Megan hoped Emma wouldn’t turn and run. She couldn’t comprehend the exact nature of the luminous threads. They didn’t look like anything she had ever seen before. It was already clear they were dealing with an unknown enemy, and this only complicated their already daunting problem.
To her great relief, Ryan grabbed Emma’s arm and eased her forward. She didn’t require much encouragement, and they both returned to the cabin, defeated.
All four peered back out as Megan played her beam across a different stand of trees, highlighting thousands more webs. The taut lines, spun at ankle, waist, and chest heights, sent a chill down her spine.
Methodical. Designed to catch prey no matter its height.
But the hissing remained distant.
“What the hell is going on?” Ryan said breathlessly.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Vargas replied. “That damned monster has us surrounded by its web. We get trapped in it, and we’re spider food.”
“I don’t think so,” Megan said. “Otherwise, it would have attacked Emma and Ryan just now. But it’s nowhere near us at the moment. Why?”
“Maybe it’s busy feasting on a bear,” Vargas said.
“Not only that, but we’re not truly trapped,” Megan added, studying the network of spun threads. “I mean, we can break through those webs easily. They aren’t dense enough or strong enough to stop us. So they must be for something else.”
“To scare the shit out of us until it comes back for seconds,” Vargas said.
“No,” Megan said. “Think.”
Everyone stood in silence.
“It’s the vibration.”
“What do you mean?” Emma said.
“They’re like trip wires,” Megan added. “Break a web; that thing can track us. No matter where we go.”
“You can’t be serious,” Ryan said.
“Yo, she’s right,” Vargas replied. “I seen Animal Planet. Spiders can’t see for shit. But touch one of their webs, they know you’re there. Spider sense, right?”
“Exactly,” Megan replied.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Ryan said. “So we break those lines, it comes hunting?”
“We don’t know for certain, but it makes the most logical sense,” Megan replied. “Think about it. We probably broke through hundreds of trip lines when we ran from the clearing. That’s how it followed us here. But when we stopped running and hid in the cabin, it could no longer find us and moved on.”
An unsettling thought occurred to her. She shined her flashlight beam across the cabin and played it on the skeleton. Sure enough, the tightly woven threads around the bones glowed bright blue. At some stage, the arachnid had entered here—when it was much smaller and could fit through the door.
Ryan shined his beam down, too, and again the webs became invisible.
“What the actual fuck,” he muttered. “Why does yours work?”
“It’s the UV light,” Megan said.
“Meaning?”
“My husband bought it for spotting scorpions during our camping trips. Must be the chemicals in the webs. You can hardly see the webs with a regular beam, but this baby lights them up with ultraviolet. Probably best to save the batteries.” She killed the light, leaving Ryan’s flashlight to illuminate the cabin’s decaying floorboards and walls.
“Wait,” said Emma. “So if that ultraviolet light can show us where the webs are, can’t we just trace a path toward my dad? We can’t just leave him out there to die.”
“I had a thought about that,” Megan said.
She took a deep breath, barely believing what she was about to suggest.
“I’ll climb onto the roof with the UV light. Let’s see what we’re really dealing with here.”
“Yeah, find us a way to the goddamn bus,” Vargas said.
“Dad first,” Emma demanded.
Vargas pursed his lips. His eyes narrowed. It appeared obvious that he wanted to disagree, but something held him back. Maybe it was his previous relationship with Emma. Or perhaps he had some goodness inside him that had finally snapped free of his restraints.
“Let’s have a look first,” Megan replied. “No point arguing about hypotheticals yet. Ricky, can you give me a hand?”
“You think the roof’ll hold?”
“You calling me fat?” Megan gave him an icy look, but she couldn’t hold it and it dissolved into a grin.
Vargas burst out laughing.
“Make sure you keep on the center beam of the roof,” Vargas said, smiling.
“Will do.”
“Anything we can do?” Ryan asked.
She shook her head. “Listen for that monster. You hear it come closer, I’ll expect you to yank me back in.”
“You got it.”
Emma stepped closer and said softly, “I’m glad you’re here.”
Megan smiled.
As she left the cabin, she prayed her idea would be enough to see the surviving members of the group to safety.
Vargas moved to the corner of the cabin and leaned against the wall. He interlaced his fingers, ready to take Megan’s boot.
She briefly surveyed the surrounding forest. Leaves rustled, partially muffling the distant hiss. Moonlight streamed through gaps in the canopy, highlighting patches of the gently swaying undergrowth.
But Megan saw no sign of movement anywhere around them. She shuddered at the thought of the now invisible webs, waiting to alert the arachnid of their movements. It made sense to her how Rizzo, DeLuca, and the family had all been taken from different parts of the forest, apparently by the same creature. It had its own natural tracking system.
“I haven’t got all night,” Vargas said—clearly tongue in cheek, though his words carried the truth.
Megan slipped her flashlight into her thigh pocket, planted her boot on his hands, and thrust upward. She grasped the top of the solid wooden beam and hauled herself up. Those pull-ups in the gym during her sabbatical were finally paying off.
She shuffled onto the roof, keeping herself flat to spread her weight out, and crawled up to the ridge.
From up here, nearly twenty feet above the ground, she had an excellent all-around view under the starry sky. To her left and right, the forest swept downhill—one way leading to the bus, the other to the campsite and the fierce rapids.
At any other time, this vantage point would have given her a perfect moment, one she’d loved to share with Mike and Ethan. She fished her flashlight from her pocket, powered it on, and swept the beam across the treetops and the ground below.
The sight almost took her breath away.
Tens of thousands of luminous webs surrounded the cabin, as expected, and formed another line near the top of the trees. Every time her beam played over the branches, it made that area of the woods glow blue.
Close by, the webs were expectedly thick in density, but they thinned in the direction of the campsite and the river.
She focused her beam on the section of forest that led toward the bus and the road.
In that direction, there seemed to be millions of webs spun everywhere. High and low. Between branches and rocks, in the treetops, even between blackberry brambles.
It was impassable. It was impossible.
There was only one direction they could possibly go.
Megan knew that the others wouldn’t like what she had to say.
Chapter
Twenty-
Four
Megan dropped down from the eaves. Her boots thumped into the damp earth, and she sank to a crouch. She took the opportunity to scan the quiet forest again, keeping her flashlight off.
Nothing moved.
Her hunch had to be right. It was the vibration in the webs that attracted this thing.
Her overriding focus was to not react through fear, as Emma and Ryan had
done when almost running straight through a skein of webs.
Vargas grabbed under her armpit and hauled her up. His hand trembled against her biceps as she got to her feet.
She didn’t blame him for being terrified. She certainly was.
“Thanks,” she said.
“So we gonna live?” he asked.
“Let’s get back in the cabin first. Come on.”
Megan and Vargas ducked back inside and set about barricading the door once again. Despite the warm evening, the hairs on her arms prickled at the mental image of the trip-wire labyrinth. But she kept a good poker face, serene on the surface while her mind spun furiously. If they wanted to execute a plan together, everyone needed to remain composed.
Emma gave her a look of anticipation. Her father hadn’t called out since before Megan climbed onto the roof. Whether he was still alive was very much an open question. But if he was, every minute they left him stranded and exposed was a tick against his staying that way.
Vargas closed the door behind them and slid the bolt home. His action left the beam of Ryan’s flashlight angled up toward the ceiling, bathing them all in a pale amber glow.
“So what did you see?” Ryan asked.
“The webs stretched the full range of my flashlight. Tightly packed around the cabin. Easily three times as thick in the direction of the bus. It knows we came in that way, and it set a trap. We can’t go that way, no matter what.”
“Shit,” Vargas replied.
“So what do we do?” Emma asked.
“The webs thin out considerably going toward the campsite. And that’s the direction we heard Pastor Rizzo from.”
“But that’s the wrong goddamn direction,” Vargas replied, annoyed. “That takes us deeper into the woods. How about we get to the river and float back to the bus?”
“That’s Class V rapids, dumbass,” Ryan said. “It’ll tear us apart.”
“Maybe I’ll take my chances, asshole.”
“Cool it, guys,” Megan snapped. “The campsite is our only possible path. I know it’s deeper into the woods, but it’s the only way we can go. And we should go now.”
“Why?” Ryan asked.
“Because of the UV light,” Vargas said.
“Exactly,” Megan replied. “This ultraviolet light is useless in daytime. We can only see it light up the webs in the dark. So the clock’s ticking until sunrise. We head toward the campsite and try and find an alternate way back from there. Or signal for help from the clearing.”
The couple nodded in agreement.
“Okay, good. Grab anything we might need from that pile of junk. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”
Ryan and Emma walked over the creaking floorboards to the far end and began checking out various tools that might serve as weapons.
“Grab those too,” Megan said, pointing to the two small powder kegs on the floor.
“These can’t possibly still be good,” Ryan said.
“Supposedly, gunpowder lasts for decades or longer if you keep it dry,” Megan replied, “and those kegs are still sealed. Better than nothing, right?”
They stowed one keg in Emma’s pack, the other in Ryan’s, and moved to the door.
Vargas stood, slowly shaking his head.
“Problem?” Megan asked.
“What if we can’t find a way back to the bus? What if we can’t signal for help? What do we do then?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Megan replied. “But no one’s going to find us holed up in here, Ricky. That’s a fact. We’ve got to move.”
“And another thing,” Vargas added. “We aren’t entirely sure your theory is accurate.”
“You’re right,” Megan said.
With that, she leaned down and snapped off a weak leg of the table in the center of the room.
“But we can find out.”
She turned on her UV light, opened the cabin door, and aimed the beam outward. Her pulse quickened at the thought of her next move. She was inviting danger, but the group had limited options if they wanted to survive.
With all her might, she flung the table leg far into the forest, easily breaking through several webs in the process. The leg crashed through trip lines and disappeared into the undergrowth.
Megan held her breath.
Chapter
Twenty-
Five
“Why the hell did you do that!” Vargas yelled out.
“Because if I’m right, we’ll be safe in here,” Megan replied. “That monster tracks vibration, I’m sure of it.”
“And if you’re wrong, we’re all dead,” Ryan shot back.
Everyone listened intently, scanning between the trees for signs of movement.
Nothing.
Silence.
They waited another minute or two.
She better be right, Vargas thought to himself.
Then, in the distance, a faint sound.
The unmistakable hissing. Far away, branches cracked in the treetops. Everyone edged back a few inches from the door.
Ryan grabbed a piece of wood, ready to bash the approaching creature if need be. Vargas took up a fighting stance, brandishing his pitchfork at the door. Megan clutched her little pocketknife in her shaking hand.
Emma leaned close to Megan. “I hope this works, for all our sakes.”
“Me too.”
In the space of a few seconds, the hissing grew from quiet to deafening. The arachnid was coming, and coming fast.
Birds squawked. Snapped twigs and small branches fell to the forest floor.
Roughly fifty yards into the woods, the canopy thrashed. Then the movement came directly for the cabin.
Nervous anticipation had Vargas more on edge than ever before—more, even, than when he first jacked a truck, or the time he escaped the police by a miracle after robbing a pawn shop.
The hissing built to a level that made his ears hurt. Maybe the creature did this to disorient its victims. He had no idea, and at the moment, he didn’t really care. Vargas focused on the thrashing, now clearly visible in the canopy and closing fast on where Megan had thrown the table leg.
The other three stood to Vargas’s left, staring out the doorway. It was just his luck that he ended up here with an impulsive hothead and two women who couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. If he was getting out of this dire situation, it would have to be his doing.
The canopy stopped thrashing. A heartbeat later, the hissing abruptly stopped, and the forest immediately around the cabin fell silent.
What the hell?
The dark shape of the creature dropped from between the branches and scuttled down a tree trunk. The coordinated movement of its thick legs made it look almost mechanical as it descended at alarming speed.
“Jesus Christ,” Ryan murmured.
The massive jet-black arachnid shot into the undergrowth, right at the point where the table leg had hit. A few seconds later, it circled the area, rustling the ferns again and again, in an ever-
widening spiral.
For a split second, Vargas got a good view of the monster as it raced through a sparse area of brush, its sharp fangs pale in the moonlight.
And the wider the arachnid swept, the nearer it came to the cabin . . .
Vargas expected that sooner or later, it would either slam into the wooden wall or rush straight into the cabin.
The sliver of refuge the structure had given them now felt flimsy and ephemeral. He felt as if they had only delayed the inevitable, living a little longer in fear until the cruel end arrived. Metaphorically, it was like climbing to the highest point on the Titanic as the mighty ship slipped into the icy black Atlantic.
He squeezed the pitchfork’s weathered haft and tried to regulate his erratic breaths. This time he couldn’t blame the ciga
rettes. He wondered whether anyone would ever see him again—whether anyone would care.
Vargas had no family to grieve him—only acquaintances who would be more than happy to take over his responsibilities on the street.
This sobering thought quickly vanished from his mind as the giant arthropod tore through the forest only twenty yards from the cabin, at twice the speed of an Olympian sprinter. It raced back into the darkness for another circuit. Perhaps the next time it entered the clearing, it would come close enough to sense the group’s presence.
He would probably get one shot if the thing attacked.
So better make it count.
In his peripheral vision, Megan slowly took a step back, still gripping her ridiculous little pocketknife. She could probably carve the arachnid a nice toothpick it could use after eating them all. That was about it.
“Don’t think your plan is working, boss,” he said.
“It will,” Megan replied, though without quite the same confident ring as before.
If Vargas had known a prayer, he would be saying it about now. Emma was the only reason he ever dipped his toe into religion in the first place. But right now all that was pointless. No prayer or invocation would save them.
“Shut the door,” Ryan demanded.
“Not yet,” Megan said. “I’m telling you, it can’t sense our presence.”
The arachnid closed to within ten yards.
Vargas took another step back. Hooking his boot around a tea crate, he slid it in front of him. It wouldn’t shield him for more than a split second, but maybe that would give him the vital moment he needed to stab the thing and flee. That was his best and only plan. He raised the pitchfork, ready to thrust it right under those horrible fangs.
Everyone stayed silent.
The arachnid scuttled past, only a tree or two from the clearing. Its eight spiny legs weaved between the trunks with a nimbleness that defied its size and bulky body.
Emma let out a long, shuddering breath.
“That’s it,” Ryan growled. “Next time it comes, it’ll be right—”
In the darkness only a dozen yards away, the undergrowth stopped moving.
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