“Come on, James!”
Old John stopped taunting, tossed aside the insecticide, and reached toward the hood of the pickup. James scrambled out of the sunroof, jumped onto the hood, and grabbed John’s hand. Using his momentum, he was safely lowered to the ground.
Once James was secured, Old John stepped forward, pulled a lighter from his waist, and precisely ignited the pit.
“BOOM!”
The barbecue feast had officially begun!
Because of the vaporizing fuel, the air around the pit was thick with gasoline particles. The moment the lighter touched the pit, a massive burst of flame shot upward.
Even with flame resistance, the heat and lack of oxygen made the giant cockroach miserable. Like a giant turtle trapped beneath a vehicle, it thrashed and struggled, all six legs kicking furiously inside the pit.
At first, its movements were somewhat restrained. But as the fire intensified—perhaps aided by the boric acid—the cockroach’s body began to dehydrate and writhe in pain. It went completely berserk at the bottom of the pit, jostling the pickup above, making it tremble violently.
“What do we do? It’s like we can’t hold it down…”
“Bring more heavy stuff, fast!”
The cockroach’s strength far exceeded expectations. Its flattened body allowed it to slip through narrow gaps. Before the team could find anything to weigh it down, half its head had already slipped out of the pit!
The flames had turned its reddish-brown exoskeleton as hot as an iron, glowing bright red, but it didn’t slow down at all. One front leg stretched over the edge of the pit, bracing against the gap. With a lift of its body, it pushed the pickup slightly backward.
“Move! We don’t have time!”
Old John shouted. Seeing James frozen in shock, he grabbed him like a farmer snatching a chick. One in front, one behind, they hopped onto the motorcycle, kicked off with long legs, and shot toward the end of the alley.
“Boom… RRRRRMM!”
Inside the pit, the fire and heat were too much for the pickup’s gas tank—it exploded. The fierce blast lit up the alley and shredded the truck into pieces. Feeling the weight on its back lighten, the giant cockroach seized the opportunity. Its legs pushed in unison, its dark brown wings flapped wildly, and it finally hauled itself out of the burning pit.
“Quick! It’s catching up!” James crouched on the back of the motorcycle, watching behind them while pounding on Old John’s shoulder.
“I’m already going as fast as I can!” John gritted out through his teeth, crouching low to keep the bike stable over the uneven obstacles in the alley.
But the giant cockroach was naturally fast, and in its berserk state, it was closing the distance even more quickly. In comparison, the motorcycle, now carrying James, was heavier and slower. Bit by bit, the gap between them was shrinking.
Just as the cockroach was about to burst out of the alley, a sudden scream pierced the air.
“Grandpa! Liquid nitrogen!” Everly’s voice rang out, full of urgency.
“Liquid nitrogen?” James repeated, still processing the words through his overworked teenage brain. Old John, a seasoned veteran, immediately understood. His eyes lit up. He swerved the bike toward the town’s only beauty salon.
Just a dozen meters from the alley, the small town’s only beauty salon sat quietly. Liquid nitrogen had special uses for scar treatment, wrinkle removal, and skin rejuvenation. Half a month ago, the salon had taken delivery of a 10-liter tank of liquid nitrogen, and the delivery truck had stopped at Old John’s gas station, so both grandfather and granddaughter knew exactly where it was.
The salon door was open, and the interior was splattered with blood. John drove the bike straight inside, rolled off, and ran toward the back workshop, not even bothering to close the door.
“Move! Help me find the liquid nitrogen!”
They had barely started running when a deafening “BANG!” echoed—the giant cockroach had already smashed into the salon.
John and James didn’t hesitate. Flashlights in hand, they tore through the pink-decorated rooms, searching frantically. Finally, in a room cluttered with strange equipment, they found a massive silver metal tank lying horizontally on a rack.
Behind them, walls were collapsing, and the scorching-hot giant cockroach had closed the distance. Seeing the two frozen in front of the metal tank, it snapped its sharp mandibles with a “click-clack”, thrusting most of its massive body forward. With a powerful kick of its legs, it charged straight at Old John and James—
“Down!”
At the critical moment, Old John shouted, slamming his hands on James’s back and rolling the young man to the side. In the flash of movement, the liquid nitrogen bottle hidden behind them was revealed.
“Ssss…”
In front of the cockroach’s jagged upper mandibles, the heavy bottle seemed fragile as paper. With a single impact, it shattered. The liquid nitrogen burst out from the opening, spraying over the cockroach’s head, eyes, and back.
The colorless liquid, the instant it touched the scorching exoskeleton, boiled violently, vaporizing instantly. The rapid cooling caused the cockroach’s shell to plummet in temperature, instantly forming a thick layer of ice. Beneath the hard shell, the cockroach’s body—freshly scorched from the fire pit—was still searing hot. The collision of extreme heat and extreme cold acted like two mortal enemies, waging a violent struggle across the reddish-brown carapace.
Anyone with basic life experience knows that if you take a frozen glass from the freezer and pour boiling water into it, the sudden expansion and contraction will crack the glass. With a little historical knowledge, you might even know that some ancient people used this principle in winter, pouring scalding water over rocks to crack them and extract desired stone blocks.
Now, under this extreme temperature difference, the cockroach’s exoskeleton became like a shattered glass cup or a cracking boulder. Tiny, sharp cracks spread rapidly across its shell, dense and intricate like a spiderweb.
Success!
The greatest challenge in killing the giant cockroach had always been its nearly indestructible shell. Once the shell was shattered, even modern firearms posed no threat to it.
Seeing this, Old John’s joy was uncontainable. He quickly drew his handgun from his back holster, stepped back a few paces, and unleashed a rapid burst aimed at the cracks.
“Bang bang bang! Bang bang bang bang!”
The gunfire lasted for about ten seconds, emptying the magazine. Without its protective shell, the cockroach’s head was riddled with bullets like a honeycomb, and its massive body collapsed limply to the ground.
But cockroaches are notoriously resilient. Old John didn’t relax. Taking advantage of the remaining liquid nitrogen’s freezing effect, he grabbed a steel rod from the ground and struck forcefully at the joint between the cockroach’s head and thoracic plate.
Hand rises, head falls.
The enormous head rolled heavily from the body. The source of all chaos had finally been crushed.
Everyone exhaled in relief.
…
Even after the giant cockroach’s death, chaos in the town continued for a while.
Daytime extermination relied on visual searching, and in the sewers and other hidden corners, a number of cockroach nymphs had survived. Over the course of more than three hours, they completed molting and emerged as flying cockroaches the size of basketballs.
Fortunately, the molting process consumed so much energy that immediately after emerging, these cockroaches did not hide. Instead, they launched attacks on nearby fresh prey. This allowed people to locate the stragglers quickly and, using whatever means they could, finish them off.
One by one, throughout the night, they were killed. By the faint light of dawn, the town was completely clean—no living cockroach remained.
By this point, Everly had already fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.
Old John’s beloved truck had been gloriously sacrificed in the incident, burned down to just a frame at the bottom of the pit. With no means of transportation and the town’s exits still blocked by abandoned vehicles, he temporarily checked into two rooms at the local inn and stayed there with Everly.
Eliminating the giant cockroach didn’t mean everything was over.
First and foremost, the townspeople needed to thoroughly disinfect the entire town from top to bottom, ensuring that not a single egg case of a mutant cockroach remained.
At the same time, they had to find someone to repair the communication base stations that had been destroyed, so contact with the outside world could be restored, and seriously injured residents could be rushed to the hospital. They needed to clear the streets of fallen cockroach corpses to prevent passersby from getting burned by sticky fluids, record the deaths from the infestation and tend to the bodies, repair damaged buildings so the town could function again, notify people who had fled to return, and more…
Everly’s head spun just listening. Fortunately, she was still a child; as long as she ate well and grew up safely, the adults would handle the rest.
Old John, however, couldn’t sit still. After a nap at the inn, he regained his energy. At the invitation of the townspeople, he went out with them to help with recovery efforts.
By the time he returned, it was already evening.
During dinner, Everly asked him about his outing and learned that he had been invited to track down the giant cockroach’s nest.
“…At the central square, where the giant cockroach had emerged, there’s a tunnel. We followed it all the way and reached its nest. Remember that alley where we found the Samoyed’s body? You wouldn’t believe it, but the cockroach’s nest was hidden in the basement of that abandoned building right next to the alley! The top of the basement has a crack that opens directly onto the alley’s end wall. No wonder Buddy kept barking there that day—it had already discovered the cockroach mother early on…”
He spoke between bites of his sandwich, both he and Everly shaking their heads in disbelief.
Hearing this, Everly’s heart skipped a beat.
She thought of her own “Four-Stage Theory” for horror movies. When Buddy barked furiously at the alley, according to the theory, the film was just entering Stage Two: the insect disaster grows from small to large, gradually starting to affect the town. At this stage, the movie uses various signs to hint to the audience that the situation is becoming serious, and the full-blown disaster is just a step away. Yet the people living through it, limited by their own perspective, often fail to recognize the change and continue their calm, ordinary lives.
Buddy’s strange behavior was one of these signs.
In fact, if one looked closely, the film had already laid countless foreshadowing clues for the disaster that would follow. For example: the sudden emergence of a large number of new cockroach species, the bloodthirsty and violent nature of these new cockroaches, the small outbreak at the school… Viewed this way, tracing everything back, it seemed the origin might actually lie at the school itself.
But that was strange. If everything originated at the school, what could have caused the appearance of the giant cockroach mother in the first place?
The school was so run-down, with only a few simple pieces of lab equipment. Everly couldn’t imagine what could have happened there to produce such a terrifying cockroach mother. As for common causes of animal mutations—biochemical experiments or nuclear waste leaks—none of it had anything to do with Volcano Rock Canyon Elementary School…
Everly thought and thought, her round face crumpling in concentration. She racked her brains but couldn’t figure it out.
Until one night, in the middle of sleep, she suddenly threw off her covers and sat up in bed.
She had figured it out! It was Carter! The “alien egg” Carter had brought to school!