| |
“I wasn’t even sposed to be drivin’ that day,” said Latisha. “It was my day off, but so many had called in that my supervisor promised me an extra day off the next week, on Friday...plus time and a half for a full shift, if I’d just come in and drive for a few hours. Hey, I got four kids, all teenagers...I could sure use the money!
“Well, I went in, and had to drive this old-ass bus that didn’t have no accordion in the middle. Just a stiff, old, city bus. The route was different than my own, but I already knew that was gonna happen. So, I ran through my checklist and got started.
“My route was in the east part of the city.”
My eyes widened. “Oh, crap.” I said.
Latisha shook her head. “I didn’t see nothing at first. People got on and off like ususal. Some of ‘em looked kinda weird, but that’s life in the city, ain’t it? People always be lookin’ weird.”
I noticed that Latisha had been folding and refolding her cleaning cloth several times, and wouldn’t look at us.
“I got a bad habit when I’m drivin’ the route,” she continued. “I don’t always notice everybody that gets on the bus. I mean, I don’t look at ‘em. I just keep my eyes focused on traffic around me, and I don’t watch the people. I wasn’t on my usual route, so I just didn’t feel like socializin’ that day. So, I didn’t see her when she got on the bus. I mean, I saw her, but I didn’t look at her, you know what I mean?
“Tyrese, who was it that told me about her? Was it Manuel?” asked Latisha.
Tyrese nodded. “I think it was, Latisha.”
Latisha nodded. “I think so, too.” Unfolded and folded went the cleaning cloth. “Manuel came up front and told me that there was a really sick lady on the bus. God help me, I said somethin’ smart-assed, like ‘what I look like, a nurse?’” A tear welled up and ran down her cheek. “At the next stop, everybody had started hollerin’ that she was sick, and she needed help. The bus was stopped, so I stood up, intendin’ to read them all the riot act. Then I saw her.”
Latisha unfolded and folded the cloth again, and wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “She had this long, stringy black hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a couple of days. Her skin was pale, and her eyes were milky and empty, just like you said your neighbor had, Paul.”
She raised her head and stared off at the horizon. “I told her to get off the bus. Instead of callin’ for help, I told her to get off my damn bus. Awwww, God!” she wailed, and burst into tears.
I reached over and squeezed her shoulder after a moment. “Latisha, you couldn’t have helped her at that point. She was already gone.”
“But I didn’t know that then!” she yelled. “That’s the point, Paul! Instead of tryin’ to help that poor woman, I just couldn’t be troubled with her! I told her to get off the bus like she was nuthin’!”
She sobbed and cried a little more. When she calmed down, she started talking again.
“People thought I was heartless, and the woman walked slowly to the doors in the front of the bus. A man got off with her. He had one hand on the small of her back, and was holding her arm with the other. They got about two steps away from the bus when the woman did what you said your neighbor did. She threw up a gallon of blood, with this black goo mixed in with it. It got all over that man that got off with her. Then she threw up again, and laid down on the sidewalk, all curled up. All of us were just staring out the windows at them, and suddenly the man starts slapping at himself all over, like he was gettin’ attacked by a swarm of mosquitos. He finally took off running down the street. I shut the doors and took off away from there. I had seen them squirmin’ things in the crap she threw up, and I saw the ones that landed on that man. I wasn’t gonna stick around for no more. I radioed in to dispatch and told them what was goin’ on, and they told me to come back in, that it was happenin’ all over the city. I yelled at everybody that we were heading back to the main station, and that everyone would be taken wherever they wanted to go, but it was an emergency situation, and that was that. We started back, and if we saw one, we saw a dozen of those empty-eyed people wandering the sidewalks within just a couple of blocks. A couple of them threw up as we drove by.
“After about four blocks, we saw our first bug.”
“See, we di’n’t know at the time, but Latisha saved us all when she made that sick chick get off the bus,” said Tyrese. “If that chick had thrown up on the bus, we’da all been eat by now.” He laughed. It was a low and throaty sound. “Woman saved all our asses, and we be callin’ her a hunnert differ’n’t kinds of bitch!” His face turned serious again. “She right. That first bug, it was about the size of a cocker spaniel...looked like a big centipede, but it had a long snout, with teeth. And it was all furry on its body, kinda red, like fox fur. Thing crossed the street ahead of us, chasin’ some wino. Thing caught the wino, knocked it right the fuck down, man! Then it bit his head off. Latisha jus’ kep’ drivin’. Few blocks later, we passed a big bunch of flyin’ bugs, like you guys talked about in the grocery store. They knocked down three people that we know of, and ripped ‘em apart. Couple of ‘em hit the bus, but jus’ left a dent in the roof.”
“Wasn’t nobody callin’ me names after that, praise God,” said Latisha. “Mostly, it was ‘hurry up’ or ‘don’t stop’ I was hearin’ then.” She had resumed folding and unfolding the cleaning cloth. Then she looked at the horizon again. “God forgive me, but I ran over a couple of empty-eyed people. And a lot of bugs. Sunlight wasn’t stoppin’ these bad boys, Paul. You don’t realize the confusion that it was – people runnin’ everywhere, bugs chomping down or layin’ eggs in ‘em, bugs runnin’ around everywhere, cars drivin’ every which way...it was crazy on the east side, gentlemen.” Unfold. Fold. “We stayed off the freeway. Every time we came close to an on-ramp, we could see how packed it was. Cars weren’t movin’ at all, and it wasn’t because of traffic. It was because of the bugs! They were everywhere!”
A Hispanic man, one of Latisha’s passengers, Pablo, I think, had come up to us during Latisha’s last few sentences. He offered a couple of comments.
“Latisha kept driving. Didn’t matter what got in front of that bus, Latisha kept driving. She saved us all.”
Fold. Unfold. “The bugs started getting fewer and fewer the farther west we traveled,” she said. “It’s a good thing, too, or we wouldn’t have made it.”
“Couple of dudes turned on some radio,” added Tyrese. “Said that the mountains was the safest place to be.”
“So that where we headed,” said Latisha. “We hit Pine Valley right about dark-thirty, and decided to take a chance on gettin’ some sleep there, and keep truckin’ in the mornin’. We found this old-lookin’ gas station, with a two-bay garage. Wasn’t nobody there, so we parked the bus inside, closed the doors, and sealed ourselves in.”
Pablo said, “Some of us left, though. We had to have weapons...food. So we took a chance on leaving the gas station.”
“Good thing they did, too,” said Tyrese. “We hit a pawn shop that somebody had left open. Had a hidden room in the back. That’s where we found the machine guns.”
“We gathered as much as we could carry, and took them back to the garage. Then, we went out again for food,” continued Pablo. “The market was empty, too. Everybody had just left, but didn’t take anything with them!”
“So, we scored with the food, too, man,” said Tyrese. “Took three trips, and lots of creative storage, but we got a lot in the bus.”
“How did you meet Dr. Case?” asked Michael.
“Pure, dumb luck,” said Tyrese.
Latisha actually laughed. “Him and the two paramedics came screamin’ into the gas station parkin’ lot with that ambulance, leavin’ skid marks everywhere, they stopped so fast! They all three came bustin’ outta that thing like their hair was on fire and their asses was catchin’!”
“Why did they come out of the ambulance like that?” I asked.
“It was because of Manuel,” said Latisha. “A squirmer was in the back with him...”
I interrupted her, since I could guess that Manuel was the one Dr. Case had told me about. “Say no more! I wouldn’t want to be around a squirmer, either, if I didn’t have to be!” I didn’t want word circulating about Manuel’s near-infection. I wanted to keep that to myself for the time being.
Latisha seemed to sense that, and didn’t finish the story. “So, to make a long story short, they joined up with us. This mornin’, we started up this hill, and we was determined to find us a hole somewhere to get into, and pull the door in behind us. And, sure ‘nuff, we found you folks.” Unfold. Fold. “I just hope God finds it in his mercy to forgive me throwing that woman off the bus that way, and for running over them other empty-eyed people.”
Faintly, in the distance, I heard the chainsaw that Bobby and I had heard late the day before. It faded in and out, as if caught by the wind and spread out along the mountain.
“You guys hear that?” I asked.
Everyone stopped to listen.
“Sounds like a chainsaw,” said Richie.
“It could be one of them model airplanes that runs by radio control or somethin’,” said Tyrese.
The sound gradually got louder.
“I don’t think that’s a model airplane. Or a chainsaw,” said Michael.
We listened a little bit longer. Finally, I couldn’t take the not knowing.
“Let’s load up, people,” I said.
Each of us took a weapon and loaded it. We began watching all around us, waiting to see what would come out of the trees. Whatever was making that buzzing noise, we all knew it wasn’t made by humans.
As we watched, Susan opened the door of the cabin and called out. “Lunch is ready! Come and get it!”
At the end of Susan’s sentence, the source of the noise burst over the trees on the north side. It was shaped like a wasp, with long black wings and a thin abdomen. That was the best of the resemblance, however. It had the one long antenna that all of the bugs had, but this thing had a long, almost canine snout, with many teeth and a long tongue. Its fur was black and yellow, like a hornet, and it had eight legs. Each leg ended in what could be called paws, and each paw had retractable claws at the end of each of the five toes. Each claw looked very sharp. Its eyes were not multi-faceted like you would expect on an insect. Instead, they were black, emotionless and empty, and resembled the eyes of a reptile. The beast was at least seven feet long.
A fast though ran through my mind – it was a curse upon the scientist whose imagination cooked up this beast.
Susan screamed from the front porch. I fired my shotgun and apparently missed the thing completely. It began zig-zagging around, much like a fly will when it’s swatted at with a swatter. Latisha and Michael fired, and both missed. Richie fired the .38 revolver he held, and managed to scratch the creature, because its buzzing became louder and angrier.
And it screamed.
Later, we all decided that a scream was what we heard. It was a high-pitched screech, emitted from its snout. We continued firing, and it continued evading the shots. It began zooming in and out toward the group of us on the front lawn, and we all had to duck a couple of times.
Meanwhile, Susan, Phyllis, and a couple of others had opened fire from the porch. Both women were using rifles, and both tagged the creature by leading it a little. It screamed again, a long, piercing howl, seemingly from pain. The creature was bleeding, and its blood was a dark, maroon color. It screamed once more, then landed on the front lawn about fifty feet away from us.
Once it landed, Tyrese opened fire on the creature with his machine pistol. He peppered a thirty-round burst all along its side, while the rest of us also opened fire. Soon, the flying beast was only a bloody carcass, mutilated by our weapons.
We stood silent, staring at the monster.
Tyrese broke the silence. “God-damn! I thought the damn mountains was supposed to be safe!”
Latisha put her hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Tyrese. It’s over now.”
But it wasn’t.
We heard a huge buzzing noise coming from the same direction as the first beast. Over the top of the trees, five more streamed into the sky over the front yard.
These five creatures were at least twice as massive as the first one. If these were any indication, we had apparently killed a young creature. And, if we had killed their young, they were going to be a little upset.
“Holy shit!” I screamed. “Shoot! Shoot at them! Get to the house! Get going! Run!”
It’s very hard to accurately fire a weapon while running for your life. The best you can hope for is that one shot get lucky. We weren’t lucky.
One of the flying beasts swooped, and knocked Pablo to the ground. Pablo screamed. A second beast landed on top of Pablo, and dug its claws into his back. It curled its lower abdomen exactly as a wasp does, and it impaled Pablo with a foot-long stinger that was as big around as a human arm. It hit Pablo twice more before Tyrese dropped to his knees and started firing his machine pistol. There were only twenty or so rounds left in the magazine. He wounded the beast, and shot off one of its wings, but it wasn’t enough to kill it. Wounded, it could not fly, but it detached its claws from Pablo, and tried to limp away.
The rest of us had reached the porch as the four flying beasts zipped around the front yard, trying to protect their wounded comrade. Tyrese slapped a new magazine into the machine pistol and was ready to open fire again. He was too late. One of the beasts hit him from behind. The machine pistol went flying away from Tyrese. The man’s face was a rictus of pain, and, as we all watched, the creature lifted Tyrese off of the ground and began to fly away with him, like a spider caught by a wasp.
We shot at the beast, but not much. We were afraid of hitting Tyrese. While we were watching Tyrese being carried away, a second creature had allowed the wounded one to grasp with its claws, and they flew away. A third creature carried the young one.
Pablo lay dead in the front yard as the creatures returned to their hideaway.
###
LATE THAT AFTERNOON, we buried Pablo at the edge of the trees, alongside Cheryl. We had incinerated Pablo’s body just in case that stinger had also laid eggs. Latisha said a few words over our fallen comrade, and led us in prayer.
When she was through, I said, “Meeting. Everyone. Inside.”
Once everyone was inside, with sentries on the front porch and on the back porch, I began saying what I wanted to say.
“Has anyone seen any more planes today?” I asked. General silence. “Okay, has anyone tried listening to a radio?” General silence. “Has anyone used a cell phone?” I knew the answer to that – almost everyone raised a hand. “Anyone had luck? I know the service is available from the tower, but has anyone spoken with someone outside of our group?” General silence again.
“What are you saying, Paul?” asked Bobby.
I took a breath. “I’m thinking we’re on our own. I don’t think any organized help is coming, and I truly believe that we’re going to have to help ourselves.”
There were general murmurs of agreement.
“Those flying things obviously have a nest close by, somewhere here in the mountains. What do you think we should do about it?”
“Do you think they’ll be back?” someone asked. I couldn’t see who it was.
“Of course they’ll be back,” I said. “We killed one of them, and wounded another. They carried Tyrese off as either a snack or a place to lay eggs. When they find out we’re easy pickings, they’ll be back. And I don’t think this cabin will hold up in a full-scale bug attack.” I looked at a few faces. “So, again, what do you think we should do about it?”
“What do you want us to say, Paul?” asked one of the paramedics. “We’re all scared to death of those things, but we aren’t safe here while they’re around.”
“You want us to hunt down their nest, don’t you?” asked Billy Barnes.
Everyone was staring at me. Finally, I nodded. “Yeah. I do. I think we should take the flamethrowers, find their nest, and burn them out.”
Richie was shaking his head. “No. No. Not me. Did you see how big those things are? And that’s just the ones we saw! No. Count me out. Uh-uh.”
“One other thing we have to consider,” said Bobby Barnes. “The mountains were supposed to be safe, according to the last government broadcast, because the temperatures were too cool here for the bugs.” He looked around. “What if those things aren’t the only creatures to have made their homes in these mountains? We need information about why those things are here.”
“We know that these creatures have lungs,” said Dr. Case. “We heard that in the police dispatches that we received. I have a theory that many of these bugs contain mammal characteristics...including being warm-blooded.”
“What does this ‘warm-blooded’ mean?” asked Manuel.
Dr. Case answered. “It means that these bugs generate their own heat. And if they can generate their own heat, they can live in colder temperatures, if shelter is available.” He crossed his arms and put a finger across his chin. “If I had a specimen, I could perform an autopsy on it. Dissect it, to see if my guess is correct.”
“And may the good Lord have mercy on us if Dr. Case proves what he’s sayin’,” said Latisha.
Several murmurs of “Amen” came from around the main floor of the cabin.
I spoke up. “I guess it’s settled, then. We’ll send out a search-and-destroy team tomorrow in the direction that those things flew. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the nest.”
Someone in the crowd said, “More likely you’ll get eaten by the nest.”
“Maybe so, but it’s a risk we have to take. Michael, are those walkie-talkie radios still in good working order?” I asked.
“They are!” he affirmed.
“Good. Who wants to go with me?” I asked.
“You’re not going, Paul,” said Bobby.
Silence ran rampant in the room.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“You’re the group leader. You’re responsible for everyone. You are staying here, and I will hear no argument about it.”
“Now, wait a minute...!” I began.
“No, Paul. If the search-and-destroy group turns into the Tuesday Night Bug Snack Group, then the group leader will still be available to plan the second attack. You’re too valuable to the group to take a risk like that,” said Bobby.
I looked around the room. “Is that how everyone feels?”
A resounding “Yes!” came from all around the room.
Bobby looked at me and winked. “I’ll take four people. I want Nick, Manuel, Michael, and Susan. Anyone have objections?” Nick was the driver of the gasoline tanker.
There were no objections.
Bobby nodded. “Good. We leave at dawn. Meet me out at the freezer house.”
“Something else we need to begin thinking about,” I said. “We need more food, and more clothes. We need to think about a quick trip to Pine Valley.”
Conversations buzzed then.
Finally, Susan spoke up. “Paul’s right. We don’t have enough to make it through the winter. We for sure need warm clothes, and any frozen food we can find. If we don’t take it now, and the power goes out, the food will spoil. Now’s the time for us to take advantage of what we can find.”
There were several murmurs of agreement.
“Okay, we’ll think about that for a day or two” I said. “Right now, let’s worry about our search-and-destroy team, and the job they’re going for tomorrow. Let’s all say a silent prayer for them, and let’s hope that they get the job done!”
