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

she held on, still she kept coming.
    Amy grabbed the first thing she could find in the dishwasher. It was a plate. Crumbs of that morning’s breakfast clung to it like barnacles. Amy took the plate in both hands and smashed it down across her mom’s head.
    Her mom groaned, but kept coming, her fingertips pressing hard against the flesh of Amy’s leg, as if trying to worm their way through her skin.
    Another plate. Another smash. Amy kicked again, screaming as those fingertips threatened to dig right into her flesh.
    Her shoulder clicked and pain stabbed down her arm as she tried to reach deeper into the dishwasher behind her. A knife. A knife. If she could only find a knife.
    Her mom’s mouth was wide open now. Her tongue hung limply over her teeth. Blood oozed from her gums and dribbled from the corners of her mouth, and – just for a moment – something seemed to crawl beneath the skin of her neck.
    Amy’s hand wrapped around something metal. She yanked it free, hoping for the big chef’s knife her dad had chopped carrots with the night before.
    Instead, she found the ladle her mom had used to dish out the soup. Hot breath seeped through the leg of her jeans as the thing’s mouth closed in on Amy’s ankle. Amy swung with the ladle. It was small and not very heavy, but it made a loud clonk sound as it battered against the side of her mom’s head.
    It wouldn’t be enough, though. A few smacks from a kitchen utensil wouldn’t stop the thing. Amy Banks would die there on that kitchen floor, aged nineteen and two months, unless she thought of something fast.
    She swung with the ladle again to get the thing’s attention. Had to keep it distracted. Had to stop it chewing through her leg.
    Amy kicked with her free foot again, driving the heel against her mom’s cheek and snapping it to the left. Something popped in the thing’s neck and the head titled at a sickening angle. Amy’s mom’s mouth opened wider. The tongue unfurled like a tatty rug. Another groan echoed from within the cavern of her throat.
    And Amy saw her chance. She turned the ladle so the curved metal handle was pointing away from her. She sat forwards, and with a scream of rage and terror and revulsion, she rammed the handle straight down her mom’s gaping throat.
    The thing jerked and bone splintered as the handle of the ladle exploded out through the back of its neck. Its arms stopped grabbing. Its head fell to the side, the glazed-over eyes still open. The mouth continued to move, but the rest of the body was limp and useless.
    Sobbing, Amy used the dishwasher to pull herself up. Her mom’s eyes followed her to the door. Amy glanced back at what was left of her parents. She wiped a trickle of snot from her top lip, but only succeeded in smearing blood across her entire face.
    “I’m s-sorry,” she whispered.
    She closed the door. She turned away.
    Then she screamed as her brother hurled himself at her from the top of the stairs.

SHOP WISE GROCERY STORE, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 
     
24th May, 8:22 PM
     
     
    Boss Man Wayne looked ill. Of course, he always looked ill in a not-enough-sleep, unhealthy diet sort of way. His eyes were always bloodshot. He had an indeterminate number of chins, depending on which way his head was turned. His skin went from dry and flaky to slick with grease in the space of a few inches, and there was a constant rash of spot lurking beneath the stubble on his neck.
    In all the time Col had been working for him, though, Wayne had never looked as ill as this. He was leaning against the store room door, his hands clutching his ribcage, his whole body trembling. His breath stunk as it rasped in an out in shallow sips.
    “I… I don’t feel so good.”
    Col stacked the last few packs of Gatorade on one of the lower shelves, then stood up. He was tall and skinny and towered over his much older supervisor. “You don’t look too hot, either.”
    “H-hot,” Wayne mumbled. He nodded his head and his eyes spun back like