Beau sped down the street. His foot slammed against the accelerator. He wouldn’t let up. A couple of times, as he swerved around a corner, his tires skidded and threatened to spin him into a tree. If the truck hadn’t been made of plastic, that would have been a bigger concern.

  As he drove, he swerved and collided through as many giant carpenter ants as he could find along his route. He hit one, two, three, and lost count before long. Every time he collided with one, a new torrent of pale greenish yellow blood splashed across the windshield, forcing him to activate the wipers.

  His battered white truck fishtailed around someone’s empty car which had collided with another car. Its polymer frame was crunched and totaled. Past that were more ants. Every time he smashed into an ant with the front of his bumper, it felt like riding a roller coaster and hitting a new drop. The adrenaline coursed through him. It also felt like a war that wouldn’t end. After smashing through another ant, the truck lurched but Beau kept going, white-knuckled and wild-eyed behind the wheel.

  He wouldn’t stop, not for anything.

  Minutes later, Downtown Deadwood opened in front of him. There, the true scale of the chaos unfolded.

  Every street, every shopfront, every rooftop buzzed with motion. The central square of Deadwood transformed into a warzone. Police officers in black vests swung metal batons and stuck ants with electric shock rods. They shouted over the screech of mandibles and the howls of townsfolk who hurled planter’s pots, swung golf clubs, and did anything they could to combat the monsters attacking their friends and family.

  The giant carpenter ants surged in waves. Forty of them climbed over each other and crawled into a shattered market building. They crawled up the walls and into the open doors of the Arvest Bank and Tom’s Bakery. The clerks inside screamed. The police officers fired yellow taser pistols, the only firearms permitted inside the dome. The barbs connected with one ant, who spasmed and twitched. The staggering ant was met by a pair of officers who struck down creature batons and broke it apart. They screamed in rage with every swing. The crowd of civilians surged again, more confident in their fight. Some were barefoot and swung broom handles, others used garden rakes. Some even used frying pans as weapons. Others cried amongst the crowds, helpless to what was happening. Some people just screamed with wordless fear, their faces twisted as they fought in a rage.

  They had no guns. They had no effective armor. The police officers wore stab vests, but not even those were enough because the carpenter ant’s mandibles slashed right through them.

  Officers fell in a bloody heap. Some screamed as ants launched on top of them and sliced into them. The ants bit down on their prey while more officers desperately slammed their batons down onto the creature. One ant charged a mob of thirty civilians, armed with garden tools, who fought desperately.

  Beau gripped the steering wheel and barreled into the center of Deadwood Square. He circled the road surrounding the fountain and smashed ant after ant with his bumper. Once he cleared the road, he parked on the grass. He threw the door open, gripped his axe, ran to the nearest ant harassing a clerk, and swung hard. The axe connected with the ant’s head and it collapsed in a heap of blood. He swung again. The blade crunched through its thorax. The greenish yellow blood sprayed across his arms. He pulled the ax free and turned to the next one.

  A woman shrieked nearby. One of the ants lunged at her with clicking mandibles.

  Beau leapt between them. He planted his feet and hacked.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  The creature’s skull split open and fell in twitching pieces.

  He turned to the woman. “Run! Find shelter!”

  She ran.

  There was no room to think of a better strategy. There was no time to breathe. There was only time to save the collapsing house of cards around them. Another officer fell, injured. A giant ant dragged the officer toward the fountain. The officer kicked and screamed. Another dozen giant ants clambered over the fountain, eating three fallen individuals who were floating in the water turning it blood red.

  Beau ran, dodged, struck a passing ant, and roared.

  He slammed his axe into legs and carapaces. He fought beside men he’d never spoken to—storekeepers and janitors and cafeteria cooks—who swung wrenches and hammers and pool cues. They held the line because there was nowhere else to go. Blood splattered the walkways. Ant ichor soaked into the cobblestones and the grass where they once barbequed on the weekends.

  The sky panels flickered above on the dome’s ceiling, glitching, painting the sky in bursts of red and white. Somewhere behind them, Beau heard the screams—they came from deeper in the dome. The ants weren’t just downtown. They were everywhere.

  The battle continued for hours.

  Near dawn, the swarm broke.

  They didn’t retreat all at once, but Beau noticed a shift. The chaotic and frenzied patterns of their attacks staggered. The ants moved less cohesively. They scattered more. Some escaped into alleyways. Others doubled back to the neighborhoods. There were reports that some made it all the way to Fayetteville and attacked the university there.

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  Someone blew a whistle.

  Officer Mahoney emerged from behind a shattered barricade, his vest shredded and one arm bound in a tourniquet. His mustache was stained with soot and blood. He limped toward Beau, stepping over two ant bodies, and looked down at the corpse of a fellow officer.

  “Private Renny is gone,” Buck said grimly. “So’s half the force.”

  Beau stood panting, face caked in grime. His arms trembled from swing after swing.

  Mahoney looked around, then back at Beau. “Thanks for the assist.”

  Beau nodded.

  “Downtown is mostly clear. There are clusters of ants breaking off toward Springdale and Fayetteville. They’re also headed toward Beaver Lake.”

  “We have to clear every inch,” Beau said. “We need platoons. We need to organize a real offensive.”

  Chief Mahoney hesitated. “You’re just a kid and you’re speaking like a general.”

  “I just killed more of those things than anyone here.”

  A nearby officer, sweat-streaked and bruised, stepped forward. “He’s right. Listen to the boy. He just led six officers against a horde of those things. They killed every last one of them. I’ll follow the kid. Whatever you need us to do, Beau. We’re with you.”

  “Same,” said another man. “The kid knows how to fight. We should listen to him!”

  “Does he know how to lead?” Mahoney asked, squinting. He wanted to argue more—but the blood loss made him slow. And he was tired. “Fine,” he said. “You lead a team and clear the lake. Take as many men as you need.”

  Beau turned and raised his axe. “We’ll clear every home, street to street.” He gestured to the surrounding men. “You all grab vehicles and follow me. Let’s move!”

  The next twelve hours were a blur, what it must feel like to fight in hades.

  Beau’s platoon moved like a machine—brutal, broken, and relentless. They kicked in doors. They checked closets. They shoved themselves through crawl spaces. Each home was a coin toss. Some were untouched. Some had ants crouched on countertops or gnawing inside cupboards.

  Every time they breached a new home, Beau went in first.

  He swung his axe. He got bit a couple of times. He bled. But they all did. He never hesitated. He just bandaged himself with a fresh patch and kept fighting. He admired the men and women who fought alongside him, they were all brave warriors in his eyes. They fed off Beau’s energy as they swept each house.

  By hour nine, they stopped using names. They evolved to using quiet hand gestures, intentional looks, and grunts.

  The panels on the dome ceiling still flickered, flashing red and white like a warning. Their air felt thin. At times, Beau internally reveled at the carnage. He sometimes felt light headed and forgot he was there to save people, not just kill the invaders.

  The final house was on a sloped road, a couple minutes from Beaver Lake. An ant stood in the living room, its head buried in a cereal box. Beau ordered the others to surround the house. They did. Once they secured the perimeter, Beau stepped toward the ant. He brought his axe down hard. It didn’t even hear Beau, possessed by its meal.

  He swung once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  The body crumpled. Beau stood over it. He stared as it twitched and finally stilled. He felt nothing. No victory. No relief. Just the ache in his arms and the blankness in his eyes.

  “Clear,” someone called.

  It was done.

  There were so many bodies.

  People lay strewn across porches, on tabletops, in stairwells and kitchens. The smell was unbearable—sour, meaty, and metallic.

  He heard a whimper from deeper inside the house.

  Beau found a child, a kid named Samantha, with blood smeared across her cheek. She held onto a meter-long wooden yardstick like a sword.

  Beau crouched beside her. “Hey,” he said softly. “It’s okay now. You’re safe.”

  Samantha didn’t respond.

  Beau took a clean rag from the officer beside him. He gently wiped the blood from her face. “You did good. Real good. You did the right thing. You’re a brave little girl.”

  The girl blinked once. Then she nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  Beau stood up. He searched the wreckage as another member of his platoon cared for the girl and worked to get the names of any surviving family members. Beau’s thoughts went to Tessa. He should go to her and see if she’s okay. He should check on Rufus again, too.

  He turned to find Chief Mahoney limping toward him.

  “You,” Mahoney said, his voice darker now.

  “What?”

  “We found something, your electric trap in the forest. It was wired to the central power grid and baited. We found the fried possum. We found the electrical circuit melted out. Do you know what that means?”

  Beau’s mouth dried.

  Chief Mahoney didn’t wait. “We now have reasonable suspicion that you caused the rift in the dome and let those ants in. We believe this whole disaster is because of you. Now I have to determine if your actions were intentional or not.”

  “Chief—but I—”

  Mahoney grabbed his wrist. With his other hand, he opened a pouch on his belt and pulled out a pair of steel handcuffs. He pulled Beau’s arms behind his back as the other members of his platoon dropped their gaze or turned away, unsure how to react.

  “Don’t resist, Beau.”

  “I’m not, am I?”

  The cuffs clicked shut. They felt tight and cold around his wrists.

  “Don’t fight,” Mahoney muttered. “If you didn’t intentionally create the rift, that’s one thing. But if you did, that’s another thing.”

  Beau stared down at the ground.

  There were so many dead and he was too tired to argue there on the spot.

  And maybe…well, maybe it had been his fault. He didn’t mean to do it. He was just trying to hunt for deer. Now he had to answer for his crimes.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the station. You’re going to answer some questions.”