Alpha drew close. Mort(e) swung the claw and connected, caving in the beast’s compound eye. A second later, Wawa’s axe chopped off the ant’s antenna. With the ant prostrate before her, Wawa swung again, severing the vulnerable neck. Bits of carapace flew off as the creature collapsed.

Two more Alphas charged at them. Mort(e) crouched and lifted the abdomen of the dead one. He squeezed until a blast of acid shot out, catching the two ants in the small explosion. The monsters clawed at their melting eyes. In their confusion and agony, the ants crashed into one another and fell over. The others stepped over their writhing bodies and continued to advance. Mort(e) slashed at them with the broken claw to slow them down. He could sense the rest of the swarm closing in from behind.

Suddenly the ants stood still, their antennae pointing straight up.

A great shadow blotted out the sun, spreading over the entire street—a gigantic silvery whale swimming above, ready to swallow up the entire town. The
Vesuvius
. Painted on the bottom of the command gondola were a massive black cross, a crescent moon, and a six-pointed star. Cannons extended from the windows. When the guns opened fire, the Alphas standing in their path burst apart. Heads, limbs, and antennae skittered along the ground. Several Alphas were cut in half. They tried to crawl to
safety as their organs spilled from their ruptured abdomens.

Letting out a high-pitched whistle, the ship fired rockets at the buildings. A fireball engulfed the row of shops, the shockwave knocking Mort(e) to the ground. As debris rained down, he felt Wawa grab his arm and pull him to his feet. He spit the dust out of his mouth.

They kept moving. An amputated claw grabbed Wawa’s ankle, and she hacked it away. The ants gave chase, even as the cannons cut them to pieces. They stepped over their dead sisters, ignoring the gore coating their armor.

As Mort(e) ran, he tried to keep up with the cross above. The
Vesuvius
was headed for the field. When the firing stopped, a cable descended from the ship, a man in a black jumpsuit harnessed at the end of it. He touched down in the school parking lot. His large tinted goggles made him resemble an insect. Behind him, the entrance of the school crumbled, revealing another nest of Alphas. They emptied from the destroyed building, rolling over one another before finding their footing. The
Vesuvius
opened fire on them, but there seemed to be a never-ending supply, a hellish waterfall of six-legged monsters.

Mort(e) and Wawa reached the man with what appeared to be the entire Colony closing in.

“Hold on to me here, sir,” the man said, pointing to two handles on the front of his harness.

“What about her?”

“We can only take one of you.”

Mort(e) glanced at Wawa. She understood right away that he could leave her. Sheba would have looked at him like that. No, Sheba
had
looked at him like that.

Mort(e) grabbed the man by the throat.

“Okay,” the man gasped, “we could try both.”

They hooked their arms around his shoulders while clasping
the handles. “Hold on,” the man said.

The cable lifted them. Mort(e) could hear the propellers on the ship increasing speed as the zeppelin ascended.

The town below them was a sea of demons. The spot where they had vacated seconds earlier was now flooded with ants, all straining their claws toward the escaping mammals. The remaining buildings resembled volcanoes, spewing the ants from their underground city.

The cable stalled and then dropped several feet. Mort(e) felt the vibrations of the motor as the gears strained.

“The winch may be broken,” the man said.

The cable gave again, dropping them farther. The zeppelin was not rising fast enough. They were only ten or twenty feet above the outstretched claws of the swarm.

“It’s not going to work,” the man said.

Wawa and Mort(e) faced each other, each waiting for the other to say something.

“Sir,” the man said, “it is an honor for me to give my life for you.”

“No, don’t give me that,” Mort(e) said.

“It’s okay,” the man said. “I know where I’m going. The gates of hell are closed forever.”

“Wait!”

The man undid the buckle on his harness. He slipped out of it and fell. He sank into the mob of Alphas, not even screaming as they tore him apart.

The zeppelin rose higher, until the ants seemed tiny and inconsequential, as they had before the war. The town resembled an abandoned picnic overrun with hungry insects.

“That was death-life,” Wawa said.

“That was death-life,” Mort(e) repeated.

The cable twisted, causing them to spin helplessly. The
painted cross turned round and round, a hypnotist’s bauble beckoning them to come forward. The farmland spread out below, bathed in the morning light like a half-remembered dream.

The Queen saw everything. The world, once so terrifying to her people, had been reduced to a viscous liquid poured into her, where it would be studied, manipulated, and conquered. There was no fear of the dark. The Queen was the darkness now, pulling in all beams of light like a black hole. She could not turn back or make peace, for this burden forced her to keep going until everyone was dead, until the only life left was the hint of her chemical trail drifting in a dry wind.

The Queen always brooded over the future on mating day, the annual event when the fertile males and females would be launched from the island, joining their bodies in midair and returning to the ground to establish new outposts of the Colony. Because she never slept, the Queen could not visit the future through dreams. Piecing together the days to come was one of only two escapes from the constant flow of information—the other being that brief flash of her mother before killing her. The future had a perfection that the past would always lack. The time to come was a perfectly crystallized snowflake, a chemical trail leading toward a hazy but brightening sunrise.

Mating days were always frantic, the air charged with multiple signals, shouting
help
, or
here
, or
go
, relayed to the Queen’s lair so she could observe. Thus the Queen relived the experiences of
every eager yet frightened participant. From millions of vantage points at once, she could see the rocky landscape flutter with a galaxy of silvery wings. It was the way of her people to gather in a frenzy and risk exposure to the outside world in order to renew their species. In the wild, during the age of the humans, the ritual had an element of desperation. Every mating day could be the Colony’s last. Predators of all kinds were driven to the mounds, attracted to the scent, or the sound of wings, or perhaps even a change in temperature as the ventilation shafts released hot puffs of air in the days leading up to the ceremony. Mammals, reptiles, and birds would paw at the earth. The workers, obeying orders, would keep hauling the fertile ones out to their doom until the soldiers intervened, grinding their teeth into the intruder’s flesh, or firing acid into the predator’s eyes and nostrils. Human interference added a new, unpredictable element. Sometimes they were simply curious and would carelessly scrape away the top layer of dirt to expose the writhing ants. Thousands of children over the years had been driven away squealing after plunging their hands into the soldiers’ quarters. Other humans would attempt to destroy the nest, usually for what seemed to be mere pleasure. Several mating days had to be aborted during a human attack, the fertile ones going senile and dying in their chambers before having a chance to fulfill their purpose. Still other humans would camp out the day of the mating. They would pluck the fat females from the horde, tear their wings off, and drop them into buckets to be cooked and eaten later. Sometimes the males would desperately hurl themselves toward the buckets and mate with the wingless would-be queens as they bled to death among their sisters.