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Moths were not his favorite insects, least not since the infestation that caused so much havoc in Houston and Galveston. It was still hard to believe that this alien life form had been found inside the meteorite shower that had passed so close to the Space Shuttle Oklahoma. Harder still, that they could have survived in hibernation for so long, perhaps millennia, awakening on first contact with warm-blooded life forms -- humans.
Unfortunately, there had not been enough time to study these amazing creatures before they were seemingly destroyed off the coast of Galveston, as they prepared to swarm, but the little that Jerome had gleaned had been enough to give him nightmares for months following.
These creatures had not been simple insects. They had managed to combine their DNA with that of the infected host, altering the host's body chemistry and biological needs to meet the needs of the simpler organism without destroying the intellectual abilities of the human.
It had made for a dangerous new predator; one that had lost the ability to feel compassion, seeing those humans without the 'scent' of its preferred blood type merely as food -- and the creatures had displayed a voracious appetite.
Weeks passed before the final death count could be made, and Jerome had been staggered to learn how quickly the creatures had taken host humans, and how many other humans had fallen prey to them. Whole families had been found with their innards liquefied and sucked out to feed the mutated creatures. Jerome could only be grateful that the original host had such a rare blood type, for it did not bear thinking about how much worse the situation might have been if Astronaut Clay Collins had been 'O' positive.
Jerome recalled the little they had discovered about these creatures, and how they were socially inclined, unable to live long without the presence of others of their kind. He also wondered what qualities-- both human and moth -- had given some of the mutated humans greater prestige among the swarm. As a pure human, Frank Hansen had been a hen-pecked husband of average intelligence and yet, as a mutation, he had been a strong and aggressive leader.
Had the DNA of the infecting moth been the important factor? Or had the change merely released inhibitions that had kept his aggression suppressed?
After five months, those with knowledge of what had been unleashed on Earth took a deep sigh of relief, believing it to be over with... and then the first new reports began to trickle in. Rumors of strange deaths and disappearances were ignored at first by the Agency, concealed beneath the genocidal actions of a despot in a small South American country. By the time Jerome and Savannah had heard the rumors it was too late.
The creatures spread at an alarming rate, with the prevailing winds slowly bringing them back towards the US. Every attempt to stop them failed, and they crossed onto the US mainland, swathing a path of death and destruction through Mexico and across the southern states.
A mass exodus of people migrating north began as a trickle and ended as a flood, with whole cities slowly turning to gigantic ghost towns inhabited only by the looters -- and then the mutated.
Jerome and Savannah stayed in Houston for as long as possible, working with NASA scientists on the bodies of the few mutations they had managed to gather from the ever-expanding swarm.
Eventually, the order came to withdraw, abandoning Houston to the mothras -- as they were coined by the Media -- and to the foolish looters who invariably became a meal on legs to feed the voracious appetite of the creatures, or new hosts.
The next line of defense against the mothra started barely two hundred miles south of Washington DC, with hundreds of miles of electrified fences and a no-fly zone forcing thousands of refugees into tent cities on both sides of the new border. Vehicles were abandoned in giant breaker's yards, to be crushed then smelted, for with so many possible hiding places inside a vehicle for a moth, the risk of letting vehicles pass across the new border was too high.
As they walked towards the perimeter fence, Jerome felt the hostility aimed towards him and his companions because they would be granted preferential treatment, gaining the relative safety beyond the fortifications while thousands queued to be let across the new border. He looked across at Savannah, seeing her disgust and wondering when everything had gone sour between them. Their work had not been conducive to continuing a sexual relationship because of the long hours, and he regretted that, knowing they both worked so hard because they felt to blame for the disaster. Perhaps, if they had not fought so hard to prevent the nuclear irradiation of the Houston and Galveston areas then the extraterrestrial moths would have been destroyed.
At the time they thought they were saving thousands of innocent lives. Instead, they might have condemned every human on the planet to be either host or food.
Several times, recently, they had argued over this, unable to even look at each other now without seeing the terrible mistake they made out of misguided need to save lives rather than the application of cold logic.
They were separated, with Jerome and his male colleagues going to the head of one queue while Savannah and the team's other female colleagues entered another, for the checkpoint was a series of small rooms, designated male and female, which they had to step inside, one at a time. Jerome stepped inside the first room and then waited for the checkpoint supervisor, who was seated behind a window made of bulletproof glass, to give him instructions.
"Strip, please."
Quickly, he took off all his clothes, placing them in a pile on the table provided. Once naked, he raised his hands as ordered and rotated slowly. Jerome knew what the supervisor was looking for, the physical signs of infection in the form of buds for additional arms. The test seemed ludicrous to him as the only humans susceptible to infection were those of a certain blood group. However, the authorities were not prepared to take any risks in case the extraterrestrial moths had evolved beyond a particular blood group.
A door opened at the far side of the room and he stepped through it as ordered, recognizing the X-ray machinery that had formally been used in baggage handling at airports. Any internal changes within his body would be seen, such as the proboscis that the mothra forced down the prey's throat to inject the human with chemicals that would liquefy their innards making it easy for the mothra to suck them dry.
Once they were certain he was all human, they let him pass through another door where a one-piece jumpsuit waited for him. He pulled it on and walked through the final door to find several CDC officials waiting for him. He greeted them warmly, having spent the past few months sharing information and insights with them as they worked together on the mothra problem, albeit, long-distance.
"Where's Savannah?"
"Still in there."
"Dr. Horne! Come quickly."
Jerome followed the supervisor towards the women's' checkpoint and stepped into the monitoring room. Inside he could see Savannah still partially clothed and refusing to remove the final garments. Her movements were jittery, and her face contorted into an animalistic mask when she saw him.
"Savannah?"
Jerome called to her and she smiled almost gleefully as she pulled off her chemise to reveal two new appendages growing from her torso.
"And I'd so looked forward to dining on you, Jerome," She said with a predator grin before her proboscis flicked out defiantly.
Jerome saw movement as two armed guards appeared in the doorway. "No! Keep her alive and have her transported to the CDC cent--"
Savannah attacked suddenly, leaping towards the first of the guards and Jerome could only look on in horror as her body danced under the hail of bullets before collapsing to the floor.
"I don't understand. She must have known about the checkpoint... and even if she got through, she wouldn't have survived on her own. Not without others of her kind. So why did she come with us? Why didn't she refuse to leave Houston -- or just disappear when the order came through?"
"She wasn't alone, Dr. Horne. A second member of your group was also infected. According to the other, they thought your party would be exempt from the checkpoint tests. We'll keep the other alive and prepare him for transportation to CDC. I think you'll want to examine him closely."
"Why?"
"Dr. Kellett is carrying egg sacs. If he'd got through the checkpoint then he'd have been the source of a new outbreak of mothra in the safe zone."
Jerome looked back at Savannah in horror, now understanding why she had taken the risk. "I'd like her body to be --"
"I'm sorry, sir. Except under explicit instructions from the head of CDC, we incinerate the bodies--"
"Bodies?"
"We have up to ten mothra trying to get through each day. That's why the people in the camp outside are so aggressive, because mothra are feeding among them. The mutants are cloaked by families who cannot let go of a loved one, even though the mothra will turn on that family eventually, seeing most humans only as food."
Jerome bowed his head, once more feeling the weight of responsibility lying on his shoulders. So many mistakes had been made from the very beginning. If Collins had been held in laboratory isolation rather than just a medium risk hospital facility then the moths would never have escaped in the first place. However, Jerome's immediate superiors had seen little risk attached to transporting Collins to a hospital despite the recent report of microbes found on a piece of asteroid debris a few years earlier.
After the moths escaped, no one had recognized the danger of a new species entering Earth's ecosystem, assuming incorrectly that they would find Earth inhospitable. Instead they had flourished, with their very presence answering the question humans had been asking since the dawn of time. Now humanity knew that it was not the only life form in the universe... but Jerome knew that if they could not find a way to contain the threat of the mothra then, eventually, humanity would cease to be one of those life forms.
As he stepped back out of the checkpoint he looked up and saw the first stars twinkling in the sky, close to the horizon, heralding the fall of night. And in the refugee camp, gunshots broke the silence of dusk as the mothra began to feed, heralding the fall of night for humanity.
THE END
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DATE: August 2003