A. Colucci - The Colony

“The ants probably snuck up on him,” said Kendra, walking across the room to a table of half-folded clothes, size XXXL. She eyed a bottle of blue laundry detergent that had spilled all over the floor. “Must have scared him to death.”

“That’s odd,” Paul said and strolled to a back door leading out to the street. “Why didn’t he run to the exit instead of the sink?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Does it matter? All we need is a queen.”

Paul scrutinized the back of the room, which was featureless except for the airtight fire door and two windows painted shut. “The ants had to come from the hallway in front of the room.” He spoke with the befuddled tone of a TV crime-scene investigator as he followed the man’s soapy sneaker prints. “These footprints go to the washers. Then they stop and go to the sink. Why did he walk to the washer instead of running out of the building?”

“Yo, Sherlock,” Kendra said. “You’re an entomologist, remember? Think Ant.”

“Right.” Paul nodded. “Ant.”

She let out a weary breath. “It’s morning. We must have missed them.” She felt hot and zipped open the heavy white suit. Something caught her attention, and Kendra pointed with her chin. “Paul, check out that washer near the body. I hope I’m wrong, but it looks like a head.”

A mop of reddish brown hair was pressed against the circular glass. Paul walked to the washing machine and tugged on the handle. Out flopped the snout of a dog, curled up tight inside the metal drum.

“Collie,” Paul said and looked over at the dead man. “He must have been trying to save Lassie here from the ants.” He lifted the dog’s limp head. “Suffocated, I guess.” He bristled and then refocused his thoughts on the room. “So I guess we look for pipes, vents, holes. If they’re hiding in the walls, this is probably the best place to find them.”

Kendra nodded and pressed her palm against the wall. She put her ear against the cold plaster and listened for any sounds of activity.

Paul tracked a pipe that stretched across the ceiling to a dark alcove by the hallway. Below the pipe was a wall vent, about six feet from the floor. He called to Kendra, “Hey, over here.”

She followed him into the shadows.

A four-foot ladder splattered with paint was folded up in the corner, and Paul pried it open. He dragged it under the vent, climbed the rungs and removed the iron grating with a hard shove. The opening was small, but he managed to reach an arm inside and then tried to fit his head. Dust rained down on his hair.

“Forget it. This building must be a hundred years old,” he said, coughing. “There won’t be any passageway big enough to fit the two of us.”

“How about a colony of twenty-two million ants?” said Kendra, drumming her fingers on her cheek. “ Think. They may have been bred to attack a city, but they can’t escape their nature.”

Paul sat down on the stepladder and closed his eyes. He considered everything he knew about Siafu and then said, “So where in this building do we find the equivalent space of a fifty-foot hollow tree trunk?”

Kendra’s face brightened. “I’ll tell you where.”

DING. THE ELEVATOR BELL broke the ghostly silence in the lobby as the gilded doors parted, revealing a roomy interior paneled in chestnut brown. Paul and Kendra stepped hesitantly inside, relieved to see that the small light fixture was still working.

Paul unhinged the stepladder and positioned it under the trapdoor screwed to the ceiling. “Are you certain about this?” he asked.

“‘Certain’ will not be in our vocabulary today.”

Paul shook his head and climbed up to the escape hatch. He used a penknife to turn the screws. The lid dropped and dangled from its hinges. He stared up at the darkness, listening to the quiet, then peered down at Kendra. “You ready?”

“I’m fine. You’re the one about to risk a face full of killer ants,” she joked.

He flipped his hood, not amused, and zipped it tight. “Gimme the flashlight.”

She handed him a bug vacuum as well. It was a pistol-shaped device, but when extended, it looked more like a Star Wars light saber.

Paul poked his head through the opening. The elevator shaft was dark and he strained his ears, listening to the silence through the plastic head cover and raising his flashlight skyward. The bright beam dissolved in two hundred feet of darkness. He lowered the light and it settled on the walls.

That’s when his cheeks lost color and for a long moment Paul didn’t dare move, or even blink. Millions of ants covered the elevator shaft. Their black armor shined like marble in the shaking light of the beam, as the colony moved slowly and methodically in wavy columns like slithering deadly snakes.

Paul blew out a breath of air and ducked inside the car, slammed the door and held it closed with all his might. He was beginning to hyperventilate. The bug vacuum dropped to the floor and he threw off his hood.

“What?” Kendra asked.

“They’re in there! All over the place. Jesus .” He tightened the first screw with trembling fingers.

“I knew it,” she declared. “Well, get up there.”

“Get up there! Are you crazy?” Paul backed down the ladder and wrung his hands together, willing them to stop shaking.

“Did they react to you? Show any signs of aggression?”

“I don’t know, Kendra.” He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. In the dark recess of his mind he could see them crawling, slowly. His brow furrowed. “No, actually, they didn’t seem to notice me.”

“Then they’re in down mode, right? Like the ants in your lab?”

“Maybe.” He cast a troubled eye at the hatch door. “We can’t really be sure.”

“You seem to forget why we’re here,” Kendra said, zipping her suit. She flipped her headpiece and started up the ladder herself.

Paul grabbed her wrist and eased her back down. “Okay, okay,” he gave in. He climbed to the top and turned the screw, gazing down at Kendra through the crook of his elbow. “But if I hear even a lip smack from those buggers, I’m out of there.”

She reached up and handed him the bug vacuum. “Fair enough.”

Paul slid the vacuum through the hatch, along with the flashlight, and zipped his hood once again. “Wait till I get up there. If it seems safe, I’ll tell you to press the button. We’ll look for the queen floor by floor.”

Arms braced, Paul hoisted himself onto the roof of the elevator, landing on his chest and skimming across fifty years of dust and grease. He got up on his knees in the filthy white suit, surrounded by darkness and millions of imaginary legs racing toward him. He shivered and flipped the flashlight to lantern mode. The shaft became awash in light.

Paul stood ready to retreat, but the ants were fairly still. At least he saw no outward sign that they were preparing to attack, so he began looking around. The elevator roof was less than ten feet across. In the center, two thick cables operated the car from an electrical box at the top of the shaft, while four thin wires secured each corner for balance. The air was musty with a metallic odor of gears and machinery.

Paul grasped the grimy cable and moved to the wall, close enough to reach out and touch the ants if he wanted to. He didn’t. Yet fear turned to fascination when he observed the colony up close. The ants were passing bits of food, carrying eggs to a nest made from their own bodies and disposing dead ants into a makeshift burial site, formed by thousands of legs linked together. They were busy with all the duties of ordinary ants but Paul was watching them from inside the colony, and he found that extraordinary.