III
Helen stood on her upstairs porch, watching the officer blow one of the insects to pieces with a shotgun. She had been alerted to their presence by the first blast from the Alexander house down the street, its loud report like a siren in the silence that had descended upon the neighborhood. The creatures had spent little time in Helen's part of the neighborhood. Once they had their individual fill, they formed into a mass collective and bulldozed their way south into the forested swampland outside the walls. When some of them made their way into her house, she barricaded herself in the upstairs guest bathroom, hands clasped over her mouth to muffle any sound at all. She heard them clicking their way through the house, toppling over furniture in search of food. It did not take long for them to realize the pickings were to be found elsewhere.
She waited what seemed like an eternity before she dared open the door to the bathroom. Helen made herself certain that she had not heard a sound for at least ten minutes before her trembling hands went for the door handle. She reached out, grabbed hold, and twisted, her heart pounding rapidly. Opening the door a sliver, she peered out into the empty house. It was destroyed. The windows were all broken, her furniture was smashed, and plaster was falling from the ceiling. There was also a strange, repulsive odor, faint, but enough to make her stomach flip.
She was tip-toeing her way around the corner to the upstairs hallway when she heard the shotgun blast. She froze for a moment and then raced down the hallway to the upstairs porch. Without thinking about the creatures, she ripped open the sliding glass door and jumped onto the porch in just enough time to see a police officer standing over the mangled remains of one of the creatures, the body of another officer strewn across the road in a bloody heap. He was far off in the distance, but Helen knew he was her only hope. She screamed for help and jumped wildly with her hands up in the air. At first, the officer didn't see or hear her but instead got back into his cruiser. Yet, just before he shut the door, he heard her faint screams and got out into the street again. He finally saw her frantically waving and shook his hand in recognition before getting into the cruiser and driving down to Helen's house.
Helen raced down the stairs, burst through the front door, and wrapped her arms around the officer as he lumbered up to her. For a moment, she believed she was the only one left.
"Are you hurt, mam?" Allen asked her.
"No, I don't think so," Helen replied, her eyes and face wet with tears.
"What the hell happened?"
"They just came up from the ground," Helen said, her voice weak. "They just started eating everybody. They ate my husband."
She burst into full sobs and buried her head deep into Allen's chest. He felt his heart and mind begin to race.
"We need to warn everyone," he said, feeling his sense of duty swell up inside of him.
"We need to run!" Helen replied.
"I'm not running."
He loaded Helen into his cruiser, and they slowly exited the neighborhood. Everything was still outside the walls. The sun was beginning its long descent towards setting, and the heat was slowly easing its grip on the land. The road back into town was empty. Though very little traffic ever came through this part of Coleman, it was noticeably silent.
"Do you think they're already here?" Helen asked.
"What do you mean? In town?"
"Yeah."
"I don't know. Which direction did they go?"
"I don't know. I locked myself in a bathroom and hoped they wouldn't eat me."
"Fair," Allen said as he turned on a curve in the road and into the small downtown of Coleman.
There were people sitting out front of Dea's diner, sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. The old ladies who normally chattered in front of the hair salon were there with their sagging chins bouncing with each bit of gossip. The Mobil station had a few pick-ups parked at the pumps and a few low-lifes hanging by the neon signs in the windows.
"Looks to me like things are status quo around here," Allen said as he drove through the town's only stop light and into the small police station parking lot.
He parked the cruiser and wondered if the last hour of his life had just been a strange dream. Had he really fought off a giant bloodthirsty insect, or had he just been dipping too freely into his wife's THC gummies? He looked over at the shock-stricken woman next to him and remembered that she, too, had witnessed the terrible force of those ruthless creatures. She'd seen them come up from the ground and wreak havoc upon the land. He had only seen their aftermath.
"We should get inside. The station is safe."
"Nowhere is safe from these things," Helen said bluntly.