Morte (39 page)

“Why have you come here?” the Queen asked.

“I thought you knew,” he said. “I thought you planned all this.”

“I want to hear it in your own words.”

“I came for my friend. That’s all.”

“Did a voice tell you to do this?”

“No.”

“The prophecy, perhaps?” she asked. “A holy book?”

“ ‘The Warrior and the Mother,’ you mean?” he asked. “No. I don’t have EMSAH. I’m not a believer.”

“Then what brings you here?”

“I told you. She’s my friend.”

The Queen tilted her head as she contemplated this.
She doesn’t understand
, he thought
. She doesn’t know what a friend is. Or, even worse: she
does
know, and she realizes that she can’t have one herself
.

“Your quest is irrational,” she said. “You want what you cannot have, and you believe you are entitled to it. This is virtually the same as EMSAH. EMSAH is the opposite of the gift we gave to you. EMSAH is a perversion of it. We wanted to see if your people could survive without succumbing to these human impulses.”

“I don’t care,” Mort(e) said. “Is she here or not?”

The Queen tilted her head in the other direction, making the ancient antennae flop around like two stiff dreadlocks.

“I’ve come a long way,” he said. “I’m not a philosopher. I’m a house slave who woke up one morning acting like a human.”

To the Queen’s left, an aperture opened. The bed of ants spread out, leaving a path from Mort(e) to the resulting doorway. He took the trail to the opening. The room inside was arranged like a human house. A green carpet extended from wall to wall, absorbing the overhead fluorescent light. A bag of laundry rested in the corner, the blue sleeve of a hoodie sticking out the top. There was a desk with a computer beside a homemade wooden shelf full of VHS tapes. An exact replica of the Martinis’ basement.

He stopped and stared at the Queen. She had nothing to say.

He entered the room. A curtain hung from an exposed pipe on the ceiling. The ants had gotten every detail right, even down to the musty smell of the carpet. Mort(e) saw his hand
pull the curtain to the side.

Like a dream, Sheba lay in the warm spot beside the furnace. Her tail lifted from the floor when Sebastian entered. Everything melted away. There was no fight with Daniel, no puppies, no war, no EMSAH. He was Sebastian. There was only this spot, and this friend, and this house with its square of sunlight. The outside world had never crept inside to ruin everything. He was safe.

Sheba was unchanged. Her paws still had hair. She stood up on all fours. Not a day had gone by for her, it seemed.

Mort(e) walked to her and knelt down. She let him wrap his arms around her neck. She licked his face.

I know you
, she seemed to say.
Where have you
been
?

Mort(e) closed his eyes and wept.

Some time passed. A rumbling began all around him. Mort(e) opened his eyes to find the shape of the room changing. The doorway widened until there was no wall between the replica of the basement and the Queen’s court. The furniture and other props remained, but as the ground stretched out, these objects were pressed into a corner at the far end of the chamber. The ants swarmed about them, so that the only space in the room not covered by insects was a small circle where Mort(e) embraced Sheba.

The ants once again formed a path, this time leading to the foot of the Queen. Mort(e) took it, with Sheba hopping alongside him like a pet.

“Why hasn’t she changed?” he asked. “Why isn’t she like everyone else?”

“The woman found her on the road on the way out of town,” the Queen said. “And when we captured the family, the child—Michael—tried to defend the dog with his life. This intrigued us, so we observed. When we tested the translator on him, we learned that you had allowed this family to live. And that you
were trying to find her. I decided to keep the dog from changing. She seemed happier that way.”

“And you let Michael escape?”

“Yes,” she said. “The other prisoners interpreted the effects of the translator as a sign that their god had chosen him as his vessel. They formed a cult around him. So I let them flee to see how his story would affect both the remaining humans and the other animals. It did what I expected it to do. Some took advantage of it. Some embellished it. Many believed, and acted on their belief.

“All the while,” she said, “we were watching you. As the humans spread their stories, we put you in a position to make a monumental decision for all life on this planet.”

Mort(e) scratched Sheba’s head. She pressed her skull into his stubby fingers, happy for the contact.

“Are you listening?” the Queen said.

“Yes,” he said, not looking up.

“There is no excuse,” the Queen said. “You have two choices. You can stay here and live in comfort with your friend. I will call off the quarantine. I will even give you a dose of the hormone that you can administer to the dog as you wish.”

With that, a clump of smaller ants scurried over her left shoulder, carrying a shiny blue pellet. A pill. The Queen took it from them. Mort(e) noticed that her claws had evolved somehow, making them more like hands. The pill resembled a large jewel in the bony clasp of an old woman.

“Or,” the Queen continued, “you can leave here and fulfill the false prophecy.”

“You’ll let me leave?”

“Yes,” the Queen replied. “But once you reach the surface, you will be quarantined like all the rest. The apocalypse that your human allies have been praying for will finally be at hand. I
rescued you from your gods, but there will be no second chance for your species. I have learned to accomplish extraordinary things, but I cannot remove evil from a person’s heart. I cannot make a person see the truth.”

“Does it matter to you that I made her a promise?” Mort(e) said. “Even if she couldn’t understand it?”

“I made a promise as well,” the Queen said, her tone changing from stern to soothing, the way Janet would speak when trying to calm one of the children. “I would like for you to stay. I know that you have an inquisitive mind. You would enjoy the wonders that the Colony would share with you. No one else has to die. All you have to do is make the right choice. For her and for you. For us.”

“Let me talk it over with my friend here,” Mort(e) said, patting Sheba on her side. He imagined that the Queen would have grimaced at this, if she had had a proper face.

He knelt on the ground, opened his pack, and removed the metal water canteen. Unscrewing the top, he held it out for Sheba to drink. He poured it while she lapped up the column of water.

Another egg dropped from the Queen’s abdomen.

“You think I’m in danger of believing in some invisible human in the sky,” Mort(e) said. “But it’s not like that at all.”

“I believe in this,” he said, pointing to Sheba as she drank. “I remember my time with my friend. I realize that these things don’t last. But I will fight for them.”

“Maybe we have much to learn from each other,” the Queen said.

The water was finished. Mort(e) shook the canteen over his free hand until a small vial dropped out. He placed the canteen on the ground. Sheba tried to probe it with her snout. He rose, the vial in his hand. The Queen’s antennae extended from her
head until they formed a perfect V.

“Maybe,” Mort(e) said.

He threw the vial at her. The sudden movement made Sheba bark. The glass tube shattered against the Queen’s face.

The movement in the room halted again. The oleic acid from the vial sent its unmistakable message to the entire court:
THE QUEEN IS DEAD. PURGE. DESTROY
. The marching and the licking ceased.

“Kill them!” the Queen said. But no one listened. Instead, the workers pierced her abdomen with their jaws. The room shook, echoing her agony. The smaller ants, who had covered the lower part of her body, now engulfed her thorax and head. The swarm on the ground surrounded the Queen. Together, the workers, the Alphas, and their tiny sisters forced their monarch toward the opening from which Mort(e) had entered. A pair of oversized workers tore open her egg-laying orifice and feasted on the contents inside. The creatures dragged her farther, splitting open her abdomen and allowing more eggs to spill out.

Mort(e) picked up Sheba and carried her on his shoulders. Racing past the Queen’s writhing head, he climbed onto her abdomen and gripped the shell. He could feel Sheba breathing heavily into his ear. More ants from other chambers contributed to the effort. Each pair of jaws that pulled her along tore off another piece of Hymenoptera the Great. One overzealous Alpha pulled on her left antenna so hard it snapped, sending the beast tumbling backward. Unwilling to accept her fate, the Queen tried to fight them off. She gobbled up the small workers that covered her arms and claws. When an Alpha attempted to latch onto her neck, she bit viciously into the soldier’s face and tore away the mandible. The other part of the Alpha’s jaw flapped stupidly as she stumbled off to the side.

The wounded Alpha collapsed onto the Queen’s back. Mort(e) tried to kick her away, but the creature lunged at him
with her broken jaw. Sheba barked, telling the ant to please leave them alone. Sheba was the most reasonable one here, Mort(e) thought. But then, the Alpha lurched forward to bite Sheba in half. Sheba tried to dodge her, but the monster’s head slammed into her side, sending her sliding down the carapace, her paws scraping helplessly. Mort(e) shouted her name as she dropped off the side of the abdomen and disappeared into the crowd of snapping jaws and grasping talons.

All those years without Sheba, all the awful nights spooning with Tiberius in trenches and tents, all the starving, mind-numbing marches—all those years of misery and despair descended upon Mort(e) again. He’d lost her again. It was worse than watching Daniel chase her away.

And then, cutting through the earsplitting noise of the dying Colony, Sheba barked loud enough for Mort(e) to hear.
Sebastian!
she said.
I’m over here!

That was what he heard, anyway.

Mort(e) raced to the spot in the crowd where Sheba had vanished. He was face-to-face with an Alpha. In a useless but deeply satisfying gesture, Mort(e) punched her again and again until his knuckles bled.
You hurt my friend
, he thought,
and I will KILL ALL OF YOU!
The creature snapped at him, but was too dazed by the oleic acid to hone in on her target. Mort(e) geared up for another roundhouse when Sheba barked again.

He spotted her near the replica of the Martinis’ basement. There was an exit nearby, another tunnel that had opened up when the shape of the room had changed. Sheba had drawn away several soldiers, who were now regaining their senses. They surrounded her. She was on her haunches, growling, her white-and-orange fur darting about as she tried in vain to scare them off.

Mort(e) could not take on that many Alphas. Perhaps he
could create a diversion to get them away from her, but Sheba would not know how to get out. Frantic, he searched the room for the weapons. He found them right where the smaller ants had left them, near the tunnel where he had first entered the room. The gun and the grenade were thirty yards away, mocking him.

Mort(e) took a running leap over the advancing horde of monsters, landing in an open space. Sheba’s barking alerted one of the soldiers. The Alpha’s head swiveled toward him. The mouth came at him first. Mort(e) dove to the ground. He felt the jaws catch his tail and then break away. A lightning bolt of pain shot up his spine. The last few inches of his tail were gone, leaving a bloody, mangled stump. Gritting his teeth, Mort(e) grabbed the machine gun, still covered with ants. The monster regained her footing and reared up for another strike. The other end of his tail dropped from the beast’s jaws. He remembered that the gun’s safety was still on. Lying prone, with the ants crawling over him to get to the Queen, Mort(e) clicked the safety with his thumb and aimed. When the Alpha dove toward him this time, she faced the barrel of a live gun.
Shoot him
, he heard the stray cats say in his mind.
Like this
.

Mort(e) pulled the trigger, crushing several ants that had lodged themselves under his finger. The muzzle flash lit up the room like a strobe light. The bullets entered the Alpha’s neck and blew out the back of her skull. The creature tottered onto her abdomen, then fell over sideways.

Mort(e) got to his feet and knocked away the ants that clung to his fur. They fell and continued scurrying off to the purge. To his right, the delirious swarm tried to carry his grenade away. He plucked it from them and ran to Sheba, trying to keep his throbbing tail still.

The grenade was another one of the humans’ ingenious devices, invented far too late to make a difference in the war.
Mort(e) pulled the pin, which released a burst of concentrated oleic acid. The ants surrounding Sheba spun toward the scent. Sheba continued barking at them, probably convinced that she had scared them away.

The creatures crawled toward Mort(e), their antennae seeking out the bomb, the object that must be purged. Mort(e) lobbed it into the nearby tunnel.

“Fetch,” he said.

The metal pinecone bounced away into the bowels of the Colony. The ants rushed after it, stumbling over one another.

“Okay, Sheba,” he said. “Let’s get out of—”

Sheba sprinted past him. She, too, was chasing the damn thing. She thought they really were playing fetch.

“Sheba, no!” he said. She kept running.

Now they were all charging down the tunnel, drawn to the noise of the bouncing bomb. When he got close, Mort(e) dove to grab Sheba’s tail, sliding face-first. She had the nerve to growl at him. Mort(e) got to his feet, gripped her by the scruff of the neck, and ran back the way they came. When he made it to the court, he dropped to the ground again, shielding her body and covering her ears with his hands. The bomb detonated, sending a blast of hot air and debris from the tunnel.

The explosion left his ears ringing, a noise like an army of humans yawning at once:
Awwhhhhh
. Mort(e) opened and closed his mouth to get his ear canals working properly, but the noise remained. Stumbling, he dragged Sheba to the Queen. There was a gap in the group of workers who were shoving the Queen out of the chamber. Mort(e) ran to it, tossed Sheba onto the Queen’s abdomen, and climbed aboard. His wounded tail left a streak of blood on her exoskeleton. From a sitting position, he pointed the gun at all the soldiers and workers. They were not concerned with him now. Blindly, relentlessly, they pushed
the hulk into the main tunnel.