Plague

its back.
    “Caine!” she yelled.
    She threaded her way through the swarm, leaped easily through the wildly waving legs of the overturned bug, and stabbed her knife into its guts.
    Then, into the largest of the gashes she thrust the shotgun and pulled the trigger.
    BLAM!
    Bug guts and bits of shell blew back and covered her. But the legs were jerking wildly now, slower, slower . . .
    Caine had overturned another bug and this one he hammered with a car, lifting and slamming, lifting and slamming, until the creature was a giant mess of stick-legs and goo.
    The creatures turned away from feasting on the sick. There were only seven of the bugs left now, not counting the one that was down in the so-called hospital or the one stuck in the doorway.
    Seven.
    “I’ll flip them!” Caine yelled.
    Brianna picked a piece of bug guts off her cheek and nodded. She quickly reloaded her shotgun and zoomed to mount the latest overturned creature. She was learning as she went along. The creatures had weak spots, one of them was the underside of what would be their chin. She stabbed with her knife, twisted to make an opening, pushed the shotgun into the gaping wound, and pulled the trigger.
    The bug’s head blew apart.
    “Oh, yeah! Oh, definitely!” Brianna cried.
    But Caine had been a bit too slow and now three of the creatures were pursuing him. All three had latched on to him with their tongues and he was yelling his head off for help.
    Brianna dashed down the steps, now slick with blood— human and insect.
    She cut the first tongue and the other two reeled back defensively.
    “Flip ’em!”
    “Trying,” Caine said through gritted teeth. He turned one over but the bugs were learning fast. A second bug charged the first, slid beneath it, and heaved its brother back over onto his legs.
    “Oh, no, we don’t do that,” Brianna said.
    Caine had to back away again as the creatures charged. If they caught Caine, then the battle was over.
    Brianna raced, grabbed Caine’s arm, and yanked him to temporary safety behind a tree.
    Cuh-runch!
    A bug mandible sliced the tree straight through.
    Caine lifted and flipped the creature, but now the swarm was converging.
    “They’ll follow us,” Caine yelled to Brianna.
    “I noticed.”
    “Gas station,” Caine gasped. He was already running, flat out, arms pumping. Brianna caught up easily. The bugs surged after them, crowding the street.
    “You understand?” Caine gasped.
    “Not much gas left there,” Brianna said.
    “Go!” Caine yelled, and Brianna zoomed away. She reached the gas station. There was a heavy padlock on the pump and, to her utter amazement, one of Albert’s people sitting there guarding it.
    “Unlock it!” she yelled.
    “I can’t unless Albert . . . ,” the kid started to say until Brianna laid her knife against his throat and said, “Really no time for chitchat.”
    He unlocked the pump. Brianna grabbed the handle—the hand pump was the only way—and worked it as fast as she could. Unfortunately it wasn’t the kind of thing that worked better at superspeed.
    She grabbed the guard and yelled, “You—pump! Pump unless you want to die.”
    “I don’t have a tank to put it in!”
    “On the ground,” Brianna said. “On the ground. All over the place. Pump it!”
    Gas gushed in irregular spurts from the pump and splashed onto the concrete.
    Brianna zoomed back to find Caine laboring hard and barely staying ahead as he reached the highway. Out in the open the bugs would be able to use all their speed and catch him long before he reached the station.
    “Keep running!” she yelled.
    She dashed straight at the foremost of the creatures. It snapped at her with its tongue. She grabbed the tongue in midair and, holding on to it as hard as she could, she dived beneath the creature’s legs.
    The bug stumbled and came to a halt, confused. Brianna released the tongue, scooted madly beneath the creature, and came out through its hind legs. She had bought Caine maybe three seconds. No more.
    She took aim at the demonic ruby eyes of the next bug, fired at point-blank range, and blew back to the gas station.
    She zipped past the panicky guard, who was still busily pouring precious gasoline out on the ground.
    Inside what had once been the gas station’s mini-mart, Brianna searched frantically through trash and debris before coming up, triumphant, with a blue Bic lighter.
    Outside she saw Caine, still barely ahead of his pursuers.
    “Get outta here, kid!”