Chapter 15: Chapter 14: A Scrape and a Crunch

Nothing had broken in yet, but something was trying. It must have heard us or smelled us or something, I had no clue what. Constant scrapes kept a perfect rhythm, punctuated by the sounds of crumbling stone. It wasn’t bothering with the door, it was digging straight through the wall!

Then, as if things couldn’t get worse, I heard another scratching sound, then another and another and another until they were all around us, precise and rhythmic, tunneling in our direction. I drew my knife as Erica and I positioned ourselves back to back, we couldn’t run, not when we were surrounded like this, we’d have to wait for an opportunity. Minutes dragged on, feeling more like hours and days, as the burrowers drew nearer. Finally, cracks started to appear in the wall by the door.

I took a deep breath as the cracks became a hole, then before whatever was digging could react, I was there, jamming my knife through the gap. I didn’t know what I’d hit, but it was hard, feeling more like stone than flesh, but my blade pierced it anyway. A chittering and clacking sound rang out from the other side, and as I pulled my knife free it was covered in some kind of yellowish-green slime. More openings began to appear around the room, allowing moonlight to filter in, and I finally saw what we were up against.

They were ants, dozens of them at least. Each one was easily the size of a german shepard, with black shells and pincers the size of my forearm. As I was taking stock of the situation, I heard a massive crash as Erica rushed the two ants nearest to her, tackling both to the ground and crushing them beneath her. She looked down at herself as she stood up, dripping with that weird goo.

 

“Oh fuck me, I just got this shirt.”

 

I turned back towards the door to find another ant pushing past where the first one had died, and jammed my knife into this one too. Not the most finesse in the world, but this was basically my first fight, and at least it worked. As I was pulling my knife out of this one, the head of another crashed through the wall to my left. I stabbed downwards, trying to break through the top of its skull, but this time my knife broke instead, the blade snapping free from the handle. It barreled into me, forcing me to the ground as its pincers snapped towards my head. This thing was strong, way way way way WAY too strong. I held it back with everything I had as its legs scraped against me and its pincers cut into my hands. I was going to die, it was too strong, and I was getting tired. I couldn’t keep going, my arms were on fire, and blood from my palms was now dripping into my eyes. Just before I gave up completely, a hoof whizzed by above me in a blur, and the ant smashed against the nearest wall.

I wiped the blood from my eyes and looked up to see Erica, reaching down to help me back to my feet. I winced as I grabbed her hand and pulled myself up.

“We can’t keep this up! There’s way too many of them!”

Erica stomped through the head of another one as she glanced around the room, her eyes growing wide as she spotted the tiny fire that was slowly burning out.

“Fire!”

“What?”

“Ants can’t stand the smell of smoke! A big enough fire will send them running back to the nest!”

Having heard that, I dove towards the fabric pile and started frantically hacking the clothes to pieces with my claws. Breaking them down into smaller pieces. Erica, seeing what I was doing, began to work double time, brawling her way around the room and keeping them from getting too close. With the fabric gathered and sliced, I began feeding it to the tiny fire, muttering a prayer to any god that would listen for that flame to grow faster.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the flames began to rise, each strip of fabric adding to the glow until I was finally just chucking handfuls into it. With the flames growing, the room began to fill with smoke, and finally, finally the ants began to turn and leave, and each ant that turned away was quickly followed by others.

Shortly after the last of the ants had left, I realized one small oversight. The small flame that had been relatively contained was now a roaring inferno, and it was beginning to spread. I’d been hacking and coughing from the smoke for a few minutes already, I just hadn’t realized with all the ants around. Through the smoke and the pain and the fear, I barely even noticed when Erica placed her hand on my back and began guiding me towards the outer wall. With one raised fist, she broke through it at the weakest point, getting us both a safe distance from the store without getting too far from the safety the flames had provided. She stopped on the edge of the street, we sat there, and she tended to my hands. We watched the store burn down, with her arm around my shoulder until the sun rose.