The Ants Come Marching

Lieutenant Arrowheart felt the crack beneath her foot. She drew her leg up. It was a femur. She shuddered. It had splintered where her foot came down with hardly any give. It was hollow. 

She squeezed her hand around the device in her pocket. Lord above, let her not have to use it.

“Ensign, write that up, ” she said.

The first of her soldiers added to the document on his tablet.

“Remember. Destroy anything that moves, even if it’s just a beetle. We don’t want a city-wide genocide.”

The third soldier of eight raised his hand. “Can we take the biohazard suits off?”

Her ensign snapped. “Not if you want to get out of here in one piece. Didn’t you hear the orders?” 

The soldier shrugged. The Lieutenant stepped up close and looked down on the soldier. “If you take a single glove off you become part of what we need to contain. I will take the flamethrower to you myself if it saves the city.”

 “Yes m’am,” The soldier was blank-faced but his skin had drained of blood.

She stepped back. “We have one chance to contain this.” She turned and pushed the doors open. 

The school should have been full of laughter. Empty sockets and fallen skeletons covered the linoleum halls.

From the corner of her eye Lieutenant Arrowheart saw her Ensign shudder. “It’s like they’re watching me.”

“That’s normal Ensign. Human hardware says skeletons are supposed to stay inside the body.”

The sound of a flame thrower coming to life flooded the hall. The soldier she had spoken to was torching a skeleton of a teacher wrapping around a smaller one. She frowned.

“What did you see, soldier?” she said. The Lieutenant hefted her own fire blaster. 

“Its eyes. They moved.”

The flames made the air wobble as they targeted the spot of potential movement. This was going to be harder than she thought. Her foot was starting to itch.

“Soldier, that should be enough.” The paper letters on the wall had turned to ash and the two skeletons were blackened. 

“But it moved!”

She nodded at the soldier, “and you burnt it. We need to proceed to the middle. Everyone keep your eyes peeled.”
They continued down the slate grey halls. Linoleum the color of static covered the floors. With the only breaks of color being blue classroom doors, the school felt more like a prison. She carefully had her soldiers check each room in three-man groups. That left her and the ensign to gather the reports. At one site, all the skeletons were piled between the doors, every single bony arm grabbing another skeleton. The Lieutenant suppressed a shudder. They did seem to be looking at her.

One of her soldiers slammed his foot down on something. 

“Report,” she barked.

He snapped his arm in a salute. “Just an ant M’am.”

The space between her shoulder blades twitched. “Proceed, soldier. Use your flame thrower in the future.”

“It’s just a bug, m’am.”

“That’s an order, soldier,” she tapped her leg. “Burn the skeletons before proceeding into the rooms.”

Her soldiers did not hesitate. Fire filled the air again. She looked away from those accusing eyes. Perhaps it was her being overly cautious. But instincts had a say when it came to the things the captain had sent her after. She itched her knee absentmindedly. 

Her soldiers came back. One brought an empty turtle shell with a tiny skull still attached. 

“What was this?” He said.

“We need to proceed. We have to stop this from spreading.” the Lieutenant replied. She fingered the device in her pocket. They might not need it after all. She itched her hip.

They proceeded to the gymnasium. It was set up for a science fair. Was this ground zero?
“Search for anything unusual. If it moves, burn it. If it glows, alert me immediately,” she told her soldiers. They spread out in groups of two. 

There weren’t any skeletons to stare at her in here. A shudder ran down her spine. Why did she still feel like they were being watched?

“Lieutenant!”

The ensign followed her down the row the call had come from. It was the soldier. He had taken a glove off to pick up a petri dish glowing blue. 

“I told you. You become part of the problem if you breach your suit.” The Lieutenant readied the flamethrower. Her ribs itched. She saw the soldier’s eyes widen before she let the fire loose. 

The ensign’s flame joined hers as the soldier screamed. 

The soldier’s partner hesitated. The Lieutenant pinned him with a glare. He slowly brought his flame thrower up. It clicked three times before he added his flame to the inferno engulfing the soldier.

The other soldiers slowly gathered around. The flames turned off and the blackened corpse dropped to the ground. 

“A breach in any of your suits will mean the same,” the Lieutenant said. She bent over the table which had held the glowing petri dish. She read the three-fold poster board. It was signed in the bottom corner.

Anomalous ant enclosure.

Little bits of the glowing stuff from the Petri dish was scattered through the tiny tunnels of the ant farm. 

“Damn, this child had no idea what they found,” she muttered.

“Lieutenant?” The ensign’s voice was shaking. 

She turned. The ensign was looking across the gym to where the waxed wood transferred into the linoleum tiled cafeteria area. She looked at a strange device the Lieutenant had taken for a box crusher.

“Soldiers, stay close. Lead the way ensign.” 

The ensign’s eyes were wide. They went over to the cafeteria watching the empty floor for signs of movement. 

The man nodded. She turned back to the ensign. The ensign faced toward the trash compactor. She could no longer see the clear faceplate. The ensign had dropped the tablet with their notes. The Lieutenant frowned. The ensign was shaking, arms hanging down, head up toward the machine, appearing entranced by the garbage crusher. 

“Ensign, report,” she said. 

Very slowly the Ensign’s shaky arms raised. They went for the biosuit faceplate zipper.

The Lieutenant raised her flame thrower. “Ensign?”

“I can’t breathe Lieutenant.”

“Keep that mask on, soldier,” the Lieutenant said. She took a step closer. 

The ensign started unzipping. 

“You have one chance to zip that back up,” she shouted.

“They won’t stop staring, Lieutenant. I have to breathe.”

“Ensign, pick up your tablet.”

“It’s recording, Lieutenant. I just needed to pause to breathe.”

The ensign pulled their helmet off. Grimly the Lieutenant clicked her flamethrower on. It didn’t work. She clicked again. What was wrong?

She looked down at the barrel. An ant fell out of the end and onto the floor. Then another. Ants crawled up the barrel toward her fingers with wide jaws. The Lieutenant dropped her flame thrower. She looked up. The ensign had the hood all the way off. The ensign turned their face. Ants dripped like snot out of their nostrils. 

“Sorry Lieutenant, they’re inside me.” The ensign began to choke. They closed their eyes. Their suit began to writhe. The Lieutenant scratched the back of her neck. She watched on in horror as ants poured out of the ensign’s mouth and nose, stripping the flesh away as they went. The eyes flung open and a new gush of ant came out of each socket. 

“Burn it,” the Lieutenant commanded. Her soldiers tried. Only two flamethrowers in five worked. The ensign was dead before they began. 

The body whistled and screamed worse than the first soldier’s had. When they had burned the ensign to a crisp one soldier picked up the tablet. The Lieutenant walked over. She stared down at the charred remains. She leaned closer. Between the silver scraps of the biohazard suit she could see a broken arm.

“Heaven preserve us,” she muttered.

The soldier with the tablet looked over. ”What is it, Lieutenant?”

“Hollow bones.” A shiver ran down her back all the way to her toes.

She could see the masks of sweat her soldiers wear. She closed her eyes. “This cannot spread.” 

The soldier with the Ensign’s tablet and a flamethrower that worked raised an eyebrow at her. She pointed at him and the other soldier with a working flamethrower. With her other hand she fingered the device in her pocket. 

“You two. Clear the perimeter,” she said, “ the rest of you come with me.” The two soldiers left. Her legs shook.

She led the rest of them to the machine: the machine full of bones, hollow as the one she stepped on, as hollow as the ensign’s corpse. Her nose itches. 

“We cannot let this spread. Check each other’s suits for breaches. I need to know how they got to our weapons.” She stands in ready position as the four soldiers check each other. 

“There’s a hole in my boot,” one soldier says. The Lieutenant closes her eyes.

“There is a tear in my arm. Not deep enough to cut. It just itches a little.” The second confirms. 

The Lieutenant’s nose begins to bleed. She pulls the device out. 

“I have an awful need to scratch. Can I take my suit off?” The third asks. 

“Yes,” the Lieutenant says. She hovers her finger over the button. She hopes the lucky two are out of range now. She raises a finger to her coms. “Is the perimeter clear?”

“For now. The building feels like it is staring at us. But we burnt everything in our path on the way out.” 

The Lieutenant nods. The first soldier begins coughing next to her.

“Proceed to decontamination, soldiers. Deliver that tablet at all costs,” she says.

“Lieutenant?”

“That is an order soldier.” She moves her finger to the button. Better to be over prepared, she had said. Better to take no chances. She could hear the scrambling, the ticking of tiny legs; she wanted to shake them out of her ears. No matter. The threat would be contained. 

Her voice came out scratchy.

“It has been an honor serving with you.” 

The first soldier fell to his knees. Ants poured from his mouth and eyes. The second fell to the ground. Tiny black bodies serged out of the tear in his suit. They all swarmed toward her, identifying an unknown threat.

She grins. Smiling, she coughs up ants. “You’re too late, formicidae.” 

She presses the button. 

A blue wave rocks out and sweeps through the school. It ignores the walls and sweeps through every crevice. Everywhere becomes stillness. A bird falls from the sky as the wave blasts over it. The soldiers watch it sweep from the outside. The grass dies around the school building, as does the old oak in front of the office. The leaves shrivel and drop in mere seconds.

Then as the bubble is about to reach the two soldiers outside it pauses. The edge quivers an arm’s length away, right at the perimeter. Then it pulls back inward. Leaving a slight suction that makes the soldiers stumble a step. It sucks back into a little device in a still hand covered in dead ants. 

……………………………………………………………………………………..

High command sent in a cleanup crew. Dead ants issued out of the eyes and mouths of four separate soldiers. When the remains of the other two are scanned they find dead ants burrowed deep into the big bones, and in one into the skull.

Their bio device worked. It killed every living thing in the radius of the blast. That would be written up as a terrorist attack. After all, only monsters attacked kids.

They questioned the two soldiers in quarantine about the recording. The soldiers answered to the best of their abilities, their bodies shivering. 

The head scientist asks the question haunting the researchers who sent them in to contain the threat.

“How did you two escape?” 

The soldiers look at each other. They nod. 

They meet the eyes of the researchers through the plastic tent. 

“We didn’t sir.” 

An ant crawled out of the first soldier’s nose. 

The researchers watched in horror as the soldiers’ skin peeled off and ants emerged from between pieces of muscle. The ants clung to the bones shredding the men, leaving red bones behind. The last soldier managed to stand. He saluted as the ants ate through his eyes. The sockets fill with ants. The ants clung together along the bones. The bones of the soldiers made two steps toward the wall of the quarantine tent. A whistling laugh cries through hollow bones as the ants move them forward. They cling together, jaw to jaw, acting as pseudo muscles.

The incineration order began with the researchers still watching. The bones collapsed as the ants burned. They whistled and popped for nearly an hour. 

The researchers submitted their reports. They submitted the recordings and all the interview answers down to the pitch of the whistling through the bones. 

They wrapped-up and went home. They shuddered, hoping they would never see something so horrifying again.

The head researcher took out a handkerchief. His nose seemed to be bleeding.