She shrieked and shoved Jeremy back. “Put your seat belt on, idiot!”
He did, his eyes wide. The few times Dad had ever driven like that, Mom had screamed at him and made him stop the car, but now she was just looking back at Jeremy to make sure he got the seat belt fastened.
The tires screeched as they made the left at the subdivision entrance. Jeremy felt himself sink into the seat back as Dad accelerated toward the interstate.
Mom spoke through gritted teeth. “We’ve got to
Dad blew air through his nose and slowed down slightly. The telephone poles were flicking by faster than Jeremy had ever seen, but there were no lines between them. Curling pieces of black insulation littered the ground and the side of the road.
Short of the interstate, Dad hesitated. “Last news report seemed to say it was spreading from Phoenix but it was worse in New Mexico. I think we should take 86 and 85, then join up on 8 and make for San Diego.”
“What about Mexico?” Mom said.
Dad shook his head. “No. They’re shooting people who try to cross. It’s stupid. The bugs travel all by themselves. It’s not going to help.”
“Do we have enough gas?”
Dad shrugged. “Maybe. There’s fifteen gallons in the jerricans.”
Gas wasn’t the issue.
Maybe Dad thought there’d be fewer bugs on that route because there were fewer people. Fewer people, less metal, but he hadn’t counted on the industrial park just west of San Pedro Road.
Mom muttered, “Where did they come from? Why are they doing this?”
You could see the frameworks of the buildings, but the skin, the painted steel sheets, were like Swiss cheese. Closer, at the side of the road, there were irregular mounds shimmering in the sunlight—silver, gold, copper, rust, all mixed with iridescent blue.
They didn’t slow down, but even going by at speed, Jeremy could see that the mounds weren’t still. They undulated and shifted, exposing the odd windshield or tire or plastic fender liner.
There was a crunching noise under the tires, and suddenly the air was full of iridescent wings.
It was like driving through a hailstorm. The bugs banged off the hood and the windshield and the roof. Dad took his foot off the pedal for an instant.
“Jesus!” Mom said. “Don’t stop! They’re not sticking.”
And that’s what they thought for another ten minutes. Then the bugs began edging over the front of the hood from the very front of the car. The grille had been scooping them up like a catcher’s mitt. You’d think that when they’d enter the slipstream on top of the car they would’ve been blown off, but they weren’t. They pressed their dark blind heads against the hood and stuck.
“Maybe we should get out?” Mom asked.
Dad tilted his head to the side. Through the rearview mirror Jeremy saw his eyes darting around. “Let’s get as far as we can.”
A few minutes later the radio antenna came off near its base and, several bugs still attached, clattered across the windshield, bounced once off the trunk, and was gone. Now the hood was covered and the bugs were climbing the roof struts on either side of the windshield. The left windshield wiper came off, and then the roar of the engine abruptly died, and everyone surged forward against the seat belts as the car slowed.
“They got the ignition,” Dad said, putting the car into neutral. “When I tell you, get out of the car as quickly as you can and run off the road.”
The car was on a downhill stretch and it wasn’t slowing much. Jeremy thought that was good. There weren’t as many bug mounds by the road, and the car was clearing the industrial park. The only bugs he could see were a small group eating a mile marker and the ones on their car.
Mom screamed, “They’re coming through the dashboard!”
They weren’t, really. There were a few crawling out of the plastic A/C vents. They began eating the metal radio trim. More crawled out, and she said, “Get me out of this car, Peter!”
Dad licked his lips, then nodded. Jeremy saw his body shift as Dad said, “The brakes are gone! They’ve eaten through the hydraulic lines!” Jeremy heard the ratcheting of the emergency brake, and the rear tires screeched. The rear end broke loose and slid. Dad steered into the skid, but with the engine dead, the power steering was no help at all.
They came over a rise, and saw the remains of another car—plastic, carpet, and tires in a jumble. Beside it, a cluster of turkey vultures were clustered around something dead. Rather than hit the wreckage, Dad headed toward the vultures. He tried to honk the horn, but it wasn’t working. As the car bore down on them, the birds jumped into the air, revealing their meal.
Mom screamed and Dad swore, swerving again to avoid the dead man, and the wheels caught the shoulder.
It wasn’t much, but it jerked the car around and it went off the road, bounced into, then out of, a ditch, and then plowed through a stand of prickly pear cactus and yucca, out into the desert.
The car came to a stop in a cloud of dust. Dad was bleeding from a cut on the side of his head, and his side window was shattered, but he just said, “Okay?” looking around. Then, “Out, out, out!”
There was dust swirling around the car, but it had cleared the worst of the cactus. Jeremy scrambled through the door and backed away from the car.
Dad was doing something with the dashboard, but he finally scrambled out, brushing at his pants leg. Bright copper flashed and fell to the ground. Dad reached into his pocket and threw something from him. It glittered as it passed over the hood of the car. Several bugs lifted into the air and followed it.
Jeremy looked at Dad’s leg. Where his right pants pocket had been, the cloth was riddled with holes; and there was blood spotting the white tatters that had been the pocket lining.
Mom and Laurie were standing on the other side of the car, near a hoary old saguaro. Mom had taken her cell phone out of her purse. Jeremy don’t know what she thought she was going to do. The cell towers had been the first to go. She turned it on, though, to try to acquire a signal, and the bugs rose up and headed for her.
Laurie screamed, and they both ran.
Dad yelled, “Get rid of the phone!” over and over again, running after them, wide around the swarm.
Mom must’ve heard him finally, for she tossed it off to the left and veered right.
The bugs followed the phone.
Mom and Laurie dropped, exhausted, onto a stretch of sand between the cholla. There was blood on their legs from the mesquite and cactus they’d torn through, and Laurie had a segment of jumping cholla stuck to her knee.
Jeremy paled when he saw that. Jumping cholla is a kind of cactus with nasty barbed spines. They stick all too well. You snag one on your shirt, and a branch segment breaks off in a banana-size chunk, and the recoil usually embeds twenty or so spines in your skin.
And since they’re barbed, they don’t like to come out.
Mom took a large comb out of her purse and held it behind her back toward Dad. He took it and held it low, where Laurie couldn’t see it.
Laurie’s eyes were wide, and she was hyperventilating through clenched teeth.
“Easy, easy,” Dad said. “Oh! Look what the bugs are doing to the cell phone!”
Jeremy knew that was bullshit. There was lots of brush between them and where the phone had landed, but Laurie turned her head, and Dad slipped the comb down between the cholla segment and the cloth of Laurie’s jeans and
Jeremy ducked. When the barbs let go, the chunk flew thirty feet, whizzing past his hair. Laurie screamed once, and then Mom was holding her tight and rocking her.
“Gotta get the water out of the car,” Dad said. “I tried to pop the trunk before we got out, but the switch wouldn’t work and my keys are still in the ignition.” He took Mom’s purse and dumped it out onto the sand.
Mom’s keys—a jangling tangle of keys, souvenir key dangles, and the keyless remote for the car—were there. There was a also a small pocketknife, a metal nail file, and a pair of nail scissors. And a mountain of change.
“Shit!” Dad looked around wildly. There were bugs in the distance, but none near. He began scraping a hole in the sand and pushing the change into it.
