Invasive (20 page)

He keeps his voice quiet, almost a whisper. “Their antennae have thousands of nerve cells. Smell detectors, chemo receptors.
They can sense changes in humidity, in airflow. We don't know how complex they are as sensory organs. But yes.
Yes,
I think so.”

The lights buzz, flicker, and then go out. Arca Labs is suddenly too quiet. All Hannah hears is the buzz of the honeybees behind the wall.

“All the power is out,” she says. “Grab the suit, we need to get back.”

T
he hive room door hisses open. It's not the only one. Hannah and Ajay leave the hive room and see that the doors to the colony room and to Barry's room are wide open, too. So is the exit. That means all the doors must be.
Shit.

They hear the wind through the palms outside. Ajay fruitlessly presses his wristband to the door's mechanism, but it doesn't shut. He should know better, Hannah thinks. But he's panicked. Panic works that way if you don't know how to harness it: it dulls some minds, sharpens others.

She grabs him. “We need to move.”

Down through the connecting tunnel they go. Back into the lab. Panic has taken hold there, too. Everyone's buzzing about like the honeybees in the hive room.

Kit: “It's just a glitch. It happens. It'll come back on—”

Ray: “Fuck that.
Fuck that
. Somebody did this to us.”

The lab is dimmer without the overheads, but the big porthole windows bring enough sunlight in—though Hannah notices now it's sunlight filtered through a texture of crawling ants. They're on the glass outside, a network of hungry insects. Legs dancing. Antennae working. Mandibles opening and closing, looking for something to
snip
.

Barry: “Maybe it's the ants. Some ants nest inside electronics, then get electrocuted, which sends up the pheromone call to the swarm—”

Hannah interjects, making her voice louder than everyone else's: “The vents are open. The
doors
are open. Someone opened them. The ants are able to get in through the vents.”

Nancy shushes them. “Shh.
Shhhh.
”

Nothing at first. But then—the sound of little feet. Whispering in the vents outside the bubble.

They're coming.
Slowly. And surely.

Hannah looks up, does a quick count of the vents. Four in here. “We need to block the vents,” she says. “Now.” She looks around. There. Metal lab trays. Few inches deep. Looks like they have a big enough footprint—she claps her hands and starts handing them out. One each to Barry, Kit, Ray, and Ajay. Nancy's far too short to reach the vents.

Those with trays scatter—stepping up on their toes to press the bottoms of the trays against the vents. Barry, Ray, and Ajay are tall enough.

Kit isn't. She struggles to hold up her tray. The top wavers, pulling away from the vent, leaving a gap of several inches. To Nancy, Hannah says, “Step stool. Something she can stand on.” But Nancy looks throttled by the terror of the situation—she stands there, teetering, eyes wide, mouth open in a soundless
oh
.

There, by the autoclave and near the fridge, Hannah sees a cooler. A Thermos cooler, like you'd take tailgating or to the beach. She grabs it. Yells to Kit and slides it across the tile floor. It hisses as it slides, and Kit catches the cooler with the toe of her boot.

She starts to step onto it.

The tray wavers again—peeling back. Kit's fingers scrabble against it, finding no purchase.

As Kit steps up, the tray falls out of her hands. She tries to catch it—and fails. The cooler slides out from under her feet. Kit tumbles, arms flailing. One leg kicks out as she lands right on her tailbone, crying out.

Ants start pouring out of the vent above her.

Hannah still remembers the yellow jackets. Running like a fool behind the generator shed, not realizing what she was doing or
where she was going—she stepped right on that hole. The wasps came out of that thing like demons out of hell, sensing their one chance at escape. They knew to come right for her. Her eyes swelled shut. Her throat felt tight.

It was her father who rescued her. He heard her screaming. Next thing she knew, he was swooping her up in his arms—getting stung himself—and running back to the house, calling for her mother.

Later that night, Hannah sat hunched over the side of their porcelain claw-foot tub as Mom dabbed pink blobs of calamine lotion all over her with a cotton ball. She told her mother, “I'm scared now.”

Mom asked what she was scared of.

Hannah said, “Wasps. They might come for me again.” She hadn't yet encountered the ants in the mailbox, but when that time came, it would only prove to her what Mom told her that night.

Mom said, “Hannah, the world is not ours. We think it is, but it isn't. The greatest lie we tell ourselves is that we are in control. Those wasps didn't care about you. Didn't care who you were or what you wanted. They're not mean. You scared them. They attacked, and that scared
you
. They're simple creatures, which is what we try to be here. Simple survives. After human beings are long gone from this planet, those wasps—and flies and butterflies and cockroaches and all the other crawly things—will still be here.”

“That makes me sad,” Hannah said, wincing as Mom smushed another glob of lotion against a swollen welt. “I don't want us all to die.”

“I don't want all kinds of things, but that doesn't change what's true. We all die, Hannah. And when we do, it'll be the bugs that eat us down to the bone.”

Kit cries out. The ants fall on her like rain. They make a sound as they fall:
pat-pat-pat, tap-tap-tap
. The woman flails, tries to scramble
and stand, but as she yells—“Help! Help! Get them off!”—her words dissolve into a scream of pain.

She succumbs beneath them. Shaking. Seizing up.

Hannah springs forward, grabbing the extinguisher from where Ajay left it. She leans back, blasts the extinguisher up first—to get the ants coming out of the vent, still, and those now crawling across the ceiling—and then arcs the cold blast downward, all over Kit. It's cold, too cold, and Kit might come out of this with frostbite. But maybe,
just maybe,
Hannah can save her skin.

The ants begin falling from the vent: a hiss of raining black corpses. They fall off Kit, too. Hannah seizes the moment and catches the woman's ankle, grunting as she drags Kit back five, six feet from where she fell—

As Kit's face crosses a patch of light from one of the porthole windows, Hannah sees the sting marks up and down her face: angry, swollen blisters. Whiteheads, each filling with pus. Already Kit's breathing is a shallow wheeze. Her fingers twitch and seize as if grasping for something that isn't there. Her eyes remain focused on Hannah, even as she tries to say words that fail to come out as anything but a gassy rattle.

Hannah whispers, “I'm sorry.”

Then she's up again, blasting at the open vent. More dead ants fall. But the others seem to hesitate. The edges of the vent are rimed over with foam and ice crystals. The ants don't want to push past them.

Hannah thinks. Whoever shut the power down—Will? Einar? someone else they don't know?—did it to kill her and the others. Options race laps around her head: She could put on the bee suit, but she doesn't know how and it would take too long. She could stand here with the tray and hold it, but that doesn't solve the problem of the doors. The ants above her seem held at bay by the leavings of the CO
₂
foam, but the cold is disintegrating, melting, and soon the way will be open once more . . .

That's it.

Back in Ez Choi's office. The plastic bins.

Hannah: “How are they not swarming all over the lab?” Ez: “Fluon. Liquid Teflon. Spray the edges of each bin and they can't get past.”

Hannah yells, “Ajay!”

“What?” He stands under his own vent, the tray pressed against it. His legs and arms are shaking. He's nervous. Adrenaline is running through him. He and everyone else will soon be worn down by it, sandblasted raw.

“Fluon!
Do you have Fluon?
”

His eyes light up. “Genius. Of course. Yes. Yes! To the left. No! Sorry. Your right. Under the cabinet—there, by the sink.”

Hannah dives to her knees and throws open the cabinet. There. Fluon. Not in spray bottles like she'd hoped, but in amber bottles, all glass. She spins the cap off one—

Underneath the cap is a brush applicator. Internally, she screams at how long it'll take to get this stuff slathered around the vents and around doorjambs—but it'll have to do. She cradles one bottle under her arm and holds the other out to Nancy, who is still standing there, shell-shocked.

Hannah thrusts the bottle against Nancy's breastbone with a
thump
. “Take this. Fluon. You do the doors, I'll do the vents.”

The woman's eyes flutter and focus.

“Nancy? You good?”

“Yes.
Yes.
I can do it.”

“Hurry. Because they're coming.”

I
t feels like the attack happened just moments ago. And also a lifetime ago.

Hannah and Nancy have drawn streaks of Fluon around every conceivable opening. Every vent and door and crack they could find. The stink of the stuff remains on Hannah's hands: an ammonia odor that conjures a swift and recent memory. It's the same stink she smelled down in Special Projects.

Will, or someone, was using Fluon down there, too.

Now Kit sits propped up in front of her. The woman's face and arms are peppered with angry red stings. Her skin is hot. Her lips are ashen. Her breath comes in sharp little intakes.

The news came back fast: the EpiPens are gone.

They had a dozen. Now they have none.

Someone stole them.
The same someone who made the ants and set them upon Arca like a plague.
Damn it.
She failed. And now Kit is dying.

Nancy said it's anaphylaxis. All the signs are there. The shallow breathing, her pallor, her temperature. Untreated, she'll die. The best they can do right now is force Kit to swallow a few antihistamines. Nancy says, “It'll slow the anaphylactic reaction down. But it's a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. This could kill her.”

Hannah stands up. Nancy stands with her.

“We have more EpiPens,” Nancy says. “At the Cove. At Special Projects.”

“I have to go there,” Hannah says. She's willing to bet the stolen EpiPens are there, too. She looks to the beekeeper suit. She picks it
up, holds the material in her hand as she rubs her fingers against her thumb. It should work against the ants, shouldn't it? To Ray she says, “Put on the suit and head outside. See if you can't figure out what's been done to the power. Whether it's the breaker or the battery or what.”

“C'mon, I don't have the experience with that sort of thing. Send me to the Cove instead. You take the suit. Check out the equipment.”

No,
Hannah thinks. Fact is, Ray isn't that smart. And Will, if he's the one behind this, is smart. Genius level.
Evil
genius level, apparently. If it's not Will and it's Einar, instead—Ray's allegiance there is tenuous. “I'm going to the Cove,” she says.

“I can't do what you want,” Ray says.

“You'll have to try.”

“I can't—”

A scuff of a heel. A throat clearing from across the room. And then a voice says, “I'll do it.”

They all wheel. There stands Einar Geirsson. Leaning against a far counter. His hair is dark, a blood-black crust. His clothes are damp and dripping.

“Einar,” Ray says, a little bit of awe in his voice. Hannah knows her instincts were right on.

“Hello, everybody,” Einar says, his voice raspy, tired. “Glad to see some of you are still alive. We have much work to do if we are to survive.”

The story Einar tells is this:

Early this morning he went looking for Will at Special Projects. He did not find Will. What he did find was a strange-looking container.

“A barrel” is how he describes it. Plastic, like the same printing used on the pods. With metal rims and hinges. Except it did not open at the top, but along a vertical line down the center. Einar opened it.

Inside, it appeared to be heavily insulated. The bottom of the container was fitted with a tray and brackets, and below those brackets was water. Cool water.

Like the runoff from dry ice,
Hannah thinks.

Above were metal racks lined with black discs. “The discs looked like hockey pucks,” he says. Each disc had a small hole sealed with wax. He touched one and felt vibrations through it.

Hannah remembers seeing them in Ez's lab back in Tucson. She says, “Those discs are ant colonies.”

“I didn't realize it at the time. I am not an entomologist.” Einar sighs and winces as Nancy applies a wet paper towel to his wounded head. “But yes. I think so.”

Ajay says, “Little formicariums. For moving small colonies with queens.”

The picture forms in Hannah's mind: Each colony cryogenically frozen and kept cool with dry ice. When it thaws, the ants wake. And if the only thing keeping them in is a wax plug, they can chew through that.

“How many discs?” she asks. “In the barrel, I mean.”

Einar thinks. “About twenty per rack. And roughly twenty racks.”

Four hundred discs. Four hundred ant queens and colonies.

“That's a lot of fucking ants,” Ray says.

Einar clutches both hands together and takes a deep breath. “It doesn't end there. There were five other barrels like it. Stored in the laboratory. Brought out from where, I cannot say. I do not know where Will would have hidden those from me. From us. But there they were.”

“That's twenty-four hundred colonies,” says Nancy.

“That's twenty-four hundred
queens,
” Ajay says.

A sense of vertigo threatens to pull Hannah down to the floor. If those colonies ever leave this island, it will be disastrous. Each sting is potentially deadly. And they do not merely attack humans as a matter of accident or happenstance. These ants
hunt
people. It would be an ecological nightmare. A plague on mankind.

Ray says to Einar, “I assume you hauled fucking ass out of there.”

The look Einar gives Ray holds a measure of distaste. “I did leave that place. Already I saw that the ants were here, on the island. On the sand of the beach, in the fronds of the palms and ferns. Killing birds. Turtles. I saw a dead seal on the beach. From there I hurried to my cabin . . .” He draws a deep breath. “I found Venla. The ants had gotten to her.” His voice cracks. “I admit, I was not brave. I did nothing for her. I ran. I ran down out of the jungle and onto the beach and into the water. I thought that the ants could not get to me out there. So it was there I waited.”

Hannah gestures toward him. “What happened to your head?”

“I saw someone.” He sighs. “Someone stalking around the labs. I couldn't see who—I was too far away and this person stood obscured by the trees. So I thought I had better investigate. I avoided the ants as best I could, and crept up—and this person came out of nowhere. I didn't see who it was. Something hammered against the side of my head. A rock, I think. I fell”—here he shows the palms of both of his hands: they're scratched up, bloodied—“and I again crawled my way to the beach and into the water. I didn't have to go far. Any ants that tried to follow me lost my scent once I was in the water.”

“Why did you come back?” Hannah asks.

“I heard screams. They were Kit's, I believe.” Again his voice cracks.

“We are running out of time,” Hannah says. He seems to care about these people. Is that just a careful act? She reminds herself that he doesn't yet know what
she
knows: that the dead body in the cabin belonged to the son of his greatest rival, Archer Stevens. That is currency. Archer is a special mystery all his own and she doesn't want Einar's help untangling it. She decides to keep that information to herself. For now. (Of course all that is meaningless if he is the murderer, isn't it? Then he knows everything and she's the one behind the eight ball.)

“Yes. Hannah is right. We need to make haste.
Sá vinnur sitt mál, sem þráastur er.
An Icelandic saying. We must persevere and be stubborn enough to win. And in this case, winning means surviving.”

Hannah nods. “I'm going to the Cove.”

“It is dangerous there.”

“The boat is there. EpiPens, too.”

Einar nods. “Give me a few moments to gather my bearings and I will put on the suit and see what I can see inspecting the power supply and the satellite dish.”

Hannah narrows her eyes. “You came here through the jungle. But you never got bit. How? You must have come in through the exit. The ants are out there. Hell, they're in
here
now. How did you escape them?”

A look of surprise and bewilderment crosses his face. “I honestly don't know. They seemed to ignore me. Perhaps I was moving too quickly.”

“No,” Ajay says, pointing a finger to his chin. “It is the salt water. The ants' receptors will not as easily be able to detect the
Candida
on our skin—the salt water masks it. Temporarily, at least.”

Our skin is the fertile soil, and
Candida
is the crop. The ants are just coming to harvest.

“Hannah,” Einar says, “That speaks to how you might make your way to the Cove: swim it. Not the lagoon, but the sea. It will be tiring, but perhaps effective.”

“I'll do that. Thanks. Good luck here.”

“Good luck to you,” he says, taking her hand. “There is another Icelandic saying, Hannah.
Ég skal sýna þér í tvo heimana.
” Ray flinches at that, though she doesn't know why. Einar ignores it and explains: “It means we must survive by whatever means we can, however we must. Survival is king.”

That she can agree with.

She gets a small pack ready. A few protein bars, a flashlight, a small serrated folding knife they had in the lab to cut honeycomb. Plus a little plastic honey bear filled up with Fluon. Before she goes, she takes her sneakers off and paints them with Fluon.

Barry tells her to take the extinguisher, but she declines. They need it more than she does, and she doesn't know how well it'll do in the ocean anyway.

On the way out, Ray catches her and in a low voice says, “Be careful out there. Things just don't feel right.”

No kidding,
she thinks. Nothing feels right. And no one feels safe—not to trust, not to stay alive. “Okay, Ray. Thanks.”

“Stay frosty. Stay safe.”

“I think we're well past the point of safe.”