The stream of ants was only the advance guard, which numbered in tens of thousands, rather than in tens of millions, but still enough to make the race for the shelter of the mangrove one of the most desperate of Ryan Cawdor's life.
Each ant was more than a foot long, with a carapace of fiery copper. The mandibles were huge, disproportionate even to the insect's grotesquely mutated size. Longer than a man's finger, they clicked together in a deafening warning as the ants picked up the approach of the six companions. Those at the front reared up on hind legs, their heads turning from side to side.
As Ryan led the charge, the very front row retreated a few yards, then regrouped in a solid phalanx of glittering death.
To hesitate was to die.
For the first dozen steps, Ryan tried to dodge the ants, but they were packed too closely for him to find any clear ground between them. The crunching of delicate skeletons beneath boot heels almost drowned out the clicking. Ryan kept moving, powering himself toward the tree, which was now only twenty yards distant. He didn't dare turn to see if the others were making it. A stumble would put a person on the last train to the coast.
He could now see something of the main body of the killer army beyond the mangrove. Not an inch of ground was free of the iridescent horde that swept toward him.
Weighing up the chances as he ran, Ryan had already spotted several low branches within easy reach. He became aware of Jak sprinting past, white hair streaming behind him like a snowy banner. The boy made the tree a torn fragment of time ahead of Ryan, diving for a branch and swinging himself onto it with a prehensile agility.
When Ryan was perched four feet from the carpet of ants, he was finally able to look around for the others. He saw Krysty running like someone dancing on hot coals, trying to pick her way between the mutie insects. J.B. was level with her, running flat-footed, deliberately crushing as many ants as he could.
Mildred and Tanner shared last spot in the desperate race.
"Go!" Jak yelled.
Ryan reached a hand down to Krysty and heaved her up beside him. J.B. made it on a lower branch to the left of the mangrove, standing up and looking down at the tide of insects, hand trembling over the butt of his pistol as though he wanted to spray lead into the limitless swell of the ants. But he recognized the utter futility of the thought.
"Doc!" Krysty cried, seeing the old man stumble and nearly fall, ants snapping at his knee boots. Mildred snatched his elbow, keeping him on his feet and bringing him close enough to the giant mangrove for J.B. to haul him up in a flailing tangle of arms and legs.
The woman screamed as one of the mutie insects managed to nip her just above the left ankle. It clung to her flesh as she staggered the last few steps to the tree. Krysty and Ryan both stretched out hands and pulled her off the ground.
"Jeez!" Mildred yelled. "Get that mother off of me."
Ryan swung a fist at the huge ant that pincered her leg in its sawing mandibles. Its thin neck snapped and the body fell away, legs twitching, to be immediately swallowed in the sea of its voracious fellows. But the head remained in place, feelers vibrating, huge eyes swiveling in their sockets. Blood was flowing freely through the thin material of Mildred's pants, soaking her sneaker.
"It's still biting me," she cried, her face contorted with pain.
Cautiously avoiding the snapping mandibles, Ryan squeezed the ant's head between finger and thumb. Its skull was as large as a rat's, and it was all he could do to keep a grip on it. He pulled it away from Mildred's leg, until the claws came free. The severed head wriggled in his grasp, trying to snap at him, until he dropped it to the ground. Ryan was unable to restrain a shudder of deepest revulsion.
"Best get higher!" J.B. shouted. "Bastards are trying t'figure a way of climbing up here after us."
Fighting to control his breathing, Ryan looked down. The clicking had stopped, and the army of killer ants was moving in a sinister, restless silence. It was like being suspended above a sea of molten lava, endlessly shifting, surging around the trunk of the tree.
The Armorer was right. Already a few of the nearer insects were on hind legs, exploring the smooth bark of the mangrove with their feelers.
"You okay, Mildred?" Ryan asked.
"Yeah, I'll make it. The bite burns, like it injected acid. Probably did."
"Thanks, ma'am," Doc called from his perch. "Never thought I might, mayhap, end my days as live food for ants."
Krysty had been peering above them, into the dark, leafy bows. The roots that twined beneath them all seemed to finally come together in a single main trunk. "That way," she said. "Got to find a place they can't come at us in numbers. Get up there and spread out."
Ryan looked where she pointed and nodded his agreement. "Yeah. Everyone? Jak, go first."
"Climbing on each other's backs," J.B. said. The place was so quiet now that he hardly needed to raise his voice for the others to hear.
The ants were forming a brazen pyramid, scrambling over one another's bodies, gaining height.
Within a few seconds their leaders would be into the lower branches of the tree.
Jak was up and away, barely using his hands as he scampered into the upper branches. "Here! Fuckers can't get other way."
Ryan motioned for J.B. to go second, helping Mildred and Doc as he went. Krysty went next, leaving Ryan alone on the low, angled part of the bole of the tree. As he readied himself to move, Ryan saw the first of the questing ants appear, its feelers tasting the air. He drew the panga, waiting a moment until the whole of the creature's body was in sight.
"So long," he grunted, the broad metal blade slicing easily through the center of the ant's swollen belly. A foul-stinking liquid squirted out, a few drops pattering on the skin of his wrist. Feeling it beginning to burn his flesh, Ryan quickly wiped it off with his sleeve.
Almost instantly a dozen more of the mutie insects came chittering over the side of the branch, scuttling toward him.
"Move, lover!" Krysty called from thirty feet above him.
"Yeah. Guess I'd better."
"This is what I believe is called a Texarkana standoff," Doc said. "We can stop them getting at us, but I fear that they can make it confoundedly difficult for us to remove ourselves."
Darkness was creeping over the land, drawing a cloak of night across the jungle. The drumming that Krysty had heard earlier had ceased. Clouds had come up and the setting sun, away behind them, was only visible as a crimson glow at the edge of the bowl of mountains.
"Could be the last hurrah for us," Mildred said quietly. They kept their voices down once they discovered that any noise they made seemed to provoke the ants to ferocious activity.
As long as the friends watched the main trunk of the mangrove immediately below them, the mutie insects had no way of reaching them. It wasn't hard to hold them off with the panga if they came crawling up.
It would be a little harder in the dark.
The traveling army of giant ants seemed content to wait.
The dying embers of the day shone over their orange-red bodies, making it seem that the very land was smoldering. After Ryan had killed a hundred or more, they'd suddenly ceased their efforts to climb the mangrove. Once or twice a lone soldier had attempted an attack, but its headless corpse had fallen to the earth.
J.B. had methodically checked their options, climbing to the soaring, swaying peak of the tree, to try to find out whether they might be able to scramble away into the nearby branches. But the closest was more than twenty feet away and was so slender that to jump would mean a fifty-foot fall into the carpet of ants.
He and Ryan had discussed the possibility of using some of their newfound supply of grens to try to dissipate the patient army of gigantic insects. Even a couple of burners might only kill a few thousand ants. Frags and implodes wouldn't even scratch the surface of the limitless forces, which surrounded the tree as far as the eye could see in every direction.
"Outwait them" was J.B.'s best offer.
Ryan didn't have anything much better. "If they're still here through tomorrow, then we have to reckon they'll stay here forever. Or for long enough."
"But they'll starve," Krysty said.
Mildred knocked that one down. "Army of ants like this could survive days. If they just use a small part of their force to scavenge around for food for the others, they can outwait us. We have those food-tabs, but in heat like this we're sweating about a pint of water an hour."
"How long could we survive?" Doc asked. "Until tomorrow night?"
She nodded. "Probably. But we'll be in poor shape by then."
Ryan sniffed. "So, the only chance is to try and run through them. If we can keep going, and not fall, our speed could get us through and out the other side. Unless anyone's got a better idea, we can try it at dawn. Mebbe drop a gren or two to give us a head start on them."
"Why dawn?"
Ryan looked at Jak. "Can't risk it in the dark. False step, twisted ankle... and goodbye was all she wrote. Wait longer and we just get more tired. Dawn's the best moment."
Nobody agreed with him out loud. But then again, nobody disagreed either.
Both Krysty and Jak had excellent night vision, but the darkness in the jungle was so intense that neither could even see the ground. The blackness was so smothering that it wasn't even possible to see an outstretched hand.
The ants stayed quiet. Ryan organized everyone into a double sentry watch, keeping the guard in pairs to make sure there was no sleeping. If a dozen or more of the creatures below succeeded in sneaking up the tree under the cover of night, the venom of their bites could be enough to prevent any worthwhile defense.
Ryan and Krysty took the four hours that ran from early morning to the first pallid hint of the false dawn.
"Sure I heard drums again, around midnight," Krysty whispered.
"Same direction?"
"Think so. Northerly."
"If we make it out of this, we can go take a look."
She touched Ryan gently on the arm. "Just in case we don't, tomorrow," she began.
But he reached for Krysty's face, finding her lips, and laid his hand across her mouth. "No need, lover. We both know what we feel about each other. Doesn't take words. If we get chilled in the morning, then it'll likely be quick. But I don't reckon on going. Not yet. Got too much living to do, lover."
She held his hand and breathed a kiss into his palm. "Fair enough. We'll make it together. Like you say... we both got a lot of living still to do."
The layers of the night peeled back with an imperceptible slowness and subtlety. Ryan suddenly realized that he had caught a faint spark of fire from Krysty's long red hair.
"Dawn's coming," he announced.