Plague

pavement.
    She was pinioned by half a dozen of the tongues and now the rest of the bugs were closing in to chew her up, mandibles slicing the air like scimitars.
    Brianna felt a sudden wave of fear. Was it possible she could lose this fight?
    “Don’t kill her,” Drake said. “Hold her! She’s mine!”
    He was on his feet and searching through the wild melee for his whip arm.
    Suddenly, the coyote was in the fight. He leaped for her, jaws open, teeth flashing yellow.
    “Really?” she cried.
    She shoved back against the greedy muzzle with all her strength. The move stretched one of the lashing tongues taut. The coyote’s powerful jaw, missing Brianna’s arm, clamped hard on the tongue, which snapped back like a cut high-tension cable.
    She was pinned, but she still had her speed.
    She grabbed the coyote’s ruff and swung it around to clamp on a second tongue.
    Now just four tongues still pinned her. She didn’t have the strength to hold on to the coyote. The creature, maybe fearing the bugs would retaliate, took off yelping as if it had been kicked.
    Four lines held the Breeze, all more or less on her left side, so she kicked off, pushing straight toward the insects. The tongues slackened. Brianna somersaulted. It was a sketchy maneuver, poorly executed, and she landed hard on her back, but the four tongues had been twisted around and now, as one, they released her.
    Even as they released others struck. She could see them flying toward her like striking cobras.
    She kicked a bug in the face, kicked hard against a slashing mandible, then boom boom boom , three hard kicks and she was out of there.
    She caught her breath on a rise a hundred feet away. Her body was blistered wherever the tongues had touched. But she was alive.
    She watched, panting, shaking, as Drake’s tentacle melded seamlessly into his shoulder.
    “Come on, Breeze,” Drake taunted. “Come and get me. Here I am!”
    Brianna had never been one to ignore a taunt. She had never run from a fight. But she had escaped by inches. By millimeters.
    “It’s the end, Breeze,” Drake crowed. “I’m going to kill all of you. Every last one of you!” He danced in a circle, twirling in wild glee. “Run, Breeze! Ruuuuun! Because when I catch you, I’m going to make you suffer!”
    Brianna ran.
    Leslie-Ann fed her siblings the scrapings from the cans and let them drink the water.
    Okay, she told herself: You did all you could.
    Except that she hadn’t done all she could. Not yet.
    She had never liked Albert much. He was kind of a jerk to her. He never said anything nice like, “Good job, Leslie-Ann.”
    But he didn’t deserve to just die like that. Maybe he was still alive.
    “I’m just a kid,” she said aloud to no one.
    But she knew what she felt, and what she felt was that she hadn’t done right.
    She went out into the streets, not knowing exactly who she should locate, or who she should tell, but she knew she had to tell someone.
    From where she stood she could see the big, weird cloud more clearly. It looked like it was raining. And just then two kids came past. They were walking in tandem, sharing the load of a heavy plastic tub. It was sloshing water over the sides and they were soaked through.
    One of them noticed her and grinned. “It’s raining!”
    “No one’s s’posed to go out,” she said.
    The kid snorted. “No one’s telling anyone what to do right now, and there’s water. If I was you, I’d get some fast.”
    Leslie-Ann ran back inside and located a bucket in the garage. Then she walked as fast as she could toward the rain cloud. If everyone was there, maybe she could find someone to tell about Albert.
    As she drew nearer she noticed something that was, in its own way, as weird as the cloud, which was now almost overhead: there was water running in the gutter. Actual water. Just running down the gutter.
    She broke into a run and saw a crowd of dancing, cavorting kids ahead of her. Buckets sat under the downpour. Kids stood with their mouths open, or tried to shower, or just shoved and played and splashed.
    A very unusual sound for the FAYZ: the high-pitched laughter of children.
    Leslie-Ann set down her own bucket and watched, marveling, as a quarter of an inch of water covered the bottom.
    When she looked away, she saw an older kid. She’d seen him around. But usually he was with Orc and she was too scared of Orc ever to get near him.
    She tugged on Howard’s wet sleeve. He seemed not to be sharing in the