With Hungry Mouths and Beating Wings

The muffled crunch of a thorax gave Riley a fleeting moment of pleasure, but she knew the space behind the refrigerator held an army in waiting. The dark kitchen smelled of old dishwater and stale food, and she barely flinched while walking over the dead roaches on the faded linoleum. She had to get Jean out of this life. Her little girl didn’t deserve to have searching feet and feelers crawling over her stuffed toys. “Mama, what’s that behind the moon?” Her honey-haired daughter was on tiptoes by the window. Riley pulled Jean into her arms and looked to the night sky, thinking for a moment the moon had a shadow. “Dunno, baby.” ∘ The shadow slipped past the moon the next day as it grew closer, now visible in the daylight, and Riley kept Jean home as the world lost its collective mind. The round shape held for three panic-fueled days, then it broke apart and spread out like a cloud of locusts. ∘ After five days and every destructive measure Earth’s armies could throw at it, the swarm remained, peppering the sky. Countries folded. Chaos governed, but from the sagging porch of Riley and Jean’s trailer, things seemed just as bad as they ever had. No money, little food. Just now the world was ending. Their meager supplies were gone, but it was too dangerous in town. Desperate people wreaking havoc before impact. They’d tried to go out the day before, but lawless didn’t begin to describe the scene unfolding around them. Riley thought of the Mad Max movies Daddy used to make her watch. She remembered thinking people couldn’t act that crazy over some water, but apparently they could. Riley toyed with the idea of pulling out the fridge and having a kabob dinner with all the little monsters crawling around in the dark, but she didn’t think she could stomach it. So, she and Jean made a game of counting the shapes in the sky, now so clear they could make out body and wing, head and pincers. ∘ The first ones landed in Europe. Newscasts showed utter destruction then nothing, just empty channels of static. If she’d had a cell phone, which she didn’t because they were for rich folk, it would be useless, too. Some idiots had torn the towers down, claiming they were homing beacons for the invaders. Riley fed Jean snared rabbits and waited for the swarm to crawl across the world. Bugs as big as grain silos. Mouths as big as houses. ∘ The sky was clear, but the ground vibrated with the approaching swarm. Riley tucked Jean under her favorite unicorn blanket and kissed her daughter’s cold forehead. She’d wanted to take Jean out of this life, just not this way. She briefly thought about drinking the same Kool-Aid mix she’d given to her little girl, curling up beside her, and pressing her face into Jean’s hair until the noise stopped. In the end, though, she couldn’t do it. She wanted to see those big bastards, even if it would be the last thing she ever saw. The air was crisp with the first hints of winter, and Riley wrapped herself in an old horse blanket and took a seat on the porch. The gnashing outside was deafening, and Riley wondered if the roaches behind the fridge were as afraid as she was, or if they rejoiced that reinforcements had finally arrived. ∘ ∘ ∘