The big black eyes of those mutated ants look right into our flashlights before ignoring us completely, not caring even a little that a human and a super mutant were inside of their lair, watching them. Instead, the bigger ants, withdraw slowly towards another room, but suddenly, one after another, they dropped backward and flopped down onto the floor, like empty sacks.
As soon as the first one fell to the ground, I looked back at Vito in amazement and sheer fear, watching him resting his assault rifle on his side after taking out four big predator ants.
"Don't look at me like that kiddo. It was us or them and to be honest with you, I'd rather not become ant food. Not to mention that they must have been very hungry, for them to ignore us like that, exposing their backs to us. By the way, their backs are their weak points alongside the interior of their mouths, if ever found a way to shoot in there, that is."
Vito explained to me, as he was examining the dark puddles of blood that were flowing out from under the dead beasts' smashed skulls, before taking out a few jars from his backpack.
"Cover me, Dante. We have just found a gold mine down here. Their blood might be poisonous for you humans, but for Ghouls, this shit is the best alcohol they could get their hands on. "
"They have alcohol in their blood?"
"No quite, their blood has a similar effect to that of alcohol, but don't mistake it for one. It's poison a very strong poison that makes your head a mess. Unlike you, the ghouls and super mutants have a stupidly higher tolerance to poison so for them this blood can be used as a luxury drink if they can get their hands on it."
"Does that mean that we might have just found our ticket to riches?"
"That's just half of the ticket, we still have to leave, as well as kill all of those things. We can't let these creatures roam the Mojave anymore. Not after what I've seen them do back in Washington."
After Vito finished filling almost fifteen jars of blood, we moved on without looking around for the "small" grunts, despite hearing their low growls coming from all over the tunnels. Every time I was about to let the temptation take over me and put a bullet into these creatures, Vito stopped me, telling me that it would only anger them. Not to mention that it was better to do that after we take out their queen, who from what my green friend told me, wasn't able to do much other than make new predator ants. To be fair to me, every time one of those things came close to us, I had to coax myself, calm myself down, and eventually, demonstrate to myself that I was a mature guy who could, to some extent tame or at least get used to this nightmares, refusing to let them drive me insane and get both of us killed just because I was a trigger, happy idiot.
Despite the occasional growls alongside the unsettling noise, their legs made when moving on the rock, the predator ants were surprisingly tame, not attacking us or even approaching us at all. It was as if they were ignoring us, maybe even seeing us as less than a threat against their numbers, which to be fair was an understatement, after all, no matter how strong or how good you were, these things could easily kill you, especially in their own home ground. The deeper we went through the rooms, we continue to see the ants crammed into both small holes as well as on the walls falling silent, didn't showing any kind of rage or desire for revenge even after Vito continue to occasionally kill one or two of their kin. Once we left the main rooms, the ants immediately came out of their "sleeping" state to devour their own dead kin. I glanced one last time at these things before quickly catching up with Vito, who was getting our grenades into a bundle, ready to be thrown inside the queen one way or another.
"They don't look like hunters to me."
"Aggression is the quality of hunters, however those who feed on dead bodies don't need it, after all, they don't need to hunt for food when the prey would come to them thanks to others. Everything alive would die sooner or later, and when that happens, their bodies would become food for them anyway. For these ants, they just have to wait and food would come to them, they don't need to risk going outside and hunt like their others kin."
From time to time, our flashlight found a stray ant hiding or sleeping in the tunnels until we reached the biggest cave I'd ever seen. As soon as we stepped inside, hundreds of pairs of black eyes followed our movement as we walked toward the biggest mound of flesh I'd seen. The predator ant's heads turned in precise synchronization, watching intently as we approached their mother and queen.
The queen was at least the size of one story building occupying almost the whole far back of the cave. As soon as we were just short of two meters away from the abomination, the patch of light from Vito's flashlight scurried rapidly from side to side, when we saw what lay under the queen's body. Hundreds of bones and gnawed skulls, no doubt coming from humans, shone when the light fell on them before quickly disappearing into the dark, however, that wasn't what made Vito look from side to side in a hurry. Not even a little, close to the far left side of the pile of bones, lying beside the bones like some useless shells were a few steel army helmets and bulletproof vests wearing the distinct marks of a now destroyed group: The Enclave.
"Bloody fucking Thursday. I think I know who brought these things in the Mojave."
"The Enclave? Aren't those like the guys you saved years ago?"
"I don't think these guys are from the same group as the one I saved, but they definitely are from the same organization. That explains why these things are so docile compared to what I've witnessed back in Washington."
"SO what are we going to do now?"
"Look around the queen, can you see it?"
I turned my head and looked at the abomination and indeed, there were some rather strange pillars surrounding the queen, and every other half a meter or so on that pillar was a fat circle the size of a head, from bottom to top. Deactivating my collar I decided to put my ability to test and see what that thing was.
[Thermite bomb (small) – Deactivated(can't be activated any longer due to the lack of proper equipment necessary for running the precaution) – Still, the bombs can still be detonated, however, it now needs to be detonated with external explosives for a reaction to start and activate the rest of the bombs]
"Holy bolts, those circles were bombs!"
"That, kiddo, it's called precautions. The Enclave knew what they were doing making this cave the home of the ants, sadly for them, they either failed or the ants turned on them."
"I know how we can finish what they couldn't."
< Just change "3" with "e" Patr3on Link : https://patr3on.com/meatbunkun>