The Widow

by Love, Aimee

  The spiders reacted instantly, ignoring Iago and racing toward me. I threw it as hard as I could toward the entrance and watched as it arced over the spiders and out. They all zoomed after it, realizing their mistake too late and trying to skid to a stop.

  Iago batted at the few that managed it, sending them into the ocean after their friends.

  “Thanks,” he told me. I grabbed his rifle and switched it to hydro, then handed it back.

  “The lasers weren’t doing anything but you told us not to mess with the other…”

  “I changed my mind,” I told him, grabbing the stun baton from his belt and going to the entrance.

  The entire cliff face was in flames and spiders were scurrying around everywhere, most of them heading up to the colony above. I didn’t have time to wonder how or why.

  Edmund had taken refuge on the sled, but the spiders had followed and were now swarming over him. He was still alive, I could see him struggling weakly under the pile, but he was doomed if he didn’t get help fast.

  “Cover us,” I called to Iago and jumped out, making the sled sway alarmingly.

  I waded into the mass, swinging with the baton. There were only two bodies, but enough free, squirming and slicing legs to fill a handful more. I wondered where they were all coming from until I hit one of the bodies and sent it hurtling over the side. Its legs detached as if fell and although most still tumbled into the ocean beside it, a few unfurled hidden wings and took flight, zooming back up at us like little kamikaze pilots. The birds I’d heard in the night, I realized, weren’t birds at all. I wondered how much weight they could carry. If thirty of them found a body would they be able to carry it? I didn’t have time to worry about that.

  Iago shot the second body and it went down twitching. Edmund used the distraction of my arrival to make it to his feet, though a few of the sucker legs remained latched on to him.

  “Go,” I screamed to him, flailing around myself with the baton. I felt a stinging slap against my face as one of the birds streaked past. I could feel blood oozing from the cut then the whole sled lurched and my breath was knocked out of me as I slammed into the mast. A fucking bird, either by accident or design, had severed one of the cables holding the net the sled rested in. It was now dangling vertically, the only thing keeping it from falling to the ocean below was the cable I’d watched Sebastian fasten to the runner to keep it from swaying so long ago.

  I looked around for Edmund, fearing the worst until I glanced over to the ledge. The others had made it to the arch and Quince and Abram were standing next to Iago, raining a steady stream of fire at anything that twitched, while Conrad hoisted Edmund up from the edge. I would have been profoundly relieved had not my own situation at that moment been so precarious. I had a good hold of the mast, but when I tried to make a grab for the sled so I could work my way up it, it dipped and swayed, then slid another foot lower down the cable.

  It was a long fall to the water below and I was wondering if my chances were better with or without the sled when Quince disappeared back down the tunnel. I was afraid more spiders were coming, though given the number I could see scurrying up the cliff and out into the colony I didn’t see how there could be any left inside. Quince returned a moment later with a harpoon gun. He must have gone and gotten it from one of the men I’d killed near the entrance.

  He pulled the bolt out and let it fall over the edge, then began unspooling its line, lowering it down to me. It looked impossibly thin, but I was hardly in a position to be picky.

  When the bolt was level with me, he swung it until it came close enough for me to snatch. I reached out, missed, felt the sled lurch again and lunged for it, grabbing it and getting a few coils wrapped around my hand just as the sled fell away beneath me. I slammed into the wall, knocking my breath away yet again and nearly pulling Quince down with me. The thing was much too thin to climb, but it held my weight and with Conrad and Edmund helping, I was pulled back up to the ledge one slow, painful foot at a time.

  “Jesus,” I swore, untangling the line from around my hand. It had cut through my glove and I was bleeding, but I could still wiggle all my fingers and, more importantly, was alive.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked.

  “I think one of the birds cut the cable,” Abram told me helpfully.

  “Not that,” I said, “That!” I pointed to the cliff where flames were still spewing from openings all along its face.

  “Oh,” Abram said with a shrug. “We don’t know. It just happened.”

  “I think the goo you told us they line the tunnels with must be flammable,” Iago put in. “We make the liquor from it, so it makes sense.”

  “You make the liquor from it?” I sputtered. “And you’re just telling me this now?!?”

  “You never asked,” he said defensively.

  True enough, but still…

  “I hope we didn’t just fry all the women,” Abram muttered.

  I shook my head.

  “I didn’t see any goo in the room with the pits,” I told him. “There was lava in there so I doubt they painted the walls with it.” The goo had been very slippery and I supposed they used it to speed their travels through the tubes, but I think if I lived in an active volcano I’d be a bit more careful.

  “Any word on the com?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Just static,” Abram said glumly.

  Hiding in the arch, we were being largely ignored by the fleeing spiders, but I doubted that would hold true if we exposed ourselves. The only other option was through the tunnels to one of the stairways going up. I’d studied the maps Julian had made us, but only the part I thought I might need. Most of the men were only allowed below for countings, but Quince had probably taken the route from the sled to the surface before and he’d certainly used the tunnels to get from one colony building to another often enough.

  “We need to get to the surface,” I told them, “Quince?” I pointed down the tunnel.

  Hell no, his look said plainly enough.

  I pointed to the ladder.

  “Look at them all! There can’t be many left inside,” I protested.

  They all looked at me like I was crazy. Shit. How many of them were there? Enough to eat a ton of fish a week, I remembered.

  We had a stun baton, a knife, four grenades, two pistols and two rifles to share among six people, four of whom were injured. I didn’t like our odds much either way.

  “Okay,” I told them, trying to sound confident. “We’re going up in two groups of three. The first group hits the ladder and the second covers them from here, then the first group turns and covers the second from topside. Got it?”

  They all nodded. Sure. No problem. Except that I needed to be in both groups.

  “Conrad, you’re in charge of the second group. If the ladder proves impassible,” I was careful not to say if we die, “you take them through the tunnels to the stairs. Clear?”

  He nodded, but Quince looked stricken.

  “Quince,” I said seriously, catching his eyes and holding them. “I have to go in the first group. They’re going to have a nasty time of it once they get up and I need to be there.”

  He nodded agreement and grabbed my arm but I shook him off.

  “I need you in the second group. If something happens, you’re the only one who knows how to find the stairs,” I told him.

  He shook his head vehemently and grabbed my arm again.

  “This isn’t a democracy,” I told him, prying him off. “You’re a soldier now, whether you want to be or not. Soldiers obey orders, even the ones they don’t like.”

  I felt like the biggest hypocrite ever. I could count the number of orders I disagreed with and followed anyway on no hands.

  “Put on your jackets,” I told them, pointing to the pile we’d
discarded on the way in, then turned away and busied myself with our armament so I wouldn’t cry. Agents are never, ever allowed to cry, at least not where anyone can see them. I left them a rifle, a pistol, two of the grenades and the stun baton, checked that all their goggles were working, turned their coms to a private channel since no one topside was talking anyway, and then took a long steadying breath.

  “All right, up as fast as you can,” I told Iago and Edmund. “Don’t stop and don’t look back. The second we hit the top you two turn and cover them, I’ll handle whatever is waiting for us.”

  I turned to Conrad.

  “You make sure he doesn’t follow me until its time, got it?”

  He nodded.

  They were all scared shitless and I couldn’t blame them, I was too.

  We put Edmund in the middle, since going first or last was likely to be hardest and his missing fingers made the ladder tricky to begin with.

  I went first, running along the narrow ledge and starting up two rungs at a time. A spider came plummeting toward me, shot by one of the men below no doubt, and I hugged the ladder to avoid being brained in the head. A few of its legs detached as it passed and I saw them take flight.

  Close up, the wings were incredibly neat. There were four arrayed around the body evenly and spiraling around it, making them look like giant flying corkscrews. Not all of the legs had them, obviously, and I wondered what could have led to such an odd evolutionary path. Perhaps when these had been fertile plains and the spiders had been nocturnal hunters they had used the flying legs as scouts to find prey and warn of danger.

  I stopped admiring them as soon as they began dive bombing me and tried to pick up my speed. In this exposed location, I knew it was my only friend. Trusting the others to cover me was the hardest part - trust never having been my strong suit - but cover my they did, and I made it up the five murderous stories almost without incident. Before climbing off the last rung, I risked a glance down.

  Edmund and Iago were still only about half way up. I could see Conrad below on the ledge. He was clearing the spiders from around them with the rifle, but he couldn’t do anything about the birds without risking hitting one of them and they were moving too slow, giving the birds plenty of time to home in on them as they dove.

  I climbed up onto the ground and pulled my knife, hacking away a chunk of ice the size of my fist, I tossed it out, far enough away from the ladder not to hit Edmund in the head but close enough to knock a few of the birds away.

  “Faster!” I yelled down, turning to break off another chunk. That was when I saw the colony.

  I’m not sure what I had expected. The com was down and the twins had vanished, so I’d known it would be bad, but this? Spiders swarmed everywhere, rending and tearing. All of the greenhouses, which were really little more than big inflatable bubbles, had already fallen, and the side of the dining hall had collapsed. As I stood agape, a rabbit darted through the throng, pursued by a spider gone sluggish and feeble from the cold. This was wanton destruction on a scale that went beyond reprisal. There was no hope that the colony could recover from it, no sign that the spiders were planning on letting a few escape to rebuild and continue. They had clearly heard their own death knell sound and were now engaged in an act I had previously believed only humans were capable of: Revenge.

  I’d stood still too long. A bird whipped past my ear. I spun around and felt a stabbing pain in my left shoulder. My sudden movement had thrown off its aim and rather than zooming past, it had hit me. My shoulder joint wasn’t well armored, but at least the heavily reinforced onesie had slowed the thing down. I felt a grinding agony and realized it was still lodged there, flapping its wings for all it was worth either in an attempt to escape or to impale me.

  I swung around with my knife, trying to cut it off, but it was too low for me to get a decent angle on and my hits just glanced off. I fell to my knees and watched helplessly as my blood turned the ice red and slick. My vision started to narrow and I wondered if I could kill the thing by stabbing into my own shoulder from the front. How close to my heart was it?

  I felt arms grab my shoulders and looked up into Timon’s worried face.

  “Should we pull it out?” He asked.

  I managed a nod and fumbled for my med-kit.

  “The green,” I gasped. “Use the green.”

  The green contained stimulants, pain killers, blood clotters, and everything else imaginable. It was considered a combat medic’s last resort, because it hardened up like cement, making later treatment extremely difficult, but it would keep me going and right now that was all that mattered.

  I felt a terrible ripping as the thing was removed, and turned enough to see Walter toss it over the edge. The twins, both bloody but whole and each still clutching a rifle. Hallelujah.

  Timon tugged off my med-kit and pulled out the green tube.

  “Cover,” I told Walter, pointing.

  A spider had come up the wall only a few yards away and was wiggling it’s feet in the air, getting its bearings. He took it out with a single shot and I realized he must have been playing with the settings and found the hydrokinetic shock. Yet another of my orders ignored, but this time I was glad.

  Timon leaned me forward and squeezed the entire green tube into my wound, then fumbled for a compression bandage and slapped it over the top.

  “We need to get you out of here,” he told me. “They’re holding out over at the hangers. Julian is there, he can…”

  “Sebastian?” I asked, cutting him off.

  “He’s there too,” he told me.

  “And?”

  “He did it,” he said with a weak grin.

  I closed my eyes and felt my muscles relax.

  “Cover the ladder,” I told him, getting to my feet. “Walter, take the land side.”

  I climbed up the rise toward the weather station, but turned the other way so I could get a good view of the colony. Dialing my vision up, I looked out toward the hangars. They were sturdy and set away from the main buildings, well out on the ice, making them a good place for a last stand. But from the looks of things, that was exactly what it would be if I didn’t do something quick. The hangers were swarming with spiders. There was a variety I’d never seen before, with short, stubby legs that spun too fast for me to see, working on the walls. They must be the ones that dug the tubes, I reasoned, and the walls, though thick poured concrete, couldn’t hold out much longer.

  I hurried back to Timon and Walter. Things must have been going badly on the ladder or the others would have been up by now, but I couldn’t spare the time to find out what.

  “When everyone is up, get them to the hangers,” I told them.

  “Where are you going?” Walter asked.

  “To end this,” I told him, glad that Quince was still below and he couldn’t follow me.

  I was armed only with a knife and already woozy from blood loss, but the spiders seemed more interested in destruction than murder and besides, I had a plan.

  I headed to the dining hall. Its side wall and part of the roof had caved in and the spiders, presumably thinking it already beyond repair, had largely abandoned it. The ones that were left seemed nearly catatonic from the cold, but they still snapped their legs and tried to drag themselves toward me. I gave them a wide berth and when a more ambulatory specimen finally confronted me, I backed away slowly, drawing my knife only to see it crumple in a twitching mass.

  I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw Iago on the hill beside the ladder. He gave me a jaunty salute and I waved back, glad that at least someone had made it up.

  The wall containing the front door was still standing, but when I tried to open it it wouldn’t budge. I skirted the building, aware that Iago wouldn’t be able to cover me from here, but needing to find a way in. When I came to a window and looked insi
de, I understood why the door wouldn’t open.

  The people manning the command center had barricaded it, cramming every table and chair they could find in front of it in an attempt to keep the wave of spiders out. They seemed to have succeeded in the short term, since I didn’t see any inside, but when the ceiling had collapsed, they had been trapped. There were bodies everywhere, trapped under rubble and crushed. No one inside was alive, and I supposed that anyone who had survived had climbed up the slabs of the ruined ceiling and then out over the fallen wall.

  I groaned, realizing that was exactly what I was going to have to do. I could see the transmitter clearly, sitting on one of the few remaining tables, and knew that the torpedo that I hadn’t been able to figure out a use for until now was in there as well.

  I went to the lowest point of the wall and climbed, one handed, into the mess.

  The attack, when it came, was completely unexpected. I’d safely navigated the pile of rubble and gotten into the building and, thinking the worst was behind me, gone looking for the torpedo.

  In theory, the thing was sturdy enough to survive any amount of banging about, but I wanted to at least get visual confirmation that it was here before I went any further. I was trying to shift rubble one handed when my leg went out from under me. The green gel in my shoulder had not only stiffened it to uselessness, it had also made me numb from head to toe.

  I looked down and saw a spider leg clamped on to my own with a terrible pincher claw. Its owner must have been on the roof when it went and, unable to move well when detached, it had been lurking somewhere inside, waiting.