A. Colucci - The Colony

“Just like normal ants—but on a far greater scale. A couple of bites or stings aren’t lethal, but a hundred can kill a normal-size adult in seconds.”

Kendra stared at the photo. On the floor of a child’s nursery, a man lay in a contorted position wearing shorts and a bloody sock. His gray body was bloated and streaked red. A mass of yellow sclera tissue lay on the floor near his face, pushed out of the eye socket by dark coagulated blood, his mouth stretched open in a scream of impending death.

Kendra had seen photos of ant stings, disturbing pictures of farm animals and even human corpses covered in ants, but nothing remotely resembled this victim. She felt a shiver of cold terror and dropped the photo on the counter, not knowing what to say.

“This is bad,” was all she could finally muster.

“Yeah.” Paul took her hand and led her across the room. “Now for the demonstration.”

“Demonstration?”

FIVE TEENAGERS IN BLACK descended like bats at dusk. They crossed the wide intersection of Columbus Circle at Fifty-ninth Street into Central Park, under the awakening glow of old gas lamps.

Leading the posse was Tabor Drake, a sixteen-year-old boy who was tall and striking with milky white skin and ebony makeup streaked across his lips and cheekbones. Long hair, dyed boot black, fell loosely over his forehead. His trench coat and pants were militant, oversized and, of course, black. Only the red teardrop tattooed below his eye saved him from a monochromatic fate. Tabor’s Goth followers were clad in equally gloomy attire.

Except for Jimmy Porter.

Porter wasn’t a true member of the group, not yet anyway, and he lagged behind the others. While they walked swiftly with purpose, he trudged behind hesitantly, adjusting a backpack crammed with wooden shovels. The handles continuously hit him in back of the head. His chubby build and short blond hair set him apart from the others, as much as his yellow Spiderman T-shirt and khaki shorts.

Porter cast a pleading eye toward Sarah, his only ally in the group, but she was struggling to keep up her own cool facade. In truth, Sarah thought that their plan to sneak a jarful of killer ants into the teacher’s lounge was so junior high, but at fifteen years old she rarely trusted her own opinion. She stared down at her feet clomping around in heavy black boots and ripped fishnet stockings and thought maybe she would join a different group on Monday. Maybe the Granolas. She looked good in tie-dye.

The vast plaza at the park entrance eventually broke into narrow trails. The ground was covered with the first signs of spring, creeping plants, moss and ferns, and the darkening sky was hidden by overhead canopies of sprouting oak branches that dimmed the last bit of evening light. It was dead quiet. Not even the sound of wild birds, so typical for this time of year, was heard from the treetops.

“Didn’t you guys see all the signs? They said, ‘Warning! Park Closed!’” Porter croaked. “We should go back.”

Tabor kept walking. “Shut up, Porker.”

“It’s Porter. ”

“No. It’s Porker. ”

“I just mean, it’ll be dark soon.”

“Duh. That’s the whole point,” said Chloe, Tabor’s sort-of girlfriend, an even more female version of himself. “They only come out at night, doofus.”

Porter puckered his face. “You know they killed, like, seven people already. They’re probably gonna kill us too.”

“Don’t believe what you read in newspapers, doofus. Fire ants only, like, sting and bite. The teachers are gonna freak.”

“We’re gonna die.”

“Sarah, what’s the deal with your fat friend?” Chloe snapped. “He won’t shut up.”

A boy with three nose rings had taken the lead. When he stopped and pointed, the others fell in behind. “That’s the spot. Harley said they were crawling all over the place.” He was motioning to the Gapstow Bridge, a stone archway over the pond. Its thick, craggy vines snaked across the bedrock like bony fingers. The ground on both sides of the bridge sloped ten feet to the pond.

Tabor walked toward the bridge, brushing back the tall grass and kicking over small stones. The other joined in, scraping their sneakers across patches of dirt and weeds, pulling back fronds with a light hand. Someone had a can of bug spray and the kids passed it around, misting their boots.

“Here, take these,” Tabor said and pulled a handful of rubber bands from his pocket. “Wrap them around your sleeves and pant cuffs to keep out the ants. I know all about these bastards.”

Porter looked down hopelessly at his T-shirt and shorts. While the others looped tight rubber bands over their wrists and ankles, he saturated his body with OFF!

“Yo, Porker.” Tabor stuck out his hand, fingers snapping. “Give me a shovel.”

Porter let the backpack drop from his shoulder and chose a short but heavy spade. He handed it to Tabor and whispered, “They’re gonna kill us, man.”

“Hey. Shut the fuck up,” Nose Ring answered. “There’s five of us against—ants.”

Tabor noticed a large area of dirt where the grass didn’t grow. He marched straight back to Porter and handed him the shovel. “You. Over there—dig.”

“No way.”

Tabor turned to Sarah. “You are so out.”

She seemed to deflate. “Jimmy, just dig.”

Porter reluctantly dragged his feet to the designated spot. He raked the shovel gently over the soil as if it were a minefield, but found the dirt was soft and loose and balled into pellets light as sawdust. So he dug with more gusto, taking a scoopful here and another there. Porter speared the ground one last time and the spade flew from his hand, plunged into nothingness.

The earth had gobbled up half his shovel.

Porter blinked hard. “I think we hit some kind—”

Suddenly, the ground caved in like a sinkhole around him. The boy screamed and flung his hands in the air, falling into clouds of dirt, buried up to his chest in soil. Porter was invisible, just a coughing sound as the dust settled. Somehow, he managed to hoist his trapped arms free and wiped the grit from his mouth with his dirty fingers.

“Shit,” he cried.

The others just stared, mouths gaping.

“Hey, you assholes, get me outta here!”

Tabor took the first wary step, while the other kids fell back. He shuffled closer and paused a good three feet from Porter’s head, then dropped onto one knee, staring right into the face of the filthy boy.

Tabor burst out laughing.

“It’s not funny,” Porter wheezed.

The fearless leader thought it was hysterical, but found himself laughing alone. “He’s fine,” he yelled over his shoulder to the others. “I always wondered how long the surface of the earth could hold your fat ass, Porker.”

Tabor held out a hand to the boy, bracing for a ton of weight. But as their fingers touched, Porter jerked back violently—and screamed. Tabor scurried away in horror as the boy continued howling cries of excruciating pain.

Beneath the soil, millions of ants were blasting tunnels to the boy’s body like desperate prospectors to a gold mine. They reached the torso and thighs in no time. Claws broke through supple skin effortlessly, foraged through muscle and ravaged their way inside the body.

High-pitched barks of agony echoed to the edges of the park as Porter screamed and dug his fingernails into the dirt, staring in wide-eyed hysteria. His hands came up soaked in blood.

Tabor once again reached out for Jimmy’s hand, but the trapped boy flew into convulsions, arms thrashing about wildly as the red stain seeped up his T-shirt to his neck.

The ground was shifting below the teenagers and they backed away, slowly at first, and then they took off in a run. They shrieked with fright and cries of warning. They ran toward the park entrance and left the boy dying.