Mandibles (8 page)

Neil Hadigan nearly wet himself as the chick started screaming for no reason. She was hot, no doubt about it, but maybe she had mental problems.

She lifted her foot and began batting at it with both hands, and Neil realized what she was screaming about. There was a big red ant on her leg. No, two of them.
"Hold still!" Neil told her, but the crazy chick just kept screaming and hopping around. Near the Wal-Mart entrance, some other people were screaming, too.
The chick finally got the ants off her leg, and quickly got inside her car. Since Neil obviously wasn't going to get a date or get arrested for driving without insurance, he got back into his own car, started the engine, and pulled out onto Dale Mabry after the crazy chick.
As he drove down the road, he noticed a lot of pedestrians moving around like something was attacking them. This was just plain freaky. If there were killer ants invading Tampa, he was driving his butt back to Sarasota, pronto.
As he saw an ant-covered man running toward his car, arms outstretched, Neil pulled into the center lane of traffic.
* * * *

Why wouldn't anybody stop? The ants were stinging him to death, and it took every last reserve of Lance Magin's strength just to stay on his feet, but the cars just kept driving by.

Moments later, his strength gave out, and he toppled forward onto the street.
* * * *

Clarissa Thompson saw the man fall in front of her car, felt the jolt, and even heard the hideous sound as the tires went right over his torso, but she had more important things to worry about, like the huge ant that felt like it was trying to dig its way into her ear.

* * * *

Rose Dobbs slammed on her brakes at the sight of the man getting run over and hurriedly got out of her vehicle to help. The car that'd run him over hadn't stopped, so she stared at the license plate number, trying to burn it into her mind.

The man was beyond saving, but even if he hadn't been, Rose knew she wouldn't be going anywhere near him. Ants were swarming his body. She ran back to her car, rolled up the windows, and locked the doors.
* * * *

"Wow, didja see that?" asked Jeremy Pepin, peering out the back window. "Some guy just got creamed!"

"Did he really?" asked his mother, looking into the rear-view mirror. "What happened?"
"A car ran him over! It was gross!"
"Oh, the poor man. I hope he's all right." Maggie Pepin sighed as the vehicles in front of her came to a halt. "So why are we stopping? What is it with this traffic?"
"Hey, Mom, there are bugs on the ground."
"There are always bugs on the ground, sweetie."
"Not like these."
Maggie started to turn around to humor her son, until she noticed the black mass moving along the sidewalk a couple of blocks up ahead. What could that possibly be? It almost looked like a swarm of insects, but there'd have to be thousands of them.
* * * *

"Henry, turn around!" Trish Valencia said. "There's something coming!"

"I can see it ... what is that?"
"I don't know, but I'm scared!"
* * * *

"Honey, I think I'm going to be late," said Christopher Hult into his cell phone. "There's like this huge swarm of ants coming down Dale Mabry. No, I mean
huge
. I'm not kidding. No, I'm not at a bar. I'm serious. There must be ... oh shit, some guy on a motorcycle just fell over! No, I'm not kidding! They're swarming him! Damn it, honey, I'm being serious!"

* * * *

As the ants stung him to death, Marcus Murray's only thought was that his ten year-old daughter had been right about motorcycles being dangerous.

* * * *

"Stay in your vehicles!" a police officer shouted through his car's intercom. "Pedestrians, get to shelter! I repeat, stay in your vehicles! Do not open your doors for any reason! I repeat, do not open your doors for any reason!"

He watched the ants take down the woman carrying a sack of groceries and crossed himself.

*-CHAPTER FOURTEEN-*
"Do you think she got away?" asked Roberta.
Dr. Ruiz nodded. "Agnes is fine. She just got scared and left us. I'll have to cut her salary this week." He smiled, but it was forced.
"I can go out there and look for her car," Zachary offered for the second time, his speech somewhat slurred from the Novocain.
"We need to stay here," said Dr. Ruiz. "There are too many of them."
Roberta looked back outside and felt another involuntary shiver. There were at least twice as many of the ants as there were before. The parking lot wasn't exactly a huge red mass with no pavement visible, but Roberta definitely didn't see many places that you could step without your foot coming down on one of them.
Dr. Ruiz sighed. "This is all my fault. We should have left as soon as something was wrong, yes?"
"We had no idea it would get this bad," said Roberta, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"Agnes did."
"Really, I can go out and check for her," Zachary offered. "No goddamn bugs are going to keep me cooped up in here."
"No, it's too dangerous," said Dr. Ruiz. "They can't get in here. We wait, yes?"
"Yeah, but how's anybody supposed to find us?"
"I'll try again," said Roberta, walking back over to the receptionist's desk. She picked up the phone, placed the handset to her ear, and then rapidly tapped on the plunger several times. "Oh, great."
"What?"
"I'm not getting the all circuits are busy message anymore. Now the phone isn't working at all."
"Those things must've chewed right through the phone lines," said Zachary, shaking his head in frustration. "You've got a cell phone, right?"
"I don't," said Roberta.
"I bought one for emergency use only," said Dr. Ruiz. "It's in the car."
"Well, that's just wonderful. I looked into gettin' one for myself, but I ain't signin' any long-term contract with those bastards. So what do we do?"
Roberta tapped the plunger a few more times, and then replaced the phone in its cradle. "It's not the Apocalypse. If we just hide out here, I'm sure the authorities will take care of the problem. They're just ants, I'm sure they've got stuff that can kill them."
"It'll probably kill us, too," Zachary muttered. He rubbed his jaw. "I sure wish this numbness would go away."
"Anyway, what I'm saying is that things can't possibly be that bad. If we wait it out, we'll get out of this without any problems."
Zachary considered that. "What you're really saying is that things could be a hell of a lot worse elsewhere, so we'd better stay put so we don't go out of the fryin' pan into the fire, right?"
"You're not the cheeriest person in the world, are you?" asked Roberta.
"Not after a root canal, no. I'll be cheerier when I can feel my face."
"So what do you think is causing this?"
Zachary shrugged. "Could be those x-rays that you guys bombarded me with. You forgot to make tiny protective vests for the ants, and now we've got a shitload of problems."
Roberta chuckled. "I always knew we were doing evil work here. Darn that radiation. And here I thought it was black magic."
"That was my guess," said Dr. Ruiz. "You are a witch, yes?"
"Oh, absolutely. Actually, there aren't even any ants out there; it's all just an elaborate spell I cast over both of you. Sorry about that."
"To be completely serious, I'll tell you what it is," said Zachary. "It's that goddamn malathion we sprayed all over the meadflies. Messed with our ant population. Somebody needs to get canned for that one."
"Or maybe they're from outer space," Roberta suggested.
"No, really, it's the malathion. Who knows what else it did? We've probably got foot-long maggots squirmin' around in our sewers and we just haven't found them yet."
"At least the alligators will have something to eat."
"It's genetics," said Dr. Ruiz. "Research gone bad."
"Yeah, that's another good one," Zachary agreed. "Those scientists were out there tryin' to make square watermelon or straight bananas and they screwed up ant DNA or somethin' like that."
"It seems like you'd have to be working directly with ants to mess up their DNA," said Roberta.
"No, not if they crawled into the watermelon maker or whatever they use. Of course, those government people are so dumb sometimes that maybe they thought we could get some kind of benefit out of really big ants."
"Like what?"
"Maybe they eat meadflies."
"I'm still voting for outer space. I'm sure they'll return to their home planet after they abduct a few rednecks."
"Did you hear that?" asked Dr. Ruiz.
Everybody was silent for a moment. There was a scuffling sound coming from one of the other rooms.
Roberta got up and slowly walked down the hallway, followed by Dr. Ruiz and Zachary. She looked into each room in turn, but they were all empty. At least, as far as she could tell.
The sound was getting louder the further back she walked.
She reached the end of the hallway. There was one door to her right, and it was shut.
"Should we just leave it closed?" she asked.
They stood there and listened.
"Is the sound coming from in there?" wondered Zachary. "I can't tell for sure."
"I say leave it closed," said Dr. Ruiz.
"I'm kind of curious, but yeah, I'm gonna have to agree," said Zachary. "We've got a good thing going here, let's not ruin it by being stupid."
"You're right." Roberta leaned over and put her ear next to the door. "That room doesn't have any windows, though. How could they possibly have gotten in there?"
"Maybe they can chew through walls now," said Zachary.
"Let's go back," said Dr. Ruiz, turning around the walking back toward the waiting room. "I needed to replace some things in there anyway."
"Good idea." Zachary started to follow him, then looked back at Roberta. "Come on. I'm sure we'll find out what's in there soon enough."
Suddenly the ceiling collapsed, showering Roberta with chunks of plaster and over one hundred red ants.

*-CHAPTER FIFTEEN-*
It was almost too much for Moni's mind to process at once. Trevor was dead. Lavin, Inc. was being overrun by ants on the outside, and possibly now on the inside. Maybe the venom of a single ant wasn't fatal, but it sure didn't take much more than that to kill a human being.
They reached the loading dock, which was like a huge garage. The sliding door at the far end was wide open, and ants were streaming inside by the dozens. Moni realized with horror that the only reason they'd taken this long to enter the main part of the building was because they were distracted by two dead bodies, neither of which were recognizable under the mass of ants.
If only there'd been a truck inside...
Abigail cursed loudly. The button to open and close the sliding door was on the far end of the loading dock, and there were so many ants in here now that getting there would be virtually impossible. For a second Moni thought that Abigail was actually going to try it, but instead she pulled the hallway door shut. There was a one-inch gap at the bottom.
"Moni, step on as many of these ants as you can," Abigail ordered. "Jack," she said, as he came running down the hallway. "Give me your shirt."
Skipping the wise-ass comment such a request would normally elicit, Jack pulled off his shirt and handed it over as Moni went to work on the ants. She wished she had a good solid pair of work boots.
Abigail took the shirt and stuffed it underneath the door. "This isn't going to hold them."
"Need my pants?"
"No, we need the front desk. Moni, keep at it."
Moni wasn't big on having orders barked at her, but given the circumstances she could let it slide. She continued trying to stomp the ants as Abigail and Jack hurried back to the employee entrance, but with this many ants scurrying around it was extremely difficult to step on them while at the same time making sure she didn't get stung.
There was a loud crash. Obviously keeping the stuff on top of the desk in good condition was not a primary concern.
Abigail and Jack returned, with the desk on its side, sliding it along the carpet. "Drag it toward the other wall," said Moni, stepping back as they approached. "Then you can let it fall and squash a bunch of them before we block the door."
"That'll work," said Jack, veering the desk toward the left. They reached the door to the loading dock and let the desk topple over, the surface striking the floor and sending a couple of dozen souls to ant hell. The three of them pulled the desk back onto its side then slid it in front of the door.
"Is there a gap?" asked Moni, breathlessly. "Can they get through?"
"Looks pretty tight," said Jack. "I think we're good for now, at least."
"Is Mr. Kamerman on his way?" asked Abigail.
"Yeah. He sounded pissed, but I'm sure he'll get over it when he sees what happened down here."
"We need to head back upstairs, get a good vantage point to see how far out this ant problem stretches. Then we need to find a way to get past them."
"We could try to make a run for one of our cars," said Jack.
"I'm on the third floor of the parking garage," said Abigail. "What about you?"
"Third floor, too."
"I'm on the second floor, but at the far end."
"Well, we know that Mr. Get Here At Nine-Thirty didn't get a good parking spot, either. So it's too dangerous."
"Maybe they aren't in the parking garage," said Jack. "Maybe the only reason they're around the building is because they know we're in here."
"That's giving ants a lot of credit, don't you think?" asked Abigail.
"Ants that big deserve a little credit."
"Either way, let's at least take a couple of minutes and see what we're up against."
The elevator doors opened, and Mr. Kamerman stepped out. "What's the problem?" he asked. "What happened to Trevor?"
"I'll tell you on the way back up," said Abigail, moving past him into the elevator. Moni and Jack followed. Mr. Kamerman put a hand over his mouth as he saw the ants, and hurriedly stepped back into the elevator. Abigail pressed the button for the second floor.
"Trevor's dead," Abigail said. "The ants killed him. They got Cindy from marketing, too, and who knows how many others. And they're all over the outside of the building."
"He's _dead_? Are you kidding me?"
The doors to the second floor opened. "We need to see if anybody else is in the building," said Abigail, stepping out of the elevator.
The four of them called out loudly for about thirty seconds, but there was no response. They returned to the elevator and headed up for the third floor.
Jack looked up at the ceiling. "Do you think they can chew through elevator cables?"
"Jesus, Jack, don't even say something like that," said Moni, looking nervously at the ceiling herself. It probably wasn't out of the question. They should have taken the stairs.
The third floor was equally vacant, or at least nobody responded to their calls.
"Are you positive he's dead?" asked Mr. Kamerman, as they returned to the elevator.
"He's dead, trust me," said Abigail, pressing the fourth floor button. "We wouldn't have left him behind otherwise."
"Oh, that poor boy. Didn't he have children?"
"No."
"Still, this is horrible. What are we going to do?"
The elevator doors opened, much to Moni's relief. "First," said Abigail, "we're going to see how bad the situation really is. Then we'll take it from there."
She swiped her ID card in the reader, and then opened the wooden door. The four of them walked through the doorway, hurrying toward the large window that took up much of the wall on the west side.
"Oh, we are _so_ dead," whispered Jack.
Actually, Moni had been relieved. It was bad out there, no question about it, but if they padded themselves up, found something to keep the ants at bay, and ran like maniacs, they'd be able to make it from the building to the second or third floor of the parking garage. Yes, there were probably tens of thousands of ants out there, but while they were all over the lawn, their numbers didn't seem to be stretching out much further than that. Maybe they _were_ going where the food was.
"Here's a question," said Jack. "Why aren't they crawling on the side of the building?"
"They must be too big," said Abigail. "At least that's something we have in our favor."
As if to prove her wrong, a single ant crawled onto the window from above.
This one was the size of a large rat.