A small boy, maybe four years old, pushed his toy truck through the dry, gray dirt, slowly, lethargically, as if he were very tired. A bug, shiny and quick, ran across his small hand and disappeared up the old tree. The drought was unrelenting and what little was left of the grass was a carpet of brown, brittle spikes. Even the trees were losing their leaves, and it was only August. Wells were drying up, the cattle were being shipped to the stock yards early, and hogs fought and began to eat at each other, in their desperate, never-ending misery. Winter would be a blessing this year.

The boy played, and though he could not fully understand, he knew something was terribly wrong. But he was from sturdy stock, raised on a working farm, and didn't seem to mind that the dirt was a filthy powder, or that the breeze felt like a blast from a furnace. His dog and his toys were his only companions, while his parents sat in stony silence, as their poverty slowly crushed what little spirit they had left. They watched helplessly as their corn shriveled and burned in the fields. A flat tire on the tractor was a major blow, and the old house they had bought years ago, with such hope, was falling in around them. There was no money to make even the smallest of repairs, and as they waited for the miracle of rain, a sheep lay dead in the wasted pasture, it's eyes open, blank and glazed. The cows stood, barely alive in skeletal frames, their loose skin hanging, unable to produce milk or young.

The boy's dog lay in a patch of shade so thin it seemed merely a mirage, and fitfully tried to sleep her misery away ... and as if it were an angry god, the wind blew harder, sucking the life out of the world.

The bugs were watching. Waiting. They knew how to survive. The century old tree was a fortress. Dying inside, it was hollow, and from deep in the root system, to halfway up it's trunk, the multitude lived. And multiplied. The searing heat was like a force, stirring them on, to a single, urgent exodus.

The small boy, seemingly turning gray himself, ventured inside the crumbling old house to find a drink of water. As his mother and father watched in numb despair, he dared not ask for more than a tiny cup of the precious fluid. Their faces were masks of futility, as the voice from the old radio once more declared the drought had no end in sight.

He crept quietly back outside, and picked up the little toy tractor that he had played with so faithfully for two years, never tiring of making the "chug-chug" motor sounds so realistically. The dog had long ago chewed one of the front tires off, but the boy loved it just the same, sometimes even sneaking it to bed with him, his dreams his only escape ... .

The hot, dry gale blew forcefully with renewed energy. The tree seemed to vibrate, while the boy pushed his tractor up the trunk, making the motor sound louder and louder, as if in defiance of the wind. His little dog pricked her ears, and looked up at the branches of the old tree. A small whine escaped her mouth, as a billion cockroaches spilled from a crevice at the base of the trunk, smothering her. Like a statue, the boy stood frozen in fear, the horde covering his small body with a dark gleaming blanket of death ... the small Kansas farm only the beginning, of the ending, of the world.

The cicadas' buzzing grew shrill and frantic in the simmering heat, while the hogs screamed in their stench and carnage. Vultures fell from the sky to begin their work, dropping down to clean the waste below them. Crops shriveled as the sun's relentless rays beat down on a world without water, or hope. And shrieking in fear and famine, the humans lost the battle and died ... as the meek inherited the earth.