George Kinray was rushing every which way, stamping, jumping and slipping on the roaches he crushed. The children were in a turmoil. As they perceived the terrible threat of the insect onslaught, they raced away from the roaches into the sea. They were driven, without thinking, by a primal, elementary certainty within: The beach meant death now. The ocean held at least the promise of survival.

But the tempest on the waters seemed in conspiracy with the insect storm rushing out of the forest onto the sand. Just as the last of the children splashed to seeming safety in the ocean, leaving only the minister in a kind of rear-­guard action, a battering ram of a breaker roared in, shooting over the tops of the highest rocks, engulfing the children. It walloped them off their feet, and pulled them under in an overpowering, drowning maelstrom of colliding winds and tides.

Most of the drowned children were swept at once deeply out to sea, but the erratic waves tumbled some of the small, wracked bodies back on the sand. They lay still there. Like broken dolls, David Brockshaw thought dimly. His mind was reeling before the impossible sights. He tried to cover Kim’s eyes, but his small sister stood as if hypnotized and he saw that no hand could ever erase from her young soul what had already carved it with unforgettable horror.

The minister, still trying to protect his charges, lost his balance and, arms waving wildly, slid down beside the bodies already sheeted with the invading, boundless creatures.

David Brockshaw saw the insects attack his friends, some snaking over the small corpses, others flying for their eyes. Stains of blood appeared on every face.

The rampaging attack had been so swift, so unreal, that no one in the Sunday School group had comprehended what was happening. It was as if life had abruptly presented a new element, beyond earth, air, fire, and water—an element of havoc beyond imagining, beyond the mind.

George Kinray again struggled to his feet, drawing on the superhuman power of his despair and guilt. He was already blind, with his cheeks stripped away. He was only a bleeding skull, but he kept trying to lift the drowned bodies away from the reach of the roaches. The children dropped from his arms when the insects gnawed through his tendons and bit through his bones. He fell again, into a new pool of his own gushing blood.

The beach was soon red everywhere. Crimson patches stained the sand darkly and rivulets of blood channeled through the sand to the sea. The spreading foam left by each rising wave was pink with the blood of the ravishment of the corpses in the unholy necropolis.