Morte (6 page)

The Colony began to learn at an accelerated rate. Meanwhile, the Queen bred a caste of medical engineers who kept her alive, allowing her to grow and molt, soon making her one of the oldest and largest creatures on the planet. In less than a century after the fire, the ants deciphered the origin of human speech—sound waves traveling from evolved organs in the throat—and in another two hundred years they could read several human languages. Unable to truly see the text on a stolen fragment of
manuscript, the Queen bred a subspecies with olfactory sensors on their feet. These “interpreters” would march around the written words, tracing the ink. After years of study, the Queen found human language to be a primitive and self-defeating form of communication, light-years behind the instantaneous clarity and subtle nuance of her chemicals. Human speech could mean everything and nothing at once. How could a species procreate, build, innovate, and survive with such an appallingly inadequate system, she wondered. It was the study of language that made the Queen realize how easy it would be to turn the humans against themselves.
Homo sapiens
had a weakness for their language, a sort of gullibility. Whereas knowledge was stored with the Queen, ensuring almost complete infallibility from the moment a pair of antennae came into contact, humans would have to bicker over translations, authorship, historical context, symbolism, and meaning. They had to rely on the faulty memory of storytellers, the biased interpretations of scribes, and the whims of inefficient bureaucrats in order to pass down their collected knowledge. In a way, she was disappointed. She had hoped that somehow the humans would surprise her and show a capacity that she had yet to discover, something that would make them worthy adversaries. But they were merely talking monkeys, an unfortunate anomaly staining the elegance of the animal kingdom, and the entire world was worse off for it.

Along with her efforts to penetrate the
Homo sapiens
psyche, the Queen also ordered her daughters to breed new microbes and viruses, with varying degrees of success. The bubonic-infected flea, the most notorious example, was a masterpiece. Though the Queen ultimately concluded that a plague would never be a sufficient way of eliminating the human threat, she learned much from her manipulation of mammals. Indeed, handing the surface over to the aboveground creatures, whom
the humans had exploited for centuries, became an indispensable part of the Queen’s vision for the earth. When the time came, the animals would learn from the mistakes of the humans and become something greater. This would be her grand experiment, proving that the ants were the true deities of this planet. And maybe the animals would grow to have some of the qualities of the Misfit Queen: bravery for its own sake, sacrifice for the good of the species, greater awareness of their place in the universe, humility in the face of reality, a rejection of superstition, a fearless embrace of truth. Maybe, she thought. Regardless, the surfacers deserved to be unyoked from human domination and given a chance to be free.

When the anthills began erupting—thereby opening the first phase of the war—the humans viewed the event with amusement rather than urgency. There would be no Hymenoptera Unus to reorient them toward a new destiny. Instead, the humans responded piecemeal. They evacuated the infested villages, retreating again and again. They attempted the use of pesticides, all the while bickering among themselves about the environmental side effects. This concern seemed especially absurd to the Queen, given that their species had done more than any other to pollute the earth. When the pesticides failed, the human governments acted swiftly to quarantine the countries that were now overrun. Some humans were misguided enough to expect fences to repel the ants. In fact, the fences were meant to keep the fleeing refugees from entering the wealthier countries.

When the insects simply dug underneath the barriers, the humans used a line of fire to hold them back. The flaming borders were so long that they could be seen from space, glowing orange ribbons sending up columns of smoke. The humans congratulated themselves for their ingenuity and solidarity, and
resolved to retake the land as soon as possible.

Several weeks later, the Queen ordered the Alphas to attack.

At first, the Alphas were instructed to prey on children only. Images of the hideous beasts carrying off screaming students from schoolhouses appeared on television screens across the world. Soldiers deserted their posts and returned home to protect their families. No one could determine a rational explanation for what the ants were doing. Rather than organizing a counterattack, confused military leaders focused on building protective bunkers for themselves. Scientists argued over the cause of such behavior. Civilians turned on their political leaders. More than once, rioters overran military checkpoints to drag senators, governors, presidents, and dictators out of their mansions in order to hang them or worse. Predictably, religious leaders agreed that this atrocity was a punishment from the heavens. The Alphas were beasts from hell, rising from the humans’ worst nightmares for a final reckoning.

Those humans who stood and fought produced some of the most horrific battles the planet had ever seen. Whereas many species had evolved the ability to go into shock and die under severe trauma, humans were somehow able to rise above this trait and fight on, even with severed limbs and punctured arteries. But their rage was no match for the undying hatred of a queen who blamed them for the death of her mother. The sight of thousands of ten-foot-tall insects storming a fortification and tearing soldiers apart appeared over and over. It did not matter how good a human soldier’s aim was, or how many bombs he could lob, or how many air strikes he could request. There were always more ants on the way. And unlike the humans, the Alphas would not philosophize about the losses. There would be no hazing of new recruits, no fatalistic bets on who would go first, no masturbating to photos of sweethearts back home. The
Alphas were as merciless and determined as the humans were doubtful and afraid.

It was in the midst of this madness that the Queen initiated the final phase of her takeover: the transformation of the surface animals. Under her direction, the Queen’s chief scientists developed a hormone derived from the chemicals they had used to breed the Alphas and keep Hymenoptera alive. The ants injected the potion into the water supply. The hormone had an effect on birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. Meanwhile, the ants constructed their nameless island in the Atlantic, along with hundreds of dirt towers on every continent, from which they broadcast signals that only the animals could hear, and that their rapidly growing brains would absorb. The frequency contained subliminal instructions on how to read, how to use tools, how to fight, how to organize societies—basic knowledge the animals would need.

The Change manifested itself on the first dose of the hormone. The animals first became self-aware, which often compelled them to flee their confines. They could now see the world beyond mere survival. For some, it was a horrifying moment. Many died leaping through windows or running through traffic. But for most, the experience was liberating, like the discovery of an elusive formula.

Within a day, the physical advancements were considerable. Their larynges extended, enabling the animals to form words. For those that did not have hooves or wings, the front paws grew into hands with opposable thumbs, and the hind legs were able to support the weight of the body. Once again, there were poor reactions among certain animals. Early in the experiment, for example, there was a pack of wolves so shocked by their new appendages that they bit them off. This behavior was an aberration, however, falling within the Queen’s projection of a
4–9 percent failure rate. Now the animals would do what the Queen’s loyal daughters could not. They would pull themselves up to greatness, as she had done.

Many animals understood immediately that they had been the slaves of cruel masters. A new front in the war opened, this time in homes, farms, laboratories, and zoos. Now the humans had to deal with their own pets, livestock, and test subjects standing before them, sometimes wielding weapons, staring with determined eyes. For many animals, this confrontation was the first time they would speak, forcing out the newly discovered words in an awkward stutter: “Indeed, yes, affirmative, I have come to kill you, sir.”

Soon the animals formed a rapidly growing army. Some former pets were conflicted about this, but the evidence against the humans was overwhelming. The humans, after all, ate the animals, stole their milk and eggs, encroached on their land, and carved up their bodies to make them more suitable pets. The Queen, on the other hand, offered a sense of purpose, and a future. Like the Alphas, the animals would know who had raised them up. They would know that there was a god on earth.

THE CEREMONY FOR
the Alphas was nearly complete. The workers gathered in a horseshoe shape facing the Queen, awaiting final approval before shuffling off to their destinies. There was only one daughter left to hold, one who was smaller than usual, yet active and squirming in the Queen’s arms. Whereas the new soldiers seemed emboldened by their duties, the Queen was exhausted from reliving the story. These few moments with her daughters were more than she had enjoyed with her own mother. She did not wish to think about it. The continued rumbling at the surface reminded her of what was at stake: centuries of planning, an entire world for the taking, an implacable
enemy pushed to the brink of extinction. She could not fail her people as her grandmother had.

The Queen’s antennae probed the young one. The story began again in her exhausted brain: the wars, the sandaled men, the oily smell of death. And then the Misfit Queen, the Abandoned One, reaching out to her through time. The Queen gave it all to this soldier, including her mother’s last moments alive, when Hymenoptera had to do her duty by murdering her.

Another
thud
against the ceiling. The workers waited for the Queen to hand over this last daughter. But Hymenoptera was not convinced that this latest brood understood the price that had to be paid. The price she had been paying for generations now.

And so she lifted her child to her jaws and crushed its skull, sending a crunching echo throughout the chamber. Everyone remained still. No one dared even to tilt a head or extend an antenna. Whatever pleasure this act brought the Queen was short-lived, replaced almost immediately by a heavy loneliness. She was the Colony. But she was not
of
the Colony. Perhaps her experiment would do more than produce mere talking creatures, and instead create beings worthy of her and the Misfit Queen. But until then, she was alone.

After she had swallowed what was left of her daughter, she made the workers stand at attention for a long time before finally dismissing them. When they were gone, she sat in the darkness and thought of her mother.

Two months. Two months he searched for her. Two months in and around the ruined city. Two months investigating every breeze, scanning every footprint, every discarded can of food, hoping to find her scent. But he couldn’t find a trace of her.

And how long had it been since he had eaten? Sebastian couldn’t say. A few days, most likely. He still had the energy to climb the stairs of a gutted skyscraper every morning, where he could get a 360-degree view of the skeletal city. The building was a steel-and-glass obelisk in the heart of downtown. Many of its windows had been blown out, leaving gaps in the reflective surface whenever the sun rose. It made the building resemble a mouth missing a few teeth. From these gaps, Sebastian would scope out the city, a lonely king surveying his worthless country.

He marked the days on a dry-erase board left behind by the humans who had worked there. Those people were like him, he supposed. They enjoyed a routine that they assumed would go on indefinitely, and then they were running for their lives. Maybe they deserved it. Maybe so did he.

Time passed by in vivid moments, with blank spaces in between: dressing the infected wound on his side. Then blackness. Trudging through the streets, inspecting abandoned cars,
on more than one occasion finding a human who had shot himself in the temple with one hand while clamping the steering wheel with the other. And then, more blackness. Breaking open a can of tuna, devouring its rancid contents. Plucking a fat cockroach from the debris and swallowing it whole. Then blackness once more. Merciful sleep and forgetfulness and oblivion.

All the while, Sebastian was learning. He could now tell the difference between the knowledge he acquired and the information that had somehow been bestowed upon him. By reading old newspapers and listening to a looped emergency broadcast on a windup radio, Sebastian confirmed what Daniel had told him about the war, the ants, and the animals. The broadcast concluded with an uninterrupted block of songs, all with lyrics about love, all happy and ignorant of the impending destruction. And then the loop would begin again, with a stern masculine voice warning of doom.