The Colony: A Novel (26 page)

She could feel the rigidness of the steel, blunt trauma on her bruised knees, and she stopped for a moment to rest. She rolled onto her back, lifted one hand and placed it against the cold ceiling, which felt incredibly dense, like pressing against the whole planet. I’m buried alive in a tomb, she thought. Her worst nightmare had come true.

Kendra flipped over quickly and forced her body to move, taking deep breaths, and tried to remember she was a scholar, a five-time champion rower and a damn good cross-country skier. She did what came naturally: started talking to herself.

“Girl, you spent two days lost in the desert. You dropped ten pounds walking twenty-six miles in blistering ninety-degree heat, and then froze the whole freaking night.… Don’t be such a goddamn baby.” The trek became easier as she focused her thoughts and stared at nothing but each passing LED light. “What about the Congo … who was first to reach the study site … by an entire day, no less … like a damn monkey you took to that jungle … left the others in the mud, is what happened.”

Before long, she had crawled about two hundred feet, and then she stopped, sniffing the air. A fetid odor wafted through the tunnel, both strange and familiar. Then the tunnel opened up wider, with a foot more head room and enough space to stretch out both her arms. Kendra clambered toward the scent and it became more distinct. She stopped short and the stench hit her face like a damp towel. Whatever the thing was, it was right in front of her. Her fingers reached out warily, as though about to touch a corpse. Instead, they brushed thin bars of cold steel and warm cedar shavings.

Rats.

Kendra poked her fingers into the cage and felt fur. Sharp teeth bit her pinky nail. She laughed a cry of relief and patted down the walls, finding what she expected: a seam in the metal. Her fingertips traced the line.

She pounded the door.

The burst of light was blinding, and she squinted at the white walls full of specimen boards, black counters strewn with paper. It was Paul’s lab. Exhaling a burst of joy to be out of the tomb, Kendra squirmed from the hole. She staggered to her feet, getting her bearings, and ran for the closet, where she had seen a stack of Bug Out suits. She threw open the door with a surge of adrenaline and relief, but the feeling lasted only a moment.

Kercha kercha kercha kercha kercha

Kendra jolted. Inside the closet, Siafu Moto covered the shelves and walls. They sprinkled like rain from ceiling vents, crawled over all the equipment and the four boxes of protective suits.

Kendra slammed the closet door shut, as clusters of ants spilled into the room. They crawled overhead across fluorescent bulbs, dropping down in clumps, and scurried over every surface. She leaped onto a desk, sending a laptop crashing to the floor in a shower of papers.

The ants rushed her, stingers raised high in unison as if they were soldiers drawing swords. Heat sliced through her body and Kendra slid off the desk and spun around, slamming into a long table. She dropped to the floor and crawled beneath it on hands and knees, heading to the back of the room toward the tunnel.

The lights went out. Jeremy had cut the power.

Kendra struggled to reach the tunnel before the ants. She felt her way to the wall and tumbled into the cramped space, shutting herself inside.

Her heart was beating like a piston and she had to stop a minute, wrapping her arms around her head. She was going to throw up.

No time for that. Keep going.
She slowly started to crawl.

The LED lights brightened.

“Thanks, Jeremy,” she whispered.

*   *   *

Jeremy Rudeau stared at the bunker main control system and switched off the last of the power. Immediately the buzzing stopped, as the electrical field disappeared. He listened to the quiet for a few moments, fairly certain the ants were headed back to the surface, preparing for their nightly raid. It seemed as if his plan had worked.

He left only one circuit running for the computer room and another one for the LED lights in the tunnel. The rest of the bunker would be dark. Jeremy crossed the room and put both hands around the heavy file cabinet. It made a piercing screech as it dragged across the floor. He opened the small door to the tunnel.

He looked inside and yelled, “Kendra!”

There was no answer. Relieved, he set off to meet her at the south end exit.

Jeremy stopped suddenly. The ant sound was low but distinct. He peered up at the ceiling, listening to the ants crawl through the vents; the sound became louder.

Not good.
He rushed to the door and peeked out. Ants were everywhere. He gazed around the room, his mind racing, but it was too late to think. Jeremy scrambled to the back of the lab as hordes of ants dropped down from the ceiling like paratroopers, blazing down the walls. They blanketed the door to the tunnel, not that he would even fit inside. The sound of the ants pierced his brain as thousands of insects filled the room. Jeremy vaulted over an enormous mainframe, waist high and four feet across. He hid behind the machine, breathing like mad, his heart hammering.

Calm down, he told himself. Jeremy tried to settle his mind, think clearly. He knew the ants could sense movement. His best chance, his only chance, was to sit on the floor completely still, unmoving like a stone, until they retreated to the surface.

He breathed slowly through his nose until his lungs felt like they would explode. In his peripheral vision the colony moved under the dim light of the monitor, searching for a body to eat. A noise escaped from deep within his throat and Jeremy pinched his lips tight, focused on the robotic ants created by his computer programs.

I’m smarter than you, he thought. I know what makes you tick. I know how to fool you. Jeremy leaned back against the computer and closed his eyes.
They won’t attack. Just sit tight. They won’t attack.…

For an instant, his mind flashed on the millions of dollars that ants had generated for his company, and he nearly laughed at the irony. In the next second, terror struck as the colony charged with a shrill cry. Eyes wide, he scrambled to his feet and sprinted over the computer, but stumbled and fell to the floor, kicking his legs and trying to stand. He gazed around the room at the explosion of life.

Jeremy knew he was going to die.

It wouldn’t be long before the insects engulfed his body, paralyzed his movements with their stinging venom, and he’d be forced to live through an agony beyond his wildest imagination. Jeremy couldn’t let that happen. He scanned the room for things he would need. The computer was plugged into a wall socket across the room, and just beyond that was a counter with a coffeepot. That would do.

Jeremy took a final deep breath and ran for the counter, right over the ants, leaping for the coffeepot. There was barely any liquid left, but he poured the cold java over his right hand.

Ants blanketed his pants within seconds.

All at once Jeremy was aware of the painful stings and he doubled over the counter. It was as if someone had doused half his body in gasoline and lit him on fire. They raced from his waist and arms toward his chest, and he clamped down on a scream lodged in his throat.

With trembling fingers he grabbed a pen from his shirt pocket, the silver Montblanc Kendra had given him. Jeremy winced in agony and struggled slowly down the counter to the computer cord, holding the pen firmly in his wet hand.

The weight of the ants was upon him, up to his chest and neck. They scuttled across his face, which was beginning to puff like dough.

Jeremy was blinded from swelling around his eyes. He had to keep his wits about him. His muscles were giving out, and he used all his remaining strength to reach the end of the cord. It was like wearing hot baseball gloves, but his swollen fingers managed to jerk the plug from the wall while keeping his grip on the pen, still slippery from the coffee.

Jeremy found the spot. He started to lose his faculties and hoped to make it in time, before complete paralysis set in. He jammed the pen inside the wall socket and felt the sheer force of ten thousand volts of electricity. His body jerked with spasms but he couldn’t smell the burning of his own flesh.

CHAPTER 43

THE LED LIGHTS IN
the tunnel flashed on and off, as if from an electrical disturbance, and Kendra paused, holding her breath.

The ants are eating the wires, she thought.

Crawling was more difficult. The earth was cold three hundred feet below the surface without any source of heat. Kendra’s muscles were cramped and her hair still wet from the shower, making her teeth chatter.

“It’s like a refrigerator in here,” she complained, just to hear a familiar voice, and then stopped again, blowing hot breath into her cupped hands. All she wanted to do was sleep. She exhaled and lay flat on the steel floor. “Just one minute to rest.”

Click.

Her elbow tripped another door. She blinked, and then busted it open. Kendra reached out a hand and felt a warm surge of air. The room was completely dark. With a breath of relief she squirmed out of the hole, overjoyed to be out of the tomb and inhaling gulps of oxygen, stretching her cramped muscles. She felt soft carpeting against her battered knees and patted her way to a piece of furniture. It was sturdy wood, perhaps a desk or table.

Then she felt a body.

Kendra scooted against a wall, panting and not moving until there appeared to be no immediate danger. She reached out to the corpse. There was a beefy arm beneath a sleeve. Her fingers ran down the stiff material. It was a man with a wedding ring. She traced the lines of the suit up to his shirt, where a cool, wet spot made her recoil a moment, before reaching back down to his shoulder and then moving slowly to his neck.

She held her watch over the body and pressed the LCD button, the closest thing she had to a flashlight.

The pale face of General Dawson was illuminated in the dark. His bulging eyes showed the fear of his impending death. Kendra saw blood on her fingers and slid the watch over the wound on his chest. A gunshot. The phone was lying by the general and Kendra grabbed the receiver. There was no signal. She pressed a few buttons, but the phone was dead.

She followed the cord to the end, where it was torn from the wall. The jagged wire spun in her fingers under the light of her watch. A cold reality hit her: the mayor had never reached the president. No one had. She sat listening to the quiet, wondering what to do next.

Kendra heard the sound of the ants. It was a low humming and she could tell they were coming from the open doorway. She turned and found her bearings along the carpet. Kendra hurried to the tunnel, heart pounding, and climbed back inside. She slammed the door three times as it repeatedly sprang open, and then finally shut with a whack. She fell back against the wall, hands pressed against her mouth and eyes clamped tight, once again safe inside the tomb. The general’s white-skinned face flashed like bursts of lightning on a dark windowpane.

Kendra choked down the fear, started crawling again, slow and unbalanced. The bombs were coming and she had no clue how to stop them. “Now you’re in a jam, girl. So, what are you gonna do about it?” She checked her watch once more. It was 5:50. That left ten minutes to get word to the president that the pheromones worked. Then, of course, Paul was on the roof with a lunatic. And here she was trapped underground with millions of ants ready to kill. It seemed a slim chance at best that she would ever make it out alive.

“Don’t lose it now,” she scolded herself. “Keep it together.”

For a moment, she thought she heard the buzzing, and stopped.

“It’s your imagination,” she said. Still, Kendra found herself pausing as she passed each LED light, all movement and breath abated. Then she continued down the tunnel, calmed by her own voice.

“I should have been an orthodontist.”

*   *   *

Paul crawled out of the hole onto the roof. He bent over the ladder, panting and wincing in pain from the bullet that had grazed his thigh. The gun dangled from his hand.

An ephemeral breeze had swept the smoke and ash away, and for a moment the sky was a clear Prussian blue, slowly turning to black. Paul spotted Garrett, a dark silhouette at the edge of the roof, looking out to the horizon and waving his hands wildly over his head. The Blackhawk helicopter beyond him was just a speck in the sky, but Paul glanced at his watch and knew what it was: the last train out of Dodge.

“Garrett!” he cried, and the colonel turned.

For an instant he looked confused, as if he didn’t recognize Paul. He contemplated the man in front of him, struggling to breathe, blood seeping through his khaki pants, and he laughed.

Paul ventured a step and clenched his teeth in pain, raising the gun. “You’re not going anywhere.”

The colonel turned back toward the sky for an instant, shaking his head, then casually approached Paul with a grin.

“Stop right there.” Paul raised the gun higher, his voice hoarse with desperation. “I know you shot the general. I’m going to tell those pilots everything.”

He looked at Paul curiously. “What do you want, Doctor?”

“Give me the queen.”

“You mean this?” Garrett took the specimen bottle from his pocket. He rolled it around in his fingers. “Anything else?”

“You have to call off the bombing.”

Garrett stared back at the helicopter, shielding his eyes from the glare. It was fast approaching and he could make out the pilot. He waved his arms again, ignoring Paul.

“You won’t get away with it,” Paul said. “I’m not going to let you bomb this city.”

The colonel smiled shrewdly, taking a few more steps closer to Paul. “But you will. And do you know why? These ants are a weapon to end all wars. They possess the power to disarm every nation. If you turn me in, the nuclear race will continue and tens of thousands of people will have died for nothing. You have the fate of the world in your hands, Doctor. Now tell me, as a human being, what should you do?”

Paul aimed the gun, but it was shaking. The Blackhawk was coming in for a landing. He could see its massive shape to his left, and hear the loud engine, feel the rush of wind from the blades that threw him off balance.