"Something hard slapped Johnny's cheek and exploded into dust, and then another and another and another. Johnny swatted, terrified that the hornets were going to sting him to death, but then he saw some of the insects clinging to his red windbreaker sleeve. They were not hornets at all, but some kind of locust, brown and brittle. "Ahh!" Johnny swatted them -- and they exploded into ashy gray powder. They stank of mildew and decay. All Johnny's fear of dusty, crackly, dry things rose up in him and he clenched his teeth to keep from shrieking in terror -- to keep the horrible, scratchy, swarming things from scrambling right into his mouth.
They were dead! The millions of flying things were only shells, dry and hollow -- and yet their wings buzzed and the creatures piled on, more and more, their dead legs scratching and scrabbling over his flesh, a maddening prickle over every inch of his exposed skin. Each one had almost no weight, but there were millions of them, more and more swarming onto him each second. He would be suffocated or --
Someone tugged his sleeve. In the center of a whirling murk of the littled winged monsters, Johnny could hardly see, but he glimpsed Sarah's white sweatshirt, and he stumbled toward her. "Help me," she screamed. The professor had fallen to his knees and was trying to cover his head. He was completely black with the writhing, twitching forms of locusts. The terrible insect forms crept all over him, making him a dark, writhing, shape.
Johnny forgot his own fear and brushed frantically at the awful things, gagging as they puffed into the sickening powder. "Come on!" he shouted. "We gotta get away from here!"
Wordlessly, the professor lurched to his feet, locusts falling from his arms. He wiped his face, threw a handful of the wriggling locusts to the ground, and staggered forward. Johnny pushed at his back, and Sarah pulled his hand in front. They reeled across the line where death began and life ended --
And with a whir that sounded like distant buzz saws, the cloud of horrible dead insects roiled away, flying back toward the house. Not a single one remained on them, although all three friends hysterically slapped at their arms and faces until they realized the nasty things had vanished, leaving behind only gray smears of greasy powder.
"Thank you," gasped the professor, leaning against a maple. He shivered. "I believe you probably just saved my life. Ugh! That was like being attacked by an army of tiny little flying mummies! I can still feel them creeping over my skin." He took a deep breath. "I'm going to have about three boiling hot baths in disinfectant soap as soon as I get home. Those monstrosities have left me feeling defiled."
"L-look," said Sarah. "Oh, my gosh, look at the house!"
The professor made a strange, startled sound in his throat. Johnny stared, not believing his eyes. The desiccated locusts had swarmed all over the front wall of the house, but now they had arranged themselves into lines. The lines created ragged capital letters. And the letters spelled out an eerie warning:
