BUGS
(a horror story)
"The skies darken, the abyss opens its gaping mouths in the land, Nature goes wild – what more proof do you need that the end as at hand?"
Hank glanced at the TV screen in the next room. Another preacher. The cable was lousy with them. All with the same message: The End Is Here. What insight. Like you needed someone to tell you that. All you had to do was look out the window.
Hank turned back to this particular window but didn't look out as he hammered in the final nail. He'd started an hour ago, used bolt cutters to snip all the pieces of cyclone fencing to size in one sitting, and now he was done. The final piece was securely fixed to the frame of the bathroom window. He stepped back and surveyed the job.
"There!" he said aloud. His voice echoed off the tiles. "That oughta keep the bastards out."
Even if the bugs tore out his screens and smashed the panes, nothing bigger than two inches across was getting through that fencing – and they were all bigger than two inches across.
But just as important as the fencing on the windows was the bar on the door. Hank had to wind his way through stacks of canned-goods cartons and five-gallon jugs of spring water in the living room to admire his handiwork there. He'd bolted the brackets deep into the door frame; they were heavy-duty steel, designed to hold a four-by-four oak bar.
Bugs and people – neither was getting in unless Hank said so.
But people knew about his supplies. He couldn't keep them out forever. He'd have to move them.
And he knew just where to take them: the Jersey Shore. He remembered a long span of his bachelor years when he used to rent a summer bungalow at places like Chadwick Beach or Seaside Heights. Most of them were little more than plywood boxes, but he knew a couple of places that were fairly sturdy, equipped with storm shutters and heat. They'd be empty now, the beaches and boardwalks all but deserted, waiting for next summer's renters – renters who wouldn't be coming. A perfect locale.
Hank stepped to the window and peered out through the mesh. This was what it must feel like to be in prison – except that no prison looked out on Manhattan's Upper East Side. And the nearest prison was empty. He'd heard on the news this morning that there'd been a massive jailbreak at Riker's Island when the night shift guards failed to show up for work.
Everything was falling apart. Panic and anarchy in the streets. All because of the bugs. Humanity was allowed the daylight hours, but the bugs ruled the night. And winter was coming. The days were getting shorter and the nights longer.
He watched the last rays of the sun fade behind the neighboring buildings. Night again. Soon the air would be filled with those flying monstrosities.
He got to work arranging all the cases of food in four-foot stacks by the door – the maximum load he could handle with his hand truck. At first light tomorrow he'd cover each stack with a sheet and hustle it down to his rented van still parked below.
Hank took a blanket and huddled down behind his walls of food and began counting the hours till dawn. He tried to sleep, hoping to dream of a quieter time when he and Carol had been happy together and the nights weren't filled with bloody horror and violent death. A time before the bugs...
The bugs. Nobody knew where they came from. It all began like a surrealist's nightmare. Giant holes opening in the earth one night, bottomless holes, truly bottomless – scientists all over the globe trying to sound those holes and failing. Where did they go? No one knew. All they could say was that they went... elsewhere. And on the second night the downdraft flowing into those holes reversed to an updraft, carrying a carrion stench. And the bugs.
The bugs. Not swattable things. No, these were big, vicious mothers, a foot or more in length, and nothing like anyone had ever seen. The newsfolk had dreamt up names for them, and each night a new one was added to the list. First came the chew wasps – darting, lobster-sized horrors with dragonfly wings, all jaws and diamond-hard dagger teeth. They attacked en mass like a school of piranha and left nothing but a red stain in their wake, not even bones. Next came the belly flies with their soft-ball-sized acid sacks that digested you alive. Then came the spearheads, the most apt name: they drove their conical, razor-sharp heads into your skull or abdomen and sucked you dry.
Every night the bugs swarmed from the holes and lay claim to the dark hours, attacking anything that moved. At dawn they returned to the shadows of the holes, waiting hungrily for the next sunset, and for the next new species to join their relentless assault.
What new horror would the holes yield tonight? Even his worst nightmares held no clue.
Whatever, tonight was going to be a bad one. The worst yet.
Hank jolted upright.
A sound from the bedroom. Breaking glass. Bugs – spearheads most likely – were ramming themselves against the windows, smashing the panes. They'd be swarming in and eating him alive now if not for the cyclone fencing. He listened for a while as they battered futilely against the metal links, then fluttered off, heading for redder pastures.
At various times during the night he heard screams from next door, thudding footsteps in the hallway. At one point a woman pounded on his door, crying about bugs in the hallway, begging for somebody to let her in. Hank's first impulse had been to open up – he actually reached for the bar – but then he'd wondered if it might be a trap, someone who'd spotted him bringing in his supplies and trying to trick her way in. So he'd crouched there with his hands pressed over his ears and his teeth clamped down on his lips, waiting for her to go away. A sudden, agonized scream broke through the seal of his palms and he snatched them away to listen. No further screams, but muffled, gurgling sobs that were hideous to hear, then violent thrashing just beyond the door, then silence.
Thoroughly shaken, Hank was about to turn and crawl back to his blanket when he saw the blood leaking under the door and pooling on the floor by the threshold. He gagged and ran for the bathroom.
Later on, when he could stomach it, he made coffee while he watched the tube, keeping the sound down so low he could barely hear it. The picture flickered now and again, but he never totally lost power. He had a battery-powered portable ready if needed. About the only things on were preachers and news – disastrous news.
The President had proclaimed a state of national emergency but the armed forces were proving ineffective against an enemy of such overwhelming numbers and so intimately mixed with the population they were meant to protect. Those with wives, children, parents were staying home to protect their own. The remainder were vastly outnumbered. For every hole they plugged with explosives – in the instances where they could safely use explosives – two more opened up elsewhere. People were quickly losing confidence in the government's ability to manage the situation. The social contract – if such a thing had ever existed – was dissolving.
The news footage only steeled Hank's resolve to get out of the city as soon as the sun rose.
