Peter Hubbard, wiping out his eyes, leaped to help his besieged colleague. Roaches were already tearing at her blistering legs, their mandibles peeling off the burned flesh easily, their teeth avidly chewing the soft, blood-­oozing tissues. Wanda Lindstrom slumped to the floor, moaning. Dropping beside her, Hubbard tried to pick away the storming cockroaches. He smashed a few, but many clung to the running wounds. For the moment, the gorging insects disregarded the man; the open flesh was easier to get at, and they were hungry after their long fast.

Wanda Lindstrom cried at him indistinctly, “It’s too late, Peter! Don’t let them get you!”

He still tried to aid her. The insect bodies became a moving blotch over her face. Hubbard tried to keep the roaches off, but he saw one already crawling up into her nose, others violating her ears, and both her eyes had been taken at the first assault. The woman kicked Hubbard away with her burned, torn feet. “Get out, Peter!” Her scream gurgled through globs of blood streaking her chin, running down her throat into the cleft between her breasts. The white lab coat was smeared crimson. He saw she was right.

Peter Hubbard started to fumble his way out, but was overcome with nausea. As he helplessly vomited, he thought how it was one thing to examine a chewed dog ear under a microscope, to hear of the abomination on Dickens Point, but it was intolerable to watch his companion choking to death because cockroaches were crammed in her nose and throat. It was one thing to dissect an insect-­lacerated rabbit and another to see these scurfy roaches drill into the body of his dear and cherished friend, Wanda Lindstrom.

Wanda could have escaped, Hubbard considered bitterly as he bent again in his vomiting. She could easily have made it to the door when that one roach had landed on his face. But she had stayed in the lab, gone for the boiling liquid, consciously risked her life to save him.

And he had been unable to save her. She lay still now, mercifully fainted or, better, quiet in the clemency of death.

Now, Hubbard realized abruptly, roaches were lurching toward him, attracted by the stink of his sickness. He had to save himself! He was Yarkie’s one hope for now. He looked about desperately for the dry-­ice tanks, then realized that in the haste of the men, the weapons had been left in the kitchen shed. Could he get out at all?

Not if the roaches could help it!