The Colony: A Novel (16 page)

“Maybe the army knows more than they care to share with the FBI.”

“Maybe.” Cameron gave Paul a stern look. “Now I’m stuck following two bug scientists around.”

“You think I have ties to ecoterrorists?”

The agent didn’t answer.

Paul shifted uncomfortably. “Are you going to issue me a weapon or what?”

CHAPTER 25

FIVE HOURS TILL DAWN.
A large moon cast a veil of light over the city, picking up thin wisps of smoke and speckled ash, white ash like snowflakes blowing in the breeze from small, scattered fires. Kendra emerged from the hatch onto the roof, where she had just been hours before, but now the cool air had a bitter stench of sulfur, and she could see a fleet of army aircraft spewing extinguishing foam from their pregnant bellies over Midtown. News choppers dashed over the city like mosquitoes at a campout. In the distance, sirens blared from emergency vehicles going nowhere and store alarms wailed through hundreds of broken windows.

Paul emerged from the hatch right behind her, dropping a Bug Out suit at her feet and stepping into his own. He glowed white like a space alien. Neither of them spoke.

Kendra climbed into the gauzy material, which seemed paper thin but felt heavy, like a bulletproof vest. The lining was metallic and stiff: new breathable steel from DuPont. It would be an uncomfortable field trip. Paul zipped her headpiece and checked the seal. It was immediately cramped and hot inside the suit and Kendra threw off the hood, wiping her brow.

Paul knelt on the blacktop, checking the contents of the knapsack. There were specimen bottles, flashlights, blowtorches and a medical bag, along with a pistol.

“A gun?” Kendra blinked hard.

“Not just a gun, a Beretta 92f.”

She balked.

“You heard the general. There are desperate people out here.” Paul closed one eye and aimed at the moon. “Cameron didn’t want to give it to me. Thought I couldn’t handle it.”

“He’s probably right.”

“All I needed was a quick lesson. He showed me how it works. This doohickey here is the magazine release.” Paul ejected the magazine and found it empty. He checked the chamber. “Jackass gave me one bullet.”

“And I’m sure you’re an expert marksman. All that training in…?”

“Eagle Scouts.” He replaced the magazine. “Although that might have been a flare gun.”

“Right.”

They headed for a small steel hut in the center of the roof. Once inside, they descended five flights down a narrow stairwell to the first floor. They were facing an office with the words
UNITED NATIONS BUREAU OF PUBLIC OF AFFAIRS
lettered in gold on frosted glass.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“Looks like the same as below. Emergency headquarters for the UN, FBI, CIA, all the biggies.”

They moved quickly down the turquoise carpeting. In every office, lights were on and televisions crackled with static or instructions from the Emergency Broadcast System. Phones were off their hooks. Spilled coffee cups and papers were strewn about the floor. These people had left in a hurry.

Paul heard voices and motioned to an office, where he and Kendra discovered a small television with cable coming in clear and they stopped to watch a few seconds of a news report. Camera shots of Manhattan revealed an endless stream of refugees packing the George Washington, Williamsburg and Brooklyn bridges, where helicopter spotlights guided them to another borough or the shores of New Jersey. SWAT teams from the Tri-state area were evacuating parts of the north in armored buses. South of Midtown was barraged by cruise ships, military boats and carriers along ports east and west.

A seasoned newscaster was talking over the footage: “I haven’t seen images like this since Hiroshima. Right now the Department of Defense is estimating up to one hundred and forty thousand fatalities and twice as many wounded … skin eaten away … blinded … just horrendous.”

He called it “the worst natural disaster in the history of mankind,” but Paul knew there was nothing natural about it.

“Come on,” he whispered.

At the end of the hall was a swinging door marked
CAFETERIA.
Paul and Kendra eyed each other before blowing their way inside. The eatery was a mess. Chairs were tipped over and tables were filled with plates of stale sandwiches, dried-up stew, noodles, rice and beans. Tidy cuts of decaying fish lined a sushi bar.

“Is it wrong to grab a snack before saving the world?” he asked.

“We’ll need our strength,” she replied.

Paul stretched the long leg of his white suit over the velvet rope to the buffet, where steel counters and glass shelves displayed sandwiches wrapped in cellophane, fruit and Jell-O, cereal boxes and cans of soda. They were both starving. Paul handed Kendra a turkey on whole wheat with mayo and bean sprouts.

She flung the sandwich over her shoulder and reached for a slice of chocolate cake. “Damned if sprouts are going to be my last meal.”

Paul unwrapped a roast beef on rye, taking great bites and closing his eyes with a satisfied grin, and then washed it down with a can of Coke. He watched Kendra alternate bites of cake with spoonfuls of fudge pudding, her mouth moving in ecstasy. He had forgotten how beautiful she was: the way her nose crinkled up and the little crescents that formed in her cheeks whenever she smiled or frowned.

“Still eat chocolate for breakfast?”

“Still eat bees?” she replied.

“That was a dare.” He winced at the memory.

“You didn’t have to do it.”

“I was trying to impress you.”

They smiled at each other. It was the same warm smile Paul remembered from years ago.

Kendra tossed the empty plates on the counter. “You ready?”

There was no putting it off anymore.

Paul crushed his soda can. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER 26

THERE WERE NO PEOPLE.
Anywhere.

Kendra gazed over First Avenue as though it were a movie set for a disaster film. Towering buildings loomed in darkness; the electric had shorted out from insects gnawing on the wires. Store windows had been shattered by looters and folks just out of their minds. A yellow cast from an overhead streetlight spilled across smashed hoods of tightly packed cars that all looked the same shade of rusty brown.

There was not a lot of sidewalk space. Kendra moved alongside Paul, snaking around vehicles and climbing on bumpers. Pieces of glass and debris lay scattered at their feet, along with photos, letters and mementos people had grabbed as they ran from their homes, irreplaceable items they couldn’t live without. It was the dolls and teddy bears that got to Kendra the most, and the clothes: pants, shirts and undergarments frantically torn from people being eaten alive.

Kendra had never witnessed so much stillness outside of the desert. At the same time, there was an uncanny feeling of movement all around her. Shadows fluttered in doorways. Even the concrete sidewalk appeared to quiver with life.

“I wonder if we’re going to be swarmed any second,” she whispered.

“Probably not,” Paul answered. “The ants are looking for people and its pretty slim pickings around here.”

The two scientists navigated the street, shrouded in white, except for their heads sticking out of the bug suits. They decided to forgo the hoods, which could be flipped and zipped in a matter of seconds if necessary. With added white shoe mitts and gloves they felt reasonably protected, but quite conspicuous. That worried Paul. There was definitely a risk that someone might steal their suits. He had one bullet in his gun, which would be useless against a mob of looters. Paul was an entomologist and to him, swarms of angry ants—even deadly mutant ants—were far more controllable than street thugs. Humans were unpredictable and irrational, driven by self-preservation, and there was no telling what stupid thing a person might do. He unconsciously reached for the pistol to check his response time, and then recoiled, aware of his own primitive instinct. He tried to focus on the task at hand.

They headed west and turned the corner of Fortieth Street, where the intersection had clogged up quickly and the street was mostly clear. After vaulting over cars and obstacles, it felt good to walk on pavement again, but it was dead quiet. Sirens fell silent as entire city blocks lost power. Not a soul was on the street. Manhattan was becoming a ghost town.

The quiet was broken by a police squadron bursting out of a diner. The men were armed with shotguns and wore menacing hoods like ninjas and sleek black uniforms with
NYPD
across the chest. They marched past Paul and Kendra, who halted their journey until the pounding of heavy boots grew faint. Then the two scientists continued toward Midtown, turning the corner onto a narrow lane where the buildings were old and expensive. There was a deceptive feeling of sanctuary among the flowering gardens and iron benches, old-fashioned gas lamps and cobblestone courtyards.

Then they saw the first body.

It lay curled on its knees and bloated in tightly stretched clothing with arms tucked beneath the chest and a bloody face pressed against the pavement.

Paul rolled the man over and found no pulse in his neck. His skin was bone white and when he lifted the man’s undershirt, the entire torso was marbled in dark purple blotches: pools of thickened blood with nowhere else to flow. A penlight showed much of the skin was in motion, peppered with black bumps of ants tunneling just under the first few layers.

Kendra rose to her feet unsteadily and stared down at the man’s pasty complexion. He stared back at her with protruding red eyes. It was a familiar memory that eased her into dark waters that she’d had no intention of wading in again. She began to shiver violently and cursed herself to keep it together, stepping back with arms wrapped tight around her waist.

“Kendra?” Paul was looking at her with acute worry.

She didn’t answer him.

He walked slowly toward her, trying to make eye contact, but she seemed to look right through him. Paul grasped her shoulder, gave a firm shake and Kendra’s eyes snapped into focus.

“Let’s keep going,” she said and turned on her heels, as if nothing had happened.

Then they noticed the others.

Lining the street were corpse after corpse: some curled up in the middle of the road, and others sprawled over steps and bloodstained walkways.

Kendra stood rapt in front of a dead woman in a white slip, kneeling with her hands clasped in prayer around a
NO PARKING
sign. Globs of dried blood hung from her eyes, nose and lips.

“I believe we’ve gone to hell,” Kendra barely whispered.

“No,” Paul replied. “Hell has come to us.”

Rounding the corner, a bearded old man walked in long strides, rising up and down like a carousel horse. His soiled raincoat flapped open with each step, revealing nothing but a jock strap. Over his shoulders, like a sack of rice, was a young naked woman, gray-skinned and obviously dead. Blond hair swung from side to side, out of sync with her limp arms. Bright red lipstick was her only trace of color.

In the beam of Paul’s penlight, the man grimaced and stopped abruptly, making the young woman’s head flop back. She had pale eyes and a gash along her forehead.

“You ought to pick up one of these bodies, mister,” the old man croaked. “If the ants come, you just throw it at them. Works better if they’re still alive, but the dead ones are all right.” He laughed as he passed them. “Trust me, it works.”

CHAPTER 27

DARK CLOUDS THICKENED LIKE
sludge across the moon, blocking out precious light. The New York skyline was black against black. Paul and Kendra could barely see where they were going, but followed the ghostly white glow of the sidewalks. Paul paused on Second Avenue and dropped the heavy backpack on the ground, rummaged blindly through the front pouch and pulled out a couple of military-grade flashlights.

Kendra turned hers on high beam and Paul set his on lantern mode, which illuminated the surrounding neighborhood in soft lavender. They walked in silence past high-rise office buildings, which soon gave way to older brick tenements and deserted fast food eateries, electronics and clothing stores.

Paul’s mind was still on Kendra’s vacant eyes, staring at the dead man.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

Kendra pretended she didn’t hear him. He was going there again, after she’d made it clear so many times that it was not a point of entry. She was rubbing the smooth, delicate spot on her wrist as if dabbing perfume. It wasn’t a conscious habit, but a reaction to the fluttery feeling of wings on her skin.
Eyelashes.
Butterfly kisses her mother gave her every night before bed. She still felt them, rather often. With that single image engraved in her mind, the haunting eyes of the dead man, Kendra rubbed her wrist on the kissing spot but it neither erased the fluttery feeling nor blocked out the memories that were so relentless.

They were in Argentina. Kendra was seven years old, lying in a field of high grass under the plentiful shade of floss silk trees, which grew in clusters: green leaves shaped like fingers on a hand and trunks covered in thorns. It was hot, muggy like the tropics, with the occasional screech of wild birds and howler monkeys.

Kendra could see the worksite from her perch on a small knoll. The fire ant mound must have reached over three feet high, because it came well past her father’s knee. He was an exceedingly tall man who reminded her of Abe Lincoln, with his narrow face and Amish-type beard. He had an overbearing presence, but was gentle and prone to clumsiness. Kendra took after her mother, who was blond and small-boned with light, playful eyes and even features. The two adults stood at the base of the mound in full gear, cutting a wedge out of the dirt and throwing the ants into a frenzy.

Kendra was occupied as usual in a tenacious search for rare butterflies, an obsession since the age of five, but every so often she looked back reassuringly at her parents. She caught sight of a Malachite, hardly rare, but not yet part of her collection, so she snapped the net over its wings and plowed across the field on sturdy legs to show off her find.