He held his tail, his fist colored red as it stanched an open wound. His machine gun was pocked with smashed ant carcasses. At his feet, waiting obediently, was a dog, a small female that stood on all fours. Wawa had not seen one since that night at the dog-fighting ring.
“These humans stink,” Mort(e) said.
The shooting continued. The humans yelled for the animals inside the cave to surrender. Wawa wanted to join the others in the small siege. Mort(e) kept his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t let him die facing his own kind,” he said.
“Who?”
“The colonel. Let him go out fighting the humans.”
“He doesn’t have to die,” Wawa said.
“Yes, he does.”
She swatted his hand away and ran toward the cave. The others ordered her to take cover.
“Hold your fire!” she said.
“No, don’t hold your fire,” someone shouted back.
“Colonel!” Wawa said. “Colonel, I know you’re in there!”
A bullet flew by her head. It came from inside the cave. A warning shot. A courtesy for a fellow soldier. The soldiers crouched lower behind the rocks and fortifications.
“Get down,” a voice said. It was the square-headed major, down on one knee behind the severed abdomen of an Alpha soldier. A handprint tinged with mud and blood covered the left half of his craggy face.
“Colonel,” Wawa said, “please surrender! They’ll kill you!”
“I said get down!” the major said. Frustrated, he turned to Mort(e) and said, “Tell her to get down!”
“She doesn’t listen,” Mort(e) said.
“Colonel, please surrender,” Wawa said. “I forgive you. We can forgive you. It’s not too late.”
This was what she was meant to do in this war. Culdesac had saved her. Now she would save him.
The square-headed officer ran to her, grabbed the shoulder strap of her pack, and made her kneel down with him. Another bullet zipped by. The soldiers returned fire.
“Stop!” Wawa said.
“Stay out of this,” the major said.
“Give him a chance to surrender.”
“He’s had his chance. You’re not in charge here—”
The man stopped talking when he noticed Wawa’s hand resting on the handle of her pistol. The tip of the holster was pointed at the major’s belly.
“You think that house cat is a warrior?” Wawa said. “I’m the one who’ll carve you up and watch you die. Now, the Archon told me this would happen. Tell your soldiers to let the bobcat surrender.”
“He’s one of them.”
“If you redeemed me, you can redeem him,” she said. “Now let him walk.”
As the man opened his mouth to respond, another barrage of gunfire drowned him out. The animals who were hiding in the cave jumped over their barricade and charged at the line of humans. There were four of them.
Wawa shoved the major away and got to her feet. “No!” she screamed.
The guns erupted. Three of the animals dropped. But one — a bobcat — shrugged off a bullet to the shoulder, bounded over the rifle fire, and landed on top of a hapless human soldier.
“Colonel, stop! Look at me! It’s me! It’s—”
Culdesac tore the man open. Wawa actually heard it: a wet, sopping noise, like soaked fabric ripping, combined with the man gasping and choking. It was then that he spotted Wawa. Her mouth gaped. She may have been screaming. There was no way to tell with all the noise. Culdesac’s eyes were like an ant’s eyes, seeing in all directions but unable to focus. Even in that moment, Wawa still believed that he would remember, and understand, and accept this new world, this last chance to be a real person.
His fur now pink with blood, Culdesac lifted the corpse, trying to use it as a shield. He reared up to attack another soldier. The rifles unloaded on him. He collapsed, with one claw straining for his enemy before a final hail of bullets left him a shredded heap of fur and bone. The men and women did not cheer this time.
Mort(e) caught up with Wawa, placing his hand on her bicep and trying to turn her away from the scene. The dog was at her other side, brushing its fur against her leg, as if Wawa were the animal’s master.
This was what the humans had prayed for, Wawa thought. And it had come true.
Wawa felt Mort(e)’s hand lift away. She felt nothing else.
Chapter Twenty-two: Love
The Vesuvius was perched low in the sky, anchored by a cable tied to the Island’s great tower. Below, the humans burned the bodies of their victims well into the night. The ground was too hard to bury anyone, and tossing them out to sea would only ensure that the corpses would resurface on the beach. There was talk of dropping the bodies down into the great tunnel leading to the ants’ lair, on the other side of the Island, but this was dismissed. While the tunnel appeared to be inactive, the humans stayed away from it. Some day, they would have to organize an expedition into the nest to make sure that the ants were not breeding a new queen, however unlikely that may have been. For now, with Hymenoptera the Great lying dead in the Colony’s trash dump, and the final quarantine canceled without her royal decree, it was time to celebrate.
Mort(e) planned to leave in the morning, having procured a small boat from a member of the amphibious assault force. “Anything for you, sir,” the human owner had said. Mort(e) had no plan other than to head for the mainland and perhaps find a cabin in the mountains, far from whatever new settlements the humans and their friends were planning. If he were to find such a place, he could not say for sure if he would stay there for the rest of his life. All of that was too far into the future to worry about now. He would think about it more when the sun came up.
While the others worked, cleaning up the dead bodies and setting up a temporary base of operations, Mort(e) collected supplies for the trip. Sheba trailed behind him. Each of the incoming ships had something he needed: water bottles, food, tools, guns. A cat who also had only half a tail offered a roll of gauze for Mort(e)’s injury. A tall golden retriever who called herself Cali gave Mort(e) a Swiss army knife. She asked to take a photo with him, to which he agreed. When a woman offered him a leash for Sheba, Mort(e) told her gently but firmly to put it away and to never show it to anyone again. Scavenging — or, more precisely, collecting donations from awestruck disciples — took up a good part of the day. It kept his mind off what was in store for the planet now that the war was over.
When Mort(e) was satisfied that he and Sheba had enough supplies, he retired to a nearby hill overlooking the area where the ants had attacked one another. From there, he watched the celebration while Sheba slurped up water from a paratrooper’s helmet. The humans and their animal friends had built a bonfire. The flames rose high, reflecting off the water and the silvery surface of the airship. The people danced around the carnage, holding hands, kissing, pitching their heads back with food and drink. For all these people knew, former master and ex-slave could be sharing a beer. That possibility did not seem to bother anyone.
There were bizarre works of piety among the victors. A group of female dogs wearing nun habits said prayers over the dead bodies before the soldiers carted them away. Elder Gregory led a multispecies group in song — something about how everyone had a friend in Jesus — while they hacked away at Alpha corpses with axes. The carcasses were too large to carry, so this grotesque procedure was necessary. Prisoners of war were pressed into hauling the slabs of meat to the fire. Nearby, some children from Miss Teter’s class fought over a pair of amputated antennae. Two others used them for a swordfight before being corrected by an adult. But then that same adult used the antennae as drumsticks on a set of percussion instruments he had constructed from ant skulls, thoraxes, and abdomen shells.