Them-2 - Chapter 32

Chapter Thirty Two – Near Pikeville, Kentucky

The first thing Huck did upon returning to OZ was to turn his reluctant captive over to Lieutenant Prestano, with a strong recommendation to have her steam cleaned. Joey Prestano got one whiff of the smelly cantankerous woman and had her frog marched straight to Sergeant Smith’s wife, who was more than capable of handling the skinny girl. Beth had woken inside the Bradley on the return trip and demanded she be released. For obvious reasons, her request was ignored.
The second thing he did was visit the lab and have a discussion with Colonel Grace and Tappy.
Colonel Grace jumped back as Huck entered the lab. “You smell like shit!” Tappy standing next to him wrinkled her nose in agreement.
“We picked up an important passenger,” Huck smiled. “She wasn’t very pleasant company but she did have something that may be of interest.” He removed the leather bag from his shoulder and extracted one of the little jars.
“This stuff may be what you’ve been trying to duplicate.” Huck went on to describe the small crowd of people and how the ants reacted to them.
Mike opened the lid and jumped back at the awful smell. “Scent alone will probably keep any self respecting animal away.” He passed it to Tappy. “You said the ant approached them, acted like it was smelling, then crawled away without attacking the group?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s probably some type of identification pheromone,” Tappy replied. “Ants use smell to tell them if what they meet is family, food or enemy. They also use it to mark slaves, leave trails, and assign work positions and a multitude of other things. They even use it for propaganda to fool enemies.”
Huck looked confused. “So somehow these people got hold of something that the ants identify as friendly?”
Tappy nodded. “In a manner of speaking. It is entirely possible that the ants themselves may have given it to the con artist and his original group. My guess is that it’s used to identify a slave.”
“You mean Moses and his oddballs were ant slaves?”
“Quite possibly.”
“It’ll certainly be helpful.” Tappy held the jar up to look at the slimy contents. “We should be able to duplicate it. We’ve been working along an entirely different line. We’ve been experimenting with the fungi in the genera Cordyceps and Ophiocordyceps to see if we can infect the ants and alter their behavior. A nematode, the myrmeconema neotropicum infects canopy ants and alters their behavior, so we thought...”
Huck held up his hand. “Save it Doc, you lost me with the first word. You think you can reproduce this stuff?”
The two scientists nodded their heads.
“Unfortunately, we’ll need a test subject to see if our results work,” Mike replied.
“You mean a live ant?”
“Well, a dead one will certainly do us no good.?”
Huck rolled his eyes. He didn’t know right off hand how he was going to catch one of the monsters alive. “You come up some technique to capture one, let me know.”
It had been several weeks since they conducted their last community meeting and the people were growing restless for news. Before leaving on the latest mission, Huck asked the FOX News Team to scour the news channels and come up with a presentation. He also tasked the other committee team leaders to prepare updates. He strongly believed that everyone deserved to know what was happening outside the pristine walls of OZ. He also lived with the philosophy that people coped better when they knew what they faced.
That evening, after Huck provided the community with a rundown on the latest exploits. including the bottles of slime, he turned the podium over to Alicia Bentley.
“What do you want me to give them?” Alicia asked as he passed her on the stage.
“Whatever you have.” Huck looked at the stack of notes in her hand. “Good or bad they deserve to hear it.”
“Most of it’s not good.”
Huck nodded and continued to the front row where a seat had been saved for him. As he sat down in the unusually comfortable theater seat, he noticed Beth a few seats down. She was clean and did not look at all like the smelly fruitcake they’d kidnapped. He smiled at her but she glared back and glanced annoyingly at Lieutenant Prestano and a military policeman sitting on each side of her.
“As usual, the news is not the best,” Alicia started. She was unaccustomed to talking without a camera in her face and a tape to recap any mistakes.
“The ants have spread nationwide, in fact, worldwide. We have visual footage of the ants crawling down Lake Shore Drive, Michigan Ave, Grant Park, Millennium Park, and the entire Loop area in Chicago. In New York and the greater New York area, Long Island, Hoboken, Jersey City, Bayonne, Elizabeth, and Newark, ant mounds are everywhere.
In the Los Angeles area, Burbank, Long Beach, Anaheim, Huntington Beach, the streets are quiet with no sign of people anywhere. There are long lines of stalled vehicles leading out into the deserts. We can only surmise the population fled to the deserts for safety. Many, if not most, did not make it.
There is one piece of good news from San Diego. Coronado is secure. The Navy blew the access road to the peninsula and at Silver Strand Boulevard and they’re using the peninsula as a major staging area for ships returning home from Asia and the Middle East. So far thousands of armored carriers and armored HMMVs have returned from overseas and are being used to hunt for survivors.
Seattle, Vancouver, Quebec, and Juneau are infested but Anchorage and Fairbanks Alaska and most of northern Alaska is untouched. The military at Cheyenne Mountain estimates that nationwide at least a hundred million people have perished. That number is estimated to be well over a billion on the other continents.”
The audience started to murmur at this bad news. Most of their extended families and friends were still at the mercy of the ants.
Alicia continued. “We also have video footage from Paris France, ants on the Champs Elysses, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and other areas. The French military tried to blow the bridges leading on to Notre Dame, but they were too late. In Rome, everything inside the A90 is on video as is the Vatican. It is assumed that the ants are everywhere since there are numerous ant mounds in the area. Tokyo, including all cities around Tokyo Bay, Yokohama, Narashino, Sodegaura, Chiba and all outlying areas were overrun. Japan has been devastated from Kagoshima to Sapporo including the nearby islands.”
Alicia halted to take a sip of water before continuing. “In China, Beijing and all outlying areas such as Tangin, Zhangjiakou, Datong and others are infested. Moscow, everything within a hundred mile radius of the city is reeling from major ant infestation. Throughout Europe, Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna, Athens, Madrid, Amsterdam, Oslo, Copenhagen and in Africa, from Casablanca to Cairo, down into Lagos, Nairobi, Port Elizabeth and East London has been overran. The United Kingdom is seething with ant nests as is Ireland and the major outlying islands. In Central and South America, Mexico City, Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago, even Havana, Santo Domingo and San Juan are swarmed under. To put it distinctly, the entire globe is infested with the giant ants and they are rapidly destroying populations wherever they show up.”
“Any good news other than Coronado?” a voice from the audience asked.
The communications guys from the Army say there are numerous holdouts in small places such as, Chateau de Grangent, Burg Pfalzgrafenstein, and Trakai Island Castle, which were surrounded by water or made to be so, and numerous small islands are believed not to be infested by the ants. In addition, we know that the ants spread so fast and moved rapidly to major population centers for easier access to food resources, there are many small bands of people in the woods and in small towns left untouched.”
“What about military news?” a woman asked. “What’s the military doing and what’s going on around the world in that regard?”
“I’ll let Major Reynolds answer that question.” Alicia waved for the Major to come to the podium. Major Reynolds was the Air Force pilot of the C-130 downed near Pikeville. He volunteered to act as liaison with Cheyenne Mountain.
“According to General McKensey the majority of our military assets have arrived back in the United States. As Alicia mentioned, Coronado is one major staging area where they are offloading thousands of troops and armored vehicles. Other military strong points in, Seattle, New Orleans, Houston and in Maine, have been sending out rescue patrols to find and bring in as many survivors as possible. However, the bases are becoming overcrowded and food shortages have already begin to appear.”
“The General also sent convoys to major supply warehouses to find food and water and secure it. The military is certain they can hold on to those bases where they have overwhelming armored firepower. As for the rest of the country, it’s not looking good. Not only have the ants taken over, they are consuming everything in their path, even corn, wheat, beans, livestock, cattle, pets, and other food stuffs left behind or in the fields.”
“Famine is wide spread in areas outside the big population centers where the ants haven’t invaded yet. Our inability to resupply stores and a mass exodus from the cities has compounded the problem. As for those people remaining in the cities we can only surmise. They may hold out for a while in secure buildings, but their food and water will probably run out before the ants do.”
“On the international front, military forces deployed to invade other countries, such as the Iranian invasion of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, China’s invasion of Taiwan, South Korea and hundreds of smaller flare ups, were stopped in their tracks. Once the ants infested the invading countries, they pulled their military forces back to protect the homeland. If you would like a more detailed report on any of this or to see the video footage, come to the COM room and we will show it to you. As military families I know you have friends around the world and you may be concerned about the area they’re in.”
“Infrastructure around the country is rapidly starting to collapse. There are massive power outages everywhere as electrical grids and hydroelectric plants fail. Major portions of most cities are burning with no one to put the fires out. The military is concerned about the nuclear power plants but unable to do anything yet. They have flown teams to some plants to stabilize them but many others are beyond their present security reach. Transportation and shipping is at a virtual standstill except for military convoys. Communication throughout most of the country is down so survivors have no means of knowing what the government is doing or in what areas they can hope to find safety. In other words, it’s a total mess out there.”
The remainder of the meeting concerned housekeeping items such as food supplies, community cooperation, ideas on improvements, special requests, and a multitude of other items.
Kathay waited for Joey to make his way from the theater. She had noticed him sitting with a very attractive young woman and for some unknown reason overwhelming jealousy flared up inside her. She liked the Lieutenant, but he was after all, thirty-five. That was old in her book. She had scanned the younger soldiers over time but most of them seemed immature and not her type, whatever her type was.
Joey noticed the look of suspicion and dislike that Kathay gave to Beth as they walked past her. Beth returned it with a look of contempt and hostility of her own. It was obvious to Joey that mutual friendship was not on the menu.
“Hi Joey,” Kathay smiled. “Haven’t seen much of you lately.”
Joey nodded for the military policeman to continue on down the hall with Beth. “Been kinda busy.” He watched as Kathay’s eyes lingered on the receding form of Beth. “She’s a hard corps radical. Been running around with a con-artist who thinks he’s the new savior or something. Commander La Roche, Huck, wants to keep her under security until she can get medical help.”
“Mom wanted me to ask you if you wanted to come to our apartment for dinner tomorrow at seven?” She just made it up on the instant. Her mother, the new First Lady, didn’t even know she was interested in Lt. Prestano.
“Sure,” Joey replied. “Got to run now, I have work to do.”
“What was that all about?” Allison Watkins walked up to where Kathay was standing..
“I invited Lt. Prestano to dinner tomorrow evening, mom. That’s ok isn’t it?”
Allison was far from stupid. She knew the difference between puppy love and destiny. She was well aware that the world as they knew it was gone forever and women in the new world would need a strong man to protect them. Most of the young soldiers and survivors she met around the complex did not fit that mold. Very few men in OZ met her ideal of a strong man. Commander La Roche, Major Reynolds, and Lieutenant Prestano were among that few.
“Prestano, that’s Italian isn’t it?” She muttered. “I’ll bet the young Lieutenant would love some home cooked lasagna.”
Mike and Tappy approached Huck before he could sneak out.
“We’ve found a way to capture one of the ants,” Mike stated. “We came up with a mixture of halothane and isoflurane that should do the trick.”
Huck looked lost.
“It’s similar to chloroform and ether,” Tappy smiled. “It should knock the creature out long enough for you to bring it back here to a secure lab, but it doesn’t have the dangerous side effects of those other chemicals.”
“And I’m supposed to make one of those monsters drink it?”
“No. All you have to do is to shatter vials of it against the ant’s armor and the ant will absorb it.”
“You do have a secure place to keep it, don’t you? I wouldn’t want one of those things loose inside OZ.”
“There are several such areas,” Mike replied. “We’ll show them to you so you can see if they’re strong enough to keep one of the ants secured.”
Huck casually glanced at his watch. “I have a late dinner date. Can we make it first thing in the morning?”
Tappy grinned. “For Kayle’s sake, you better.”