“One, two, three…”
I love this.
Only a small fraction of the rats were left. The largest mass of them had been herded into a corner by the swarm, and in their panic they had done nearly as much damage to each other as they were doing to the bugs.
I guess it does make sense to herd them into one spot if you’re going to be killing them anyway.
Stragglers remained elsewhere, but as good as they were at navigating the nooks and small spaces of the house, the bugs were just as good, organized by my will, and they vastly outnumbered the rodents.
The addition of Taylor practically turns the swarm into a hivemind that is much smarter than the individual bugs, and that makes the swarm incredibly effective at navigating mazelike environments and keeping track of things.
“Thirty-one, thirty-two…”
Before the last of the rats were dead, I began organizing roaches and other sturdier bugs to have them cart the dead rats away.
Ah, okay, so she is handling that. Good.
So we’ve got roach hearses carrying hundreds of rats to the rat graveyard to be rat buried by a rat undertaker.
I filled the corners of the stairs with massed insect bodies, until it was more like a ramp than a set of steps. I stepped up to the house to open the door and let the swarm start bringing the dead rats outdoors.
I do think there’s an element of showbugship in Taylor’s motivations here. Showing a way she can dramatically make a difference to some of the people living under her care, dramatically. That’s why she came here, that’s why she’s opening the door instead of having the swarm carry the rats out some other way (I’m sure there are some available for creatures at that size, especially with the rat infestation in mind), that’s why she’s not explaining herself. She’s going to let the visual of roaches and other insects carrying rat corpses out the door in droves do the talking for her.
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