Day of the Spiders

  This monster, whatever it was, it was her. It was his Katie, and deep within his jackhammering heart, he knew she was still in there somewhere.

  “It’s me,” he yelled up at her. “Don’t you remember? It’s me, Perry.”

  The monster didn’t move. It stood its ground.

  “You are Katie Underwood. My Katie. You must remember, you must.”

  The monster didn’t move. Those eyes were fixed on Perry. He thought, although it might have been his imagination that a frown had creased its forehead. Its mind must have been working it over.

  Perry took a step closer to the monster. “Come on, think,” he yelled. The monster recoiled a little.

  Just for a moment, Perry saw that frown on its face begin to smooth out. He felt a huge surge of elation. He was getting through to her. He knew it. He began to step slowly forwards towards her, trying to see the human behind the horrific mutation. His heart ached for her. He so desperately wanted her to be cured, to be restored to her former glory. He had agonised over looking after her whilst she recovered from her broken leg, and now he wanted to take care of her more than ever. The monster stood its ground for a moment, looking down at him. Those eyes sparkled, just for a second. Perry saw it, and he knew that she knew who he was. Those memories of their life together were still deep within her contorted brain.

  But then something roared above them, a piercing, shrieking roar that echoed all around the complex. Perry looked up and saw another monster attached to the side of the building. It was scuttling towards the ground with frightening speed. The Katie monster turned towards it, saw it coming and then uttered her own scream. Perry clapped his hands over his ears to try and drown out the deafening noise. The shriek stopped when the other monster reached the ground and ran over to Katie. The new monster looked down at Perry, its one remaining eye burning a hole right through him.

  “No….” was all he had time to get out and then the monster was upon him. It pinned him down with one of its legs and then the huge fangs were clamping down on the front of his neck. Perry beat at the leg holding him down, punching it as hard as he could. He tried to draw in another breath to shout for Katie to help him but the fangs clipped together, neatly snipping through the skin, the flesh, the tendons and the bone, severing his head from his body. In his last waking moment, Perry felt the large arteries in his neck let go in a warm gout and then he knew no more. His head rolled three feet from the rest of his body with a fountain of gore following it, coating the grey concrete surface in a deep red colour.

  Inside the mind of the Katie monster, there was a momentary conflict, a fleeting need to feel something for the man that had just been torn apart. It wanted to scream out, to stop it from happening. Just for a moment, it felt human again, and then it was gone. Back to the primary urge that was infesting its psyche. It had to survive, they all had to survive. It could feel them within its consciousness, every single one of them, hiding away, waiting for the moment. The first ones had only been the scouts, the ones who were going to set the whole thing in motion. They had done their job admirably. It felt the change deep within its guts. It was time to bring the army in. It was time for the next phase of their survival, and the only way they were going to survive was to dominate, to take over. It had already survived an attempt to stop it once, and this time it would not fail.

  The Katie monster grasped onto that feeling that it had deep down inside and then it opened its mouth once again. It began to emit a clicking noise, so loud and so deep that it vibrated through its body. The Wells thing began to make the same sound, perfectly in sync it amplified it to the point where it was echoing around the town.

  A few moment later the ground beneath them began to shake.

  24.

  Braden didn't know how long he had sat in the car. The moment that he had sent in that picture, the thrill of the chase had ebbed away. He had got the story, got the proof he needed and now it was done. Did he feel fulfilled because of it? Not even a tiny bit. The echoes of Jax’s crying were still bowling around his mind. He supposed that a heroin addict would feel the same after falling from grace when they had promised over and over again that it was all over. He was feeling the entire career that he had spent twenty years building fading away. The love of it had curdled in his insides and left him feeling empty. It was over. Whatever he did from this day forwards would have nothing to do with journalism ever again. All he had left was the sliver of hope that Mary would allow him to speak to her again, allow her to listen to what had happened. He wanted her to understand his motivation and to forgive him again. Without her, without his daughter and without his career what was he? Who was he? He was just another soul cast into the darkness of uncertainty. He wanted to cry, just put his head into his hands and cry for the man that he had just lost, but he couldn't. There was no emotional hit there, just a big empty space deep inside of him. He wondered what he should do right now. He wondered if it was a good idea to even go home or should he just hit the pedal and keep going until he ran out of road and options. Would anyone even care if he vanished? He sat like that for three hours, just trying to get to grips with where he would go from here.

  He was jolted out of his thoughts. The car felt like it was vibrating. Then engine wasn't even on so it couldn't have been that. He opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. It was the floor that felt like it was humming under his feet. As he stood there, his hands out if front of him trying to feel the vibration it suddenly got stronger and more violent. He swung his head around trying to see if there was anything obvious causing it. He saw a column of thick black smoke rising up from the direction of Corsica Road. He could hear that mysterious sound, almost like a Geiger counter but ten octaves lower. Birds were blasting out of the surrounding trees and taking to the air. The huge volume of them was almost enough to block out the sun. The sounds of their collective chirping almost made Braden want to clap his hands over his ears. The windows of the houses in the cul-de-sac where he was parked began to split and crack. Tiles began to come loose from the roofs and crash to the floor. One of them struck the floor a few inches from where Braden was stood.

  Earthquake, he thought.

  He bolted back into the car and cranked the engine. He slammed the car into drive and hit the pedal hard. He screeched out of the cul-de-sac and headed for the main road which would take him towards home. As he drove down the road he could see people coming out of their homes and looking around them as if they could find a solution to what was going on in the air around them. Through his open window, he could hear car horns blaring and the sounds of metal bashing and squealing. The car weaved and wobbled on the shaking ground and Braden wrestled with the wheel. He brought the car to a halt near to the junction of North Road which would have taken him home. The junction was almost completely blocked by overturned and smashed cars. Screams of pain and anguish filled the air over the smashing of cars hitting cars. Some had run off the road and collided with lamp posts and pedestrians. One had managed to plough straight into the front window of one of the many pound shops that made up North Road. The entire shop front had been pushed inwards by the force of the impact. The pavement under the car was awash with human blood and broken bodies. Braden fell out of his car and tried to start running. The thrumming of the ground underneath him made it almost impossible to keep his balance. Trying to run was only making it worse. He knew he had to get away from the main road and try to get back home on a back route of some sort. He knew that near the top end of North Road was an entrance to the Layton Canal. He was pretty sure if he walked along there that he could get off again at the bottom end of Layton town. Then it would only be a half-hour walk home. It would take him longer than if he stuck to the road, but the carnage that was unfolding in front of him meant that it would have been too dangerous to stay on the main routes for very long. He would have to traverse the Hemmington Road, and he wasn't sure just how far he would get before he was cut down by a swerving car. But he had no choice. Standing here
, feeling the earth beneath him shaking and stirring, causing his calf muscles to bunch up to keep his balance, he knew he couldn't just stand here and wait to see if it passed. A loud bang came from behind him. He turned around and saw with horror that some of the road he was standing on was beginning to crack. That got him moving. He weaved around the wreckage of cars that was beginning to block up the road. Car alarms and burglar alarms were buzzing and whining their self-important tones to nobody. The noise was almost carried away by the noise of the birds still flying for their lives in the sky above. Braden moved around two cars that had hit each other head on. One of the drivers had gone through the windscreen and was lying on the twisted metal of the bonnet. One of the peaks of bent metal had torn off most of the right side of his face. Blood was coating the light blue paint in a deep red torrent. The young man was groaning softly through the remains of his smashed teeth.

  Clunk, click, every trip, shit for brains, Braden thought to himself as he passed by. The driver of the other car looked like she was asleep behind the wheel. The airbag had deployed and hung down limply from the collapsed steering wheel. Braden kept on moving, dodging through the trashed cars and panicking hordes of people that seemed to emerging out of all directions. One of them was a bald man in a suit. He was carrying a clipboard and running around in a circle. He was screaming at the top of his voice for someone to switch it off, switch it off, switch it the fuck off. The ripples running through the floor were getting stronger and more violent, making it even harder for Braden to stay on his feet. He had to lean on some of the wrecked cars and the long fence that ran alongside the edge of the pavement. He could see the canal path through the metal railings and he knew that he was nearly there. The canal barges that were moored by the side of the water were rocking back and forth and crashing into each other like a giant, bizarre Newton's cradle. There was bellowing and shouting coming from the boat owners that were aboard. Even over the chaos on the main road, Braden could hear then yelling at each other. He had a pretty good idea that they had no idea what was going on. He forged ahead. The entrance to the canal was just up ahead. He tried to run again but the waves of motion beneath his feet made it too risky. A car suddenly whisked past right in front of him and smashed into the metal fence. The fence held its ground for a moment and then it creaked backwards and gave way. The car went with it, its rear end lifting up off the ground. It flipped onto its roof and slid down the sharp embankment down to the canal. It collided with one of the barges with a loud and impersonal bang. It rested against the boat for a moment and slowly pushed it towards the middle of the canal. The car slipped into the water taking it and its occupant down into a watery grave. Braden pushed on, trying to kick the idea of drowning in that way out of his mind. A big part of him wanted to try and help, but he was all too aware of what would happen if another car came crashing down on top of him. He had to keep moving. It was the only way he was going to get back to Mary and Jax and get them the hell out of here whilst he still could. He went through the metal kissing gate and scrambled and fell down the dirt path down to the edge of the canal. The water was being slammed onto the edges of the walkway, flooding them. Braden stopped in his tracks. There was no way he was going to be able to walk up the pathway, he would be swept into the water, such was the force of the waves crashing over the sides of it. The barges were also being slammed against the edges, breaking them open and letting water flood into the open wounds inflicted upon them. Braden sat down, not knowing what to do. He thought about going back up to the road, but it was just as likely that he would be wiped out by a car or falling masonry from all of the buildings up there. He was trapped, right here on the edges of the canal. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He was starting to count the blessings he had been given in his life. He was residing himself to his fate at the edge of this canal when he heard and felt something pop deep beneath the earth. Then there was a new sound. It sounded like a rushing of water. Braden saw the waves that were crashing against the edge of the canal were suddenly being pulled towards where he was sat. He braced himself, not knowing what was going on, then he saw that the water was being pulled downstream. The barges all began to get dragged along in the same direction. Some of them began to jackknife until they reached the end of their mooring ropes. The ropes held them for a little while, making the barges look like big ugly kites stuck in the middle of the canal. Then the rush of water in that direction intensified. Somewhere under the bed of the canal a massive hole had opened up and the water was pouring down the breach in the canal bed. Braden saw his chance and took off up the path, staying as far from the water's edge as he could. He fell often, the shaking of the ground taking his legs out from under him. More and more boats went crashing past him, flipping around and battering against the concrete edges of the canal. Some of them were manned, with people starting up engines that were barely equipped to deal with the force of the new current that the canal had developed. About a mile up the path, Braden, battered and muddy began to believe, just a little, that he might make it back to Mary and Jax alive, perhaps not in one piece, but alive nonetheless.

  25.

  Thompson was just pulling his car into his driveway when the earthquake began to happen.

  After the day he endured so far, nothing at all on this earth and beyond it had the capacity to surprise him. When he felt the ground begin to move under his feet, he almost rolled his eyes and sighed. He bolted from the car ran up the steps towards the front door. The shaking of the ground was enough to make him stagger and to grip the hand rail a little tighter, but not quite enough to take him off his feet. As he got to the front door, it was torn open by Cindy. Her eyes were bulging with fear, and she grabbed hold of him.

  “Gerald, what’s happening? The television is talking about terrorists. Are you hurt?” she sobbed in his ear.

  “I’m fine, don’t worry. We need to get out of here, get as far away from town as we can.”

  Cindy pulled away from him and looked him in the eyes. She saw something that she wasn’t used to seeing in them. It was fear. He was actually scared, and Gerald Thompson didn’t do scared, at least not in the time that they had been together.

  “Gerald, you’re freaking me out, what’s happening,” she shrieked.

  “I don’t have time to explain right now, we need to get moving. I’ll explain everything to you when we are on the road, OK?”

  “’k” she said in a weak voice.

  The ground beneath them suddenly lurched, snapping them into action. Cindy bolted back inside the house. Thompson followed her. He left the door open so they could get back out quickly if they needed to. There was a big ugly crack in the living room ceiling. Dust and pieces of plaster were raining down on the wooden floors.

  “I need to get my medications,” said Cindy and she went into the kitchen to get them out of the bottom drawer. He followed her, went into the cupboard and grabbed a bag to put them in.

  “Here,” he said, standing next to her and holding the bag open. She threw the boxes in and slammed the drawer shut.

  “Right, anything else we need we can pick up along the way. We should…”

  The ground lurched again, almost throwing them both off their feet. Thompson grabbed hold of Cindy to stop her from falling, wrapping his arm around her waist to steady her. The shaking of the ground stopped for a few moments. Outside, alarms from cars and houses were shrieking and howling across the town, cutting through the sudden silence that had fallen.

  But then there was another sound, a creaking hooting noise. Thompson had heard that sound before, he was sure about it. He groped around in his memories for a moment and then it came to him. It was the same noise that the water pipes had made when they had first moved into their house in Newtown all those years ago. But this noise sounded like it was coming from the kitchen cupboard under the sink.

  “Gerald?”

  He went over to the sink and carefully tipped his head over the edge. The washing up bowl was in
the way, so he snatched it out of the sink and threw it on the side.

  “Oh, dear god,” he said.

  There was something coming up the plug hole. It took a second for him to work out what it was, and then he realised. The small holes around the plug had turned black. Dozens of thin black legs were poking up out of the holes, feeling around, trying to get a grip. Then a black body popped through, and then another, then another and soon it was a torrent. The sink was beginning to fill up with spiders, hundreds of them. They couldn’t make it up the sides of the sink, it was far too slippery for them, but soon, just in their sheer numbers, they would reach the top, and then the house would be full of them.

  “Come on,” roared Thompson. He grabbed Cindy who was clutching the bag of medications to her chest. They managed to get out of the kitchen just as the first of the spiders managed to get to the top of the sink. He pulled her through the living room, heading for the open door, but something caught his eye, something above them. He looked up and he stopped dead in his tracks. The spiders were beginning to swarm out of the crack in the ceiling above them. They started to patter onto the floor below and run towards them.

  “Upstairs, come on,” he yelled.

  “But, we’ll be trapped up there,” wailed Cindy.

  “We can climb out the bedroom window onto the garage roof, we can get to the car that way,” he said.

  Just as he finished his sentence, a spider dropped onto Cindy’s shoulder. Without thinking, he hit out at it, knocking it to the floor. Cindy squealed and ran for the stairs, the spider in hot pursuit. Thompson followed her, bringing his shoe down on the spider, popping it with his weight. They headed up the stairs, rounding the corner and finishing the ascent to the top.