The morning meeting was shorter than the one before.
No raised voices.
No long arguments.
Just the facts laid out on the table.
Grain was down to six days.
Dried meat less than that.
The eastern stores had been empty since before the ants came.
Someone had to go out and find more.
Mara looked around the room once.
“We need volunteers.”
Silence.
Then a man near the back spoke.
“We already voted.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed.
“When?”
“Last night.
After the body.”
She waited.
The man did not look at Ares when he answered.
“Everyone voted the same.
He goes.”
No one disagreed.
No one looked sorry.
Mara studied the faces in the room for a long moment.
Then she turned to Ares.
“You heard them.”
Ares nodded once.
“You leave at first light.
Two days’ rations.
No one goes with you.”
He did not argue.
Lina was not in the room.
Marek stood near the wall and said nothing.
The girl from the wall watched from the doorway, quiet.
Outside, the ground where the ants had left Tomas’s body was empty again.
Someone had already taken what remained and burned it.
Ares spent the rest of the day preparing.
He cleaned the rebar.
Checked the edge.
Filled a small pack with the two days of food they allowed him and a half-full water skin.
No one spoke to him.
A few people watched from a distance, the same way they watched the walls at night.
That evening Mara found him near the east gate.
“You understand why they chose you,” she said.
“Yes.”
She looked at the dark tree line beyond the walls.
“If you find something worth bringing back, bring it.
If you don’t… don’t bother coming back empty.”
Ares did not answer.
At first light the east gate opened just wide enough for one person.
Ares stepped through.
The steel closed behind him with the same heavy sound it had made the night the ants arrived.
The open ground was quiet.
No movement in the grass.
No sound from the trees.
He started walking east, toward the orchard that was no longer an orchard, and the place Tomas had visited without permission three weeks earlier.
Behind him the camp went on with its day.
They had chosen him.
Ares walked until the walls were only a low dark line behind him.
The open ground turned to tall grass, then to the broken edge of the old orchard.
The trees still stood, but the fruit was long gone.
Thick vines covered the trunks.
The air smelled of wet earth and rot.
Broken branches lay across the path in places, some snapped clean, others chewed through.
He stopped once and checked the small map he had taken from the command room the night before.
The old military support point was marked in pencil two kilometers further east.
If anything remained, it would be ammunition.
The camp needed bullets more than anything else.
Ares folded the map and kept moving.
Something tracked him from above.
A soft scrape of claws against bark.
Then silence.
Then another scrape further ahead.
Whatever it was moved from tree to tree, staying just out of clear sight.
Ares caught only the shift of leaves and a pale flash between the branches.
He did not look up for long.
At one point, the movement stopped completely for several minutes.
He waited with the rebar in both hands before continuing.
He passed the half-eaten body of a deer that stood higher than his chest.
Something with a wide jaw had torn it open and left the rest.
The ground around it was soft with dark blood and scattered bone.
Further on, a line of cat-sized ants crossed the path ahead of him, carrying pieces of something dark.
He waited until they were gone before he continued.
The support point appeared between the trees: a low concrete bunker half-sunk into the hillside, covered in moss and vines.
The steel door was still closed.
The lock looked intact.
Small cracks ran across the concrete near the corners.
Ares stayed in the grass and watched.
A dark smear of blood marked the ground near the corner of the bunker.
Human.
Not completely dry.
Someone else had been here recently.
A single boot print pressed into the mud beside it, pointing toward the trees.
Above him the thing in the trees went still.
From the far side of the concrete came a low, wet clicking.
Ants.
A scouting line, six or seven of them, moving along the base of the wall.
They ignored the door and stopped at the blood smear, antennae working.
Ares looked at the blood.
Then at the ants.
His eyes moved to the branches above.
He waited until the ants moved past the smear and disappeared around the far side.
Then he crossed the open ground in a low run.
The lock was rusted.
He worked the rebar into the gap and forced it.
The steel door stuck, then gave with a dry scrape.
Ares stepped inside and pulled it shut.
Darkness closed around him.
The air smelled of old metal, dust, and gun oil.
Water dripped somewhere in the back of the room.
He stood still until his eyes adjusted.
Most of the shelves were empty.
A few metal boxes remained at the back.
The first two contained only rusted tools and old cloth.
The third felt heavier.
Inside, wrapped in oiled cloth, were two full boxes of rifle rounds.
Ares packed them into his bag.
He checked the rest of the room quickly.
Nothing else useful.
No food or weapons.
Outside, something heavy landed on the concrete roof.
Dust shook loose from the ceiling and fell across his shoulders.
Then the wet clicking of the ants returned, closer to the door.
Ares set his back against the wall, rebar ready, and waited to see which one would try the door first.
Claws scraped across the roof again.
Something struck the door.
The ants clicked beneath the door.
A long, pale limb reached down from the roof and hooked around the handle.
It was jointed wrong.
Too many segments.
The door groaned as the limb pulled.
Ares drove the rebar through the gap beside the door.
The tip punched into the limb.
The creature screamed and jerked back, ripping the rebar from his hands.
It clattered across the concrete outside.
Dark fluid sprayed across the threshold.
The ants reacted at once.
Their clicking rose into a rapid, angry chatter.
The thing on the roof moved, then dropped to the ground.
Ares heard limbs tearing into each other.
One ant clamped onto the pale creature’s leg.
The creature tore the ant free and slammed it against the concrete.
Another ant climbed onto its back.
More joined.
Ares pulled the door open just wide enough.
An ant turned toward him.
Ares kicked its head aside and stepped through before it could recover.
A pale limb swung past his shoulder, missing by inches.
He shut the door hard behind him and ran low toward the trees, bag tight against his side.
Behind him the fight continued.
Something screamed.
The sound cut off.
He kept moving until the bunker disappeared behind the trees.
Then he slowed and checked the bag.
The boxes were still intact.
The camp was west.
Two days of rations.
Two full boxes of ammunition.
Night would come soon.
The trees were already dark between the trunks.
Ares found a thick stand of trees tangled with heavy vines and climbed into the branches.
He wedged himself between two trunks, bag against his chest.
From there he could see the ground below.
Something moved through the undergrowth.
Slow.
Heavy.
Not ants.
He stayed still until the sound faded.
Tomorrow he would start back.