T H R I P S

Bloodstone was baked like a cake that summer's day.

It was unseasonably hot as global warming wreaked havoc with the crops.

Pests multiplied exponentially in the drying fields and an unstoppable plague of death was about to be unleashed on the roasting village.

In the shade of the rear, Jack and Valerie romped in the straw bales at the back of the big barn. 

This was their moment for the taking and a delicious teenage fumbling began.

Valerie, oh my, before we go all the way I need a big puff on my inhaler.

Jack grabbed the diffuser from his coat, a big affair on account of his asthma. Sweaty with anticipation he didn't bother to check the unit first and never saw the black mass he swallowed until it was too late.

Jack! Jack! What's the matter? For God's Sake, what's wrong?

Jack clutched his throat and his eyes bulged. He stared at Valerie and gagged. His mind reeled as oxygen was cut off and he felt a strange warmth as his end approached. 

I wonder if we'd have ever got married, Valerie and me?

Jack passed in his girlfriend's arms, his neck pulsating horribly with whatever he'd inhaled. 

Valerie wept and ran topless into the farmyard, the hands whistling as she screamed to the heavens.

He's dead! He's dead! He's dead!

She wasn't in the barn to see a bung of blackness erupt from Jack's mouth and fly away.

Down on Bloodstone village green the annual fair was in full swing. 

Dawn and Donna, on lunch from the Hauliers' typing pool, got on the Ghost Train like a couple of giddy school kids.

Two adults please.

Two more mate too!

A pair of teddy boys from town got in the double car behind the girls.

They sang like doo-woppers.

That'll be the da-ay-ay, oo-er!

Dawn and Donna giggled loudly. The prospect of a bit of slap and tickle in the dark tunnel with these urban ruffians sent a shiver of excitement along their spines. They both clenched their knees and chuckled as the unmistakable screech of the double doors scared them to bits entering the ride.

Skeletal hands dangled down. Cobwebs brushed against their faces. Roaming fingers from behind sought purchase under their cardies. They slapped the teddies back and laughed as the car momentarily emerged in sunlight between two scary sections.

It was here on this daylight bend beside a farm, where an ambulance was pulling in, that Dawn and Donna saw a cloud of darkness descend upon them just as the carriage re-entered the gloom of the vampire's room.

In the lightless ride the sable fog had smothered the girls' faces completely, the million constituent threads finding sanctuary in their ears, nose, mouth and eyes. Whatever they were they were inside the typists' eye-sockets crawling around their pupils and along their optic nerves. 

Dawn and Donna shrieked in agony as the morass penetrated every orifice of their heads, tumbling over each other to reach their pudding-like brains.

The two teddy boys were sure the girls were just very scared but also very excited to be in their company. The leant forward and began kissing their necks, their hands caressing their hair. It all felt really odd, as if it was all all mobile and wet.

The screaming girls couldn't stand the teeming pain any longer. They stood up in the carriage as they reached the solid arch of the exit.

There was a distinct crunch.

The wailing shriek of the finished ghost train was only just audible above the din of the two teddies smeared with hot blood.

They shook with fright and yelled till their lungs burst as they stared at Dawn and Donna's severed heads in their hands.

The smog of ink, tinged with crimson, that alighted out of their neck stumps, whirled round and headed for the myriad of distant fields nestling on the gentle hills of the Folds.

Oh Hell! What the fuck are those things?

The two Teds dropped the heads and heaved over the side of the car.

They're thrips. Of course, it's thrips day. And by the looks of it they've gone for reinforcements.

What the chuff are thrips?

The old farmer, in the village to buy new milking mates for his cows, nodded at the vanishing cloud.

Yep, thrips alright. Thunderbugs. Tiny crop flies. And a helluva lot of 'em. Must be this flamin' tropical weather we're having!

Damn. 

Having dealt with Jack nearby, the local Bobby arrived in his Panda. The young constable threw his guts up when he clapped eyes on the decapitated girls. It was all too much.

The old farmer drove home to neighbouring Thing following the course of the shallow Thirsty Chase. 

He installed the new milk units onto his shed herd and flipped the switch. The automated system chundered into life but seemed unusually sluggish.

Damn units! They're duds!

But whatever blockage there was it quickly cleared and the farms' locally famous Thing Dairy bottles began to fill again.

It was then the farmer heard his cows wailing in pain. The whole bottling system had stopped and it was clogging up the beasts. 

The old man stooped down to inspect the pints filling the conveyor and could not believe his eyes.

The milk was jet black and moving. 

He peered closer and realized with sickening clarity that his cows had passed thrips through their udders. Millions of them. 

As he wretched the bottles rattled loudly and the dark cargo erupted into the air.

They targeted the farmer and entered his body at every point, filling his entire frame with a convulsing insect horde searching for his damp plump innards.

Christ! They're carnivorous!

These were his last words in this terrible new world, a revelation that countless more victims would come to know by the end of that fatal summers day.

Ten miles further east a NATO ICBM was being transported to the USAF base on the coast. The gargantuan truck had a military escort as it wended its way through a secret route across the Folds.

The truck driver and partner were enjoying the gorgeous countryside when a mist appeared in the trees. It grew in size like an amoeba and as the convoy crawled through Bloodstone the entity filled the cab and smothered the two men. 

The insatiable thrips poured into their mouths like black gravy and ballooned their guts until they blew in a welter of entrails. The insects went into a feeding frenzy and devoured everything save the drivers hands, still clutching the steering wheel. 

Without the substance of his arms to guide it, the wheel turned and the truck and ICBM careered into the small farming petrol station run by National. 

The impact triggered a chain reaction. First the petrol pumps went up in a huge ball of fire seen and heard across the village and then the US missile, now lying on the forecourt, overheated in the flames and ignited. The ensuing explosion was so large that the village of Bloodstone was reduced to a wide smoking crater where once a thriving farming village had stood. 

As the neighbouring panda cars arrived they were first greeted with a burning ferris wheel rolling towards them, the occupants in flames. It was a vision of hell and only surpassed by  what came next.

Two figures staggered out of the devastation and walked along the road. Except for their beetle crushers and velvet jackets they were draped from head to foot in rank after rank of tiny black creatures seething allover their head and limbs. 

As they reached the waiting police the two Teds opened their mouths and released long streaming dark jets of minute flies, which surrounded the pandas, dropped en masse to the ground and died in their millions.

The Teds fell to their knees, their creamed minds jumping like broken singles, repeating over and over again the songline they'd sung all summer.

That'll be the da-ay-ay that I die!

For them, the day of the thrips was over for yet another year.