Day of the Ants Pt 2/3

Fire ants walking over a automatic rifle. Aak fictionspawn

-Custer! Look at this! Markinson was staring at his phone.

Custer looked up from his pile of notes. -Shouldn’t you be working?

-There’s been a terrorist attack, here in town. He’d got Custer’s attention. -And if this isn’t an acid, I’m no chemist.

Custer got up from his chair, walked over to he college. They zoomed in on the dead bodies in the photo.

-It looks like some kind of formic acid, Custer said. -Only stronger. A lot stronger.

He went over and turned on the radio. They were talking live from the scene.

…we have with us Officer Johnson of the national police. What has happened here?

-Our best clue is that it is a terrorist attack, although I’ve never seen anything like this. The attack seems to have come from everywhere at once. We still do not know what kind of weapon has been used, but it loos like the bodies a…. aaaaaaahhhh!!! My leg! Ants! It stings! Get’em off me Get’em off meeeeeee!!!

The radio went silent. A man apologised for technical problems.

-Damn. Custer and Markinson looked at each other. -Formic acid. Ants. This isn’t a terrorist attack. It’s…

They heard a scream from the corridor. Custer got up, looked out of the circular window in the door. People were lying on the floor, twisting in pain.

-What’s happening? Mario asked.

Custer kept staring. He pulled his head back from the window. An ant was crawling out on the glass. Then another. And another.

A moment he froze, looking at the head of the little ant. It was staring at him. This was no ordinary ant. It’s eyes were watching him. Studying him. Highly aware of his presence.

Markinson… he said with shaking voice. -We‘ve got to get out of here…

The glass started changing colours underneath the ants’ jaws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formic_acid

http://www.preservearticles.com/201012261679/common-uses-of-acids.html

Link to part 3

11 Comments

Classic horror, love the succinct fast-paced way the story is unfolding 😎.

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Aak fictionspawn says:

May 9, 2018 at 2:34 pm

Thank you Echoesofthepen! Happy to have you here 🙂

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I remember reading an “Ant-Man” story decades ago when I was a kid (wish I still had that comic book) where Formic Acid was the answer to getting rid of a giant alien invader. It was also the first appearence of Janet Van Dyne as the Wasp (she was barely 19 at the time).

The alien was chemically similar to ants, and Henry Pym loaded a shotgun shell with formic acid and shot it at the monster. To this day, I don’t know why he had to be ant sized to do it, which required a lot of assistance from a bunch of ants, since being full (human) sized would have made the task so much easier.

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