Gokiburi

Three shots rang out in the darkened building, deafeningly loud in the narrow corridor. Metal grazed metal and sparks danced into air, all but one missing the mark.

Squelch.

A horrible, viscous fluid sprayed out from under his boot as he brought it down on the monstrous insect, and Harry had to turn his head briefly in disgust. What should have been a sense of triumph was completely overwhelmed by the sickening crunch of exoskeleton. He dragged the sole of his boot along the grated floor as he backed away from the fresh kill, scraping off any remnants that he could. The things reeked—as bugs often do, if one was so unlucky to catch a whiff—an unpleasant musky smell. But this was elevated to the nth degree. The liquid that oozed out of them was a shade of sickly green. Not the semisolid, gooey bug guts one might expect from such a creature, if one had any expectations of gigantic cockroaches. They bled and dripped like any animal, any human would. Harry shuddered and waited for the queasy feeling to pass before adjusting his light and turning to confront the long, empty hallway.

He felt anger now, mostly at himself, for his panicky trigger finger, but also because of how fast these things were. While his marksmanship was still piss-poor, he had noticed some improvement in his first few hours of using a handgun. On some things, at least. The things he had not yet given a name: the short, grey things that lumbered through the halls, slow and noisy as they approached with fair warning, and the emaciated, mangy dog-like things, and even the screaming flying things. The air screamers.

But these roaches were difficult to lock onto, and indeed, seemed like a creation designed purely to waste precious ammunition. His first run-in had been with a pack of no less than three of them, and two danced circles around his feet at a dizzying rate of speed, while a third had the audacity to try and climb up the leg of his jeans, feelers twitching, legs scuttling, pincers snipping.

His mouth set in a grim line at the memory. They also happened to bite. And that one had.

I'll kill every single one of you bastards I find, he silently promised.

He cocked his head to the right and strained his ears. Thick swirls of fog rolled along the empty street, obscuring the view in either direction. James's grip tightened instinctively on the thin plank of wood he held in his right hand. There was a sound coming from up the road—he heard it for sure now. Something strange. Like a metallic high-pitched grind, combined with a whistling pop. It was growing closer, whatever it was...

And then it stopped.

He strained his ears again. Had it been another one of those brown straight-jacketed things? They shuffled along with a low gurgling that was now familiar to him, but he'd never quite gotten used to the screeching that they emitted once he'd dropped one to the ground, or the manic kicking that sent them flailing around at an unusual speed; and their tendency to fly out from underneath parked cars, sending him into a jolt of panic. No, this sound had been different.

He inched his way up the cracked pavement, staying near to the sidewalk and storefronts, and keeping the sound of his footsteps in check. A ghostly white van materialized up out of the fog, parked on the corner of the street. He gingerly dropped to one knee beside the back right tire, intent on getting the drop on whatever creature it happened to be.

"Aagh!" he screamed, and fell backwards in an ungraceful stumble. A giant, grinding, whistling cockroach had flown out from under the vehicle. He retrieved his dropped plank and bashed the thing into a dark stain against the road in a panic of repetitive blows.

Oh god, what next, he thought, clambering back up to a stand.

James had never been a fan of insects, particularly large ones, and now a new phobia was beginning to eat away at his already fragile mind. He imagined himself trapped in a dark, evil place, surrounded by hundreds of them. He shivered and banished the thought as quickly as he could.

Of course, nothing that horrible could ever happen. Right?

"DAD!"

Harry burst into his daughter's bedroom within seconds with a loud slam of the door. Few things ever got to him these days, but the one thing that could send him springing into action was the sound of her voice crying for help.

"Dad, oh my god, it's so gross!" she exclaimed.

"What is?" he demanded, feeling mostly relieved, though not without a touch of aggravation. From the tone of her voice, he'd half expected an intruder to be climbing in through her window at that very moment. Yet Harry had found only his horrified teenager, standing up on her bed, grasping a rolled up magazine and brandishing it like a deadly weapon.

"Look under the desk, it went under there!" She pointed frantically.

He snatched the magazine out of her hand and knit his eyebrows together in concentration. He lifted his leg and kicked the chair out from under the desk. A two inch long brown insect scuttled out from the shadows and made a run for it. Harry tossed the magazine aside and opted for his boot instead. It flattened the bug with a nauseating crunch.

"Damn, Dad," she muttered. "I mean, I thought you were just gonna trap it and take it outside. You know, like you do with spiders."

Harry glared back over his left shoulder at her with an intense stare, unbecoming of her normally calm and collected father.

"All roaches must die," he replied coolly. He turned and made his way out of the bedroom, pulling the knob and closing the door behind him.

Heather sighed deeply. She longed to move back to their old apartment on the outskirts of the city. At least the roaches there had been polite enough to wait until after dark before they went scurrying through the house.

Fin