* * * *
"Joshua, help meeeee!"
That sounds like Michael, your best friend from next door. Where is he?
You stand at the top of the stairs and try to remember what you were about to do. It's important. Vital.
Michael? No. Something else.
You study your house again. All of it is wrong--a big mass of confusing wrongness.
Stuff lies everywhere. You trashed the place.
No. It wasn't you.
Something else did.
Broken, twisted pieces of your life heap together on the shredded rug, leftovers of some madman's rage. Or a giant, some beast who had hoisted the house and shaken it, like a baby rattle, before setting it back level on the ground.
It stinks here. The still air reeks of burning things: wood, plastic, rubber, metals, and flesh. Meat on fire. Not cooking, like for dinner. Just burning.
Inside is quiet. Outside is... odd. You strain to hear. Distant thumps, dry pops, muted screeches, rumbling buzzes; the sounds of an arcade surround you. But this is no game. No reset button offers escape. This wreck is your life.
"Mom? Dad?"
Nothing.
They're long gone. You know this for some reason.
What were you going to do? It was one of two things, wasn't it? Try to remember!
"Joshua, pleeease!" Michael, again.
The sound comes from your room down the hall. You creep toward the closed door, certain you shouldn't go near it.
At the end of the hall you stop. Through the door, you hear snapping and crackling and under it, gloomy daylight flickers. You reach for the knob.
More daylight seeps in through the widening crack. Your room is gone, only a hole in the house now, bitten off just beyond the door. Looking up, a smoke-filled sky darkens from fires raging across your neighborhood. Looking down, a driveway sits next door.
Michael crouches behind his family's ruined car. Opposite him on the other side of the car, a thing lumbers. Tall as a man, armless, it waddles on two, thick legs; stubby extensions of a pear-shaped body that seems all wrinkles of scarred, red flesh. The folds of skin jiggle as it circles the car, stalking Michael. He whimpers. A wet spot stains the crotch of his tattered jeans.
The thing shifts to the front of the car. Michael slides around the rear. Shuffling backward toward the street, a pucker of folds atop the thing starts to glow, crimson at first, shifting to golden white.
"No. God, no." Michael steps away from the car.
Out of the pucker, a triangle of yellow light sprays. A blast of heat envelops you a second later. The car sizzles and pops as glass and metal fuse together. Michael dances in its shadow. You want to scream at him, urge him to run, but dare not open your mouth.
Michael takes off across the lawn, head down, twisting, dodging. The beam swings, shifting from yellow back to crimson and narrowing to a tight line that drills Michael's back.
"Nooooo!" His scream gurgles away as he arches his shoulder blades and staggers to a halt.
The crimson light fans out, washing over Michael's whole body. He jerks and spasms in the glow like someone being electrocuted. You watch, unable to look away.
Smoke erupts from Michael's clothes and hair, swirling around him. When it clears, he's changed, mutated into a red blob of wrinkled flesh. The light winks out.
Now there are two of the things.
You remember: hide!
You pull on the doorknob, easing it back. One of the hinges squeals a protest. A flash of yellow erupts under the door just as it shuts. You retreat from the blackening wood.
Hiding won't help. You remember what else you were going to do.
Run!
Just as your feet hit the top of the stairs, the door explodes behind you. The house rocks. Halfway down the stairs, you tumble, bouncing all the way to the bottom where your head smacks tile. Blackness steals your thoughts.
Someone whistles.
No, not someone. Something. A horrible, high shrill stabs your eardrums.
You blink into billowing clouds of smoke. The whole upstairs burns. Curls of angry fire wind through gaping holes in the roof. One of the smoke detectors shrieks its steady alert. Head throbbing, ears ringing, you crawl backward into the kitchen.
A yellow beam slices across the ceiling, sending a light fixture hurtling to the floor. A thought strikes you. If the things still flame the house from Michael's side, the other way might be clear. You scramble through the kitchen and out onto the driveway.
What time is it?
Hard to tell from the blackened sky but maybe middle of the afternoon.
Which way?
A flash and dull thump of an explosion echoes from the direction of the city.
Not that way.
The street looks empty, but the things next door might spot you if you try it. If they see you, one of their crimson beams might find you. If that happens....
A huge crash from inside the house makes up your mind. You dive through the side gate into the back yard and flip over the slatted fence.
No sign of Bobby, your rear-neighbor pal. What's left of his house smolders, and you don't look in it as you sneak by. Better not to know.
Out on Bobby's street the coast is clear. You take off, heading for the park. The silent houses you dart by are all damaged; most are wrecked, charred shells. There's nobody around--not a living soul. No people, dogs, birds, insects. Nothing.
At the intersection with the next street, you duck behind an overturned pickup, careful not to squat in the gasoline pooled beneath it. The neighborhood runs deeper to your right, where more of your friend's houses are. No doubt those houses share the same fate as the ones beside you. You wonder if your other friends share Michael's fate.
To the left, the neighborhood spills out to the park road. Across the road, oleanders bloom, a profusion of violet dotting the hillside. You squint hard. Something moves among the flowered shrubs. A second dark shape trails the first, followed by another. The front wall of oleanders parts.
Three monster spiders skitter onto the road. Their bodies look twice as tall as you and have a pitch-black sheen, as if polished to a mirrored finish. Eight spindly legs angle above each spider's bulbous abdomen. The last spider bears a clutch of gray lumpy bundles underneath it.
"Psssst."
You freeze. What was that?
"Joshua, over here."
Off to the side, a face ducks back from shattered glass in one of the less damaged homes.
A reedy, chittering noise focuses your attention back on the spiders. All three rear up and flail their front legs at something unseen up the park road. In response, a tangle of yellow beams lances across each spider. Many of the beams reflect, veering off to the sides, igniting small fires in the vegetation. Some beams don't though and portions of the spiders explode in puffs of vapor and debris. The chittering becomes a maddening squeal.
"Hurry! Before you're spotted."
Through an open front door, a hand waves. You dash up the lawn and inside. The door shuts with a click.
"It's good to see you, Joshua." A skinny girl stands there covered in soot and filth, wearing a ripped tee shirt and bicycle shorts. Wavy, curled brown hair frames a pale face.
"I know you, don't I?"
"Allison. We had Mrs. Timberly's switch class together in second grade."
"Oh, yeah. Hi."
"Hi."
Another squeal comes from outside, closer, more frantic.
Allison grimaces. "Let's go in back." She taps you on the shoulder and you follow her into the kitchen.
"This your place?"
"Huh-uh. I live that way." Her head tilts toward the backyard. "Two neighborhoods over. Some old woman owns this place."
"How do you know?"
"Because she's out in the garage. Dead."
"Dead? Not turned into one of those... those things?"
"You mean the spiders and mutants?" She frowns at you. "They kill just as often as they change people. I've seen i
t."
"Yeah. One of the mutants tried to kill me earlier."
"Really?" Allison looks as if she doesn't quite believe you.
"Really. I'll bet my house is still burning."
You and Allison duck as brilliant flashes strobe through the kitchen window. A home in back erupts in a spray of fragments and flames.
She snatches your hand and pulls you down below the counters. Pots, pans, silverware and broken glass litter the floor.
"Joshua, can you get us out?"
"Huh? I don't even know what's going on."
"Seriously?"
You shake your head at her in confusion.
Her mouth drops open. She fumbles at her feet.
"Take this!" she screams, handing you a cookie sheet. She shoves past you brandishing a cast iron skillet.
Wham! Iron smacks tile.
You whirl and see Allison swing. Clang! A bar stool soars against the wall and splinters.
Up onto the counter, a spider jumps, a fist-sized version of the ones on the road.
"Don't let it spray you," Allison yells, aiming for another blow.
You raise the cookie sheet in time to deflect a stream of fluid the spider spits at your head. The stream ceases as iron slams on laminate.
"Kill it. Quick!"
The wounded spider plops at your feet. As you raise a sneaker, a chittering squeal erupts, piercing your ears. The sound ceases as its body flattens under your heel.
Allison flings aside the skillet. "Let's go!"
You race behind her through the laundry room into the garage. The body of an old woman lies on oil-stained cement, what's left of her. She has no torso, only bubbled chunks of residue where it should have been. Your nose burns from acid fumes.
"Come on, before more spiders show up." Allison ducks out the side door.
You follow her out and across the street that connects to the park road. Both of you slip through a yard to the back