A. Colucci - The Colony

“Hannah,” she whispered, and then asked, “Why is your head so big?”

Paul frowned and whispered to Kendra, “She must be hallucinating.”

“Actually, I think she’s rather perceptive.”

Hannah closed her eyes with a yawn and fell back to sleep.

It was getting cold, as they continued down the block. Dampness hung in the air and a light breeze kicked up the smell of blood. Kendra’s eyes were stung from the smoke and debris. Her contacts were drying up but the bottle of saline was zipped inside her ant suit.

They passed the abandoned playground of a school, where all the windows were broken. Kendra didn’t want to think about that, but a screaming in the distance brought her to a halt. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman but the sound faded and she continued.

They still had another few blocks to go and she tried to concentrate on the child, keeping her eye on Paul and wistfully imagining him walking with their own child someday. Calmness settled over her body. It was a feeling that lingered for only a moment.

Paul abruptly stopped. “Turn off the light.”

“Why?”

“Turn it off.”

Kendra reluctantly flipped the switch. Darkness shrouded the street like a black veil, making Kendra feel light and unsteady, and she leaned against Paul.

“Listen.”

There it was. A slight buzzing noise rushed toward them like a gust of wind. It was a hauntingly inhuman sound, yet it had a melody.

Kerka kerkosh ker kerkosh kerka kerkosh ker kerkosh

It resonated like waves of angry crickets in an orchard, growing louder and closer until it surrounded them. Kendra threw her hand to her mouth.

“Quiet,” Paul said under his breath.

The little girl became stiff in his arms and Paul looked down to see Hannah’s eyes wide, her face frozen in a mask of terror.

As quickly as it started, the noise began to fade, receding like the evening tide. Hannah closed her eyes again.

Kendra didn’t know if it was cold sweat on her face or the sudden mist of rain.

TWO SEARCHLIGHTS SHOT UP like geysers a thousand feet into the air behind New York University Medical Center. Paul and Kendra followed their beckoning call to a stadium-sized crowd gathered in a parking lot outside the emergency room, under a steady shower of horizontal rain.

Blinding rays from halogen lights spilled over the scene and Kendra realized it wasn’t a mob waiting to get inside, but a triage unit. There seemed to be as many medics as victims. Doctors and nurses worked swiftly and expertly in biohazard space suits, kept on hand since two airplanes changed New York City’s landscape and its definition of “emergency.”

Thousands of wounded ambled like zombies, pale and bloody with telltale red eyes and blackened lips. They lumbered like the living dead, minds less intact than their bodies. A toe tag dangled from each wrist listing name, address, injury, priority level and medications. Cadavers were wheeled on stretchers to an abandoned lot overlooking the East River. They lay in bunches stacked like kindling on top of plastic sheets.

Kendra bristled at the sight of so many bodies. Her protective suit now felt rigid and steamy, as the rain weighed down her shoulders. She and Paul searched for a medic, but it seemed like every emergency worker was far too busy with the critically wounded to help the little girl.

Paul approached a nurse who was bandaging a tattered arm. “Is there anyone who could help us with this child?”

The nurse didn’t look up. “You’re better off taking children to the front.”

He hoisted the child higher, wiped the dampness from her face and set off in a new direction, beckoning Kendra to follow.

They proceeded down a path to the main entrance, stepping carefully over the wounded, and then crossed a narrow green lawn full of dandelions and writhing bodies, but the number of living waned. Soon they were walking through a field of scattered corpses, like a pumpkin patch.

For a moment, carrying a single child past so many dying victims seemed ludicrous to Kendra. Here they were trying to find a queen that might save the entire city, yet they had stopped to save one solitary life. She wondered if Paul was thinking the same thing, and worried that he might place Hannah down any second with the rest of the victims, but he showed no sign of letting up. He continued the trek to the hospital entrance, face pinched with worry. He looked relieved when Hannah stirred and again threw an arm around his neck.

Yellow tape blocked off the front of the hospital. Friends and family of the dead and injured stood beneath a hand-painted bedsheet labeled WAITING AREA, their wistful faces begging for the slightest information.

Soldiers were everywhere. They stood armed and kept order, in muddy boots and uniforms covered with some kind of clear plastic.

Paul scanned the nondescript faces and touched the sleeve of an elderly man in scrubs walking briskly by. “Excuse me. Are you a doctor?”

“I am,” the man answered curtly, continuing his hurried pace toward the entrance.

“Please. This child fell from a window.”

The doctor stopped and looked at Paul, confused. Then he checked the girl’s pulse, then pupils, and made a quick examination of her body.

She moaned and crinkled up her nose.

“Slight concussion,” he grumbled. “Lacerations, maybe a fracture. Come with me.”

Relieved, they followed him through the shattered glass doors into chaos. The lobby, spacious on any other day, was now packed. A circular visitor’s desk was staffed with aides scrambling to sign in a steady flow of doctors and nurses, who had flown in from all over the country. Injured children were being admitted and anxious parents were shouting and refusing to leave. Everywhere victims were sprawled out and bleeding, too close to death for assistance, not close enough to be tossed. The expensive leather furniture and Persian rugs were now just comfortable places to die.

Paul and Kendra followed the doctor through broken fire doors into a brightly lit hallway. Massive generators in the basement vibrated under their shoes. Corpses sat upright against the walls next to patients, making it hard to distinguish between the living and dead.

The doctor shook his head in disgust and flagged down an intern. “Get these bodies out of here. This is a hospital, not a morgue.”

“Yes, Doctor.” The orderly chose a body that didn’t flinch when he kicked it lightly with the tip of his shoe, and then threw it over his shoulder.

“Damnedest thing,” said the doctor. He grabbed a pen off the counter and wrote a few notes on a pad. Paul noticed sting marks on the back of his hastily bandaged hand.

“Are the ants here?”

“Not yet.” The doctor ripped a sheet from the pad and handed it to a nurse. “Just came from Bellevue. It’s completely infested.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Paul. “What about the patients?”

“I have no idea. I go where I’m needed and there’s nothing that can be done there now.” He spotted an orderly with an empty gurney. He whistled loudly and said, “Bring that over here, please.”

The young woman changed directions, spinning the gurney toward the doctor.

“Tag this girl,” he instructed and asked Kendra, “Do you have her name?”

“Her first name only. We don’t know if her family is alive.”

“Well, she is, and quite well, considering.” He pulled a toe tag from his pocket and handed it to Kendra with a pen. “It’s not often we see someone we can save.”

Paul set the child gently on the gurney, hesitating just a moment, and then watched the orderly cover her with a blanket. The toe tag simply read, Hannah, 268 E. 36th Street . It was placed around her tiny wrist and the girl was carted away. Paul stared blankly as his hopes sunk to a new low; logic and reason seemed to evaporate from the universe, sucked into some backward dimension. Right now anyone could tell him the earth was flat after all and he’d believe it.