A Princess of The Linear Jungle by Paul di Filippo

lunch.
    One of the bike boys, a wiry blond chap, spotted a novel-looking fruit tree showing boldly along the alley’s perimeter. Before he could be cautioned otherwise, he had scrambled up its bole and had his hand upon a globular crimson pod.
    “No!” shouted Durian.
    Too late.
    The thin-skinned pod burst, drenching the lad. He fell screaming to the turf.
    Merritt and the others raced to the boy, but hung back at Vinnagar’s command.
    “Don’t touch him, or you’ll suffer the same fate!”
    The skin of the writhing lad bubbled and melted. His throat collapsing inward and exposing a segment of his spine, he died of asphyxiation complicated by shock seconds thereafter.
    Two Fisherwives boomed down and made off with the unlucky boy.
    “Bunyan. BuynyanBunyan Breedlove was his name,” said Dan Peart softly. “Had a sweetie back home smart as a Hornbucklea Hornbuckle derailleur .”
    Scoria confronted Vinnagar. “How did you know of the danger?”
    “Have you ever consulted Brion Allardyce’s Hortus Botanicus ? No? An omission you must someday repair. Allardyce lived in Greendale five hundred years ago, and was in charge of the Mayoral Hothouses of that Borough. He describes a plant he called ‘the saliva tree’ for its digestive properties, and provided an illustration. Current authorities deem the species extinct. But I recognized the original just before poor Bunyan reached his deadly prize.”
    The expeditionaries returned to their meal, but with hardly any appetite left. This first fatality had unnerved them mightily, especially due to its preventability. Nonetheless, under Scoria’s urging, they ate to keep up their strength, before resuming their walk.
    Toward the middle of the afternoon, Merritt was the first to detect an odd, almost subliminal noise.
    “Art, stop a minute!”
    Halted and shushed, they all heard the growing noise.
    “Sounds like a thousand air hoses filling a thousand bike tires,” said Peart.
    Now, away down the transmogrified Broadway, something loomed. A moving line composed of barely discernible identical parts.
    “Rifles up!” commanded Arturo Scoria.
    Four bike boys formed the front ranks. Peart and the fifth faced rearward, just in case, sandwiching the remaining five explorers.
    Ransome and Scoria were both tall enough to peer over the bike boys, and so they alerted the others to the nature of the approaching creatures.
    “Roaches! Giant roaches!”
    Her heart thumping like mad, her mouth gone dry, Merritt nevertheless bulled past her chivalrous protectors to see for herself.
    Each cockroach was the size of a sofa, and moving about as fast as a human’s easy walking pace. Hissing contentedly, they munched the turf as they advanced, filling the passage “shoulder to shoulder.” They seemed oblivious of any object in their way, including the Scoria-Vinnagar Vayavirunga Expedition.
    “Shoot!” Scoria ordered.
    A volley of pneumatic shots pfffted out, bringing the lead roaches down in a mortal tumble. Finding a heap of their dead fellows blocking their path, the roaches behind halted in evident confusion, milling about and hissing in annoyance, antennae waggling.
    Scoria seemed about to give another order—perhaps, thought Merritt, to slaughter the rest of the roaches—when from a side trail emerged those in charge of the cockroaches.
    Cady Rachis screamed, “Rats!”
    But they were not rats, thought Merritt with absurd composure. They were ratmen.
    Entirely human and male from the neck down, wearing naught but skirts fashioned of lanceolate leaves, the masters of the roaches featured completely rodential phizzes, furred and snouted and whiskered. It was as if, thought Merritt, a human had donned an elaborate full hollow-head mask that rested firmly upon the clavicle.
    But when the ratmen snarled, revealing wet pink tongues and sharp yellow teeth, the sense of harmless masquerade was shattered.
    And the ratmen carried long-shafted, wicked-looking spears.
    Without prompting,