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.
Chapter Sixteen: The Island
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.
The Queen relived all the previous mating days, the successes and the setbacks, as she collected information on how the latest event was proceeding. The males were marched out first, wet and shivering, but warming in the sun. The workers prodded them toward an opening near the western side of the island, where they would be shielded from the brunt of the sunlight. They still had to gain their footing, though their main skill was to fly. The clumsy ones who tumbled over were gently righted again, if for no other reason than to get them to stop sending anxious signals as if the entire Colony were under attack. It was an amusing contrast to the mammals, who were in the bad habit of putting their males in charge.
And then the winged females emerged. Sleek and menacing angels. More beautiful than any other creature on earth. The future of all life. The females marched out from their chamber, thronged by soldiers and workers who would give their lives to protect them as though they were queens already. The males waited, their wings shaking off the last drops of moisture.
Many would die. Almost all, in fact. They were so tiny, and even though their archenemies had been driven toward extinction, so many things could get them killed before, during, and soon after mating. Errant winds, a poorly timed landing, getting their wings wet and collapsing from exhaustion as they tried to flap them dry again. They would be cut off from the Colony unless they succeeded in establishing new outposts, and even then it would be their responsibility to reconnect with the island. Because she became queen and then mated under emergency circumstances, Hymenoptera was fortunate to have avoided the massacre, for even her intellect would not have saved her from the random cruelty of the world.