Now what was he going to do?

Should he hide until the wasps left? He doubted his concealment would last forever. Eventually one of the Wardens would notice him and investigate. Then he'd be in serious trouble. He needed to find a way to distract the wasps and drive them away so he could retrieve the binoculars.

Slowly he crawled away from the Swarm, retracing his route until he was back at the ridge. He retrieved his backpack and routed around inside.

There must be something I can use to distract the wasps, he thought.

He found nothing, until he pulled out the first aid kit. Inside he discovered exactly what he was looking for.

His plan was simple but it would take careful preparation. If he timed it perfectly, he could snatch the binoculars and escape without the swarm being aware of his presence. He hoped.

He set about preparing. Firstly, he dug up some stones from the ground. It was easier with the ground so wet. The rocks would be instrumental in ensuring that his plan wasn't discharged too soon.

Then he set about opening the package he had found. He had to be meticulously quiet. He wasn't certain how well wasp could hear, but he knew if he made too much noise, he would attract their attention.

It took him ages to unfold the package. He placed the stones on top to prevent the wind from catching it. Even so, he was dreadfully concerned about the racket he was making. He expected to be discovered at any moment.

He had to pry each layer apart, which was difficult to do while he was under the covers. It was delicate work and he had to remove his gloves. By the end, his hands were like ice. However, apart from the edges leaking out from the covers he managed to unfold it without incident. He gazed at the sheet and nodded. He was ready. He slipped his gloves back on.

Tailor removed the stones and quietly gathered the sheet in his hands underneath him. Then he waited. He needed a gust of wind for his plan to work. He waited a terribly long time, hunkered under the yellow covering, hoping that he wasn't about to make a horrible mistake. If the plan failed, the wasps would surely spot him and that would be that.

He listened, and sought out any signs of movement from his spy hole. There were no indications of any Wardens nearby, although he could still hear the swarm.

A squall whipped at the covering. Now was his chance. He rolled to his side and the covering fell away. He launched the silver thermal blanket with all his might. It sailed up into the air, crackling as the ball unwound. Then the wind caught it. Like a silver sail, it snapped and floated up across the open field away from him toward the hospital.

Tailor only got a quick glimpse. Once he was certain it was on its way, he grabbed the edge of his covering and pulled it back across himself. He hoped that the wasps would fly after the silver intruder instead of investigating its origin.

He huddled under the covering and listened for the sound of the swarm as it chased after the blanket. However, all he could hear was the wind. He was tempted to peek, but that was risky.

For a long, frightful moment, he waited. Then he heard something that filled him with dread. It was the metallic crackling of the blanket. It was drawing closer.

Tailor peeked out from the covering. The silver sail was floating above him heading straight for the Swarm. The wind had changed and taken it in the entirely wrong direction.

The Swarm must have spotted it at the same time as he had because it reacted. The humming rose in volume, and there was an angry burr to it. As he ducked under the covers, Tailor got a quick glimpse as the Swarm leapt from the grass and attacked the blanket. He could hear the impacts as sortie after sortie pummelled the intruder. Then as the wind increased, the sound of both was gone.

Tailor ducked out from underneath the covering. He listened. He could just hear the hum, but it was fading. Leaping to his feet, he slung his backpack and snapped on his belt. Then he ran toward the binoculars.

He kept low just in case there were any wasps that had remained behind. He darted through the narrow gully until he reached the edge of the depression. There he stopped and raised his head above the grass tops.

He could see the blanket, still in the air, surrounded by the Swarm. Then abruptly, the wind dropped and the blanket floated down to drape itself over the window frame where his father had given him the binoculars a few hours before. The Swarm continued to attack it.

Tailor couldn't see any signs of wasps in the area around the binoculars. What was he going to do now that his escape route was blocked? He glanced toward the buildings to the right. They would have to do. At the very least, he could hide there.

He leapt into the hollow and grabbed the binoculars. He suspected he had only seconds before the swarm would return to recommence its assault upon the hapless eyeglasses.

He was about to turn and dash away when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a flash of red: a Warden. It burst from the grass and charged straight for him. Tailor reacted instantly. He swung the binoculars in his hand and pummelled the Warden into the ground. It tried to rise but he was already swinging again. The wasp went down. Just to be sure, Tailor crushed it with his boot, and then he ran.

He headed straight across the open field towards the cluster of apartments. He didn't even try to hide. The Swarm was after him, he knew. The Warden had told them about him. He needed to find a way back to the lake or he would die.

The apartments appeared to be made from a sandy-coloured material similar to the outer wall. However, these bricks had been baked hard, the surface was smooth with white veins across it.

Tailor made for one of the wider openings. Despite the brightening sunlight, he couldn't see inside the gaping doorway. At one time, it had held a sliding glass door and had probably led to something called a lounge room. Tailor didn't entirely know what one was, but he had seen them in the Pre-Fall videos.

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The life shown in those videos was quite different from how he lived. He found it difficult to believe that his parents had lived like that when they were his age.

For starters, space was at too much of a premium in his home for everyone to have individual sleeping quarters. Entire families had to sleep together. He found the thought of trying to sleep without Angie's breathing or his father's snoring nearby quite unnerving.

He was thinking about this as he plunged into the room at a sprint. However, what he saw inside caused him to pull up sharply.

Globular domes covered every centimetre of the walls. Haphazardly constructed, they overlapped and absorbed the ones surrounding them. It made the wall look like it was melting, or covered in creamy, brown lava.Wasps! Aaaarh! Spiders! Aaaaagh! [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/985522161202642954/985522395685216296/unknown.png]

The ceiling too had been eaten away. Tailor could see the domes covering the walls in the apartment above as well. In the centre of the room, a massive cigar-shaped construct hung almost all the way across the two stories. Some of the outside covering had been stripped away revealing the hexagonal chambers inside.

Tailor heart sank. He had stumbled into a giant wasp nest. There must be room for thousands of wasps here perhaps even millions.

He was about to turn and flee back outside when he realised there were no wasps crawling on the nests. In fact, the bulbous globes were dead. Even the inside chambers he could see were empty. Then he noticed the swathe of spider webs enveloping the upstairs apartment. Spiders and wasps were ancient enemies. Their continual war stretched back millions of years. Somehow, a cluster of spiders had gained a foothold in the wasp's home.

Tailor noticed big red ants crawling throughout the construct. They were all over the downstairs structures. Had the ants invaded first and the spiders followed?

Now the nest served as a massive trap for any unsuspecting wasp with spiders upstairs and ants downstairs. Tailor almost felt sorry for them. They had been driven from their homes by invaders – just as humanity had been.

Careful so as not to attract the attention of any wary inhabitants, Tailor moved further into the apartment. It appeared that the wasps had built throughout the entire block: in the bedrooms; the kitchen; even in the toilet. There were globes covering every surface.

As he made his way to the other side of the building, he noted that the spiders had invaded into some of the downstairs rooms as well. They were thick with webs, with bloated, fat spiders hanging in the middle.

When he reached the front door, he discovered a dense layer of web shrouding it as well. He used his gloved hand to break through the strands. Sensing the disturbance, a bloated spider, with a red hourglass on its abdomen, rushed to investigate the intrusion. Tailor knocked it to the ground and squished it with his foot. Spiders, like wasps, were not something to be trifled with.

Now that he had escaped the building, he needed to find his way back toward the lake. Before him was a low wall. Made of the same yellow sandstone, it was part of the outer compound. Beyond, there was the black surface of a road. It curved gently around in both directions. Pools of water had gathered in the large pot-sized holes dotting its surface.

Tailor could see small bushes growing in the shells of the burnt out houses lining the other side of the road. He wondered what living inside one of them must have been like. They looked massive, even compared to the apartments. He'd have to ask Blake and get him to describe what a swings was.

He set off in the direction of the lake. He proceeded in spurts, crouching low to watch the air for any sign of the Pests, before sprinting to the next hiding place when he was certain the way was clear. Every now and again, he used the binoculars to scout ahead.

Apart from the dirt covering them, the binoculars appeared to be undamaged from the adventure.

Continuing like this he eventually spotted the lake. He huddled behind the withered remains of a tree and scoured the area with the eyeglasses. It looked clear. The rangefinder revealed the lake was just over one-hundred metres away. He packed the binoculars away and prepared to make a run for it.

He took several deep breaths and readied himself mentally. He could do this, he knew.

"Just run, and leap into the water," he told himself, "Twenty or thirty seconds then you'll be safe. Ready. One. Two. Go!"

He broke cover at the same time that he heard the Swarm. He glanced back to see it appear over the top of the building. The sun was high in the sky by then, but the wind had picked up again. The swarm was risking slamming into the ground just to get its revenge.

He sprinted toward the lake. He knew he wouldn't make it, but he had to try. He ran as he'd never run before. He didn't get a lot of practice, especially now that he was bigger. There wasn't much space to run around in back home.

Then the wind dropped and he spied another Swarm taking flight off to his right. Perhaps they would fight his pursuers. Swarms could be territorial at times, he knew. However, the second Swarm headed straight for him as well.

He was almost there. He'd covered over half the distance already. He was so close! Perhaps he might survive the initial strike and still make it under the surface anyway. He ran with all his might.

Then they struck.

There was an abrupt flash of black to his right. It so surprised him that he stopped at the water's edge and turned to watch it.

Dark shapes plunged from the sky into the middle of both swarms. There must have been hundreds of them.

"Birds!" Tailor screamed.

He watched as they devastated the mass of insects weaving and darting into their midst. The swarm to the right was quickly eliminated. Then, their hungry attackers flew off after the other swarm, but it turned and fled. A few stragglers managed to limp away back over the roof as the flock gave up pursuit.

Their breakfast completed, the birds wheeled in a massive arc above Tailor. He saluted back at them.

Then he dived into the water and swam as hard as he could toward home. He had something wondrous to tell his family. Something that none of them knew: something to make his father really proud.

The birds were back.