Buzzing flies coated the green and brown sludge causing the whole mass to roil and writhe as if it were a single massive entity. There must have been thousands of them living, breeding and dying out there. Watching them made my skin crawl. I could imagine being buried alive beneath thousands of tiny legs and beating wings, until they covered my entire body, in my clothes, in my hair.

Shuddering, I put my hand on the blue-tinted glass to reassure myself that something was keeping all the bugs out. It seemed too thin. The air was thick and quivered, a living fog. I was sure that they had more than enough mass to push the window in. Beyond the quarter inch of glass, diseases long thought eradicated, propagated without anything to stop them. This entire disaster had been made possible by the MVF spill.

A finger tapped on my shoulder, “Ma’am?”

The voice belonged to my aide, Charles but his voice was different. It had a peculiar buzzing quality to it, as if he had a fly in his throat.

He tapped me again, “Bzz?”