The Battle

The Battle

It’s becoming uninhabitable. We can’t stay here any longer.

“Let’s get out of here!” I yell to Sheila.

She is grabbing everything she thinks she may need, ignores my plea.

“Now, Sheila! They’ll be here any moment.” I yanked my backpack off the hook near the door, snuck a glance outside. “The King is sending squads around to check. Hurry!”

She finished rooting around, then ran to my side. “When did you hear that?”

“Helen told Mark who told Jane who told Harry who phoned Marcie. Does that really matter now?”

We rushed out the door to find others escaping. The milling throng ran toward a pack at the other end of Main Street. We were swept up, melded into the group. I glanced back to see the King’s squad marching down the street. A great green phalanx, with weapons drawn.

The invasion started in mid-July. It now encompassed all of the Western U.S. Great clouds of grasshoppers covered the land. No city or town, farm or ranch, escaped the hungry horde.

The leaders of the hoppers, King Klod Hopper and Queen Hedda Hopper, sent a message to the country from their Green Kingdom some weeks ago. “We are in charge. You are powerless to eliminate us.”

Humans now have a NoHopZone. That’s where we’re headed. It’s a desert area about twenty miles from here. No food for the hoppers there. At least that’s the story we’ve been fed.

We arrived at the NoHopZone to find nothing but shells. Empty shells of people, all their life-giving fluids sucked out. We turned with the other refugees to fight. We fought those hoppers with our sidearms, giant cans of insect repellent. As the slogan goes, “Raid! Tougher than bugs!”

Unable to go further, hoppers fell. Humans won, for now.


W/C 300