F. Paul Wilson - Nightworld

Another bug whistled by—close enough to ruffle his hair. A spearhead.

Ignoring the throbbing in his skull that crescendoed toward agony with the effort, he put all of what little strength he had left into lifting the grate. The metal squeaked and moved a quarter inch, then half an inch, then screeched free of its seat. Hank pushed it aside and slid through the opening into the darkness below. Four feet down, his feet landed in a puddle. No problem. Not even an inch deep. He reached up and slid the grate back over the opening. When it clanked into its seat, he slumped into a crouch and looked up at the sky.

Dark up there, but still lighter than down here. As he watched a lonely star break through the dispersing haze, a huge belly fly plopped onto the grate directly over Hank and tried to squeeze through. Its acid sack strained against the openings, bulged into the slots, but it was too wide. Buzzing angrily, it lifted off and flew away.

He should have been relieved, happy he'd found a safe haven. Instead, Hank found himself sobbing. Why not? No one around to see. He was alone, hurt—still bleeding a little—cold, tired, hungry, no food, no money, no ride, and now he was hiding in a storm drain with dirty, stagnant water soaking through his sneakers. He'd really hit bottom now.

He forced a laugh that echoed eerily up and down the length of the drain. If nothing else, he could soothe himself with the knowledge that things couldn't get worse.

Something splashed off to his right.

Hank froze and listened. What was that, oh Lord, what was that? A rat? Or something worse—something much, much worse?

He eased his feet out of the water and inched them up the far side of the pipe until he spanned its diameter. If anything was moving through the water, it would pass under him. He peered into the darkness to his right, straining ears and eyes for some sign of life.

Nothing there.

But from his left came a furtive scurrying, moving closer…countless tiny clicks and scratches as something—no, somethings!—with thousands of feet slithered toward him along the concrete wall of the drain.

More splashing from the right, bolder now, lots of splashes, hurried, anxious, eager, avid, frantic splashes coming faster, racing toward him. The storm drain was suddenly alive with sound and movement and it was all converging on him.

Hank whimpered with terror and dropped his feet back into the water as he slammed his palms against the grate above and levered it up from its seat. But before it came completely free a pair on tong-like pincers vised around his right ankle. He shouted his terror and agony but kept pushing. Another set of pincers lanced into his left calf. His feet were pulled from under him and he went down to his knees in the stagnant water.

And then in the faint light through the grate above he saw them. Huge, pincer-mouthed millipede creatures, like the one he'd seen wriggling from the throat of the corpse in the lobby this morning. The pipe was acrawl with them, five, six, eight, ten feet long. The nearest ones raised their heads toward him, their pincers clicking. Hank slapped at them, trying to bat them away, but they darted past his defenses and latched onto him, digging the ice-pick points of their mandibles into his arms and shoulders. The pain and horror were too much. His scream echoed up and down the hungry pipe as he was dragged onto his back. His arms were pulled above his head and his legs yanked straight as he was positioned along the length of the pipe. Cold water soaked his clothes and ran along his spine. And then more of the things leaped upon him, all over him, their countless clawed feet scratching him, their pincers ripping at his clothing, tearing through the protective layers like so much tissue paper until every last shred had been stripped away and he lay cold and wet and naked, stretched out like a heretic on the rack.

And then they backed off, all but the ones holding him who continued to pin him there in the water. The drain grew quiet. The sloshing and splashing, the scraping of the myriad feet died away until the only noise in Hank's ears was the sound of his own ragged breathing.

What did they want? What were they—?

Then came another sound, a heavy, chitonous slithering from the impenetrable darkness beyond his feet. As it grew louder, Hank began to whimper in fear. He began to thrash in the water, struggling desperately to pull free but the pincers in his arms and legs tightened their grip, digging deeper into his already bleeding flesh.

And then in the growing shaft of light from the rising moon he saw it. A millipede like all the rest, but so much larger. Its head was the size of Hank's torso, its body a good two feet across, half-filling the drain pipe,

Hank screamed as understanding exploded within him. These other, smaller horrors were workers or drones of some sort; they'd captured him and were holding him here for their queen! He renewed his struggles, ignoring the tearing pain in his limbs. He had to get free!

But he couldn't. Sliding over the bodies of her obedient subjects the queen crawled between Hank's squirming legs until she held her head poised over his chest, staring at him with her huge, black, multifaceted eyes. As Hank watched in mute horror, a drill-like proboscis extruded from between her huge mandibles. Slowly, she raised her head and angled it down over Hank's abdomen. Hank found his voice and screamed again as she plunged the proboscis deep into his abdomen.

Liquid fire exploded at his center and spread into his chest, it ran down his legs and his arms, draining the strength from them.

Poison! He opened his mouth to scream again but the neurotoxin reached his throat first and allowed him to give voice to little more than an especially loud, breathy exhalation. Hank's hands were the last things to go dead, and then he was floating. He still lay in the water but could not feel its wetness. The last thing he saw before tumbling into a void of blessed darkness was the queen horror with her snout still buried in his flesh, sucking greedily.

CNN:

News from NASA: We have lost contact with most of our higher orbiting satellites. The communication satellites are still operational—otherwise you would not be watching this broadcast—but the rest are simply…gone.

OVER THE PACIFIC

They got in and out of Bakersfield in record time. Or so Frank said. Jack would have to take his word about the record part, but it sure as hell had been fast. The main reason was that Frank's plane was one of only a half dozen scheduled in and out of there today.

It hadn't been Bakersfield, actually, but a small airstrip just outside it. Frank seemed to know everybody in sight; there weren't too many of those, but they all were impressed that he was still on the job. Especially impressed that he was making arrangements to get refueled here on his return flight.

"Yer gonna be fly'n' inna dark comin' back, y'know," the old guy who ran the place had said as the wing tanks were filling.

He was the one who'd pocketed a stack of Glaeken's gold coins for the fuel. He was wrinkled and grizzled and looked old enough to have been Billy Rickenbacker's wingman in the Lafayette Escadrille.

"I know," Frank said from the pilot seat. He had his Walkman earphones slung around his neck and was playing with one of the drooping ends of his mustache.

Jack sat beside Frank in the pilot's cabin—he'd called it the "cockpit" earlier and had been corrected—while Ba sat in the passenger compartment, adding more teeth to his billy clubs.

"Lotsa planes disappearin' inna dark these days, Frankie. Go up, neva come down."

"So I've heard."

"Some are even disappearin' inna day. Inna dayl So nobody's flyin'—nobody with any sense, that is. Scared to get off the ground. 'Fraid they won't come back. Don't want you t' be one a thems that don't come back, Frankie."