Nightworld

MANHATTAN

Suddenly Hank was awake. 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.

It used to be the nights were never long enough for Hank. His head would hit the pillow and before he knew it, the clock radio would switch on and Imus In The Morning would be bitching and complaining through the bedroom.

Now the nights were too long. He'd fallen into an exhausted sleep soon after stacking the cartons by the door, and now he nestled down into his blanket and tried to find sleep again. 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 was 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 violent thrashing just beyond the door, then muffled, gurgling sobs that were hideous to hear. 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. With the sound down so low he could barely hear it, he watched the tube. 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 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 whole social fabric was unraveling.

The news footage only steeled Hank's resolve to get out of the city as soon as the sun rose. In fact, why wait till dawn? The sky was getting lighter now. Those things should be on their way back to the hole already if they wanted to make it before sunrise. Maybe he could get a head start on loading the van.

The first stack was already draped and loaded on the hand truck. Hank lifted the bar and opened the door for a quick peek.

Someone was out there. Down the hall to his left a still form lay curled on its side near the elevators. No one else was in sight. Hank stepped outside his door, locked it behind him, then hurried down the hall, pushing the loaded hand truck ahead of him, following the long trail of smeared blood that ran from his doorway to the still form.

It was a woman. Or had been. Hank forced himself to look. He didn't recognize what was left of her. Her body was shrunken, wizened, all her exposed skin was shredded, chewed up but strangely bloodless. He bit back a surge of bile and told himself that it was a good thing he hadn't opened his door last night; if he had he might be as dead as she. He repeated that a couple of times as he turned his back to her and waited for the elevator to arrive.

Hank whirled as an angry buzz came from far down the hall to his left. A couple of the ceiling fixtures were smashed down at that end so it was dark there. He couldn't see anything, but he knew that buzz. Wings. Big, double, dragonfly wings. He'd heard plenty of it these past nights. And then he heard another sound—the gnashing teeth of a chew wasp.

Terror rammed a fist down hard on his bladder. Too early! He'd left the apartment too damn early!

His first impulse was to run for his apartment but a vision of himself standing before the locked door, fumbling for his keys while the chew wasp zeroed in on his neck kept him where he was, pounding on the DOWN button, the UP button, anything that would get the elevator here.

The buzz became louder, angrier, closer. And then he saw it as it came into the light, hurtling down the hall at a level of about five feet, directly at him. The grinding of the teeth picked up tempo. Frozen with terror, a scream building in his throat, Hank watched it come for him.

And then another sound—the opening of the elevator doors. Hank ducked inside, yanking the hand truck after him as he hit the DOOR CLOSE button. The chew wasp veered toward him but couldn't make the turn. It slammed into the edge of the open door and fell to the floor with a bent and twisted wing. It flopped and thrashed and buzzed furiously on the hallway carpet while Hank frantically pressed the LOBBY button. As the doors began to close, it straightened its wing and launched itself at the elevator. Hank ducked but the doors slid closed before the thing reached him.

Pressing both hands over his quaking, churning stomach, Hank leaned against the back wall of the sinking elevator in a sweaty, gasping squat. He didn't want to move. He wanted to stay in this windowless steel box and wait for day. But he pushed himself to his feet. The elevator was on its way down and he had to get out of the city. He had to get these supplies transferred to the van before everybody else who survived the night was out and about.

The elevator light dimmed and the car lurched, paused. Oh, Lord! Was he going to be stuck here?

Then it started down again.

No question about it: He had to get out now. Who knew how long the power would last?

When the doors slid open on the lobby, Hank peered out. Dim out there. All the lights either out or broken. More than lights were broken. Off to his right, in the faint predawn light, he saw that the thick glass of the front door and windows was smashed, blue-green shards scattered all over the tiled lobby floor. And something else there by the remains of the door.

Hank squinted into the faint but growing light. Another body. He listened for the sound of wings. Quiet. Taking a deep breath, he tilted the hand truck and rolled it ahead of him as he hurried toward the door. He slowed by the corpse. This one was male, hardly chewed up at all, but very pale, very dead. He didn't recognize him, either. Hank realized how few of his fellow tenants he knew. Maybe that was for the best. He looked down at this fellow's wide, glazed eyes and shuddered.

How did you die, mister?

As he turned away, he heard a sound, something between a cluck and a gurgle. It seemed to come from the corpse. As he stared, he saw the throat work, the jaw move. But he couldn't be alive—not with those dead eyes!

And then the man's mouth opened and Hank saw something moving inside. No, not inside anymore, slithering out. A flat, wide, pincered head, dark glistening brown where it wasn't bloody red, followed by a sinuous six-foot body as big around as a beer can, powered by countless fine, rubbery legs, all dripping red.

Some sort of giant millipede, squeezing out the corpse's gullet and coming right for him. And it was fast.

Hank yelped and backpedaled across the lobby. He kept going until the backs of his legs hit the edge of the settee against the wall, then he hopped up on it and tried to climb the wall.

But the thing wasn't interested in him. It veered toward the doorway and raced over the shattered glass, heading for the street. Heading for the nearest hole, no doubt.

He'd never seen anything like that before. It had to be the latest addition to the bug horde.

Realizing that he looked like an old maid who'd seen a mouse, Hank jumped down from the settee, ran to the doorway, and looked out.

Monday morning. The sky looked funny. Not quite sunrise yet, but the streets should have been jumping by now, clogged with cabs and cars and delivery trucks. But nothing was moving. No, wait. Up the street he spotted a garbage-can-size beetle with a wicked set of mandibles spread wide before it, scuttling by at the corner, heading toward Central Park; an occasional flying thing whizzed through the air, also heading west. Except for those, the street was empty. Where had the giant millipede gone? How could it have got around the corner so fast?

Didn't matter. He had to get moving. He ran back into lobby, his feet slipping and crunching on the glass, and pulled his hand truck out to the van. He quickly dumped all the cases into the back, then hurried back to the elevator. Had to keep moving. He was going to have to make a lot of trips before he got everything transferred.