The Bug: Complete Season One (22 page)

Col and the others looked up, as one, at the ceiling. There was no sign of movement up there, but there was no mistaking now that the scraping and scratching sound was coming from just on the other side, growing faster and more frantic by the second.

“What is that?” Jaden whispered. “What’s up there?”

Col began backing away towards the stairs. “Don’t know, but let’s not hang around to find out.”

“Yeah,” Jaden agreed, following. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Amy and Col hurried down the stairs, taking them in leaps of two and three. Jaden turned at the top and beckoned back to his mom, who was still standing in the same spot, her neck cranked all the way back as she gazed at the ceiling. Her eyelids fluttered as a dusting of white paint flakes cascaded across her face.

“Mom,” Jaden said. “Come on. Mom!”

Amanda frowned and dragged her eyes down from the ceiling. She looked at her son. She smiled, but quizzically, like she’d been asked a question in a language she didn’t understand. And then, with a
crack
, something black and shiny exploded through the ceiling in a swirling cloud of white dust.

Amanda screamed, as the cat-sized
thing
dropped onto her from above, but the sound died in her throat almost at once. The black shape thrashed, lashing out with spindly legs that were each half a meter long. A spray of blood arced up the wall and Amanda folded downwards onto the carpet, her breath gargling and bubbling at the back of her throat.

“M-mom?” Jaden whispered.

Amanda’s body heaved and convulsed as the shiny black creature tore at her. Her arm reached out towards Jaden. A finger extended, pointing down the stairs behind him.

“G-g,” she gulped.

A hand caught Jaden by the sleeve. Amy was suddenly there, two steps down, pulling him away. “Come on,” she hissed. “Please. Come on. There’s nothing you can do. We have to go.”

Jaden shook his head, but his mom’s hand lay limp on the floor now. Her eyes no longer looked at him, but beyond him. Through him. Jaden felt his fists clenching and rage boiling up inside him like bile.

The thing from the ceiling was a bug. Or something like a bug, at least. The slick, armored body was the size of a small dog, with a frenzy of legs that tapered to thin, knife-like blades at the ends. There was a head. Eyes. Mandibles that snap-snap-snapped at his mom’s dead flesh.

 “Oh, Jesus.” Col appeared beside Amy and recoiled at the scene playing out on the landing. “Jaden, we have to go. We have to go,” he whispered.

He and Amy both pulled Jaden down the stairs, just as the bug-thing noticed them. There was a scurrying on the landing behind them. They leaped down the last of the steps and into the downstairs hall just as the insect hurled itself after them.

Amy shoved Jaden towards the front door and wasted half a second tipping over the telephone table, trying to slow the thing down. The bug scurried sideways up the wall, its bladed feet chipping holes in the plaster.

“Amy, move!” Col cried from outside. Amy glanced back over her shoulder in time to see the creature duck low on its long legs, getting ready to spring.

She stumbled outside. Col pulled the door closed. There was a
thud
and a screech of frustration from the other side. A shiny black blade stabbed through the wood, splintering it. Another of the thing’s feet broke through. It drew back, hacking and slicing at the door. Again. Again. Again.

Amy and Col darted along the path. Jaden hung back, his eyes fixed on the top half of the house, where his mom lay dead – or worse, not yet dead.

But no. She was gone. She had to be. The blood. So much blood.

“Jaden, come on!” Col cried. Jaden whispered a goodbye, just as the bug smashed a tennis ball-sized hole in the door. Jaden caught a glimpse of its twitching head and dribbling mandibles, but then he was off and running, racing after Col and Amy as they hurried out onto the street.

A howl of rage from along the sidewalk on their left made them jump. Their heads whipped round. A crowd was there – dozens, hundreds, maybe. They were hunched over, their clawed fingers making grabs at nothing but air. A few of them broke ranks and began to run –
sprint
– towards Jaden, Col and Amy. The others, realizing what was happening, broke into charges of their own, and a chorus of screams and squeals and furious howls split the night.

“Fuck,” Amy spat, turning right. “Run!”

This time, Jaden didn’t need telling twice. He and Col kicked into high gear, racing after Amy. Col quickly began to pull ahead, but hesitated as he passed the others.

“Go! Just keep going!” Jaden wheezed. “Don’t stop.”

Col slowed down for Jaden to catch up. “I’m not going to leave you to--”

“Just fucking go, Col!” Jaden shouted. He shoved his friend hard, sending him stumbling a few paces ahead again. “OK? Don’t wait, just fucking go! Now!”

The crowd swarmed towards them, moving like a single organism now, closing the gap a little more with each frenzied bound.

“Stop arguing and just fucking run!” Amy screamed at them. There was a corner dead ahead, where the road turned onto a wider street. Amy wasn’t overly familiar with this part of town, but she thought there were some shops down that way. Maybe, if they were lucky, somewhere to hide.

They clattered around the bend in the road, Col in front, Amy and Jaden doing their best to keep up. The infected horde was snapping at Jaden’s heels, just a dozen meters away now, maybe less.

Col hissed as a powerful beam of light hit his face, dazzling him. He threw up his arms and squinted, and was only just able to make out the silhouette of a man with a rifle dead ahead.

“Hurry! Get in the car,” a voice barked.

“Mike?” Col gasped, then Amy and Jaden hit him from behind, forcing him onwards.

They powered towards what Col now realized was a car with its headlights on, breath wheezing, lungs burning in their chests. Mike jumped into the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed. Leaning over, he threw the passenger door open and Col dived in. Amy tore open the back door and dived in next, with Jaden falling in on top of her in a tangle of panicky limbs.

Mike slammed the car into reverse before they could even close the door. A wall of twisted, furious faces was lit up by the car’s headlights as the crowd kept coming. Amy dragged Jaden all the way into the car, and the door slammed closed as Mike pulled a sharp, sudden turn that spun the car around a hundred and eighty degrees.

From behind them came a loud
crack
. They all spun in their seats to see the bug-creature clinging to the rear windshield. Across its shiny abdomen was a wide, horizontal slit, which looked unsettlingly like some sort of mouth.

SCREECH!

Metal tore above them. A thin blade pierced the roof of the car. Mike floored the gas and the car lurched forwards, but the bug-thing hung on.

Jaden leaned forward into the front and made a grab at Mike’s waist. His fingers wrapped around the handle of the gun the marine had confiscated from him.

Turning, Jaden took aim at the wriggling insect on the other side of the glass. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you?” he hissed. “Windshield’s a bug’s natural enemy. Bitch.”

He squeezed the trigger. The inside of the car was filled with the deafening roar of gunfire and the splintering of glass. The insect creature squealed and thrashed. Jaden fired again. Again. Over and over. The bug’s body twisted all the way around, before it finally lost its grip.

It hit the road in a flailing mess of limps and stump, then skidded to a stop against the kerb. Jaden spat out through the broken glass. “That’s for my mom, you six-legged fuck.”

“Make that ‘five-legged fuck’,” said Amy, pointing up at the machete-like foot that was sticking through the roof of the car.

“Shit, yeah,” said Jaden. He stared at the foot for a few lingering moments, watching a single drip of blood form on its pointed tip. The drop hung from the end, swaying slightly as the car sped along the road.

At last, it fell. Jaden watched it until it splashed onto the seat beside him and soaked a tiny irregular circle into the grey fabric.

And then, with the sounds of the howling and roaring growing quieter in the distance, he buried his face in his arms and cried like he had never cried before.

May 25th, 12:06 PM

“Bloody Hell, this is alright, isn’t it?” said Marshall, following Leanne into one of the hotel’s suites. It was just as grand as the rest of the place, but with less unnecessary clutter and a more modern feel. Even the wallpaper, with its thick embossed swirl pattern over vertical columns of white and green – while utterly fucking hideous – felt bang up-to-date.

While there wasn’t a lot of clutter in the room, what there was plenty of, was space. This room was only the living area of the suite, but it was easily the size of Leanne’s whole flat and so, by default, easily the size of Marshall’s flat, too, as they’d lived above one another back in Glasgow.

“Yeah, it’s nice,” Leanne agreed, heading for a curvy red sofa with wide cushions that stood in the middle of the room. She gently lowered the sleeping Immy onto the couch, then tucked a small throw cushion in at her side to stop her rolling off.

“Still asleep, then?” said Marshall, simply because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Aye,” Leanne agreed. She glanced around at the three closed doors leading off from the room. “Keep an eye on her a minute, will you? I really need to pee.”

“What? I mean, aye. No bother,” Marshall said. He looked down at the sleeping baby, then back at Leanne. “What will I do if she wakes up?”

“She won’t.”

“But what if she does?”

“Jesus, Martin,” Leanne sighed. “She won’t. I’ll just be one minute.”

Marshall nodded and smiled at Leanne as she opened a door and found the bathroom on the first try. He paced around in a tight circle, alternating between admiring the room, with its tall windows and lavishly thick curtains, and glancing down at Immy.

“Please don’t wake up,” he whispered. “Please don’t wake up.”

There was a knock at the door. “Hey, Marshall?” Daniel shouted.

“Shh! Shut up!” Marshall whispered, doing a sort of speed-creep towards the door, trying not to make a sound. He opened the door, ready to snap at Daniel, but was confronted instead by a soldier wielding a half-folded travel crib. He recognized the soldier as the woman he’d accidentally scowled at, back outside the shop.

“She brought this for the baby,” said Daniel, who was out of sight around the door frame.

Marshall laughed too hard. “Well, I didn’t think she brought it for me!”

“Where do you want it?” the soldier asked, flatly.

“Just anywhere in here’s fine,” said Marshall.

The woman didn’t move. Marshall flashed her an awkward smile.

“Want to get out of the way, then?” she asked eventually.

“Oh, yeah, right,” said Marshall, hopping away from the door like the floor had just caught fire.

The soldier wrestled her load through the door, glanced around in disbelief at the size of the room, then placed the crib down on the carpet not too far from the sofa.

“Here OK?” she asked.

“Fine. Fine, that’s… that’s fine,” said Marshall. He waited until she’d started to walk away before blurting out a jumble of words. “You, I mean, I, uh, I saw you at… You were at the shops, weren’t you?”

The woman nodded. “Yeah. Why?”

“Nothing, nothing,” said Marshall. “I just… I may have given you a funny look, but there was nothing… I didn’t mean anything by it, is what I’m trying to say. I sort of scowled at you.”

The soldier looked him up and down. She had dark eyes, Marshall noticed. Hypnotically dark. “Right. Well, I didn’t notice, so don’t worry about it.”

She made for the door. Marshall felt panic flare up inside him. More than anything, he didn’t want this woman to leave. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Donald.”

Marshall frowned. “What? That’s a man’s name.”

The soldier turned. There was something that vaguely resembled amusement on her face, and Marshall didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Yeah. My surname’s Donald,” she said.

“Ah! Right, yeah, of course,” Marshall said. “Stupid. Me, I mean, not… not your name.”

Marshall wasn’t a brave man – quite the opposite, most of the time – but he managed to bunch his courage together into a knot in his gut.

“What’s your first name?” he asked, trying to sound relaxed, like he didn’t really care what the answer was. “Mine’s Martin. Martin Marshall.”

“Ah, what the Hell,” said the soldier, after a long, tortuous pause. “It’s Caitlin.”

“Caitlin,” repeated Marshall, stalling for time as his mind frantically raced to come up with further conversation threads. “Caitlin. That’s not the sort of name I’d expect a soldier to have.”

“Really?” Caitlin said. “And what sort of name would you expect a soldier to have?”

Marshall puffed out his cheeks. Fuck. He’d backed himself into a corner here, he could tell. Whatever he said next was almost certainly going to lead to Caitlin either punching him, walking out, or both. But she was staring at him now, and he had to say something.

“Rambo?” he ventured.

Caitlin blinked several times in succession. Then, to Marshall’s delight, she smiled. She actually smiled! “Well, yeah, I mean, obviously. It’s wall to wall Rambos, usually,” she said. “But there’s the odd Caitlin in there somewhere, too.”

“Right! Right!” breathed Marshall. He began to say something else, but then the toilet flushed and the bathroom door opened. Marshall glanced over to see Leanne stepping out, and when he turned back to speak to Caitlin, she was gone.