Adam Troy Castro by Locusts

Author:Locusts [Locusts]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-01-26T00:37:03+00:00

“I don’t know. Something that kept their populations down, prevented them from overrunning their environment, kept them from becoming … Lemmings? … no.

Locusts.” His lips smacked around the word; it was the first time he’d called them that, and for everybody in earshot it sounded like an official christening.

“Whatever it was, it’s not around anymore. We must have done something to kill it off … or at least bring its population down so low that it can’t effectively make a difference anymore.”

As everybody chewed on that, I said, “If you’re right, and that’s the explanation, we’re in trouble.”

Eddie glanced at me, openly surprised I’d dared to speak in his presence; ever since that thing with Sharon, we’d tended to stay out of each other’s way.

“Why?”

“First law of wildlife management,” I said. “Whenever the prey gets too numerous, the predators multiply faster to compensate. If the old predators are gone, then new ones evolve. Either way, we’re going to have to worry about them next … and they’re going to be worse.”

Everybody looked at each other. All of a sudden, nobody wanted to think about the predators anymore. The Locusts were bad enough. They were already utterly destroying the world we’d known, turning it into something frightening and alien, in which we might not have a place … if there was something worse on the horizon, we might as well just place the barrels of our rifles in our mouths, pull the triggers, and be done with it. It would save us all a hell of a lot of wasted effort …

… but we wouldn’t know for sure until it happened.

And so we turned away from conversation and just concentrated in making our way through streets littered with tiny humanoid corpses. Nobody said anything else until we reached the shopping center where the supermarket stood waiting for us.

And where five of us then died … 7.

Wherever we were, it was dark. A strange kind of darkness, signifying not only the absence of light, but also the addition of something deeper and colder.

Peter was in here with me — and he was screaming, loudly and continuously, with more air than could realistically be held by a single pair of lungs — but he was a thousand miles away, too far away to reach; he’d sunken into the darkness a lot faster than I. The neighborhood children surrounded both of us, jeering with voices that cut like barbed steel, in sentences that stung like salt poured directly into an open wound. They were delighted to have adults in here with them, where they could have all sorts of fun torturing us with the force of their combined hate.

I didn’t mind. I was relieved. It was over. I didn’t have to spend any more nights listening to the Locusts pound the walls, and wonder which of my friends would still be alive the next time the sun set. I didn’t have to spend any more days watching our humanity recede from us one mutation at a time.

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