The Bug: Complete Season One

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “We don’t need it. We were fine before it came along. We’ll be fine again once it’s gone,” Mark said.

  “She, Mark, and this is not funny. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but the joke is fucking over. Let me go right now.”

  Over in her crib, Immy began to cry. Abbie felt a scream of rage well up inside her. It burst from her lips as she brought one knee up sharply, driving it deep into Mark’s groin. He groaned and stumbled back, clutching his balls and looking like he might throw up.

  Abbie ran for her crying daughter, but before she could reach Immy, Mark caught her by the arm and spun her round. “You ungrateful fucking whore,” he growled, his face twisted into an expression Abbie had never seen before in all their years together.

  His fist hit her like a wrecking ball, spinning her to the floor. She landed awkwardly on the carpet, her wrist twisting painfully beneath her.

  By the time she’d rolled over, Mark was over the crib, reaching inside. “We don’t need it,” he whispered. “We don’t need it. These are the things a good daddy does.”

  Abbie was on her feet before she’d even thought about moving. Her arm drew back, and she was surprised to see the candlestick in her hand, swinging towards her husband’s head. It hit not with the hollow thud she’d been expecting, but with a nauseating crack that she felt more than heard.

  Mark spun around, hissing like a demon. He flew at Abbie, but her arm came up all by itself again and the heavy base of the candlestick connected just above his right eye. He staggered and fell, a curved line of blood already appearing where the edge of the rounded base had struck him.

  With a crash he hit Immy’s toy box, his forehead slamming against the side of the lid. A sound, like bubbling water rolled from between his lips. He twitched violently, then seemed to deflate into stillness. Abbie hesitated, fighting the instinct to check on him. Instead, she wrapped Immy in her blanket and pulled her in against her chest.

  She was half way to the door when she heard Mark stir. Without looking back, she raced out into the hallway and made for the front door. She had to get outside, flag someone down, get help, get away. Mark was clearly having some sort of breakdown, and much as she loved her husband, she’d kill him before she let him hurt their baby.

  The street outside was empty, and much darker than she’d been expecting. The street lights were out in both directions, but there were more lights on in the other houses than was normal for that time of night.

  Bare-footed, Abbie ran past the first house, which was in darkness. She hammered on the frosted glass door of the next one, where lights blazed in every window. “Please,” she whispered, knocking rapidly. “Please, someone be up. Someone be up.”

  There was a sound from somewhere inside the house. Abbie glanced back at her own front door and held the crying Immy close. There was no sign of Mark yet, but it was only a matter of time.

  A shape appeared through the frosted glass of the door. “Open up, please,” Abbie said. “I need help.”

  The flat of a hand slapped against the inside of the glass. There was a long squeak as the hand slid down, leaving a streak of blood on the door.

  Abbie stepped back as the hand became a fist and began to pound at the glass. The person inside the house squealed and screeched as he kicked and punched and threw himself at the door. Abbie backed away further, past the parked cars and into the road, watching the distorted shape thrash harder and more violently against the glass.

  “Abbeeeeee!”

  Mark staggered from inside their house, blood painting both sides of his face. He was partly hunched over, his fingers curled up like claws. As he spotted his wife and child, he lurched towards them, his mouth gnashing at the air.

  “No, please, Mark, no,” Abbie sobbed, backing all the way to the other side of the road. Mark broke into a run. His movements were jerky, his face now twisted almost beyond all recognition. Abbie clutched Immy tightly against her chest, shielding her. Whatever happened. Whatever Mark did, he wouldn’t let him hurt their baby.

  “No, Mark, please, stay back,” Amy whimpered, then she squinted in a sudden glare as Mark was silhouetted by two powerful beams of light.

  A white delivery van hit him like a battering ram, sending him skidding along the road on his face. For a moment, Abbie could only stare at his unmoving body in shock. But then his foot twitched and his fingers curled, and, to her amazement, he began to sit up.

  With a creak, the van’s passenger door was pushed open. A young man with dark skin and darker eyes leaned over from the driver’s seat and beckoned urgently to her. “Hey, lady,” he called. “You getting in or what?”

  SHOP WISE GROCERY STORE, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  24th May, 8:26 PM

  “Phone’s not working,” said Col, pushing through the swing doors that led through from the back store.

  “End of the world, dude. What do you expect?” said Jaden. He had moved closer to the window again, and was filming Wayne on his phone. The supervisor was currently punching the glass over and over, but if the last five minutes were anything to go by, he’d go back to mashing his face against it soon enough.

  “Holy shit, he looks like he’s been a car accident,” said Col. “Then got chewed up by dogs.”

  Col glanced at the phone. “You’re not really going to put that on YouTube, are you?”

  “Hello? Haven’t you been listening?” said Jaden, not taking his eyes off the screen. “It’s the end of the world. There is no YouTube. This bad boy is strictly for my own amusement.”

  “It’s not the end of the world,” said Col. He tried to laugh, but it was proving surprisingly difficult. “Power’s still on for one thing. OK, so the landline’s down and there’s no cell network. What else is wrong?”

  Wayne sprang forwards and his bloodied face hit the glass like a water balloon. “Except him, obviously,” Col said. “I’m the first to admit, he’s completely fucked up.”

  He studied the glass doors. “Think they’ll hold?”

  “They’ll hold longer than Wayne’s skull, that’s for sure,” Jaden shrugged.

  “Then what?” Col asked. “We go out and find, I don’t know, a cop?”

  “No, we pull down the steel shutters, lock the doors and hole the fuck up in here for the rest of our days,” Jaden said. “Even when the power goes out and the freezers stop working – and they will – we’ve got enough food and stuff to last us into our forties. And who the fuck wants to live to fifty anyway, right?”

  “That’s it?” said Col. He glanced back into the store. “That’s the plan?”

  “That’s the plan,” said Jaden, zooming in for a close-up as Wayne smashed his forehead against the window with a clonk. “We just need to grab one little thing first.”

  Col frowned. “What’s that?”

  “My mom.”

  “Shit. I forgot about your mom,” Col said. He bit his lip. “I hope my parents are OK.”

  “I know. Poor bastards,” said Jaden. “Give me the zombie apocalypse over a high school reunion any day.”

  They both recoiled and let out an “oooh,” as Wayne drew back and mangled his face, nose-first, against the glass.

  “That was a nasty one,” Col said. “That had to hurt.”

  “I know. It was awesome,” Jaden said, grinning. He leaned in and squinted at his screen, then up at the car park. “Wait, is that Joe?”

  Col stepped to the side so he could see past Wayne. “Shit, yeah. That’s Joe.”

  Crossing the car park was a white-haired man in a security guard uniform that looked to be at least two sizes too big. He moved at a snail’s pace, but for Joe that was pretty much full tilt.

  “Shit. We have to warn him,” said Col. He banged on the window. “Joe! Joe, don’t! Get away!”

  Joe glanced at Col, but kept coming. He was saying something, shouting across to Wayne, but Wayne was too heavily invested in the face-mashing to notice.

  “Wait, Joe’s got a gun, hasn’t he?” sa
id Jaden. Col shrugged. “He does. They gave the crazy old bastard a gun, can you believe that?”

  Jaden spun to the window and pointed to Wayne. “Shoot him in the head,” he shouted. “You hear me, Joe? In the head.” Jaden watched the old man hobble closer. “Did he hear me? He didn’t hear me.”

  Jaden cupped his hands around his mouth. “Joe, you deaf old bitch, shoot him in the head!”

  “What?” Joe shouted.

  Wayne turned sharply and Joe’s eyes went wide. “Oh great,” Jaden sighed. “Now he’s fucking dead.”

  The old man fumbled at his holster, but Wayne was already running for him, closing the gap between them in a frantic, frenzied sprint.

  “Shit!” Col spat. He hammered on the glass. “Wayne! Wayne, come back here! We’ve been taking extra breaks! We drunk your Gatorade!”

  “He’s got his gun! Nice work, Joe!” Jaden cheered. Joe had managed to pull the revolver free of its holster at last. He was halfway through raising it when Wayne pounced on him like a lion taking down its prey.

  The old man crumpled and hit the ground hard. Wayne caught Joe’s head in both blood-soaked hands and twisted, as if trying to tear the damn thing off. Joe hollered and kicked and flailed on the tarmac, his arms and legs jerking like a broken puppet.

  “What do we do?” Col yelped. “What do we--?”

  There was a flash and a bang from Joe’s gun and the window to Col’s left disintegrated. Col and Jaden ducked for cover as thousands of razor-sharp shards of glass rained down over the checkouts.

  “Oh fuck,” groaned Jaden, staring at the twelve feet by nine feet hole where the window used to be. “That’s not ideal.”

  Col shoved him towards the corner. “Get the hook,” he barked. “We’ll get the shutters down.”

  Jaden nodded and hurried to grab the long-handled hook they pulled the shutters down with. Joe was still twitching underneath Wayne, but only barely now. “Is he eating him?” Jaden asked, handing Col the pole. “I don’t want to look.”

  “I don’t want to look either,” Col hissed.

  “Well, someone should look,” said Jaden, but Col shook his head and fumbled with the pole, trying to catch hold of the metal loop to pull the shutters down.

  “Just help me get this.”

  “Oh fuck, I looked,” Jaden said, and something in his voice made Col turn, too. Wayne – to his credit – wasn’t eating the old man, but he had smashed Joe’s head against the road so often his shock of white hair was a dark shade of pink.

  Joe was still stirring, but faintly now. Col turned back to the shutters and tried to steady the hook. He didn’t turn again, not even when Jaden let out a sharp yelp and muttered something about Joe’s eyes.

  Finally, the hook caught on the metal ring. Col pulled down, but the rattling of the metal sheeting made Wayne turn. “Hurry!” Jaden cried, as Wayne launched himself into another frenzied sprint. Col tried to move faster and keep steady both at the same time. A sudden yank, he knew from experience, would make the hook slip.

  “Jesus, you’re like my fucking grandma!” Jaden yelped. He caught hold of the pole and tugged.

  “No, don’t!” Col warned, but too late. The hook lost its grip on the ring and slipped free. The shutter squeaked to a stop.

  Over his shoulder, Col could hear Wayne hissing and huffing towards them. There was no time to get the shutters down now. No time to do anything but run and—

  Jaden thrust the pole sharply past Col. There was a crack and a tearing noise that made Col’s stomach flip all the way over. The pole shuddered and shook for a few moments, then Jaden released his grip and it fell to the ground.

  “Oh,” muttered Jaden, looking down at the ground. “Shit. That’s nasty.”

  “Is he dead?” Col asked. “I don’t want to turn round.” He quickly turned round, but turned back before seeing much of anything. “Is he dead?”

  “Well, he’s got a five-inch metal hook sticking out through the back of his head,” Jaden said. “So yeah, pretty sure he’s dead.”

  “Jesus,” Col hissed. “So… what do we do now?”

  “We stick to the plan,” said Jaden. “We go get my mom, then come back here and hole up. Only difference now is…” He nodded over to where Joe’s body lay. “…now we have a gun.”

  GLASGOW NW POLICE HQ, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND

  25th MAY, 2:21 AM

  Marshall leaned over the reception desk, on the off-chance that someone was hiding on the other side. “Hello?” he called, when he found no-one there. “Anyone about?”

  “Where is everyone?” asked Leanne. There was a note of panic in her voice she was only barely managing to keep a lid on. The drive to the station had only been a mile or so, but it had been like navigating a warzone. She’d been relieved when Marshall had swapped seats with her, but had then spent the rest of the journey just staring in horror at everything going on outside.

  A lot of it had just looked like bog-standard rioting, although quite a lot more enthusiastic than usual. There was the run-of-the-mill looting, vandalism and arson happening on pretty much every street, but here and there she’d seen groups of people chasing individuals down. She’d always looked away before they caught up, preferring to imagine that the person being chased had somehow made it to safety.

  She’d expected the police station to be safe, but from the moment they’d entered she knew it wasn’t. She was filled with a sudden nagging doubt that nowhere would ever be safe again.

  The glass doors hung off their hinges. Furniture was upturned, broken or both. Smoke poured from the windows on two different floors, and while there was a lot of blood spattered across the walls and other surfaces, there was no-one – police officer or otherwise – to be found.

  “Martin? I said where is everyone?”

  “I don’t… I don’t know,” Marshall admitted. “Maybe they left.”

  “Left? What, all of them? They all just left?”

  “Maybe! Like I said, I don’t know, Leanne, OK?” Marshall snapped. He squeezed the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. “Sorry,” he sighed. “I don’t… maybe they’re upstairs.”

  He looked to the ceiling, then frowned. “No, wait.” His eyes went to the floor. “Let’s check the cells.”

  “Why the cells?” asked Leanne. “It’s cops we’re looking for, not prisoners.”

  “Safest place in the building,” said Marshall. “It’s like a vault down there.”

  He pressed the call button on the elevator. There was a metallic squeal and grinding sound from somewhere inside the shaft. Marshall shot Leanne a sideways glance.

  “Maybe we should take the stairs.”

  ***

  The basement level was in darkness. Marshall flicked the light switches a few times, as if that might somehow fix the fault. When it didn’t, he reached into his pocket for his mobile to use as a torch, then remembered it was back in the flat, still wedged under his mattress.

  Marshall backtracked up to the ground floor and rummaged in the front desk until he found a torch. Halfway down the stairs again, he heard Leanne whisper.

  “Ssh,” she urged. “Quiet.”

  Marshall tip-toed the last few steps. “What is it?” he whispered.

  “I heard something,” Leanne said. Marshall could only faintly make out her outline in the dark. She pointed towards where he knew the main cells door lay. Sure enough, if he listened, he could hear something, too. It sounded like…

  “Is that… is that someone muttering?” Marshall said. He clicked on the torch. “Sir? That you?”

  A circle of light illuminated the small square window in the door. A flabby, pock-marked face scrunched up in the sudden glare. “Fuck. Watch where you’re pointing that thing,” spat Detective Chief Inspector Hoon. “Marshall? Is that you?”

  Marshall approached the door. “Aye. Aye, it’s me.”

  “About fucking time,” Hoon snapped. “I told you to knock off early, no’ vanish off the face of the fucking Earth. D’you kn
ow how many times I tried to phone?”

  “I’ve a pretty good idea, aye,” Marshall admitted. He reached for the button to open the door, but Hoon’s sudden shout stopped him.

  “Don’t open it!”

  Marshall froze. “What? Why?”

  Hoon took a deep breath. “How fucked up is it out there?”

  Marshall glanced back at Leanne. “Pretty bad.”

  “Aye, well it’s no’ exactly been a bed of roses down here, either,” Hoon said. “Morrison’s dead.”

  Marshall blinked. “Morrison?”

  “Aye.”

  “Who’s Morrison?”

  “Fuck’s sake,” Hoon tutted. “Sergeant Morrison. You know. With the wife that got caught shagging her stepbrother.”

  “Sergeant Watson?” said Marshall.

  Hoon twitched with irritation. “Whatever his fucking name is. He’s dead.”

  “Shit. You sure?”

  DCI Hoon glanced back over his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure, aye,” he said. “If he’s not, it won’t be for want of me fucking trying. Now, about that button.”

  Marshall reached for it again.

  “No! I didn’t mean press it! Jesus. Listen.” Hoon took another deep breath. “There’s something in here with me.”

  Marshall frowned. “What?”

  “Bugs,” said Hoon.

  Leanne stepped forward. “Bugs?”

  “Who the fuck’s she?” Hoon asked.

  “My upstairs neighbor,” Marshall explained. “It’s… It’s a long story. What do you mean, ‘bugs’?”

  “I mean bugs. I can’t put it any more plainly than that. There’s bugs in here. A lot of bugs. If I was feeling descriptive, I’d go so far as to say it’s fucking hoachin’ wi’ bugs.”

  There was a long silence while Marshall waited for more. “So?” he asked, eventually.

  Hoon laughed to himself. “‘So?’ he says. So, we don’t want the bugs getting out there. Trust me on that.”