A. Colucci - The Colony

Kendra stormed across the room and snatched the papers from his hand. She threw them in the air and they rained down like ticker tape. “Are you insane?” she shouted. “We’re dealing with weapons. Monsters. Creatures from the deep!”

“Oh, I see. This is my fault.” Paul said it like he wasn’t thinking the same thing.

“Wasn’t that your job? Didn’t the mayor put you in charge? Why didn’t you demand he evacuate the city?”

Paul was flustered under the barrage of questions. “Don’t you think I blame myself? Of course I do, but who would ever…” He was becoming angry; his cheeks reddened. “You saw them yourself. I believe the words you used were ‘preposterous’… ‘ridiculous.’”

“I didn’t mean…” Kendra wasn’t sure what she meant, but hurling insults wasn’t part of the plan.

“This study of yours,” he said. “Will it work on these ants?”

“It’s possible. But we need to find a queen if it stands a chance.”

Paul reached across the counter to a couple of boxes marked BUG OUT. He tossed one suit to Kendra and threw a rucksack over his shoulder.

“So let’s get the damn thing.”

The two moved swiftly to the mayor’s office. A new sense of urgency weighed heavily on their shoulders, along with the bundles they carried, filled with supplies.

Paul wanted details. “So tell me about your research. How did you kill the colonies?”

Kendra kept a steady pace. “It all goes back to your experiment on brood pheromones. Remember how you saturated grains of rice with extracts from newly hatched larvae?”

“Of course.” Paul nodded. The well-received study was cited in every major science journal. As a college freshman, Paul had unwittingly revitalized a movement in integrated pest management with his first published paper. “The workers hauled the rice back to brooding chambers and tended to the grains as if they were real offspring.”

“Right. You showed that ants could be fooled by their own chemicals. So I started playing around with different concentrations of various queen pheromones, and injected the formula into the nest.”

“It must have caused extreme agitation in the colony,” he commented.

“More than that. Within hours, I had hundreds of queen corpses.”

Paul stopped short. “Your theory?”

“The high concentration of the sex pheromone caused the workers to kill off the queens.”

“Quantitative pheromone effect.”

“If you want to get technical. Then I added the queen’s alarm pheromone to the mix, and the whole colony started killing each other off.”

“So you’re saying you found a way to synthesize pheromones into a formula that causes the workers to kill off the queens and each other?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Paul started walking again. “Impossible. Nothing like that has ever worked.”

“Not in sixty years of trying.”

“Do you realize the implications of your findings? Fire ants terrorize twenty-two states.”

“Twenty-four.”

“If you can apply this method to other insects, you could save farmers millions of dollars.”

“Billions.”

“You could prevent crop depletion across the nation.”

“Across the planet.”

“You might wipe out the insecticide industry.”

She grinned. “I can live with that.”

They reached the mayor’s office. “It sounds very promising. Still, Siafu Moto aren’t normal ants. They might not respond to your cocktail.”

“Paul,” Kendra groaned.

He held a finger to his lips and reevaluated his position. “I like it.”

“You like it?”

“Okay, I love it.”

“And?”

“And your radiance blinds me. I’m not worthy to carry your microscope.”

Kendra smiled with satisfaction. “I do like the new you.”

MAYOR RUSSO SEEMED HOPEFUL for the first time that day, listening to Kendra and Paul divulge their plan to capture a queen. Kendra explained that if the pheromone operation was successful, it would trigger two immediate reactions. The workers would kill off the queens and then destroy each other.

General Dawson was interested in hearing the specifics of the chemical synthesis, asking questions about how it was done, the results of Kendra’s own experiments in the desert. He took notes and occasionally spoke into a small recorder.

Colonel Garrett was entirely skeptical. “My team of top scientists spent months trying to find a way to kill these ants. You waltz in here the day you learn about them and tell us you have some magic formula?” He shook his head vehemently. “General, you know as well as I, these ants are indestructible. Nothing that kills ordinary insects will kill Siafu Moto.”

“We don’t have a clue how to destroy them,” the general replied. “But their idea is far safer than any I’ve heard today.”

“We agreed on the solution, an infallible plan. Not some half-witted theory that hasn’t been tested.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything, and neither has the president. I’m willing to give the pheromones a try—if it can be done quickly. That means twenty-four hours.”

Garrett started for the door. “As far as I’m concerned, this matter has already been decided.” He left the others in silence.

“He’s right, you know,” the general told Kendra. “This is a long shot, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” she admitted. “But I’m sure it stands a chance.”

“What do you need from us?” Russo said.

“We could use some help finding a queen. Perhaps the army, or National Guard.”

Russo shook his head. “I’m afraid the Guardsmen are too busy with the chaos on the streets, evacuating the city.”

The general concurred. “Besides, none of my men know the first thing about finding an ant queen.”

“It takes a trained professional.” Paul nodded to Kendra. “Guess we’re it.”

“You’ll need a gun out there. People are going nuts. Agent Cameron will issue you a weapon.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Kendra said. “Our only concern is the ants.”

“We have nothing to protect you from those insects or help you find a queen.”

“We’ll be in full gear, searching the city for nesting sites,” Kendra told them. “It doesn’t take a lot of fancy equipment, just good instinct.”

“Where will you look?” Russo asked.

“I hate to sound morbid,” Paul replied, “but we should check the biggest food supply. There are plenty of residential buildings in Midtown. I’m going to assume these ants are like Siafu. Attack all night, rest in tree trunks—or I should say buildings—all day.”

Kendra wondered if she should mention that Jeremy’s computers predicted the same thing. She decided not to.

“What are your odds?” Russo asked Paul.

“Better than one in a million.”

“So let’s say, by some miracle, you find a queen,” Dawson said. “What then?”

“We synthesize enough pheromones to cover the city,” Kendra replied.

“How much do you need?”

“Not as much as you think. This is potent stuff, and insects have highly developed receptors in their antennae. Just to give you an idea, it takes less than one tablespoon of trail pheromone to lead an ant around the world five thousand times. Just a few molecules can stop a colony.”

“We’ll hit every street in Manhattan,” Paul said. “After that, we can pump the chemicals into the sewers and subways where they hide.”

“Of course, we should spray all the buildings as well,” Kendra said, and her expression darkened. “We have to consider alates.”

“What’s that?” Russo asked.

“Something we don’t want to think about but have to be prepared for,” Paul replied.