Chapter Twenty-One

 

 

It was one of the most amazing sights that Ryan had ever seen in his life. He stood on top of the shallow hillside, looking down the other side, where the trees had thinned out even more, leaving what should have been a swath of fresh green grass.

 

Instead, there was a carpet of shifting, whispering crimson, stretching back down the other side of the slope for more than a quarter mile.

 

As Ryan stared at it, he felt two more bites. One of them was near the top of his thigh, and he winced at the pain, realizing that the first scouts of the aggressive tidal army of ants were already surrounding him, infiltrating his clothes, seeking bare flesh to attack.

 

The numbers of insects ahead of him was incalculable.

 

Millions.

 

Billions.

 

The figures didn't matter. Not when you were faced with an unstoppable army of voracious killers.

 

Ryan glanced down at the ground seeing that there were forty or fifty of the ants darting over his boots, working their way up the legs of his pants.

 

Cursing under his breath, he knocked most of them off, running quickly back to join Krysty, who was crouched fifty yards away, dividing her attention between the waving grass around her and the cluster of small red lumps on her right leg, all of them just below the knee.

 

"Get out of here," he panted.

 

"Just putting some spittle on these bites. Sometimes helps them. Sort of dilutes the acid poison in the bites." She glanced up at him and saw the shock etched deep in his face. "What is it, lover?" Realization dawned on her. "That's what it is! What's freaked out every living thing in the whole jungle. An army of ants!"

 

"Yeah. Army isn't the right word. Doc's good with words. There's a universe of them out there, covering a square mile or so of ground like a red carpet."

 

"Coming this way?"

 

"Right."

 

She quickly pulled on her dark blue boot and tucked in the leg of her trousers, taking care not to leave any gaps. "These are the recce party?"

 

"Guess so, lover."

 

"Can I see the rest?"

 

"We need to get our bolts greased and hurry back to the village. Warn them."

 

Krysty stamped her feet on a group of ants that had found her. "Must be vibration that attracts them. I have to go take a quick look, Ryan. For myself."

 

"Skirt around to the right there." He pointed to the highest point of the ridge.

 

She ran quickly, moving as lightly as she could, with Ryan at her shoulder.

 

When they reached the top of the hill they stood together, staring down at the awesome sight. Her hand reached out and took Ryan's, squeezing hard.

 

"Shit-scared, lover," she whispered. "I swear to the green gods I never saw anything like this."

 

"Nor me."

 

"How fast they going?"

 

Ryan shook his head. "Probably sort of slow. They must be eating all the time, on the march. Only two or three miles a day. But" He looked behind him. "They've got a straight ace on the line for the village."

 

"Time for people to move if we warn them."

 

"Sure." Ryan looked carefully around and spotted a squad of the red ants moving toward them. They didn't seem to be physically mutated, being well under an inch long. But their fierceness and eagerness in hunting was something new. "Sure the people can move, but look way back, where they've been. Stripped the land bare for a half mile across."

 

"Over there!" Krysty pointed to her right.

 

The forest wasn't utterly deserted.

 

A young water buffalo calf had been left behind. Perhaps it was sickly or maybe it had wandered too far when the rest of the herd fled.

 

Now it came wandering from some dense foliage, with strands of vegetation dangling from its jaws. It seemed totally insensible to its danger.

 

Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer, intending to fire a shot to warn it away from the advancing column of ants. But he hesitated a moment and then holstered the blaster. "No point," he said. "It's too young to make it far. And the noise of the bullet might bring them all over us. Silencer doesn't work like it used to."

 

The animal was very tottery on its long, skinny legs, staggering like a newborn colt, moving toward the nearest edge of the ants.

 

"They've sensed it," Krysty said, watching as a long arm split off from the broad central column, reaching out like living fire toward the hapless animal.

 

The buffalo calf stopped suddenly, peering at the ground in front of it with a concentration and surprise that would have been amusing.

 

 

If it hadn't been so tragic.

 

"Got it," Ryan said, checking behind them to make sure that none of the marauding insects had yet reached them, not wanting to find themselves isolated up on the crown of the ridge. "They'll take it now."

 

The buffalo gave a short, sharp yelp, tossing its head back, its skinny little tail waving futilely, as though it had been stung by a gadfly. Then it took a number of unsteady steps to the side, head going up and down, its body beginning to twitch. Tiny red streaks appeared up its legs, across its belly and flanks, as the ants climbed onto its body.

 

 

"Run," Krysty said to the doomed animal.

 

 

"Too late." Ryan looked behind them again. "Hey! Little bastards are on to us. Better get moving out of here."

 

"Just a second. Why doesn't it ?"

 

 

Now the calf was obviously in agony from dozens of the burning bites.

 

"Come on, lover, quick," Ryan warned, snatching at Krysty's right arm.

 

 

"It's down."

 

 

The young animal fell, its legs kicking out wildly. It was as if it had fallen into a fast-flowing river of lava. The moment it went down, the ants swarmed all over it, covering its body inches thick, biting and stinging it on the mouth, in the ears and on the eyes, blinding it.

 

 

Krysty gasped in horror. "Just like that," she said.

 

"Down and done in half a minute. About as quick as those mutie piranhas we once saw."

 

They ran from the ridge together, planting their feet hard in the long grass, crushing dozens of the bright red insects beneath their boots, heading toward the village.

 

They moved at a steady pace, alternating between a slow run and a fast walk, crossing the strange deep bowl of bare rock, continuing west. The trees grew thick about them as they rolled back the long miles.

 

The sun was well past its zenith when they finally caught sight of the flat-topped pyramid that stood just beyond the outskirts of the village.

 

"Can we just stop for a couple of minutes?" Krysty panted. "Think I'm getting too old for all this running around. Sweating like a pig."

 

"Me too. Didn't Doc say that only horses sweated?"

 

Krysty grinned, wiping her face on her sleeve. "Right. And men perspire. But ladies simply glow."

 

They both laughed at the saying, so typically peculiar and old-fashioned and Doclike.

 

Ryan squatted on his haunches. "Notice now some of the noises of the jungle kind of returned as we came closer to the village?"

 

"Yeah. Seems normal here at the moment. Right. Think I can go on and arrive without looking like a mobile puddle of greasy candle fat."

 

 

 

A SHRILL BLAST on one of the war trumpets greeted their arrival at the main gates of the village. Speaking Eagle was the first person of any authority to see them. He realized from their appearance that something had happened. "Jaguar people?"

 

"No," Ryan replied, shaking his head.

 

 

"Men with whips?"

 

"Not them, neither. Look, we don't want to have to tell this story a dozen different times. Just the once. It's triple important." Ryan spoke slowly, as he'd already found that the native didn't have the best grasp of the American language, "Call Itzcoatl and all your main men. I'll get J.B. and the rest of my friends. Meet in the main hut in five minutes from now."

 

The man nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on Krysty's sweat-sodden shirt. "I tell," he said. "The story you will speak to us is a bad one?"

 

"Yeah. It's a bad one."

 

 

 

THEY SAT TOGETHER on the bed in their hut, the others gathered around.

 

The attack of dysentery had vanished as swiftly as it had struck, and everyone was feeling fine.

 

"What is it, Dad?"

 

"Slavers?" the Armorer asked.

 

"Stickies?" Jak queried. "Haven't seen bad mu ties here. That it?"

 

"Perhaps some mythical beast from beyond the blasphemous deeps of time and space?" Doc offered.

 

All the voices overlapped with their questions, and Ryan held up a hand for silence.

 

"Quiet," he said. "Going out for a council of war with the natives in a couple of minutes. Give you all the details there. But I can tell you quickly what it was. No interruptions. Questions and stuff can come later."

 

He glanced across at Krysty, who gave them the answer in a single word. "Ants," she said.

 

Ryan gave them a brief outline. "Not big mutie ants. Ferocious scarlet little boogers." He pulled up his shirt to show the half-dozen scattered bites, now turned into yellow-peaked lumps, each about the size of an old quarter.

 

"Want me to try and get something for those?" Mildred said. "Probably got herb poultices that'd help."

 

"No. Let it be for a bit. They sting and burn and itch all at once." Ryan tucked in his shirt again. "Main thing is, there's a whole army of them. Must cover more than a mile, and they're eating their way toward us."

 

"Eating everything in their way." Krysty told the others about the way the jungle had emptied of life. And of the water buffalo calf and its lonely, agonizing death.

 

"They're still several miles off and it'll be dark soon. Anyone know if ants travel at night?"

 

Doc raised a tentative hand. "I might be proved wrong, but I rather doubt it. I imagine that they'll form themselves into a sort of camp. Protect their queen and all the grubs and babies. Must be a whole species on the move. An entire colony burning their way through the forest. I've read tales of this happening. I vote for no travel at night."

 

Ryan nodded. "My guess, too, Doc. In that case we've got a little time. And we can mebbe use that time to try and come up with a plan." He glanced at his chron. "Five minutes is up. Let's go and talk this over with our hosts."

 

 

 

THE NATIVES WERE APPALLED at the ant army that was moving toward them. As soon as Ryan broke the news to them, they began to chatter and argue, several of them standing and pointing toward the east.

 

Itzcoatl silenced the panic by clapping his hands and making a strange hissing noise between his teeth. He spoke American for the benefit of Ryan and the others.

 

"This is very bad. The sacrifices the other night were wasted. Something must have been done wrongly and the gods have become angry with us. All things are pushing against us on all sides. The gods wish to destroy us."

 

"But first they make you mad," Doc whispered to Dean, looking disappointed at the blank bewilderment on the boy's face.

 

"We can only run," Itzcoatl said.

 

He turned to Ryan. "How long before the small biting ones reach us here?"

 

"Difficult to tell, Chief."

 

"Are they in trees," Smoking Crest asked, "or in grass?"

 

"Grass. Sort of swampy kind of region, where the trees are thinned out."

 

Krysty interrupted him. "Best description is that big red-stone basin. They'll know that."

 

"The spit bowl of the fire gods," Itzcoatl said. "We know it. Have the ants got that close?"

 

Ryan looked at the sun, which was low on the horizon. "Answer me a question. These red ants, when they up and move like now, do they march at night?"

 

Itzcoatl looked around the council table, waiting for some of the older warriors to answer him. Finally a man called White Jaguar spoke.

 

"Not in dark," he said. "Only in light."

 

Ryan nodded. "Then the ants should reach that deep bowl in the rock during the middle of the next morning. Mebbe a little sooner."

 

"They will be in our pockets by the middle of the following day," Itzcoatl said. "Where they move, the ground dies. Where their shadows fall, the flowers crumble. We can do nothing. Nothing stops them."

 

"Water?" Jak asked.

 

"Oh, yes, Jak. A fast river will stop them. They will send the scouting ants up and down until they find a fallen tree or a place to cross. We have no river in the way of them."

 

Everyone sat silently, regarding the disaster that was moving remorselessly toward them.

 

"Might they just stop?" Mildred asked. "Or change the direction of their march?"

 

Itzcoatl shrugged. "Only if the gods will it. But their eyes are against us."

 

Doc suddenly spoke. "You said you'd found a lot of gasoline, Ryan?"

 

"Sure."

 

The old man's milky blue eyes were alight with eagerness. "My father's friend, Leiningen, was a plantation owner in the jungle. He was faced with an army of ants."

 

"And?" Ryan prompted.

 

Doc grinned wolfishly. "And I will tell you how he solved the problem."