A. Colucci - The Colony

Queen fire ants.

“Hey there, girlfriends,” she said, tapping on the glass. Startled, the large red ants paused for a moment and then darted side to side with frantic feelers, tracking each morsel.

“Ready for your morning workout?” she asked. The tank was resting on a metal plate and when Kendra flipped a switch, the plate began to vibrate. The ants, sensing a sudden earthquake, reacted with extreme agitation. The first queen rose on her hind legs, mandibles wide open and antennae working like a couple of whips. Kendra placed a thin syringe into the tank, which contained an absorbent fiber inside the barrel. She aligned the tip of the needle just below the queen’s head, catching precious airborne chemicals known as pheromones, secreted by the queen. She did the same with eleven other queens.

Kendra flipped off the gyrator and the rumbling tank fell silent. It would take at least fifteen minutes for the insects to calm down. Kendra switched on a computer and prepared the collected secretions for analysis by a gas chromatograph–mass spectrometer, a device used to identify unknown compounds by separating and breaking them down into characteristic fragment ion patterns, just like fingerprints.

This particular unit was fitted with an extension designed by the university’s engineering department specifically for Kendra’s unique method of ant study. The structure, made of metal castings and plastic tubes, looked like a homemade distillery. Kendra checked the slow drip from the day before. In the collection flask was about four ounces of yellow liquid, a synthesized version of the queens’ pheromones, and she poured the liquid into a brown glass vial that was nearly filled to the top. She was pleased to discover that there was enough chemical to finish off the bottle, so she capped it and placed it in her backpack.

Kendra hit the stereo and Bob Marley blasted through the steel hut louder than most morning ears could tolerate, but Kendra liked her reggae loud. She found the soothing vocals and steady rhythm of the snare drum hypnotic. She stripped off her nightgown, grabbed a towel and kicked open the battered aluminum door.

Music poured like liquid across the silent desert plains and dissolved into the vastness. The sun was a fiery dome of orange just above the horizon and it bathed the sand in the same brilliant hues. In the outdoor shower, Kendra tugged a metal chain and cold water washed the dust and sweat from her skin, revealing a bronze tone across her face and graceful neck, her lithe arms and legs, while the rest of her body was ice cream white. Under the loud spray of water, Kendra was completely unaware of the young college student driving up to the shower stall.

Marshall swiveled his motorcycle up to the hut, never taking his eyes off the shapely calves below the shower door. He slowly dismounted, nervously biting the corner of his student union card.

With a last tug and rinse, Kendra draped herself in a loose towel, tiptoed hastily across the scorched sand and found the boy standing gape-jawed by her door, his hair sticking up flat on one side and T-shirt half untucked.

“Marshall.”

“Professor H-Hart.”

“What are you doing here?”

“The d-d-dean sent me. He wants to t-t-talk to you right away.”

Kendra breezed by the stuttering boy with a flick of her hand and opened the door. “Tell him the check’s in the mail.”

The music was deafening. Marshall pressed his fingers to his ears and followed her inside, leaping to avoid the swinging door. “He said you haven’t answered your phone in weeks.” He squinted, trying to adjust to the darkness of the room. “Do you want a ride to campus?” he shouted over a bass guitar.

“No. I don’t have time for his whine festival. I have field work to do.” Behind a thin screen, Kendra dropped her towel and put on a robe.

Marshall spun around, cheeks flushed, eyes shut and shouted, “What should I tell the dean?”

Kendra snapped off Bob Marley and the room fell silent. “I’ll call the university tomorrow.”

“I don’t think he’ll be happy about that!” The young man’s eyes were still pinched tight.

“Marshall?”

He looked at her.

“Don’t you have a class or something?”

Marshall walked out the door, dazed. His ears were still ringing from the music and he was worried about the dean, but he had to smile at the blissful image of his teacher’s lovely silhouette forever embedded in his brain.

Kendra poured breakfast into a bowl, a handful of M&Ms mixed with Cocoa Puffs and granola. Chocolate was the only weakness she indulged and her eyes half closed as she munched the concoction down with warm bottled water.

She rolled up the sleeve of her robe and gave herself an injection of antivenom. It was common for entomologists in the field to treat themselves with venom immunotherapy, especially if they had insect allergies, and Kendra was allergic to fire ants. It stung for just a moment, and she quickly dressed for the worksite.

She couldn’t wait to get started. There was a time she remembered all the complexities of a past life, a mosaic of people and places and belongings. A frustrating marriage to an arrogant scientist. A stifling career in the corporate world. The hectic lifestyle in a bustling metropolis. That was years ago and now all the faces, connections and minutiae had begun to fade into the sand.

There was only her research, the desert and the ants.

KENDRA’S OLD YELLOW JEEP Wrangler blasted down the dusty road to the pulsating rhythms of Bunny Wailer. On the back of the vehicle, two bright red bumper stickers proclaimed to the world, WOMEN WHO SEEK EQUALITY TO MEN LACK AMBITION, and, I GOT THIS CAR FOR MY HUSBAND—IT WAS A GOOD TRADE.

The morning drive was Kendra’s favorite time of the day. Hot wind licked her face and blew her untamed hair. Tall mountains rose off the horizon, purple and majestic, and the white sand seemed as vast and uninhabitable as the surface of Mars, billions of life-forms silently camouflaged. It took less than a half hour to reach the university’s student housing complex, a cluster of shabby trailers roasting in the desert heat and jokingly referred to by its young residents as Death Valley.

Kendra beeped her horn and a student emerged from a boxy building. Kate, a perky redhead with too many freckles, sprinted to the Jeep under a cloudless blue sky.

“Hurry up, we’re late,” Kendra said.

“Sorry. I was trying to get through to civilization,” she said, vaulting into the seat.

“Civilization?” Kendra smirked and threw the Jeep into gear. “Who needs civilization?” She took off down the road, turned a sharp left and headed straight up a sand dune, blasting the music and belting out the tune in the wind. The women laughed and sang and headed straight into nowhere, leaving a contrail of dust in their wake.

The study site was nine hundred acres of parkland; endless flat terrain dotted with yuccas and lilac and flaming red blooms of ocotillo. Kendra drove up to a small metal trunk baking in the sun and took a rough count of the white flags scattered like those of a miniature golf course, marking each anthill.

She spied two other students, Jane and Derek, under the shade of a Joshua tree playing hacky sack with the meticulously rolled excrement of a dung beetle.

“Was I right?” Kendra quipped. “Fooling around like usual.”

“Well, this is their spring break.”

“Uh-huh.” Kendra was all too familiar with goofball interns. Most students willing to spend their last big vacation counting ants in the desert were stoners and partyers, desperate for extra credit by the end of the school term.

Kendra leaped out of the Jeep and geared up. She wiped globs of sunscreen on her face and arms. Fire ants had a fierce sting so she wore billowy coveralls with a high collar and stuffed her pant legs into thick socks. To complete the look, she slipped on a black Oilers baseball cap and dark shades that were large enough to fit over her prescription glasses.