Chapter 13 - Poking the ant hill

"I count, twenty of them, and that's just outside. What about you Vito?"

"Twenty-two, there are acid spatters hidden behind that car, see?"

"Do you think we can take them, just the two of us?"

"We might be able to thin out their numbers, but the only problem I can see is those damn giant ants are not all of them. Neither do we nor the NCR know if there is a queen down below the surface, however, if there's one, this job is above our pay grade. The only way we could take on a nest with a living queen is with a brotherhood of steel army armored with power armor. "

"Why is that anyway? I mean can't we just bait them into machine guns fire? Or use grenades and explosives to blow them apart?"

"There are too many ants, and they have tunnels underground that let them ambush us. These freaks can dig through anything that's not metal or blast-proofed concrete. As I said our best bet is to thin out their numbers, then slowly check their tunnels and if find even the tiniest bit of evidence that there's a queen down there, we leave and throw all of our grenades behind."

"I've asked around the outpost, and apparently these things use a pheromone to communicate, can we use that to our advantage? "

"Not unless you somehow transform into an ant, kiddo. Nevertheless, that pain and a half, if we attack one of them the whole bloody damn colony would be after our heads."

While I would have loved to easily finish this mission and get our pay from Jackson, the sad truth was killing a bunch of ants, possibly even their queen was not as easy as those pre-war games and comics made it be.

We waited for almost an hour before the ants went back underground and just as we were about to descend into the tunnels, a shout made us rethink our next move. As soon as I turned around, the butt of a rifle greeted me while Vito froze abruptly on the spot when he saw me going down. The partner of the man who hit me in the face ran into Vito's back at full tilt. Without making a sound, the green mutant flung him aside and froze again, lowering his head and turning his ear toward the tunnel. For a second, I imagine Vito as a bat by the way he was listening, but when the man that hit me was about to shoot him in the back, I deactivated my collar and used my power on his rifle, rearranging a small yet extremely important piece, making the rifle useless. By the time, the man could comprehend what was wrong, Vito turned around and punch the man into oblivion, knocking the man out, at least that how it looks to me.

"Vito…what's wrong?"

"Pheromones, kiddo. We are in deep shit right now."

I couldn't smell anything, but maybe the super mutants had better senses than us humans?

"They'd certainly got here quickly. And here I was hoping that we won't be made to fight them until we find if they have a queen."

Hearing his words, I used the wall to get myself on my feet before shrugging the assault rifle off my shoulder and clicking off the safety catch.

"You ok kid?" Vito's voice suddenly boomed, turning to me with a look of worry on his face.

I chuckled to myself while Vito looked at me as if I was crazy. Then again he had more experience than me with things like these, who could tell what hellish beasts we might find do here other than the normal worker ant and spatters? The radiation had mutated most if not all of the creatures in the world, that also include those that live underground as well. From what we know, we might just head into the stomach of a huge creature.

"I'm fine Vito, I found our situation funny, don't you think so? Two raiders attacked us just as we were about to go down into the tunnels."

"Now that you mention it, it does sound strange, not funny, but then again, I'm what people before the war called a boomer."

"So what do you think we might face other than ants?"

"God forbid we meet the predators. I've faced against them once in Washington and I swear to god those things are horrifying."

"Predators?"

"It's a crossbreed between a spider and an ant, that's the best way I can describe it to you, without having to risk our lives. These things are fast, hard to kill and above all, they are corpse eaters. Sadly for us, they fear any kind of light source, but as you can see we only have two flashlights and if the battery on them fails…we die before we could even realize."

As we were slowly walking down the tunnels, I deiced to learn more about those things that Vito hopes we won't fight.

"Have you fought against them a lot back when you were with the Master?"

"Kind of. The brotherhood made those things into weapons, killing a lot of super mutants and people alike. These repulsive creatures that simultaneously resembled spiders and ants had never risked openly attacking humans, mutants, or even ghouls and fed on carcasses or bodies dragged down by the worker ants, but the brotherhood somehow managed to tame them or at least find a way to send them on our way. The first time I met them was when we tried to ambush one of their outposts from underground, sadly for us, all the tunnels that led to that said outpost were filled with this sickly-sweet stench of decomposition as well as tens if not hundreds of spider sacks the size of a human. By the time we found out what we are against, it was already too late. In the end, we barely managed to retreat."

"Do we have to worry about something poisonous?"

"Other than the strong smell of putrefaction that follows them, we don't need to worry about any other smells, but as I said if we are to face them, keep your light at them, that makes them think twice before attacking."

We continue in silence, fearing that the ants might hear us, however, the deeper we went down, the less noisy the tunnels become. It was as if the ants themselves were somehow scared of going down here. Sadly, for us, Vito's fears become real when we reach a three-section filled with bits and pieces of what seemed to be humans and ghouls.

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