|
This is one of my few horror stories. At the
request of my friend Ann this one now comes with a
health warning, especially if you don't like creepy
crawlies! Enjoy!
- David
|
It began when Jenny called me from Biofab.
'John,' she said, 'can you could come over? I'm at the lab. I want you to see something.' Her voice was high and tense. She sounded almost scared. But damn it - my job was important too.
'Jenny, I've got all these results to collate. The report's due tomorrow.' I glanced across the sunlit garden to where my papers were spread out on the picnic table under the oak tree.
There was a cold pause.
'I see. I don't know why I married such a selfish man. All right - don't come then.'
'No it's all right,' I said quickly before she slammed the phone down. Then I sighed ostentatiously to make my point. 'I'll be over in ten minutes.'
I don't quite know what had happened to our marriage but we sure weren't a team.
'Park round the back,' she said immediately. 'I'll wait for you at the smokers' club.' The smokers' club was the small rear entrance whose burglar alarms, unknown to the company, had been neatly bypassed by one of the lab technicians to allow the nicotine addicts to sneak outside and get their fix.
'John,' she added, making it an order, 'don't go round to reception. OK? I'll wait for you at the back.'
I got the car out of the garage and headed towards the lab. I was wondering what on earth could have happened to kick her out of her habitual ice-cold equanimity.
As soon as I drove into the car park she started running towards the car, and she grabbed my hand the moment I had the door open. I could smell the hot tarmac and the resin from the pines warmed by the summer sun. I reached for my jacket, which was folded on the back seat, taking my time while she hopped impatiently beside me.
She hurried me across the short lawn and behind the rhododendrons to where someone had parked the field van in the shade, partly hidden from the main laboratory.
'They've put them out here so that people won't talk,' she muttered, 'stupid idiots'.
Taking out a small key, she glanced round furtively. She unlocked the door and turned the handle. I had time to notice the biohazard warnings before she had pulled me inside and slammed the door.
The van had no windows. It was a brightly lit square room, sparsely furnished with stainless steel cabinets and lab equipment. It was chilled and smelled faintly of antiseptics.
But then, the dead don't need luxury.
The body was laid out on a metal table in the center of the room.
It was dressed in slacks and a blue sports shirt with what looked like the remains of a jacket. Apart from the jacket, the clothes looked new and unmarked. I could see modern trainers and an expensive watch on the wrist - what remained of the wrist.
The clothes had collapsed in on themselves, because inside the clothes was nothing but a skeleton.
I saw bones that were obviously fresh, but looked as if they had been sandblasted clean, with only a few strands of ligament still adhering at the jaw and knuckle joints. The empty eye sockets stared at the humming fluorescent tube three feet above its head.
'God,' I said. I was an epidemiologist and a doctor and I had seen my share of dead bodies in the course of my special Government work, but the shock always gets to you.
'There are more,' she said. Moving swiftly she slid open three mortuary drawers, one after another. 'A woman probably his wife, and two children.' The cold bundles in the long metal drawers were decently zipped into opaque plastic bags.
'And are they…?'
'Yes, the same. Skeletons inside good clothes. Underclothes too, we checked. We think the man's jacket was leather, but the rest of the clothes were probably synthetics or cotton, not animal.'
'What did this?'
She paused.
'We think it must have been the soldier ants,' she said reluctantly. 'We were out looking for the nest today when we found the bodies. They must have set out for a picnic on the heath over that way.' She waved her arms vaguely to the west.
'They must have trapped them. Surrounded them. Brought them down.' Her dispassionate voice was beginning to shake. 'They eat their victims alive, John, from the inside. They bite a hole and crawl inside and…'
Her voice was rising and she suppressed a sob.
'Hey, slow down.' I caught hold of her shoulders with both hands. 'Even soldier ants can't do that to humans, not unless they were tied down or something. And we are in England - remember. We don't have soldier ants.'
She shuddered, drew a breath and started again.
'That's why I wanted you here. You are a Government epidemiologist and an outsider and you understand about containment, like with a disease. It was all I could think of. Rupert is treating this as a simple pest control job, but these aren't just ordinary soldier ants.'
I nodded. Rupert was her boss. I knew about him.
'They come from the lab here. We import them from Africa. Someone must have been careless.' She leant her weight again me, letting me hold her. 'You see, Rupert has been - adjusting - the queen.'
'You mean,' my voice was flat, 'they've allowed a genetically modified queen to escape?'
'We think that's what must have happened,' her voice was defensive. 'It must have been the smokers' club. It's the only door without an alarm.'
She bit her lip.
'They're such good subjects, you see, soldier ant. They breed fast and there is lots of material to work with and they have this skewed genetic system, like bees. But these ones have become - different.'
We left the mobile lab.
Jenny locked it carefully behind her and we walked towards the main building.
'We've found their nest.' She was speaking quickly now, filling in the details for me before I met the rest of the team. 'We're going out tonight to destroy it with flamethrowers and poison. The police are cooperating, trying to keep everything quiet to avoid panic, cordoning off the area.
'But these ants are intelligent and resilient and strong, John. Don't think of individual ants - think of the whole organized swarm. That weighs more than a Bengal tiger.'
'Each has a nasty bite,' I objected, not seeing her fear, 'but it's small and its blind.'
We had reached the front of the building now. The glass doors flashed the sunlight into my eyes as she swung it open.
'No, that's the wrong focus. Think of the whole swarm as one hunting animal, like a tiger.' She was talking over her shoulder as she flashed her badge at the receptionist and led the way down the long corridor.
'They communicate by scent. They can talk for up to three miles, sending complex chemical messages like the nerve signals between different parts of a hunting animal. These are all the daughters of the same modified queen, remember, all hundred thousand of them. This new breed of ant hunts intelligently. They scout, plan, trap and kill. The evidence is out there on the heath.'
I stumbled in the darkness and swore. There was no moon that night. Around me other figures moved, waving powerful flashlights. Behind us came more men with heavier equipment.
Rupert and the others hadn't wanted me to come but I'd insisted. Since I had seen the bodies they didn't trust me not to complain to my department if they didn't do what I said. So I came, but they weren't talking to me.
Beside me trudged Jenny. She must have been wondering if she'd sacrificed her whole career in a moment of panic. They were only ants. At night they would all be in the nest, partly comatose. Tonight they were going to die, and that would be the end of it.
We arrived at the remains of a ruined oak. It had been split open by some great storm and now its dry empty trunk reared above our heads.
'Lights,' called Rupert softly.
Soon three big arc lights on metal stands made the scene brilliant, throwing weird shadows into the undergrowth around.
Cathy Chang stood close to Rupert, her dainty Chinese figure looking tiny beside his bulk. I had always liked her, and I thought she looked nervous. Later I was to remember how she'd kept twining her slender fingers together.
They were both wearing beekeeping suits. Now they started struggling into the enveloping hats and gloves, and tying up the ankles over their rubber boots. Each of them strapped a metal canister to their back and connected up the hose. They checked each other's equipment carefully. Rupert lifted the long-nosed spray and gave an experimental squirt, and Cathy did the same. I smelled the sharp acrid mist of Chlortoxicane.
Ladders were placed against each side of the trunk.
The ants were inside all right. Standing by the oak tree I could hear a soft rustling hum beating steadily inside the tree like a slow wooden heart.
Jenny heard it too. 'They keep the nest warm with rotting vegetable matter and the heat of their bodies,' she said softly. 'What you can hear is their movements as they ventilate the inner nest. They make a protective lattice round the queen and the nursery, a wall made of their own bodies.'
Her hand came out and held mine.
'Everybody back,' said Rupert, enjoying his hour of glory. 'We're going in now.' Jenny and I stepped back, still holding hands. I shivered. Let him enjoy it. I wouldn't want to go in there.
Slowly they clambered up the ladders, one on each side of the tree, awkward in their heavy gear. Rupert reached the top first, and waited for Cathy to get to the opposite rim. There must have been twenty of us -police, scientists and technicians - all standing silent, watching. The four men with the flamethrowers stood ahead of the rest, holding their weapons pointing forwards and downwards. The pilot flames made small red sparks against the dark background of moss, leaf mould and last year's twigs.
'Right. All set Cathy? Let's go.'
Together they pointed their sprays deep into the nest and turned the knobs on their canister. I heard the hiss of the poison as they directed it down and round the walls. The rustling hum inside the oak became louder, like a rising wind.
I swallowed, wishing I hadn't insisted on coming.
Suddenly, under the hard light of the arc lamps I saw what looked like a wave of black paint, thick and viscous, emerging from a small hole on the side of the trunk. It began pouring upwards over the gray dead wood. Another wave started creeping out of another hole.
Several voices called out, and Rupert looked round uncertainly, still spraying.
We heard Cathy yelp. 'Bloody thing's got inside,' she said in a shrill voice, slapping at the knee of her suit.
'You OK Cathy?'
'No, no, oh God.' She banged the leg of her suit with the spray nozzle, and then sprayed her own leg. 'Help. They're getting in.'
Suddenly she started to scream and clutched at her groin. She half turned, starting to back down the ladder, but the heavy canister caught on a branch and she lost her balance. She grabbed at a dry branch for support but it broke in her hand. For a moment she teetered on the brink waving her arms for balance.
With a shriek she fell into the nest.
I heard her scream again, and then long continuous shrill screams. I could hear her feet kicking and scrambling at the hollow wood of the trunk. I could tell when she started to choke and her screams faltered. I was shocked into immobility, imagining what was happening to her. We were too far away. All any of us could do was watch. I had a sudden vivid image of the clean bones of the skeleton I had seen that morning.
But Rupert was still trying.
Holding firmly onto a branch he leaned forward and reached one arm into the hole.
'Cathy, hold onto me.'
She must have caught at his hand because I saw him stiffen as he took her weight, and immediately I could see the black tide running up the thick white material of his gloves and arm. He started to pull upwards, but then her hand must have slipped. He reached in again.
One of the men shouted and we looked where he was pointing.
Out from the base of the tree was flowing a spreading black pool. The surface seemed to flicker as the light reflected off thousands of moving legs and jaws. We stepped hastily back. I heard the heavy woof-woof as the men with the flamethrowers lit their weapons.
The shout had distracted Rupert and he glanced round to see what new danger was threatening. I think he must have stepped back onto a weak place, because suddenly he staggered. With a shout he fell outwards, off the tree and into the carpet of ants on the ground.
He landed with a thump and a gasp.
Immediately the ants swarmed over him and he began to run.
He headed for the nearest flamethrower, which was scything up the black sea with a whoosh and crackle. I could smell kerosene and what smelt like burning hair. The man directed the flame away from Rupert, but Rupert deliberately swerved and ran into it. Immediately he was alight, a flaming torch running away from the ants, stripping off his canister and beating at his burning clothes as he ran.
The next morning I was lying stretched out on a low grassy hummock watching a scouting party of the soldier ants through powerful binoculars. I could feel the sun on my back and smell the heather and gorse. Jenny was in the field van fifty yards behind me - my escape route. Behind her was the Army Landrover with Captain Morrison in the driver's seat, a flamethrower on the seat beside him.
It had been a somber party that met back to the lab late last night. Rupert was in hospital under heavy sedation and was likely to lose his sight. Cathy's body, what was left of it, would have to wait. The flamethrowers had only just kept the ants at bay while we escaped and it was only the coldness of the night air that stopped the ants from following us.
'We were lucky,' Jenny had said.
'What we need is a good hard winter. Pity it isn't February. A sharp frost would soon finish them off.'
'We must have depleted their numbers,' said the dapper Army Colonel who had taken over since our return. 'Another night should do it.'
'Don't count on it,' Jenny had answered. 'How much did Cathy weight? Anyone know?' She looked round.
'Anyway, she just provided them with over a hundred pounds of healthy fresh meat. They breed fast. They will have regained their numbers by tonight.'
I shivered despite the heat.
The column of ants was curving round a small hillock searching for prey. I looked like a long groping arm feeling its way over the grass and dry heather. I'd had to move twice already and soon I'd have to move again. They were coming my way, even though they'd already searched the area where I was lying. I supposed that they could smell me - but they wouldn't find me, not if I could help it.
I'd had to argue hard to be out here this morning, but they needed the information and Jenny and I were the field experts. The Colonel had offered support, but I'd wanted a small party - more mobile and less conspicuous. They'd insisted on sending Captain Morrison and one Landrover, but apart from that I'd got my way and the army had promised to keep back until I called them. I tapped the mobile phone in my pocket to make sure. My job was to observe and learn, not to take risks.
What I was working on now was - how did the ants know I was here? Could they smell me, even though I had been careful to stay downwind?
The phone beeped and I scrambled it out of my pocket.
'Another arm is heading round behind you to cut you off.' Jenny's voice was tense.
'Coming.'
I stood up, sprinted to the van and jumped into the driver's seat.
Starting the engine, I headed back down the narrow track followed by the Landrover with its neat regimental markings. I crossed the bridge, and headed back up the other side of the small river until I was almost where I had been before, but with the water between the ants and me.
'That should keep them.' I grabbed the keys and jumped out. 'Just keep your eyes open for ants crossing that bridge.' I grinned at her and ran to the nearest piece of raised ground and resumed my studies.
The Landrover had halted further back and I had a brief glimpse of Captain Morrison's nervous face through the windshield as he peered this way and that. We all have our own phobias I suppose. All the way back in the darkness I'd heard him swearing to himself in a low scared voice.
I can only imagine what happened next.
Further up the
river, in the opposite direction from the bridge, there were
trees overhanging the water. A scouting party must have found
a long branch out over the water. They probably formed a bridge
with their bodies to a branch from the other side. I should
have remembered that they do the same in their native Africa.
It's not that surprising. They would have been probing all
of the trees at once, using many small parties, until one
of them found a way through. Then the chemical signal would
have gone out and the whole stream would have started pouring
over the bridge and round behind us like water through a breached
dyke.
My phone beeped and I grabbed it out of my pocket.
'They're round behind me. Quickly John.'
'On my way.' I sprinted towards the van.
God, we'd left it too close. There was already a thin tributary of ants between the van and me. Further out I could see a great black-brown moving carpet under the trees, surrounding us. I jumped over the tributary, and felt my foot crunch and slither on small bodies as I landed short. Two more paces and I was dragging the van door open and leaping in, brushing at the ants that were biting my legs.
I reached for the keys.
My heart stopped. I knew what had happened even as I continued frantically scrabbling in my pockets. When I had pulled out the mobile phone, something had tinkled.
'I've dropped the bloody keys,' I yelled, 'it'll have to be the Landrover.'
The Landrover was already surrounded and I could see ants swarming up the tires. Captain Morrison was staring at the sea of insects as though mesmerized, making no attempt to use the flamethrower. I started to get out of the van.
Suddenly I heard the Landrover's engine growl. With a spurt of gravel it sped off down the road, crushing small black bodies beneath its wheels. He must have seen me. I stared after it furiously, but only for a moment. We didn't have time.
'Quick, into the back.'
Jenny had seen me searching for the keys and seen the Landrover take off. Now she reacted rapidly without a word. Together we ran round to the back of the van stamping on swarming insects and I yanked open the doors. Inside it looked just the same as yesterday, except that the bodies were now in the police morgue. We clambered in and I slammed the door shut.
'John, while you were watching I did some research of my own.' She was hastily searching through the drawers as she spoke. She paused to swat at an ant that had crawled up her leg. 'They have laid out sentries - small ants hidden in cracks in the ground and widely spread, ready to give the alarm. Most of them would survive the night. That's how they always knew where you were. Good, this should do.'
She had found a roll of adhesive tape. Taking a scalpel from a drawer she started neatly cutting off strips and taping round the edges of the door. 'What are the Army's plans for tonight?'
I was helping, pulling out the tape while she cut and stuck. We did three complete layers.
'They are going to try another attack, with long distance sprays this time so that they don't have to climb the tree. A bigger party with more flamethrowers and an all-terrain vehicle.'
'There. That should slow them. I think I'd rather suffocate than be eaten alive.' She flashed me a grim smile.
'These creatures are learning, John. They know we are good prey and also dangerous. That makes us a threat as well as food. Anyone on foot will be trapped before they get to the nest - see how you had to retreat continuously. I don't know how they'd tackle a vehicle, but I wouldn't put it past them.' She pulled a sour face. 'Captain Morrison certainly wasn't going to wait to find out.'
Meanwhile I'd pulled out the phone and contacted the Army.
Only, there was a problem. They couldn't contact Morrison - reason unknown. I didn't comment on that, just asked for another vehicle. But it seemed their only other vehicle in the area was having problems.
'Not to worry, Sir,' said the cheerful-sounding sergeant, 'We'll have someone there soon - within the hour, maybe less.'
'I don't know if we have an hour,' was all Jenny said. 'Can't they send a helicopter?'
'I tried that. They're going to try to scramble a sea-rescue bird. The Army ones are all too far away and couldn't get here any sooner.'
She looked at me wanly. 'Then we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?'
'Not for long.' I pointed, feeling sickness in my throat. A thin stream of ants was already curling under the door and more were biting larger gaps in the tape.
'John, behind you.' It wasn't quite a scream.
At the driver's end of the room two more rivulets of ants were emerging from under the cabinets, one from either side. The room was supposed to be sealed for insulation, but it had never been designed for a hermetic seal.
Jenny jumped up onto the table. Her face was a grimace of disgust as she brushed frantically at her legs. I had a sudden vision of a stripped skeleton huddled on the table in her empty clothes. I wanted to scream too.
'Wait Jenny,' I yelled. Dragging open the drawers I found two of the opaque body bags. They were made of stiff hard plastic and ought to challenge even the big soldier ant's jaws for a while. 'Put it on - zip it up to you neck.'
I threw a bag to her and she started scrambling into it.
I stepped into mine, and then paused.
This was only a delaying tactic - even if it worked.
We had wanted to find a way to kill them. The field van could make a perfect tiger trap - and we would be the goat.
I hopped quickly across to the temperature controls and turned them as low as they would go. In a moment I heard the air-conditioning cooler thump into action.
We'd give them a taste of winter.
I could feel ants crawling up my arm but I hesitated, ignoring them. Not low enough - the thermostatic would only allow me to chill the room, not freeze it.
'Quickly John, get inside,' Jenny screamed at me.
I sneezed as a small creature crept into my nostril. A screwdriver, I needed a screwdriver. Frantically I pulled out drawers, scattering the contents on the floor in my haste. Something had got into my eye and I rubbed it with the back of my hand. I felt the sting of bites on my eyelid.
Grabbing a scalpel I hopped back to the thermostat, the body bag still round my feet. Wedging the blade under the cover I started prizing it upwards. Jenny was shouting something at me but I had to concentrate. My hands were black with ants now, crawling and biting, and my fingers were beginning to feel numb and lumpy. The blade broke. I swore and forced the broken stump under the cover again. I leaned on the handle, ignoring the bites.
Something gave and one corner of the thermostat lid bent upwards. Another wrench and the whole lid of the box sprung away.
Damn, I couldn't see. One eye was closed and the other was obscured with a crawling mass. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. For a moment things were a bit clearer. I could see the input wire and the resistor pot, where did it come out?
It was hard to make my brain think.
Using the broken off end of the scalpel I unscrewed the terminal and gingerly pulled out the small blue wire. There was a spark and the steady whine of the cooler fell silent. I pulled the wire across to the other side of the box.
This would either work - or it would short everything out and we were dead.
For a moment I thought it wouldn't reach the other terminal and I pulled harder. Some more of the wire pulled out from the flex where it disappeared into the wall. I paused to clear my eyes again. I had my mouth firmly closed, though I could feel the prickle of legs and jaws on my lips. My nose was getting blocked and breathing was becoming difficult.
I pushed the wire firmly down onto the other terminal. My ears were becoming blocked with ants too, but I heard the sweet music of the cooler start up again. I had bypassed the thermostat. Hastily I screwed the wire home into the terminal. Now the system should go on cooling until hell froze over - or the generator broke down.
Jenny was lying on the table inside her bag, curled up in a fetal crouch, with the barest crack of zip open. I could see her fingers inside frantically squashing the ants that managed to crawl through her tiny air vent.
My body bag was
still round my ankles. With numb hands I began pulling it
up and zipping myself in. Not worrying about an air vent for
the moment, I began struggling out of my clothes inside the
bag. I had more ants inside my clothes than outside. Frantically
I started scrubbing my skin with the palm of my hands to crush
the thousands of biting invaders. I snorted and sneezed them
out of my nostrils, scrubbed them from my eyes, and picked
them from my ears, slapping and crushing in a frenzy of hatred
and disgust. They were attacking my groin. They were crawling
in my hair. They were all over my skin. I couldn't see any
more, just feel a million stinging bites. I was being overwhelmed.
I was screaming. I was bloody well dying.
It was the cold that brought me out of it.
Probably half an hour had passed and I was shivering. I found I was lying doubled up on the floor, half suffocated. The leg of the table was digging into my back. It was cold.
I couldn't feel any movement.
I had to struggle with the zip, which was designed to be opened from the outside. It wasn't a design fault I told myself madly, dead men weren't supposed to unzip themselves. I felt an insane giggle welling up inside me. I stopped and took a breath.
A piece of my shirt had got caught in the zip. It had possibly saved my life by not allowing the bag to close completely. Carefully I set myself to ease the threads of cotton out of the zip until it ran freely.
Suddenly the bag fell away and I was gasping in the freezing air.
All around me were heaped bodies. Big soldier ants and little workers, lying like great heaps of crisp black seaweed washed up by the tide and dried in the sun. A Bengal tiger? These would have made a whole pride of them, almost filling the small room. They crackled like frozen leaves when I trod on them.
I stood up shivering and grabbed my clothes. I shook them wildly to get rid of the small black corpses and huddled them on. There was ice on the windows.
Then I stopped.
Jenny was still curled up on the table, quite still.
I felt my heart lurch. God, Jenny.
My hands were trembling so much that at first I couldn't undo the zip. Then I had it open and could see her face. Her skin was bright red all over, that which wasn't covered in black crusts of ants. It was warmer inside the bag than out, and some of the ants were still moving.
I pulled the zip right down and started scooping the ants out with both hands. With the bulk of them gone I stripped the bag right off her and flung it on the floor. I laid her out on the table in unconscious mimicry of yesterday's grotesque corpse. The living ants that I had scooped out of her bag were slowing down and becoming chaotic as their communications failed. Soon they were still.
I couldn't tell if she was alive.
I hunted around in the steel drawers until I found some small swabs and began carefully cleaning her nostrils and her eyes. As soon as I had cleared the blockage her nose started bleeding. I'd deal with that later. Her mouth was clamped shut with rigid force. Gently I massaged the muscles of her jaw until I could force it open. There were ants in her mouth, but not many. I cleaned then out.
As soon as her mouth was clear I began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but there was no response. My fingers were too swollen and cold to feel her pulse.
After a while I began stripping her body, searching as I went and removing dead, comatose or still-active ants. I worked meticulously but mechanically. It didn't matter now. I hadn't realized it, but tears were coursing down my cheeks.
I knew now that she was dead.
Then, after an age I heard a sneeze.
Her body jerked and she began to whimper.
'John, I'm cold. Can we stop playing now?'
The Army Colonel looked uncomfortable sitting in the hard hospital visitor's chair beside my bed. He wasn't quite sure how to treat me. His manner was an uneasy mixture of sympathetic visitor and senior officer and he was obviously in a hurry.
'Yes Sir,' he was saying, 'when we arrived the dead ants took up the great bulk of one end of the van. We weighed them as you requested. Came to almost 100 kilos.'
I tried to think.
'Given the poison and flamethrowers last night,' I said slowly, 'and allowing for the addition of the 115 pounds of Cathy's body mass, that could well be almost every ant in the nest apart from the queen and her carers. They won't have had time to catch other prey and replenish their numbers.
'When you attack, use all-terrain vehicles and keep them moving, nobody of foot.' I told him again about Jenny's observation and the small sentry ants.
He nodded.
'Yes Sir. And thank you. Now I must start the preparations. Good luck Sir.' Nothing had been said about Captain Morrison. The army would deal with him in their own way, no doubt. Not my problem.
With the barest of salutes, he left, marching crisply down the polished tiles of the ward. Just another day in the modern army, his upright back seemed to say. It had taken the support vehicle over two hours to reach us.
I turned the other
way and contemplated the humped blankets over the bed beside
me. They were lifted up on hoops to keep the weight off her
skin. I knew she was covered in antihistamine creams and sedated,
I'd watched them doing it. She'd been babbling about great
dark caverns with walls made of spun ants when they brought
us in. At first she wouldn't leave my arms. They've promised
me she'll be OK. It was mainly a massive immune response to
the bites, they say, and that's under control. I know enough
to know that nobody can be that certain - but I think she'll
be all right.
I can hear her soft even snores.
I nearly lost her.
From now on, we'll just have to make a good team.
We need each other.
'Man Eater' - Copyright
© David Caldo 2006
All Rights Reserved
|
