The Bug: Complete Season One by Barry J. Hutchison Read Free Book Online Page A

hog.
    “Thank you,” he wheezes, so breathless I suspect he’s about three jumping jacks away from dropping dead. It’d serve him right. He’s a horror-show. Someone should have put his fat ass out of its misery before we took off, so I wouldn’t have had to spend six hours breathing in his body odor and listening to him fighting for air.
    A whisper in my head agrees with me that someone should put this man down. No, not man. He doesn’t deserve that label. He’s an animal. A fat, blubbery whale no-one should be forced to even look at, never mind be jammed in next to for several hours.
    He looks at me with his sunken eyes and twists his blubbery lips into something that I guess is supposed to look like a smile, but which makes me want to throw up all over him. That’d teach him. That’d show him what decent, normal people think of horrible fat fucks like him.
    But no. That’s not enough. He looks down at his dinner tray. Empty, of course. He devoured the whole lot in minutes. Caught him eyeing mine up, too. He’d have eaten all my scraps, given half the chance. Left unchecked, he’ll probably eat all of us.
    Someone needs to teach him a lesson. Someone needs to carve some of that disgusting fucking lard from his bones.
    Someone.
    Anyone.
    The bug whispers in my head.
    Me.

FRANKLIN, MASSACHUSETTS, USA
     
24th MAY, 6:54 PM
     
    When she woke up that afternoon, it never occurred to Amy Banks that she’d bash her dad’s skull in with a frying pan.
    And now that she had – now that the screaming and the thrashing were over, now that his brains were painting the linoleum – she could only stare in mute shock as her mind tried to shut down from the horror of it all.
    Her legs were shaking too much to stand yet. She used her hands to shuffle away from the corpse on the floor until her back was against the dishwasher. The smell of the blood left a coppery tang in her mouth. She spat it out and let her breath come back in big shaky gulps.
    Amy didn’t want to look at the dead thing, but she was afraid to look away, as if the moment her back was turned it would rise up again, teeth snapping, hands curled into limp claws. It had been her dad, then it had become something else. And now it wasn’t anything at all.
    There was the sound of movement out in the hall. Footsteps shuffling along carpet. Amy’s breath caught at the back of her throat. The kitchen door slowly began to creak inward. She looked for the frying pan, then remembered tossing it across the room after smashing open her dad’s head.
    Amy tried to get up, but her legs shook and her bare feet slipped on the bloody floor. She kicked out frantically, trying to find purchase as the door swung open all the way, revealing a familiar figure framed in the doorway.
    ‘Mom?’
    A low moan burst like a bubble on her mom’s withered lips. Another sound came from somewhere within Amy herself. It was a raw, primal scream. Not fear, but something much more. Terror times ten.
    Her mom jerked into the kitchen like a bad animation, and immediately slid in the blood puddle. There was a solid thump as her face battered against the kitchen floor, but whatever was driving her on didn’t seem to notice.
    She crawled forwards across the remains of her husband, her fingers squishing through the cheesecake of brain that had spurted from his caved-in head. She moved like an old drunk – slow and clumsy, her limbs trembling. Amy flailed out, searching for a weapon – something solid she could defend herself with.
    Her hand found the handle of the dishwasher. She yanked the door down. Her arm bent backwards as she tried frantically to reach inside.
    And then her mom was at her feet. No, not her mom, just a thing that looked like her. Her mom was long gone now. The thing’s mouth was opening, its gnarled fingers grasping at Amy’s jeans. Amy kicked with her free foot. Once. Twice. The thing that looked like her mom’s nose burst open in a spray of dark red goop, but still