The effects of the translator began to wear off. Mort(e) could feel the knowledge dripping out of his mind like water leaking out of a pair of cupped hands. He had entered the phase that Yojimbo described as “deflating.” Part of him would miss the things he had learned. It was hard to go back to being a mere mortal after knowing almost all there was to know.

He was trying to recall some of the Queen’s trials and errors in Alpha breeding when the jeep ran out of fuel somewhere in the abandoned farmlands to the west. They were still too far from the mountains, where Mort(e) believed they would be safer. At least there, the ants would not be able to pop right out of the ground. On either side of the road, fences marked fields that were littered with dead crops. The humans who had fled in this direction could not have lasted very long. There was nowhere to hide.

After abandoning the jeep, Mort(e) and Wawa walked in the doomed footsteps of the humans. Their shadows grew longer. Wawa seemed almost catatonic after hearing about Mort(e)’s meeting with Briggs, the messages from the Vesuvius, his supposed role as the savior, and the possibility that Sheba was still alive on the Island. That was a lot for one day.

They took a badly needed break. The deflation had left Mort(e) nauseated. Now there were only questions with no answers. They simply trailed off. Did Wawa/Jenna kill her master, or simply escape, or …? Was Archer’s original name three successive squeaks … (eee-eee-eee)? And what did the Queen do with Australia again?

An enormous traffic jam clogged the road ahead, another relic of the war that the Bureau had not yet sponged away. A long line of vehicles stretched to the horizon, growing so dense that Mort(e) and Wawa had to squeeze between car doors and fenders, weaving their way through a metal graveyard. Mort(e) surmised that the traffic must have come under attack from both the front and the rear. Several drivers had panicked and tried to move forward onto the grassy shoulder and the empty oncoming lane, forming a bottleneck. Wedged so closely together, many of the humans must have been unable to exit their vehicles, so they smashed the windshields and climbed out. The glass was everywhere, and many of the cars had dents the size of human feet. Several windshields had been smashed in rather than out, suggesting that those people who were unable or unwilling to break out of their cars were stuck waiting until an Alpha pounced on the vehicle.

Wawa pointed her snout toward a bunched-up blanket lying on the road between a van and a convertible with the roof torn off. The blanket covered the body of an old woman lying face down, decomposed to a skeletal state. Her white hair was still curly. Most likely, this one expired en route, and her overly sentimental family hoped to bury her somewhere, still believing that they would have a chance to do so, and that it actually mattered. It was possible, too, that the marauders were so busy chasing down every last EMSAH-infected human that they simply left her behind. The only way she was spreading the disease now was through her eye sockets. All that she knew, and learned, and loved, had died when her heart stopped beating, and her bloated human brain dried out, and all its contents fell away, spilling onto the asphalt.

There were overturned cars up ahead. The ants had sprung a trap for these refugees. The humans fled, only to run toward a new anthill bursting through the highway. Mort(e) pictured it: the ants rising, Alphas supported by hordes of their smaller sisters. Rivers of insects, spraying from a hideous fountain.

He tried to think of something else. Their immediate survival seemed like a good start. As odd as it felt, spending the night near the hollowed-out ziggurat was probably the best idea. Mort(e) thought that he may have been one of the few people in the world who would not be scared to go near an old anthill. Hiding near this place could buy them some time.

He was about to share all of this with Wawa when something caught his eye. At the base of the anthill, where the road had cracked open, a silver SUV lay on its side, its rear window smashed in. A child’s safety seat lay on the ground, probably plucked from the vehicle and tossed aside after its occupant had been removed. There was no blood on the SUV, although the airbags had been deployed. It was exactly like Janet’s vehicle, the one she drove away on the day Mort(e) killed her husband.

Wawa asked if he was all right. He said he was fine. She suggested that they try to hotwire one of the cars and head for the mountains. Mort(e) talked her out of it. A loud vehicle on an abandoned road would attract too much attention. Camping here was the better option, even if it slowed their progress.

Neither of them wanted to sleep on the dirt. At the same time, they did not want to stay inside a vehicle in the event that they needed to make a run for it. They settled on the cargo area of a pickup truck as their resting spot for the evening. The only signs of its previous owner were a bloodstain on the cracked windshield and a half-empty crate of bottled water. They could run away if the Alphas showed up. When Wawa expressed some doubt, Mort(e) reminded her that he was born in a truck like this—it was a little too perfect for him to die in one, too.

With the sun behind the mountains and the temperature dropping, the excitement of the day’s events finally died down. For the first time in hours, Mort(e) felt hungry. Wawa denied needing any food, so he decided to not bring it up again until at least the morning. The only thing they could do now was set up the telescope and wait for the Vesuvius to send its message to the surface. He told Wawa that she should sleep first. When she objected, he pointed out that he couldn’t sleep because he was still wired from his experience with the translator.

“Before dawn,” he said, “I’ll have forgotten more than you’ll ever learn.”

This convinced her. She curled up in the corner of the pickup and closed her eyes. Meanwhile, Mort(e) took the telescope and tripod from his backpack. He used it to search the landscape until there was no trace of the sun left. After that, the only movement he detected was Wawa’s sporadic fidgeting.

When he grew tired, he leaned against the cab of the truck. Like all cats, he could maintain a sort of half-sleep in which his eyelids bobbed up and down, taking him in and out of the real world. Wawa’s sad groans brought him back, but his eyelids soon clamped shut.

When he opened them, he knew right away that they were not really open. He was dreaming. Or, to be more accurate, he was still deflating.

He sat cross-legged in an open field. The sky was blue, and the grass beneath him was a brilliant green, like a child’s watercolor painting. And sitting before him, sprawled out in her extravagance, was the Queen, Hymenoptera Unus. Her distended abdomen was the size of a bus. Her thorax and head rose from it like some ghastly hood ornament. Even though her mouth did not move, a voice emanated from her. It was the voice of Janet, the only woman’s voice he could remember. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

This was no mere dream. It was an echo from the translator. Yojimbo called it a “residual,” a reinterpretation of the knowledge that was forced into his brain and then flushed out. He and the Queen had bonded in some way. He was now a child of the Colony, having eaten from the tree of knowledge. He was one of them now.

“Because I want to,” he said. “I choose to. I owe it to my friend.”

“Even if it causes all this?”

The sky turned gray, as if the painter had mixed the wrong colors. The field was now covered with corpses of every species—human, animal, insect. Not a single inch of the ground was visible, like the floor of the meeting hall in the quarantined town. The bodies had piled up at the base of the Queen’s abdomen. She was submerged in them, like the hull of a ship riding a sea of the dead. Mort(e)’s feet sank into a twisted knot of broken limbs, slashed necks, eyes staring at nothing.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I don’t care. If you want to stop me, you’ll have to kill me. But I’ll kill you first.”

Mort(e) saw in her a sadness at his defiance. He expected it to make him feel powerful, like the warrior he had trained himself to become. Instead, he understood—or remembered?—that she was as scared and alone and tired of this war as he was.

The Queen bowed her head. The landscape grew dim before blurring out completely. After that, a peaceful void enveloped him. He floated in it, his arms airplaned to either side, his tail dangling freely.

The weightless feeling lasted until something brushed against his fur. The sensation electrified his entire nervous system. With a pounding sense of alarm, his heart seized up, and his tail slammed on the deck of the pickup. Opening his eyes, he found Wawa lying at his side, her arm draped over his waist. He thought she was sniffing him. But she was crying.

Mort(e) stood up. “Lieutenant?”

“Sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I … I must have been dreaming.”

She was lying. Mort(e) lifted the telescope over the cab and placed it on the hood. With his tail to her, he tried to make it clear that he had work to do.

“Aren’t you tired of this, Mort(e)?”

He paused. “Is something wrong, Lieutenant?”

“Forget it,” she said. “I thought you would understand.”

“Understand what?”

“My people were meant to travel in packs. To keep one another warm. That’s all. I just thought you would want that …” She trailed off.

“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” he said.

“But you and your friend used to—”

“We’re not discussing that. Go to sleep.”

With Wawa muted, Mort(e) returned to fiddling with the telescope, even though it was fine.

Wawa kicked the inside of the pickup, startling him. The noise was so loud it bounced off the other vehicles. “Are you trying to get us killed?” he said.

“Culdesac was right,” she said. “You’re a miserable hermit, praying to some ghost. You say you’re immune to EMSAH, but this is worse.”

“I’m a choker, Wawa,” he said. “I can’t help you.”

“I wasn’t asking you to mate with me,” she said. “I grew up in a cage, Mort(e). Everyone in my pack did. My master wouldn’t even let us touch each other. I just needed … and I thought you needed …”

Shaking her head, she slumped down in the corner of the pickup, as far away from him as she could get. “We have no pack anymore,” she said. “Culdesac betrayed us. We’re going to die out here alone.”

She wept. Her attempts to hide it were useless. When the crying subsided, she said, “Culdesac was the closest thing I had to a friend. Isn’t that pathetic?”

“No,” Mort(e) said.

“It is now.”

With his thumb, Mort(e) rubbed the smooth surface of his St. Jude medallion. It made him feel a little better, until he was finally ready to speak. “Do you want to hear how I picked my name?”

She did not answer, even though she had to be awake.

“Lieutenant?” he asked. “Do you want the explanation?”

Wawa moved into a sitting position. “I would like that,” she said.

“It’s from a book I read. Le Morte d’Arthur. The death of Arthur. I thought about changing my name to Arthur, but I imagined there were already a few of those. I liked the word Morte. When I was hiding in the ruins of the city, I would say the name to myself.”

“So your name means death?” she asked.

“It’s not death,” he said. “Not really. I was starving. Eager to find my friend. By the time the Red Sphinx caught up with me, two things had happened. First, I decided that I didn’t want to be called Death anymore. I wanted to be a normal person when all this madness was over.”

He let go of the medallion. It flopped against his chest. “Imagine that. I actually thought all this would be over back then.”

Wawa laughed and raised an imaginary drink in the air.

“The second thing that happened was that I forgot how to spell the damn thing,” he said.

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I forgot if it had that e or not. So I put it in parentheses when Culdesac asked.”

“So your weirdo name comes from bad spelling.”

“No, no,” Mort(e) said. “The name fit. Because I could go either way, depending on how things sort themselves out. I could be the normal person, reuniting with my friend. Or I could become Death. I’m trying really hard to avoid that, but I guess I’ve developed a habit.”

Wawa chuckled. “Thank you, Mort(e),” she said.

“Now can you get to sleep, or do you want another bedtime story?”

“I’ll sleep,” Wawa said, rolling onto her side. Her tail wagged a little before coming to a stop.

A minute later, she said, “Don’t worry about me, Mort(e). That business won’t happen again.” He caught it in her voice—the slow crumbling of another one of her beliefs.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.” He sat under the stars and waited.

THE MESSAGE FROM the Vesuvius was short and to the point. It gave a set of coordinates, followed by a simple, persuasive word: Run.

Mort(e) found the coordinates on his map. They intersected in an open field at the edge of an abandoned town. It was a perfect rectangle, probably a football field. He understood the instructions well enough. Driving a car was out of the question, even if they could find one that still worked. They would have to leave the road, and taking a vehicle through the dirt would create so many vibrations that the Queen herself would hear them. So they would have to do it on foot and hope that they were not too loud to attract attention, and that there were no bird patrols passing through the area. Calculating the time needed, Mort(e) figured that if they began moving now, they would reach the field by dawn.

Wawa gathered up the remaining water bottles. Using a discarded belt, she fashioned a strap for her axe, which she wore over her shoulder. Moments later, they were running across the dead fields, leaping fences, hopping over craters.

Their journey took them across another highway, this one with an even more bizarre sight than the last. Instead of being lined up in a traffic jam, the vehicles were piled haphazardly in an artificial mountain, a pyramid, the faint moonlight shining through the windshields and reflecting off the paint.

More running. Past trees. Over a shallow stream. The sky above changed. Soon, they were sprinting under a purple canopy that brightened to red. And then, finally, the sun rose in the east. They were behind schedule, but the town was in sight.

The place was virtually untouched. An exit ramp curved onto the main street, toward abandoned shops and church steeples. Though the buildings blocked the view, the map showed that the field was on the other side.

Mort(e) picked up a scent and sensed the vibrations in the ground. Wawa, whose hearing was even more acute, noticed it as well. She sniffed, then let out a whine to indicate danger. They stood still. Something moved in the soil under their feet.

Wawa was about to speak. Mort(e) raised his hand to silence her. He tossed a bottle of water so that it skimmed across the dirt, away from the ramp. It went about twenty feet before the earth around it ripped open. The armored skull of an Alpha soldier squeezed out of the fissure. Three others emerged, along with a churning river of smaller ants.

Mort(e) and Wawa broke for the ramp, vaulting the barrier and landing on the asphalt. Behind them, the earth tore open. The air was thick with the smell of freshly plowed dirt, and the sound of clicking jaws and skittering feet.

They would have to run through the town. They were safer on cement than the dirt, but there was no telling what was inside the buildings. If there were humans waiting at the field, they were probably already dead.

A row of cars on the side of the road overturned as the Alpha soldiers burst through it. A cherry-red convertible tumbled into their path. Mort(e) ran around the vehicle while Wawa bounded over it. Alphas poured over the barrier. Ants rose from their underground tunnels, sending up geysers of dirt.

They approached an abandoned military roadblock. A burned-out army truck was parked beside a row of sandbags and barbed wire. Seconds after jumping over, Mort(e) heard the ants explode through it.

The first building they passed was a post office. A sign on the front door had a drawing of an ant, with a message underneath that said, INSECT BITES TREATED HERE. At the intersection, to his right, the street was filled from sidewalk to sidewalk with Alpha soldiers. All of them completely still. Same thing on his left. The soldiers came to life, their movements synchronized, an undulating wave of armor and claws. Wawa yelped.

The glass storefronts shattered outward. Alpha soldiers spilled onto the street. Others emerged from second-story windows and rooftops, dropping to the ground and aiming their antennae toward the two fugitives. Dozens of Alphas now cut off their escape.

They had been lured right into a nest.

Mort(e) pulled the gun from its holster. Wawa unhooked the axe from its strap and ran with the blade over her shoulder.

Mort(e) picked out the closest Alpha and fired. She kept coming at him, shrugging off the gunshots. Mort(e) emptied the clip until he hit the base of her neck, cutting off the ant’s brain from the rest of her body. The Alpha stumbled forward and landed hard on the pavement, part of her jaw breaking off. Mort(e) jumped onto her back and grabbed one of the claws. Placing his foot on the joint, he snapped it off. Now he had a club. Another Alpha drew close. Mort(e) swung the claw and connected, caving in the beast’s compound eye. A second later, Wawa’s axe chopped off the ant’s antenna. With the ant prostrate before her, Wawa swung again, severing the vulnerable neck. Bits of carapace flew off as the creature collapsed.

Two more Alphas charged at them. Mort(e) crouched and lifted the abdomen of the dead one. He squeezed until a blast of acid shot out, catching the two ants in the small explosion. The monsters clawed at their melting eyes. In their confusion and agony, the ants crashed into one another and fell over. The others stepped over their writhing bodies and continued to advance. Mort(e) slashed at them with the broken claw to slow them down. He could sense the rest of the swarm closing in from behind.

Suddenly the ants stood still, their antennae pointing straight up.

A great shadow blotted out the sun, spreading over the entire street—a gigantic silvery whale swimming above, ready to swallow up the entire town. The Vesuvius. Painted on the bottom of the command gondola were a massive black cross, a crescent moon, and a six-pointed star. Cannons extended from the windows. When the guns opened fire, the Alphas standing in their path burst apart. Heads, limbs, and antennae skittered along the ground. Several Alphas were cut in half. They tried to crawl to safety as their organs spilled from their ruptured abdomens.

Letting out a high-pitched whistle, the ship fired rockets at the buildings. A fireball engulfed the row of shops, the shockwave knocking Mort(e) to the ground. As debris rained down, he felt Wawa grab his arm and pull him to his feet. He spit the dust out of his mouth.

They kept moving. An amputated claw grabbed Wawa’s ankle, and she hacked it away. The ants gave chase, even as the cannons cut them to pieces. They stepped over their dead sisters, ignoring the gore coating their armor.

As Mort(e) ran, he tried to keep up with the cross above. The Vesuvius was headed for the field. When the firing stopped, a cable descended from the ship, a man in a black jumpsuit harnessed at the end of it. He touched down in the school parking lot. His large tinted goggles made him resemble an insect. Behind him, the entrance of the school crumbled, revealing another nest of Alphas. They emptied from the destroyed building, rolling over one another before finding their footing. The Vesuvius opened fire on them, but there seemed to be a never-ending supply, a hellish waterfall of six-legged monsters.

Mort(e) and Wawa reached the man with what appeared to be the entire Colony closing in.

“Hold on to me here, sir,” the man said, pointing to two handles on the front of his harness.

“What about her?”

“We can only take one of you.”

Mort(e) glanced at Wawa. She understood right away that he could leave her. Sheba would have looked at him like that. No, Sheba had looked at him like that.

Mort(e) grabbed the man by the throat.

“Okay,” the man gasped, “we could try both.”

They hooked their arms around his shoulders while clasping the handles. “Hold on,” the man said.

The cable lifted them. Mort(e) could hear the propellers on the ship increasing speed as the zeppelin ascended.

The town below them was a sea of demons. The spot where they had vacated seconds earlier was now flooded with ants, all straining their claws toward the escaping mammals. The remaining buildings resembled volcanoes, spewing the ants from their underground city.

The cable stalled and then dropped several feet. Mort(e) felt the vibrations of the motor as the gears strained.

“The winch may be broken,” the man said.

The cable gave again, dropping them farther. The zeppelin was not rising fast enough. They were only ten or twenty feet above the outstretched claws of the swarm.

“It’s not going to work,” the man said.

Wawa and Mort(e) faced each other, each waiting for the other to say something.

“Sir,” the man said, “it is an honor for me to give my life for you.”

“No, don’t give me that,” Mort(e) said.

“It’s okay,” the man said. “I know where I’m going. The gates of hell are closed forever.”

“Wait!”

The man undid the buckle on his harness. He slipped out of it and fell. He sank into the mob of Alphas, not even screaming as they tore him apart.

The zeppelin rose higher, until the ants seemed tiny and inconsequential, as they had before the war. The town resembled an abandoned picnic overrun with hungry insects.

“That was death-life,” Wawa said.

“That was death-life,” Mort(e) repeated.

The cable twisted, causing them to spin helplessly. The painted cross turned round and round, a hypnotist’s bauble beckoning them to come forward. The farmland spread out below, bathed in the morning light like a half-remembered dream.