A. Colucci - The Colony

“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.”

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.

Her father was arguing with a man and two other men in a jeep. They were locals from the village where they were staying. Kendra’s mother pulled off her white hood. She had a worried expression and shooed her daughter away. Not used to being ignored, Kendra retreated with a scowl. She didn’t like hearing adults argue either, so she trotted back into the field and sat down and studied the incandescent green wings of the Malachite.

She talked to it, played with it and named every part of its body. Then she explained to the insect that butterflies live only for a few days but not to be sad because three days aloft on graceful wings was better than seventy years of walking on boring feet. When it finally died she would stick a pin through its body and hang it on a board.

This is where things got fuzzy for Kendra. There were several loud popping sounds and she may have heard a scream or maybe not. But something frightening made her look back at the worksite. She stood up straight, and the Malachite soared into the clouds. Kendra watched the jeep race away. She could barely see her parents lying on the ground by the ant mound, the grass was so high. Only the tips of their shoes and the thin white lines of their protective suits peeked over the green blades. Kendra wondered if they had fallen, and she became frightened and anxious to reach them.

The site was not more than fifty yards away but it seemed like miles and now her legs felt heavy and hard to lift as she moved slowly toward the mound.

The puffy white face of her mother stared up at Kendra and her swollen lips were slightly moving, telling her something. Her father too had open eyes, but expressionless. Neither of them wore head gear or gloves. Both were covered in ants and bleeding across their chest, or maybe the neck, or the hands; it was always different.

Then someone grabbed Kendra and swung her over large shoulders. The last thing she remembered was the sound of her own scream, as her parents moved farther away.

“You can’t deny the similarities,” Paul was saying and it snapped Kendra back to the present. “There’s such a thing as post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“And there’s such a thing as bad psychology, Dr. Freud,” said Kendra, irritated. “My parents were killed over a few dollars. What we have here is the most catastrophic event in human history. I have every right to a freak-out.”

He nodded, watching her rub her wrist, and decided to drop it.

They crossed Thirty-eighth Street to what sounded like a street festival with no music. Halfway down the block, hundreds of people moved in the glare of police searchlights. Residents of the Emily Harding Home for seniors were being evacuated. There were no vehicles for transport so they had to settle for wheelchairs, gurneys, stretchers and even a few shopping carts, all pushed by a long procession of rescuers.

A skinny, dark-eyed boy about twelve years old held the arm of a woman as she plodded toward a wheelchair. She was embarrassed, complaining about moving so slowly, and the boy kept saying, “No problemo. No problemo.” He eased her into the seat and set a bulky pocketbook on her lap. For a brief moment, his eyes locked with Paul’s. The boy smiled, and then rolled the woman down the street with the others.

“Come on,” Kendra said in a low voice, and they continued down Second Avenue.