Elisha, tall for his age of fourteen, looked out over Tucson from the loading dock at the back of the Tucson Storage and Refrigeration building that was now in quite a shambles.

What he saw was another Tucson entirely from the one he had known. Buildings were torn asunder and burning. Bomb craters littered the area. Every spec of green was gone and killer bugs covered the landscape for as far as he could see. Many more bugs flew over the city obscuring the normally bright sun and making it appear dark.

He stood for some time wondering where he could possibly go for help. Everything seemed in ruins and it didn't look like anybody was left alive. But something inside him relished taking on these bugs. He had seen their fear and they no longer scared him like they had.

So, he stepped down the steps from the loading dock and started heading for downtown Tucson which looked to be about four miles away. As he walked, he saw that many of the bugs were actually dead. Still others just laid there as if they had eaten way too much and couldn't move.

Some hissed at him. A few challenged him and ran or flew at him with their stingers pointed towards him, but he just whacked them away with his iron bar. He especially like stabbing the ones laying helpless on the ground and watching their faces twist before going blank.

This is too easy he thought. He had expected a bigger fight and was actually disappointed to not find it. And this just made him stab more of the helpless vermin.

But then he heard a voice. A person was yelling at him from a house.

"Help me!" he called. "Help me!"

He saw an older man stumble out of the wreck of a house, looking as if he would fall over at any moment.

"You must help me!" he shouted and then coughed up what looked like blood.

But the bugs flying over Tucson spotted him and in just seconds they swooped down, grabbed the man and quickly tore him limb from limb. It happened so fast that the boy could hardly believe what he was seeing. Bugs swarmed over each body part as they flew away with them and soon consumed them entirely. The boy didn't even see any bones drop to the ground.

The quickness and ferocity of the attack really scared the boy and he froze in his tracks. Would he be next?

He stood motionless for several minutes expecting the worse, but none of the bugs flying overhead seemed to notice him. Was it the man's shouting that did him in, the boy wondered. Was it his stumbling about? Was it the smell of his blood that did it?

The boy didn't know but the sight of those bugs consuming the man so quickly gave him the shivers and he wondered if he had made a big mistake. Maybe he should go back where his mom was and it was safe. But no, he had made it this far, so why not keep going? He just had to find help.

He walked more slowly now and tried to keep quiet. He stopped killing the bugs that were laying around and just headed for the downtown area.

As he got closer to the downtown area, he saw that most of the windows in the taller buildings were missing and twisted pieces of metal and wiring were hanging out. A number of the buildings were on fire or had already burned to the ground with just steal frames left behind.

Walking in the streets of the downtown area was like walking through a combat zone. Destruction was everywhere and the streets were filled with cars that had been smashed, often with their doors ripped off or with the windows broken out. But there were no bodies, no people, nothing. Human life was nowhere to be seen or heard, not even the dead kind. Only dead bug bodies lay scattered about on the ground.

All the people had been taken by the killer bugs and eaten, and this struck the boy as a deeply sad thing, something he wasn't accustomed to feeling.

As the boy walked, he tried to be careful where he stepped, trying not to make any noise, trying to avoid all the broken glass that was everywhere. But as he looked where step he started to notice something else. At first, he didn't think much about the little white stones he saw everywhere, but then a few caught his eye as he thought they looked like gold.

He leaned over to look closer at one and that's when he saw that they weren't stones at all. They were teeth. Hundreds and hundreds of them scattered everywhere. It stunned him because there were so many of them all over the streets. It was one thing to see all the destroyed cars, it was quite another to see that real people had been here and had been killed by the bugs.

It quite literally made his blood run cold. And for the first time in his life, he truly felt a deep kinship with his fellow humans, and his hatred of the bugs turned in a new direction; towards rage for what the bugs had done to *his* people, and towards revenge because he so much wanted them to pay for it.

But as he bent down looking at the teeth, he heard a sound. It was the sound of air rushing, but he couldn't see where it was coming from. He walked around listening carefully, and finally he tracked the sound down to a vent in the sidewalk.

He leaned over the vent and could feel the air being blown out. And he could hear other sounds. The sound of an engine running. The faint sound of people shouting about something.

People! There were others alive then, and he knew he just had to find them. He looked around to see where there might be an entrance to this underground area, and he figured it must be through the building that the sidewalk ran beside.

The door to the building looked like it had been pulled apart and he couldn't help but notice all the teeth that were in the lobby and everywhere else. He went in and looked for a staircase and then went down as far as it would go, but it just emptied out onto an underground parking garage.

He looked around but couldn't find anything, so he went back up and looked for another staircase. But he couldn't find anything and was ready to give up when he noticed something under a sign on a door. The sign read "Authorized Personnel Only", but it was tilted and he could see some other words underneath it. These words read, "Bomb Shelter".

This had to be it, he thought. But the door was locked. He banged at the door. Banged harder. But no one came. And perhaps they couldn't even hear him.

He ran out into the street, opened the trunk of a car and grabbed a crowbar. The crowbar didn't work as easily as he thought it would as he couldn't wedge it between the door and the frame, but he worked at it until he finally got it.

The door opened to a staircase that went down quite a ways and then came to another door that was also locked. This door, however, looked a lot sturdier and didn't look like the crowbar would be of any use.

But the crowbar could make quite a racket by pounding on the steel door and he didn't worry about making noises down here.

And then he heard someone else pounding and so he stopped to listened.

"We're full here. Go away!" the voice said at a barely audible level muffled as it was by the thick door.

"But I need help!" the boy shouted back as loud as he could.

"Go away!" the voice replied.

But the boy wouldn't and instead started pounding again on the door with the crowbar. He kept it up until he heard the door being unlocked, and then he waited as the door opened to see who else had survived the attack of the killer bugs.

A balding middle-aged man in a suit was standing there with a gun pointed at him. A gun had always seemed so harmless in the movies he watched, but this was different. It scared him to think he might be killed just because he was trying to get help.

The boy dropped his crowbar that fell clanking on the concrete as he and the man stared at each other.

"I told you to go away!" the man snarled.

"Look, I just wanted some help." the boy said noticing a number of other people looking on.

"I'm sorry, but we don't even have enough supplies to last us. You'll just have to go."

"I don't want your supplies." the boy said angrily, and then he softened his voice. "I just wanted help for my mom... she was stung by the bugs and is in pretty bad shape."

"She's lucky she's still alive! Now get out of here. We can't..."

But he was interrupted by a woman who looked to be in her thirties. "Hold on Roy. Maybe this boy can tell us what's going on out there."

"How'd he even get here?" another man spoke up.

"Yeah Roy," said an older woman. "If he could get to us, then maybe we can get out of here now. I'm sick of this place myself."

A number of other people started to talk at the same time to the man holding the gun who looked like he had had it with this group he had been stuck with.

"Alright! Have it your way!" he shouted and then stormed off.

The boy stood there not knowing for sure what to do.

"Come on in." said the woman in her thirties. "What's your name?"

"Elisha." he said but he could see they didn't get it. "My name's Elisha." he said this time more slowly.

He stepped through the door and into the underground shelter and that's when they caught a whiff of him.

"Eeww! You smell bad." the woman said. And then she saw something on his back, and her eyes grew wide.

"Bugs!" she yelled. "There's bugs on your back!"

A young man quickly pulled his shirt off and used it to wipe the baby bugs off the boy's back while squashing them as they fell on the floor.

"Wow! You must have had over a dozen bugs on your back!" the young man said. "Didn't you feel 'em there?"

"No. I didn't know." was all the boy could say.

"Weird! Look, my name's Jimmy. I'm glad you made it here. I really didn't think anybody could survive out there, but I guess you proved me wrong." the young man said as he put his shirt back on.

"Hi Jimmy, but I can't stay. I need to get help to my mom. Is there a doctor here?"

"No." the lady in her thirties said. "Nobody here is a doctor, but I used to work as a nurse. Maybe I can help. We even have first aid kits here. Do you think you could bring your mom here?"

"I don't know. I was hoping somebody could come and help her. Can't I take one of the first aid kits with me?"

"Well, I don't think so. We voted when we got here to keep all the supplies just for us, but if you can get your mom over here, I promise I'll try my best to help her."

She paused. "By the way, my name's Mary."

"Thank s Mary."

"And I'll go with you." said Jimmy. "If you can make it out there, then so can I. Anybody else want to have a look outside?"

Almost everybody else shook their heads and looked terrified at the thought of going where all those killer bugs were, but one other man stepped forward. He looked very muscular and quite able to handle himself. He also carried a shotgun.

"I'll go." he said. "I'm sick of hearing about those bugs. It's about time somebody went out there and squashed a few."

"Then let's go." said Jimmy leading the way up the stairs.

Elisha and the muscular man followed behind and then they heard the heavy steel door close behind them.

At least he had gotten help, thought Elisha. Maybe this wasn't going to be so hard after all.

~~~~

If you want me to continue this story, please review. Thanks so much... D*W*Cooper