Morte (12 page)

With this loyalty as a foundation, the Colony set up a quorum of elders for every species, each of which sent a representative to the Council. The first order of business was to establish a Bureau to oversee the dirty work of rebuilding: construction contracts, relocation assistance, adoption services for orphans, local policing, education, medicine. Weary from years of conflict, the animals embraced these mundane tasks. Veterans were returning home, and construction workers were arriving by the
busload. Things moved again. Streets opened up. There was even talk about reestablishing cell phone connections once the network of towers was rebuilt.

Ignoring all these developments, Culdesac asked the Red Sphinx to stay together. The enemy was still watching them, he warned, and no one should relax simply because some politicians declared the war to be technically over. “The new order must be defended,” he said, sounding like some human propaganda broadcast. “Somebody has to protect these trash-pickers and schoolteachers.”

When a new settlement known as Wellbeing opened in the part of the country where he had grown up, Mort(e) quietly left the Red Sphinx. It was his right. He was the first one to do so while still living. Mort(e) had saved the lives of the others so many times that they dared not criticize him. But Culdesac could not hide his disappointment. He said he would never forgive Mort(e).

Mort(e)’s decision to quit came with another price. He relinquished many of the benefits of being a war hero and would have to go to the resettlement camps and wait with all the civilians. Still, he had options. Culdesac, on the other hand, had no home to which he could return. His entire life was combat. The Change had made him smarter, but the struggle would never end.

Living in the camps took some adjusting for Mort(e). The food was bland and repetitive, and he had to sleep in a massive auditorium with rows of pallets on the floor. He grew accustomed to the routine. After so many exhausting missions, his strength was returning, his mind clearing at last. And because he was a veteran, the administrators gave him prime real estate by one of the windows. They even let him browse the logbooks, though he could not find records for anyone named Sheba.

Mort(e) was snoozing in the dusty light, his thoughts
dissipating among the echoing voices in the room, when the captain paid him a visit. Culdesac nudged him with his foot. Mort(e) rose to give a salute.

Culdesac put up his great paw to stop him. “Don’t bother.”

In his typical blunt fashion, the captain went through the list of those who had died on the latest mission, a raid on a fortified villa in the mountains. He kept his hands at his sides, his ears twitching at the sound of crying children. This camp, filled with weak, ungrateful civilians, insulted everything he stood for, everything he was. He needed the war. Peace, for him, was the equivalent of death.

“You’re going to get lazy and fat again with all these other pets, aren’t you?” Culdesac asked. “You’re going to take this new order for granted.”

“There is no new order,” Mort(e) said.

Their ongoing argument had grown more heated in recent years without Tiberius to act as mediator. The newer members of the Red Sphinx, unfamiliar with the long relationship between the two, would sometimes fear for Mort(e)’s life when he disagreed with the captain. For his part, Culdesac seemed to enjoy their debates. It was exercise for him, the same way a battle was something to prepare for and learn from.

“Has it ever crossed your choker mind,” he asked now, “that the Colony has bigger plans for you?”

“I’ve served the Colony,” Mort(e) replied. “The war is over. They can’t possibly have any other plans for me.”

“You were supposed to represent the best of the Change.”

Mort(e) burst into mocking laughter. “If that’s true, then we’re all choked,” he said. “What are you getting at? What is Her Highness telling you these days?”

Culdesac waved him off. “Never mind,” he said. “It just wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“We’re going to become like the humans,” Mort(e) said, as he always did. “I don’t care about this ‘aim true’ crap. Your Queen is wrong about us.”

Culdesac said that if Mort(e)’s predictions ever came to pass, then Mort(e) could punch him in the face. “And I won’t even kill you for it.”

“Okay,” Mort(e) said, “Then the next time we meet, you know what I’m going to do.” He balled his mangled hand into a knobby fist.

“Then maybe this should be the last time we meet.”

Somewhere in the large auditorium, two pups fought over a stuffed animal until an adult told them to stop.

“You’re going to try to find her again, aren’t you?” Culdesac said. “After all you’ve learned. After all I’ve taught you. You still think you’re going to see her again.”

Mort(e) considered this for a moment, letting out a deep sigh.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

Everyone gathered at the mouth of the temple. Animals of every genus and species, waiting for the latest appearance of the remaining humans on the planet, the last holdouts of the great war. This was the era of the final humiliation of humanity, when the crimes of that greedy species would be punished at last. The humans had prayed to their gods, they’d maintained faith in their technology and their governments, but nothing would save them now.

The Colony held a Purge every few months in Wellbeing. The people loved it. They loved jeering at the human prisoners as the Alphas frog-marched them from the depths of the anthill. No other event encapsulated both the anger and the euphoria of the animals’ new freedom. No other event brought things full circle. Here, the humans were the exotic ones, the playthings, the ones who could be discarded. In the days leading up to a Purge, people gossiped about who they expected to see—high-ranking generals, politicians, young children (for the humans were still breeding). People wondered—sometimes aloud, but mostly to themselves—if they would see their former masters. And when the prisoners were put on display, the spectators placed bets on who would cry first, who would scream first, who would pray first, who
would fight back first, who would beg first, and who would say nothing at all and accept the fate that had arrived at last. The pomp reminded the citizens of what they had won, and how easily that victory could be taken away.

Mort(e), however, was tired of it. It had been over a year since he had walked out on the Red Sphinx, and a lifetime since the Martinis had driven away in their silver SUV. Unless this Purge actually produced his former masters or provided some clue about Sheba, then it was another waste of however much time he had left on this earth.

Things were supposed to be normal now, but Mort(e) knew that it would take another generation for everyone to get over what had happened. It would require the people of his time to die off, and the memories of their former lives to die with them.

The animals waited in the evening sun, into the dusk, and finally in the dark. The temple—a massive anthill the size of a pyramid—changed color from tan in the daytime, to brown as the sun descended, and finally to gray under the stars. At last, the mouth of the structure opened, powered by some biomechanism that only the ants could master. The aperture began as a hole the size of a fist and continued to widen like an iris. The anthill became like a basket placed atop a fluorescent lamp, with spears of light shooting high into the night sky.

Crouching on all fours, the animals got into position.

Alpha soldiers emerged from the entrance, standing upright. Their abdomens swayed from side to side with each step. Antennae waved like the arms of a marionette doll. Segmented eyes gazed at everything and nothing at once. Mouths resembled the parts of a machine, all gears and hinges and sharp edges. Coarse hairs sprouted from their exoskeletons. And crawling about their bodies were thousands of smaller ants, making it seem as though their skin somehow moved. Humans had once
suffered through nightmares about creatures such as this. And here they were.

The crowd split down the middle to make room for them. Mort(e) waited several rows away, between two dogs who did not acknowledge him, and behind a pair of cats who arrived together but said nothing to each other. The dogs wore the orange vests of sanitation workers, and Mort(e) detected a faint odor of death masked by some kind of musky cologne that the humans had left behind. Mort(e) imagined that these workers had removed another stash of corpses—probably another bomb shelter with a desiccated human family inside. He noticed a pamphlet sticking out of one of the cat’s pockets.
EMSAH SYNDROME
, it read.
BE ALERT FOR THE SIGNS
. The disease gave these workers a sense of purpose as they did their part to reestablish civilization. If Tiberius had been there, he would have quizzed them on EMSAH trivia and scolded them for each question they got wrong.
You mean to tell me you don’t know the incubation period?

As he did whenever he was in a public place these days, Mort(e) kept an eye out for Sheba. If he did it long enough, everyone resembled her until it seemed as though the entire crowd was mocking him. There was Sheba cradling a pup in her lap. There was Sheba removing a miner’s cap and inspecting the little light for the next day’s work. There was Sheba holding a pair of binoculars, awaiting a glimpse of the Alpha warriors and their human captives. Then, as always, Mort(e)’s eyes readjusted to reality, and his mind accepted that she was nowhere to be found.

Before Mort(e) could become completely lost in his thoughts, the first of the human prisoners appeared. The Purge was beginning. Everyone tensed up, craning necks, straightening spines and tails. Mort(e) was surprised to see so many prisoners. Most were American soldiers, still clad in their pixelated camouflage,
faces muddied. There were always stories of humans hiding out in caves and sewers, using their awful machines of war to hold on to life for one more day. Mort(e) suspected that the Colony itself was the source of these rumors, which did such a wonderful job of keeping the animals on their guard.

One of the women prisoners carried a sleeping baby against her shoulder. This also surprised Mort(e), for it was common knowledge that the Alphas liked to eat human children.

While the soldiers had been grim, trying to ignore the sea of animals that spread out before them, the civilian prisoners whimpered. Mort(e) caught sight of one of them, a woman of about fifty. She had white hair and was still chubby despite years of conflict. A younger woman shushed her.

A phalanx of Alphas guarded the rear. The aperture in the temple closed behind them. Then a noise rumbled from the bowels of the anthill like a foghorn.

At the signal, the animals knew what to do.

All at once, they rose on their hind legs. The prisoners, including the most hardened among them, could not keep from being startled at the sight of it. The symbolism of the ritual was clear: the age of the humans was over, and all their attempts to extend life through science and cheat death through religion had failed.

All together, the animals lifted their arms and waved at the prisoners. Mort(e)’s hand was smaller than some of the others’, his fingers stubby but functional. He could still wave.

A scream rang out. It was a soldier, sobbing uncontrollably. Another soldier put his arm around the man. Then he faced the animals and spit. Soon almost all the humans were screaming. The animals cried out in response. It began as random taunts before coalescing into a sustained chant:

“Purge!” they shouted. “Purge! Purge! Purge!”

The crowd swelled around the prisoners, moving with them toward the ship docked at the river. The vessel resembled a half-submerged submarine made of a brownish organic material, like a combination of bamboo and mud. There were no windows on the hull, only a doorway on the side. A retractable gangplank extended through it, holding the corralled prisoners. From there, the humans would be ferried to the Island, the nameless place where the nameless war was won, and where the Queen kept her royal court. The Colony’s official propaganda stated that Miriam and her staff would use the prisoners in experiments intended to find a cure for EMSAH. But Mort(e) imagined that at least some of the humans would become zoo exhibits. Perhaps they would be forced to breed so that their offspring would live through the same horror, producing generations of slaves for all eternity. It would be no different from what the humans had done to the animals, Culdesac had always said.