The pneumatic doors at the back of the bus clicked and opened slowly, as if they didn’t want to release me into the humid summer day. It was before eight, still, but it was already warm and muggy. As I stepped down off the last step of the bus I straightened my shoulder bag around my frame and trudged off to my office.
I strolled down Hennepin Avenue, watching cars speed by as I thought about the day before me. I was in no hurry to get to the office. It was such a nice day out even at this early hour that I didn’t want to be inside any earlier than I had to. The morning reports could wait, I figured.
Diverging from my normal path, I headed off on a more scenic route into the heart of downtown. It was a little longer but took me past the park and wasn’t so heavily overrun with rush hour traffic. It might have been my imagination but the air felt cleaner, too. It just felt better to saunter down the footpath between buildings than on the open and boring sidewalk. Here I passed through a secret space that few knew about. The residents of the surrounding buildings must have known about it, but I was alone on the path. On my left I passed by a large pyramid of a fountain, water cascading down a series of chutes and funnels rather than spraying out the top.
In my black dress shoes the gradual uphill slope of the path was more arduous than I recalled from previous detours. I smiled to myself as I remembered I should have worn sneakers if I was going to walk the extra mile in and keep my less comfortable shoes in my bag. I glanced down at my feet to assess the scuffs on the leather and saw bugs all over the ground.
The multitude of bugs all over the pavement, swarming and squirming on the footpath, was enough to make me stutter in my step. My eyes went wide as I held my foot up, not wanting to smoosh who knows how many bugs beneath my sole. There was no order to them; they weren’t ants marching in a line or little things eating dropped food. They looked like caterpillars, but not any that I had seen before. I hadn’t noticed them when I got of the bus; they must have started beneath me somewhere on the path.
The bugs were no more than an inch long, these thin little hairy things that seemed to be criss-crossing the pavement, as far as I could see. They blended in with the speckled grit of the sidewalk, their odd black shapes indistinct from standing height. Tentatively, I bent closer down to see what was happening.
They looked uglier, more unfriendly, close up. It looked like they had pincers on one end and a point on the other. I made a noise of revulsion and straightened up, pressing forward in resignation, knowing I was squishing countless numbers of the little monsters under my feet as I walked. I thought about pulling up the legs of my pants so I wouldn’t have any hitchhikers on my hem, but reconsidered when I realized how peculiar it would look to anyone who might see me. Resigning myself to the situation I was in, I shook my head and walked to the end of the footpath, where I came out onto Nicollet Mall.
To my dismay, the bug influx didn’t end with the path by the park. Wherever they had come from, they were just as numerous on the sidewalk as they were in the path. Looking around in amazement at the unexpected change in the ecosystem, I noticed the few people out in the streets were also stepping gingerly. I wanted to find a spot free of the bugs from which I could observe them, but everywhere I looked they wriggled and went about their business. They were crawling over light-posts and garbage cans. They covered the fountains and statues lining the mall. I trudged on to the office.
Heading north up Nicollet, I passed a coffee shop with its doors locked and a closed sign in the window. Odd, I thought. Wednesday morning after seven, they should be open. At the intersection on 9th and Nicollet, I realized the bugs weren’t confined to any one area. In fact, they were just as numerous in the street as they were on the sidewalk and path, if not more so. A passing bus lumbered by, smashing thousands of the little caterpillar things under its wheels and leaving two tire tracks of goo in its wake.
I had to keep moving at Don’t Walk signs, for fear of the bugs crawling up and over my shoes, up past my socks and biting my ankles and legs. I itched just thinking about it. In curious horror I lifted a leg to look at the bottom of my shoe. The sole was sticky and whitish green, the gunk from thousands of crushed bugs under my foot. I shivered and walked up the mall as soon as the light turned.
As I neared my office I tried to stop a passing man to ask if he knew what was happening. He shook me off, not speaking but communicating he wanted nothing to do with me. A woman wearing a raincoat and carrying an umbrella hustled by, her head down and avoiding eye contact with me. There were no clouds in the sky. Her getup seemed oddly preventative, I thought.
I noticed there were other shops that were closed. Cafes and delis that normally would be open for business were shuttered, despite their normal hours of operation being fully in effect. I was gestating a ball of anxiety in my core, a gnawing, nervous thing that ate at my focus and stole my concentration.
When I arrived at my office building at the corner of 6th and Nicollet I almost stopped in my tracks. I skidded a bit from the slippery goo under my feet, but keep shuffling a bit to prevent interlopers on my loafers.
The entire building, at least as far as my eyes could discern, was covered in the swarming bugs.
They had enveloped the tower, very little if any concrete visible under the black teeming mass of insects. From where I stood across the intersection it appeared as thought the building was alive. The swarming bugs resembled a single organism, like it was a shuddering skin over the skeleton of the Dorsey tower.
I understood now why the woman had the umbrella and raincoat. To get through the doors I would have to pass under a continuous stream of falling bugs. Where ever they came from, there seemed to be more and more of them by the minute.
I pulled my collar tight around my neck and went as quick as I could. Even just wrapping a single finger around the gold handle on the glass door, I felt the little caterpillars crawl onto my skin. I was standing in the lobby of the building brushing the insects off of my shoulders when they started biting my hand. Little pincers dug into the soft flesh of my palm. I cried out in horror and anger more than pain. They didn’t hurt that bad; it was more the threat of so many of them getting the same idea, the sheer volume of them covering the glass of the lobby and blocking out the sun. I scraped my hand against a corner of pillar and rubbed my palms together. I was confidant I had removed all of the attackers.
Getting my bearings, I saw how dark it was in the lobby. Not only were the bugs blocking the ambient light from the day, the lights were off in the building. Most of them, anyway – a few emergency runner-lights were on along the walls. No one was around. I wanted to get answers, to find out what was happening and where everyone was. I needed to get to my office, where I could use the phone and, provided the system was up and running, scour the internet for answers.
From the elevator bank I heard the clicking of heels on stone, someone walking toward me.
“Hello?” I called. The heels stopped for a moment, then clicked faster to me. A young woman emerged from the elevator bank, taking long strides in a pencil skirt and heels. She clack-clack-clacked over to me in a purposeful, confidant manner.
“Hey,” she said, holding her arms out, “what’s going on? Is there no power? Where is everyone?”
“I…don’t know,” I replied as I looked around the lobby. I didn’t recognize her. “I just got in. I haven’t seen anyone else, really. Just a couple people on the street. My bus was pretty empty too. What’s the deal with all the bugs?”
She crossed her arms and answered without looking at me, her jaw jutting out. “I have no idea. They weren’t like this at my house, I just thought it was a sign of summer. The closer I got to downtown, the more there were. I pulled into the parking ramp downstairs and they weren’t so bad down there. They don’t seem to really come in.” Finally, she looked at me, sizing me up. “You don’t know anything about this? Are they like that all over?” she asked, pointing to the glass façade behind me.
