Reconnaissance

To one side of me lay the accursed white dust, the bodies of several
of my brothers and sisters all but dissolved within it. It was
painfully bright outside after the dark tunnels and chambers of the
underground colony, but my eyes quickly adjusted to the light and I
felt a shameful pleasure that prolonged subterranean existence had not
left me blind like some of the others.
I ran quickly away from the colony's entrance, fearing that my courage
would desert me and I would return to its sanctuary rather than risk
this dangerous unknown. Then I reflected that the colony was a
sanctuary no longer - the sickness given by the white dust having
unwittingly been brought in by some member of my family (once there had
been many) and consequently poisoning even our food stores. We were
powerless against this dreadful disease that caused us to melt inside
our armour, our anti-bacterial measures which kill fungi and everything
else that commonly plagues an underground refuge now rendered useless.
Three times today I had carried out the bodies of those who had
sickened and died underground; who'd not had the strength even to crawl
outside when they'd felt themselves going, so to spare me the danger of
dispensing of their carcasses.
Reaching a precipice I crawled quickly down, reaching the great and
cracked plain where no male from our colony had ever set foot before. I
surveyed the wilderness I had to cross and steeled my nerve, thinking
of mother ensconced in one of the remotest chambers and being cleaned
and fed and looked after, safe from the plague -
For now.
Reconnaissance, I reminded myself - a vital task in the usual routine
of a colony but now absolutely essential, were mother and my remaining
brothers and sisters to survive. And the weight of responsibility had
fallen on me, strong and able-sighted as I was and with several more
weeks left before I was due to die. My instructions: to find another
colony and furthermore to discover whether they were friendly, so
willing to allow my colony to merge with theirs far away from the dust
of death.
So deep was I in my thoughts that I failed to notice the huge figure
blotting out the sun until it was almost upon me. Immediately I rolled
into a ball, feinting death, reassured by the thought that it was
unlikely I would be noticed but deciding to exercise caution
nevertheless. The figure passed and the sun was again overhead - this
bastard certainly meant to boil me alive, to weld my body to the hot
rock I was running at full speed across, having at first melted my
legs.
Looking back my heart-rate increased with fear as I realised just how
far I'd travelled in such a short space of time, my home and my family
now such a long way behind me. Another colony would certainly not be
found on this great and arid plain, where the ground was too hard to be
dug and far too exposed to the heat and possible enemies. Just how far
would I have too travel before I found another colony, and when - if -
I did then what would they be like? It would be true to my colony's
rotten luck should our nearest neighbours transpire to be snatchers of
the young, they raiding other colonies and taking their tiny, pink,
limb-less and defenceless creatures, consequently raising them to be
slave-labourers.
Looking in front of me again I realised that there was another male
close ahead, and I cursed my lack of caution - had I not been busy
day-dreaming I would have seen him much earlier, and I could have
observed his movements for signs of either friendliness or hostility.
Had the indications not been too promising I would have avoided him,
for I'd not had any call to fight since birth. Whereas in other
colonies, fighting sometimes even to the death is the norm.
Reaching him I began a greeting when without warning the bastard cut
me, this immediately followed by a burning sensation as his acid
entered the wound. In spite of the dreadful pain I succeeded in
blocking his next blow (which certainly would have finished me) and in
desperation I bit into his leg, feeling the bastard writhe in agony as
I grimly chewed my way through the limb, the sod unable to turn
sufficiently round so to give me another cut and another dose of
acid.
Finally the leg came away in between my serrated jaws and I stepped
quickly back, the bastard dragging himself slowly away, defeated and
ashamed. I debated finishing him off but decided not to - mine was too
important a mission to allow for any distraction: and with a wound like
that he was clearly dying anyway.
The implications of this fight were extremely worrying - if this male
belonged to a nearby colony then it was certainly not friendly. They
would enslave or possibly even butcher my relatives: my sisters and
brothers - and mother. As a substantial number of those whom I'd left
behind were in the initial stages of the sickness they would be of no
use as slave labour, to be sent out on dangerous missions to obtain
food or building materials, or set to work digging longer tunnels and
bigger chambers.
Food, I thought suddenly and longingly: with the stores in the colony
being tainted by the disease of the white dust I'd not eaten properly
in days. Of the greatest importance was mother's well-being, and so it
was natural that her diet should not suffer unlike everybody else's -
the food that was certainly disease- free was hers. There had been wild
rumours from a few relations now dead of a great store of food just
there for the taking - and at no great distance, either. I'd refused to
believe it and I didn't believe it now: it had just been the wild
fancies of the dying.
My hunger and the burning wound the sod had given me - which had
penetrated even through my exoskeleton - combined to make me feel sick
and weak, the sun all but broiling the brains inside my spherical head
and making my three eyes ache. Then, miraculously, I saw some food
ahead. I latched onto it with the same vigour I'd displayed when biting
my opponent's leg, my digestive juices dissolving solids into liquids
which I readily lapped up with my tongue.
Sated I was able to concentrate more on my surroundings, and to the
right of me and a little distance away I now noticed a strange, shiny
pole that stretched up towards the sky. They were seated high above but
still below the sky, giving the strange rumblings that made the very
ground shake. I threw caution to the wind and ventured towards the
pole, determined to find at least a source of food untainted by
sickness: where there was one morsel there were usually others
nearby.
Reaching the pole I felt the warmth of the strange, exceptionally hard
material between my legs as I began climbing, thinking of mother - my
Queen - and the others weakening with every passing second, relying on
me to save them from death.
Did it ever end, this pole? I asked myself, as my antennae waved in
front of my body, alert along with my eyes for any danger that might
present itself. Far behind me and across the vast and desolate plain
lay my home, and as I despaired of ever being in its dark, warm
confines again a shadow fell across me and I looked up to see a great,
crushing weight bearing down on me with incredible speed. I increased
my pace whilst knowing my efforts to be useless - one could never match
their speed upon the rare occasions that they noticed our presence and
decided to destroy us.
And -

"What's up, George?" a fat man inquired of another fat man seated in a
deckchair beside his own, the first fat man startled by his neighbour's
sudden activity.
Replacing his folded copy of The Sun in his lap George exhaled
noisily, deciding not to stay out in the sun for too much longer as he
noticed his sagging belly reddening.
"Just an ant, John," he replied, and he closed his eyes and gratefully
took a long swig from his ice-cold can of Foster's.
It was hardly a subject worthy of comment and, besides, the sticky
afternoon discouraged all but the most sluggish of conversation. Still,
and after a few moments' silence, John thought of something
sufficiently worthy of mention that concerned the flattened pest.
"Did you see that geezer?"
"Who?" George grunted, irritated by his friend's customary lack of
elaboration: George knew any number of bloody geezers.
"That Rentokil bloke."
"Oh - Wayne, you mean. Yeah, he gave me some powder to put down -
they've got a nest by the edge of the house, before the patio. It can't
be that big, though, 'cause I've only ever seen one of them that has
wings - "
"Queen ants, I think they're called," John suggested.
"Whatever. I just got pissed off when I opened the sugar in the
kitchen to find a few of the little fuckers inside. Having a proper
little feast, they were. Doubt I'd worry about it, otherwise. It's only
ants, ain't it?"