A. Colucci - The Colony

“Because they know these ants. The Siafu Moto were not created by terrorists. There is no such group as Earth Avengers. The entire project was funded by the United States military.”

GARRETT BELLOWED AT HIS superior, “This is outrageous! Revealing top-secret information to civilians! Why, it’s treason. ”

General Dawson stood with fists wound tight at his sides. “This has gone far enough, Tom. We’ve been waiting for a method to destroy these ants for twenty-five years.”

“You can’t assume their feeble experiment will succeed. The entire world is at stake.”

The general’s face reddened. “I’m relieving you of all duties regarding this mission.”

Garrett ignored the comment. “The decision has already been made by our commander in chief to evacuate and bomb the city.”

“That was before we had a way to destroy the colony. The plan has been changed.”

“On whose authority?”

Dawson shook his head. “The cover-up is over. I’ll be sending out a report to every department in Washington. I can assure you that Operation Colony Torch will be called off, just as soon as I contact the president.”

Colonel Garrett walked out of the room, fuming.

Dawson turned to Paul and Kendra. “I can’t even imagine how this looks to you.”

“You created the damn things?” Paul was aghast.

“We created a weapon.”

“With no off switch!”

“This is the United States military. Damage is our first priority.”

“Using living insects—screwing around with their DNA for your own destructive purpose!”

“Is it anymore horrible than biological warfare? Viruses, germs, infectious diseases, self-replicating organisms that eat away living tissue of their hosts. Smallpox, anthrax, yellow fever. It’s all the same.”

No one said anything.

“Look, this nation owes you a debt of gratitude. But don’t try to make sense out of insect warfare. Very few people on the outside understand how the military works.” Dawson rubbed the side of his face.”Sometimes I’m not sure myself.”

The general was anxious to get to Russo’s office and phone the president. He asked Paul and Kendra to come along.

“I’d like you both to be there for the call.”

As they moved swiftly down the corridor, Dawson explained that when the twenty-five-year project was terminated, Laredo was furious. He went crazy, blowing up the entire lab, killing everyone inside, and sneaking off with a queen.

“Why was the project terminated?” Kendra asked,

“As you probably noticed, these ants are uncontrollable. They started eating everything in sight, doing things they weren’t designed to do. There was no way to stop them, and even worse, no way to destroy them. Then we discovered that Laredo was making a deal to sell a queen to a terrorist organization. He actually did have ties to environmental groups.”

“So the FBI is in on this?”

“No. Just a select group of people in the army and the CIA. When Cameron started following our money trail, we created Earth Avenger to throw him off track. Undoubtedly, this will all come out in the hearings.”

“No offense, General,” Paul said, “but the military has to be off its rocker to turn ants into a weapon. Why exactly would you put all this effort into creating something so unstable?”

“Same reason the government does everything. Money . The United States military is stretched about as thin as at any time in history. Most of our noncombat jobs in the Middle East are outsourced to other countries and a growing number of our soldiers are paid recruits from Europe. Ever since the draft ended in 1974, the number of fighting units has decreased and with the growing unpopularity of the wars we’ve been fighting, the budget has been slashed to a tiny fraction over the last decade.” He threw out a hand and said, “Siafu Moto were the answer to all our problems. They get no salary, no benefits and no one cares about the casualty count. There’s no bureaucracy, in-fighting or pulling rank in an army of insects. They follow orders and don’t make trouble. They’re the perfect soldiers… almost.”

Kendra looked at the bottled queen in her hand. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“These are the warriors of the future,” Dawson insisted. “We can’t depend on old methods anymore. There’s just not enough money or support. You’ll see—if it’s not ants, it will be some other creature.” They reached the mayor’s office. Dawson led them inside and said, “And after twenty-five years we finally have a method to destroy them.”

Paul and Kendra both dropped their shoulders with relief.

“Your buddy Jack Carver came through for us. He has a dozen chemists working on a metric ton of the pheromone, almost ready to take off.”

Kendra closed her eyes. Consumed with fatigue, she could barely open them.

“When’s the last time you two got any rest?”

“What day is it?” Kendra asked.

“Saturday.”

She squinted, too tired to do the math.

Dawson grinned. “I’ll call the president and get those pheromones in the air. You can both take a couple hours off. It will be at least that long before the planes are loaded.”

The shower was as small as a coffin. Paul and Kendra stood entwined under a hot spray that soothed their aching muscles and washed away the filth of the streets, but not the memories. The left side of Kendra’s hip glowed with an enormous bull’s-eye bruise of deep purple, yellow and black that closely matched the one on Paul’s backside. There were smaller bruises and scrapes, but fatigue took the greatest toll.

Kendra stared up at Paul with sleepy lids and rested her head on his shoulder, feeling the warmth of the steam. His dark hair hung long and damp, and she swept it away from his eyes, the same lovely brown as always, but she couldn’t read his thoughts.

It was more than despair.

Paul turned off the shower and handed Kendra a towel. She let it drop to the floor and followed him into the shoe-box-sized room painted moss green and furnished with a simple bed and dresser, like the tiny bunks on submarines. She kicked aside the grimy Bug Out suits lying in a heap and curled up next to Paul on the cot. The narrow mattress was a tight fit so she wrapped her arms and legs around him.

He stared unblinking at the wall, his face shrouded in grief. The weight of a little girl in his arms, the smell of blood in his lungs and the end of a natural world separate from man all spun in his mind and he struggled to keep it together. On the dresser, he could see the specimen bottle containing the queen, her body lifeless and broken. An image of Colonel Garrett, and all his boasting and warnings, played like a demented music video in his head.

“What have we done?” He sounded worn down, depleted.

“What do you mean?” Kendra’s voice was raspy from shouting alarms all morning.

“ Nature. My one solace. A world void of spite and vengeance—turned into a sadistic instrument of destruction.” He shook his head. “Why?”

“Because we can,” she muttered. “It’s like you wrote in your book—”

“Don’t remind me. How an ant colony can save the human race. Jesus, I’m the laughingstock of the Nobel committee.”

“But you were right.”

“I was wrong.” Paul cringed. “What if my whole life was wrong?”

“Ah, Tolstoy.” She nodded.

“It was a childish simplification, Kendra. Humans aren’t ants.”

“Are we so different?” She smiled at his pouting. “Your research showed that ant colonies fight for the same reason we do, variation of the species. Yet they’ve survived for a hundred million years. That proves diversity isn’t fatal. All we have to do is accept our differences and learn to exist alongside other colonies… without blowing each other up.”