Caught in the Web

by Jason R Davis

  Maybe it was because of that, but he couldn’t get the image out of his mind as to her always just being the sidekick. He could picture her in some movie, always being the one standing around eating a chocolate bar or some candy.

  He knew that was mean. That it wasn’t right to judge her by how large she was and how shy she seemed. Still, he just couldn’t get the damn image out of his head.

  He was thinking way too much about it.

  He should be watching them, paying attention to what they were doing and making sure nothing happened to them.

  “Damn, this crap is disgusting,” came Christian’s voice over the radio.

  “Cut the chatter,” the corporal said, sternly.

  “Yes, corporal.”

  The corporal seemed like a decent guy. From what Westdale had heard around camp, he should have been a sergeant, but he never pushed for it. There was even a rumor that he had actually refused it a few times. From what others had said, he didn’t want to take on the responsibility.

  He could see that. He wouldn’t want to be in charge of fresh young apes running around with machine guns, grenades, and assault rifles, either.

  Westdale had no idea just why they would have put him in charge of this little squad.

  “What the…”

  Westdale looked at the doctor. He hadn’t realized he had been staring at the larger of the two and had kind of zoned out. Now he saw that her eyes were wide, and she was looking at the body and the other doctor in a frozen expression of panic.

  Westdale could see why. The things only working hand had reached out and grabbed the doctor’s wrist as she leaned over it. She must have been coming across the center with the scalpel to cut down its chest. It held her there firmly, the hand stopped after just having cut into the pale white flesh.

  “Soldier, get it off me,” he heard her say in a high voice. He had the sense she wanted to scream, but something inside her was forcing her to keep control. That impressed him. Maybe this wasn’t her first rodeo, and she wasn’t all that uptight for no reason.

  He hurried over to her, snapping into motion at the sound of her voice. His rifle was raised but, as he closed the three foot gap, he realized he was too close to shoot it.

  If it was a human, alive or rational being he could point to its head and demanded it release her. If it was like a zombie from the movies, he could just fire into the head. However, he wasn’t sure what the hell this thing was. No matter what they did, it just seemed like it never died. Its head was already a mass of gore, but it was wrestling with the tiny, frail-looking doctor.

  In one swift, smooth motion, he rotated his rifle so the butt of it was forward. He wasn’t aiming for the head this time. This time, he was going for its wrist. He couldn’t really aim. The thing and the doctor were struggling and she was pulling, trying to shake free. It wasn’t releasing her, and she was moving the torso around on the table. The thing was lighter than the amount of strength it seemed to possess, making the torso of the creature unable to get any leverage. However, that also made it a hard target.

  He changed his grip. Now he held it more like a baseball bat, raising it over his head like a sledgehammer. Damn, he hoped like hell his drill sergeant never saw this. For that matter, he hoped none of his superior officers saw it, as he knew just how keen they were to bite his head off. Using the butt of the rifle was one thing, but to be swinging it down… Yeah, he knew it would not go over that well.

  Who was he kidding? If he got through this shit, they sure as fuck better see there were extenuating circumstances.

  Yeah, right, and pigs flew.

  He brought the rifle down across its arm. He had been aiming for as close to the wrist as he could get without hitting the doctor’s arm, but due to a sudden jerk of the zombie, he had missed and the rifle slammed down onto hers.

  He heard her scream come from both within the room and his radio. It was like an echoing scream drilling into his head, loud and shrill. From the crack he had heard and how her hand was hanging at an angle, he knew it was broken.

  “What the hell’s going on in there?” came the loud, commanding voice of the corporal.

  “It has the doctor. Your soldier has broken the doctor’s arm trying to get her free. We need to get her away from it,” came a rushed, panicked voice. He knew it couldn’t have been from the other doctor in the room because she was still too shell-shocked and was backing away from the table. It had to have come from the male scientist who was still in the other part of the trailer.

  “Fuck!” came Thompson’s voice. “We are pulling out of the office sweep. Churchill, Redman, you two head back to command to assist. Randall, you stay on perimeter, and we’ll meet up with you to secure, then we’ll swoop back in towards the command in a sweep.”

  A chorus of “A cho” came over the radio.

  Westdale didn’t have time to respond. He had to react and keep reacting.

  Once the pain had dulled in his head from the wailing scream, he saw that the doctor was collapsing to the floor, pulling the thing down with her. The rifle was useless so he quickly set it aside and reached forward, grabbing the thing around what used to be its chest.

  Under the sensation of his gloves, he could feel the softness of the flesh. The thing was cold enough that it sent an icy chill through his fingertips, and it was squishy like he was grabbing soft hamburger after it had defrosted.

  He put his foot against the table and pulled. The thing resisted and fought him with a strength that still surprised him. He was able to pull it back, but he could see he was pulling her with it.

  He heard another scream. The thing was trying to gnaw at her neck with what was left of its jaw. There weren’t enough teeth left to tear through the suit, and it really couldn’t close what was left of its mouth, but he could see that it still pulled itself in close enough to hurt her.

  The other doctor, bone cutters in hand, finally appeared. The thing was big and had ridges to it that made it look like it belonged in a Saw movie. It was nearly a foot long, the steel shining bright. He could only imagine it being used in morgues and horror movies.

  The metal turned a dark black as she brought it down, starting to slice through its arm. The thing didn’t react to it and the hand kept hold, even after the blade finished making its way through.

  The torso fell back, Westdale releasing it and rolling in the opposite direction. He stopped, his breath heavy, quickly fogging his facemask. He could feel sweat beading across his brow. The suit seemed like it was growing hotter, burning him up. These suits were never meant to handle this kind of use and he was overheating.

  He tried to look back over at the two doctors. He could hear the one still screaming, fighting against the hand. The other doctor, blurred in his vision, was bent over her, trying to pull the hand free.

  “Westdale! Westdale! We need you out here. There are more of those things. They are all over the place,” came over his radio. He thought it sounded like the corporal’s voice, but it was too distorted. There had been too much gunfire in the background.

  This whole situation was going to hell. They had to get out of there. The doctors needed to get away. He needed to get away. He realized there was no way they could take these things out. They had one in the lab which was just a torso, and they couldn’t even stop that. It was like every part of the body was after them, out to kill them.

  He needed a fucking flamethrower. Just how in the hell would the things like that? Burn the sons of bitches. He doubted any pieces of them would last against a fucking flamethrower.

  Did they have one? He tried to think over their inventory. He didn’t recall seeing one, but he sure as hell doubted they didn’t have one. These guys seemed to have thought of everything. These were smart people. They had to have thought they might need to use a flamethrower for something, right? Fire was the best at cleansing a hostile infection. Isn’t that why forests were put to the torch in some of those third world counties? To combat the spread of certain disease
s?

  Yeah, like he would know. Still, someone had to have thought of it. There had to be a flamethrower somewhere in there.

  Westdale turned himself over, pushing himself to his knees, then reached out to the wall. He pushed off of it, but something slammed into his leg, causing him to stumble. He looked back and saw the stump of the arm hitting against his leg. It didn’t have any stability, but it was flailing in a fashion to move it closer to him. It was somehow pushing its torso around so that the little of what was left of the skull was coming towards his leg. The damn thing was still trying to eat him!

  “Fuck this!” Westdale slammed his large boot down, feeling the satisfying crunch beneath his heel as what was left of the skull shattered.

  He had hoped it would finally stop moving, but it didn’t. The stump of an arm continued to pound against his leg, and he fell back against the wall, letting it. It was only causing bruises at this point. He was just too damned tired of fighting with the thing.

  He looked away from it to see that the hand was being pulled free from the doctor; however, as it pulled away, he saw it had somehow been able to rip a hole in the woman’s suit. He could see that a trickle of blood starting to form. He doubted she even realized it yet, and he wondered what she would do when she did.

  Then he had the fleeting, dismal thought of just how easy it was to become one of those damned things, and he had the feeling it was a hell of a lot easier to become one than kill one.

  His leg took another hit. Who was he kidding? They still hadn’t killed one. They had shot it, dismembered it, but it was still hitting him. It was dead as dead could be, but it was still trying to come after him.

  “Westdale, get your ass out here! Churchill is down. Christian, behind you!”

  Westdale hadn’t heard any gunfire over the radio that time. He knew they were probably out of ammo. His squad was out there, while he was safe inside. They were all going to die. He knew it had taken much of their ammo just to bring this one down. They couldn’t have had much left. How much did he have? Not much. Not much at all, and he doubted that if he had gone out there, he would even have been able to help them.

  They were all dead, and they didn’t even know it.

  “Where are all these spiders coming from?” he heard the doctor ask.

  He looked over at her, the fog in his visor beginning to fade as he was getting his breathing under control. He saw it, too. Not the spiders, but the male doctor looking down at the woman on the ground. He could see it in his eyes…fear.

  Yeah, they both knew what that meant. Soon, it wasn’t going to be much safer in there.

  “Get them off me! Get them off! They’re getting into my skin. Get them off!”

  Westdale walked over to her, lowered his rifle so it was aimed at her facemask, and fired a single shot. The sound echoed in the small room, and he wondered if that had been the smart thing to do. After all, he was pretty sure that had been his last shot. He should have saved it for himself.

  CHAPTER 19

  They were still out there. Nothing had changed, but everything had. Minutes were dragging into hours. The sun was glowing, and the day was slowly passing by. The things were still outside. They had been moving along the street, more of the things joining the group, but there now seemed like there was an influx of more of them just mulling around out there.

  At first, Sullivan and Jason watched them from the front windows, but over the course of the last hour, they seemed to just occasionally glance out in morbid curiosity.

  In the bar, nothing had really changed. As it grew dimmer outside, inside seemed to become lighter. It was amazing at how perception could manipulate how the lighting was perceived. When the sun had been high, the bar had seemed like a dungeon, barely enough light to keep from tripping over their own two feet, but as the sunlight left, inside became lighter.

  Rob looked at the ambient green glow coming from the lights behind the bar, then looked at his reflection in the bar mirror. That green light made him glow unworldly as he looked into his own eyes. If he had to describe them, he would say they were dark and sunken. He really hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before because he had been having nightmares.

  Bruce was the same way, as he had heard the trucker mentioning earlier that he had driven all night. Before he had picked up Rob, he had been hurrying home and had faked his logs so he wouldn’t have to stop. It wasn’t an uncommon practice, but it was highly illegal, and the truck driver was now showing just how tired he was. His head was slumped over the bar, just a few stools down from Rob, gazing into his glass of Coke. Rob wasn’t sure when the man had switched back to just drinking soda. Or was he, as he didn’t recall the bartender earlier just putting Coke into a glass. Not unless it had a little rum mixed in.

  They were all getting tired, worrying when the things would try to get in again. It had been a couple of hours since that redneck and his wife had gone outside. The back window was broken, and while the things hadn’t been able to get in, he had heard them try a few times.

  He had no idea what they were going to do.

  “Any ideas yet?” Bruce asked.

  Rob looked at the reflection and saw Bruce was looking at him in the mirror, that green light catching the dark grease patches on his face and turning it into a hideous mask. Rob looked away to stare into his own darkness.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We can’t just stay here, can we?” Denise asked. Both she and Tina had stayed quiet; however, Tina stayed by herself behind the bar, holding the baby. She was withdrawn, only focusing on the child in her arms. The world was a million miles away from her.

  “I’m not sure we have too many other options.”

  “Why? What do you think is going on?” Bruce said as he glared at him.

  “Don’t know.”

  “So you’ve said. You’ve said that since we got here, but you do know something.”

  “What do you know?” Sullivan asked.

  He stepped away from the front window to walk down to the cooler, pulling himself out a beer. He popped the top and started to drink. He didn’t even put any money in the till for it, but Jason didn’t push the subject. He hadn’t been paying attention to any of their drinks for the last few hours. Probably a smart move, though Rob wasn’t sure it had anything to do with money. The kid still seemed like he was more or less suffering from shock and was only really with them part of the time.

  “I don’t know anything. I can make some guesses, based off former military training and my experience as an officer, but I don’t know if any of it’s true.”

  “Cut the shit. What’s going on out there?”

  “With them?” He motions to the window. “I don’t know. Is there a large military base around here? I don’t know of any north of Marion. Then there’s Fort Leonard Wood. Outside of that, I don’t know of any, so I can’t say military experiment gone wrong or some other conspiracy-related garbage.”

  “So what do you know?” Bruce was getting hostile.

  “Phones are out. Cell towers are jammed. Television is jammed. That’s what I know.”

  “You really think they’re being jammed?” Sullivan asked.

  Rob just nodded, then took another drink of soda. The Coke had started to taste sour to him. He thought he should switch over to water. He was probably getting wired up on the caffeine and sugar. Besides, it was now warm and had long since gone flat.

  “But you’re thinking something.”

  Rob swiveled, turning to look Bruce directly in the eyes. It seemed like there was some silent communication there, and the edge fell away. Bruce softened, nodded, then shrank back into himself. He brought his hands up and buried his face in them.

  “What is it?”

  “We’re quarantined. Cut off from the outside world.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Okay, take what I’ve already said, but now add in the fact that my car still hasn’t been towed in from out of town.”

  “But that
could be because the tow truck driver got attacked.”

  “Could be, but add it up. Plus, take in the fact that the CDC was here before this escalated. How they got here so fast might be the biggest stroke of luck out there, or this thing might have gotten out faster. That’s even thinking positive that it hasn’t. But the CDC was here, they locked it down, cut us off, and now we’re stuck here.”

  “So what do we do?” It was the kid asking. He still had that dead tone to his voice. Damn, Rob wished there was something he could do for him.

  “Don’t know.”

  “You don’t think we can get out of here?”

  “I think the military will have a blockade set up. Now, I don’t think they would have been able to set up road blocks at all the roads, so they probably had to bring in area law enforcement to supplement their own, but the National Guard would have taken the main routes. If we could get out of here, it’d probably have to be on a side road so we could deal with law enforcement. Military will be under strict orders, and they won’t let anyone through.”

  “So you think we should be trying to get out of here?” Sullivan asked.

  “We could just stay put until help comes.” Tina’s voice was quiet as she squeaked her opinion from the back hallway.

  “We could. We could just sit here and wait until help comes. That is, if help comes.”

  “Do you think it will?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, fuck. Why don’t you know? Come on, man. You’re one of them,” Bruce said as he stood up and started to pace the floor. “You’re a fucking pig like the rest of them. You know this shit. You know what’s going on.”

  “I’m in here. I’m in the zone. I’ve been cut off, same as you. How am I supposed to know anything?”

  Bruce turned to look at him, the corner of his eyes wet with tears. “I want to get home to my little girl.”