"Great. Both of your friends will be with you."

She waited for him to go down but he stopped on the first step and sat on the little landing inside the door.

"Aren't you going down?"

He looked up at her with frightened blue eyes.

"Close the door and I'll wait right here."

"You're sure?"

He nodded solemnly.

"Okay," she said. "But I'll be right back. And don't you worry about a thing."

Feeling like some sort of abusive mother locking her child in a closet, she pushed the door closed. The click of the latch echoed in her heart like the clang of a jail cell door. But it was what Jeffy wanted. She'd never seen him so frightened. Granted, those things were vicious looking, ready to grind up anything that got in their way, but what made him think they were after him specifically? A carry-over from his years of autism?

She didn't want to think about that, didn't even want to entertain the possibility that he might slide back into his former impenetrable state.

She hurried back to the kitchen. There she found Alan in his chair by the sink, towel-wrapped fist held before him, and Ba leaning toward the window with a raised meat clever. One of the things broke through the screen just as she arrived. Faster than her eyes could follow, it launched itself into the kitchen with a furious buzz. Alan batted at it with his fist. The thing sank its teeth into the towel and bit down. Alan yelped with pain but held his hand steady while Ba's cleaver whizzed down and sliced through the creature just behind its head. The winged body dropped into the sink, then rose and flapped about the room, dripping orange fluid as it caromed off the walls and ceiling, leaving wet splotches wherever it impacted. Finally it flopped to the floor, twitched a couple of times, then lay still.

The head didn't relax its grip on Alan's hand, however. It clung there, its jaws weakly chewing, even in death. Finally it stopped.

Alan leaned in for a closer look. "Where the hell did you come from?" he said.

He pried the head off and dropped it into the sink. It left behind a shredded section of towel. Crimson fluid began to seep through from within.

Sylvia found her mouth parched but she managed to speak.

"Alan?" she said. "Are you all right?"

He winked at her and smiled. "Sharp teeth on those buggers. Only a scratch, though." He glanced at the second thing still caught between the screen and the window. "Better take cover before this one breaks through."

He wrapped a second towel around the first as he and Ba took their positions and waited.

"I'm going upstairs to close the windows," she told them.

"No, Missus," Ba said without taking his eyes from the window.

Alan glanced at her. "Don't risk it alone. Wait till we get this one, then we'll all go up together."

"I'll only be a minute," she said, and headed for the stairs.

"Sylvia!"

She heard Alan's call from the kitchen but she ignored him. She hurried through the front foyer and ran up the curved staircase. The lights were on in the master bedroom where she and Alan slept. She dashed from one window to the next, checking the screens for holes, slamming them closed. No holes, no booger bugs.

One room down, five more to go on the second floor.

She hurried down the hall to Jeffy's room. The door was closed. When she opened it and flipped the switch, nothing happened. The floor lamp in the corner was supposed to come on. Sylvia hovered on the threshold, afraid to enter. She held her breath and listened.

Silence. No…a faint tell-tale buzzing from the window near the corner. Silhouetted in the moonlight was a translucent globule clinging to the screen. Another booger bug. The one downstairs had seemed harmless enough. And anyway, it was outside.

Telling herself it was safe, Sylvia gritted her teeth and hurried across the darkened room. She was almost to the window when her foot caught on something. She went down on both knees with a bruising thud. She reached back and felt the beveled post of the floor lamp. It had been knocked over somehow. A breeze, or…?

Suddenly afraid, Sylvia scrambled to her feet and fumbled for the lamp on Jeffy's end table, found the switch, twisted it.

Light. Blessed light.

She peered over at the window. The booger bug was still there alone on the screen, trying to strain itself through the mesh. It looked like it was making some headway too. Part of it had actually seeped through—

Sylvia's heart stumbled over a beat when she saw the jagged edges of the screen. My God, it wasn't seeping through the mesh, it was bulging through a jagged hole in it. She lunged for the window and slammed down the sash. Then she ran around the bed and closed the window on the other side.

But the question remained: had anything got in?

She stood and listened again. This time there was no buzzing. She let herself relax. She'd got here in time—just in time. But there were still other rooms to secure. Before heading further down the hall, she picked up the fallen floor lamp—

—and stopped, staring. The lampshade was chewn up, shredded, as if a teething puppy had been working at it for an hour. She dropped the lamp again and spun around, her skin rippling with fear. Nothing moved, nothing buzzed. But the door was open, and if something had got in, it could get loose in the house if she didn't close it.

Moving slowly, smoothly, as casually as she could, she stepped toward the door. Her heart was thumping madly. If one of those chew bugs came after her she knew she'd fall apart and run screaming for the hall.

Almost there. Half a dozen feet or so and she'd be home free. She just had to stay calm and—

Sylvia heard it before she saw it. A ferocious buzz from the other side of the bed, a machine-gun rattle of hundred-toothed jaws banging against each other as they chewed the air, then a blur hurtling over the bed toward her face. She ducked but not quickly enough. It caught her hair, twisting her head around with an incendiary blaze of pain from her scalp. She felt a patch of hair rip from its follicles as the thing yanked free and swooped around the room. As she crouched, watching it, she heard another sudden buzz from behind her and instinctively threw herself to the side. A second chew bug darted past her ear, jaws clicking dangerously close.

Two of them!

She stumbled in a circle, turned, felt something soft press against her calves, and then she was falling backward onto the bed. The mad clicking accelerated and the dissonant harmony of the buzzes rose in pitch as they came in together. Sylvia grabbed Jeffy's pillow and held it before her. The impact of the two creatures knocked her onto her back amid a squall of feathers. She could feel them wriggling, chewing their way into the pillow. She turned the pillow over, trapping them against Jeffy's bedspread.

"Got you!" She cried, and laughed. It was an awful sound, tinged with hysteria.

She glanced at the open door. With these things immobilized for the moment, she could make it. But just as she was about to ease her grip on the pillow, a pair of tooth-encrusted jaws burst through the case and snapped at her. She screamed and ran for the door, slipping on the feathers, scrabbling along on her hands and knees until she reached it. She rolled through, stretched up and grabbed the knob, and was just pulling the door closed when the two chew bugs hurtled through the air above her and dove toward the first floor.

"No!" she cried.

And even before they were out of sight she heard an angry shout from Alan in the kitchen. She got to her feet and ran downstairs where she met Alan and Ba in the foyer. Ba, cleaver in hand, looked like a mad oriental chef.

Alan's eyes widened when he saw her.

"Sylvia! What happened?" He was staring at her head.

"Why?" She touched the sore spot on her scalp. Her fingers came away wet and red. Some of her skin must have come away with her hair. "Two of those things upstairs—in Jeffy's room. They got away and came down here. Did you see them?"