Day of the Spiders

  Corporal Keller bellowed to the other soldiers to cease fire. “Save it, save the ammo,” he yelled into his radio. There were a few more bursts of gunfire and then the guns fell silent. Keller stood up on the barricade, looking out over the road. The black carpet of spiders had stopped their advance. It was still in a state of perpetual movement, rippling and writhing, but they didn’t move forwards, not one inch.

  Keller grabbed his radio and jumped down from the top of the barricade. “Ma’am we have stopped them for now. They’re still here but they are not advancing any further. We have limited ammunition until the next drop gets here, over.”

  The radio hissed, “Affirmative. Ammunition drop ETA one hour. Possible chemical weapons inbound too. Hold your position, over,” said Brigadier Taber.

  “Holding position, confirmed, over, out,” said Keller. He climbed up the barricade again and had another look at the spiders covering the road. He didn’t even want to try and estimate how many of them there were. From his vantage point it looked like there was millions of them.

  Why aren’t they attacking? He thought. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have them totally outnumbered. They could have held them off for a little while but they would surely overrun them. They could climb over the barricades, continue down the road and into the city. They could go up the edges of the road, up the grassy verges on either side and try and get to the flame throwers on the top of each verge. They could do if they wanted, so why were they waiting? What were they waiting for?

  A signal. They’re waiting for a signal, thought Keller. He grabbed the radio again and switched to the short-range frequency. “Listen up everyone, keep an eye on them. If they come forwards again, give them everything you have.”

  He looked out over the spiders, knowing full well that this battle, this war was only just beginning. It wasn’t a case of if, it was a case of when.

  **

  Thompson and Cindy made it to the makeshift medical centre in the middle of the park. The park was absolutely brimming with people, most of which looked lost an unsure of what they were supposed to do with themselves. They were brought inside the tent which was lined with fold-out beds, the kind that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a holiday camp. Every bed had a body in it. Some were totally still, some of them writhed and moaned in pain. At the front of the tent there was a fold-out table with an army officer sat behind the desk, a laptop open in front of him. He looked up when he saw Thompson and Cindy walk inside.

  “Names please?”

  “Gerald Arthur Thompson, Cindy Thompson,” said Cindy.

  The officer took more details, dates of birth, address, national insurance number, blood type, everything.

  “So, you’re from Layton? Did you have any encounters with spiders whilst you were in Layton, were either of you bitten?” said the officer.

  “We encountered, yes. I’m a D.C.I. I was investigating the death of a young girl just yesterday morning, I think it was a spider that killed her,” said Thompson.

  The officer tapped the information into the computer, pressed another button and then closed the lid. “Were you on Corsica Road in Layton yesterday?” said the officer.

  “That’s right. That’s where the little girl lived, and two other victims,” said Thompson. He was getting out of breath again.

  “Are you injured in any way sir?”

  “Yes, he had a fall, his ribs, back and his wrist are messed up,” said Cindy.

  “Right then sir, you must come with me. We need to get you comfortable as soon as we can.”

  The officer led them out of the tent and growled something into his radio. He turned to Thompson. “We have all been asked to look out for you. You were there at the start of all of this, you need to answer some questions if that’s ok. We need all the intelligence that we can get at the moment.”

  “Of course,” Thompson gasped.

  “Don’t worry, we will get you all fixed up first. I can’t have you in pain. There’s a car coming for you to take you to the Hurst Centre. It’s a private hospital. The best that we have,” said the officer.

  Thompson wanted to protest. He hated the idea of private healthcare when there were so many in need, but the pain caressing his body made him shut right up and accept whatever help he was offered. Besides he had never really had the VIP treatment before in his life and he wasn’t about to stop that from happening now.

  “Please, take a seat, make yourselves as comfortable as you can. The car will be here to pick you up in a few minutes,” said the officer and showed them to a small row of deckchairs. Cindy tried to help Thompson into the chair, but he ended up losing his balance and crashing down into the seat with a wince.

  “Sorry,” said Cindy, but he waved it off and patted the seat next to him for her to sit in. She lowered herself onto the edge of her seat and took one of Thompson’s hands in her own. “Are you alright? Really, I mean,” she said.

  Thompson offered her a smile through his pain and his sweating. “I’m alright. I’ve had worse, trust me.”

  “Try to rest up a little,” she said and kissed his hand. “You are my hero after all.”

  Thompson laughed, clutching his ribs to try and stop them from moving. Cindy sat back in her chair and scratched at her leg.

  Thompson leaned back tentatively, trying to take the strain off all of his muscles in his mid-section. He managed to move himself into a position that was actually pretty comfortable. He breathed a sigh of relief and had a look at the world around him. The park looked like it had seen better days. There was a large amount of graffiti on every concrete surface, some of it pretty good and others that made bold, simple and misspelt proclamations. ‘Fuck the tory’s’ being one of the most dominant. Pretty much every bit of grass had someone sitting on it, some alone, some in a pair, lots of families trying to make the most of the situation they had been in. The evacuation of Layton must have happened pretty fast in Thompson’s opinion. He had just been lucky that they had got out first before anything had chance to happen to them. Christ, if he had been a few minutes later then it would be a much different story for them right now. He knew one thing for sure, to get an evacuation done so quickly and to get so many people out, it had to have been planned in advance, ready to go at a moment’s notice. They had been planning for this, that was what Thompson thought, they had been planning for it for years.

  The tower blocks that surrounded the park looked like big uneven concrete teeth poking up into the skyline. Thompson could see the green stripes of Suicide Towers from where he was sitting. He had been inside that tower block when he had been on the case of a man that had been driven mad by the noise coming from his neighbours flat. He had knocked on the door of the neighbour and then took a baseball bat to the noisy buggers’ knees. He had insisted that it had been an act of self-defence and that if he had tried to tolerate the noise for much longer, he would have ended up caving his neighbours head in with that bat. It didn’t even occur to the hapless man that even after he had put his neighbour in a wheelchair, that the noise he could hear continued as he sat in the police cell waiting to be charged. Of course, the noise was inside his head rather than coming through the admittedly paper-thin walls inside those flats.

  Thompson shook his head and smiled. The number of people that he had dealt with over the years had been large and varied. Never a dull moment, never the same day twice. That was the nature of the job. He certainly had never had a day like today, or yesterday. Yep, it was another one for the books, if there were any books left of course. His eyes were beginning feel heavy and despite the coolness in the air he felt as if he could just go for a decent nap right about now. He was about to shuffle himself into a decent napping position when he heard an unrest beginning to build amongst the masses of people. There was a combination of shouting and the beeping of a car horn. The officer came over to them again.

  “Your car is here Mr. Thompson. Please come with me,” he said.

  Thompson winced as he pulled himse
lf back out of the chair again. Cindy did her best to support him, but she wasn’t strong enough to take any of his weight. His spine crackled as he got to his feet. It was stiffening up on him something rotten. He had never really considered himself as an old man, but today he felt every inch of it. The officer led them around the medical tent and back towards the main path that ran through the middle of the park. It led from the edge of the main road right up to the most central point where the bandstand stood. However, in their way was a lot of irritable and very vocal people. A path had been forged through the seething masses by some very heavily armed soldiers. As they walked through Thompson could pick up on little snatches of the unrest.

  ….want to call my wife….

  ….need to check in….

  ….tell us what’s happening…..

  …..won’t talk to us….

  By the time he got to the car, a very plush dark green Jaguar with blacked out windows, the type of car a president might get around in, he had a pretty good idea of the mood of the people. They weren’t telling them anything and somehow they had taken down the internet too so they couldn’t get information from any other source either.

  Not bad for an old man, he thought to himself.

  They got into the car and it began to drive out of the park. The soft leather seats were much more inviting than the deckchairs they had been sitting on a few moment earlier. Thompson felt another wave of sleepiness wash over him. He resisted it, only because his copper’s eye was restless. He wanted to have a look around, see what other clues he could find. He was still on the job after all.

  Despite himself and his strong instincts, he was asleep before the car had even got to the park gates.

  9.

  Three hours after Thompson had arrived at the Hurst Centre, and was being wheeled in, still fast asleep, for assessment, Briggs and Willis were in the air aboard a helicopter and heading for Hemmington City. They were being escorted again by Monsun, who still hadn’t found any humour deep with his soul. If he had then he was still doing a pretty damn good job of hiding it. He was, however, forthcoming with information of the spider outbreak that had happened in Layton.

  “Hemmington City is holding. The spiders have got as far as the barricade but they can’t get inside. Our boys have got too much to hit them with,” said Monsun through their headsets.

  “What about the other directions? They won’t just go for Hemmington, there’s Hale Peak, Hurndell, Denway. They surround Layton don’t they?” said Briggs.

  “Every town and village surrounding Layton has a military presence. There’s too many spiders to keep them contained in Layton, and we don’t want a repeat of what happened to Newtown either. The tactic is to draw them all out of Layton and attack them when they are exposed with lower-level explosions, flamethrowers, and anything else we can hit them with without causing major damage. Hell, we are even talking about using a pesticide on them,” said Monsun.

  “What about the hybrids?” said Briggs.

  “What?” said Monsun.

  “The human spiders from the hospital. Have you taken them out yet?”

  Monsun was quiet for a moment. Briggs tried to read his stony face to no avail.

  “They haven’t been found yet,” said Monsun.

  “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

  “I’m not in the business of telling lies Doctor Briggs,” said Monsun.

  “Humans spliced with spider DNA that contains a virus so aggressive that it causes the most incredible mutations any of us have ever seen. It turns people who have been bitten into large spider-like monsters that tower probably eight-to-ten feet tall and you’ve lost them? Jesus Christ,” said Briggs sitting back in his seat and folding his arms across his chest. He looked at Monsun. His eye caught it, it caught the tight pursing of Monsun’s lips and the baleful, murderous look in his eye, just for a fleeting second.

  He had gotten under Monsun’s skin. He was human after all. He smiled to himself a little. He still had the ability to piss people off, therefore he was still relevant, at least to himself.

  “We will find them,” said Monsun.

  Briggs said nothing. He had an idea that Monsun was just towing the line. He wasn’t going to tell him anything truthful without putting a spin on the whole thing.

  “I think when the time is right, they will show themselves again,” said Willis. Monsun offered her a polite nod.

  “So, who is this person we’re going to see?” said Briggs.

  “Gerald Thompson. He was the investigating officer on the case of Lottie Richmond who died yesterday morning of severe anaphylaxis. He is in the Hurst Centre with some minor injuries he sustained as he was escaping from Layton. Apparently, his partner is one of the Hybrids that our friend here lost,” said Willis.

  Monsun’s lips pursed again and Briggs stifled a laugh. “Sounds like we could learn something from him. Hopefully it will give us a little insight as to that we are dealing with.”

  Monsun sat forward suddenly and pushed the forefingers of his right hand against his earphones. He was listening to a transmission that Briggs and Willis weren’t a party to. He shielded his mouth as he spoke into the radio. The conversation went on for a few moments and then he dropped his hand again.

  “Well Briggs, I think you might be surplus to requirements,” said Monsun, back in their ears again.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “The spiders that had made it to the outskirts of Hemmington have gone. They must have retreated. We drove them away,” he said. The ghost of a smile flickered around the corner of his mouth.

  Briggs looked over at Willis and then back to Monsun. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” He said.

  10.

  Brigadier Taber had gone over to the south barricade the moment that she heard the report that the spiders had gone. She had found Keller who was still standing on top of the barricade, a pair of binoculars stuck to his face. He was scanning the horizon, looking for any sign of their return. Taber climbed up to where he was standing. The road in front of them was almost completely clear. Some sections of the tarmac had been cratered by some of the explosions. Pieces of ash floated around the air, carried by the breeze that was washing down the road. Cars still littered one side of the road where they had been abandoned, some of them still burning from the carnage that had ensued earlier.

  “What happened?” said Taber.

  “It was the strangest thing. They never moved for two hours, not one bit, and then they suddenly started dispersing. They went in all directions, most of ‘em went back up the road. It happened so fast that we didn’t even have time to react. If I didn’t know better, I would have said that they were signalled to move,” said Keller.

  “Did you sweep the perimeter? They could be trying to find a way in,” said Taber.

  “It was the first thing we did. All the barricades are reporting no sightings, and that’s not just here, that’s at all the barricades within fifty miles. They haven’t seen anything. It’s like they just vanished off the face of the earth,” said Keller.

  Taber shot him a look, “Several thousand aggressive spiders do not just vanish Keller. They have to be somewhere.” She tapped a button on the headset she was wearing. “I need a chopper in the air right now with every piece of surveillance equipment that you have. We need to find those spiders, and we need to find them now,” she yelled.

  She climbed down from the barrier again and levelled a finger at Keller. “You, keep looking and don’t leave that spot. I want every barricade to stay on high alert, you got that Keller? You see anything with more legs that you and I don’t get to hear about it then I will feed you to those fuckers myself, do we understand each other?”

  “Crystal clear Ma’am,” said Keller.

  “Good,” said Taber and walked away. There were some big and tough soldiers that gave way to Taber as she walked through. She had to prove herself over and over again to get the ranking that she had, and she didn’t give an inch t
o anyone. She was about as tough and hard-boiled as they came. If she said she was going to feed him to the spiders herself then he was pretty certain that she would go through with it too.

  Keller turned his attention back to the road, scanning it with the binoculars. But there wasn’t a thing moving out there, not a single thing.

  11.

  The Hurst Centre had its own landing pad on the roof. From the ground, the place looked like a stately home, albeit a very modern stately home. It was surrounded by almost perfectly kept gardens. You would have to look long and hard to find a blade of grass out of whack or a stray, uncut leaf on one of the many hedgerows that bordered them. The Hurst Centre was the kind of place where just walking through the main gates made your own personal stock feel like it was rising sharply. If you weren’t wearing an expensive suit then you were likely to feel a little out of place.

  Stepping inside the building from the roof doorway, Briggs thought to himself that it would have been a much more pleasant experience if he had been incarcerated in a place just like this one instead of the relative poverty of the Tulip Suite. There would have been no crappy, overcooked fish and stale, dry chips here. It would have been eggs benedict, fresh mushroom soup and caviar and crackers for a snack. Still, he had no energy to keep yanking on that lever. He had a job to do after all. An ageing, but very well turned-out female doctor escorted them to the room where Gerald Thompson was staying.