The Colony: A Novel Read online

  “Still here? Lucille, you’re a goddamned paralegal,” he quipped.

  “With any luck, I’ll be your boss in three years.”

  “I could get you there sooner, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t make me sue your ass.”

  “You’d lose.”

  Lucille leaned back as the lawyer sat down on the desk, trying to catch a better view down her blouse. It made her skin crawl, the way his lips pursed, a gesture he obviously thought sexy but she found effeminate.

  “I heard the Central Park couple died last night.”

  “The ant people?” she scoffed. “Next time don’t get naked in the middle of Sheep Meadow.”

  “You know a better place?” His hands pressed against the sturdy Formica. “I’m a desk man myself.”

  “Is that why they call you pencil prick?”

  “First the couple in Soho, and now these two in the park. That makes four dead bodies.” He leaned in close, smelling like green Tic Tacs. “Lonely walk to the bus, babe. Bet you could use a ride home.”

  “I’ll take my chances with the bugs.”

  He shrugged and straightened his tie. Then he left her office with a childish grin, humming “The Ants Go Marching.”

  Lucille closed the last folder and reworked her hands across her heavy lids.

  Four dead bodies … Four dead bodies … Four dead—

  If she hurried, she could still catch the 4:15 A.M. bus to Brooklyn. She grabbed her vinyl briefcase and walked down the hall to the elevator, rode it twenty flights to the lobby, where the security guard was immersed in a crossword puzzle. She took the usual exit, through a side door into an alleyway, an eerie precolonial road paved in original cobblestone that narrowed under the shadows of looming black buildings.

  The predawn cool air revived her senses but not her nerve; the alley was silent except for her spiky heels, which struck against the glistening black pavers.

  Click, click, click.

  Lucille began walking faster and a damp chill spread across her skin. The sound of her own panting quickened her pace, and she clutched the briefcase like a shield.

  Four dead bodies … Four dead bodies … Four dead—

  Her heel caught the edge of a stone and she stumbled onto her hands and knees. That’s when her thumb touched something wet and furry. A rat. It was nearly devoid of flesh but its round eyes glowed pink and its tiny paw twitched. Lucille stared in terror at the carcass on the shiny black pavers that seemed to come alive with fluttery movements.

  She sprang to her feet, grabbing her briefcase and flailing her arms with a guttural cry. Halfway down the alley, she broke into a frantic run, heading toward the hazy light at the end of the lane.

  Broadway opened up wide and bright and Lucille stopped, spilling over herself. A few early commuters emerged from the subway, men and women in dark suits toting briefcases. The lights flickered on in the Starbucks across the street and the illuminated banks on Wall Street loomed with noble grace.

  Lucille dropped her shoulders with relief and continued down Broadway. The glass shelter at the bus stop was empty and her watch read 4:17, but she stood beside the bench and waited, hoping the bus was running late.

  A sanitation truck was parked with its engines still running, the front doors open wide. The dome light revealed an empty cabin. Lucille stepped along the curb and gave the truck a sideways glance. A sound made her turn around, where trash was piled high against a building. Slabs of drywall leaned against the brick and garbage was scattered oddly across the sidewalk.

  A faint and unfamiliar noise emanated from the heap, like the crackling of a wood fire. Lucille pulled out a canister of Mace from her briefcase, rolling it nervously in her palm. She moved under the soft yellow glow of a streetlight and in her peripheral vision, something moved.

  It was a hand; large and pallid and sticking out behind a board of drywall. The hand twitched. Lucille’s heart caught in her throat.

  “Hello? Are you all right?” she asked in a meek voice, and continued in measured steps until the hand was close enough to grab her ankle. There was a slight tremble to her fingers as they extended toward the drywall and gingerly touched the jagged edge.

  Whooosh. The drywell fell solidly to the ground and the woman sprang from its reach as shards of ice ripped through her veins. She muffled a cry with her fist.

  Two sanitation men lay at her feet, covered head to waist with crawling ants. As light swept their bodies, the insects scurried into the collars and sleeves of their uniforms and vanished under debris. Parts of the men were eaten away, their faces swollen and pale like rising dough. Globs of coagulated blood protruded from their eyes, ears, mouths, nostrils and long jagged cracks in their skin, as if something inside their head had burst into pieces.

  Lucille screamed as the number 12 bus pulled to the curb.

  CHAPTER 3

  IN THE BASEMENT LEVEL of the American Museum of Natural History, a couple hundred of the world’s most brilliant minds studied biology, geology, anthropology, paleontology and every other “ology” in natural science. Along with cutting-edge equipment were mummified bodies, primitive tools, Jurassic-age insects trapped in amber, fossilized bacteria and six-ton pallets stacked to the ceiling with the oldest artifacts known to mankind.

  The largest corner office was a relic itself. Under murky light, strained wooden bookshelves were packed with dusty back issues of Entomology Today and Naturalist magazines, faded reference books and journals. A mammoth desk against the back wall was littered with travel brochures of South America, old anatomy reports, draft copies of speeches and uncashed checks totaling ninety thousand dollars in speaking fees.

  The office belonged to Dr. Paul O’Keefe, a tall and elegantly handsome scientist in an Armani suit, who had spent the last thirty-six hours tirelessly peering into a microscope. He had a bookish quality, thoughtful and serious, with quick brown eyes that brightened whenever they hit upon something he’d never seen before, which lately seemed to be every few minutes. Paul wiped the back of his wrist over his damp brow and peered through the lens at the absurdly oversized ant with a degree of respect that was turning into something more like terror each day. He adjusted the steel knob and his fingers shook the image.

  The ant appeared to be a precise replica of the others. The head was unusually skull-shaped and twice as large as that of any other ant species, its copper face tilted up in a roar. The claws were enormous, and what the hell was this—a thumb? Paul used a dropper from a vial to dab the ant with nitric acid. Normally the body would dissolve; this insect showed zero reaction. He slid the ant around in the liquid with the tip of the scalpel. Not even the joints broke apart.

  Impossible.

  No matter how many times he examined them, dissected them and tested them, the impossible factor wasn’t going away. He rubbed his closely trimmed beard and wondered how the greatest moment of his career had so rapidly dissolved into the bleakest.

  Two weeks ago, Mayor John Russo had come to the museum claiming ants had eaten a couple of New Yorkers. The insects delivered to Paul’s office resembled no ant species ever discovered. They were enormous and had no recognizable DNA. Their morphology wasn’t linked to any genus of Hymenoptera. The ants acted viciously in the field, yet were docile in the hand. They displayed abnormal behavior and died within hours.

  Then colonies of ants started popping up all over the city, seemingly overnight.

  For any entomologist, it was a dream come true.

  Paul believed he was the perfect scientist for the job. Known throughout the bug world as Professor Ant, he had just come off a lecture series for his controversial book, Insect Altruism: How an Ant Colony Can Save the Human Race. For that he’d been awarded a Pulitzer Prize and the National Medal of Science, and there was talk of a Nobel. He’d hosted multiple nature specials on PBS, BBC and Discovery and been quoted in National Geographic no fewer than twenty times.

  Paul’s studies were based on the social aspect of ants. Their abili
ty to survive since 50 million years before the dinosaurs was due to congenital cooperation, not the pursuit of individual needs. Ants performed tasks solely for the benefit of the colony, never for themselves. They possessed an incredible sense of duty; all worker ants had two stomachs, one for themselves and one to feed the rest of the colony. Certain worker ants might be in charge of cleaning out the tunnels, but if they noticed food stacking up at the entrance of an anthill, they would switch tasks and begin food storage. It was called collective decision making.

  Paul compared the sociology of ants to certain altruistic human societies, like the Aborigines in Australia, the Siberian Inuit, the bushmen of Africa, monks of Tibet and Buddhists in Malaysia. Based on his study of Hymenoptera, Paul had developed a theory: societies that act in cooperation survive, whereas those motivated by personal gain will eventually become extinct.

  There wasn’t a scientist on earth who possessed his knowledge or experience in the taxonomy of ants. But Paul had to admit, for the first time in his life, he was stumped. He flung the contaminated specimen and dissecting tools into a utility sink, went back to his desk and collapsed in the leather chair. He leaned forward and rubbed his bloodshot eyes, then gazed around the room. On the walls were photos of Paul with Jane Goodall in Africa, David Attenborough in Madagascar and Edward O. Wilson back at Harvard. Without a doubt, Paul had reached the pinnacle of his career.

  That was before the mutant ants.

  Paul cringed at his arrogance. Hadn’t he promised the mayor he could single-handedly contain the colony? Hadn’t he done everything possible to keep out his rivals? Now he was locked in a deadly race against time, anxiously awaiting DNA reports from universities like Cornell, Texas A&M, North Carolina State and Purdue as well as entomology institutes in England, Kenya, Japan, Germany, Australia and every other ant shop he knew. He walked back to the lab, heavy in thought.

  Jason, a spirited young assistant, entered the office. He was tall, boyishly handsome, with intelligent eyes and a biting smirk on his face; a younger version of Paul. He carried a thick stack of folders in one hand and held out a cell phone with the other.

  “Mayor’s office is calling me now.” He raised an accusing brow at Paul. “Turned yours off, didn’t you?”

  Paul didn’t answer, but grabbed the stack from his assistant.

  “Latest batch,” Jason said. “They all say the same thing.”

  Paul slammed the reports on the counter.

  Enough paperwork. Falling back on his early training, when all the answers could be found in the physical world, he plucked up a fresh ant specimen from a slide, held it between his fingers and sliced the thorax down the middle with a diamond-blade scalpel.

  A clear bubble of liquid oozed from the exoskeleton and leaked onto Paul’s thumb. The venom set off a fierce sting and Paul reflexively dropped the ant, snapping his wrist back with a gasp of pain. He shook his hand and frantically scanned the room.

  “Looking for this?” Jason nonchalantly picked up a coffee can of sodium bicarbonate.

  Paul plunged his fingers into the can.

  Jason laughed.

  “Thanks a lot.” Paul rolled out a length of paper towel, tearing off a piece to wrap around his thumb.

  “Geez, you’re bleeding.” Jason clicked his tongue several times with mock empathy. “That was truly the act of a desperate man. This won’t go over well with the Nobel folks, no sireee.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to go back to assembling Eskimo dioramas.”

  “I’m just saying…” The sarcasm in the room evaporated. “So what the hell are you waiting for? Go to the press.”

  Paul shook his head. “Not until we figure the damn things out.”

  “Is that you talking, or city hall?”

  Paul felt flushed. He wasn’t sure if it was from the toxic hit he’d taken from the ant or from his assistant. A Blackberry lying on the counter rang out Beethoven’s Fifth and Paul stiffened. His thumb was still bleeding through the paper towel. He added another layer and answered the phone.

  “O’Keefe.” A wave of nausea swept over Paul as he listened to the mayor’s voice on the other end. It was worse than he expected.

  Jason handed him a medical bag as Paul headed out. “Another body?”

  Paul shook his head. “Two.”

  CHAPTER 4

  NEON LIGHTS SWIRLED FROM the tops of a dozen police cars, blocking off a chunk of Broadway, where the bodies of the sanitation workers lay under white sheets in the same position they were found. NYPD officers stood stoically over the crime scene while commuters pressed against the yellow tape, straining their necks to get a look.

  Police Chief Scotty Harris walked away from the bodies in disgust. The medical examiner, handpicked by the mayor himself, still hadn’t arrived and Harris cursed him through gritted teeth. He yelled out to one of his men, “Sergeant! Where the hell is Wang? I got two dozen detectives, FBI, CIA and no fucking medical examiner. I want these bodies gone.”

  “He’s up in Harlem,” the sergeant scowled. “Got another one. That makes what—seven?”

  “Who’s counting?”

  A white van topped with a satellite dish screeched up to the scene, FOX FIVE NEWS emblazoned on the side in red, white and blue. The door blew open and a willowy blonde sprang out with a cameraman in tow, ready to roll. She elbowed through the crowd to the first cop that didn’t flee from her like the plague, thrust a microphone in his face and fired off questions just as NBC News pulled up to the scene.

  The rookie cop, caught in the spotlight, raised a helpless brow to the chief.

  “Go tell Debrowski to keep his mouth shut,” Harris told the sergeant. “Anyone asks, it’s a regular, run-of-the-mill New York City double homicide.”

  “Right.”

  The chief backhanded the sergeant’s shoulder. “Who’s that?”

  Poking around the bodies was a man in a lab coat and latex gloves. The sergeant shrugged. “Some ant guy the mayor sent over. Probably another one of his cronies who won’t give us a goddamn thing.”

  The chief sighed and stepped off the curb. The stranger squatted over the bodies with a pair of tweezers. He raised a dead ant to the sun and dropped it into a bag, just as the cop reached the corpses’ shoes.

  “Chief Scotty Harris. Can I help you?”

  Paul peered up with affable brown eyes and offered a business card. “Paul O’Keefe.”

  “Mayor sent you?”

  “Just getting some samples.”

  The chief glanced at the card and read, American Museum of Natural History. “You gonna put these things in a display case?”

  “I’m purely research.”

  He stooped down next to Paul. “So what, are these some kind of fire ant? That’s what the last guy told us, when they killed that couple in the park.”

  Paul didn’t answer. “Mind if I open the guy’s mouth?”

  “Forensics hasn’t arrived.” Harris motioned to a cop standing guard over the bodies and asked, “They take photos yet?”

  “Half hour ago,” the cop replied.

  “What the hell,” Harris said, disgusted. “Mayor’s running this show.”

  He pulled the sheet back slightly from the victim’s head and Paul winced. The skin of the dead man was shiny white and swollen to the point of resembling whale blubber, the features hardly discernible as human. Thickened blood protruded from orifices and deep cracks in his flesh. The eye sockets were empty and the one remaining eyeball hung like a wet strawberry from fibrous membranes.

  Paul opened the mouth with a tongue depressor. The cavity was crammed with ants, mostly dead, but three crawled across the lips.

  Harris stumbled back, nearly losing his balance. “Damn. They’re alive.”

  Paul ripped off a glove with a snapping sound and scooped the ants with the tongue depressor, then sprinkled them onto his naked palm.

  Harris was startled by the risky move but had a feeling this had become routine for Paul. The ants were unperturbed and s
eemed to be cleaning their antennas with nimble legs. The cop strained to get a look. “Huh. Not a bite. Guess they must be stuffed from eating this guy.”

  “Maybe.”

  From his breast pocket, Paul retrieved a Genetic Barcode Reader; a shiny silver device with a touch screen and small square hole at the base. It worked on the same principal as a barcode scanner at the supermarket but instead of recognizing line patterns on vegetable cans and packs of poultry, the scanner sequenced strands of DNA and could identify any plant or animal on earth from a database of 10 million species.

  Paul retracted a stylus from the side and used it to crush one of the ants into the hole. The screen lit up and numbers and letters streamed by like ticker tape. When it stopped, he peered down at the screen and frowned. SPECIES: NEGATIVE.

  “Thank you.” He stood up, a head taller than the chief, and extended his hand.

  Harris shook it, but then held on firmly, his expression pleading for mercy. “C’mon, guy. You gotta give me something.”

  Paul could hear the heavy weight of desperation in the cop’s voice. His ruddy face was pinched with lines of worry that stretched from his receding hairline to the bridge of his bulbous nose. Paul looked past the police badge to the early dawn creeping over the skyscrapers and wondered what new horror the day would bring.

  “I’m sorry.” His eyes showed he truly was. Paul headed toward the uptown subway.

  The chief eyed the cadaverous mass on the sidewalk and watched a few ants crawl out from beneath the sheet. A couple stragglers drifted toward his shoe and he backed off, kicking up gravel.

  “Hey!” he called out. “Just tell me one thing. Is there anyone out there who can kill these sons of bitches?”

  Paul was already gone.

  CHAPTER 5

  Las Cruces, New Mexico

  THE CHIHUAHUAN DESERT WAS alive with early morning sounds of coyotes, ravens and warblers. It was already hot—maybe 82 degrees—but a slight wind blew west off the Rio Grande.