James Axler – Deathlands

“They’re still several miles off and it’ll be dark soon. Anyone know if ants travel at night?”

Doc raised a tentative hand. “I might be proved wrong, but I rather doubt it. I imagine that they’ll form themselves into a sort of camp. Protect their queen and all the grubs and babies. Must be a whole species on the move. An entire colony burning their way through the forest. I’ve read tales of this happening. I vote for no travel at night.”

Ryan nodded. “My guess, too, Doc. In that case we’ve got a little time. And we can mebbe use that time to try and come up with a plan.” He glanced at his chron. “Five minutes is up. Let’s go and talk this over with our hosts.”

THE NATIVES WERE APPALLED at the ant army that was moving toward them. As soon as Ryan broke the news to them, they began to chatter and argue, several of them standing and pointing toward the east.

Itzcoatl silenced the panic by clapping his hands and making a strange hissing noise between his teeth. He spoke American for the benefit of Ryan and the others.

“This is very bad. The sacrifices the other night were wasted. Something must have been done wrongly and the gods have become angry with us. All things are pushing against us on all sides. The gods wish to destroy us.”

“But first they make you mad,” Doc whispered to Dean, looking disappointed at the blank bewilderment on the boy’s face.

“We can only run,” Itzcoatl said.

He turned to Ryan. “How long before the small biting ones reach us here?”

“Difficult to tell, Chief.”

“Are they in trees,” Smoking Crest asked, “or in grass?”

“Grass. Sort of swampy kind of region, where the trees are thinned out.”

Krysty interrupted him. “Best description is that big red-stone basin. They’ll know that.”

“The spit bowl of the fire gods,” Itzcoatl said. “We know it. Have the ants got that close?”

Ryan looked at the sun, which was low on the horizon. “Answer me a question. These red ants, when they up and move like now, do they march at night?”

Itzcoatl looked around the council table, waiting for some of the older warriors to answer him. Finally a man called White Jaguar spoke.

“Not in dark,” he said. “Only in light.”

Ryan nodded. “Then the ants should reach that deep bowl in the rock during the middle of the next morning. Mebbe a little sooner.”

“They will be in our pockets by the middle of the following day,” Itzcoatl said. “Where they move, the ground dies. Where their shadows fall, the flowers crumble. We can do nothing. Nothing stops them.”

“Water?” Jak asked.

“Oh, yes, Jak. A fast river will stop them. They will send the scouting ants up and down until they find a fallen tree or a place to cross. We have no river in the way of them.”

Everyone sat silently, regarding the disaster that was moving remorselessly toward them.

“Might they just stop?” Mildred asked. “Or change the direction of their march?”

Itzcoatl shrugged. “Only if the gods will it. But their eyes are against us.”

Doc suddenly spoke. “You said you’d found a lot of gasoline, Ryan?”

“Sure.”

The old man’s milky blue eyes were alight with eagerness. “My father’s friend, Leiningen, was a plantation owner in the jungle. He was faced with an army of ants.”

“And?” Ryan prompted.

Doc grinned wolfishly. “And I will tell you how he solved the problem.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The whole village worked through the nightthe warriors, the priests, the elders, the children and the women.

At first it was Itzcoatl who was in charge of the desperate operation, but he simply didn’t have the logistical skill for anything on this scale.

He handed over control to Ryan, who ordered, chased, shouted and kicked to get his way, organizing the village into a number of squads, each of them with a specific task, each with a different member of the group of friends to take command of them.

Dean was given a group of the youngest children, whose task was to collect all the available honey from the village’s stores and carry it in pots, through the dark jungle, until they reached the chosen spot.