One of the gelatin bulbs landed at Wil’s feet and he crushed it under his shoe. The roach-lobster was squealing, thumping against the pillars of the bar as it tried to lunge toward its attackers. Its back was now fully aflame, its children turning into black, crispy curls, and what motions it could make were stumbling and jerky as it twitched with pain.

But the bar was filling with foul smoke and there were at least a dozen of those embryonic monsters. While the mother roach was fading, Wil knew that getting within reach of its long barbed legs would be a death sentence. This was to say nothing of the fire itself, which continued to spread by the second.

“Watch out!” Qadira shouted as Wil backed away. Something burned his calf and for a second he thought the fire had spread behind him somehow, but then saw one of the white-fleshed embryos stuck onto the back of his leg. Acidic pain burned from the meaty center of his calf as it chewed through his jeans and began eating away at his skin and muscle.

“Fuck!” Wil said and seized the creature with one hand and tore it away with a scream. A bleeding piece of his flesh hung from its tiny, black fangs, and Wil gagged at the feel of the creature as it writhed in his hand. It was fat, warm, and squishy, like a wet piece of leather filled with hot cottage cheese. He threw it against the exposed brick wall and it splattered apart with a wet gushing sound.

Blood ran down the back of Wil’s leg as he limped further toward the back wall. The smoke made it hard to see where the little embryos might be, but he heard somebody else cry out in pain and then something else splatted to his right. He had a glimpse of Kelly rushing forward to her now-dead husband. One of the roach-lobster’s arms shot out of the flame and smoke beyond and impaled Kelly through her chest with a wet crunch of her sternum.

She didn’t have time to scream, to do anything but gargle once and then be yanked off her feet and pulled into the fire beyond. Tyson wailed from somewhere in the back corner. Wil slid behind the bar, just behind Qadira. Matsuda, Steve, and Jenn were back there already. He could just make out the shape of Laura by the fire exit, holding Tyson back. Several of the embryos lay splattered behind the bar as well, and a few more were crawling toward them. Wil axed two of them when they got close and Matsuda used his hatchet on a third.

“The fire exit is our best shot,” Matsuda said. He flinched at a crash behind him. The roach-lobster had smashed through one of the pillars supporting the bar and the whole room shook. Wil glanced up as a crack appeared in the ceiling with a shower of dust.

“Shit,” he said.

“Someone help me with him!” Laura said as she continued to try and hole Tyson back.

“Let me go! Mom! Mom!” the teenager said. Wil jumped up, the cried out as an embryo drop onto his shoulder from above. He immediately tore it off and hurled it into the fire, but it still managed to rip his shirt and the top layers of his skin off. He ignored the pain and rushed toward Laura and Tyson, then clocked the young man square in the jaw. Tyson collapsed in Laura’s arms, and she grunted as she held onto him.

“C’mon!” Wil said as he grabbed Tyson’s feet and started to haul him back behind the bar with the others. The lobster roach screeched as it pulled itself forward on one leg. The others had either been injured or burned already, and the creature was clearly on its metaphorical last leg and well as its literal one.

But it was now close enough to swipe at all of them and its antennae stretched forward and waved in the air in search of any movement.

“Hatchet!” Wil shouted to Matsuda and the old man tossed the weapon handle first to him. Wil dropped Tyson’s feet, grabbed the hatchet with one hand, then seized the end of the antennae with the other when it came close. The roach-lobster fell to its shoulder, reared its deadly limb back, and then Wil swung the hatchet.

The antennae was no thicker than Wil’s thumb, and Matsuda’s hatched cleaved through the sensitive feeler as though it were nothing but a twig. More of the creature’s foul yellow, bubbling blood gushed out and hissed onto the floor, and it reared back in shock and pain and let out its most intense shriek yet. It lashed out, but only served to smash out another window.

“I got an idea!” Wil said to Matsuda as he pointed at Laura and Tyson. “Help her!”

Matsuda did a hunched run over to Tyson’s feet and hoisted them up while Wil threw an empty glass at the roach-lobster. It crashed near it and it swung its blind, burning face toward him.

“Hey!” Wil shouted as loud as he could and stood in front of the jammed metal fire escape. He threw another glass at it and it broke against its shoulder.

Its remaining antennae waved toward him and he grabbed at it, then planted his feet as he prepared himself.

“C’mon!” he shouted. The roach-lobster pulled its remaining leg back and Wil took a breath. There was a flash of movement and Wil threw himself to the side.

The roach-lobster’s leg slammed into the metal door with the sound of a car crash. The impact was enough to shatter its foot in a spray of cracked carapace and yellow blood. The door broke inward, off its hinges, and fell out onto a concrete stairwell with a bang. Wil fell to the floor as he felt a sharp pain in his side: the barbs on the roach’s legs had slit him open just below the armpit, deep enough to expose muscle and send a sheet of blood seeping down past his waist.

Qadira stepped forward past Wil, his axe in her hands, and swung it down in a vicious overhead arc. The axe didn’t so much cut through the monster’s leg as bash through its already weakened surface. A spray of acidic yellow blood sprayed from the amputated limb and Qadira cried out as it hit her on the forearm and hissed.

“Run!” Matsuda said as he hoisted Tyson onto his back. Laura had taken his backpack, and she followed after Matsuda out the fire escape. Wil got shakily to his feet and limped after them after he grabbed Qadira by her uninjured arm and pulled her through. Steve hobbled out after them with help from Jenn. Matsuda led them down the stairs.

“My arm, my arm, shit,” Qadira said as she cradled it. Wil glanced down and saw the yellow blood had devoured the long sleeve of her jacket and given her something like a moderate second-degree burn.

“It’ll be okay. We got…first aid…and…” Wil said and took a breath. He felt dizzy, and the stairwell spun.

“Jesus, you’re bleeding everywhere,” Qadira said as she looked at him.

“He’s falling!” somebody said behind Wil. He felt the stairs tip upward, wondered how that was possible, and then a sharp bonk on his head made the stairwell go dark.