Morte (41 page)

Everyone moved toward the other end of the Island, where Culdesac’s forces were waiting. To advance, all the Black Hats had to do was get behind a wall of ants as the insects traced the chemical signature of the oleic acid all the way to the animals’ foxholes. The marauding humans made a curious sound as they rushed ahead: “Woo! Woooo! Wahooo!” It was like dogs howling, but out of joy instead of warning or despair.

The humans climbed over the dead ants and stormed the fortifications. The animals were already in full retreat to the sea. Even though Wawa sprinted as fast as she could, she could barely get close to a living enemy. She saw a number of animals cut down from behind as they retreated. There were even a few tending to the wounded who were shot on sight. She pointed her gun in the air and fired so she could say that she was at least contributing to the ruckus. The hard ground did not sop up the blood. By the third foxhole, she appeared to be wearing red socks. But she kept running with the others, a mad avalanche bristling with guns.

Up ahead, the landing party had arrived on a nearby shore. The pitch of the yelling descended an octave, remaining in a sustained “Yeaaaaaah!” A few of the humans took a break from shooting to hold their rifles in the air with both hands in celebration. The Black Hats shouted to their incoming allies.

“Get yer ass over here!” someone yelled.

“Welcome to the party!”

Wawa could see the forces unloading from the ships, marching down gangplanks or rowing to shore in small boats. The reinforcements made their way down the beach, cutting off the only avenue of escape for Culdesac’s forces.

The Black Hats came to a halt at the foot of a hill. They spread out, trying to find cover. A bullet whizzed by Wawa’s head, prompting her to hide behind the abdomen of a dead Alpha. Except it wasn’t dead. Still on its side, the beast turned to face her. Panicked, Wawa fell on her tail while firing madly until the ant’s head dropped once more.

She got to her feet and saw that the Black Hats had surrounded a cave. There was so much gunfire coming from it that the opening itself looked like the barrel of a gun. The shooting stopped, and a few cocky humans attempted to storm the
entrance. Three shots in succession took them all out. More firing ensued. The animals inside the cave were barricaded behind sandbags and had plenty of ammunition.

Wawa was about to make a run for a spot closer to the action when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She spun around to find Mort(e) staring into her eyes. “You were easy to find,” he said.

He held his tail, his fist colored red as it stanched an open wound. His machine gun was pocked with smashed ant carcasses. At his feet, waiting obediently, was a dog, a small female that stood on all fours. Wawa had not seen one since that night at the dog-fighting ring.

“These humans stink,” Mort(e) said.

The shooting continued. The humans yelled for the animals inside the cave to surrender. Wawa wanted to join the others in the small siege. Mort(e) kept his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t let him die facing his own kind,” he said.

“Who?”

“The colonel. Let him go out fighting the humans.”

“He doesn’t have to die,” Wawa said.

“Yes, he does.”

She swatted his hand away and ran toward the cave. The others ordered her to take cover.

“Hold your fire!” she said.

“No,
don’t
hold your fire,” someone shouted back.

“Colonel!” Wawa said. “Colonel, I know you’re in there!”

A bullet flew by her head. It came from inside the cave. A warning shot. A courtesy for a fellow soldier. The soldiers crouched lower behind the rocks and fortifications.

“Get down,” a voice said. It was the square-headed major, down on one knee behind the severed abdomen of an Alpha soldier. A handprint tinged with mud and blood covered the left half of his craggy face.

“Colonel,” Wawa said, “please surrender! They’ll kill you!”

“I said get down!” the major said. Frustrated, he turned to Mort(e) and said, “Tell her to get down!”

“She doesn’t listen,” Mort(e) said.

“Colonel, please surrender,” Wawa said. “I forgive you. We can forgive you. It’s not too late.”

This was what she was meant to do in this war. Culdesac had saved her. Now she would save him.

The square-headed officer ran to her, grabbed the shoulder strap of her pack, and made her kneel down with him. Another bullet zipped by. The soldiers returned fire.

“Stop!” Wawa said.

“Stay out of this,” the major said.

“Give him a chance to surrender.”

“He’s had his chance. You’re not in charge here—”

The man stopped talking when he noticed Wawa’s hand resting on the handle of her pistol. The tip of the holster was pointed at the major’s belly.

“You think that
house cat
is a warrior?” Wawa said. “I’m the one who’ll carve you up and watch you die. Now, the Archon told me this would happen. Tell your soldiers to let the bobcat surrender.”

“He’s one of them.”

“If you redeemed me, you can redeem him,” she said. “Now let him walk.”

As the man opened his mouth to respond, another barrage of gunfire drowned him out. The animals who were hiding in the cave jumped over their barricade and charged at the line of humans. There were four of them.

Wawa shoved the major away and got to her feet. “No!” she screamed.

The guns erupted. Three of the animals dropped. But one—a
bobcat—shrugged off a bullet to the shoulder, bounded over the rifle fire, and landed on top of a hapless human soldier.

“Colonel, stop! Look at me! It’s me! It’s—”

Culdesac tore the man open. Wawa actually
heard
it: a wet, sopping noise, like soaked fabric ripping, combined with the man gasping and choking. It was then that he spotted Wawa. Her mouth gaped. She may have been screaming. There was no way to tell with all the noise. Culdesac’s eyes were like an ant’s eyes, seeing in all directions but unable to focus. Even in that moment, Wawa still believed that he would remember, and understand, and accept this new world, this last chance to be a real person.

His fur now pink with blood, Culdesac lifted the corpse, trying to use it as a shield. He reared up to attack another soldier. The rifles unloaded on him. He collapsed, with one claw straining for his enemy before a final hail of bullets left him a shredded heap of fur and bone. The men and women did not cheer this time.

Mort(e) caught up with Wawa, placing his hand on her bicep and trying to turn her away from the scene. The dog was at her other side, brushing its fur against her leg, as if Wawa were the animal’s master.

This was what the humans had prayed for, Wawa thought. And it had come true.

Wawa felt Mort(e)’s hand lift away. She felt nothing else.

The Vesuvius was perched low in the sky, anchored by a cable tied to the Island’s great tower. Below, the humans burned the bodies of their victims well into the night. The ground was too hard to bury anyone, and tossing them out to sea would only ensure that the corpses would resurface on the beach. There was talk of dropping the bodies down into the great tunnel leading to the ants’ lair, on the other side of the Island, but this was dismissed. While the tunnel appeared to be inactive, the humans stayed away from it. Some day, they would have to organize an expedition into the nest to make sure that the ants were not breeding a new queen, however unlikely that may have been. For now, with Hymenoptera the Great lying dead in the Colony’s trash dump, and the final quarantine canceled without her royal decree, it was time to celebrate.

Mort(e) planned to leave in the morning, having procured a small boat from a member of the amphibious assault force. “Anything for you, sir,” the human owner had said. Mort(e) had no plan other than to head for the mainland and perhaps find a cabin in the mountains, far from whatever new settlements the humans and their friends were planning. If he were to find such a place, he could not say for sure if he would stay there for the rest of his life. All of that was too far into
the future to worry about now. He would think about it more when the sun came up.

While the others worked, cleaning up the dead bodies and setting up a temporary base of operations, Mort(e) collected supplies for the trip. Sheba trailed behind him. Each of the incoming ships had something he needed: water bottles, food, tools, guns. A cat who also had only half a tail offered a roll of gauze for Mort(e)’s injury. A tall golden retriever who called herself Cali gave Mort(e) a Swiss army knife. She asked to take a photo with him, to which he agreed. When a woman offered him a leash for Sheba, Mort(e) told her gently but firmly to put it away and to never show it to anyone again. Scavenging—or, more precisely, collecting donations from awestruck disciples—took up a good part of the day. It kept his mind off what was in store for the planet now that the war was over.

When Mort(e) was satisfied that he and Sheba had enough supplies, he retired to a nearby hill overlooking the area where the ants had attacked one another. From there, he watched the celebration while Sheba slurped up water from a paratrooper’s helmet. The humans and their animal friends had built a bonfire. The flames rose high, reflecting off the water and the silvery surface of the airship. The people danced around the carnage, holding hands, kissing, pitching their heads back with food and drink. For all these people knew, former master and ex-slave could be sharing a beer. That possibility did not seem to bother anyone.

There were bizarre works of piety among the victors. A group of female dogs wearing nun habits said prayers over the dead bodies before the soldiers carted them away. Elder Gregory led a multispecies group in song—something about how everyone had a friend in Jesus—while they hacked away at Alpha corpses with axes. The carcasses were too large to carry, so
this grotesque procedure was necessary. Prisoners of war were pressed into hauling the slabs of meat to the fire. Nearby, some children from Miss Teter’s class fought over a pair of amputated antennae. Two others used them for a swordfight before being corrected by an adult. But then that same adult used the antennae as drumsticks on a set of percussion instruments he had constructed from ant skulls, thoraxes, and abdomen shells.

Mort(e) could not find Wawa in the crowd. It was probably for the best. They had said all that they needed to say to each other. She was free to tell herself, along with these chanting primates who were part of her pack, that all these things had happened according to some divine plan.

Later in the day, after Mort(e) had wrapped his wounded tail, a great commotion rose up. The people were yelling so much that he at first thought something terrible had happened. But they were cheering because, for probably the first time in years, Michael was brought down from the ship and onto land. Four people carried his stretcher, with the stern bald nurse giving them orders, smacking their foreheads if they jostled the boy too much. Mort(e) suspected that she did not approve of this spectacle, but had been pressured into it by the Elders. She waved to Mort(e), probably after someone whispered to her that the messiah was observing her from a nearby hill. He waved back. For the next couple of hours, people took breaks from their labor to visit the boy and whisper prayers of thanks and mercy to their prophet. The nurse stood guard with her arms folded.

When the crowds around Michael began to thin out, Mort(e) and Sheba approached him. Michael was exhausted from the experience, his weak hands grasping at some unseen object dangling above him. The nurse patted his head, a gesture signifying love, sadness, impatience, and regret all at once. When
she noticed Sheba, she leaned over and scratched the dog’s ears. Sheba liked this.

“Sheba the Mother, home at last,” she said. “We sang songs about you. Did you know that, girl? Yes! Yes, we did!”

Mort(e) imagined the woman with a dog of her own, in a house like the one in which he grew up.

“I’m glad that you found your friend,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“You know,” she said, turning to Michael, “I thought this whole thing would kill him.”

“Really?”

“His connection with the Queen was so strong,” she said. “I was worried that he would sense her death, and then he would die, too. But he’s still here, our little angel. So innocent.”

She squeezed his hand. “I wish the rest of us were so innocent,” she said.

Mort(e) wanted the boy to get a good look at him and Sheba, and to recognize how things had come full circle. Michael’s blank stare suggested that this would never happen. So Mort(e) steeled himself to accept that he would never see this child again. At least it was easier this time. Sheba was with him.

“There’s something you should know,” the nurse said. “I can’t tell the others. But I can tell you.”

“What is it?”

“When the Queen died, Michael said something. Something she must have taught him. Or some kind of message she sent to him in her last moments.”

The nurse cleared her throat and said, “Love is stronger than God.”

Mort(e) turned to Sheba for a reaction. The dog merely sat on her hind legs, content. Was this the summation of all that
the Queen had learned, or some desperate acknowledgement of the only things that her advanced intellect could never fully comprehend? The only one who knew now was a shivering, half-dead child who had never asked to be a part of this.