He tried to tell himself it wasn’t selfish. That he would save his friends. That he owed them it. And then Cade stopped agonizing. Because the ants were coming again.

The tunnel seemed to shrink suddenly. And Cade saw the true horror of what they faced: The ants weren’t just charging along the tunnel’s bottom. They were on the walls, the roof. Crawling toward him in a great flood, blotting out the light beyond.

00:25:14

00:25:13

00:25:12

Quintus nudged Cade with his foot.

“Now,” he hissed.

“We need to wait,” Cade whispered. “Make every shot count.”

Men whispered prayers around him, and the tunnel echoed the frantic chittering of the beasts approaching. As the swarm neared, each torch winked out, one by one, knocked to the ground by the mass of insectile monstrosities.

“Wait for it,” Cade whispered.

The noise grew thunderous, rattling around Cade’s mind. He picked the nearest torch, some fifty feet away. Waited for it to blot out. And fired the gun.

A crash of gunfire erupted, strobing the dark tunnel with light. Dust and ichor plumed as black smoke belched from the gun throbbing in Cade’s hand, half obscuring his view.

Ants fell from ceilings and walls, trampled underfoot by the fearless horde. Insect bodies were hurled back, tangling and tripping the legs of those behind.

Yet still they came, for the winnowing of the swarm still left frontrunners, ants that had miraculously survived the hail of bullets. They crashed into the shield wall on either side of Cade. Men roared, both in fear and fury, as hand-to-hand combat began. Cade’s only solace was that within the cone of accuracy directly in front of his gun, not a single ant survived.

Soon enough, there was a pile of insectile corpses choking the tunnel. But the ants swarmed over and around the mound as if it were no more than a feature of the landscape. They came on, and all the while the bullets spattered random death through the masses.

Then, just like that, the gun fell silent. Cade released the button and yanked the empty belt through the bottom of the gun. As he fumbled for the next belt, an ant dropped from the ceiling and slammed into Quintus’s shield.

Cade tried. He really did. But the gun was heavy and his hands were slick with sweat. The space was too cramped and dark to see the gun teeter, and it fell from the tripod, landing on the ground with a clang. A death knell.

Ants poured forward, the hail of gunfire no longer cutting down their numbers, and Cade could see them slashing their great claws into the front line’s shields with abandon, splinters flying.

They were like machines. Methodical, precise, and untiring. And seemingly ignorant of the swords that severed limbs and punctured their carapaces. Each fought until it fell, and another took its place.

Cade gripped the gun, slotting the belt into place with frantic fingers as he tried to lift it back to the tripod. Another blow from the front knocked Quintus back once more. The tripod fell, and Cade screamed above the furor, using his hand to pull Quintus away.