NOVEL WEB Chapter 24
*SCREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR*
It was at least as tall as me in my power armor and as long and wide as a minivan. The mandibles were two feet long and looked like scimitars growing from its head. Two giant antennas grew out from next to its disgusting compound eyes, waving around madly as if trying to desperately search for something.
Behind the head was the thorax, with six legs that end in spine-covered feet. And it needed those powerful looking six legs to drag around the giant undulating egg sac. And to top it all off, the monstrosity had wings. Two giant semi-translucent wings fluttered on its back so fast that it looked like a blur and generated a low bussing noise rattling the base of my skull.
*SCREEEEEEECH*
What must have been this hive's queen then snapped its head and focused on me. The queen reared its ugly head, and a split second later, a jet of brown liquid was spat at me. The queen's spit coated the front of my armor, causing a hissing noise to come from it. Looking down, I was alarmed by the sight of the finish of my armor bubbling and pits forming underneath it. I swung my minigun away from the smaller ants and focused my fire on the queen.
As if the situation couldn't get any worse, after hearing their queen scream, the little of what remained of the 'normal' giant ants went into a frenzy and redoubled their efforts to overwhelm me. They got a boost in speed, and in the blink of an eye, they had covered most of my armor. Some found weak links in my armor, like the red ant that bit my ankle, and my body was quickly burning up from the venom.
Tossing a glance at my lower left, I saw that my health had dropped to just under one-half and wasn't stopping. I stopped time by pulling up my inventory and used two stimpaks so I could fully heal. Hopefully, that will be enough to carry me through this fight since I only had three more. I didn't think I would get into so much trouble, so I left the remainder of my medical supplies with Isabel in case she needed them.
As I exited the inventory screen, I was greeted with the sight of a giant ant queen charging into me with surprising speed and ferocity. It head-butted me, and I was flung back by getting hit by the equivalent of a van going 20 miles an hour.
"Ooof"
My back hit the wall hard, crushing some of the ants on me in the process. My HUDs diagram for my armor showed that my left leg's power armor had been destroyed, and the chest plate was severely damaged. Not a second later, my head was pinned to the concrete behind me. The ant queen had taken the opening from me, getting knocked off my feet to catch my helmet within its mandibles.
The metal groaned under the stress, and I instinctively knew it wouldn't hold on long. My health was dropping again, and the damage just taken basically negated the effects of the two stimpaks I took, and things weren't looking so good. Despite how grim my outlook seemed, I was... shockingly calm.
Everything slowed down. Not because of VATS, being in my inventory, or looking at my pip-boy, but seemingly because my brain had started overdrive and was hyper-focusing on finding a solution. I was losing strength and health like crazy, so if I was going to try to live through this, I had to end it all in one attack.
My armor had been broken, and I could feel multiple mandibles tearing away at my leg. Hopefully, my body isn't taking any permanent damage like when the raiders I saved Isabel from shot me with a hidden deranger. I would hate to live in the wasteland with a lame leg. And it would be nice if I didn't have any permanent side effects from the stupid thing I was about to do.
I opened my inventory again and used my remaining stimpaks, one of my Rad-Aways, and the only Rad-X I found. The stimpaks weren't enough to completely heal me, so I used the purified water I stored from Vault 111 to cover the rest. Once I had given myself as much radiation resistance and health as possible, I pulled out the fat man I found in the robotics disposal ground.
Using the last of the strength, I raised the fat man and pointed it right behind the ant queen.
"Fuck you, Bitch."
I pulled the trigger and watched as the miniature nuclear warhead soared under the queen and landed behind its egg sac. The next thing I knew, my eyeballs were seared by a blinding white light. The Geiger counter in my suit went nuts, and I watched as the rads per second skyrocketed from zero to 20 a second.
A heatwave coursed through the room and even got past the protections my power armor afforded me. My uncovered left leg got the worst of it, feeling like it was being roasted on a grill when nuclear flames washed over me. The rest of my T45 armor also heated up, but it soaked up most of the heat and made the underlying skin slightly uncomfortable.
I imagine a small atomic bomb going off would have been loud, but the screeching from the ants completely drowned out any other noise I could have heard. They eventually stopped, and I felt the vise-like grip around my head loosen after a while. Not like I had the mental faculties to appreciate it.
The most intense sensation of finding myself in the middle of a nuclear blast continued for a few seconds before everything started fading away. The first thing to die down was the radiation levels, which dropped from a worrying 20 rads per second to a healthy 2 rads per second. Next was the heat, which went from being cooked alive to just a scorching summer day.
The adrenaline coursing through my veins ran its course, and I was left with an all-body ache and no energy whatsoever. I don't know how long I just sat in my corner of the room, but eventually, my mind recovered from being blank, and I could finally process information again. My armor creaked as I raised my head and looked around me, only to see the room completely covered in soot and scorch marks.
The queen ant had let go of my helmet and was flopped onto its side lifelessly. Its egg sac had ruptured, and I could see scorched ant innards splattered everywhere. The other ants were in a similar state. Most of them are in bits and pieces, and those that weren't had been burnt to a crisp.
Beyond the visual scenes of utter chaos, the smell was also repugnant. Cooked ant meat and guts smelled like rancid chicken mixed with rotten eggs. It took every bit of my remaining mental power to not vomit inside my helmet.
My health was just a tiny sliver now, and over half of my HP bar was red because of how much radiation I took on. Studying my body, it seemed like my game-like abilities did their job, and visually I came out no worse for wear. I used the last of my Rad-Away and consumed over a dozen bottles of purified water to regain my health.
Once my health was back, I groaned and pushed myself off the floor. As much as I wanted to lie there and go to sleep, I had a job to do and needed to get back to Isabel. And since it seemed I'd eradicated the ant threat, I needed to go back into the tunnel and destroy all the ant eggs like the ones in that first chamber. I might need to come back here one day to scavenge the equipment, and I want to avoid running into another hive of ants.
I dived back into the tunnel and weaved in and out of every tunnel I could fit through. Whenever I found a chamber of eggs, I would stomp all of them out and make sure they could never hatch the next generation. There were tunnels too small for a human to fit through, so I had to just hope that the ones I found were all that there were.
Eventually, I found myself in an especially large room that had a working lamp at the top. It took me a few seconds before I realized from some crates and a doorway without doors that the tunnels had taken me to the main storage room mentioned in the daily briefings for the satellite station. Judging by how the place was utterly packed in ant eggs and even some freshly hatched larvae, the queen must have turned this room into its private hatchery.
Crushing larvae the size of a baguette was no fun, but I wasn't risking an infestation of giant irradiated ants if I could help it. If I never saw an ant again, it would be too soon. I went around every corner of the room, stomping anything I could find that remotely resembled an egg or larvae.
"Uuuuuuuuugh..."
As I was finishing the last batch, I heard a groan come from my left. Spinning around, I was immediately ready to start fighting more insects again. Instead of more ants, I found a woman with messy blonde hair stuck against the wall, hidden behind some crates.
The woman's eyes were sunken, her lips cracked from dehydration, and her body was clearly malnourished. Her limbs were stuck to the wall with some termite-hill-like material, and her entire body was covered in rashes and small insect bites.
"What. The. Fuck"
