by WW Mortensen
Someone gasped. Rebecca thought it may have been her. “Don’t move—do not say a word,” she whispered.
High above them, suspended from the very top of the ceiling, a huge mass of black—a great, dark ball—gently pulsated.
It took Rebecca a moment to come to grips with what it was, and while she did, she could only stare in disbelief, the hairs on the nape of her neck prickling.
They must have been literally in their dozens, all of them huddled together at the top of the dome, all grasping each other, forming the huge, swollen mass—
Dozens of spiders clinging together in a sea of black legs and bodies…
“Oh my God…”
The ball itself seemed to be tens of feet across. It reminded Rebecca of a beard of bees, a seething, organic mass suspended from the ceiling, swelling and contracting rhythmically like a slowly beating heart.
Even so, none of the individuals comprising it were themselves active—despite the gentle pulsing—and Rebecca knew why. “They’re roosting together.”
A wave of nausea rolled over her. All along, the colony had been sleeping in a giant cluster at the top of the chamber.
And we walked right in underneath them…
As she came to that terrible realisation, standing there watching the pulsing mass in both awe and revulsion, the dark ball began to writhe.
We’re out of time…
The spiders were waking up.
• • •
The first spider dropped from the ball and landed on the floor below with a soft, padded thud. Quickly, it was joined by several more of the creatures, and as others readied to do the same, the ball stretched in the direction of the ground, alive with purpose. It shrank as its members dropped away, and the floor swelled and rippled with movement like the disturbed surface of a pond.
Rooted to the spot, Rebecca could only watch as the spiders—some of them just yards away—disappeared into the funnel in the centre of the floor like liquid down a drain.
They were flooding the passageway below.
No! We should have had more time!
Oliveira’s voice was low, urgent. “Come! We have to go back up!”
But Rebecca hardly heard him, and she reached for her temples as the strange intrusion that had earlier invaded her mind gripped her once again. This time, however, it was stronger and more insistent, painful almost.
Close range…
She froze.
It was beside her.
Slowly, Rebecca turned, eyes fluttering shut in resignation, opening again as she came around. It was to her right; at the edge of the doorway, perched on the wall. She saw no detail, just a shadow in the dark.
Barely a foot separated their faces.
They stared at one another, unmoving. Rebecca understood they eyed each other from across worlds—to the thing watching her, she was every bit the alien. But her thoughts weren’t really at a conscious level, and as everything slipped into slow motion, she was held motionless by the sight of the jumper’s monstrous fangs, dripping and spraying venom as they unsheathed with a slow, menacing hiss.
Rebecca waited for death.
77
There had to be an opening of some kind at the end of the tunnel, something that led outside through which the breeze was passing. It was that knowledge that kept Sanchez lucid, and drove him on.
Some minutes ago, Owen had again fallen silent, probably unconscious. The toxins surging through his own veins threatened Sanchez with a similar fate—with every step his dizziness grew, but still he moved with energy and purpose. He could sense freedom.
Soon, his efforts were rewarded.
Sanchez drew up as the tunnel came to a sudden end, falling away sharply at his feet and widening into a gigantic cavern. This new chamber was much bigger than the one that had housed the spiders’ waste, and essentially different for one obvious feature: at its centre was a very large and black pool of water, fed by a narrow stream that disappeared off to his right through several enormous, misshapen boulders. The stream had to be flowing from higher ground…
Sanchez smiled, barely able to contain his excitement as he scampered down the embankment, stumbling to the edge of the subterranean lake.
He’d just found their escape route.
He was about to inform Owen of their success when an abrupt scuttling echoed behind him and caused him to freeze where he stood.
78
The Kalashnikov erupted beside Rebecca’s ear. The jumper, illuminated by the muzzle flash, exploded into oblivion.
Rebecca recoiled, stunned and disoriented. Asensi lowered his weapon and mouthed something at her, but she couldn’t hear him, just a high-pitched ringing inside her head. Then someone seized her and hauled her bodily sideways, towards the stairs, and as the world tilted crazily, she glimpsed something strange back in the chamber. The image imprinted itself in her mind’s eye: a huge, pale grey form, seemingly luminous, still suspended from the chamber’s ceiling where the ball had been just seconds before. It was what the spiders had all been clinging to.
And as she replayed that fleeting snapshot, stuck in her silent world, she realised the shape had moved.
Then there was a sense of fierce heat beside her and she was fleeing up the stairs, a line of belching flame in her wake…
• • •
They hit the landing at the top of the stairs and Rebecca’s hearing came rushing back.
“Move it!”
She wondered if the blast from the flamethrower had worked, and stole a backwards glance in time to see a giant arachnid burst through the open doorway below—
—with a legion of its companions in tow.
Oh my God…
“The passageway!” Oliveira yelled. “Go!”
Someone hauled Rebecca to the left, to the sloping passageway rising higher into the pyramid—a better option than the priest’s chamber, which was a dead-end. The sound of gunfire echoed off the stone walls, and over the top of it, a thunderous skittering as the creatures—dozens of them—fought their way through the bottleneck and up the stairs, barking and scrambling and scratching…
“Run!”
The passageway curved to the right. More gunfire, another eruption of flame. At the top of the bend, a dark, empty space.
“QUICKLY… THIS WAY!”
They crossed the void. Ahead, another stone door, like the one in the priest’s chamber below.
To the rear, from the mouth of the passageway, the first of the spiders emerged, leaping high—
—just as Luis sent a spout of flame back towards them.
The deadly blast engulfed everything in its path. The heat was intense, the flash blinding. Reaching the open doorway, Rebecca dashed through it. Luis, reeling backwards, kept his finger on the trigger, spewing fire even as Costa seized him by the shoulders and towed him into the chamber, and then someone rolled the door shut and it fell into place with a thud—
—and there was silence.
Rebecca whimpered and fixed her gaze on the door, bracing herself for an assault on the huge, cog-like disc.
It didn’t happen. No attack, no noise from the other side.
What the hell?
Then Rebecca turned around and saw why.
79
Sanchez watched the three spiders emerge from the silk-lined tunnel he’d just exited… and sank lower in the water.
Upon hearing their approach, he’d leapt into the subterranean pool, dragging Owen in with him. Now, with only his eyes peeking above the water’s surface, he tracked the jumpers as they moved to within a few feet of the torch he’d dropped to the ground. The three megarachnids were big, each more than a yard across the legs, and they were working in unison, their actions stuttered, twitchy. Sanchez guessed they were searching, pausing to feel for vibrations. One of them came across the cavern’s ceiling, the other two across the floor, down the embankment. Then, close on their heels, two more of the creatures darted from the tunnel and at once, all five of them froze.
Sanchez froze, too.
They looked at him and Owen and converged swiftly… only to stop in front of the torch.
Sanchez felt his heart leap into his mouth. The spiders hadn’t been looking at them after all, but just in case, he edged closer to the base of some boulders lining the bank, pulling Owen behind him.
The spiders approached the torch, its dancing flame entrapped in the many dark mirrors of their eyes. In that same firelight, he thought the colour of their bodies shifted from jet black to the kind of mottled grey-brown of the embankment on which they had gathered, but he couldn’t be certain. They seemed to be inspecting the torch.
With a padded thud, the spider on the ceiling dropped to the floor. At the same time, another of its companions kicked the spear, flicking it through the air.
All of them spun and moved away…
Down to the water’s edge.
Sanchez clamped a hand over Owen’s mouth and circled the boulders. Fortunately, he was able to walk, the water here shallow.
With the torch-flame reflected in its glassy black eyes and along the velvety hairs of its body, the lead spider touched two of its feet lightly on the surface of the lake.
Sanchez held his breath, muscles tensed.
The creature felt for vibrations.
Sanchez didn’t move, prayed that Owen, barely conscious, would remain silent for just a few more moments—
They can’t swim, can they?
And with that the jumper did a peculiar thing and Sanchez wished the thought had never entered his mind.
80
Rebecca’s breath caught sharply in her throat.
They were everywhere.
Like strange lamps, they dangled from above; white spheres each about the size of a soccer ball, individually suspended on a thread of silk attached to the ceiling.
Eggs.
More accurately, egg sacs. The entire chamber was filled with them. There must have been hundreds. “This isn’t good,” Rebecca murmured.
“Why is it so… hot?” Costa’s voice trembled.
“To keep the eggs viable,” Rebecca said absently, her feet frozen to the spot. She swivelled her head about. “Hive-creatures need high-temperatures, a tropical climate. This is a nuptial chamber. We have to get out of here.”
“Where is Luis?”
Rebecca spun. The FH-9 flamethrower—Luis’s flamethrower—lay discarded on the ground a few feet away… covered in blood.
“Oh, no…”
They were already in here.
• • •
The dark shape swooped in from the side, through the air, its legs spread wide. The forelegs collected Asensi in a smothering hug, at the same time the rear legs hit the ground and propelled the creature and its screaming prize back up to the ceiling.
The attack sent Ed sprawling. Reflexively, Costa opened fire, bullets sparking off the stone walls in pursuit as the jumper, defying gravity, twisted gracefully in the air and attached itself to the ceiling with its free legs. Asensi writhed and screamed the whole way, in the process somehow getting his weapon hand free and depressing the trigger.
A deadly stream of bullets rained wildly from Asensi’s Kalashnikov as the jumper scurried across the ceiling, hauling its prey towards a large circular hole in the centre of the stonework. Scrambling for cover, Rebecca dived out of the way as bullets pinged around her.
Asensi kept firing until the weapon was torn from his grasp, and then the silenced Kalashnikov fell away, tumbling through the air. It clattered to the ground in front of Rebecca.
She dived for it.
As Asensi was hauled into the black hole, Costa—panicked and still firing—turned his weapon on her…
Rebecca snatched up the AK-74 and rolled behind a curtain of silk, bullets sparking in her wake—
“NO!” With a howl, diving sideways, Oliveira slammed into Costa and knocked him off his aim.
His efforts were a fraction too late.
• • •
The first of the bullets reached Rebecca—everything now in slow motion—and something incredible happened.
They stopped.
Right there, in front of her face. Amazingly, she saw the rounds—two of them—come to a sudden halt, stuck in the web.
The silk curtain—a strong, fibrous film weaving through the forest of egg sacs—had caught them. She noticed another bullet had ripped through one of the nearby cocoons, which now oozed fluid. Rebecca thought she saw movement inside the sac, something writhing…
Everything sped up again.
Oliveira and Costa untangled as the second jumper leapt in, seizing Costa in the same manner as the first had snatched Asensi. Kicking and screaming, Costa, too, was dragged to the ceiling.
Oliveira had seen it coming. Ducking, he lunged for the abandoned flamethrower, spinning and firing upwards in the one action. The bright-orange flame blasted the ceiling-hole a millisecond after Costa and his abductor disappeared into it.
The chamber was empty.
Discarding the flamethrower, Oliveira spun with his pistol, targeting Rebecca—
She was already on her feet with her AK-74 trained firmly at his head.
• • •
Face to face, neither stood down.
“Thanks for trying to stop him,” Rebecca said, her hands trembling on the weapon.
“You are welcome, senhorita.”
Rebecca gestured to the Beretta in Oliveira’s hand. “I need you to drop that.”
Unblinking, Oliveira mirrored her tone. “I was going to ask the same of you.”
Rebecca had no intention of complying. Neither, it seemed, did he. Barely ten feet apart, weapons pointed at each other’s heads, they held their ground, surrounded by the endless clusters of egg sacs. Some of these were still on fire, lighting the chamber and exuding a sickening, sulphurous odour.
“This is neither the time nor the place for an insurgence,” Oliveira said. “You know that shortly they will return.”
Rebecca held firm but agreed. “What now, then?”
A clicking sound, on Rebecca’s right. “That’s easy. Drop your weapon, senhor.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Rebecca saw Ed emerge from the shadows to stand on Oliveira’s left. He held an automatic pistol, trained at Oliveira’s temple.
Oliveira held his ground. “Where did you get that?”
Ed’s voice was hoarse. “The plane. I guess the pilot dropped it. Had it in this vest the whole time.” He coughed. “Now, let’s do as the lady said, and drop it, nice and slow.”
Oliveira turned his head to look at Ed. “I am afraid I cannot.”
Ed tightened his grip on the gun and took an unsteady step forward, wheezing and spluttering.
Oliveira had already returned his gaze to Rebecca. “Be careful, senhor,” he said to Ed. “I don’t presume your vision is perfect. You don’t want an accident.”
Ed held his ground. It was a three-way stand-off.
This isn’t good, Rebecca thought. The spiders could reappear at any moment…
Oliveira read her mind. “I am sure they regroup as we speak. We must get out of here.”
“What do you propose?”
“We cannot fight each other if any of us hopes to live.”
“We don’t need you,” Ed coughed.
“How can we trust you?” Rebecca said to Oliveira.
“Bec,” Ed said, “we’re not giving up our weapons.”
“Then as a gesture of goodwill,” Oliveira said, “I shall give up mine.” With that, he dropped his pistol and kicked it across the floor.
Rebecca glanced down as it spun towards her, the Kalashnikov still pointed at Oliveira as the weapon cruised to a stop at her feet. She paused… and then looked up. “Throw me the package.”
“What?”
“The package—throw it to me.”
Oliveira hesitated.
“We’re running out of time,” Rebecca said.
Reaching into his vest, Olivei
ra retrieved the small cloth bundle and hurled it. Rebecca caught it with her left hand. It was heavier than she’d expected, firm yet pliable. She shifted her gaze to look at it. Though intrigued by its contents, the pouch was too firmly tied to open while still holding the Kalashnikov. She looked up at Oliveira…
…and kicked back his gun.
“Bec!”
“He’s right,” Rebecca said to Ed. “We won’t survive this on our own.” She turned to Oliveira and jutted her chin at the pistol. “Before you pick that up, you listen to me. I’m going to tell you how this works, and I don’t want any more of your shit about striking deals or making demands, okay?”
“I’m listening.”
“From now on we work together,” Rebecca said. She waved the package at him. “If we manage to get out of here, back into camp, you’re going to swap me a sat-phone for this, and you’re going to disappear. Got it? I don’t care who you are or what you’re involved in back in the real world, but we all go our separate ways and pretend we never crossed paths.”
Smirking, Oliveira opened his mouth to reply, but no words passed his lips. He looked to the ceiling and his smile faded.
At that moment Rebecca realised the chamber had grown darker—not because the burning egg sacs had extinguished, but because a great shadow descended. Like Oliveira, she turned her gaze upwards.
“Oh fuck,” she breathed.
• • •
It was literally the stuff of nightmares. Rebecca’s neck skin crawled.
Impossibly huge, it lowered itself face-first through the ceiling-hole on a silken dragline. Slowly. Deliberately. The size of a large SUV, the superspider was pale, whitish-grey, virtually luminous. Except for two outstretched forelegs—they must each have been five or six yards in length—its segmented limbs were tucked up beneath it, sprouting from a thorax that seemed comparatively narrow given the improbably huge, round and bloated abdomen that appeared to float in the air above it.
The creature was totally hairless.
Rebecca was reminded of a huge, gnarled hand—the thing appeared to be covered in skin, its knuckled legs looking like bony, human fingers. At the same time, she thought they also resembled the long, almost skeletal appendages of the giant spider crabs that dwelt in the darkness of the Earth’s deepest oceans.