If the universe had any mercy in it, the swarm would have blanketed him, obscured his death from view, but it didn’t. His death was a spectacle. We saw him denuded of skin, saw them burrow through the spongy tissue of his bones, and gnaw through heart and lung, liver and stomach. In seconds, he went from boy to Swiss cheese monument, a juddering colander trellised by strings of crawling, jewel-shelled insects.
