A Dawn of Mammals Collection by Lou Cadle

Author:Lou Cadle [Cadle, Lou]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cadle-Sparks Books
Published: 2019-01-15T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Hannah went over to Laina, the closest, and helped her swat at the insects. They were ants, big ones, and she already had a couple dozen on her, legs and arms both. Laina’s slaps at herself were becoming more and more frenetic.

“Here, be still. Let me help.” Hannah reached for one of the plump bugs and plucked it off Laina’s shirt. But before she could squeeze it to death, the thing had already turned its head and bitten her finger. She yipped. The suckers really did hurt! She used her fingernails to cut the thing in half and dropped it. Then she tried brushing at Laina.

Problem was, these were tenacious little buggers. They clung tightly when touched, and the instant her arm moved to try for a moving one, that one froze while the last one crawled to a new spot. Laina was twitching at every bite and cursing.

So were Claire and—shockingly—Bob. He never cursed in front of the kids.

“Ow!” Hannah said, as she was bitten just above her sock. A line of ants had broken off and were coming at her. “We need to get away from these fish guts,” she said.

She caught motion out of the corner of her eye. It was Garreth, running this way.

“No, stay back!” she said. “And someone check the cleaned fish and—shit!” she finished, stomping her foot. Ants were crawling up her leg, inside her pants. She left Laina to fend for herself and jumped back, away from the line of ants, and sat on the beach, wriggling around, trying to smash the ants on the back of her calf by pressing her weight against them.

One bit a very tender spot at the back of her thigh and she yelped again. She didn’t like the way this was headed—not at all. She reached down and yanked at the laces to her boots, pulled them off, and ripped her pants off. An ant was coming around her thigh, headed for the elastic of her panties, and she flicked at it. It didn’t allow itself to be flicked. She pinched it and flung it off.

Reaching both hands around her thigh, she tried to scrape several off at once. They had found her other leg too. Movement ahead of her made her glance up, and she was horrified to see an entire army of them marching out of the trees in a swarm as big as a pig—a meat-eating, million-legged pig with a hundred thousand pairs of biting mandibles.

Bob said, “The water. It’s our only chance.”

“But the predators!” she said, slapping at more ants. She scuttled backward on her butt, trying to put more distance between her and the swarm. But it was hopeless, here it came, like a single creature. It was coming too fast. “You’re right,” she said. “Claire, Laina, into the lake.”

Laina was so involved in trying to fight off the ants, she hadn’t seemed to have heard. Hannah jumped up, grabbed the girl’s arm and hauled her toward the water. Having

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