CICADA!, page 6
“Sir, we need you to follow Agent Jamieson to the missile capsule. And then we will get you safely to Omaha to take command of the situation. You will need to address the nation and try to bring some calm to the growing panic now moving from East to West. We already have the Vice President safely moved to the Presidential control center in Cheyenne, Wyoming”.
“Fine, I’ll go. Have a full briefing for me when I land in Omaha. For now, let us go to DEFCON 2 so that no nation thinks that we’re vulnerable to their attack.” said the President. “And let us put our navy to sea. I’ve already seen the reports of the deadly cicada attacks on ships docked in Norfolk, Virginia”.
“Your orders will be executed,” said General MacLean. “Safe travels, Mr. President.”
With the President having left for the missile capsule, General MacLean turned to his experts. “Let’s hear from Professor Sheila Mathews on what she knows about these cicadas.” Professor Mathews, the nation’s leading etymologist, rose from her desk, shown on the video screen. She was known as the bug lady in academic circles because of her encyclopedic knowledge of every insect that crawled or flapped its wings.
“Let me recap, so all of us are on the same page. These giant cicadas are mutations of the insects that come up from the ground anywhere from seventeen to twenty years. They have been below ground for years and should still be sucking on the sap from tree roots. Instead, these cicadas have apparently been feeding on a toxic soup of fracking fluids and the chemical waste that has been dumped for over a decade in quarries, mines, caverns, and other available underground sites. That accounts for the deadly, acidic green slime they spew when attacking.
Typically, the young nymphs will gradually dig tunnels with their legs through the soil and eventually come out of a mud cone they build. The bugs normally exit the mud huts and climb nearby trees to molt. The males would soon emit an annoying buzzing sound to attract females that flick their wings in sexual interest. They will mate, and each female will lay a dozen eggs or so. After about six to ten weeks, the eggs hatch, and the nymphs burrow their way back into the soil. After creating their offspring, these adults will die off after four to six weeks, and then the cycle repeats itself many years later. They have always been relatively harmless to human beings.
However, with these carnivorous mutants, we must throw what we have known about these bugs out the window.
We have heard of mass cicada sightings all up and down the eastern seaboard. Cicadas historically have confined themselves to New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, the Carolinas, and Georgia and Midwestern states like Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Their numbers are hard to comprehend. You could find one and a half million of the “old” cicadas on just an acre of land. What we have witnessed, is nine-foot cicadas emerging from the ground in the hundreds of thousands with no end in sight. And they are not moving into trees. Instead, they are moving on the attack by land and air with incredible violence against humans. We are witnessing angry giants who seem hell-bent to kill and devour everything in front of them. They have apparently developed an incredible sense of smell that they are using to find every living thing in their vision.
The initial crater eruptions and attacks by these nine-foot insects have been in and around chemical dump sites.
Unfortunately, many were situated on the outskirts of major cities and population centers. At the same time, the cicada’s sheer size forced them to burrow well outside of their normal locations.
This underground migration has been aided by fracking fissures, especially in Pennsylvania, which has created a network of cracks below ground that provided new entry points for the tunnel construction and movement of the bugs.
The insects themselves are literally crawling chemical bombs. Their blood is saturated with these poisons. The chemical mix has also given them a potent weapon in their acidic venom with the incredibly powerful corrosive abilities we have seen. Their bodies have grown a protective muscular cover stronger than Kevlar, which is why most ammunition has proven ineffective in killing them. Their heads are the only real kill zone. But when they explode, it is like releasing a pressure cooker with the acidic bodily fluids erupting.
Right now, we are seeing the insects in their awakening and feeding phase. The feeding frenzy you are seeing is the first step. The bugs will also be coming out in continuous waves. With some twenty broods down the East Coast, you are looking at a killing machine in the hundreds of millions, even billions. What you have seen so far is just the tip of a horrible green murderous iceberg.
Soon we will be deafened by the sound of their buzzing as they seek females to mate. What was annoying before will shatter glass and rupture eardrums. Once mating is complete, the females will look for a location to lay their eggs. Each female could lay an unknown number of eggs.
Can you imagine billions of mutant eggs?
My belief is that, unlike the typical cicadas, these insects, because of their size, cannot quickly return underground. With the newborns, there just is not room.
Unlike their predecessors, these mutant cicadas’ new blood composition may not be as susceptible to cold. They are constantly evolving, and we may even see faster hatching of their eggs. Once the nymphs grow into adults, you will have a vast new mutant army.
You can see from the map the systematic advance of the warrior insects. As they move on, columns of smaller cicadas, which we have termed “Reapers,” gather what’s left of the dead. They package the remains in some sort of gelatin sack and then carry them to buildings for storage. We believe they are creating food lockers for not only the above-ground cicadas but for the rising females. Perhaps waiting until the warriors have secured the vast land and safe passage the females will need for mating.
Newly exiting insects leapfrog those on the ground by flying. We have tracked them on the radar to a height of a quarter of a mile and a range of ten miles before they land. We have seen them boldly attack ships that are miles offshore.
These are intelligent creatures.
There is a battle plan being implemented. We have seen their cratering of areas in and around vital military bases and airports to destroy or render our assets powerless. At the rate of consumption and arrival of hundreds of millions of more of these creatures daily, the Eastern states will be a human dead zone within a few weeks.
They will then turn west and south and begin their march to the coasts.
In sum, we must stop the advance of the insects and kill those above- ground before the females surface. This is a challenge. As we have seen, their sheer numbers are overrunning our capacity to kill them fast enough,” concluded Professor Sheila Mathews.
The General picked up the conversation “Any massive chemical attack would, of course, have the unfortunate effect of killing remaining humans. I do not think we have much in our arsenal after the treaty we signed banning chemical warfare. Bombing them with conventional or nuclear weapons would kill millions of them but devastate our country as well. We could prepare a failsafe plan for an airburst of nuclear-tipped missiles as a last resort. The destruction of our infrastructure would be horrendous. The electromagnetic pulse will fry every electronic device for hundreds of miles. But the radioactivity would be limited by an airburst that would allow us to rebuild within a decade. Also, from a military standpoint, the nation has never prepared for a ground war here at home. Most of our military is abroad since that is where we thought the battle would be fought. We have mobilized the National Guard, what military units we can, law enforcement, and civilians who are armed.
Hypothetically if we have killed those above ground, we could inject targeted concentrated gas attacks into the entry points the cicadas have used. This would kill those primed to move forward, especially the females. We then need to seal these chemical sites, fracking wells, mines, caverns, etc. And then it goes without saying we must stop the dumping of this chemical waste to cut off their food supply. Many of our East Coast bases have already been overrun. Craters have been well planned, preventing us from getting the remaining troops and equipment out. These craters have also shut down runways and crippled squadrons. I am immediately ordering a hasty retreat of all remaining forces, aircraft, and equipment to bases in Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Kentucky. We will regroup and determine where we can establish a potential firewall.
But as we all know, the key to success is eliminating their authorities that are giving the commands for this carefully waged attack.
We need to get what drones we have left up in the air to study their formations and movements to see if we can find their control centers. With our situation here growing more precarious by the hour, I will be turning over command to General Max Dempsey, currently in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Any questions?” said the General.
There was absolute silence in the room.
Eyes were suddenly glued to one of the nine television screens in the room. It caught the picture of an exceptionally large cicada atop the Washington Monument.
“What….is…. that?” asked General MacLean.
Chapter 14
Commander Zero, all ten feet of him, really enjoyed his new view. He easily scaled the five hundred fifty-five-foot obelisk, using some of the indentations left by the damage of a recent earthquake to make his way to the top. Ironically, his army’s ferocious digging of a labyrinth with miles of tunnels and chambers had, in fact, caused the earthquake that shook the marble monument’s very foundation. His telescopic vision scanned the city below from its tallest building, watching his massive cicada troops continue their killing spree. They had only been above ground for a few days yet had already claimed millions of human lives.
The huge government buildings were now devoid of human life, becoming temporary food stores. And soon, many of them would be the future homes of his offspring, especially when the weather turned cold again.
Commander Zero hummed the song that he had heard playing on the chemical truck radio to himself. He was pleased that he had claimed the first human kills. Zero hated humans with a fierce rage he could barely control. His forefathers had been indiscriminately killed by man.
Squished with delight.
Wings ripped off and tortured to death.
Boiled, fried, and burned to death.
Eaten.
All while posing no harm to the then giant humans.
Then the good fortune of mutation intervened through the catalyst of chemical dumping grounds. The chemicals had transformed their bodies and minds, evolving them into powerful creatures that had both a pang of hunger for human flesh and revenge. Fracking fluids being pumped into the ground provided an added dependable food source as the numbers of giant cicadas swelled. Running out of room below ground, Commander Zero had decided that they must surface now and not wait the additional five years like earlier generations.
Their brains had grown as well, and the chemical processes had created a form of telepathy. It had allowed Commander Zero to send orders to his thousands of generals across hundreds of miles to carefully orchestrate the invasion, now successfully underway. Their voice boxes could even mimic human sounds that came out in a childlike, unnerving way.
His goal was quite specific. To eradicate the planet of humankind and any species that threatened cicada dominance.
Retribution.
Revenge.
Justice.
Commander Zero had planned the details of this massive attack down to the minute. The first waves were his hard-core warriors. The nine-foot creatures each weighed over 200 pounds but were remarkably fast, and of course, could fly high and long distances. They were his chosen killers. Their beaks had mutated, so they were lined with razor-sharp teeth. Think the velociraptors from Jurassic Park on steroids or the blades of a Vitamix churning at one hundred times the running speed. Once puncturing a human body, their powerful lungs would help vacuum the internal organs and blood through the wood-chipper-like beak in a matter of minutes. His warriors only needed to eat a few times a day. The beaks could pierce through brains or hearts within seconds. Or they could emit their powerfully acidic venom through a sack below their mouths. The sack was replenished from the chemicals coursing their bodies and accumulated waste.
Or just crush or tear the human target apart with their strong wings and legs.
So many ways to kill these humans within moments. And happily, move on to the next one.
The bloodlust grew intensely with each kill to an uncontrolled frenzy.
To reach the surface, they had created hundreds of thousands of huge craters. Commander Zero had mapped out where the humans kept their armies, where their planes had to land, and the major roads they would need to move their vehicles. So, he concentrated his ground exits on and around those three key targets. The results were two-fold. First, the humans could not move their machines against them because of the craters. And secondly, most of their machines fell into the craters, making them useless for any kind of counterattack. The gridlock trapped his adversaries and those civilian humans trying to escape. The insects became car hoppers, moving from kill to kill.
Following the warrior waves were his food gatherers, and eventually, the nesters. Miles and miles of food caravans moved across the many states to fill empty buildings and houses with future sustenance. The female nesters were his most essential cicadas and his legacy. The females would breed with returning warriors and lay billions of eggs. The mating could begin in a few weeks within the vast amount of territory that had been successfully seized. The eggs would hatch during a shorter incubation period due to their chemically enhanced genetics. The new generation of mutant cicadas would help ensure their eventual worldwide conquest and assure that their domination would continue for centuries to come.
Yes, Commander Zero had already lost tens of thousands of cicadas to the battle. Still, it was a willing sacrifice, especially knowing that millions of more humans were being killed and their territory seized. They were replaced a hundred million-fold by more and more streaming insects from beneath the ground every hour. Space was not an issue above ground as it was now below. They would never need to return to the underground.
Commander Zero stood and slowly unfolded his massive, orange-colored wings. He sent a telepathic message forwarded by his generals to his millions of followers rising and those still below ground.
The humans gathered in the Pentagon war room and watched the screenshots from across the East Coast. Cicadas were facing the direction of the Washington Monument, lifting their wings in a united salute. From their barreled chests, a thrumming sound filled the air, building to a cacophony that shattered windows throughout towns and cities.
It sounded like a human roar of Zero, Zero, Zero.
Back in the Pentagon, the generals assembled gaped at the colossal insect atop the memorial to the nation’s first President. Surely, he was a vital insect by his sheer size and the homage paid by the other cicadas. He could be their very leader. Their command-and-control center.
With this elusive target now visible and reachable, General MacLean gave the order to kill Commander Zero with all deliberate speed. The two remaining drones armed with Hellfire missiles at Andrews Air Force base were released with the top of the Washington monument as their target. Commander Zero’s keen eyes spotted them coming a mile away, and he effortlessly soared over to the top of the nearby African American Museum to safety. The drones’ missiles hit the monument and caused it to crack and topple.
The Washington Monument was gone.
Commander Zero smiled in pure delight at the self-destruction.
Suddenly bright lights came on at the top of the Treasury Building, the New Executive Office Building, St. John’s Church, and the Chamber of Commerce offices. Rising from each structure were giant gun-like machines. They each came on firing a different color laser light that formed a defensive box above the White House and the nearby Lafayette Square. Gatling guns rose from the White House itself and began firing on cicadas resting on the roof and flying within 100 feet of the building. The bullet fusillade continued unabated, and then the ground started shaking. Exiting from an opening near the statue of General Lafayette was a rocket with the Presidential escape missile capsule atop it. The rocket picked up speed, and flying cicadas attempted to reach and strike it. But the lasers tore through their bodies like knives through butter. The laser lights rose in a protective sequence with the rising rocket until it was out of sight and harm’s way.
Commander Zero knew who was in the capsule.
He thought to himself, “You can run President Rush, but you can’t hide. I’m coming for you.”
Then with a burst of anger, he gave the telepathic order to his generals to release another hundred million cicadas to the invasion. He still held close the memory of the President’s son, who almost stepped on his father.
Audience Participation
So, thanks for reading this book.
How do we kill and or stop billions of cicadas?
Take a minute to write down the answer or send it to your friend, partner, or colleague. Or feel free to send me an email with your response to charlescicada@gmail.com.
You will soon see if your answer was correct.
Chapter 15
Luray, Virginia, was some seventy miles from the nation’s capital. It was a world away from the political wheeling and dealing of America’s dysfunctional executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The scenic vistas of the Shenandoah Valley were welcome escapes from the hectic and stressful life of Washington, DC. Parents with their children flocked to the local apple blossom festivals, pumpkin patches, corn mazes, and the famous Dinosaur Land. Weekend warriors attended Civil War battle reenactments. History buffs visited the Cedar Creek battlefield and the renowned Stonewall Jackson headquarters.
