Chapter 32.1: Cockroaches (7)

The rubber overalls they found in the truck came with gloves. Relying on this layer of protection, James held a small knife and inserted the tip into the seam along the cockroach’s back. With a forceful twist, like prying open a clam, the exoskeleton “cracked” open.

Inside the shell was the cockroach’s body, still wriggling like maggots—it looked extremely disgusting.

Cockroaches in the middle of molting were pure white, with only their two eyes pitch black, like tiny black glass beads. Without the protection of their shell, the body underneath was very fragile. A careless stab from the knife would pierce the skin, releasing a clump of yellow-white fluid. The sticky liquid smeared on the knife, easily corroding the stainless-steel tip into a pitted, uneven surface.

“Their acid can even corrode metal?” Everly shouted in alarm.

“It can, though not this strongly… they’re still evolving. You can expect that once this molt is complete, the acid inside these cockroaches will be even harder to handle.” James disgustedly poked the knife into the yellow sand, wiping off the sticky residue, then moved the worn, pitted knife back to the wriggling cockroach. He scraped away the obstructive fluid to expose the insect’s back.

“And look here,” he continued. “This wrinkled, mesh-like layer? That’s actually the cockroach’s wings, which haven’t unfolded yet. After it molts, its internal fluids will gradually fill the wings, inflating them. Once the wings harden, the cockroach will be able to fly.”

“You mean… after this molt, these cockroaches will be able to fly?” Everly exclaimed.

Although she had always thought cockroaches could fly, this particular V-spotted cockroach that had been terrorizing the town had never grown wings. Its attacks had only been sudden bites, which made Everly mistakenly assume that this type of cockroach was wingless. Turns out they weren’t wingless—they just hadn’t grown their wings yet.

James nodded gravely. He told Everly that he suspected the creatures people had been fighting all along were merely the nymphs of this new cockroach species.

“As I mentioned before, from hatching to adulthood, cockroaches have to molt several times. Among these, the final molt is the most important—it’s called ‘eclosion.’ After eclosion is complete, the nymph’s body lengthens further, wings grow on its back, and it gains the ability to fly. Most importantly, female cockroaches can mate just twenty-four hours after eclosion…”

He paused, then continued, “Under ideal conditions—plenty of food, suitable temperature and humidity—a single pair of American cockroaches can produce hundreds of thousands of offspring in a year. We don’t yet know the reproductive capacity of this species, since we lack sufficient samples, but I have a feeling… we wouldn’t want to know the answer.”

Everly understood exactly what James was getting at. Good grief—so this was a movie with a potential world-ending scenario? No wonder it was a bad movie; it really aimed big…

“So we have to kill them before they complete eclosion,” she said. “This is our last chance.”

“That’s right.”

But that raised a new problem: how long would the cockroaches’ eclosion last?

If it was brief, then running away would clearly be the better option—otherwise, once the molting was over, they would become the hunted instead. But if the process took long enough, there might still be a chance to rally the remaining survivors in town and act together, crushing the disaster before the cockroach outbreak fully exploded…

“I need a laboratory,” James said immediately, clearly having thought of the same thing. “I need to observe the rate of cell division in their tissues.”

Everly felt a headache coming on. Lemot was just a tourist town famous for its natural scenery—where on earth was she supposed to find a biological research lab?

“How about the elementary school’s science lab?” she asked without much hope. “They’ve got microscopes, beakers, Petri dishes, that sort of thing…”

To her surprise, James actually nodded. “That’ll be enough!”

Wait—seriously? That’ll actually work?

Although she felt this whole development was a bit childish, Everly, following her self-made survival rule of “stick close to the protagonist,” still followed James and Diana and climbed back into the battered truck from before.

The truck careened wildly down the road. This time, in order to kill as many cockroaches as possible, James ran over any insect in sight. No matter how strong the big cockroaches’ resistance to being crushed, they couldn’t withstand the truck’s weight. Everywhere the wheels passed, there was a crackling sound of exoskeletons shattering, and when the truck moved on, all that was left on the ground were pulverized insect remains.

Perhaps encouraged by this reckless style, some townspeople who had been hiding in their homes cautiously peeked out. Others—friends or relatives who had been bitten—seeing the cockroaches incapacitated, suddenly flared up with anger. Grabbing hammers, baseball bats, or other heavy objects, they began mercilessly smashing the helpless cockroaches on the ground.

The once-dead town unknowingly began to awaken.

James paid no attention to the townspeople around him. He drove straight at full speed to the wrecked elementary school building, climbed up to the third floor under Everly’s guidance, and carried the samples into the school’s laboratory.

Research was the protagonist’s job. Everly couldn’t help with that, so she first went outside the lab, grabbed a few cockroaches that hadn’t yet molted, and began experimenting to figure out the fastest and easiest way to kill them.

The eight-year-old girl, cute as she was, squatted there expressionless, methodically using various tools to torture and kill the creatures in front of her. Honestly, the scene was a little horrifying—like something straight out of a dark children’s storybook. Diana, the teacher, watched nearby, hesitating, opening her mouth, then stopping, unsure what to do. After a long moment, she finally said reluctantly, “Everly… put it down. Let me do it…”

“I need these, teacher. There are plenty more over there,” Everly replied, pointing to the nearby pile of cockroaches. She kept working, completely absorbed in her task.

Everly had grabbed the alcohol lamps and reagents from the student lab, the baseball bats and liquid glue from the hallway storage closet, and got knives from James. Beyond that, regardless of whether they’d be useful, she also brought soda, Fanta, and sparkling water—wanting to see if any of these drinks could damage the cockroaches’ tough exoskeleton, which at this stage was the biggest obstacle to killing them.

After testing everything, Everly discovered that fire was the most effective. The V-spotted cockroaches’ reddish-brown, resilient shells weren’t afraid of knives or bats; only under the blaze of flames did their structure become brittle. Once baked like that, breaking the shell was as easy as crushing a potato chip.

Encouraged by this scientific breakthrough, Everly collected a dozen or more cockroaches and ran controlled experiments—testing how long exposure to fire was needed to be effective, and whether the flame’s size made a difference…

Lost in her research, she suddenly heard the familiar roar of a car engine nearby, growing louder. After a moment, she stood up, leaned over the corridor window, and peered down. Sure enough, she spotted the familiar black modified pickup truck.

In the truck sat a white-haired old man, wearing a full combat suit from head to toe and a helmet. If it wasn’t Old John, who else could it be?!

“Grandpa! Over here! I’m here!”

Everly jumped up and down, waving at him from above.

“Oh, Everly… thank God you’re okay. Around noon, several people ran out of town and told me at the gas station that giant cockroaches were running rampant, biting everyone. I was worried sick, so I grabbed some weapons and came straight to find you…”

A few minutes later, Old John made it upstairs and successfully reunited with Everly. The two hugged briefly before starting to exchange information from their respective sides.

After hearing the survivors’ descriptions at the gas station, Old John immediately loaded up his weapons and drove straight toward the town. But at the town’s entrance, he was blocked by a sea of cockroaches and a massive traffic jam of abandoned vehicles. Left with no other choice, he detoured through the barren desert, enduring countless hardships before finally making it into town and reaching the elementary school.

He had originally planned to take advantage of the cockroaches’ temporary paralysis and lead Everly back the way he came. But after listening to his granddaughter describe what would happen once the cockroaches completed their eclosion, Old John changed his mind.

Huge in size, capable of flight, and possessing terrifying reproductive power—once cockroaches like that became a plague, they wouldn’t affect just a single town. The gas station was the closest point to town. If the problem wasn’t dealt with early, sooner or later his gas station—and the half a lifetime of effort buried deep underground beneath it—would be affected as well, turning the place into barren wasteland. That was something Old John absolutely could not accept.

“I brought gasoline. A lot of it. If we can gather the cockroaches together, we could douse them and burn them alive. I just don’t know if we still have time…”

“We do!”

James arrived just in time with his latest findings, excitedly telling everyone that according to his observations, during the eclosion stage, the cockroaches poured all the energy stored in their bodies into reshaping their structure and form. This process was different from their earlier molts—it was a more thorough, complete transformation. Because of that, from the start of eclosion to its completion would take at least three hours.

Everly was stunned. Could you really figure out this much using nothing but an elementary school lab? But then again, this was an obscure B‑movie (she firmly believed that if it were a good movie, she’d definitely remember it), and it was only reasonable for a bad movie to be a little unreasonable!

“The cockroaches all froze at 2:13 p.m.,” James said. “It’s been an hour already. In other words, we still have two hours to wipe out these mutated cockroaches.”

Two hours.

What could be done in two hours?

If it were just a few individuals, there wasn’t much they could do. But once the entire town’s living strength was mobilized, there was so much they could do.

The town’s communications network had already failed, but Old John happened to have a modified loudspeaker in his truck—something he’d brought specifically to find Everly.

James recorded a science briefing on cockroach eclosion and used it to rally the townspeople, urging everyone to use the last two hours to kill every cockroach they could see.

Everly added her own findings, telling everyone to use flames to char the cockroaches’ shells. Once the shells turned black and brittle, anyone could pierce them with a sharp object, killing the cockroach with minimal effort while avoiding being sprayed by its body fluids.

Then came Old John’s instructions. Before setting out, he had loaded the truck with eight 5-gallon (≈19 liters) cans of gasoline and a flame thrower—all to kill cockroaches. If there wasn’t enough fuel, townspeople could “collect” the cockroaches and bring them to the central square, where he would ensure they were burned en masse.

Once the long message was recorded, everyone went into action.

Diana, the art teacher, had the key to the elementary school’s broadcast room. With the recording copied onto her phone, she ran to the broadcast room, turned on the system, and looped the message at maximum volume throughout the school.