Page 31 - Fables volume 2

To Plague the Devil

“Hey-hey! What do you say? Great day for a swarm. Yes! I can feel
the power!”
The locust leader pushed the excited youth away.
“Go over there and stop rubbing legs with everyone! We have a
problem.”
By now a large group of chastened hexapods stood nervously
around the Big Stick. He swiveled his triangular death’s head in
search of more stragglers. Satisfied that his troop was not going
appreciably to grow, he faced them, a pained expression on his
usually blank face.
“We haven’t been out in seven years. But things have changed.
Take a good luck around this area. Hot and dry. Drought. Time to
metamorphose, go crazy and ravage the countryside, right?”
“Yeah! Let’s rock! Party time!” came the chirped response.
“I’d be happy to lead you on a major agricultural pillage, my
friends,” said the senior arthropod. “But I have already made a
reconnaissance of the area. Nothing green is coming out of the
ground. The landscape is devastated, blasted, sterile. No reason to
expend our reserves on bulking up for an open-ended raid.”
“Nothing? Nowhere? What happened?”
The Big Stick twitched his mandibles. “Looks like humanity
smoked itself out of a habitat. I don’t see how we can plague them if
they’re going to do it to themselves. This is really upside down. The
devil turns us loose to give them a taste of hell on earth, and this time
it can’t be done.”
“But our contract—” began one legalistic locust.
“Look at the fine print,” rasped his superior. “Acts of god are
excluded.”
“You mean—”
“Yes! It’s obvious, isn’t it? Instead of our boss picking people off
one at a time for individualized torment, terror and torture, they
managed to offend and outrage their favorite deity beyond all
tolerance and he is punishing them wholesale. Where does that leave

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