At three o’clock in the morning, the sky was still pitch black. Coupled with the ash from the wildfire, it seemed as if the entire sky were covered in gray dust.
Under this dark canopy, one shadow after another, unidentifiable, black shapes, emerged from the wildfire zone and moved toward the city.
Most of the people resting at the time couldn’t see this terrifying scene.
At the same time, the activity of these unknown things caused other dark entities, normally hidden in buildings and sewers, to start emerging.
Tonight, many people in the stadium were exhausted from the evacuation and had gone to bed early. But there were always those who liked to stay up late. One seventeen- or eighteen-year-old youth was lying on the stadium’s now yellowed grass. This had once been a soccer field.
The youth was scrolling through a short-video app. Despite the heat, people were still active online. Just as he was laughing at a funny clip, the light from his phone screen suddenly twisted and warped.
Thinking it was his eyes playing tricks, he rubbed them, then he saw two pitch-black, roughly child-palm-sized creatures, shaking two long antennae, hovering above his phone screen.
Simple lighting along the edge of the stadium made it easier for him to see exactly what these two black things were.
“Ahhhh!”
Being a northerner, the youth was terrified of these southern specialties.
His piercing scream, amplified slightly by the stadium, woke up quite a few people.
Lin Su heard the scream and immediately climbed out of her tent.
She had been resting but had kept her clothes neatly on, just in case something happened. Quickly, she asked Wen Shiyun, who had also emerged from his tent: “What’s happening?”
Members of the security team were on duty in the stadium. Hearing the scream, they had already rushed to the youth’s location.
Seeing the two large creatures flying above his head, they froze for a moment, but acted quickly, snatching up a nearby hat and smashing it toward the creatures.
By this time, the people who had been woken up also realized what was happening and started complaining: “It’s just cockroaches! Is it really necessary to scream like that?”
“Yeah, they’re big, but come on, really?”
Amid the chorus of “not that serious” voices, the youth was paralyzed with fear. Unlike the onlookers, he had just seen the two huge cockroaches wriggling their mouths toward him. They looked as if they were about to bite a chunk of flesh off him.
The two cockroaches dodged the hat and instead lunged at the nearest middle-aged man’s face.
Just a second ago, the man had been confidently saying, “It’s not that bad.” In the blink of an eye, the two giant cockroaches had bitten into the softest flesh of his cheeks.
“Ahhhhhh…”
The scream turned into a blood-curdling shriek. Even standing on the stands, Lin Su jumped in fright at the sound.
Before she could react, the football field erupted with wave after wave of agonized screams.
Lin Su and Wen Shiyun immediately realized the situation was serious and rushed to wake up their family and friends.
Meanwhile, the security team on duty at the field had already identified the source of the screams.
The stadium lights were switched on in long rows. With the puff-puff-puff of the lights flicking on, everyone could see the creatures more clearly.
Then came one scream after another.
The football field descended into chaos.
Countless cockroaches, of unknown origin, fluttered their massive wings and began biting the nearest humans.
Up in the stands, the concrete floor gave people a slight breathing room.
“Shit…”
He Rongxuan had already woken his grandparents. Seeing the scene on the field, he drew a sharp breath in horror.
At that moment, the stadium broadcast crackled to life, urging everyone to use clothes or protective suits to shield themselves, stay put, and fight the cockroaches without panicking or fleeing.
But the biting had already thrown the crowd into a frenzy.
Some people surged toward the stadium’s lower exits. On the way, anyone who fell was immediately trampled over.
In that instant, these people fought for their lives like reason had abandoned them.
“This… this…”
Grandpa He and Grandma He had been doctors all their lives and couldn’t bear to see such bloodshed. They wanted to help, but the surging crowd was terrifying.
They were on the highest stands, far from the exits, so the initial wave of people hadn’t reached them. But the cockroach horde was already flapping its wings and wriggling its mouthparts as it charged forward.
“Elderly and children hide in the corners; we young people take the front line.”
The people from their villa district were gathered together, so it was natural for them to cooperate.
Fortunately, although there were elderly people and children among them, they were positioned on the highest stands, tucked into a corner. Thick concrete walls blocked their backs and left sides.
They only needed to defend the other two sides to protect the elders and children hiding inside.
Lin Su’s words won wide agreement. Everyone grabbed the weapons they had prepared and got ready to face the cockroaches flying toward them.
But, of course, at this moment, someone decided to cause trouble.
“You idiots, stay here and feed the cockroaches! I’m running for my life…”
Zhou Mi grabbed her boyfriend and, ignoring everyone, pushed into the crowd in front and tried to flee. A few others on the stands had the same idea, but after just a few steps, they were blocked by people coming up from the football field.
Seeing her do something so foolish, Lin Su let out a dry laugh and joined the other neighbors to form a human wall.
The first layer of the human wall was made up of strong, able-bodied young men. They each grabbed clothes or fans they had brought and swatted at the cockroaches as they flew toward them.
The second layer consisted of women and older men. Like the first layer, they wielded whatever tools they could to fend off the cockroaches.
The final layer, the elderly and children, huddled together in thick tent fabric, hiding in the corner.
Lin Su had no idea that the sound of a cockroach’s wings flapping was somewhat like the high-pitched buzz of a bee.
The cockroaches, flying in all directions, seemed to appear from nowhere. They came in an unending stream, swarming toward the humans.
Besides the flapping of wings, the ears were filled with the continuous screams of people. The air slowly grew thick with the smell of blood. Mixed with the scent of burning vegetation from the wildfire, it made people nauseous.
Lin Su raised her electric fly swatter and zapped several giant cockroaches that lunged at her, producing sizzling sounds.
The smell of roasting cockroaches made her even more queasy, but she ignored it, holding fast to protect her parents behind her.
Her parents weren’t idle either. Draped in tent fabric, their feet constantly stomped on any cockroaches that fell from the swatter, crushing them thoroughly.
These cockroaches were incredibly resilient. Even after taking the full power of the swatter, they didn’t always die immediately.
Many others were acting in the same way as Lin Su’s parents.
Soon, the ground in their area was covered with the white sticky fluid from exploded cockroach abdomens, unknown red liquids, and even bits of flesh.
The scene was disgusting enough to make many people recoil in horror.
Even though they were moving quickly, some people still got bitten by the cockroaches’ mouthparts or scratched by their legs.
“Hiss…”
In the front row, Wen Shiyun saw a swarm of cockroaches flying toward them and immediately swung his fan at them. His strike was precise, and under normal circumstances, it would have been fine. But Hu Shanshan, standing not far behind him, wildly waved her umbrella at the cockroaches.
As a result, a lone cockroach was flung directly onto Wen Shiyun.
Lin Su, standing behind him, barely had time to alter the cockroach’s trajectory. In that instant, one of the spiny cockroach legs scraped across Wen Shiyun’s arm.
Meanwhile, Hu Shanshan, the one who caused the mistake, kept screaming. Lin Su couldn’t tolerate someone slowing them down like that and shouted, “Go stand behind your dad!”
The Hu family had also come as three. Since Hu Shanshan was acting like this, her parents could keep an eye on her.
Startled by Lin Su’s sharp command, Hu Shanshan, though trembling from fear, looked like she wanted to curse Lin Su.
But Wen Shiyun had already tugged Lin Su aside and shook his head. Following their pre-planned strategy, they gradually tightened their protective circle with the He siblings.
If some people kept being reckless, they would just focus on protecting their own family.
Once the protection circle was smaller, Lin Su even had time to take out alcohol spray from her pocket and tend to a few friends’ wounds.
Cockroaches carry many bacteria. Scratches or bites from them require immediate disinfection. Especially the cockroaches they were facing, these were huge, clearly not ordinary cockroaches, and no one knew where they had come from.
At the same time, the first group of people who had escaped the cockroach swarm outside the stadium hadn’t even had a chance to celebrate their survival before being terrified by a wave of cockroaches, causing them to stumble to the ground.
Panic made some forget how to even make noise or stand up. They scrambled back on hands and knees toward the path they had come from.
The second group, rushing out, didn’t have time to rejoice before seeing the first group’s predicament.
When they looked up and saw the sky filled with cockroaches clicking and chittering, they immediately turned and ran back.
Unfortunately, panic combined with asymmetric information created chaos. People outside the stadium wanted to get in, and people inside wanted to get out. They became trapped at the entrances.
Those closest to the outside were already covered in cockroaches. The pain from bites and scratches made them push frantically, desperate to get back inside the stadium. Inside, there were cockroaches too, but not in such overwhelming numbers.
But this effort was futile. Because of all the pushing and shoving, within minutes, many people trapped in the middle suffocated under the pressure.
It wasn’t just the stadium, throughout An City, wherever cockroaches could survive, they emerged, unfurled their massive wings, and lunged at the nearest humans.
Only then did people realize that, somehow, the cockroaches had grown so large and become so deadly.
Countless screams echoed across the city in the early morning hours.
By around five a.m., sunlight began breaking through the clouds and the drifting ash, casting light on the ground below.
This sunlight, a symbol of hope, could only bear witness to a battle between humans and cockroaches.