Chapter 95 - Full Ripley

  The room had dozens of entrances, and in the dim glow given off by the eggs, I saw twitching antennae sticking out from all of them. Hope gave a soft growl of warning. I looked back—behind us were more ants, lining the walls and floor of the passage we’d just come through.

  All of those little waves of ants, they’d been to slow us down enough so that once we reached this place, it would be well defended. Now we were surrounded. Ants crawled from some of the smaller holes, taking up positions between us and their queen.

  Ever seen that movie Aliens? That scene at the end where the hero goes down into the alien nest to rescue the girl and comes face to face with the queen alien, in a room full of eggs, with tons of the warrior aliens all over? Yup, that was me.

  I’d gone full Ripley.

  At least she’d had a flamethrower to threaten the aliens with. All I had was… Oh, yeah. I had a fire-breathing undead dinosaur. Pretty sure I actually had Ripley beat, in terms of firepower.

  “Sue, send a warning shot into the ceiling, dead center of the room,” I said, keeping my voice soft.

  Sue growled, then aimed and fired. The ants reared back, the queen trying to hide herself, even though there was really no cover there for her. But the Fireball wasn’t aimed at her, or any of them. It blasted harmlessly against the ceiling, knocking down some of the dirt from above to patter among the eggs.

  Now it was time to see how smart these things were. “Sue, aim your mouth at the eggs right in front of the queen, and the queen herself. Don’t fire. Just look scary.”

  I didn’t know if the ants could understand English; the ratkin could, so anything was possible in this world now. If they could, saying my commands aloud might help me out here. If not, it wasn’t doing any harm. My hope was, the ants would get the idea that there were two ways this mess could end. One of them involved me torching their queen and every egg in this room.

  Nobody moved for a long moment. The ants held their positions, even the ones behind us. So did we. I let it wait a beat, and then I gave Sue the mental order to begin moving slowly toward the other large tunnel, the one I hoped would bring us back to the surface. The eggs were all over the cave floor in the middle of the room, so I kept Sue marching around the outside edge, where there were no eggs to crush. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally break this fragile truce we had going on.

  Hope whined, and I turned to look. A horde of ants marched slowly out of the passage we’d just left behind. There were too many of the damned things to count. It wasn’t good at all. If they all came at us, I wasn’t sure we could pull off a win, even with Sue.

  “It’s okay, girl. Keep an eye on them, though,” I told her. I hoped that I was right.

  We kept moving, straight on toward the other large tunnel. Ants scuttled clear of our path, moving out of our way as carefully as we steered clear of their eggs. One ant made a move like it would lunge toward me and I held my sword pointed directly at an egg. It froze—then backed away slowly. Yeah, they got the idea. I’d figured a larger ant with a bigger brain might be smarter than the originals, and this was strong evidence I was right.

  We kept moving, making a steady pace toward the tunnel. Then we were there, and a good dozen tier two and three ants poured out of our escape route, acting at first like they were taking up positions to bar our way.

  “Sue, remind them,” I called out, sending mental orders to the dinosaur. Sue turned and roared, the magical attack echoing back and forth inside the chamber. Every ant in the place except the queen froze in place; she did the opposite, practically writhing.

  I had a better look at the ant queen now. She was tier five! Impressive. I wondered how close she was to getting her own Domain, just like the goblin mage? If she ended up with a Domain, how powerful would she eventually become? The queen shuddered, then clacked her mandibles together, the first sign of any sort of audible communication I’d seen from them. If I remembered right, ants communicated mostly via pheromones, but also with visual, auditory, and touch signals.

  They were complex creatures before the Event, and now they were a thousand times bigger and smarter to boot? Suddenly I found myself wishing for more giant spiders, except I had a feeling the ants would tear them apart!

  The ants ahead of us snapped out of their daze and immediately moved off to the left and right. A few of them took up positions among the eggs, like they were protecting them, while others skittered up the cave walls, watching us from higher vantage points.

  We were almost to the cave, and I found myself wondering what happened next. In the movie, the aliens don’t let the hero leave the room, and she had to torch the place… As I thought about it, I realized that as soon as we left this chamber and the queen was safe, they were just going to come after us. It was only fear of what we could do to them that was keeping them at bay for now.

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  “Shit. Well, this is just gonna suck, isn’t it?” I said aloud.

  I turned back to the queen ant. She was surrounded by other ants, now. They’d swarmed across her—shielding her, I realized. They were like armor! Sue’s Fireball might not even wound the queen, if they got enough ants protecting her. It was a neat trick, and made me even more certain our detente was about to end.

  “Listen,” I told her, calling out as loud as I could. I had no idea if she could understand me, but…maybe. It was at least worth a try. “You let us go, I’ll leave you be. I won’t come back. I’ve got no bone to pick with you.

  “But attack me while I’m trying to save my friend, and all bets are off. I will get out of here. I will bring her to safety. And then I swear to you, I will come back and burn every single one of you to a crisp. Not one ant will survive. I’ll bring this entire nest down. I don’t know if you can understand what I’m saying—but if you can, this is your only warning.”

  I held my blade up so that I was sure she could see it, then I sheathed it. Maybe she would understand that gesture, if she didn’t get any meaning from my words?

  Crossing my fingers, we left the cavern behind and slipped into the second large tunnel. It wound counterclockwise, and had an upward angle steep enough that I could feel it under my feet. At least we were moving in the right direction! The darkness was closing in quickly as we left the dim light from the eggs behind, and my chem light was fading, so I dropped it and took out another.

  In the space of time between dropping the fading light, its dim glow then mostly shrouded by soil, and getting a second light ready, I almost died.

  I snapped the new light and held it aloft to see the beady eyes of a tier three ant directly in front of me. It was on the wall, mandibles at my eye level, and about to strike. I snapped my left arm in the way, hoping to take the blow there instead of on my head, and reached for my sword with the other hand.

  But it was Sue who saved my ass. The dinosaur chomped down on the thing, ripping it off the wall and biting it in half.

  It hadn’t been alone. A swarm of ants rushed down the hall toward us from the front, and Hope’s barking told me the same had to be true behind us. There was no time to hesitate—I had Sue drop a Fireball at almost point-blank range in front of us. As the flame shot forward I dove between her legs, getting myself out of the line of fire.

  With my Agility, rolling quickly back to my feet was easy enough. The passage ahead was a mess of burning ants. The Fireball did its work, but Hope was engaging a stack of ants behind us, and she was getting overwhelmed.

  “Sue, bust through!” I ordered her to move forward at a steady walk, hitting the ants with more Fireballs each time her timer came up. Then I was back with Hope, who was about five seconds from dying.

  I dropped a Heal Undead on her to bring her back up to strength, and then went after the ants with my sword. Most of these were tier one and two. With my Agility, they might as well have been standing still. I cut through Hope’s assailants like they were nothing. One after another died on my blade, and aside from a few scratches when they got lucky hits on my arms or legs, I wasn’t even getting hurt.

  A Drain Life on the tier three I spotted coming our way recovered the health lost from the small wounds. The ant I’d hit with the spell decided discretion was the better part of valor or something, because it turned around and ran back down the passage toward the queen. Weird. Why run from a fight?

  Maybe it wasn’t running after all, but bringing a message, because shortly after the tier three took off, the ants stopped pressing us so hard. Then they pulled back entirely. I was panting, but unhurt. I wiped huge amounts of ant goop off my blade, then sheathed it. If I had a few moments, I wanted to use them to collect the crystals from the ants I’d slain.

  I did that as fast as I could, then followed behind Sue and grabbed the stones from the ones they’d crisped or bitten.

  We were hit a few more times as we proceeded toward the surface, the spiraling path slowly winding its way up. But each attack was small, with low tier ants. The raids felt almost desultory.

  One of those attacks came rushing out of a side passage, but Sue tossed a Fireball down the tunnel before too many could get out, and we polished off the remainder together. Once the ants were all dead, I ducked into the side passage quickly to tap the Fireball-slain ants for crystals. I’d just started when I realized there was a small room ahead.

  The smell told me what the room was before the dim light of the fire flashed off white bone and red flesh. I only got a glimpse, but what I saw made me want to throw up. I’d found one of the ants’ larders, and it was full of food. Some of that food was formerly human beings.

  Even if I hadn’t sworn to take them down for attacking, I knew I’d have no choice but to come back and finish this place off now. These creatures were hunting and eating people. I couldn’t let that pass.

  It didn’t take us very long to get out, after that. The larder was pretty close to the surface. I was incredibly grateful when I was able to suck in fresh air again. The evening breeze blew away the smell of ant—I hadn’t even realized how sharp and acidic it was until it was gone. I brushed dirt out of my hair while the moon shone down on us from above.

  We came out a short distance from the main anthill, at a smaller hill I guessed was some sort of backup entrance. I led Sue from there over to the nearest house.

  Kara still hadn’t woke up yet, so once I was sure the house didn’t have any people living there—by virtue of the left side being gone, torn away by the ants—I searched inside for some supplies. A mattress and a few blankets later, I had what I needed.

  I needed to get Kara to healers. The fact that she still wasn’t awake told me for sure she had a serious concussion. She was breathing, her pulse was okay, but she needed healing now. I lifted her gently from Sue’s ribs, then laid the mattress inside. I placed Kara on the mattress, wrapping her in blankets to keep her warm, then tied her down so she wouldn’t shift around during what was going to be a very bumpy ride.

  In the distance, I sensed that I still had a couple of skeleton juggernauts out there. Most of my little undead strike force was dead, but it felt like there were no more undead for them to kill, so my survivors were just standing around. There wasn’t time for me to wait for them, so I ordered them to stay put and kill any other undead they found.

  Then I crawled in beside Kara, to make sure she stayed safe.

  “Run, Sue. To the Guard base, fast as we can!”

  Sue took off, long, loping strides eating up the ground as we rushed ahead, Hope sprinting at her side. I only hoped we’d get there in time.