Day of the Spiders

  Inside the car, Braden found the button to release the boot lid which began to rise upwards slowly. Trent grabbed hold of Jax and shuffled towards the open boot. Mary and Braden were yelling at Jax to get in the car. She finally bolted forwards and dived into the boot. She climbed straight over onto the back seat and then onto Mary’s knee where she threw her arms around Mary’s neck and buried her head into her shoulder. Trent was nearly at the back of the car. He was reaching out for it, ready to get in.

  Braden saw him coming, and he shoved the car into gear and he hit the gas. The car pulled away and Trent fell forwards onto the ground. He yelled out once, just once before two of the spiders were upon him. One climbed onto his head , leaned forwards and sunk its fangs into Trent. One fang impaled itself into the bridge of Trent’s nose, the other went through his eyelid and straight through the soft meat of his eyeball. He screamed until his vocal chords ruptured and a glut of blood came up out of his throat. Another bite landed halfway up the back of his neck. The concentrated venom from the larger spider dissolving the flesh and the bones away. His carotid artery gave out, sending a jet of blood in all directions. Trent’s severed head was dragged away by one of the spiders, his face was frozen in that final scream and stayed that way until it was ingested.

  They were a mile away when Mary realized that Trent wasn’t in the car.

  “What happened to him? Did they get him?” wailed Mary.

  “They got him,” Braden lied. If Mary had looked over at him she would have seen a smile threatening to break out over Braden’s face.

  7.

  Doctor Briggs woke up in Willis’ bunk in the ESA complex just three hours after he had finally gone to sleep. Willis had been his first sexual encounter for over five years, and he had made the absolute most of it that he could. They would probably have gone on a little longer had they not both been fighting off the urge to sleep, but they had both succumbed. He had been a little surprised to find that she was already up and about when he had awoken. It would seem that she needed even less sleep than he did. He could get along with her just fine. He even entertained the idea of extending her an invitation to Hawaii when all of this had been put to sleep.

  The first thing that came to his mind once he had gathered himself enough was that his sleep had been uninterrupted by dreams of any sort, at least none that he could recall. He wasn’t soaked with his own sweat as he usually was when he woke up in the morning and he had been allowed to come out of his sleep a little more naturally, rather than being torn from his sleep by visions of hell playing before his eyes. He swung his legs out of the bed and sat on the edge of it for a moment. He couldn’t decide if he was looking forward to his first full day of work in such a long time or not.

  He stood up and walked around the little room for a few moments. He toyed with the idea of putting the television on for a few moments and finding out what was going on out in the big bad world, and then he decided against it. He thought it might be better if he knew as little as possible. The invention of the virus in the first place had taken him just under four years, at least to get it to a point where the host wasn’t killed by it, now he had to find a way to make it go away? Did they really think that he had invented the thing without a failsafe? It was all dependent on how much the virus had evolved. The behaviour of the spiders that were infected was the key to his diagnosis.

  First things first though, he had to sort himself out a change of clothes. Off-hand he went to one of the drawers next to the bed and pulled it open, not expecting to find anything in there, however it was full almost to the brim of all colours of t-shirt. He looked at them for a moment, taken aback by their mere presence and then he closed the drawer again. He tried the next one down and found five pairs of neatly folded jeans and in the bottom one, several sets of underwear and socks. He pulled out an item from each of the drawers, checked the sizes and wasn’t surprised to find that they were all matched to him. It began to dawn in his head, as he dressed himself in the new gear, just how much planning had gone into all of this? It wasn’t a spur of the moment arrangement at all. He couldn’t even muster any surprise within himself. Nothing that had Layfield’s hands in it would ever be totally clean. If that man dipped his hands in shit they would come out cleaner than they had done before.

  He smiled to himself and wondered what on earth he could have for breakfast before he got started. He found himself looking forwards to seeing Willis again. He couldn’t help but find himself attracted to her. He put that down to the fact that he hadn’t felt the welcoming warmth of female skin for a very long time. He hadn’t felt much of an appetite for any of that nonsense whilst he was in the hospital, but that was probably to do with the drugs that they had been giving him. They had tried to kill his free will with them and they had pretty much failed on that front. They had succeeded in killing his dick stone dead, he had to give them that one. Still, perhaps now that the medical regime had been all but forgotten and the affection that Willis had shown him so far, he might start getting a little of his fire back. He was mulling the idea of Hawaii over in his mind. That would be the perfect way to retire, with nothing but warm weather, cocktails and beautiful people all around him. Sounded pretty perfect to him, oh hell yes.

  He headed to the door, stopping only to have a quick glance in the full-length mirror to see how he looked in his new gear. He pulled the door open with a view to going and finding Willis, but he was surprised to find her on the other side of the door. She jumped back a little and let out a little squeal of surprise.

  “Oh, I just went for a shower, I didn’t run out on you I promise. I was just gonna invite you out for breakfast,” she said.

  “Well, I could eat the arse out of a dead elephant, if you pardon the expression,” said Briggs.

  Willis giggled, covering her mouth as she did so. The gesture made her look even younger. Briggs scolded himself a little for sleeping with her. Dirty old man.

  “May I escort you, ma’am,” he said, a little flirtatiously despite his internal dialogue. He offered an arm out to her.

  “I’d be delighted sir,” she said and linked his outstretched arm. They started down the hallway and towards the canteen. As they got closer Briggs caught the aroma of freshly cooked bacon. His stomach groaned and growled like a dying ogre. He could see himself becoming some sort of food obsessive, having lived on overcooked, dry crap for so long. He might even get fat, not that he minded. There were worse things in life than being fat, that was for sure, being hungry was far worse. He picked up the pace a little.

  “Hey, what’s your hurry?” said Willis.

  “Oh, just hungry. Too many years on hospital food, you know.”

  “Hospital food? What happened? Did you have an accident?” said Willis.

  Briggs looked at her to see if she was joking. If she was, she certainly was a good actor. “Did they not tell you where I’ve been for all these years?”

  Willis shook her head.

  “Well then, I have a hell of story to tell you over breakfast,” said Briggs.

  And tell her he did, all of it, as they both made their way through a full English each with extra toast. Briggs found himself impressed that Willis liked to eat. She wasn’t one of those girls that was so self-obsessed that she would just munch on a salad in a vain attempt to stay thin for another day. She listened to his story about the end of Newtown, the capture and incarceration into the Tulip Suite and his repeated meetings with Doctor Low, the arsehole who had tried relentlessly to get him to confess to terrorism. When he was done, she sat back in her chair and shook her head.

  “Why would you agree to come back here? I’d have told them to shove it up their ass,” she said and Briggs laughed.

  “Well, let’s just say that if I do my duty for my country I will have enough coin to retire on, and that will be compensation enough for me,” said Briggs.

  “Fuck me. How much?” said Willis.

  “I’m not allowed to specify. But it’s a lot.”


  “I might ask for a pay rise, see how they like that,” said Willis. Briggs laughed again and shook his head.

  “I’ll tell you what, when we get this shit sorted then I’ll make sure you get what you deserve too, how does that suit you?” said Briggs.

  The frown across Willis’ face smoothed out into her trademark toothy smile. “You got a deal, mister,” she said and stuck out her hand which Briggs shook.

  “Ok partner. I suppose we had better get started. The sooner we get it done the sooner we can retire,” said Briggs.

  **

  They made it back into the lab. The room was flooded with lots of natural light that was coming in through the windows. It lent the room a more appealing ambience than the gloom of the evening before. Something caught Briggs’ eye from the moment that they walked in. There was a rectangular shape on the workbench to his right. It looked rectangular, it was hard to see fully because the item was covered with a large cloth. Briggs looked at Willis who offered nothing more than a shrug that told him she had no idea what it was.

  “Looks like we have been given a present to celebrate our first day together,” said Briggs. He went over to it and whipped the cloth off it in one smooth motion. When they saw what was underneath it they both took a step backwards.

  “Woop, shit,” yelped Willis.

  Woop shit was absolutely right. Under the cloth there was a clear plastic specimen box, and inside were around a dozen black house spiders. The moment that Briggs took the cloth away they swarmed in his direction and began to clamber over each other to try and get to him. There was no grip for them on the slick inside of the tank, but it didn’t stop them trying. They frantically ran over each other, tried to climb the box and fell back down again. It looked like a small collection of blackened hatred being driven mad by its insane instinct to get to them. They showed no sign of resting or calming down, and watching it reminded Briggs of some of the inmates at the Tulip Suite, still fighting and squirming, even though they knew that they were outnumbered and their fate was inevitable. It was the behaviour of something that had given over its natural instincts and had moved down a step into a primeval instinct to fight and survive.

  Psychosis.

  The word echoed through his mind. He tried to push it away, but it wasn’t going anywhere. He turned to Willis, and she took a step backwards. She must have seen something on his face.

  “Wha….What is it?” she said.

  “Come closer, watch them. Then you can tell me,” he said.

  He picked up the cloth and draped it over the tank again. “Now watch them.” He whipped the cloth away and the spiders ran towards Briggs again, falling and clambering over themselves to try and get out of the tank. Willis watched them, a sneer of disgust on her face.

  “They’re acting like… like… animals,” said Willis.

  “Exactly. They have no control over themselves.”

  Willis pondered it for a moment. Briggs was hoping that she would put the dots together.

  “It’s the virus. It’s driven them insane. It’s taken away their basic instinct and turned them into… this,” she said pointing at the tank.

  “They could have attacked at any time. Why now? Why are they behaving like this now?”

  Willis offered a shrug. “There must have been a trigger point?”

  “Correct. Layfield told me that there had been a little girl killed yesterday morning. I have to know if they were already aggressive or if this behaviour started to happen afterwards,” said Briggs. He had begun to pace up and down the room, not knowing what to do with himself.

  “We can’t change this biologically can we?” said Willis.

  “I fear that it is already too late for that. If this virus has evolved to become dominant, overriding all the natural instincts of its host, then no, there is nothing we can do to fully stop it. We could come up with a vaccine to treat the earlier stage of the virus, that’s no problem, but this is highly evolved. This is now a new form of parasitical life, and I think it’s moving onto humans.,” said Briggs.

  “You said we could treat the earlier stage. We could stop it spreading any further, couldn’t we? We could, couldn’t we?” said Willis. There was a tone of anxiety in her voice.

  “Yes we can. We can stop it spreading, and then all that the powers that be have to worry about is containing the evolved spiders,” said Briggs.

  “Where do we start?”

  Briggs stopped pacing. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

  “What is it?” said Willis.

  “When I put together the building blocks of the Whisperer, I needed a DNA strand that could be easily altered to mimic that of a spider. I needed DNA that was flexible enough to bond to its host. I used….” He broke off for a moment, his throat working and his lips moving silently.

  “Tell me,” said Willis.

  “I used my own DNA.”

  “Christ, what were you thinking?” said Willis.

  “Oh, there’s more. I had to get the virus passed through quarantine before it could be used out in the open. That included a human trial to make sure that it didn’t affect them. I couldn’t find a volunteer, so I tested it on myself.”

  Willis said nothing, she looked at him open mouthed. “So that means…”

  Briggs nodded. “I’m already infected, have been for five years and that also means that I have immunity. The cure for all of this is running around in my veins. I think the powers that be knew it and that’s why I’m still alive.”

  Willis was stunned into silence. She began to pace up and down the room. “OK, that’s good isn’t it? That’s a good thing. We need to synthesize whatever is in your bloodstream and then we have got it right?”

  “Again, it depends on how far the virus has evolved. We need to speak to boots on the ground, people who were there, and we need to collect more samples. Hybrid ones if we can get them. Then we can start studying the reaction between my immune blood and the blood of an infected. That’s our key to finding the cure.”

  “I’ll make some phone calls,” said Willis. She started for the door and then paused.

  “Briggs. Are we too late?” she said.

  Briggs offered her a smile. “No, it’s not too late. We just need to know what we’re dealing with before we engage the science. It might not be too late just yet, but we have to move fast before it spreads too far,” he said.

  Willis nodded and then pushed her way out of the doors. Briggs was left alone, looking at the box of spiders that had been left on the table, watching them still trying to escape. One of them looked like it had rolled over onto its back and died, perhaps exhausted by its efforts.

  They are willing to die to get to us, he thought.

  That was when the first sliver of fear began to edge its way into his insides.

  8.

  Hemmington Central Park had been modelled on Central Park in Manhattan, New York. The planning council at the time had been very keen to bring some of that American vibrancy and financial economy to the north of England. By trying to replicate the layout of such a booming city, it was thought that the workforce and the inhabitants would have been inspired to create such levels of success just by having their own version of the city that they had seen on television, or visited on holiday at some point. The plans were passed by the fawning, sycophantic planning committee, so lost in their own arrogance that they didn’t scrutinise the numbers closely enough. The building of Central Park in the centre of Hemmington had been finished on time, but had almost bankrupted the council, who then had to scrimp and save on housing projects and office space. The park was fantastic, it had to be said, but the problem was that Hemmington was so poor that it only managed to take on contracts for telesales companies and debt collection agencies. The workforce was largely unskilled and were driven to indulge themselves in all manner of mind-altering substances of an evening. During the weekend it was even worse, and pretty soon the park had become a gathering point for the young and disaffected that
weren’t old enough to be contained within the relative safety of the many pubs and night spots that littered the town. Soon the beautiful park that had swallowed the council’s budget whole had begun to look rather shabby around the edges. It was still the best part of the whole city, a rough diamond stuck slap bang in the middle of a dirt pile.

  It was the park that had become a make-shift base for the military, much to the displeasure of the natives, who were becoming increasingly restless. To compound matters, the internet had stopped working and all mobile phones had become nothing more than pretty little black slabs in the pockets of the irritated masses. Some of the call centres had tried to carry on as normal, but had found that their phone lines were patchy at best and none of their computers could communicate with each other, so they had begrudgingly sent the workforce home until further notice. The vast majority of them had decided to go to the pub instead, to have a nice cold pint and to await news of what the hell was actually happening.

  The helicopter carrying Thompson and Cindy landed on the main playing field, well away from the centre of the park where the military was still in the process of putting up large tents and marquees to accommodate the influx of people that they had managed to evacuate from Layton and the surrounding areas.

  Thompson and Cindy were escorted from the helicopter to the edge of the field. Thompson was in pretty bad shape from his exertions on the road. He was still struggling to get a deep breath into his lungs without his ribs howling in pain. At the moment, that pain was just fine, because they had made it here alive and they had escaped the wall of spiders that was heading for the city. The moment the helicopter had crossed over the airspace above the large roadblock that had been put in place, the army had given it to the spiders with everything they had. Long blasts of flame had swept across the wall of scuttling bodies, setting scores of them alight, vaporising the ones that were nearest the front. Explosions went off, throwing hundreds of them into the air. The rattling of gunfire underscored the assault. Thousands of bullets were fired into the rolling mass of spiders, shredding them, obliterating them. The fight carried on for just over ten minutes and then the wall of oncoming spiders stopped. They stopped dead in their tracks. The firing continued for another thirty seconds and then began to die out as the soldiers began to realise what was happening.