“What about the phones?” she asked, and he was shocked by her innocence.
“I’ll man the phones when I get back, but in the meantime I’ll be telling everyone I pass to get out while they still can, and I’m starting with you. Take Lawrence with you. The keys to Anderson’s car are still there so take that and get to Emerson. Tell them what’s going on here!” He was going back to try to get hold of Emerson over the radio, but that had always been sketchy since Mercy went up.
“What about you?” Tammy asked.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, not knowing what he was talking about. “Now get going, over and out!” he clicked off the radio and threw the handpiece down on the passenger seat.
As much as he wanted to do his best in his job, there was one thing on Garrick’s mind that was more important than all else now and that was Jenny. He had to make sure she was safe. Driving with his windows open, he called on people running past to get to a car and get out of town. There was nothing he could do to save them all, and trying would only condemn more people to an agonising death in Gossamer Falls.
There were no clouds near his own home street, and it was eerily quiet here as Garrick pulled up outside his house. Screams could still be heard from all over on streets nearby and people’s names being called in hope, but it seemed his own house was outside the fray, unaffected. Then he thought about the calm in the eye of the storm and he was worried all over again. He ran to the house calling Jenny’s name.
The front door was open when he got to it and pushed on into the house. He’d told her to stay in and lock up. He rushed from room to room, still calling her name frantically as though there might have been some chance she hadn’t heard him already. Garrick ended up back in the entrance hall having checked every room. She was gone, but where? Perhaps she went to the Sheriff’s Office looking for him; that’s where she would most likely be!
On his way back to the car, he noticed someone was walking down the street, limping, a woman he didn’t recognise. She looked scared and hurt.
“Are you alright, ma’am?” he asked from across the street. She looked up in fear and then seemed a little relieved when she saw it was a policeman. At that moment a neighbour from the far side of the street, Perry Plinkins, came out of his house. He had a shotgun in his hands and Garrick didn’t blame him considering the sounds of mayhem and chaos all around. By the time Garrick understood what Perry was about however, it was too late. Perry came to the middle of his lawn, lifted the gun and blasted the head clean off the woman’s shoulders as she turned to look at him.
“Perry!” Garrick shouted, pulling his own gun and running to take cover behind the cruiser. Perry looked over at him, his eyes cold and mean. “What the hell are you doing?” Garrick shouted. Perry’s answer was to raise his gun again and fire at him.
Glass shattered and sprayed all around the ground and Garrick dropped to the ground.
“Shit!” he said. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he knew he had no choice now but to shoot Perry. It would be the first time he’d ever even had to aim his gun at a living being.
“Perry, this is your last chance,” he called out. “Put down the gun!” Garrick listened, but all he heard was the unmistakable sound of the gun being reloaded and the barrel click shut once more, two more rounds waiting to tear his body apart. The old man must have snapped with all that’s been happening this week.
Perry’s last chance was gone.
Garrick drew in some deep breaths and then glanced under the car to see if he could see where Perry was now. As expected, he’d come as far as the footpath and was getting closer. Garrick rose to his hunkers and held his gun in both hands as he leaned against the car, shuffling to the rear. He raised himself and then using all his force pushed away from the car, stood up, and shot twice at Perry.
The older man was surprised by the speed of the attack and his gun barrels had only started to lift when the two bullets entered his chest. He stood there a moment looking at Garrick like he’d never seen him before. The gun fell and clattered to the ground and then Perry fell backwards to the ground.
Garrick’s breath rushed from him and he started to feel lightheaded. With the gun still trained on Perry, he approached in a wide arc trying to see if he was still alive. He didn’t think so but couldn’t be sure.
“Perry?” he said, the feeling of death thick. He stepped closer and watched the chest. It didn’t move. Garrick moved closer and was about to bend to one knee to take Perry’s pulse when he saw the spiders crawling out of the old man’s ears. There were not many, but even one inside a man’s head was way too many. Garrick backed away, still a little dizzy, and realised he was pointing his gun at the spiders now. How ridiculous. They were coming his way, though, and he didn’t want to find out what they had in mind for him. He turned and ran to the car and drove away as fast as he could, his thoughts at once turning to Jenny and getting the hell out of this place.
Chapter 38
Clinton Scarrow stood over his car looking at the engine. It had been disabled, and there were no other cars around he could salvage the cable he needed from left in the parking lot of the hotel. He’d watched from the trees as Deputy Garrick had lifted the hood and he’d seen the man do something but didn’t know what until now. It was a good move on the policeman’s part, he had to give him that.
What was odd, though, was how he’d taken everyone away with him, leaving the dead bodies in the hotel and Scarrow’s boot. He would have expected the doctor to have been called up here at least, but it looked like for now at least everyone had simply abandoned the place, even the owner who didn’t look like he’d left here in years.
He had more work to do, but not much. Though no one in town would know it yet, the road out of Gossamer Falls through the mountains was blocked with fallen trees. Now he had to do the same for the only other road out of town, the one that passed right by the hotel. Only he didn’t have his car anymore to pull the fallen tree trunks from the side of the road. How the hell was he going to do his work now?
During a tour of the shed and surrounding area of the building of the hotel, Clinton found a couple of things to help him in his task. He’d been looking for perhaps a hidden car, snowmobile or motorbike, but what he found was a chainsaw - for keeping the forest closest to the hotel under control - and a girls’ ten-speed racing bike. Though not ideal, it would be enough for him. Tying the chainsaw onto his back and hanging the gas can to fuel it on the end of the handlebars of the bike, Scarrow set off on his wobbly journey. He figured a half mile up the road would be far enough. Just enough for people to have hope about getting out of town before being bitterly disappointed and finding they were trapped unless they tried to walk or tried lifting tree trunks on their own off the road.
As he rode, Scarrow looked to the trees on both sides of the road. He was looking for a point where there were four or five large enough trunks close to the roadside so he could fell them directly across the road without having to do any pulling. He found what he was looking for only a third of a mile away and set to work at once. He was sure time was of the essence by now.
An hour later, five large trees lay at varying angles across the road and there was nothing going to get through here in a hurry. It was not a moment too soon. As Scarrow turned off the chainsaw and it whined down to silence, the sounds of screaming and shouting echoed up from the town in the distance. He smiled and got back on the bicycle and headed back to the hotel. He was sure it wouldn’t be long before people would come calling there, and he would be waiting.
Back in the parking lot, Scarrow looked at his car as he rode by. He was going to put the bicycle out of sight, to have everything look the same as it was if the Deputy came back. But he wasn’t a deputy anymore was he? Scarrow stopped, unsure where this idea had come from but feeling the truth of it. Garrick was the Sheriff now, and he was the only one left from the Sheriff’s Office. Knowledge of the town flowed into this mind; things he couldn’t know - like
what was happening in some places right now - washed through him, and he knew everything he felt and saw was real and true. It was the most powerful feeling he ever had in his life.
HE was coming from the mountain. Who HE was Scarrow didn’t know for sure, but HE was power itself and there would be no stopping him. Scarrow didn’t know what HE wanted, ultimately, but there was a darkness in it that the small town of Gossamer Falls would not be able to contain.
Chapter 39
Maggie Glymer tried climbing up onto the roof proper of the surgery, but it was a sheer lift and she just couldn’t do it, despite numerous efforts. After her most recent failure, she’d allowed herself to look down on the lawn. It was almost completely covered now in the white spiders. An army of them streamed out onto the sidewalk and there broke off in groups moving in all different directions. Regardless of the numbers that were going off somewhere else, the lawn looked caked solid of spiders who were going nowhere. Maggie had the eerie sense they were watching her, waiting her out, but that couldn't be the case.
“You’re losing it, Maggie,” she heard Frank say in her mind.
“I know,” she agreed quietly.
Just then, Maggie felt the unmistakable sensation of being watched. She looked beyond the spiders and there in the middle of the road were two boys on bikes.
“Watch out!” she shouted at them, standing up and waving her hands, “Those spiders are dangerous. You need to get out of here or they’ll kill you!” The boys looked at one another, down to the nearby row of spiders, and then back to Maggie.
“What are you doing up there?” the older of them called. Maggie looked and saw he was the same defiant boy who’d been ringing her doorbell and running away recently.
“Didn’t you hear me!” she called. “You’ll be killed!” The younger boy looked nervous and he eyed the spiders while the older continued looking up at Maggie.
“What about you?” he called up.
“What about me?” she replied; couldn’t these goddamn kids do anything a grown-up told them these days!
“Well, how long is it going to be before the spiders start coming up after you? Where are you going to go then?” Maggie didn’t know why he was asking, but she didn’t have an answer. The boy saw her hesitation. “We can’t leave you here like this,” he added. Maggie’s heart melted, but she was the adult here and she couldn’t let little kids risk their lives to save her.
“Go get some help,” she called. “Just don’t let any of those spiders come near you!”
“No,” the boy answered forcefully, “we’re not leaving you like this,” and then turning to his friend said, “Come on Ed, we have to think of something.” Ed was still looking at the filing spiders on the road.
“I don’t know, Terry,” he said. “Maybe we should just go get the Sheriff.”
“To hell with that,” Terry answered, and he pushed down on his pedals and turned his bike before lining it up and running down the column of spiders in the road. They made cracking noises like broken glass as his heavy rubber tyres crushed them. “Looks like they die easy enough!” he shouted back, turning around again. In his wake, he’d left dozens dead and a pinkish ooze was smudged on the ground.
“Don’t touch them even if they are dead!” Maggie called down. “And don’t touch your wheels with that gunk on there!” Terry waved a hand at her while looking at Ed - a most adult motion that said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’
“If we rip up and down over the lawn a few times, we’ll kill hundreds and the rest might start to run away,” he said to Ed. Ed’s face showed how much he liked this idea.
“What if we slip on the grass?” he protested.
“We won’t,” Terry cajoled him. “Look, I’ll do a test run and you’ll see.”
Maggie up on the roof couldn’t hear this exchange, but she didn’t like the look on either boys’ face - one of fear and the other stubbornness.
“What are you two talking about down there?” she called. Neither boy answered, but the same one who’d rode over the spiders with his bike rolled up the street a little before turning to face the building again. Maggie knew then what he was planning; it was plain on his face and she screamed, “NOOOOOOO!” as he started pedalling and picking up speed.
There was nothing she could do from up here, and she looked on in horror as the boy reached his top speed and then mounted the kerb and tore across the yard right over the horde of spiders. The glass-breaking noise sang out, and the spiders started to scurry around in their confusions.
“Way to go Terry!” Ed called out in triumph, and the success spurred him into action too. He got on his bike and did the same. Maggie continued to tell them to stop, that they were going to get themselves killed, but they were not listening. They criss-crossed the lawn, coming in from different angles, and Maggie had to admit they were doing a good job. Most of the lawn was cleared now, and of those spiders left, most were only barely alive.
“Start climbing down,” Terry called Maggie, “We’ll kill the ones closest to the window now, right Ed!”
“Right!” Ed called back; he was a totally different child now, exuberant in confidence and looked to be having the time of his life. Maggie was terrified they were too confident; in her mind she saw them skid and slide to the ground and be swamped by those vile white creatures.
“No, please, you’ve already done more than enough!” she called to the boys. “There’s a path I can run through.”
Once again, the boys took no heed of her and Maggie had to start climbing down; the sooner she was safe, the sooner the boys would stop being so reckless! With her back to them now, doing her best to recreate how she got up in the first place, Maggie heard their wheels swish past beneath her, and the tinkling glass-shattering noise came afresh. She chanced a glance down, looking for the window ledge with one swaying foot and saw she was close. Stretching a little more, the tips of her shoe made contact, and it was a great relief as she shimmied down the drain pipe a bit more to get a better footing, confident she wasn’t going to fall now.
Turning on the ledge to face out onto the lawn, Maggie took the lay of the land to find her escape route. As she did, the boys came speeding across the lawn again, but this time they were too close to one another. The spiders thrown in the air from Ed’s wheels sprayed all over Terry's bike, and one of the spider’s flailing legs sliced through the flesh of his shin in passing.
“Jesus!” Terry called out in pain. Ed looked around, clear of the lawn now, with a frightened look on his face.
“What?” he asked. They pulled up the bikes back in the middle of the street.
“You flicked some of those shitheads up on me and one of them hit my leg!” Terry cried out. Ed looked and saw the trickle of blood on Terry's shin. It didn’t look anything more remarkable than the usual cuts and scrapes young boys got throughout their course of a normal day and he shrugged.
“It’s only a scratch,” he said. Terry looked at it a moment and nodded,
“I guess so, but it stung like hell when it happened.”
“Boys!” Maggie called out and they both looked to her, “I’m going to make a run through this gap you’ve made for me, so don’t come back near here, okay?” She waved at the route before her and the boys nodded in agreement. “If they get a hold of me, don’t try to save me. I’ve seen them in action, and they are lethal, you won’t be able to knock them off me without getting yourself killed!”
“You just run, lady,” Terry said, “If they start to come after you, we’ll ride behind you and kill the ones that do!” This wasn’t ideal, but she supposed it wasn’t terrible either.
Sitting down on the window ledge, Maggie dangled her feet just above the ground and readied herself to run. There were a few spiders still alive in her path, but mostly it was a clear run. She glanced at the boys one more time and found tears in her eyes, they were her saviours, and these were tears of gratitude.
“You’re not saved yet!” Franks voice reminded her. Maggie wi
ped her eyes and without a moment of hesitation, jumped down and set running as soon as she touched the lawn. As she’d expected, the spiders began a wave towards her, but she was quick (much quicker than she would have dreamed possible) and they had been so spread around by the boys’ wheels she made it out onto the street ahead of them. She didn’t stop running, and the two boys set off right after her.
“You’re getting away!” Ed Tipping called out happily. Though she believed him, Maggie didn’t want to tempt fate by turning around to see for sure. It would be just her luck she would fall and break her leg or something stupid like that.
“We need to get to a phone!” Maggie called through puffing breaths.
“My house is just around the corner,” Terry said, and he went in front to lead the way. Maggie glanced at him and smiled, ‘What brave boys they were.’
Chapter 40
Tammy was back in the cell corridor looking in on Lawrence when the phone started to ring again in the main office. It seemed every time she walked down here this happened; it was very frustrating. At least Lawrence seemed to be doing better, though. He was sleeping much more soundly and wasn’t tossing or turning or muttering things she didn’t understand. She trusted Doctor Hanrahan and felt Lawrence would be over the worst it this when he woke up.
“Hello, Sheriff’s Office, how can I help you?” Tammy answered the phone; she’d been trying on different answering approaches each time trying to find one that felt right to her.
“Tammy! This is Maggie Glymer!” The shrieking tone in the woman's voice was enough to put chills down Tammy’s spine; she didn’t need to know what had happened to know it was the worst thing Maggie had ever seen. Tammy’s panicked inner thoughts urged her to put the phone down and run; she didn’t need to know what had happened. This wasn’t her responsibility after all.
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