“Evacuate!” he called when the workers by the water glanced over, when the fishermen pulled in their lines, when the men chomping on toothpicks at the helm of their ships peered down at him. “Evacuate now if you want to live. Move north!”
“Hey, come on, enough with the shouting!” A White Flower leaned over his ship railing. “What could possibly be—”
Roma aimed his gun, his stomach twisting hard. He fired, and when the bullet studded itself into the White Flower’s shoulder, the White Flower could only spit out his toothpick, his jaw dropping at Roma. Roma never missed.
“I mean it,” he said coldly. “Get yourself to the hospital. Everyone else—move, or I’ll force you into the nearest hospital too.”
They hurried. He wished they would move faster. He wished it didn’t take the threat of violence for them to do it.
A scream echoed through the Bund.
Roma whirled around, raising his gun immediately. “Get into the buildings!” he roared. All the ladies taking strolls by the Bund, the foreigners with the parasols, they stared at him with wide, frightened eyes, but they did not hesitate. The screaming was a signal of a real threat. Roma’s manner was confirmation of something incoming. The crowds surged inward, away from the water, and Roma searched desperately from where he stood—eyes scanning the multiple streets that fed into the Bund, tensing for the appearance of the monster.
“Move! Move!”
Juliette. He’d recognize her voice anywhere. And it was coming from the far road.
Roma ran, darting right onto the road and signaling for the cars to go backward. It didn’t matter if they honked and narrowly ran him over. He waved his gun and those at the front immediately tried to back up with a loud bang of their engines, creating a block as the cars behind tried to creep forward.
Satisfied with the gridlock, Roma turned his attention elsewhere. There was only one road between the water and the mouth of the intersecting street—one road and one long wharf, depending on which way the monster wanted to run, depending on if it would dive into the shallows where the fishermen’s boats were docked, or if it would move down the wharf toward the deep end. Roma strode backward, coming to a halt at the head of the wharf. Down the street, a blur of movement came barreling along the tram lines, dispersing dots of black wherever it went.
The monster.
“Okay,” he muttered. He lifted his gun. Aimed. Even if bullets did not penetrate its back, its front was still soft in the way humans were. “Enough is enough.”
Roma pulled the trigger.
The gun kicked back… but nothing came out.
He had no bullets left.
“Dammit!”
Roma tossed the gun aside, reaching into his jacket for his spare. A flash of movement to his side. Before he could retrieve anything, Roma turned just in time to sight Paul Dexter with his pistol raised.
On pure instinct, Roma ducked fast, barely avoiding a bullet to the head. He pressed his palms into the hard ground, looking around his immediate surroundings.
“Give up,” Paul hissed. In one hand he had his weapon, and in the other, a briefcase.
Roma didn’t humor him. He swooped for the nearest object—a wooden box—and threw it, aiming right for the face. With a yelp, Paul was forced to drop his briefcase, forced to almost lose his grip on his pistol. By the time he recovered, Roma had already reached into his jacket and pulled out his second gun.
Roma’s finger hovered on the trigger. He would have shot Paul, then and there, if the ground had not started trembling. If the world around him hadn’t suddenly started teeming with a flood of deadly specks rushing toward him en masse.
“No,” Roma whispered.
The monster had arrived.
* * *
“Move, move!”
Juliette pushed the woman down, narrowly saving her from the arc of insects that crawled by her food cart, panting hard. A group of people not three steps away collapsed in unison. The woman whimpered, her eyes wide.
“Stay there,” Juliette snapped. “Stay low, keep your eyes on the ground, and move when you see the insects, understood?”
The woman nodded, the motion fitful. Juliette bolted back up, searching for the monster once again. They had almost neared the Huangpu River, neared the final destruction that marked the end of a bloody, gruesome trail—or at least what Juliette hoped would be the end. The Bund was right ahead, upon the next intersection.
“No.” Juliette’s eyes landed on two figures right by the water, grappling with each other. Her eyes tracked the monster, tracked its trailing insects as they whipped in the direction of any victim it could find.