UNDER THE COLONY

I — THE GREAT AWAKENING HAS ARRIVED

“Where do you live, man?” I asked, reaching out to grab the Skol can left by the window.

“Cuiabá.”

“Man… that’s a beautiful city.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Yeah. Made a lot of deliveries in the capital.”

“So why do you want to go to Nova Esperança?”

“For my grandmother’s wake…”

“I’m sorry, kid. Losing a relative right at the start of the year…”

The young man lowered his head.

The air inside the cab was heavy, almost liquid from the heat. Without air conditioning, every breath felt like a lukewarm gulp, scraping the throat. I saved everything I could; every coin was counted, especially now with Edite’s arrival.

Through the windows, Mato Grosso stretched out like a living carpet: a mosaic of deep green, with endless rows of soybeans and corn swaying in the wind. The sky was clear, blue—until it was suddenly cut by a military jet. The white trail it left behind looked like a scar across the firmament.

I kept my foot on the gas, searching for the rhythm of the road. I turned the radio knob, but the only response was static—dry crackling that blended with the hum of the tires on the asphalt.

“Shit… Jovem Pan FM is supposed to be on,” I muttered.

I fiddled with the dial until 90.9 MHz, took another sip, and tossed the can out the window.

Suddenly, a fire truck tore down the opposite lane, its sharp sirens rattling the cab.

“Looks like there’s a big fire somewhere…” I murmured.

Right after that, an ambulance sped by.

“Some guy must’ve smashed into a tree…” I said, feeling around for another Skol can. The metal was hot, but when I opened it, the foam hissed out fresh.

“Want one, man?” I offered, raising the can.

“I don’t drink.”

“Religious?”

“No. I’m on prescription meds.”

I stayed quiet for a moment. The bitter taste of beer spread across my mouth. His hair was slicked to the side, so loaded with product it looked greasy.

As we approached the border, a rusted sign announced the entrance. Its faded green background carried worn, nearly erased letters: Nova Esperança. The town appeared on the horizon.

Suddenly, a black helicopter flew low overhead, its blades slicing through the air like knives.

“Looks like our little friend made one hell of a mess,” David said, a crooked smile forming at the corner of his mouth.

I saw police cars from Mato Velho and Nova Esperança speeding the wrong way down the road, sirens blaring. They were PMR/MT units—Toyota Hilux trucks—coming straight from Cuiabá.

“They from your city, man?” I asked.

“Looks like it was bad,” David replied, bouncing his legs, restless. There was something nervous in every movement he made.

“You got a wife, man?”

“No, I’m single.”

“Stay single. Women and kids ruin a man, believe me. At first it’s all love. Then the shit comes.” He let out a low laugh, but his eyes hardened. “I only stayed with Susana because of the kids. Five in total, counting the youngest, who was just born.”

I showed him a picture of Edite on my phone.

“Pretty girl,” David said, not taking his eyes off the image. “If I were your age, my brother, I’d be at a whorehouse right now, you can bet on that.”

We entered the Clóvis neighborhood. The gas station sat right at the entrance to town, near the turnoff to the state highway. There was no movement. It was a typical roadside station. Nova Esperança loomed in the distance—a small town, nothing remarkable, with around eight hundred inhabitants. It didn’t even have a mayor; in practice, it was a satellite town of Cuiabá.

We got out. The heat there was almost oily, sticking to the skin like grease. In the distance, I saw the attendant fueling a car while joking with a girl leaning against the pump. The streets were nearly deserted.

I took the last sip of my Skol. The bitterness went down scratching my throat. I tossed the can; it hit the asphalt, bounced, spun, and came to rest at the feet of a skinny dog, which stared at me with yellowish eyes.I walked past the attendant and stepped into the station’s convenience store. The air inside smelled of old oil mixed with dust and smoked meat. From the low ceiling hung bags of chips, condoms, and salamis, tied to a wooden frame. I fanned my face with a cloth.

“Heat… my God… my God.”

The waitress was doing the same, fanning herself with her hands. Her face, already flushed with sweat, glistened with oil—the mark of someone who spent all day frying pastries. She was beautiful. Very beautiful.

“Give me a pastel to go.”

“It’ll be ready in three minutes, sir,” she replied.

I sat down in a plastic chair by the window. The seat creaked under my weight. David was beside me, motionless, eyes fixed outside, his briefcase clutched tightly in his lap.

“Give me a salami too, to go,” I said, without taking my eyes off the nearly empty street.

The waitress came back with the salami, and at that moment a fire truck sped past, its siren raging. The sound ricocheted off the empty storefronts. In the sky, two rescue helicopters flew low, dragging themselves along like exhausted iron birds.

On the TV mounted in the corner, images of devastated crops appeared: rows of corn and soy reduced to dry stalks, a dead landscape. The reporter spoke about a phenomenon recorded across nearly every continent—a fast, voracious agricultural plague, spreading out of control. The image cut to a farmer holding his hat, red-eyed, showing land eaten down to the stalk.

Suddenly, the transmission failed. The screen filled with static.

That’s when I heard it. At first low, like the buzz of a distant insect. Then louder, closer. A continuous, metallic sound, coming from everywhere at once—as if the whole world were vibrating.

“Your pastel is ready, sir,” the waitress said, placing the package in front of me.

The smell of fried dough, hot and greasy, spread through the air. The grease-stained paper made a dull sound as it hit the counter—a flat, muffled flop that echoed more than it should have.

Beside me, David squeezed his own hand, restless. He looked on the verge of collapse. His eyes were fixed on the road—now red and shimmering—that led to Clóvis Street. From the gas station window, I saw thousands of tiny things moving across the ground. They glinted in the dim light, forming something like a living sea.

“What the hell is that?” muttered the station owner.

He was a huge man, with a grotesque double chin hanging beneath his jaw. His red face shone with sweat, as if it were melting. He must have weighed around two hundred and sixty pounds and breathed like an asthmatic horse.

The girl outside screamed suddenly. Her body collapsed against the curb with a dull crack, and in the same instant, they climbed up her legs like a living black liquid. Wherever the creatures passed, the skin turned a dark red, almost black. The screaming intensified as the first lines reached her stomach and spread across her torso.

The waitress stepped back, but bumped into a shelf, knocking over a row of glasses. The snacks scattered across the floor. The sound of shattering glass mixed with the intense buzzing growing outside. The station’s large window offered a full view.

The swarm surged over the girl’s face, tearing pieces of skin away with surgical precision. The epidermis peeled off in flakes, revealing the wet red of muscle beneath. She screamed—a hoarse, broken sound—but the ants were already inside her mouth, like a black sea forcing its way down her throat, disappearing into her.

Others burrowed into her ears, while more and more vanished beneath her eyelids. Her left eyeball swelled, throbbed, and popped free with a sickening snap, rolling until it struck the edge of the “…sidewalk.” I swallowed the vomit. I could’ve thrown up right there. I had just seen her damn eye pop out.

The ants, in a line, crawled into the hole left by the eye, sinking into the socket. She was still alive. Her body twisted, but each movement was weaker than the last.

The attendant let out a muffled scream, dropped everything, and ran—but he tripped and fell. These ants were different. First, they formed a compact mass, clinging to his foot like glue. The man screamed for help. I blinked, still in shock, and then his other foot was taken too. They dragged him into the storm drain. He tried to hold onto the edges, his fingers scraping against the concrete, but soon he disappeared inside.

The girl, almost voiceless, tried to crawl toward the gas pumps. She dragged herself along, leaving a trail of thick blood that stretched from the pumps toward us, mixing with the attendant’s blood and staining the ground all the way to the cracked asphalt. The ants moved over her like a living cloak.

I coughed and lowered my head. A surge of adrenaline snapped me out of the shock and drove me to do something unthinkable.

I grabbed the broom with trembling hands, feeling the rough wooden handle against my sweaty, slippery skin, and yanked the door open, nearly tearing it off its hinges.

I ran toward her, my heart pounding out of rhythm in my chest. I swept the broom across the girl’s face, trying to push those things away, but on the left side there was nothing left: the skin had been eaten down to raw, pulpy flesh stuck to the ground. Her right eye—still hanging by a strand of nerve—trembled, about to give way.

When it popped free, I heard the wet plop as it hit the ground. My stomach lurched. The ants dove into the open hole, vanishing inside it as if tunneling through living flesh.

That’s when I realized: they weren’t just coming from the ground. They spread through the trees, poured down in black streams from rooftops, and covered the hoods of parked cars.

I felt the first ones reach my boots. They scratched at the leather, searching for gaps. I slammed the broom handle against the asphalt; the impact echoed sharply, sending pain up my shoulder, scattering crushed, tiny bodies.

But they didn’t stop. They climbed, hungry, relentless. Some leapt straight onto me, slipping through the fabric of my pants and reaching my leg. The bite came sharp, slicing—like tiny blades cutting under the skin. It burned. It seared.

I kept striking until the broom handle cracked against the ground. The vibration shot up my arm, leaving my fingers numb, tingling. A jolt against my back made me spin: a wave of ants was raining down on me, dropping from the tree leaves. I felt the bites on my ear, on my scalp.

Sweat ran down my face and burned as it seeped into the cuts opened by their stingers. Their mandibles clicked against the metal of my belt, against the buckle, against anything that wasn’t flesh—but when they found skin, they tore into it without hesitation.

They formed a circle, cutting off every escape route I might have had.

I took a step back, brushing at them, trying to tear them off me. Another step, until my back hit the station door. I turned, grabbed the handle, and threw myself inside, kicking desperately at the ones trying to follow me in. The door slammed shut, and I slid down the cold tile.

My hands swept the floor, searching for anything. I grabbed a rag and started striking the ones still clinging to me, crushing them.

The waitress collapsed beside me, her hands covering her mouth, her stare fixed—mute with terror.

I stumbled. My body hit the floor hard. The ants were everywhere, biting my legs as if trying to tear pieces away. I remembered my childhood, when I lived on a farm with my parents: army ants crossing the house. This was like that—only a thousand times worse.

I grabbed the rag, dipped it quickly into murky water, and pressed it against my skin. The soaked fabric slid over me, trying to wipe away the unbearable sting of the bites.

“The phones… they’re not working…” muttered the station owner, the heavyset man, his voice shaking and muffled.

I grabbed my phone. I sat down, trying to access anything. Everything was down. Wi-Fi.

“What’s the password?” I asked.

“It’s the name of the station—postonovaesperança, all together,” he replied.

I typed it in. It didn’t work.

The waitress tried too, tapping the screen with trembling fingers.

“Try 5G…” the man suggested.

“No… it’s not working…” she sobbed.

The girl cried behind the counter, red-eyed, her hands shaking.

“I have to go home… I can’t stay here,” she muttered, her voice breaking. Outside, the noise kept growing. A thin, piercing buzz—like a blade slicing through the ears—mixed with the wet sound of flesh being devoured.

“I have to get out of here!” the waitress screamed.

“If you don’t shut the hell up, I’ll throw you out there!” the fat man shouted, his voice cracking as he pointed at the door.

David had been pacing in circles since it all started. He didn’t stop for a second. He ran his hands along his waist, pulled a pill from his pocket, and swallowed it dry. His face was white as paper. He was sweating so much it looked like he was melting. He clutched his head with both hands; his eyes trembled. He whispered something unintelligible.

I looked at the large windows. Outside, the ants had turned the ground into a living mass, completely black, reddish in places, sometimes yellowish.

II — THE FIRST NIGHT

Night fell quickly. Twilight spread over the road, tinting everything with a yellowish hue that made the massive swarm gleam in a sickly way. Soon, darkness took over. The ants didn’t come in—at least not yet, which was the only stroke of luck we had so far. We’d only been there for three hours, and I already felt like I was losing my mind.

I looked out the window again. The full moon dominated the sky, bathing the gas station in a cold, almost metallic light. The rest of the neighborhood, with a few apartment buildings in the distance, was plunged into a sepulchral silence, as if everything out there were dead.

And then, the ants.

They were getting closer: a living stain, dark and dense, rippling across the road and sidewalks. The ground no longer looked like ground—it was black, reddish, pulsing like an exposed heart, visible to all of us.

At first, I thought they would invade the gas station through the cracks and devour us from the inside out. But nothing happened. They didn’t come in. I remembered my childhood again, how my father used kerosene to keep ants from entering the house.

We locked all the doors. We stuffed the gaps with cloth, rags, cardboard—anything that would do. In the storage room, we found kerosene. The strong smell soaked the air, clinging to the skin. My hands grew damp, but there was no time to think about it.

When we were done, we went back to the store, staring outside, waiting for help.

I went back to the table. The waitress was still there, crying, her arms crossed over her shoulders as if blaming herself for all of it. I had no idea who those people were, aside from David. The truth is, you don’t think straight when you’re attacked by thousands—maybe millions—of ants, after watching a girl get eaten alive.

“What’s your name, miss?” I asked.

“Maria Eduarda…” she replied, her voice choked.

I turned to the fat man and asked the same:

“And you?”

“Everaldo!” he shouted, breathing heavily. “I’m Marcos Augusto, from Paraná. My friend here is David.”

“Do you have a radio? Anything that works?”

“I don’t know… maybe in the storage room.”

Everaldo staggered off and came back with an old radio, the kind that still played CDs. I turned it on and tried to tune every station I could. Nothing. Just static.

“Try the Cuiabá station…” Maria suggested, her voice trembling.

I slowly turned the dial. Nothing. Just endless hissing.

“What the hell…” the fat man shouted.

“Do you think this could be happening in other places?” Everaldo asked, agitated. Sweat ran down his forehead, his eyes wide.

“The TV,” I said.

We turned it on. No channels worked. Not cable, not broadcast. Everything was down. “This is evil… real evil,” Everaldo muttered.

“Help is coming… the Army, someone, the police… they’re just ants,” Maria shot back, starting to cry again.

“We have to get out of here! Now!” David shouted, trembling uncontrollably. “I have to get out of here!”

We all turned to him.

“Hey, calm down, kid…” Everaldo grunted, trying to hold him back.

But David bolted for the door without thinking. I reached out, tried to grab him, but missed. The bottle of pills slipped from his hand, scattering across the dirty floor. He didn’t look back.

He ran toward the row of gas pumps. He moved awkwardly, his feet slamming against the concrete, his hands banging into the metal. In the silver light of the moon, I could see pure horror and desperation on his face. He made strange grimaces, like a panicked animal.

He ran a little farther, stumbled in the middle of the lot, and fell onto the ants.

The scream that tore out of him sounded like it ripped his throat apart. Pain was written across every muscle in his face. The ants, lit by the full moon, looked even more monstrous. A dark tide surged over him, covering his body in seconds. David vanished beneath shades of black, dark red, and a sickly yellow.

A hellish buzzing filled the air—the collective sound of thousands of legs scraping and mandibles clashing.

Maria started crying again, softer now, in muffled sobs.

“What the hell was that idiot doing out there…?” Everaldo muttered weakly.

Everaldo rubbed his belly, as if trying to understand why David had made such a stupid decision.

“I’ll find out,” I said, reaching down.

I picked up the bottle he’d dropped. Anti-anxiety meds—every kind of drug strong enough to knock out a horse. Panic had taken over, no doubt. I slipped the pills into my pocket. If I thought too much about all of this, I’d panic too.

“I doubt those things could handle a blast from a flamethrower right to the face!” Everaldo said, raising his voice, out of breath.

I lay down in a corner, suffocated by the heat. The only fan was the ceiling one, and it did more to smother than to relieve. The air felt trapped, dead—like the bodies outside. I wiped my face with a cloth soaked in cold water, trying to cool off, without success.

The buzzing stopped around three in the morning. Then the wind came. Strong, uneven. By 3:10, the gusts had intensified, lashing against the station. The trees groaned as if they were alive, throwing leaves and dry grass onto the asphalt. I thought a storm was forming, but when I looked toward the horizon at the edge of town, I saw no lightning, no clouds—just the stars and the full moon.

I barely slept, waking from nightmares that felt too real.

“I have to go home…” Maria murmured, whimpering, unable to sleep as well.

I got up and walked over to her, placing a hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her.

“Look, Maria, I left my wife and five kids at home. I know what you’re going through.”

She calmed down a little. There were only the three of us there, trapped in the station. I looked out the window again.

The ants were starting to move away. Now, they seemed more interested in what was left of David. I thought about running to my truck, trying something—but the thought came and went as quickly as it appeared.

Maria eventually fell asleep on the floor, curled up, her eyes still swollen. Finally giving in. Everaldo woke up shortly after; from his expression, he seemed to have had the same nightmares.

He and I stayed awake, sitting in the dark, listening only to the wind and the occasional snap of breaking branches. Outside, we waited for help—but we knew that if anyone were coming, they would’ve arrived by now. If no one showed up, it meant things were far worse than we imagined.

“What do you think those things are?” I asked, breaking the silence between us.

“Maybe a new species of ant… or some mutation. Pollution, radiation, cosmic rays… fallout from a nuclear war, who knows.” He sighed. “We’re screwed. You know that, right?”

I nodded silently, trying to think of a way out.

“That your car out there?” I asked him, nodding toward the large glass window.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Could you distract the ants while I make a run for it?” Have you lost your mind?” Everaldo raised his voice without realizing it. Maria stirred awake.

“What are you two talking about?”

“Nothing. Go back to sleep,” he said, motioning downward.

She laid her head back down.

“How many days’ worth of food do we have?” I asked.

“Three, at most. The supply shipment was supposed to arrive tomorrow… but it looks like we won’t be getting any visitors anytime soon.” He coughed, reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and took a drag. “We’ve got some candy and a bit of meat in the freezer.”

“Then we have to get out of here. Or we’ll starve. What do you prefer? Starve to death, or try to make it to the car and get help?”

Everaldo bit his nails, shaking his head in silence.

“Let’s think about it tomorrow… maybe they’ll be gone by then.”

“I doubt it. I’ve never seen ants do anything like this.”

“Of course they’ll leave! They’re just ants,” Everaldo grunted.

I looked him straight in the face and replied:

“They’re just ants, huh? Just ants that can devour a man whole… Have you thought about what happens if these things are everywhere right now?”

He stared at me with such intense horror that I watched his fat face turn from pink to a pale white, like he’d seen a ghost.

“Impossible… impossible… impossible…” he kept repeating, his voice rising.

“Hey, you’re going to wake Maria up again. I’m just saying these ants might’ve spread across the whole region.”

“Let’s leave that for tomorrow. We need to sleep,” Everaldo concluded, lying down beside the crates of Coca-Cola and the remaining candy.

I lay down to Maria’s left, trying to settle into what little space there was. I closed my eyes, but my thoughts wouldn’t stop. I thought about my young children. Were they in danger now? Would Susana be able to take care of them alone? Or was it already too late… maybe they were already dead, devoured.

III — THE SECOND DAY

When I woke up, my migraine had gotten much worse—far worse. I ran a hand over my head and looked at the large window.

Day had broken. The first rays of sunlight crept over the horizon, but the light brought no relief, especially not for the throbbing pain behind my eyes. Maria woke up with deep dark circles and came to sit beside me.

“When is this going to end?”

“I don’t know. I think they’re surrounding us.”

“Like a military siege?”

“Yeah… like a military siege,” I replied.

The ants were still there. The ground was black, stained with red. Where there had once been green grass, there was now a living, pulsing sea. We were surrounded, waiting to starve or run outside only to meet death.

They approached the station again, moving in organized lines—almost military. It was so absurd it felt like a cartoon. They began to climb, covering the windows. Maria broke down in tears. The glass turned black, as if a creeping darkness were swallowing us whole.

I stepped closer to get a better look. I saw the stinger of one of them—thin as a needle, too sharp to be harmless. Others had different colors and sizes. They were different species. That was impossible. I saw leafcutter ants, small ones, large ones—every kind. All together, like a single unified colony. I felt my sanity waver.

“Do you see this?” I asked.

“See what?” Maria replied.

“They’re different species…”

Everaldo woke with a start and rushed to the old wall phone, banging on it as if that might make it work. Then he pulled his modern cell phone from his pocket and tried again.

Maria panicked again. She dropped to her knees and started crying like a child, unable to stop. Everaldo, stubborn, tried the phone once more. Then he went to the old radio, turning the dial all the way. Nothing. He turned on the TV, trying to tune into any channel—cable or broadcast. Everything was still down. Just static. “Is someone going to come help us…?” Maria asked, her voice breaking.

“Yes… they will,” I replied.

But I knew they wouldn’t. If anyone were coming, they’d already be here. I thought that maybe, if we had run to Everaldo’s car while David was being devoured, we might have escaped.

In silence, Maria started making coffee, as if trying to keep herself together. The hot, bitter smell spread through the station.

“You’re not from around here, right?” she asked, stirring the drink.

“I’m from Paraná—Cascavel… I was here for work, making deliveries.”

I fumbled until I found a cup. She poured the coffee, a faint steam rising from it. I brought it to my lips and took a sip. The strong taste burned my tongue. I ate an old, greasy cheese pastel and a Nestlé chocolate bar. The snap of the chocolate breaking between my teeth brought a strange, almost inexplicable comfort.

I also grabbed a yogurt from the freezer—I had a habit of mixing it with pieces of chocolate, like an improvised ice cream. The crunch spread across my tongue, but the sweetness left a faint bitterness at the back of my mouth.

Around nine in the morning, the power at the gas station finally went out. I jolted. Maria looked at me, and Everaldo too, his face filled with absolute shock. I flipped the switches one after another, still clinging to some illusion of hope.

“Do you think they managed to cut the power lines?” I asked Everaldo.

“Shit… shit… shit…” he kept repeating. He was starting to lose it.

“How many days of food do we have?”

“Maybe two… now, with the power out and this heat, everything will spoil by tomorrow.”

“Damn it… what the hell is this? The end of the world?” I blurted out.

Maria started crying again, quietly. She was worried about the relatives she’d left at home. Everaldo and I went to check the supplies.

There wasn’t much left: some chocolate and pastel dough. Without power, the meat in the fridge would spoil quickly. At best, we had one or two days of supplies—and with the suffocating heat, maybe not even that.

Around one in the afternoon, the ants moved away from the window. I dared to look outside, toward the road and the town. Something bothered me immediately.

“Did you notice that?” I murmured.

“Notice what?” Everaldo replied, suspicious.

“No one’s come down the road. No cars, no truckers… no one stopping for gas.”

I’d been a truck driver for over ten years. I knew that route. There was always movement, always someone stopping there. But now… nothing. Not even an old car, not even the distant sound of an engine. The conversation from earlier, about this being the end of the world, no longer seemed so absurd. The idea that we might have to learn to live with those things—slipping through corners, running from them, accepting this new reality—made my stomach churn. When I looked at Everaldo, I saw the same expression on his face.

Everaldo went pale. He was still trying to cling to the hope that someone would come save us.

“We’re screwed… screwed… screwed…” he repeated, softer each time.

“I think this might be happening in other cities too…” I ventured.

Maria started crying again. But now it was worse: a hysterical, dragging sob. She shook her head, pulling at her hair as if trying to rip it out.

“I told you!” Everaldo exploded, his face red, his neck trembling with fat and sweat. “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll throw you out there—to the ants!”

Everaldo’s smell was almost unbearable: rancid sweat mixed with the stench of unwashed clothes, a stale, rotten odor. The heat didn’t help—it had to be around ninety degrees. I myself gave off a sour smell of thick sweat clinging to my skin.

“Maybe they’ll give up and go away…” I tried to tell Maria, forcing a calm I didn’t feel. “Just stay calm. We’ll get out of this. I promise.”

Everaldo went to the storage room. He grabbed a case of Skol, opened it, and started handing them out.

“I don’t drink,” Maria said.

I took a can and brought it to my lips.

“My God… it’s still cold,” I murmured, taking another sip.

“My wife’s alone… she’s probably dead,” Everaldo said suddenly.

“We can’t say that,” Maria shot back.

She lifted her eyes, frozen, as if Everaldo had touched an open wound. She wiped her tears and looked at the large window.

“I left my wife and kids at home too,” I said. “They’re far away, in Paraná, like you said… but what if this is happening everywhere? Imagine the chaos on the highways.”

I remembered when I arrived there with David: police cars, helicopters rushing toward other cities. I pressed my hands to my temples, already aching from thinking too much. Everaldo took another sip of beer; his fat, flabby hands trembled slightly with the movement.

I spent the entire afternoon staring out the window. The sun was already setting when I saw what was left of the girl.

Just bones—whitened and stained with dried blood. Small clumps of flesh, already starting to rot in the summer heat, still clung to the remains. Flies swarmed up and down over the body. Some ants still clung to the left side of the skull. Her face was gone—now just bone structure. The dental arch looked like a mechanical denture thrown onto the ground. Some ants still feasted on what remained of her head.

Farther ahead was David.

Unlike her, he was still recognizable. Flesh—torn, exposed. His face was half-devoured; his nose had been eaten halfway through, revealing an open hole in his skull. His tongue hung out, exposed. I’ve always had good eyesight, and from there I could see ants going in and out of his mutilated nose. The body wasn’t in good shape either: the skin hung in thin strips, especially along the arms, where the bones were already showing, pale and exposed.

I looked at the collapsed mouth on the ground. Beneath it, the dental arch appeared, stark and grotesque. The eye sockets were nothing but black holes, their edges chewed away, where hundreds of ants crawled in, disappearing into the skull. Others entered through the ears, flowing in black lines, carrying pieces of him toward the storm drain.

I saw the tongue fall, and a small army of ants carry it off like a prize. For a moment, I had the absurd impression that he might still be alive. Then I realized—it was the ants inside the body, devouring him from within. The entire corpse was a shifting terrain. The abdomen pulsed beneath the living mass of insects. The chest still held scraps of muscle, but it was already overtaken by flies, competing with the ants.

I thought I would vomit—but I didn’t.

Maria looked out the same window as I did. With only a partial view, she couldn’t handle it. She ran off and vomited hard onto the floor, clutching her stomach. Her sobs mixed with the sound of vomit hitting the tiles. She dropped to her knees.

“My God, girl, did you have to do that on the floor?” Everaldo complained.

“I couldn’t take it, damn it!” she shot back, gagging, vomiting again.

I felt my stomach twist. Bile burned its way up my throat. I thought I wouldn’t hold it in. I clenched my teeth, took a deep breath, and swallowed the acidic taste. I forced it down.

I couldn’t afford to throw up. We had little food, and wasting what little remained could doom us. Even so, the image stayed, etched into my mind: the ants devouring David.

IV — THE SECOND NIGHT

Night fell again—heavy, suffocating. By late afternoon, the water was gone too—the pipes let out a hollow noise, a dry vacuum. That’s when I realized the streetlights hadn’t come on. The whole world seemed dead.

Everything was completely dark; only the moon cast a pale, cold glow, more like the light of a tomb. The landscape took on an almost lunar aspect. The wind started again, making the air slightly cooler. Maybe rain would come in the next few days, I thought, looking at the star-filled sky.

Moonlight spilled over David’s face—now just a devoured body—and over the girl’s skeleton. The lunar glow created a false sense of normalcy. It was natural light, but there was something sick about it, something that turned my stomach.

In the distance, I could make out the silhouettes of houses and a small apartment building. I forced myself to stare at the windows, searching for any sign of life—a candle, a flicker, anything that might reveal survivors. Nothing. Just darkness. Either they were dead… or they had learned not to draw attention. To the ants, as to us, that didn’t matter—they knew we were here.

Maria lit two candles. The flame flickered, casting restless shadows along the walls. It was just the three of us, trapped inside, surrounded by ants outside. I lit another candle near the window, a useless signal—in case anyone was still alive and could see it. I barely believed that myself.

I sat down and started thinking. If things kept going like this, we wouldn’t last long. I knew it: we would have to leave, or we’d die—of hunger or thirst.

Reality hit us hard when we realized the water was completely gone. Dry. Maria, Everaldo, and I lost the last of our hope. We would have to face the inevitable: try to get out of there.

I started reasoning it out. How was this even possible? It was as if the ants knew exactly what we needed—power, water, supplies. Had they cut everything off? Were they laying siege, patiently waiting for us to die?

I remembered when I realized they were from different species. A thought snapped through my mind: they were unified. One gigantic colony. A single organism spread across the world. I thought about how many billions—maybe trillions—of ants existed on the planet. The idea that they might now be everywhere, killing people, children, carrying remains to some global, interconnected nest—it terrified me more than anything else. I was starting to lose my mind.

I was jolted by Maria, who had lost control. She screamed, pulling at her hair:

“It’s the end of the world! The ants are the end! The end!”

She cried, desperate. Everaldo stayed silent, his face partially swallowed by candlelight, which barely illuminated his greasy beard and massive jowls, giving him a monstrous look, like something out of a horror movie.

As for me, I looked out at the road. The moon bathed it in a sickly glow. The ants moved in mass, like a living ocean, rippling in a hypnotic and terrifying motion. The sound was lower now, a muffled hum—not the piercing buzz from before.

I began to form a plan. I thought about fleeing to somewhere like a supermarket, where there might be enough supplies to survive for months. The image of my children came to mind. “One thing at a time,” an inner voice tried to calm me. I couldn’t think about everything at once.

I turned to Everaldo.

“If we make it to the car, we can get out. Do you have any chemicals? Something acidic? Besides kerosene?”

“Maybe in the storage room… but how can you be sure they won’t get into the car?”

“I can’t. We’ll have to take the risk.”

“You’re insane!” Maria screamed, on the verge of collapse. “I’m not going out there to be devoured! My God… my brother is dead, eaten by those damn things!”

She cried uncontrollably. She was at her limit—a girl who had probably never seen violence beyond a street fight between cats, now thrown into that hell.

I was losing my mind myself—imagine what this was doing to her.

“If we stay here, girl, we’re going to die. Of hunger. Of thirst,” Everaldo said, raising his voice.

“We could try going to a supermarket,” I suggested. “There might be other people who got trapped inside—maybe they’re holding out against the ants.”

“My God… you’re a genius!” Everaldo seemed to come back to life, reignited by a spark of hope.

I laid out the plan quickly.

We’d use the night. The ants seemed less active then.

We prepared everything in silence. My heart pounded like a drum in my chest. The moon lit up most of the road, spilling a cold, silvery glow over the asphalt. Maria clung tightly to my arm, her fingers digging into my skin. Everaldo held a broom soaked in kerosene, along with other chemicals we managed to gather.

We ran toward the car.

When we reached it, the vehicle was unrecognizable—covered in a living crust of ants. The metal gleamed in spots where their legs scraped against it, creating a dark, shimmering sheen. Everaldo hurled the chemicals with force. The acidic smell burned my nose, and the ants reacted instantly—they pulled back in circles, as if sensing danger before the attack even hit. Some died. I threw the last liter of water we had; they swelled and clustered, forming something like a living pyramid. Then I poured the kerosene, forcing them to scatter.

Then came the snap.

From the tree beside us, a black mass broke loose and fell onto Everaldo.

He collapsed to the ground. His huge belly writhed in desperation. His scream was swallowed by the wet sound of mandibles closing on flesh. I threw kerosene on him in a blind impulse. Maria clung to me, her nails digging into my arm, almost tearing the skin. The sharp smell filled my lungs, burning my throat.

The ants pulled back for a moment—only for others to surge forward right after, in relentless waves.

Maria and I backed away, running, and rushed back into the station. We slammed the door shut, pounding it until our fingers throbbed with pain. Outside, Everaldo still writhed. His body jerked in spasms, his belly rising and falling as he screamed, begging for help.

How was this possible?

They knew.

They knew we would come out at that exact moment. They anticipated our movements. They formed strategies. They knew we would use chemicals—that’s why the ambush came from above, from the trees, from the car. They knew we would go for the car, especially Everaldo’s.

A chill ran down my spine. It felt like we were being watched. Like they understood what we were saying.

A thought hit me, filled with terror:

Why haven’t they killed us yet?

They could come through the vents or the door—so why keep us alive? What did they want? To starve us? To punish us for destroying their homes for centuries, maybe millennia? Being devoured would be too easy. They wanted to watch us go mad in here, wasting away, with some sick pleasure that might have come from a cosmic hell… or from the reckless use of pesticides. None of that mattered anymore. I knew I was going to die there.

I started thinking about killing myself. How would I do it? I wouldn’t give those damn things the satisfaction of watching me rot away in here.

Ants weren’t supposed to be capable of this. Not like this.

I felt my sanity slipping away along with the cold sweat running down my neck. I was starting to crack. I went to the counter and grabbed one of David’s anxiety medications. The blister pack was already damp with sweat when I swallowed the pills in a rush. I gave another to Maria, who was trembling, her eyes wide in the darkness.

My eyelids grew heavy. The exhaustion was crushing. I couldn’t stay awake anymore.

“I’m going to try to sleep… You watch the door…” I murmured, barely able to speak.

The candle flickered, casting twisted shadows across the wood. Her freckled face appeared and disappeared in the unstable light of the flame. V — THE THIRD DAY

When I woke up, for a moment, I believed it had all been just a nightmare. But then I looked around: I was still at the gas station. I had dreamed about my daughters. I saw Susana accusing me for leaving them, judging me for not being by their side—and because of that, they had died.

I walked to the storage area, trying to figure out how long it would take before everything ran out. With Everaldo dead, I didn’t want to be unfair, but he was one less mouth to feed.

I went into the pantry looking for something to eat or drink. I was extremely thirsty and hungry. My last hopes died when I smelled it: rotten vegetables and the bitter stench of decomposing meat.

“Shit…” I muttered, already expecting the worst.

When I opened the door, I saw movement. An ant was there, motionless, behind the wood—as if it had been waiting for me. When it realized I had noticed it, it ran into a hole. Then another. Then another.

Suddenly there were dozens—maybe fifty—all squeezing into the same hole, disappearing into the darkness. I shut the opening in a panic, desperately searching for other places they could get in.

I looked at the food. It was all spoiled. The ants had found a way to ruin it—or carry it away. Anything processed—candy, cookie packages—was gnawed, deformed, or simply gone. What they couldn’t consume, they dragged through the holes.

In the corner, I saw carcasses of dead insects, split in half, covered in a black paste of chewed chocolate.

The sight made me tremble. With rage.

“Bastards…” I muttered, running a hand over my head.

The thought from the night before came back with force: they wanted to starve us. They could have attacked at any moment. They could have devoured us while we slept. But no. They wanted us to suffer. They wanted us to feel what they had felt for millennia.

A sharp, desperate scream snapped me out of those feverish thoughts. It came from the station yard.

“Marcos! Come here, now!” Maria shouted.

Out in the yard, under the weak light of the morning sun, I saw something impossible. The ants were gathering in the thousands, moving in perfect synchrony. Slowly, the lines began to form words. Living letters.

YOU HAVE NO FOOD LEFT.
SURRENDER.
WE WILL NOT HARM YOU.
PREPARE TO FILL THE TANKS.
I REPEAT: WE WILL NOT HARM YOU.

My legs gave out. I almost fainted.

Fill the tanks… for whom?

Shaking, I wrote a reply on a piece of paper. My handwriting came out nearly illegible. I didn’t expect an answer, but I left the paper on the ground near the door.

WE WILL NOT SURRENDER.

An ant approached, touched the paper, and returned to the group. They began to move again, that macabre dance of black bodies rearranging themselves, until another message appeared:

THEN WE WILL KILL YOU ALL.
YOU HAVE 4 HOURS TO SURRENDER TO US.

Maria collapsed to the ground, crying uncontrollably. Her voice broke, choked between sobs:

“I didn’t expect an answer…” she said, gasping. “I slapped my face, pinched myself—I thought I was losing it, going insane. But the letters were still there… the formation…”

“Should we surrender?…” she continued. “What can they even do to us? What do they want, my God?”

“I don’t know, Maria…” I replied. “But I’m sure it’s nothing good.”

I leaned back against the wall, still holding the paper, thinking about what I would write next: whether I would surrender… or end it all at once.

She came over and rested her head on my shoulder.

“Should we surrender?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

“No. I’d rather die than face whatever they’re planning for us out there.”

“Me too,” I said.

She leaned in and kissed me. For a moment, I kissed her back. Then I thought about my wife. I thought about how I was betraying her—maybe dead, maybe devoured—while I kissed a red-haired girl young enough to be my daughter.

I gently pulled away.

“I’m sorry… I don’t know what came over me,” Maria said.

She started crying again.

“That’s normal… it’s just stress. Things like this happen,” I said, trying to comfort her.

We stayed in silence, staring at the large windows, as the midday sun climbed the sky, relentless. VI — THE END

I think it was around two in the afternoon when we ate the last of the food.

She cried a little more. We gave up. We chose the fastest, least painful way out.

I took David’s meds and mixed them with others—rat poison and insecticides we found in the storage room. I knew that combination of chemicals and poisons, in that amount, would kill anyone. Maybe in thirty minutes or less. At least, that’s what I hoped.

The dosage was lethal. Of that, I was sure.

“Gabriel is dead.”

She said the name out of nowhere. I looked at her.

“He was my little brother. He’s special… he can’t eat without my help. He only had me. My mom and dad are already dead.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked.

“We’re going to die anyway. I needed to get it off my chest… I know Gabriel is dead. I know it.”

I thought about my five children, especially the baby—Edite. How would they live without a father? That is, if they were even still alive.

“This will be better than being devoured by those things out there,” I said, forcing courage.

I brought the pills to my mouth. She did the same.

Then, a loud thud echoed outside. We both jolted. A sharp sound of wheels scraping against asphalt.

I recognized it.

It was a truck.

No. Trucks.

I had never felt such relief in my life.

I spat the pills onto the floor. Maria did the same.

She ran to the door, crying.

Trucks. A line of them stretched along the highway, reaching the horizon—and more kept coming. From every corner of the country. There were flags, license plates from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná, Amazonas, the Northeast…

The first trucks stopped.

Maria smiled through tears and laughter, her mouth open in pure disbelief.

Finally. Help had arrived.

She hugged me, crying.

“Maybe we can still save Gabriel…” she murmured.

I cried with relief, holding her.

Then the ants reorganized once again. On the ground, they formed new words:

“LAST CHANCE.
FILL THE TRUCKS NOW.
OR WE WILL KILL YOU ALL.”

I looked again. Ran my hands over my mouth.

My heart nearly stopped.

A sharp pain pierced my chest. Cold sweat ran down my neck. I almost threw up, overwhelmed by absolute panic.

Maria’s expression changed in a second—from relieved smile to a hollow, unhinged stare. She blinked a few times… and fainted instantly, collapsing into my arms.

I only stayed standing because of the adrenaline and the fading euphoria.

A man stepped down from one of the trucks. He wore an old cap, worn out by time; he had a large beard, a swollen belly pressing against his pants, and looked like he hadn’t bathed in a long time. The smell gave him away even from a distance.

The ants parted a path for him. With each step, they moved aside to avoid being crushed. I picked Maria up and carried her toward the man, to the station door. I went inside.

He shut the door behind me as he entered. I laid Maria on the floor—she had completely collapsed.

The man looked at me, irritated, as if I were inconveniencing him—that look I knew well from my bosses whenever I messed up a delivery. Boxes falling, shouting, humiliation. I could tell he was about to do the same.

“What the hell are you idiots standing around for?!”

“But what’s going on?” I asked.

He had a southern accent—Gaúcho—very different from Paraná or Mato Grosso.

He shot me a hard look, almost like he could tear me apart. Still, I could see fear in his eyes.

“You’d better start cooperating. You haven’t seen anything yet of what those things can do.”

“What the hell…?” I muttered.

“Look, I don’t have time for this. I haven’t slept in a day. Start filling the tank, man—I still have to reach La Paz today, if I’m lucky… unless there are more idiots like you trying something stupid.”

“Bolivia?” I asked.

“Of course, you moron! Move it before they eat all of us.”

I opened the door. The ants let us pass.

I walked beside him and pointed.

“That’s my truck. I’m a trucker too.”

“Doesn’t matter anymore. Just fill the damn tank.”

I pressed my lips together, swallowed hard, and obeyed.

I grabbed the hose, forced the cap open, and let the fuel flow into the tank. Maria woke up.

“What happened?”

“They won.”

That’s all I said.

She was—in complete shock. She didn’t cry, like I expected. She just came over to me.

Maria helped me in silence, her eyes red, unable to hide the trauma. That beautiful red-haired girl I had seen when I first arrived was gone. What remained was an exhausted shell. She looked like she had aged twenty years in a few days: deep dark circles, disheveled hair, her body giving off the smell of sweat and dried urine.

I stood up and carried the hose from one truck to the next.

They came by the thousands along the highways.

On the horizon, an endless line of trucks stretched out—coming from every state. We spent the entire day like that: trucks appearing from every direction, like an endless march of steel and smoke. I thought it would never end.

Engines roared in unison, heavy, making the ground vibrate beneath our feet.

Long semis, covered in red dust.
Old trucks, with worn paint and patches of rust.
Others newer, chromed, reflecting the scorching sun.

My face was starting to burn, oily, stinging. Maria kept helping me; her disheveled hair whipped in the hot wind. I lifted my head to see if the line was close to ending—and realized it wasn’t.

There were vehicles of every size: dump trucks overflowing, carriers hauling machinery, tarp-covered trailers with logos nearly erased by time. Some came decorated with little flags, saints fixed to dashboards, stickers with road slogans.

I recognized plates and markings from all over Latin America: Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina.

“My God… so this is happening everywhere,” I said.

I started to cry. My tears fell onto my calloused hands, reeking of gasoline.

It was as if an entire continent had risen on wheels. Under the command of the ants.

The heat was killing me. I felt like I might faint. My hands were burned, skin stinging.

But the silence was worse. Maria stopped talking. She just shut down. Did only what I told her, without showing any emotion—not even sadness. That girl was already dead inside.

All I could think about were my children. Were they okay? Still alive?

Sweat ran down my face, burning my eyes. I wiped it with my sleeve, but it came back immediately—thick, heavy, as if the air itself had turned into a viscous liquid. I coughed, my mouth dry and cracked. I thought I’d pass out, but I held on.

I looked at the massive trucks. Some were carrying people. I saw faces of pure terror—like those in World War II photographs, of Jews being taken to extermination camps.

Up to that point, I hadn’t seen a single child inside the trucks. Only adult men and women. Some vehicles arrived packed, people crushed together, eyes wide with fear.

But no children. No elderly.

That’s when I knew: all the children and all the elderly were already dead.

Dusk fell again, casting long shadows over the trees and staining everything a dirty yellow. I started crying again, thinking about my baby and my kids. An irrational rage took over me. I thought about blowing up the gas station. I thought about a thousand things—all leading to suicide. In the end, I did exactly what the ants wanted.

I looked at the makeshift line that had formed. It was enormous now, swollen by the absurd number of trucks still arriving. The sun bent over them, sinking into the horizon in dark, sickly yellow tones. One by one, headlights flickered on, cutting through the distance with dull beams. I imagined that with the total power outage, in a few hours the road would be taken over by those lined-up lights, motionless, illuminating the gridlock like an artificial river.

I wondered if everyone was doing the same as me. Or being moved to some kind of hell—improvised concentration camps, or enslaved right there under the ants’ command.

And Maria… she couldn’t take it. She was exhausted. More exhausted than me. Her beauty had been swallowed by fatigue; her skin was red, sunburned. Just looking at her, I could almost feel the heat radiating from her burns.

“Let me finish here. Go rest,” I said.

She walked away unsteadily, slow steps, eyes lifted to the sky as if still waiting for some god to answer.

I kept working alone. The movement mechanical, repetitive, almost automatic. Hose, fuel, truck. One after another. The strong smell of gasoline, the heat of the asphalt, the sky slowly darkening.

The ants formed letters on the ground again:

“TIME TO REST IS FOOD.
YOU WILL BE GIVEN A MEAL.”

The truck drivers stopped. They got out and walked toward the gas station.

We all went inside and began eating food taken from a supply truck—only items that didn’t need refrigeration. It was little, poorly distributed, but no one complained.

A Bolivian man cried as he ate, tears streaming with every bite. He spoke in his language, repeating something that sounded like “mi hija.” I couldn’t understand anything beyond that.

A man from Rio muttered, his voice full of anger:

“You’re just going to let them win like this? If we accept this, we’ll be their slaves forever!”

Another man cut him off immediately:

“Quiet! They can hear us…”

He had a Minas Gerais accent.

The man from Rio fell silent.

The idea of being enslaved by those things might be worse than being devoured. Spending the rest of your life there, filling gas tanks, obeying insects.

The letters moved again:

“END OF REST.
RETURN TO WORK.”

Everyone went back to their trucks.

I went back to fueling them.

The moon was full again, shining over the endless line of trucks and the heavy faces of their occupants. I thought about running. About breaking away. Getting into my truck and trying to escape.

The thought was crushed almost instantly.

There was nowhere to go.

There was no longer an “outside.”

The engine roared like a mechanical heart chained in place.

I looked at the horizon: the endless line of trucks, the cruel glow of the moon, and the shadows of the ants, always lurking. They were in the trees. On the station roof. On what was left of David. Some ran between my feet, brushing my boots with their antennae, as if communicating—as if they knew I was thinking about doing something stupid.

We would have to accept it.

Unlike them, we were divided. Petty. We could never face something with that level of organization.

Maybe, in a hundred years, someone could rise against them. Maybe someone would crush the rulers and drive them back to wherever they should have never left.

Around two in the morning, traffic slowed. Some trucks stopped.

The ants formed letters again, just for me:

“TIME TO REST.
8 HOURS.”

As I closed my eyes, I thought about what would come next. They would reduce our population until there was no strength left for rebellion. Little by little. Methodical. Patient.

In the end, only this would remain.

Living under the colony.

Credit: L.S Benveniste

Amazon

Please note the author of this Creepypasta does NOT give permission for it to be reproduced in any other medium