Two of the creatures were scampering to cut him off. He snatched up a delivery van as he passed it and hurled it quickly—so quickly it flew low and almost hit him in the head as it blew past.
The crowd in the insurance company panicked. They poured from the narrow door, jamming one another, cursing and screaming.
A boy slipped, caught himself, but the delay was fatal. A bug speared him with a leg and swept him into gnashing, slashing mouthparts.
“Oh, no, no, noooo!” the kid screamed. The sound died suddenly, replaced by a noise like a garbage disposal chewing up chicken bones.
Caine ran down San Pablo with the kids pelting behind him and the swarm was forced to funnel into this more narrow space.
Things had gone from bad to desperate far faster than Caine could have imagined.
A second kid was caught by what looked like a black frog tongue firing from a bug’s mouth. She screamed as the bug reeled her in.
Caine stopped in the middle of the street. Shaking all over. Jaw clenched. He couldn’t outrun them and this was as good as any place: middle of the block so he couldn’t be attacked from the sides, at least.
The insurance company crowd splintered, kids rushing in every direction, all of them screaming, some beating helplessly against locked doors and crying to be let in. Others scrambled over fences into backyards.
Caine raised a parked car and hurled it, then another, another, three cars in rapid succession. It was like a pileup on a freeway, crashing, smashing, glass spraying, side mirrors popping off, rims rolling down the sidewalk.
His furious counterattack may have stopped or even killed some of the bugs—he couldn’t be sure in the darkness—but the swarm never hesitated. Up and over they rolled, like a wave.
Shaking, he stood his ground and raised trembling hands. If he couldn’t smash them maybe he could just hold them back.
The nearest bug slammed into an invisible wall of telekinetic power. Its legs motored madly, tearing gouges in the blacktop, kicking the smashed cars, but unable to advance.
“Yeah, try that!” Caine yelled.
A second, a third, a fourth creature, all pressed against the barrier, all relentlessly scrambling, pushing, determined. And all the while, Caine stood alone in the middle of the street.
But for how long? he wondered. The bugs didn’t seem to be tiring. In fact they were scrabbling over one another in a mad tangle of legs and massive silvery carapaces and scythe-mandibles and always the gnashing mouths and glowing ruby eyes.
He faltered, seeing those eyes, and suddenly the wall of bugs surged a foot closer.
He redoubled his focus. But he was feeling something he’d never felt before when using his power: a physical push back, as if he was holding them back with his muscles as well as his telekinetic ability.
Without thinking, he had set his feet in a strong stance, and he could feel the weight on his calves and thighs, even more on his arms. He wasn’t just projecting power as he always had, he was pushing back, at the limit of his powers, being pressed by thousands of pounds of thrust from dozens and dozens of stabbing legs.
They were just twenty feet away. Piling high against the invisible barrier. With a terrible shock he realized they were climbing over one another in a deliberate effort to get over the top of the invisible wall of energy.
Then, a far worse shock: some of the creatures had come around Golding Street and were rushing him from behind.
He switched his pose, one hand for the mass of bugs, one for the onrushing attack. But it would not do. He couldn’t hold them.
“Should have stayed on the island,” he told himself. He had gambled and lost.
The two invisible walls were closing in. He was holding back tons of pushing, questing monsters and he couldn’t do it, could not. He just did not have the power. And once he broke, they would be on him before he could blink.
“Hey! Jerkwad!”
He glanced toward the sound. Standing, arms akimbo, atop the flat roof of a two-story apartment building, was Brianna.
“Come to gloat?” he managed.
“See the front door of that house?”
“What?”
“That’s where we’re going.”
“No time!”
“No time,” Brianna mocked. “Please. Just go limp.”
“Go limp?”
“Yeah: limp. And oh, by the way: it’s going to hurt.”
He never saw her move but he felt the linebacker impact as she hit him at blazing speed.
Caine went flying. His shirt was ripped from his back. He spun crazily and fell hard onto the lawn. The bug armies crashed together like two waves behind him. Like the Red Sea closing behind Moses.
Caine tried to stand, but already there were hands on his back pushing him, propelling him forward at insane speed. He hit the doorjamb on his way through. The bugs swarmed toward the door but it had already been slammed, locked, and barricaded with a chair.
Brianna stood in the middle of the room, examining her fingernails with theatrical calm.
“The whole superspeed thing comes in helpful at times,” she said.
“I think you broke my back,” Caine said. He felt sharp pain in his ribs. But it was very much better than the alternative.
The door exploded inward and a tangle of bug legs appeared.
“I can hold them, but I can’t kill them all,” Caine shouted.
“Yeah. They’re hard to kill. You got a plan?”
Caine bit savagely at his thumb, worrying the cuticle. They were surrounded. The very walls were being battered. The windows were all smashed. They couldn’t fit through the door but they would soon make it wide enough.