Vargas staggered onto land and slumped down beside her, gasping for breath. He dug his cigarettes out of his pocket. The pack was crushed and soaking wet. He flipped open the waterlogged lid, then let out an exasperated groan.
The two sat in silence, side by side, backs against a rock, for several long minutes.
There were no words to speak.
Eventually, Vargas broke the silence. “You okay?”
Megan glanced up at him and studied his expression for a moment. He was looking attentively at her.
She dropped her head, lost in thought.
“Last year . . .” she said, struggling to form the words she was about to say. “Last year . . . when Mike and Ethan were trapped in that burning chair . . .”
Her eyes welled up with tears. “There was a moment—a second or two, maybe—when . . . when I could have saved them.”
Vargas sat up straight. He appeared taken aback by her admission.
She continued, tears streaming down her face. “There was a locking pin I could have reached—I should have reached—but instead I pulled back from the flames. Out of fear, selfishness. I betrayed them. I betrayed myself. And now I live with this constant reminder of what I failed to do . . .”
Megan rubbed her hand along the shiny burn scar on her arm. “Ryan had the same look in his eyes that they did that day. Desperation. Helplessness.”
Vargas looked up at her with sympathetic eyes, his trademark streetwise attitude gone.
“I just feel very—”
“I know how you feel,” he interjected, losing the tough-guy exterior. “Alone.”
She nodded.
“I’ve been alone all my life,” he confessed.
For the first time in the past two days, Megan finally felt that she was speaking with the real Ricky rather than his cocky persona.
“Don’t know what’s worse,” Vargas said. “Having everything and losing it all, or never having anything to lose.”
She couldn’t decide either.
The two sat there, staring forward at the wild river, lost in their own thoughts.
“Can I ask you something?” Megan said.
“Shoot.”
“What’s in the bus?”
Vargas looked up at her, clearly feigning innocence. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You know exactly what I mean, Ricky. You didn’t come here to get away from the city. You left the campsite to go back to that bus. You’ve been itching to get back there for two days now. So no more bullshitting. I mean, it’s not your insulin. That was horseshit. What’s on that bus that you’re not telling me about?”
Vargas kept staring at the roaring white water. Finally, he turned back and faced her. “About half a million dollars of heroin—street value. Just transporting it to some buyers in West Virginia, and no cop pulls over a church bus full of old people to look for H.”
“Got it,” Megan replied, unable to hide the disappointment on her face.
Vargas shifted uncomfortably.
“I’ve got to go back in that cave for them, Ricky,” she finally said.
“Yeah, I know you do.”
“And I know you’re not gonna join me. I won’t try and persuade you, but I’ve got to try. You understand?”
“Yeah, I underst—”
Before Vargas could finish his sentence, Megan made an odd choking sound.
He turned toward her just as her UV flashlight thudded against the ground and her legs rocketed up toward the canopy.
The arachnid had its front two legs wrapped around Megan and had sunk one of its fangs into her shoulder.
She let out a scream that quickly faded as her body went limp.
A heartbeat later, the creature disappeared with her into the treetops.
Vargas dived for the flashlight and shined it upward. His hands shook as he scanned the branches, fearing the worst. He backed toward the river until the cold water chilled his ankles.
Megan was gone.
Everyone was gone.
Vargas screamed with all his might, and his voice echoed through the canyon.
He shined the UV light through the trees and toward the entrance to the creature’s forbidding lair.
Then he looked at the raging torrent behind him—his only possible escape from this hell.
Chapter
Thirty-
One
Branches whipped against Megan’s face. One of the arachnid’s front legs had wrapped so tightly around her torso, she could hardly breathe. Twenty feet below, the ground rushed past. Blurry and dark.
A fang had punctured her back just after the arachnid dragged her up a tree trunk. Already, her vision was foggy and all power seemed to drain from her limbs. She tried to scream but managed only a soft whine. Tried to wriggle but couldn’t move.
No amount of strategizing would spare her from this fate. Even without being paralyzed by whatever the creature had injected into her, she would have stood no chance.
The thing scuttled at breakneck speed toward the burrow, letting branches and twigs lash its paralyzed prey along the way. And even though her limbs were immobile, Megan still felt every gasp-inducing hit to her legs, arms, body, and head. Her lower lip swelled. Blood ran from her forehead and pooled in her left eye. She felt searing pain all over.
She blinked, trying to keep her focus. Perhaps to stay present for her terrifying last moments alive. Perhaps this was karma for backing away from the stuck swing chair a year ago. Every member of her family dying with the same desperate look in their eyes.
The speed through the trees slowed as she approached the clearing. She could see only a few feet ahead, but it was enough for her to realize that the arachnid was taking her down a tree, past the escarpment near the river’s edge, and toward the cave’s mouth.
Drawing in strained breaths, she ransacked her mind for anything that might help. She knew that short of a miracle, she was dead.
The edge of the burrow’s entrance rushed toward her face.
She squeezed her eyes shut a second before impact.
Megan came to with a splitting headache, not knowing how much time had passed. Her whole body throbbed. For a second, she wondered whether she had dreamed it all. Maybe she would wake back up in the Bronx, before this trip ever began. Or, even better, wake up a year earlier when Mike and Ethan were still alive . . .
Then the terrifying reality appeared firmly in her mind’s eye.
Her eyes slammed open.
Thousands of webs surrounded her, spun from her knees to her shoulders. She gasped. Strength was finally returning to her pained limbs, but it didn’t matter—she was cocooned tightly from the shoulders down.
Trapped.
She peered up into the cavernous burrow. In the thin moonlight from the opening, it looked maybe three stories high, though the ceiling of fractured rock was barely visible.
“Megan,” rasped a voice beside her.
Pastor Rizzo.
She forced her head a few inches to the left. Her vision was still impaired, but she could recognize the blurred outline of the pastor’s face. He lay facing her. A string of blood hung from his lip.
“Is that you?” He sucked in a shaky breath.
“It’s me, Pastor,” she replied.
“My God it hurts,” Rizzo groaned.
Her heart broke at the sound of the man. If there was a hell, this was it.
“Is help coming, Megan?” Rizzo asked. His croaking voice echoed in the burrow.
“I don’t think so, Pastor.”
A dark figure moved behind him, bobbing slowly up and down—surely the arachnid, though she couldn’t quite make it out in the darkness.
Now they all were at the monster’s mercy, except Vargas. She hoped he would find his way out of this forest alive, but even if he did, t
here was little hope of any rescue arriving on time.
Megan tried to reach for the penknife in her pocket. Only inches away from her fingers. It was no use. She had been firmly immobilized, prepared for consumption.
She gulped back a cry.
Then Rizzo came into focus.
He grimaced, showing his bloodstained teeth. His body had been bound in webs just like hers, but only to his waist. Below that, his legs had been meticulously stripped to the bone. Only a few dark tendons and ligaments hung from his knees and ankles.
The creature was slowly consuming him, limb by limb.
While he was still alive.
Not for much longer . . .
Megan used all her resolve to avoid looking horrified as she scanned back up his body. Vargas was right: the thing had taken them for food. She glanced around the burrow for any other survivors: DeLuca, the Johnson family, Emma.
It was too dark, and her sight still too poor, to see much beyond Rizzo.
Any moment now, the arachnid would return and likely feast on him before her eyes—a gruesome preview to her own eventual fate.
Her vision cleared a little more. The arachnid stood over another cocooned body.
The head and shoulders had been cleanly stripped of all their flesh and muscle, making the face unrecognizable. Megan looked down at the lower half of the body, fearing the worst. Emma’s hiking pants and boots confirmed it.
The arachnid sank its fangs into Emma’s upper body, systematically cutting straight lines across her chest, going lower each time. Ripping off chunks of flesh and swallowing. In less than a minute, it had opened her rib cage and torn out a lung to gorge upon.
Megan had never felt more horrified in her life.
“Megan, please tell me . . .” Rizzo croaked. “Is my Emma safe?”
Megan realized that the pastor could not see the horrors happening right behind him. With everyone’s impending death a certainty, it served no purpose to inform the pastor that his daughter was already dead and being consumed by this nightmarish creature.
“She’s safe, Pastor,” Megan said, fighting back tears. “Emma escaped with Ryan a while ago.”
“Thank God,” Rizzo mumbled, drooling blood.
But she knew that no one was getting out of here alive. The fate of DeLuca and the Johnsons was now chillingly clear. Even though she couldn’t see them, their bodies were around here somewhere.
Likely in various states of consumption too . . .
Soon, the monster would be tearing the lungs out of her lifeless body as well.
Rizzo swallowed hard. “Please, if you make it out of here, tell Emma how much I love her.”
Megan nodded. “I promise, Pastor. I promise.”
Rizzo tried to smile, but his mouth quickly straightened. He took a final, bubbling breath, and his body relaxed, his suffering finally at an end.
She briefly closed her eyes and prayed this would all go away.
The sounds of tearing flesh sent a chill down her spine.
She hoped the end would be fast.
Megan half opened her eyes and glanced across to the arachnid, not daring to attract its attention.
It continued digging inside Emma’s ribcage, making fast work of her liver.
Then it sprang up and darted toward the distant, dimly lit burrow entrance. A heartbeat later, it scuttled away, no doubt alerted to other prey.
She expected it back soon to finish off the Rizzo family.
Then it would be her turn.
Chapter
Thirty-
Two
What the hell are you doing, Ricky?
Vargas stood beside the burrow entrance, his back planted against the mountain’s rocky face. It took a lot to piss him off, but he was now firmly in that territory, to the point where his anger had overridden his fear.
He was angry at himself for choosing this moment to be brave. Furious at his life for bringing him to this sorry pass.
But most of all, he was angry at that god-awful creature for picking them off one by one so easily and for acting as if it were invincible.
No one’s invincible, asshole.
He dropped the heavy tree limb that he had just swung against the arachnid’s thick cable of webs. Maybe this would confuse the hell out of the damned thing, though he had no clue. He hoped to send a signal that webs had been disturbed in every part of the forest, and get that creature out of its nest long enough to rescue Megan.
He craned his neck around the mouth of the burrow and shined Megan’s UV flashlight inside. The tunnel was wider than he had expected—maybe eight feet. The blue cable ran deep, like a huge glow stick in a storm drain. But so far, the monster had not emerged.
Vargas wrestled on Ryan’s backpack, which he had salvaged from the riverbank. The damp fabric and straps cooled his back and shoulders. He picked up the pitchfork, determined to give the next few minutes everything he had.
Still, no sound came from the burrow.
How much encouragement did this damned thing need?
Vargas edged inside the tunnel and took a few steps. He kept close to the fractured, damp wall while angling the UV beam down the shallow incline, listening for the faintest sound of the arachnid heading his way.
Each step forward seemed like a slow descent into hell. He winced as his boots crunched against loose gravel. He held the pitchfork forward in his right hand, like a lance.
The air was humid and much warmer than outside.
Sweat trickled down his temples.
Something flitted silently past him, brushing his cheek.
With an inward gasp, Vargas dropped to one knee. He swept the UV beam across the ceiling as a bat burst out of the tunnel’s mouth.
Then something rustled deeper inside the cave. Vargas turned the UV light quickly, and its muted glow revealed the arachnid’s shell.
Vargas flattened against the cave wall and switched off the flashlight. He stayed deathly still, praying that the thing hadn’t detected him.
His survival depended on Megan’s theories. If the thing couldn’t see him or smell him, all he had to do was not hit a web.
Right?
A soft clattering approached.
Vargas tensed. The creature was heading right toward him.
“Fuck me,” he breathed.
The clatter of eight galloping legs grew louder as it thundered up the tunnel. It would reach him in seconds.
Vargas discounted the idea of ramming the fork into the creature’s side. He had learned to pick his fights carefully. If the spider went searching the forest, that would give anyone left alive a chance to escape.
A close-quarters fight would be the last resort.
And it could happen right now.
The web cable still had a slight residual glow from where he had earlier shined the UV rays. Vargas dared a glance.
The arachnid powered up the incline, legs on either side of the cable, body brushing it—perhaps to monitor any more disturbances.
Vargas tried to stop his body from shaking as he pressed against the cave wall, trying to be as flat as possible.
The arachnid raced right past him without slowing, inches from his chest, and left its stench hanging in the close air. It then burst out of the burrow entrance and disappeared into the dark forest, in search of its prey.
“Later, motherfucker!” Vargas yelled out, amazed that his ruse had worked.
After waiting for a minute, he activated the UV light and pressed deeper. He could move faster now, confident he wasn’t running straight into two sharp fangs.
The tunnel leveled off, and his beam shot into a wide-open space twenty yards ahead.
He advanced, conscious that the arachnid could return at any minute. Scared of what he might find, yet committed to seeing this through, whatever the outcome.
A coppery stench hit him, and he felt queasy at the thought of its source.
Vargas reached the end of the tunnel and swept the UV beam around a cavern the size of a cathedral. Glimmers of moonlight punched through the roof in several areas. The sound of water dripping into a pool echoed around the walls. At the back of the burrow stood a pile of bones thirty feet high. Thousands of them—a mix of animal and human. The bones near the bottom were darker in shade than those on top. The entire cave smelled of putrefaction and decay.
Vargas lowered the beam to where the thick cable of web led to a bed of dry moss. Maybe the point where the arachnid sat waiting for a signal from the forest.
“Pretty shitty crib you got here, asshole!” he called out into the darkness.
He moved the UV beam away from the cable, cutting it over the ground.
The sight made him shake his head in disbelief.
A spiral of skeletons led out from the bed of moss. Arranged in tight coils that reached farther with each revolution until they fanned all the way out to the distant walls.
He guessed there had to be several thousand. Like the bone midden, this formation also appeared to have a certain order. The remains closest to the bed of moss looked ancient—hundreds of years old, at least. Dried and cracked with age. Some animals, Vargas couldn’t even recognize. Each skeleton had a few bright-blue threads around the skull, ribs, and legs.
Newer victims were near the outer reaches, like the youngest growth rings of a tree. That was where he would likely find the victims from the church group.
“Can anyone hear me?” he called out. “Megan?”
A faint murmur came from a dark alcove to his left. A survivor? Or was it just the wind coming through a fissure in the ceiling?
Vargas headed toward it, stepping carefully over the arcs of human and animal bones, and avoiding the webs at all costs.
“Yo,” he said. “It’s Ricky. Anyone there?”
A voice mumbled in the darkness.
A woman.
Perhaps he could rescue at least one of the captives. Optimism rose inside him, though not enough to quell his terror of the monster that could come clambering back into its home at any moment.
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