Ants and termites seemed unstoppable, overwhelming every block and each barricade they were faced with, and after not even a day of battle the few survivors were crammed into the tower of the southern district, the only one defended by flamethrowers, the sole weapon of the giants’ era that seemed to be truly effective.
Ants and termites went on attacking despite everything, but just when the gas and gasoline reserves that supported the flames of the flamethrowers were about to run out, the insect tsunami stopped. An unexpected joy began to spread among the ranks of the survivors. Some expressed it almost hysterically, others — more cautious and superstitious — dared not give it a voice. A wise choice as a slight hum anticipated the dragonflies’ arrival.
In a few moments, they took away, torn, and threw down from the tower the defenders who were outside or lurking in the windows. Some of them entered through such windows, wreaking havoc of many humans before being shot down.
The defenders closed the windows and sealed them using steel bulkheads, thus trapping themselves inside the tower. They sent the umpteenth requests for help via radio in the hope that aid from the capital could arrive in time when the tower shook and ants began to emerge from under it. Resistance was futile and extermination was absolute.
That was the beginning of the Cambodian Syndrome — also, and more commonly, called Gea’s Revenge — that is, an inexplicable but continuous attack on humankind by insects. It had started with ants but soon many other species of insects had come together in this absurd war and, from that first time in Angkor Wat, their attacks had quickly multiplied, spreading wildly all over the globe.
Insects — and this was an even stranger and crazier thing — not only attacked human settlements but also automated systems which humankind depended upon, such as farms, power plants, plantations and they did so by cutting wires or penetrating inside robots, corroding their circuits.
Many did not resign to the lack of answers for such attacks and pursued and often made up hypotheses — of which unfortunately they were persuaded — such as plots by other states, or by some sect, or by some secret order that had developed a technology capable of controlling insects, or even the long hand of the aliens who, now that we had shrunk, no longer saw any use in us, and so on.
Actually, by that time, the only sure thing — besides the scientific and war effort of all humanity in search of a way to stop these continuous attacks — was the certainty that everyone was going to be attacked sooner or later.
To date, more than three hundred years after the big small step, the most affected states had been India, China with the whole Far East, as well as Indonesia and Australia and in that part of the world only Japan seemed a port more or less secure. Africa had also been devastated, Southern Europe was suffering more than northern Europe. The real tragedy, however, had taken place on the American continent: South and Central America had been completely overwhelmed and humankind entirely swept away from those lands.
Many, indeed almost all the fugitives from such lands had taken refuge in Texas, in Last Flame, perhaps the last stronghold against the advance of the insects that came from the south, destroying every human settlement in their path.
Last Flame had been built, or rather moved, in the middle of the country’s last oil plant and all its defenses were based on it. Eight ditches had been dug around the city where oil burned nonstop. Dozens of oil-powered flamethrowers had been placed between one ditch and another. Every citizen capable of holding a flamethrower had been equipped with it and, for months now, ammunition factories had been operating at full speed as well as those making respirators and gas masks. Yes, because — although virtually impregnable — Last Flame had a problem created exactly by what protected it: the toxicity of the fumes exhaled by oil.
CHAPTER 4 – THE PRESENT
“Hey Mexico, put your mask on if you do not want to die young!” Jenny scolded him.
Pedro looked up at her, who was trying to see beyond the curtain of flames and smoke in front of them using her binoculars “I’m Brazilian, not Mexican!” he replied, tired of repeating it every single time.
Jenny shrugged “Always Latin America it is!” she put her binoculars away and sat down, frustrated “And yet they should already be here!” she complained “Scouts spotted them two days ago.”
Pedro shook his head “I would not be so impatient for ants to arrive, you know?”
Jenny smiled maliciously “I want to see them burn, hear the crunch of their exoskeletons and smell their burnt flesh!”
Pedro shook his head dejectedly.
She looked at him in amazement “You should want the same more than everybody else, right? Don’t you want revenge?”
He sighed “It wasn’t the ants.”
“Really? And who?”
“Not who but what!”
Jenny nodded embarrassed “You are right, sorry, we must not give a sentient dignity to insects by speaking of them as if they were our equals.” She recited by heart.
Pedro nodded “It was mosquitoes! Endless swarms of mosquitoes that attacked us in our sleep, our guards were looking at the ground, we were all terrified by ants and spiders, but our end was deemed by mosquitoes.” He paused drinking a long sip of water: telling that story still troubled him “Mosquitoes had never been interested in us until then, never ever just one person had been injured that far, but, for some crazy reason, that night they decided that the moment of revenge had come.”
“Revenge?” snorted Jenny.
Pedro nodded gravely “Yes, revenge, I think they are taking revenge.”
“What for?” Jenny retorted trying to contain her perhaps too contemptuous voice out of respect “For the thousands of years when we mercilessly crushed them while they sucked our blood?”
Pedro shrugged “What do I know!” he snapped “There must be a reason for the destruction and devastation they brought!” He picked up a stone from the ground throwing it forcefully “A few hours, can you imagine it? They just needed a few hours to wreak havoc on the city and kill almost everyone with their stingers.” The memory made him shiver “If you were lucky they killed you by drying you up in less than a second, but if they just hurt you, you died all the same in less than ten seconds, but in a much more horrible and painful way: their poison made their victims swell until they literally exploded. Being forced to witness that so many times was horrible.”
Jenny, who usually never lacked words and was used to always having the last one, this time was left speechless.
Pedro had turned pale at the memory of what he had witnessed — he began to nervously scan the sky. Suddenly, he was shaken by an uncontrollable tremor and grabbed her shoulders forcefully “We think we are too intelligent or, better, we think they are more stupid than they really are, they are coming, they will find a way, they will kill us all!”
Jenny first hit him with a knee in his stomach and then slapped him so hard his head turned and he tumbled to the ground “Calm down soldier!” She shouted at him staring at him with a stern martial look “This is Last Flame! We will not fall! Never! Got it?”
Pedro, red-faced in shame, crawled away holing up in a corner “They will come!” He whispered.
She took two long steps forward kicking him behind a thigh “Shut up, you coward!” She furiously warned him “One more word and I’m sending you out to scout out there!”
Pedro fell silent without daring to even breathe in order not to make any noise.
A few hours later Jenny’s wishes came true.
Ants arrived.
Thousands stormed the inflamed oil ditch.
None passed unscathed and the few who succeeded