Bug Park by James P. Hogan

It brought her onto a house-size rock with a domed top. An impassable wall of dead leaves and pine needles lay to the left, while on her other side a ramp of sand scree and pebble-boulders led down. Scuffling and clicking noises came from ahead, growing louder as she moved forward. She crossed cautiously over the steepening slope of the dome until she could see down the far side of it . . . and found herself looking at an ant freeway.

There were hundreds of them, streaming in a two-way column: pinch-waisted bodies the size of hogs, jostling and swerving, occasionally bumping to exchange pieces of substances that some carried in their mandibles. Others bore triumphantly aloft pieces of leaf and other trophies. The flowing patterns of bustle and movement were hypnotic, and even in her agitated state Michelle was unable to pull herself away. She had heard that a colony was in reality, somehow, a single, extended organism, its cells freely mobile as individuals, yet at the same time totally subordinated functional parts of the whole. She had never really understood what that meant; but here, watching them, she could feel it, chilling and unnerving, as if she were watching an entire race that had become zombies; individually mindless, yet collectively with a sinister single-mindedness of purpose evident in the endless, mechanical, marching lines.

There was movement at the edge of her field of view. A scout on the flank of the column had detected her and was coming up the ramp by the side of the dome to investigate. And it was coming fast.

Michelle finally lost the control that she had been striving to maintain. She didn’t care about this being an illusion, didn’t stop to reason or intellectualize. She couldn’t have if she’d tried. The flurry of clacking, Erector-Set legs and the sight of the tapered head with its huge eyes, antennas switching like whips, crushing mandibles extended, triggered her most basic, animal survival responses. The next she knew, she was plunging back through shoots and vines, moving faster than she’d thought possible, not sure if she had shouted out her terror. All that mattered was to get away.

A whine like a diving jet fighter came from overhead. She looked up to see a winged school bus coming out of the sky, straight at her. She certainly screamed then, but it streaked over her and came down among the overhanging leaves. One of the shoots sagged to reveal the green caterpillar that she had seen before, caged among the wasp’s legs. It convulsed and squirmed, causing the whole frond of leaves to shake. Michelle saw the wasp’s body arch, watched the sting drive into the quivering bulk. . . .

Get away, anywhere! . . .

She was back at the wood-chip mountain, scrambling frantically, causing logs and boulders to slide. The hillside burst open as the centipede emerged—amber and brown, armed with huge claws converging like pincers, and two trunklike antennas—a monstrous, loathsome, segmented train with waves of legs undulating in place of wheels. The avalanche of wood tumbled down around Michelle, bowling her over. A gigantic head studded with eyes loomed over her, ghastly beyond her worst nightmares, its sideways-gaping mouth open to expose slavering fangs. The horror overcame her. She had no voice, no will, was incapable of reacting.

Then another whine, higher-pitched than the wasp’s, came from close by; there was a quick rasping sound, and the centipede recoiled as one of its antennas flew away. Something long and deadly flashed above where Michelle was lying, and the monstrosity wheeled away, rearing to meet a different threat. Michelle rolled clear with brief impressions of a bright yellow, upright creature dodging in an amazing leap, then lunging. The centipede grappled with its claws and tried to bite, reeling back as two of its legs came off.

It was another mec! Michelle pushed herself up, staring disbelievingly. The assailant was another mec, with black and yellow stripes again, like the other one in the box back on the ledge. It was brandishing something that looked like a chain-saw ten feet long.

Again, they closed. The mec evaded the snapping claws and sprung in nimbly to hack off another leg, causing the front part of the beast to lose support and lurch over. As it did, another mec, bright red this time, raced in from the opposite side, leveling a whirring lance even longer than the saw, and drove it into the base of the centipede’s head. Coordinating perfectly, the striped mec swung the saw down at the back of its neck. The head dropped, almost severed. The remaining antenna flailed violently a few times, and then the rest of the body collapsed in a wave of shuddering legs that rippled down its length like a line of toppling dominoes. Some of the legs twitched spasmodically; then it was still.