Day of the Spiders

by Brian O'Gorman

  “What shall we do about him?” said Trent.

  Mary shrugged, “I don’t know. I don’t blame him for being angry.”

  Trent looked down at him thoughtfully. “I’ll try and talk to him. We are no good to each other swinging weapons with all the shit that’s going on out there,” he said, jerking a thumb at the window.

  Braden started to try and get himself off the floor. Mary quickly got the cricket bats and moved them out of harm’s way.

  “Hit me….can’t believe you hit me…..” he was saying. He was climbing up the sofa, just like Trent was a moment earlier.

  Mary felt a flash of irritation. He was complaining about the fact that he got whacked around the head? Hadn’t he put out Trent’s knee in the same way? She wanted to chew him out about it, but instead she bit her tongue. She looked around at Jax. She was staring a hole in father, a deep frown set upon her smooth face. Mary had seen that look before when Braden had fucked up by not coming home on time, or had broken yet another promise to her.

  “She was stopping you doing something that you would have regretted,” said Trent.

  “Well, you would stick up for her wouldn’t you, you bastard,” said Braden. He had managed to maneuver himself into a sitting position on the sofa. His had was rubbing his temple where the bat had made contact with him. The blood that had been trickling out of the cut had started to dry out, and it was flaking off and dropping onto his shoulder like a scarlet dandruff.

  “If you had opened that door then we would all have been dead by now, you, your wife, and your daughter,” said Trent.

  “Don’t you ever speak to me about my daughter, you hear me? You hear me? you home-wrecking cunt?” Braden roared suddenly. Jax flinched, the sound of her father’s raised voice had built in the reflexive fear over the years.

  Trent sighed. He was trying to keep his temper in check. Really, he just wanted to go over to him, grip him and try and shake some reasoning and sense into him. But, after all, he had been fucking his wife, and that gave him no moral high ground whatsoever.

  “We have a bigger problem right now that’s outside these walls, and it’s much bigger than the issues that we have in here right now. There will come a time when we can settle those differences, and it ain’t now,” said Trent.

  “Fuck….”

  “We need to make sure that we are going to be safe, and then we can have this out, just you and me,” said Trent.

  Braden said nothing, he just stared at Trent with baleful hatred in his eyes.

  “Come on Braden, you’re a smart man. You know I’m talking sense. Once everything is straight then we can sort things out between us, any way that you like, ok?”

  The burning hate in Braden’s eyes softened a little. Trent was right about that, Braden was a smart cookie. No-one could take that away from him. Perhaps he would bide his time. Perhaps he would wait. Perhaps he would feed that wife-stealing shit bag to the spiders as soon as he got a chance. He would hit him when he least expected it. And he would watch him get bitten. He would watch him be made into one of those horrendous mutilated corpses that he saw inside the house on Corsica Road. Then he would make Mary pay for her mistake. Hell, yes he would. He could feel the love he had for her starting to muddy and curdle. Trent had poured a healthy dose of sugar into his fuel tank. Mary wasn’t the perfect beautiful woman that he once knew. She was something corrupted, something dirty, something he had lost all his respect for. She was just like all the others with their loose morals. He could have done the same thing to her on many different occasions, but he had always resisted. It was the one thing that he could offer her that was consistent, his undying loyalty to her. Yes, he had been absent for a vast amount of time during their marriage, but he had always been faithful to her. There had been many opportunities for him to fall from grace from both sexes, but he had never taken them up on it. He would always put Mary’s face, her sweet and innocent face up in his mind and that would be enough for him to turn it down. He had risked his arse to get the story of the century, which was going to pay him enough for them to both retire. He had risked his life, and this was how he was being repaid. Now here was the arsehole that had been keeping his bed warm telling him how it was going to be. He could just cave his fucking head in right now, just grab one of those bats and start hitting, and keep on hitting until he was nothing more than a pile of smashed brains on the floor. But his daughter was sitting just across the room. It was bad enough that she had seen him hit Trent already, what would it mean if he beat Trent to death right in front of her. She would see him as a murderer. She would never trust him again as long as she lived and he couldn’t live with that, not ever. But, an accident. If Trent had an accident, then it wouldn’t be his fault, not at all. If he played along with it then Trent wouldn’t suspect a thing and then when the moment was right…..

  His anger dissipated a little. It would be smart under the circumstances to play the long game. “Ok,” he mumbled, his steely gaze never leaving Trent.

  “Good stuff,” said Trent. “Mary, we need to get the generator back up and running again. I could do with you just taking a look outside of the window and seeing just how many of our little friends are still out there.”

  Mary nodded and then went over to the window. There was another sofa underneath it and she carefully knelt on the arm of it so that she could get close to the glass. There was a spider on the outside that was still half covering the window. One of its legs was still tapping and sliding, trying to get a good grip, otherwise the spider was still. Mary looked over the large black body and through the long spindly legs and saw the woodland outside. She took in a sharp breath. Every one of the trees outside had large webs strung up between the trunks and the branches. In the middle of some of them the spiders were sitting, as if they were waiting for something to come along that they could possibly eat. She really didn’t want to hazard a guess what was on their menu. There were a few of them still crawling around on the floor, but far less of them than there were half-an-hour ago when they had first arrived.

  “They’re still out there, but they’re pretty spread out,” said Mary.

  Trent walked, his damaged leg rigid, to the console where his computer and radio were situated. “Right, I need to get that generator on, then we can try and find out more about what is going on out there,” he said.

  Mary nodded at him and he hobbled over to the back door. He opened it up and went through to the utility room.

  Mary looked over at Braden who was sat silently in his seat, he was still rubbing at the knot on his temple. He looked tired and pissed off.

  “Are you alright?” she said.

  Braden shrugged and said nothing.

  “I’m sorry I hit you, but I didn’t want you doing something stupid,” said Mary.

  Braden mumbled something from behind his hand.

  “What?”

  “I said, I’m good at doing stupid things aren’t I? Just like getting married to you, you fucking whore,” he said in a raspy voice that he barely recognized as his own.

  Mary walked right up to him and slapped him hard across his face. Her hand began to fizz from the impact with Braden’s cheek. She stood in front of him, shaking with a combination of anger and fear.

  “Don’t you dare speak to me like that in front of our daughter,” she hissed at him. A single tear welled in her eye and ran down her face. Braden said nothing. He dropped his head forwards a little so he didn’t have to make eye contact with her. His hand came back up and began rubbing the side of his head again. Mary walked away from him and went and sat next to Jax on the bunk. Jax was sat with her head down, just like her father. Mary put an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. Just like her father, she had no response. Mary was almost to the point where she just wanted to shout and scream at the both of them, and she nearly did it, but the click and hum of the generator snapped her out of the moment. Her eyes darted to the window and she saw that the spiders that had been sitting pretty still
were jumped into action by the sound of the generator. They darted up and down the window and then they disappeared from view. Trent came hobbling in from the back, pulling the door shut behind him. He went over to the desk and powered up the computer. He grabbed a headset from the radio and put it on his head. He clicked some buttons on the radio console and began mumbling into the microphone which was hanging from one of the earpieces in front of his mouth. He went to work on the computer and then a picture came on the screen attached to the wall.

  “This is us. It’s a satellite picture of everything around us, and….” He broke off. Something was coming through on the radio. He mumbled something else into the microphone and then lowered the earphones to his neck.

  “There is a full-scale evacuation going on in the area right now. People that survived Layton are dotted around the area. If we can make it to the Layton dam then they will airlift us out of here. I think it will be our best option,” said Trent.

  “How far is it from here?” said Mary.

  “About three miles,” said Trent.

  “We can make it. Three miles is nothing,” said Mary.

  Trent went back to his computer, he clicked around a little and then the image on the screen changed. It was more of the local landscape. Trent got up out of his chair and went over to the screen to get a better look.

  “Yes, we can make it. However, it’s going to be risky….”

  “Where are they going to take us,” said Braden suddenly.

  “Military base, about eighty miles from here,” said Trent.

  Braden fell silent again. He went back to rubbing the lump on his temple. He had a look of a man that had been utterly defeated.

  “We have to get to the car. But I think it’s too far away from the door for you to get to, and how are you going to drive with your leg the way it is,” said Mary.

  “Can you drive?” said Trent.

  “Yes, but I never go over thirty,” said Mary. She shrugged her shoulders as if to say That’s all I got.

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to teach you how to drive my way,” said Trent.

  Braden felt himself prickle again. Anything that sounded a little like flirting between them made him want to go and take to Trent with the bat again. But he had to go along with what was going on otherwise he was going to end up being left here to fend for himself. He didn’t see any indicator in here of any food anywhere around. He bit his tongue instead.

  “You’ll have to go and move the car closer to the door,” said Trent.

  “You want me to go out there? No way,” said Mary.

  Trent looked over at Braden, “How about it?”

  Braden looked over at Mary. The pinched look on her face elicited a tiny spark of sympathy somewhere deep inside him. His love for her wasn’t completely dead yet. Give it time, and he was sure that it would be. There was too much raw emotion around the whole issue right now. “I’ll go with you, Two people would be safer than one,” he heard himself say. He stood up and went over to where Mary had thrown the cricket bats and he picked one of them up. Braden went over to Trent who cowered slightly as he approached.

  “Relax. It’s for them,” said Braden pointing at the window. “I’m going to need your keys.”

  Trent fished in his pocket and held them out for Braden. Braden took them and started to head for the door. He turned back and looked at Mary. “You had better shut the door behind us.”

  Mary nodded at him.

  “Take care of Jax,” he said.

  “I will, I promise,” said Trent

  “Let’s do this then,” said Braden. Mary picked up the other bat and then went with him to the door. Braden pulled the bolts over and turned the catch under the handle. He stuffed the keys into his pocket and raised the bat in his hand. He pressed the handle down and pulled the door open.

  Both of them jumped backwards. There was a huge spider stuck to the outside of the door. Braden reflexively swung the bat. It struck the spider dead center in the middle of its body, knocking it off the door. It hit the floor on its back and its legs began to flail as it tried to right itself. Jax screamed and climbed onto the top bunk to try and get away. Braden brought the bat down and hit the spider again. It impacted the top half of the spiders’ body causing it to break right across its middle. A stream of pink fluid began to bubble out of the split in the spiders’ body. The spiders’ flailing intensified for a moment, flicking the pink fluid in all directions. Some of it got onto Trent, who frantically began to wipe it off. Some of it got into his mouth and he bent over and began to spit on the floor and retch noisily.

  Braden brought the bat down again and again until the spider lay still. “Come on,” he said to Mary. He kicked the dead spider as hard as he could, sending it sliding across the floor and out of the doorway. They went outside and Mary pulled the door shut behind them.

  The ground outside the station was mercifully spider free, but every tree out there had been strung up with silky webs. Braden saw a squirrel that had been caught up in one of them. It wriggled and pulled at its trapped legs, causing the web to shimmer and vibrate. A huge spider came darting down the web and fell upon the squirrel. It sank its fangs into the squirrel’s head. The animal threw its body around, trying desperately to escape and then, as Braden looked on, it froze. The squirrel’s body shriveled up, like a balloon losing its air and then it drifted downwards from the web as if it was no heavier than a feather. The spider sat in the web for a moment longer and then scuttled off back to its hiding place. Braden turned away from it, feeling mildly sickened at what he had just seen. He focused his attention on the car and he saw, with his heart sinking into his stomach that one of the spider webs had been attached to the roof. If they disturbed it then they would be attacked in just the same way that that poor squirrel had been. Between here and the car, the path had a few of the webs attached to some of the loose rocks that lined the edges of it.

  “Don’t touch the webs, whatever you do,” said Braden. Mary nodded and readjusted her grip on the bat. They began to move slowly forwards. The air outside felt like it was unnaturally still, there wasn’t a breeze blowing, or a bird call anywhere that they could hear. It felt like they were walking through a graveyard rather than an area of natural beauty. They went single file. Mary taking up the rear. Their legs moved dangerously close to the strands of web laid out at the sides of the path. Braden checked each one of his steps that he was taking, making sure that he was well away from the strings that could get them killed. At one point a stone overturned under his foot, causing him to momentarily be off-balance. His arms came up to steady himself, nearly putting the bat right into one of the strands of web. Mary hissed in a breath behind him and grabbed hold of his shoulder to steady him. He managed to get his balance back, and both of them started to breathe again.

  “That was too close,” whispered Braden. Mary said nothing. Her heart was hammering so fast that she thought she would go into cardiac arrest at any moment. Braden started to move forwards again, slowly and more carefully than before, if that was possible. They were just a few feet away from the car and Braden fished the keys out of his pocket. Braden felt an extra surge of urgency, he was so close to being safe that his body wanted him to abandon the stealthy approach and bomb straight for the door and safety.

  A sound from above caught his ear. It sounded like there were branches in the trees breaking somewhere. His head snapped upwards. His vision was momentarily blocked by the hazy glare of the sun above the trees and then he saw it. One of the spiders that had set up home in the upper branches of the trees must have lost its grip, it was falling through the trees. Most of the branches it hit broke, such was the size of the monster. It tumbled and span towards the earth at a terrifying rate. It landed four feet away from where Mary and Braden were stood. It laded right side up and then began to shuffle around in a half circle. Its front legs had struck the ground first causing them to be bent and broken out of shape. Mary uttered a high-pitched scream at the same time t
hat Braden let out a bellow of terror. They both began to bolt for the car. The impact of the spider hitting the ground and the scream from both of them vibrated through every one of the webs that had been attached to the ground. Spiders began to scuttle down the trees and into the middle of their webs. Braden pressed the button to unlock the door and the car let out a beep and the lights on the tail flashed twice to let them know it was open. Mary was in the car first, tearing the door open and then pulling it shut behind her. Braden managed to get his door open just as a huge spider thumped down onto the roof of the car. Such was Braden’s height that he was face to face with the back end of the spider. It shuffled around with lightning speed until it was facing him. Braden managed to duck down and throw himself into the car just as the spider launched itself forwards to bite him. Braden stretched out and grabbed the door handle. He pulled it shut just as the spider was beginning to make its way down from the roof and into the open door. The impact of the door onto the spider trapped its head and its forelegs inside the car. The rest of the spider’s body fell to the floor outside leaving the severed piece dangling on the inside of the door. The still-twitching legs tickled and stroked Braden’s arm and his face, making him jump and yell out in disgust.

  “Get us out of here!” shrieked Mary. More of the spiders were dropping to the floor and making their way quickly towards the car. Some of them were already climbing up the sides and were trying to bite at the windows, spraying a clear fluid from their fangs. The liquid ran down the window until it touched the paintwork which began to fizz and sizzle.

  Braden fumbled the key into the slot and fired up the engine. Another spider dropped down onto the bonnet of the car. Braden shoved the car into reverse and hammered the pedal down. The car pulled backwards, causing some of the spiders to get thrown from the vehicle. Braden saw in the rear-view mirror that the road behind them was covered with spiders. The car bumped and shook as it ran over them. Some of them were broken and flattened by the weight of the car. Others had their legs mutilated and broken. Braden saw that there was no way that Trent and Jax were going to be able to get to the side doors of the car without being attacked and bitten. He kept the image of the squirrel in his mind, the way that he had seen it shrivel up like a prune and he imagined that happening to Jax. He gritted his teeth and hammered the pedal down harder. The car smashed through the door of the station and took a generous chunk of the wall out with it. Trent jumped up out of his chair and then fell to the floor. He scrambled to his feet as best he could with his bad knee. Jax jumped down off the top bunk and ran behind Trent. Debris and injured spiders were littering the floor.