#the millenium bug

"What the fuck kind of candies are these?" I asked, spitting what seemed to be sugar and wax out the side of the car.

"It was all they had at the store," you explain, frowning bitterly as you swallow half a can of an oyster-flavoured soft-drink. 

"I hate Central America," I lied.

Yeah, deep in Central America, and running from the Millenium Bug. "I thought this sorta thing got played out over a decade ago," you'd said to me, when we first saw it's gruesome carapace poking out above the dense foliage of the rainforest. 

But it wasn't a myth, or a lie, or just a fade from the late nineteen-nineties. It was a colossal insect, a bug the size of Manhattan Island. Crazy for the blood of humans, breathing clouds of toxic fire.

"I thought we were just going to expose a crazy old man, or some angry locals," I said, choking my way through another handful of what might've been a gummy worms melted into a vanilla-scented candle. "This is totally outside of anything I signed on for."

"Shut up and eat your candy and drive," you tell me. And, just because I'm scared, and there's nothing else to do, and I kind of like it when you get all growly at me, I just just up. And I eat my candy. And I drive.

Behind us, the Millenium Bug is laying waste to hundreds of thousands of lives. It'll be the worst tragedy in human history. It may turn out to be an Extinction Event.