There were roughly five seconds that stretched into hours where Wil hoped, prayed, bargained, and begged that the steel shutter on the window would hold. He thought maybe the whatever-it-was outside was just scuttling its way across like it had been on the hotel. It had giant monster-bug business to attend to and it was going from A-to-B to get it done, nothing more. No need to stop at some random building and search for survivors.

The shutter creaked and bent in further.

Wil’s breath stopped in his throat, refused to inch up his windpipe another inch for fear of giving the creature outside something to home in on. His hands trembled as he gripped his gun, and he had to force them steady with conscious effort to keep the barrel from waving all over. He at least had the foresight to keep his fingers off the trigger: he didn’t dare trust himself not to accidentally fire a shot in panic and…

And the shutter creaked again.

And bent.

And a shutter snapped in and silver-gray daylight sliced into the room with the finality of a dagger.

The hours of seconds condensed very quickly then, making up for lost time.

The whole shutter was smashed in by a seven-foot-long foreleg that glistened the same color as polished redwood. It was sleek on the front, but barbed on the back and at the tip of a dainty foot that reminded Wil of stiletto heels. The metal shutter crashed against the back wall and clipped Steve on the side as it flew past. He fell to the ground with a shout of pain and surprise and Jenn screamed.

The rest of the creature’s leg entered, well over twelve feet in length as it unfolded, and then it poked its head in. It was, as Wil feared, the limosine-sized roach-lobster from before. It’s blind, angular head jabbed into the empty bar, and the wavering tendrils that composed its mouth widened to reveal a circulating hole of a mouth ringed with barbed suckers. It screeched and began to squeeze itself through the wide, broken window, but was having trouble getting its body to fit.

Wil didn’t waste the opportunity.

He put his finger on the trigger and squeezed.

The bang inside the confined space of the bar was loud, and made Wil’s ears ring. There was a spark of light across the roach-lobster’s head as Wil’s shot ricocheted off its carapace. It screeched again as Matsuda shot it once with his rifle. Its carapace cracked and there was some bubbling yellow goo that welled up out of its head, but little else.

The shots only fueled its scurrying effort to get inside. Its long antennae waved about as it lashed its blind head from side-to-side and forced its upper body and another two legs inside. Wil had only now become aware of Kelly and Qadira both screaming. They, and Tyson, had moved into the back corner, making themselves as small as possible.

Qadira was at the metal door to the side of the bar, the fire exit, desperately fighting with a handle that was stuck somehow. The roach-lobster was crawling in through the window, its long legs stretching into the room, between them and the entrance down the stairs.

“Fucking freak!” Gregg said and threw a heavy paint can at the roach-lobster. It struck the creature on the side and bounced off uselessly. Wil holstered his gun. It was useless and he was afraid he would shoot somebody. Matsuda fired again, aiming for the creature’s open mouth. His first shot missed, but the second hit, and it screamed in obvious agony as thick gobs of that yellow fluid gushed out.

It learned quickly though, and lowered its head as one of its legs lashed out toward Matsuda. It still wasn’t in far enough to reach him, but its legs were long enough that it wouldn’t be an issue in another few moments.

“Move!” Qadira screamed, and orange light blossomed behind Wil. She had taken a rag from the counter and a bottle of liquor from the shelf, and made herself a Molotov with a lighter she pulled out of her pocket. The rag at the top of the bottle flickered with the comforting fire, and then Qadira threw it, a leisurely arcing comet that lit the bar as it soared across the empty space.

The bottle shattered with discordant music across the back of the creature as it forced more than half its body inside. The small glow of the flaming rag blossomed into a bonfire of liquid light as the alcohol ignited. For a moment, the fire appeared to have no affect on the creature: its armor was as strong against flame as it was against bullets.

Then the burning liquor splashed and slid beneath the seam of the shell, and onto the glistening bulbs and their squirming embryonic cargo.

The roach-lobster’s thrashing turned from angry to panicked. It was a seizure of pain and fury that caused it to snap one of its own legs off: it embedded the sharp point of its foot deep into the hardwood floor, then lashed its body to the side and snapped the armored limb off at the knee. Yellow fluid gouted out in a foul, bubbling spray that hissed as it hit the floor in larger chunks.

“Yeah, fucker!” Gregg yelled and already had another Molotov ready. Qadira lit it and Gregg hurled it at its back. The makeshift weapon struck just as the seam along its shell was opening and the glass and liquid fire flooded across its vulnerable cargo.

Wil backed away against the wall, only stopping to help pull Steve away along with Jenn. He took his eyes off the roach-lobster to check on the young man and his wife when he heard Qadira scream again, followed by a splat.

“Damn!” Matsuda said.

A glob a gelatin the size of a cabbage had struck Gregg in the face. At the center of the quivering glob as a shape: it resembled a shrimp, all white flesh curled into an organic comma, except it had a number of tiny black barbs near its top.

Like teeth.

Gregg’s scream was muffled but intense as the pale creature inside the gelatinous bulb of goo gnawed at his face with inhuman voracity. The transparent gelatin turned opaque, vibrant red at once, and blood gushed out from the sides of the gelatin bulb and down the front of Gregg’s shirt. He fell to his knees and began writhing in agony as the embryonic form devoured him from skin-to-skull.

Wil swung his axe like a golfclub, only briefly stopping to worry about hitting Gregg with it before he thought that honestly, if he had to choose between getting his face devoured by an alien grub or getting an axe to the head, he’d take the axe.

Gregg didn’t have to take the axe, and Wil swung true. His axe bit through the gelatin with ease and connected with the meat of the grub within, cutting through it even as the blade pulled it away from Gregg’s face and sent it smashing into the wall with the sound of a rotten tomato hitting concrete. Its pale yellow guts burst out of it in a visceral explosion and it fell to the floor with a lifeless plop.

Splat!

Splat!

Splat!

The roach-lobster had gotten one half of its shell raised up enough and was flexing unseen muscles in its back to launch the squirming young it carried across the bar, away from the fire that was burning its young and itself. Gregg twitched on the floor, a halo of blood around his head. Wil had a brief glimpse of his skull.

Not his face. His skull.

His face was in that grub’s stomach, and its stomach was on the floor. Gregg was now naked, bloody bone from the middle of his forehead to his upper lip. The grub had gnawed his upper gums and teeth away, his nose, his eyes, and all the skin in-between. Gregg’s mouth hung open, blood gargling in it as he attempted to scream, made even more difficult by his lack of a tongue.

“Nooooooo!” Kelly wailed.

“Look out!” Matsuda said as he fired a single shot at one of the gelatin bulbs that had landed near Jenn. She flinched and screamed as Matsuda blasted the grub as it lunged out of its casing toward her. The other two had hit the far wall, one near the ceiling and the other near the fire escape. The roach-lobster was still squirming into the building as fast as it could and firing off more of its ravenous young in any direction, anything to get them away from the fire that consumed it.

“Fuckers!” Qadira said. She was sobbing, but it didn’t affect her aim any. She based the grub near the fire escape with her crowbar. Tyson had put himself between the grubs and his mother, holding her back as she tried to lunge toward her dying husband. Steve finally got to his feet and made another Molotov.

“No!” Don’t throw any——” Matsuda started to say but Steve had already thrown it. The hit from the shutter to his side must have messed with his aim, because the Molotov went wide and only hit the floor in front of the creature. Granted, it slowed its advance and caused it to back away, but it also further blocked them from the exit.

“Stop!” Matsuda snapped and took out his hatchet. He whacked a grub that was skittering toward his foot, then backed away toward the bar.

Splat!

Splat!

Splat!

Splat!

More of the ravenous fetal abominations. At least a couple dozen now, some still in their gelatin bulbs oozing down the walls, others scuttling across the floor or dropping from the ceiling. The roach-lobster itself had finally managed to fully enter the bar and screeched in triumph and pain and fury as it and its young burned. There was no doubt that it would fry.

The question was whether or not Wil and the others would too.