“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.
The Queen’s daughters had shredded her wings, clipped her antennae, and amputated all but one of her claws, which still clutched the blue pill. She had protected it. He turned to Sheba, his expression asking, Do you see that?
Mort(e) scrabbled up the carapace to the Queen’s shoulders. He reached for the pill. It was too far away. Suddenly the Queen’s head spun around.