Invasive (33 page)

“That's pretty fuckin' appropriate,” Ray grouses, then shifts uncomfortably between the other two in the back.

“Shush,” Hannah says to him. Now isn't the time. She can't have anything derail their current mission: Get to the north end of the island and find Will. And, hopefully, find the rest of the ant colonies, too.

Moana, still staring at them from the front, narrows her eyes. “You three better fix dis. People are dead. Ants took over island like on that zombie show on the TV, except these aren't zombies, they're ants. They bite you and you go down, boom. Then they eat your face, your hands, your balls. Some people go to shelters, but some of the shelters, they get overrun. The hotels got the rich people protecting them. The shelters got closed off by the
pakalolo
dealers. Out here it's fend for yourself. For a while we had helicopters coming in and bringing us medical supplies and food, but now they stopped, too. People startin' to whisper. Saying they gonna drop a bomb on us. Big boom.” She sniffs. “First I thought, maybe these ants, they give us back our island from the
haoles
. But they come at us, too. We just
ono grinds
for the little anties. We too tasty to resist.” Then, with a smile, “They still bettah than you tourists.”

Her laugh is a mad bellow.

They drive through a dead island. Past houses sealed up with plastic and boards in such a way that Hannah can't tell if they're serving as shelters or as tombs. Cars sit on the side of the road. Some
crashed into trees, guardrails, poles. Others abandoned. Others still occupied, their owners dead at the wheel, red faces glistening. Pono eases the car past and rattles the can of Raid as a demonstration. “Don't worry, they won't get in here.”

Pono rambles as they drive. Hannah lies back and closes her eyes for a little while, not to sleep, but just to try to find her center. Some calm in the fury of the storm raging inside her. Pono goes on, mostly just telling stories about when he was a kid, like that time he got bit by a little fish but told everyone it was a shark, or the time he lost his hat down in some ocean geyser called Spouting Horn. But as she listens to him talk, she hears the fear in his voice. He's worried for his family. He says they're safe somewhere—on a boat—but she can tell he doesn't believe it. Nor should he. Because none of them are safe. But a boat is better than on land, and she tells him so.

Eventually she asks for the GPS tracker again to see if she can try another call to Hollis, but the battery is dead.

The road turns north through Koloa. She sees a lone building under a cone of light and says, “Is that a general store up ahead?”

“Koloa Town Store,” Pono says. “Yeah, sure. We shouldn't stop.”

“Would they have pharmacy items? Or grocery?” She thinks, it'd be great to have some kind of defense against the ants. Coconut oil would provide the oleic acid. And if she could find antifungal spray . . .

Something would be better than nothing.

“Sure. Maybe. Some over-the-counter stuff. Definitely some food stuff.”

“I'd like to stop.”

“Bad idea,” Ray says. “We keep going.”

“We need some kind of defense,” she says. She tells them about the oleic acid and fungal spray combo. Ajay thought that's what Will was using to hold off the ants. “And they might have food. I know I'm hungry.”

Einar says, “I'll agree. We can all go.”

“I'll do it alone,” she says. “I don't want to put anyone at risk.”

“I'll stop just outside,” Pono says. “Then I drive the loop a couple times. We'll catch you on one of the go-arounds, okay?”

She nods. He eases the car up outside.

Hannah pops the door and exits.

The store is humid and dimly lit. The front half is full of kitschy Hawaii tourist stuff: grass skirts and coconut shell bras, tiki mugs and shot glasses.

She takes her first step toward the back of the store, then listens. A faint sound rises. Like Rice Krispies crackling in fresh milk.

Hannah peers around the one shelf toward the counter. A corpse is slumped backward in a chair. The face is a dark, clotted mask—flies twitch, flitting from cheek to cheek, from nose hole to forehead. The eyes are a bulging, bold white. Teeth, too. The head shifts slightly back and forth.

The smell hits her nose: the pungent, all-too-familiar whiff. This is a nest. She has to move quickly. What takes priority? Food or defense? Her stomach has its answer as it growls, and on the list of survival priorities, eating is definitely top of the list. But if there are ants in here . . .

On the floor sit a few small plastic shopping baskets. Hannah scoops up one and bolts toward the back of the store. There's only one pharmacy aisle, and for a moment she fears she won't be able to find what she's looking for. But her bet pays off. This is a hot, wet island. If ever there's a place you're going to get athlete's foot, it's here. Which means there are two cans of Tinactin antifungal spray for sale. She grabs them both. Then she hurries around to the two grocery aisles and starts using her forearm to swipe food into the basket. Granola bars, bags of chips, chocolate. It's just junk calories, but it'll do the trick, and her stomach tightens like a coiling snake to remind her how hungry she is. Then she spies a jar of coconut oil,
and she tosses that in, too. Now if she can just find an empty spray bottle, she can make her own mix of the stuff.

She turns to head back to the front—

A black line of ants half a foot wide has crossed in front of the door. Their little antennae have caught her scent. They know she's here. They just don't know where yet.

The moment they detect her is as clear as a tolling bell. The river suddenly breaks in the middle—and both halves begin streaming toward her.

There has to be a back door.
Has to be.
Hannah curses herself for not looking when she was there, but now she has no choice. She turns tail, bolts toward the back of the store. There's a small hallway. An office, a restroom and—

EXIT
.

She slams up against it, twists the knob. It won't open. She checks the knob, looks for a dead bolt . . . but nothing. The door opens a little when she pushes on it, though. Something's blocking it from the other side.

She looks for a window. Another door. Any way out.

But this is the only one.

The river of ants has broken apart. They're streaming up the walls, across the ceiling, and over the floor. The larger ants shepherding the smaller ones, or maybe protecting them. Their jaws lift in the air, tilting toward her like some kind of mad, insectile salute—like a promise, like a
threat
.

They're ten feet away now.

Nine.

Eight.

With her shoulder, Hannah rams the door again and again. It budges a little more—she can now see a dark line through the lower half of the door crack: the shape of whatever is blocking her egress.

Seven feet, six feet . . .

Hannah quickly reaches into the basket, digging through
the food until she finds one of the cans of Tinactin. It's not mixed with the oil, but it's not like she has the time for that. She wrenches the cap off, then begins to spray herself down. A cloud of acrid chemical stink fills the air in front of her. She suppresses her urge to cough even as her eyes water. Up and down her body she sprays—

Five feet. Four.
Three.

She winces her eyes shut and blasts herself in the face and all over her hair. All the muscles in her body tense up. She knows what's coming. The tickle of their little feet. The clamping pinch of their jaws. The needle-stick of their stingers.

But that never comes. The ants gather only inches away from her feet. They have stopped in their tracks. Jaws in the air. Antennae twitching and turning like satellite dishes that have lost their signal.

It worked. The spray
worked
. She's not sure if it's because the chemical scent is too overpowering or if it has already begun to undercut whatever
Candida
she has growing on her body. Either way, the mob of ants begins to break up. They recede like a tide, going back into the store.

When the ants are truly gone, she stabs out at the door with a hard kick, targeting the area around the hinges. The door won't bust outward, so that means the whole damn thing has to come off.

The wood is weak. The hinges are old. It takes only a few kicks before the lower hinge squeaks and hangs loose, and Hannah can get her hands in the gap and wrench it off. She leans it up against the wall.

There, behind the store, is a car. An old Ford Escort. Its hood is pressed right up against the door—but it didn't break the wall, so whoever hit it wasn't going fast. She sees the shape of a body slumped over the steering wheel. Skull hairless, stripped down to meat and bone.

Hannah grabs her bounty from the store and climbs up over the hood and drops down the other side of it. As she does, she sees a few
ants wandering on the inside of the windshield glass. They don't see her; she pretends not to see them.

She heads back to the road to wait for the Lincoln. The can of antifungal meds did the trick, so she needs to get that information to Hollis. (
If he's still alive,
she thinks.) But first, they will go to Will's house on the North Shore. That is priority one. He designed these ants. He knows how to stop them. He
must
.

Moments pass. She thinks she hears an engine, but then—nothing. Impatience gnaws at her like a rat chewing bone. A few flies swarm dead birds nearby—chickens with neither flesh nor feather.

Across the road, she spies something. A dark heap. Another body, she realizes. Human. All black clothing. She thinks,
Are those fatigues?
A military man, maybe. Navy or Army. But wouldn't they be wearing hazmat suits? Or at least be in the traditional camo?

Another ten seconds, twenty, thirty, and she thinks,
Hell with it,
then crosses the road.

Sure enough, it's a dead body in head-to-toe fatigues. A black balaclava sits pulled down over his face, too—though what little of his face she can see is skinless, glistening red like raw beef. At his hip hangs a holster. Hannah reaches down, frees the pistol that nests there. Looks like a black HK45 Tactical.

The holster has a smaller side sleeve, likely for a suppressor. It's empty.

The guy's not military. He's PMC: a private military contractor.

And just who sits on the board of a PMC corporation? Archer Stevens. Was this dead man one of the Blackhearts? That could mean Archer is involved.

Which would mean . . . Einar isn't.

Hannah takes the pistol and tucks it in the back of her pants, then pulls her shirt down over it just as a pair of headlights shortens the dark.
Better safe than sorry,
she thinks. Mom always said that when the shit hits the fan, your biggest enemy won't be the thing that caused the cataclysm—it'll be all the people around you.
People
are what will really end this world,
she used to say. Cynical, but there it is.

She waves her hands, and as she jogs over, the Lincoln slows for her.

When she gets in, she doesn't tell them about the gun. An echo from her mother, herself something of a gun collector:

Never tell them you're packing heat
,
Hannah.

H
annah may not tell them about the gun, but she certainly tells them about the body. If only to see what their reaction is. Does it mean anything to them? When she describes it, Einar and Ray share a look.

“What is it?” she asks.

“Sounds like a PMC,” Ray says.

“I believe that's accurate,” she says.

“A mercenary?” Einar asks. “Why would a mercenary have any interest in an island overtaken by a plague of ants?”

“I don't know,” she says. And she means it. She neglects to mention, however, that it may very well connect to Archer Stevens.

“It certainly complicates the puzzle.” Einar leans forward. “Now is perhaps the time to mention that my competitor Archer Stevens sat on the board for a private military group. The Blackhearts.”

Sat
on the board.

Past tense. A slipup? Accidental? Intentional? Simple language-barrier issue? She bites her tongue. But suspicion creeps in at the margins. Hannah wants to believe that Einar is telling them this because it's relevant. But she also knows that interrogators use techniques to elicit confessions—sometimes false admissions of guilt—from criminals by leading them into information, stringing them along, and pushing them into conclusions.

“Stevens is a very rich man,” Ray says. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “The fuck's that mean for Will, though? You think he and Ajay were in on it? Like, bought and sold?”

“With enough money, anything is possible,” Einar says.

Hannah frowns. “Will didn't seem the type, though. This is different for him. Not about money. It's about a message. The same way a serial killer kills to complete a moral or emotional mission.”

“Perhaps he is simply an excellent liar,” Einar offers. “Consider how well he fooled us in the first place. He is a chess player. It is possible he anticipated the need for that lie and orchestrated a narrative that would fit your view from within the FBI: a consultant familiar with criminal profiling.”

Though, Hannah thinks, that's not really her specialty. Hers is futurism—how the future could spell humanity's end. Will knew that. So if he did tailor his message for her—if he did craft a special deception—then would this be it? His language did speak to her life, her upbringing, her fears . . .

“One thing is certain,” Hannah says. “We need to find Will Galassi.”

Moana looks back. “Only thing I know for sure is I can't wait to have you jabberjaws out the back of my bruddah's car.”

The drive to the North Shore of Kauai takes them up the eastern coast—past abandoned cars and bodies in the road, past a blocky elementary school with bedsheets painted with
HELP US
hanging out the windows, past the smoking wreck of a Navy UH-1 Huey helicopter. In the distance, another fire burns. They hear occasional screams and gunfire. Windows are broken or boarded up. Doors are shattered off their hinges or covered over. Sometimes as they drive past, Hannah sees shadows flitting about. Survivors? Military contractors? Or the more likely answer: just tricks of the eye.

Pono stays quiet as he weaves around dead cars. They round the northeastern bend of the island. Through Kapaa, Anahola, Kilauea. Here, it's quieter. The growth is thicker. More trees. More shadow. They drive past dark rocks and crashing surf. The car eases under canopies of rain forest trees and drooping palms. Eventually Einar
tells them to take a turn down a narrow, ill-paved road. Then he signals toward a rutted driveway.

“This is Will's home,” he says.

It's a little bungalow the color of coral. A set of rickety steps off the driveway leads to a dark wooden porch at the front of the house. The property is surrounded by dark, swaying trees.

A warm glow of light shines from inside. Hannah sees someone move past one of the front windows—it's fast, and then gone. “Someone's here,” she says. She hands out the Tinactin. They all hose themselves down with the stuff.

Einar tells Pono, “Keep the engine running, please, Pono.” He, Ray, and Hannah step out of the car. The air is cool and damp. The trees and bushes hiss and whisper in the breeze. From inside the house, Hannah hears the crackle of static and an interrupted radio broadcast swallowed beneath it. At her back, the gun feels heavy with purpose.

Ray takes the lead without asking. He steps up to the screened-in porch, the wooden boards groaning under his weight. He looks toward a small gardening shovel leaning up against the latticework underside, then leans back and picks it up before heading toward the screen door.

Hannah can't see any ants. But a smell tickles her nose and jogs the memory of being down in Special Projects back on the atoll. It's the smell of whatever concoction Will uses to keep the ants at bay.

Ray gives her and Einar a look. Einar nods.

The screen door opens with an obnoxious creak. Every inch of Hannah's body tenses, waiting for an attack to come: a gunshot, a scream, a knife, a rain of ants. But through the light of the door Hannah sees Ray look to his right, then his left, then back to his right.

He's looking at somebody. “Who are you?” she hears him ask.

Inside, a woman sits at a small breakfast nook table. She idly bats a Kleenex box back and forth. A cairn of used tissues is built off to the side. She regards the sudden trespassers with raw, red eyes.

An emergency radio crackles and hisses:
—ation—land—ency—ants—ilitary—

The woman's dark hair is pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. She's pretty, Hannah notes. She scans the corners. The windows. The doors. Ahead is a pair of double glass doors going out to what must be the backyard. Beyond them, a corner leading to a hallway. Behind them is a well-worn kitchen, and it's wide open enough to show that nobody is hiding in there.

“You're him,” the woman says to Einar.

“I am,” he says in a way that is somehow both entirely devoid of ego and yet entirely given over to the inevitability of that question. Hannah wonders what that must be like: to be a person people know, to be someone about whom they have strong opinions.

“Will isn't here,” the woman says, then blows her nose.

“Where is the little fucker?” Ray asks.

Hannah pulls up a chair next to the woman. “I'm Hannah Stander. I'm a consultant for the FBI. What's your name?”

“Rachel. Rachel Kelley.”

“Rachel, do you know what's going on?”

New tears form at the corners of her eyes.

Hannah says, “Will is involved in something. We don't know what yet, but we do know that what's going on here, on Kauai, is in part his responsibility. But maybe it's not all his responsibility. Can you help us understand? Is there anything you can give us? Any information at all?”

“I don't know much,” the woman says. Her words are sticky with spit. Her voice has gone nasal behind her stuffed-up nose. Hannah wonders if she knew all along who or what Will was. Does she even know now, or is she only just glimpsing it? As if reading Hannah's thoughts, Rachel gives a bitter, mirthless laugh. “Except I know the wedding's off.”

Hannah forces a smile as she takes Rachel's hand. She gives Ray a look. Ray nods and disappears into the house. Einar stays rooted behind Rachel.

“Rachel, do you know where Will is?”

Rachel hesitates, and in that moment Hannah knows she does
.

“Rachel, if Will is involved, we need to know as much as you can tell us. If you want him safe, then this is how that happens. He may be in possession of the Myrmidon ant colonies—ants we both know are very dangerous. We're not out on a witch hunt. We're here to understand the situation and find Will
and
bring him home. But that puts it all on you. That's a heavy weight on your shoulders, I know. It doesn't change the fact that if you want to save Will—if you
love
him—then you need to tell us where he's gone so we can go after him.”

Rachel swallows and blinks back tears. She turns her head away, and Hannah is sure in that moment that she lost the chance, that the woman will only dig in deeper. But then she sighs and it all comes out: “He packed up some gear. Hiking gear. He took his laptop. He told me he'd be back someday and I told him not to bother and that seemed to hurt him, like I really
hurt
him, you know? Then he left. He just took off.”

Hiking gear,
Hannah thinks. He's trying to hike the interior of Kauai, or he's headed to the western shore of the island. Which means he's hiking the Na Pali coast, taking the popular—and dangerous—Kalalau Trail. “Does he know Na Pali well?”

Rachel nods. “He hikes it at least once a year.”

“Do you know hiking, too? The gear?”

“Yeah. Yes. A little.”

“Did he take a water filter with him?”

“I think so.”

“Climbing gear?”

“No. I think that's still in the shed. You can check . . .”

He's hiking Na Pali. He's got to be. People can disappear up there. It's eleven miles of trail, but that's assuming he stays on the trail and
doesn't go beyond it. If he was hiking the interior, he'd be climbing. And going to the wild margins of the island makes sense. Even if he's protected from his own monsters for a time, going to where few people are means the ants will have little reason to be there.

Einar asks, “He has all his research with him, doesn't he?”

A stiff, reserved nod from Rachel. Tears now creeping down her cheeks.

“Did he use something on you?” Hannah asks. “A spray. I don't see the ants here, but surely you know what's happening on the island.”

“I do.” Those two words are a struggle for Rachel. Like she feels complicit. Why wouldn't she? She's probably asking herself right now:
How did I not see this? How did I not know I was about to marry a madman?

“And did he? Spray you with something?”

“Mm-hmm. It's over there.” She gestures toward the kitchen. Sitting on the counter, under a dangling rack of pots and pans, is a small non-aerosol spray bottle. “I don't know what it is, but he said they wouldn't come for me if I used it. Twice a day to be sure . . .”

And then it's over. She crumbles like a clod of dry sand held in the hand. Hair forming a mop around her as she melts into her folded arms. Shoulders hitching with every sob.

Hannah gets up, goes to the small spray bottle. What's inside sloshes around, and bubbles of oil separate. She shakes it, emulsifying it, then gives it a little spray onto the palm of her hand. The smell is familiar. It's the same mix of oleic acid and antifungal. Will's special brew. “Does the phone work?” she asks Rachel, spying a portable on the wall. “Rachel, answer me, please.”

“No,” the other woman bleats from inside the cavern of her arms. “It's dead.”

“What about a cell?”

Another bleat: “Will took it.”

“We're going to have to go after him,” Hannah says to Einar. “If he has the colonies, then we need to get them back.”

“Even if he doesn't, he has information. He knows more about these ants than anyone. Do you agree that he's hiking the coast?”

“I agree. You hike?”

He smiles. “I do.”

Ray appears around the corner. “No sign of him. No sign of a laptop, either, but there's a desktop in there he tore apart—boards broken, hard drives ripped out. And a file box that's open but empty. Where's the little slug gone?”

“He's hiking the coast,” Hannah says. “Kalalau Trail, I'd guess. You hike?”

“Sure,” Ray says, but the way he says it, she can tell it's just bravado.

“Ray, just stay here with Rachel. Keep searching the house.”

He throws up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, I've hiked. I can
hike
.” Now he's just trying to talk himself into it, Hannah thinks. He takes one step forward—

Kssh.

Behind him, a sharp crack runs up the glass of the patio door like a bolt of lightning frozen in place. Ray stands there for a second, his lips forming soundless words. Then he falls. Behind him, the glass is punctured by a single hole, spreading into jagged cracks.