Everyone gathered at the mouth of the temple. Animals of every genus and species, waiting for the latest appearance of the remaining humans on the planet, the last holdouts of the great war. This was the era of the final humiliation of humanity, when the crimes of that greedy species would be punished at last. The humans had prayed to their gods, they’d maintained faith in their technology and their governments, but nothing would save them now.

The Colony held a Purge every few months in Wellbeing. The people loved it. They loved jeering at the human prisoners as the Alphas frog-marched them from the depths of the anthill. No other event encapsulated both the anger and the euphoria of the animals’ new freedom. No other event brought things full circle. Here, the humans were the exotic ones, the playthings, the ones who could be discarded. In the days leading up to a Purge, people gossiped about who they expected to see—high-ranking generals, politicians, young children (for the humans were still breeding). People wondered—sometimes aloud, but mostly to themselves—if they would see their former masters. And when the prisoners were put on display, the spectators placed bets on who would cry first, who would scream first, who would pray first, who would fight back first, who would beg first, and who would say nothing at all and accept the fate that had arrived at last. The pomp reminded the citizens of what they had won, and how easily that victory could be taken away.

Mort(e), however, was tired of it. It had been over a year since he had walked out on the Red Sphinx, and a lifetime since the Martinis had driven away in their silver SUV. Unless this Purge actually produced his former masters or provided some clue about Sheba, then it was another waste of however much time he had left on this earth.

Things were supposed to be normal now, but Mort(e) knew that it would take another generation for everyone to get over what had happened. It would require the people of his time to die off, and the memories of their former lives to die with them.

The animals waited in the evening sun, into the dusk, and finally in the dark. The temple—a massive anthill the size of a pyramid—changed color from tan in the daytime, to brown as the sun descended, and finally to gray under the stars. At last, the mouth of the structure opened, powered by some biomechanism that only the ants could master. The aperture began as a hole the size of a fist and continued to widen like an iris. The anthill became like a basket placed atop a fluorescent lamp, with spears of light shooting high into the night sky.

Crouching on all fours, the animals got into position.

Alpha soldiers emerged from the entrance, standing upright. Their abdomens swayed from side to side with each step. Antennae waved like the arms of a marionette doll. Segmented eyes gazed at everything and nothing at once. Mouths resembled the parts of a machine, all gears and hinges and sharp edges. Coarse hairs sprouted from their exoskeletons. And crawling about their bodies were thousands of smaller ants, making it seem as though their skin somehow moved. Humans had once suffered through nightmares about creatures such as this. And here they were.

The crowd split down the middle to make room for them. Mort(e) waited several rows away, between two dogs who did not acknowledge him, and behind a pair of cats who arrived together but said nothing to each other. The dogs wore the orange vests of sanitation workers, and Mort(e) detected a faint odor of death masked by some kind of musky cologne that the humans had left behind. Mort(e) imagined that these workers had removed another stash of corpses—probably another bomb shelter with a desiccated human family inside. He noticed a pamphlet sticking out of one of the cat’s pockets. EMSAH SYNDROME, it read. BE ALERT FOR THE SIGNS. The disease gave these workers a sense of purpose as they did their part to reestablish civilization. If Tiberius had been there, he would have quizzed them on EMSAH trivia and scolded them for each question they got wrong. You mean to tell me you don’t know the incubation period?

As he did whenever he was in a public place these days, Mort(e) kept an eye out for Sheba. If he did it long enough, everyone resembled her until it seemed as though the entire crowd was mocking him. There was Sheba cradling a pup in her lap. There was Sheba removing a miner’s cap and inspecting the little light for the next day’s work. There was Sheba holding a pair of binoculars, awaiting a glimpse of the Alpha warriors and their human captives. Then, as always, Mort(e)’s eyes readjusted to reality, and his mind accepted that she was nowhere to be found.

Before Mort(e) could become completely lost in his thoughts, the first of the human prisoners appeared. The Purge was beginning. Everyone tensed up, craning necks, straightening spines and tails. Mort(e) was surprised to see so many prisoners. Most were American soldiers, still clad in their pixelated camouflage, faces muddied. There were always stories of humans hiding out in caves and sewers, using their awful machines of war to hold on to life for one more day. Mort(e) suspected that the Colony itself was the source of these rumors, which did such a wonderful job of keeping the animals on their guard.

One of the women prisoners carried a sleeping baby against her shoulder. This also surprised Mort(e), for it was common knowledge that the Alphas liked to eat human children.

While the soldiers had been grim, trying to ignore the sea of animals that spread out before them, the civilian prisoners whimpered. Mort(e) caught sight of one of them, a woman of about fifty. She had white hair and was still chubby despite years of conflict. A younger woman shushed her.

A phalanx of Alphas guarded the rear. The aperture in the temple closed behind them. Then a noise rumbled from the bowels of the anthill like a foghorn.

At the signal, the animals knew what to do.

All at once, they rose on their hind legs. The prisoners, including the most hardened among them, could not keep from being startled at the sight of it. The symbolism of the ritual was clear: the age of the humans was over, and all their attempts to extend life through science and cheat death through religion had failed.

All together, the animals lifted their arms and waved at the prisoners. Mort(e)’s hand was smaller than some of the others’, his fingers stubby but functional. He could still wave.

A scream rang out. It was a soldier, sobbing uncontrollably. Another soldier put his arm around the man. Then he faced the animals and spit. Soon almost all the humans were screaming. The animals cried out in response. It began as random taunts before coalescing into a sustained chant:

“Purge!” they shouted. “Purge! Purge! Purge!”

The crowd swelled around the prisoners, moving with them toward the ship docked at the river. The vessel resembled a half-submerged submarine made of a brownish organic material, like a combination of bamboo and mud. There were no windows on the hull, only a doorway on the side. A retractable gangplank extended through it, holding the corralled prisoners. From there, the humans would be ferried to the Island, the nameless place where the nameless war was won, and where the Queen kept her royal court. The Colony’s official propaganda stated that Miriam and her staff would use the prisoners in experiments intended to find a cure for EMSAH. But Mort(e) imagined that at least some of the humans would become zoo exhibits. Perhaps they would be forced to breed so that their offspring would live through the same horror, producing generations of slaves for all eternity. It would be no different from what the humans had done to the animals, Culdesac had always said.

There was one last ritual to play out, a formality that the ants had instituted in all the resettled sectors. The elite soldiers of the animal army would be at the dock to preside over the event. To Mort(e), this ceremony was one of the Colony’s clumsy public relations efforts, intended to show that the ants were transferring power to the surface dwellers.

A tan dog—what the humans would have stupidly called a Great Dane—had the privilege this time of seeing the humans off. Wearing a maroon sash to indicate his rank of colonel, the dog stepped forward to a microphone mounted near the gangplank. The humans waited with drawn faces, apparently more annoyed than frightened by this point.

“The last days of this war go on and on,” the dog said, “but with this Purge, we are closer to final victory over the plague of humanity.”

A cheer rose up, followed by more chants of “Purge!”

The colonel lifted his hands to ask for quiet. “Final victory over the plague of humanity,” the dog emphasized. “And final victory over humanity and its plague.”

A Purge was never complete without mention of EMSAH. In response, the animals pointed at the humans and chanted, “Shame! Shame!” It was not in unison, which made it all the more disturbing.

“We have seen what your syndrome, your hellish weapon of last resort, has done to you,” the dog said, facing the prisoners. “And so, we say to you in one voice, ‘We stand united.’ ”

It was the opening line to the pledge that the animals recited at every Purge. Anticipating it, the crowd immediately joined in:

“We pledge to one another a new world founded on peace, rooted in justice, secured by order, and prepared for war. We promise to stand together to defend this new world with our lives. In the name of the Queen, the Colony, and the Council, this we swear.”

Mort(e) did not recite the pledge. No one noticed.

The dog unhooked a device attached to his belt. It was a translator, the same kind Culdesac used during his briefings with the Colony. Though it may have been the most extraordinary piece of technology ever created, here it was used merely as part of a formalized ritual. Donning the headset, the dog approached the lead Alpha and delivered his report on the state of the sector. It took only moments—supposedly, the translator could slow things down for the user so that a brief conversation could include enough information to fill a textbook. In that sense, it mimicked the mental capacities of the Queen herself.

The “report” complete, the dog stepped aside while the Alphas led the prisoners up the gangplank. It was typical for the audience to break into song at this point, but that depended on who showed up. This time, they remained mostly quiet. Maybe, Mort(e) thought, they had chanted enough for one night.

The crowd dispersed, the animals grunting and jabbering to one another. They would always compare this Purge with the last before talking about what they were doing the next day. The same pointless conversation spilled from everyone’s lips. The lights from the temple went dim. Soon, Mort(e) was the only one there, standing amidst the tracks of his animal brethren, hidden in comforting darkness and silence.