A. Colucci - The Colony

The street was packed. Chen could see long lines of cars blocking the road, some abandoned, others crammed with people honking and yelling and going nowhere. Tourists held fast to their children, fighting their way out of restaurants, past windows of hanging duck and roast pig, as fellow merchants shouted to each other in Mandarin. Frantic commuters poured out of the subway entrance, stepping over slower-moving victims while trying to escape the underground assault.

Chen watched in horror as a screaming Asian woman, swatting a baby carriage, was knocked to the pavement by a man in an expensive suit. The woman crawled to the curb and sat down crying, as ants covered her legs and blanketed her bright yellow dress.

A wide ribbon of insects flowed across Chen’s fruit bins like the billowing black silk of the New Year’s Dragon. He doubled back, knocking over carts of mangos and apples until the sudden blast of a car engine spun him around. Hurling toward him was a dark vehicle painted with ants. The monster truck jumped the curb as pedestrians scrambled out of the way. It struck a homeless woman, her shopping cart and two teenagers zigzagging in its path. Chen froze as the headlights hit his face. He shut his eyes and the engine roared.

Crrrrkkkk! The sound of crashing metal nearly shattered his eardrums as the car hit a concrete wall of the bodega. The horn blasted steadily and the man behind the wheel was still, his face pressed against the broken windshield, covered with ants and blood.

“Li Mei!” Chen cried, running through a cloud of plaster to the back of his general store.

“Here!” she yelled over her shoulder, frantically beating away ants with a broom as they swarmed from the cellar. Chen grabbed his trembling wife around the waist and half dragged her to the back exit.

The alley was dark and motionless as Chen and Li Mei walked with quiet feet and shifting eyes to the far end of a six-foot fence. Behind them, a militia of ants carpeted the ground and invaded the walls of surrounding buildings.

There was nowhere to go but over the top. Chen helped his wife up the fence and onto a dumpster, but could not scale it himself.

“Go! You go!” he cried.

She shook her head, clasping his hands tighter.

“For the children. For the children,” he pleaded again.

Li Mei nodded and clumsily pitched herself over the jagged wooden fence, falling through darkness onto the lid of another dumpster. Unable to balance, she slid inside the metal cave, and into a nest three feet deep with ants, trash and rat bones.

THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING, Kendra thought, but it was happening.

She and Paul had returned to the bunker fearing the worst, but hoping they were wrong. Finding no one around, the halls eerily quiet, Paul headed for the lab while Kendra veered off toward the control center, only to find intense panic among a crowd of people crammed into a large television lounge, staring at a screen. Kendra watched the news report and silently prayed it was some sort of horror flick, or perhaps a cable news simulation, at the very least Candid freaking Camera.

“…What is going on in Manhattan right now is cataclysmic and unbelievable.” News anchor Michelle Scott fumbled nervously with her earpiece, anxious eyes darting between two unsteady cameras. At the bottom of the screen a ticker ran: CNN SPECIAL REPORT—DEADLY ANTS ATTACK NEW YORK CITY. “We have on the phone Ray Lowell, a noted entomologist at Florida State University,” Scott continued. “Can you tell us, Dr. Lowell, what is going on here?”

“I’m not entirely sure myself.” The voice of authority was shaky at best. “These aren’t like any insects we’ve ever seen. These ants are organized, marching in columns by the millions, like you would see in some African species. Maybe in Tanzania, but certainly not in New York—”

“Excuse me, Doctor,” Scott interrupted. “Right now we have a report from John Seaver who is standing in Times Square. John, what’s the story there?”

The once dashing and confident reporter stared wide-eyed into the camera, his jacket torn at the shoulder and his silky black hair windswept as he ran backward, shouting over the furor and trying to stay in the shifting spotlight of the cameraman.

“Well, Michelle, it is utter chaos ! There are reports of attacks all over the city. We’re hearing the same thing from everyone—this is surreal. The police are telling everyone not to panic, which of course is ludicrous. If you look right down this street—Brett, get a shot of that. If you look right there, you can see bodies. Those are dead bodies and some, well, some still alive—”

“John, maybe you should get out of that area.”

“Yes, yes. That’s what we are planning to do.”

“You go ahead, John. Right now we just received an appeal from the police commissioner that all residents of Manhattan should be tuning in to the Emergency Broadcast System, if they still have power—apparently these ants are destroying power lines—or they should follow the evacuation routes posted in their buildings. Most importantly, don’t panic. Leave your belongings and get out of the city as quickly as possible. Do not attempt to go to the police or fire departments because it appears they are being overrun. Fire trucks have been hosing down streets—”

“That may not be going on, Michelle,” John Seaver cut in between wheezing breaths as he continued to flee in long backward strides. “The gridlock down here is atrocious. Everyone we’ve seen, and that includes myself and my cameraman, we’ve been walking, or I should say running—Brett! Brett!”

The camera suddenly tumbled to the ground. It rolled a few times and stopped, still broadcasting a sideways view of the enormous Times Square intersection at night. Under billboards flickering a dazzling array of colors, bodies were scattered in heaps like packages fallen off a delivery truck. Some were still fighting for life, most were not. Shadowy figures sprinted over them in aimless directions.

Kendra broke from the television. She darted through the labyrinth of halls with one hand pressed against a stabbing ache in her side, past a stream of contorted faces, blurred from tears that stung her eyes.

Just hours ago, she’d been arguing with Paul in the lab, casually talking to him on the roof, wasting so much precious time. Overcome with guilt, all she could think was, Why didn’t we do something? At the same time, she was filled with fury. This wasn’t her fault. After all, she had just arrived, while Paul, Mayor Russo and other so-called guardians of the city had known about the ants for weeks. She remembered the mayor’s callous words in the control room: Do you have any idea what such an undertaking would cost?

Angry voices resonated from the control center, sounding like a party that wasn’t going well. Kendra reached the enormous room and found the place crammed with UN delegates in colorful costume, racing across the floor, slamming into one another, their voices exploding into a single multilingual drone.

Overhead TV screens were broadcasting attacks all over the city or giving instructions via the Emergency Broadcast System. This is not a test…

John Russo stepped to the podium with a sturdy gait. He had spent the first few shocking moments alone in his office, flipping through news channels and muttering to himself, worried about where the blame would fall. Within minutes, however, he sprang into action, barking out orders to his staff and city officials, who were quickly congregating in the bunker. Without a doubt, this was the major event he’d prepared for his entire career. Now his only job was turning himself from villain into hero.