James Turnbow

I slung the contents of the Petri dish onto the nearest ants.

To the naked eye, it looked identical to water.

And as it hit the ants, it seemed to slide harmlessly off their hard exoskeletons.

There was no change.

They continued closing in.

I stumbled back until I was pressed against the wall, nowhere else to go.

The first of them reached my feet, which were heavy with grease and other writhing ants.

They started up.

I shut my eyes and recalled another quote.

This wasn't from any movie.

It was one of the last things Wade had said before he died.

When moments passed and my legs didn't grow heavier with thousands of ants, I opened my eyes again.

The ants in the lead were still there, still moving, but their behavior had changed.

What had once been an impressive display of cooperation, all of them moving together toward a common goal, was now a chaotic spectacle.

The insects nearest me now moved in every direction, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

But as I looked closer, I saw the pattern.

Those lead ants that had been doused with the pathogen-laden liquid were under a different directive.

They turned on each other, appearing at first to be biting their brethren, but I knew they weren't biting.

Ants use their saliva for many important things in the colony, such as communication via pheromones and larva development via hormones.

Wade's goal had been to weaponize this fact with cordyceps spores.