Free Dust Girl: The American Fairy Trilogy Book 1 by Sarah Zettel Page B

wanna take a bite outta me? Come on and try it!”
    Which was a stupid thing to say, because Mrs. Hopper did come on. For a minute, I saw the locust plainly. Taller and heavier than I was, it scuttled on four of its legs, its hooked feet held out in front. Its mandibles snapped, looking for something all covered in sticky cola to chew.
    Fear blanked my mind. I backed up, clutching the frying pan in front of me.
    The bug shivered and became Mrs. Hopper again. She pressed a hand against her stomach.
    “What …” Mrs. Hopper covered her mouth, and hereyes rolled. With a groan, she reeled sideways. Vomit splattered all over the floor.
    It was disgusting.
    Seeing no point in waiting around for her to finish, I ran headlong for the swinging doors and slammed into Jack.
    We both staggered backward, clutching our noses and gawking at each other.
    “The Hoppers are all being sick!” He pointed behind him. Then he saw Mrs. Hopper retching, and Letitia still out cold against the wall. “God Almighty.”
    “Come on!” I bolted down the corridor toward the front doors, still holding tight to the frying pan. My plan was forgotten. All I could think about was getting away. I jumped off the porch and plowed straight into the dust drifts.
    “Wait!” Jack grabbed my wrist. “The car!” He waded toward the Duesenberg, which sat gleaming in the light that trickled from the Imperial’s glass-fronted doors.
    “We don’t have the key!”
    “Just get in!”
    I dove through the driver’s-side door, my pan banging the door frame behind me. All at once, the Duesy was gone. I sat in a rattletrap Model A truck with a cracked windshield and an open back.
    Jack and I stared at each other, but only for a heartbeat. Jack folded the Model A’s hood back and plunged both arms into the engine. A second later, the engine coughed and the smell of gasoline filled the passenger compartment.The whole truck shuddered, and the motor caught. That unsteady rumble was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.
    I threw myself and my frying pan sideways as Jack leapt feetfirst into the driver’s seat. He worked the choke, yanked the throttle open, slammed the gears, and stomped hard on the accelerator, and we lurched off into the dark.
    “Which way?” shouted Jack.
    The world beyond the little space cleared by the headlights was a wall of solid black. I squinted, and found out my ability to see through the dust didn’t mean I could see in the dark.
    “Just drive!”
    Jack’s cheek bulged as he clenched his jaw. A line of barbed wire and fence posts appeared in front of us. Jack swore and tried to swing right, but he was too late. Wire twanged and snapped around us as the truck lumbered straight ahead.
    I stared and stared. Slowly, I made out the line of the hogback ridge, and then the vague shape of a windmill. With the fence, that meant we were headed east, away from town, out toward the railroad tracks. I opened my mouth to tell Jack to bear left, but the wind gusted hard, blowing dust in through the truck’s open windows. Dust, and voices.
    Look shhhhaaaarrrrp! Look shhhhaaaarrrrp!
    “No! Oh, no, no, no, no!”
    “What?” Jack demanded.
    “Can’t you hear it?”
    “No!”
    THUMP!
The truck rocked under the impact of something heavy falling square on the roof.
    “Heard that,” Jack muttered.
    A second thump shook our flimsy getaway truck.
    “That too,” said Jack.
    A huge Hopper head, mandibles scissoring, ducked into the window. I screamed and shoved the frying pan straight into its mouth. There was a hiss and a stench like burning hay, and the bug tumbled off into the dust.
    “Got it!” I shouted.
    Jack hooted and pounded the steering wheel.
    A black hook curled around the window frame.
    “Take that!” I banged the frying pan down on the hook. The Hopper howled and the hook vanished.
    Jack gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles went white. “Hang on!”
    He hit the brakes and wrenched the wheel around. The engine groaned, and the