Chapter 31: Cockroaches (6)

As Everly had guessed earlier, Diana and James were a couple.

However, not long ago, for some reason, they had a fight and broke up. In a fit of anger, Diana returned to her hometown and applied for a job as an art teacher at an elementary school, while James, full of regret, traveled thousands of miles to Lemot to pursue love.

When the street disinfection started, he had just gotten up and was buying coffee at a nearby café. By chance, he witnessed the entire process of the disinfection spiraling out of control.

At first, everything was normal. The disinfection team wore protective suits and carried manual sprayers, spraying chemicals in streets, alleys, and other public areas. Wherever they went, a large number of cockroaches scrambled out of their hiding spots in panic, only to be killed by the increasingly concentrated chemicals—they flipped over and lay still.

“I had never seen so many cockroaches come out at once. Even at the largest cockroach farm in the U.S., the Gensi-Mei Cockroach Farm, I’ve never seen this many cockroaches at the same time. The sight was truly disgusting…” James exclaimed, then continued.

“At first, the pesticides used by the disinfection company were very effective. Cockroaches would almost die immediately upon contact. However, as time went on, when the team began moving to the next street, people noticed that some cockroaches didn’t die right away after being sprayed—they started molting in place.”

“Molting?”

“That’s right. Cockroaches molt. Take the American cockroach, the most common species here, as an example: from hatching from the egg case to becoming an adult, they go through 5 to 13 molts. With each molt, their shape and body structure change slightly, and after the final molt, wings grow and they gain the ability to fly,” James explained to Everly.

“Are those fist-sized cockroaches the result of molting?”

“Yes. The molting process happens incredibly fast—much faster than ordinary cockroaches. In the blink of an eye, they complete a molt, becoming larger, stronger, and, importantly, the newly molted individuals gain resistance to the chemicals.”

At first, only a small portion of the group would molt; the majority still died. However, at some point, the number of cockroaches molting in the chemicals began to increase. Ten or so minutes later, people several blocks away even called in to report that cockroaches there had inexplicably started molting as well.

The pesticide gradually lost its effectiveness.

However, even though it could no longer kill the cockroaches, it remained highly effective at driving them away. The town’s cockroaches instinctively hated the smell, and wherever the exterminators went, the cockroaches would swarm and flee in massive numbers.

Taking advantage of this, the exterminators changed tactics, moving from chemical extermination to physical extermination—in simple terms, they started hitting the cockroaches.

This peculiar cockroach, with a V-shaped pattern on its back, was of an unknown strange species. It had no wings, was large in size, and its body was fragile—just a slight stomp or press could crush it. Unlike native cockroaches, whose flat bodies could withstand up to 900 times their own weight, making them nearly impossible to crush by foot.

“…During the physical extermination process, the cockroaches molted again. After this molt, they became noticeably bigger, with bodies tougher and more resistant to crushing. Their internal acids also changed from weak to strong. When people tried, as before, to stomp or crush them with heavy objects, they found that before the cockroaches died, their shoes and sticks gave out first.”

With each molt, the cockroaches grew larger.

With each molt, a flaw in their body was overcome.

“Just like how humans’ overuse of antibiotics eventually created ‘superbugs,’ every attempt by the extermination team, while killing some cockroaches, also allowed other cockroaches to evolve and become stronger. I suspect that these cockroaches release a special chemical before dying. If a large number of them die in a short period, the high concentration of this chemical triggers the population’s coordinated defense and evolutionary mechanisms, prompting other cockroaches to develop even stronger defensive abilities… In simple terms, the more you try to kill them, the harder they become to kill.”

The cockroach attacks began only after a few rounds of evolution.

According to James, this was probably because molting consumed so much of their energy that the cockroach swarm urgently needed massive amounts of food to replenish themselves.

“In short, by the time people realized what was happening, the streets were already in chaos. Everywhere there were injured people—bitten by cockroaches, corroded by their acid, slashed by their legs… In the areas with the highest concentration of cockroaches, I even saw a townsman bitten to death and eaten down to a skeleton. In just a few minutes, a living person… gone! That’s all I know. As for your question about the disappearing signal, I really have no idea about that.”

The conversation ended just as the truck reached the southernmost edge of the town.

Here, the cement road disappeared. Beyond it lay the yellow sands of the vast, boundless Lemot Desert.

Perhaps because more than one person had tried to escape into the desert, the end of the road was cluttered with cars parked in all directions, completely blocking the town’s exit.

The final stretch had to be crossed on foot.

All three of them put on the protective full-body aprons in the truck. Everly, being too small, couldn’t fit into the apron at all, so she tied the upper half of it to her chest with some strips of cloth. It looked quite ridiculous.

Fully geared up, the three opened the truck doors and stepped out one by one. No sooner had their feet hit the ground than a “scritch-scratch” sound of crawling erupted from all directions—on the road, walls, and even the vehicles. Areas that had been spotless moments ago suddenly swarmed with countless giant reddish-brown cockroaches, each about the size of an adult’s fist, with powerful jaws, thick limbs, and astonishingly fast movement.

“Run!”

Seeing the circle of cockroaches closing in, James shouted and pushed the two girls toward the desert.

“Cockroaches… cockroaches hate heat and dryness… as long as… as long as we reach the desert… huff, huff…”

Unfortunately, the least physically fit of the three wasn’t eight-year-old Everly, nor Diana the art teacher—it was James, a graduate student. After only a few steps, he was already gasping for air.

After all, this was not an ordinary run.

The road was littered with slippery cockroach corpses and all kinds of debris. Every step had to be taken with extreme care—to avoid stepping on the strong acid that could instantly corrode shoe soles, and to avoid tripping on the scattered obstacles.

Meanwhile, cockroaches nearby detected their presence and rapidly swarmed; new ones could spring out from anywhere at any moment. If one collided with you, it wasn’t too bad on the rubber apron—you could shake it off and keep running. But if one hit your face, neck, or other vulnerable parts, its sharp mandibles would pierce like knives, cutting through flesh and blood vessels. With bad luck, a person might even lose their life…

The further they ran, the denser the vehicles blocking the road became. Cockroaches covered the rooftops, windows, and doors. There were so many that they had to climb on each other, stacking like a twisted pyramid, crawling all over the cars. The writhing mass resembled maggots moving over a corpse.

When humans passed beneath them, these “maggots” had even learned to jump from high points, trying to use gravity and the wind to land on fresh, living prey.

“Watch out! Stay away from those cars!”

Everly, being small and light, and thanks to her encounter with the banshee, possessed a healthy, strong body. She ran at the front of the group. Just barely dodging a cockroach attack, she quickly shouted back to warn the others.

Diana, charging behind her, slammed on the brakes. James, unable to stop in time, collided headfirst into his girlfriend, almost pushing Diana—who had narrowly avoided the cockroach jumps—directly into danger again. Fortunately, Everly sensed the imminent threat, used her tiny body to press against Diana’s lower back, giving her a push. Only then did the three of them manage to stabilize themselves.

But even this brief delay was enough. When they looked up, they realized they had fallen completely into the cockroaches’ encirclement. To the left—cockroaches. To the right—cockroaches. Above and below, everywhere, cockroaches with open mandibles, ravenous and ready to strike. Far into the distance, more and more cockroaches kept pouring in…

This… was it? Today wasn’t going to end like this, was it?

A bad premonition rose in Everly’s mind.

Just as the three of them backed against each other, trying to think of a way out of the shrinking circle, suddenly, the cockroaches froze.

From the distant town center all the way to the outskirts, an invisible ripple seemed to spread at lightning speed. Wherever it passed, cockroaches—whether hiding, hunting, or running—stopped in unison. Like dominoes knocked over, they collapsed one after another, curling their six legs under their bodies, forming tight little balls, completely rigid, frozen in a strange stiffness.

In the blink of an eye, this rigidity spread to the cockroach ring surrounding them.

“W-what’s happening… why are they suddenly not moving?” Diana asked, dumbfounded.

“Don’t think about it, run now while you can!”

Everly shouted and dashed ahead, nimbly dodging the cockroaches scattered like landmines, racing toward the edge of the encirclement. After running a short distance, something felt off—she hadn’t heard any sounds from behind. Turning around, she drew a sharp breath in horror. The two main characters—James and Diana—were still there, one standing and the other crouching, foolishly staying in place, showing no intention of running.

“Are you waiting for them to start moving again so they can eat you?”

Everly thought for a moment, then dashed back, grabbing the edges of their clothes to drag them along. But James stubbornly refused to move.

“Look… doesn’t their body seem a little transparent?” he asked Everly, pointing at a frozen cockroach.

Everly glanced over and nodded vaguely. “Yes… and?”

“Their bodies becoming transparent, moving sluggishly, and the narrow cracks appearing on their backs—these are signs that a cockroach is about to molt. Look…” James said, while carefully pulling out a small knife from somewhere and lightly prodding the back of the cockroach.

At his touch, Everly finally saw a faint, hidden line appearing across the cockroach’s back.

Everly didn’t understand. “But you said they molt extremely fast, why aren’t we running yet?”

“Yes, their molting is extremely fast. Every time I’ve seen it before, it’s always over in just a few seconds, from start to finish, with no warning at all. But this time… all the cockroaches stopped almost simultaneously, and their bodies showed features normally seen only during molting. It’s incredible… my gut tells me this is important. I have to figure out why this is happening…”

Gut instinct? What a “gut instinct”!… For the sake of James being the protagonist, Everly decided to give him the chance to investigate. After all, countless horror movies had already taught her this: when the main character insists on doing something, never oppose them. Even if it seems completely absurd at the moment, the ending will always prove the protagonist is right…

“Alright, then… can we move just a little to somewhere that’s easier to escape from? Not far—just a few dozen meters that way,” she said, pointing toward the edge of the desert.

James nodded obediently.

So the three of them shifted slightly, crouching together, and continued watching as James examined the frozen cockroach.