“If that damned thing comes in, we’ll fight it together.”
It made sense in a situation where not much else did. Her clarity of mind had a calming influence. But only in the same way that a shot of rum calmed a soldier from the Great War, clambering out of a trench and charging into a hail of gunfire.
This wasn’t quite the calm before the storm. It was the incessant noise before the slaughter. Then again, he had no idea what else they could do.
The group ducked down, backs together, staring around them and waiting for a plank to suddenly crash in, or the roof to collapse.
The hissing slowly grew quieter—still nearby, though not immediately on top of them.
“What do you think it’s doing?” Ryan asked. “Leaving?”
“Who knows what the hell it’s doing!” Vargas growled. “I doubt it’s gonna leave us to casually wander out of the forest.”
“You know what I mean, prick.”
“Yeah, I do. The situation is that we’re stuck here, hiding from a monster straight out of a horror movie. And you asked us if we knew what it was doing—”
“Shut the hell up, both of you!” Megan yelled.
Her voice carried authority. It reminded Vargas of the vindictive bitch of a principal at his high school. Only now, he knew that Megan had spoken for everyone’s good.
Ryan shook his head and went to comfort Emma. This, on top of seeing her dad get snatched into the treetops by a giant bug, had pushed her to the brink of a meltdown.
Vargas stopped himself from saying, “everyone be cool,” since he wasn’t capable of doing that himself. Instead, he moved closer to the wall and listened, trying to gauge when a final, desperate fight to the end was coming.
The arachnid wasn’t going anywhere, and he doubted they had the power to withstand the eventual attack.
Should he make a run for it? A lot was still riding on his making it back to the bus.
“Hear anything different?” Megan asked him.
“Nope. Maybe it’s just waiting us out.”
“I would. We can’t stay in here forever.”
“But people are looking for us, right?” Emma asked. “The helicopter might scare it away.”
“What helicopter?” Vargas asked. “We’re in the wrong goddamn woods, ’cause DeLuca took us the wrong way. You heard that ranger. This ain’t Davies Canyon. They don’t know where the hell we are.”
“He’s right,” Megan said. “We should assume we’re on our own for a while. Let’s look around in here, see if there’s anything useful.”
“You serious?” Vargas added. “Shit in here’s gotta be from the Civil War.”
“Actually, looking at the furniture, I’d say Revolutionary War,” Megan said, scanning about her. Her flashlight beam cut past Emma and settled on a gunnysack, covering something lumpy.
Emma reached over and folded back the rough burlap. She cupped her hand against her mouth and gasped, then gave a loud sob. Ryan put his arm around her.
A bare skeleton, shrouded in webs, lay spread on the floorboards. The bones rested on a long wool coat. Hobnail boots covered its feet.
Vargas leaned in for a closer look. As he did, the distant hissing filled his ears, like a nightmare version of tinnitus.
It was impossible to say if the thing outside had ended this person’s life. The yellowed bones and antiquated clothing made it look old.
It seemed this pristine forest they’d blundered into hadn’t seen visitors for hundreds of years. Or maybe, like the skeleton on the floor, those who entered the forest never left.
One thing was becoming clear for Vargas: if he didn’t come up with an escape plan soon, his dream, already on the brink of disaster, would finally die as well.
Chapter
Twenty-
One
Megan wiped sweat from her brow for the hundredth time. Her T-shirt clung to her. The stale air made the inescapable cabin feel like a rotting sauna. The creature’s hissing had come and gone all day, never disappearing for more than a few minutes. The cabin shook periodically, perhaps from the swaying branches pushing against the roof and gables when the monstrosity passed overhead.
The quiet times felt like a silent countdown until the arachnid’s next appearance.
At the moment, the hiss was low, like a punctured bike tire. Megan crawled to the edge of the cabinet and peered into the paper-thin crack between its back and the filthy window. Dusk was fading, meaning they’d been here for nearly twelve hours.
She checked her watch’s luminous hands. Thirteen hours. And still no sign of a search party.
Perhaps only a half hour left before full darkness.
Megan turned and moved back on her hands and knees, past a few items they had collected while searching the cabin. Some were potentially useful, others not so much. A pitchfork. A scythe. Some frayed rope that looked as if it wouldn’t hold the weight of a child. Two small powder kegs—surely useless after two centuries. Vargas had placed on the pile a flintlock pistol, whose utility Megan also very much doubted. The commemorative Civil War cannons in Riverside Park had a better chance of firing.
“See anything?” Ryan asked.
“It’ll be dark soon.” Megan focused her beam on the center of the cabin, between where Emma, Ryan, and Vargas had sat. “How much food and water have we got left?”
“We’re nearly out of water,” Emma said. “Food to last a few more days.”
“Never thought we’d be short of water here,” Ryan added mournfully. “Any volunteers for a run to the river?”
Vargas dipped a hand inside his plastic bag and produced two cans. “Got some White Claw if that helps.”
Megan smiled. “I’m sure we’ll bust those open soon.”
“And when we run out of everything?” Emma said to the group. “What do we do then? I mean, shouldn’t we take our chances while we still have strength?”
“We’re not close to that yet,” Megan replied. “We seem to still be safe in here. Let’s give it a few more hours for help to arrive. If nobody shows, we make a break for it at sunup.”
The group murmured in agreement.
Megan had already imagined the scenario in her head. The group running out of supplies while still trapped. The maddening sound of the nearby stream and distant rapids, taunting them. Luring them to life-giving water—and probably to their deaths.
Someone would eventually lose their shit and make a stupid move.
The hissing reminded everyone of the risk, but they had outrun the beast once before. If it came to it, they simply would have to do it again. But they needed to wait till they had some kind of advantage. Rizzo’s capture, as much as she hated the thought, had given them time to beat the arachnid to the cabin.
Or maybe they hadn’t escaped. Perhaps this was exactly where it wanted them. Farther from the road. Deeper into its killing zone . . .
Megan shuddered at the thought.
They emptied all their food onto a groundsheet. Emma and Ryan had brought freeze-dried supplies, which, of course, needed water. Vargas had a few ramen noodle cups. Again, just add water.
Megan had a plastic bag filled with peanut butter protein snacks—Ethan’s favorite healthy food and now, potentially, their lifeline.
They had a few snacks and a few sips of water and went back to silently listening. Megan had tried to gain an appreciation of the creature’s movements in relation to the cabin. This had proved impossible because it had always seemed to come in from a random direction. No pattern. They weren’t dealing with a creature of habit, with a methodical hunting routine.
Trying to work out the potential behavior of a terrifying unknown species struck her as one of the weirdest things she had ever done. All she could do was fall back on her operational skills.
Even the world’s leading arachnologists would find this situation
baffling.
For the next twenty minutes, no one said a word. At each of the creature’s comings and goings, they exchanged nervous glances, their faces dim in the beam’s peripheral light.
Twenty minutes later, during a moment when the hissing had waned, a new sound rose above the faint roar of the distant rapids.
“You hear that? It sounds like a guy’s voice,” Ryan said. “I’m sure of it.”
Everyone quickly shuffled toward the barricaded door.
Nothing immediately followed. Megan refused to believe this was a sign of help. Since the disaster a year ago, she had learned to expect the worst.
“If it’s a dude,” Vargas said, “he’s not gonna last a second out there alone.”
“Shut up and listen,” Emma snapped.
A cry joined the noise of the hissing and the rapids.
“There it is again,” Ryan said.
To Megan, it sounded like a wail of desperation rather than a call from a search party. She kept that thought to herself for the moment. It wasn’t inconceivable that another poor soul had fallen into the arachnid’s clutches.
“Help . . . me,” a man’s voice carried faintly through the forest.
“What the . . . ?” Emma said. She strained to listen more closely.
A few moments later, the voice from the forest came again. “Help . . . me . . .”
“That sounds like . . . my dad.”
Ryan shook his head. “I don’t think that’s him, babe. You saw what happened earlier.”
“Just listen goddamn it. I know what my father sounds like!”
Emma moved her ear closer to the wall. Ryan moved protectively by her side.
Megan understood why Emma would want to believe that it was her father calling out. More than once, she had found herself waking up at home, expecting Mike and Ethan to walk through the door. A floorboard creaked at night—Ethan coming to her bedroom after suffering a nightmare. Something clicked downstairs—Mike in his office. As if her personal tragedy had all been a bad dream.
She wished.
But just like the state fair, this nightmare was real.
“Emma! Ryan! Can anyone hear me?” the voice called.
“it’s dad! He’s alive!” Emma scrambled to her feet. “We need to do something. Now!”
Ryan sprang up beside her.
Vargas had frozen with an unlit cigarette inches from his lips. He remained quiet, eyes darting back and forth between the two.
Megan had recognized Rizzo’s voice the second time he called out. She had no reason to doubt he was still alive, but she needed time to process the implications. Her first reaction was shock mixed with relief. The next thought: Is this a trap?
“Richard! Megan! If you can hear me, please help.”
Shortly after the last cry, the hissing stopped. Almost as if the arachnid wanted them to hear the pastor’s next cries and be drawn outside.
“He sounds in pain,” Emma said. “We can’t just leave him out there!”
“The hell we can’t,” Vargas said. “It would be madness to go out there.”
“Anyone! Please!” Rizzo yelled.
Emma turned toward Megan and Vargas. “I’m not leaving my dad out there to die. Stay here if you want. I’m going out.”
She put her hands on the barricade.
“Wait a second,” Megan replied. “Let’s think this through first. It could be some kind of trap!”
Emma ignored her and threw a tea crate to one side. Ryan also began pulling away the objects they had stacked behind the table. Within a minute, they had just about cleared a way out.
“Wait!” Vargas bellowed. “That thing might be waiting behind the closest tree. Who knows what the fuck is going on!”
He tried halfheartedly to stop them, but Ryan pushed him hard and continued tearing the last of the barricade apart.
Megan couldn’t criticize them for risking everyone’s safety. She thought back to the moment her family died. How she recoiled from the intense heat of the fire consuming their bodies, and couldn’t unlock the pin to free her husband and son.
In hindsight, she would gladly have burned half her body if it meant saving them. So she couldn’t blame Emma for taking this shot. If anything, she admired her for it, because the prospect of dying out there was real, never mind Rizzo’s apparent survival.
And that death could come the moment they opened the door.
Emma and Ryan pulled aside the last crate of the barricade, pushed the cabin door open, and ran out into the night.
Chapter
Twenty-
Two
“Fuck . . . me,” Vargas said as he watched Emma and Ryan bolt out of the cabin. He stooped down and quickly grabbed the antique pitchfork. Its weathered hickory handle and four rusty tines were better than nothing.
They weren’t thinking straight. Allowing their emotions to override their good sense.
And he was not dying because of them.
Vargas looked out the open cabin door as Emma and Ryan ran into dark woods. The hissing continued maybe a hundred yards away, adding to the sinister, doom-ridden atmosphere. Trees casting dark shadows across the ground. The creak of branches in the pitch-black canopy.
A minor consolation was the cool evening air now flooding into the cabin.
At any moment, he expected the canopy to thrash, and the monstrous creature to close in on them at high speed. This was probably what the damned thing had been waiting for all along. Rizzo was just the bait.
The last thought brought him to an obvious conclusion.
“I’m telling you, this has gotta be a trap!” Vargas shouted out the door.
“I agree,” Megan said.
“Stop, goddamn it!”
The couple outside scanned about with their flashlights, as if trying to decide which path to take. In the cabin, it had been impossible to ascertain the direction of Rizzo’s cries. It had also been impossible to get an idea of the arachnid’s location.
“Help me!” Rizzo pleaded in the distance, his voice cracking.
Emma and Ryan both looked in the direction of the campsite.
“That way!” Ryan shouted.
They took off immediately, and within seconds the darkness swallowed them.
“It’s suicide,” Vargas said, rocking on his heels by the door.
The hissing continued softly. The arachnid had not come for them even after the noise the couple created dismantling the barricade. Surely, though, that was only a matter of time.
“You may be right,” Megan said. “But we can’t let them go alone, Ricky.”
She grabbed the only flashlight left in the cabin: her high-powered UV light. She flicked it on and pointed its beam into the forest, directly on the backs of Ryan and Emma.
Vargas inhaled sharply at the sight. “Oh, my God . . .”
Megan stood rigid for a moment, taking in the shocking view.
The forest, illuminated by UV light for the first time, glowed blue in all directions around Emma and Ryan. Light-blue luminous threads surrounded them, connected between trees, branches, and rocks in a sort of fence, as if the creature had spun a cage of webs around the cabin.
“don’t move!” Megan bellowed.
The alarm in her voice had the desired effect.
Ryan and Emma stopped dead in their tracks, seeing the threads around their bodies for the first time. They looked over their shoulders toward the cabin, then to their sides at the thousands of luminous fibers spread through the forest in all directions.
Emma’s boot was only millimeters from breaking one of the filaments. She stared down at it, frozen in terror.
Ryan shined his flashlight, but the webs all but disappeared under normal light.
Megan flashed her beam out into the dark forest, lighting up thousands more blue web
s.
“Don’t move a muscle!” Megan followed up. “Very slowly, back up right now!”
She angled the UV beam down at Ryan’s and Megan’s boots, lighting a path for them to make their way back to the cabin.
The couple slowly backtracked, careful to avoid any of the webs. The terrifying sight all around them seemed to have dampened their motivation to rescue Pastor Rizzo.
Vargas stared, dumbstruck.
They were being systematically hunted from all sides.
Chapter
Twenty-
Three
Megan edged toward the cabin entrance. The sight of thousands of glowing blue webs throughout the forest had turned her legs to lead. She took small, uncertain steps, staring in horror at the tightly woven network. The webs were everywhere, crisscrossing from tree to tree—deadly trip wires strung in all directions.
The monster had been busy surrounding them.
Or had the webs always been here?
Vargas, pitchfork in hand, matched her stride, retreating back into the cabin.
The more she got to know him, the more similar she realized they were. He, too, knew that if they wanted to stay alive, they had to start properly assessing the situation before acting.
The cabin that had bought them some temporary safety now turned out to be a trap. And the only way out was to negotiate a seemingly impassable network of webs likely designed to ensure their capture.
They reentered the cabin and moved to either side of the doorway. She kept her beam focused on a path for Ryan and Emma, helping them make it back without disturbing the arachnid’s trap. Both stayed rooted to the spot, scanning their immediate vicinity.
“Back up,” Megan snapped. “Right now.”
They would be mad to keep going after seeing this. The only sensible option was to return.
Finally, the couple slowly crept back. Their saving grace, perhaps, was the small clearing around the cabin. Two trees deep into the forest, they had stopped only inches from snapping a web.
In the distance, Pastor Rizzo’s agonized voice cried out one last time.
Emma stopped in midstride. The look on her face matched the anguish in her father’s voice. Ryan stood close by her side. He spun in the direction of the campsite.
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