by Jacob Rayne
He fired another bolt at it, waiting for it to take effect like it had on the mutant in the alleyways, but nothing happened. It was anticlimactic in the extreme.
From the far end of the corridor where Kyle and his family were trapped, he saw a dozen of the terrifying arachnoids appear. They were on the floor, the walls, the ceiling, hissing and spitting as they approached.
Their grey bodies, legs and vertically hinged jaws awoke a primal fear in him, as did the startling speed at which they moved.
One of them dropped into the web which held Kyle and his terrified daughters.
‘Are you gonna fucking help or what?’ Abbott shouted to the scientist, who was staring blankly at the tunnel walls.
The arachnoid dropped onto the web, making it shake, jolting Kyle and his daughters like they were on hell’s bouncy castle. Its bear trap jaws opened slightly, clacking against each other in anticipation.
Abbott loosed off one of the arrows at the arachnoid, hitting it flush in the base of the spine. The blow seemed to have no effect.
The creature spun to glare in his direction, hissing a little more vehemently, but soon turned back to its trapped prey.
The rest of the creatures were scuttling along the tunnel towards Abbott and the seemingly catatonic scientist.
Abbott flinched at Kyle’s scream and turned to see the creature wrap its legs tight around his body, forcing all the blood into his head and making his face turn beetroot.
Then, with agonising slowness, its jaws opened and it placed the jagged teeth either side of Kyle’s head.
Kyle had time for a scream then the jaws clamped together with tremendous force, bursting the top of his head in an orgy of flying blood and pulverised bone.
The girls screamed as their father’s blood spattered their pale faces. It wasn’t clear what was worse; watching it happen to their father or knowing that it was about to happen to them next.
In sheer desperation, Abbott was firing the crossbow at the arachnoids headed up the tunnel towards him.
Though he hit them all, the arrows seemed to have no effect.
A second arachnoid fell onto the web. Its jaws opened around Simone’s blonde hair. Abbott looked away just as there was another sickly crunch and the sound of gushing blood and greedy slurps.
‘For Christ’s sake, do something,’ he implored the scientist who was still staring at the wall. He’s lost the plot, Abbott thought, furious. Of all the times to do it.
He fired his crossbow empty, all to no avail. He felt a hand on his shoulders, and he spun with it, pulling his knife on the way. His blow stopped half an inch from his assailant’s throat when he saw it was the scientist.
‘Knew there was one round here somewhere,’ he said, baffling Abbott.
Abbott looked at him with bulging eyes. Then the scientist dragged him into a hole in the wall that seemed to have just appeared out of nowhere.
‘Those girls,’ he said, fighting to go back and get them as more arachnoids poured into the tunnel.
‘They’re gone,’ the scientist said, straining to hold Abbott back. ‘And we will be too if we go back out there.’
Abbott fought free, just as a chilling chorus of screams rang out from the far end of the tunnel. The section of wall slid neatly back into place, hiding the tunnel and its abundant horrors.
‘Ok,’ Duggan said, after they’d refuelled the chopper and made the necessary introductions. Duggan checked the document on his phone and saw that there was a message from Sadie saying to check the lab for a serum.
‘I need to go back to Rook’s Foot Canyon, get into the labs and see what I can find. Anyone want to help me?’
Carroll, Hennessee, Craggs, Winters, Lennon, Warden, Weiland and his son, Scott, all put their hands up. Gooding did too, after a furious glare from Craggs.
‘Well there’s room for all of you, but I don’t want to take that many. We’ll keep it to six. Just so you all know, this could well end up being a suicide mission.’
Only Gooding’s hand dropped.
‘God bless your fighting spirit,’ Duggan said, his voice cracking a little.
‘I reckon Weiland and his son should stay,’ Hennessee said. ‘Lennon and Craggs too.’
This met with furious resistance from Craggs: ‘This town is – was – ours and we all want to defend it.’
‘You’d probably be marching straight into a violent death,’ Duggan reminded him.
‘I don’t care,’ Craggs said.
The chorus from the rest of the men was the same.
‘Ok,’ Duggan said. ‘We need some kind of draw.’
He looked around the office. Saw a coffee mug filled with pens on Warden’s desk.
‘Ok, I’m a definite, since only I got the document. There are eight waiting to come – I’ll discount Warden cos he’s got no truck with Rook’s Foot.’
He took the caps from the pens, taking four red and four black.
‘Ok, four black, four red,’ he said. ‘Black stays. Red goes. I’ll put ’em in my pocket. Take turns in drawing ’em out.’
‘Fair a way as any, I guess,’ Craggs said.
Gooding went first, pulling out a black cap. His face lit up.
‘You fucking coward,’ Craggs shouted.
Weiland drew next, getting red. He looked pleased with the outcome.
Lennon drew black, as did Scott Wright.
‘One get out of jail card left,’ Duggan said.
Craggs pulled out a red cap. He too seemed pleased with this.
Hennessee drew red too.
‘One of each left,’ Duggan said. ‘Only Winters and Carroll left to go.’
Winters went up, heart thumping. He was keen to do his duty, but was terrified by the thought of going back to his ravaged home town. He put his hand in Duggan’s pocket.
‘We’ll go together,’ Carroll said. ‘Don’t open it yet.’
Winters nodded, his fate literally in the palm of his hand.
Carroll grabbed the last pen cap and held his hand tight shut. Both men’s thoughts were on the colour of the pen cap in their hands, hoping and praying that they had black.
‘On three,’ Duggan said. ‘One.’
‘Two.’
‘Three.’
The hands opened. Carroll smiled, Winters grimaced.
‘Now that it’s decided,’ Winters said. ‘I’m shitting myself.’
‘We’ll be alright, Morey,’ Craggs said.
‘Ok,’ Duggan said. ‘If you’ve got family, say your farewells because, in all probability, we may not make it back here. You’ve got five minutes, then we go.’
Chuck and his friend were exhausted. Chopping down trees and fashioning them into fence posts was tiring enough, but digging the holes for the fence posts was even more of an ordeal. They almost had the posts in, but the fence was a long way from being complete.
‘I gotta take a rest,’ Chuck said. ‘See if there’s any beer in there anywhere, willya?’
‘It’s time,’ Duggan said.
The families said farewell to their men, knowing full well it could be the last time they ever saw them.
Each of the men took a shotgun and a handgun. Warden gave Weiland a high-powered sniper rifle, reckoning it might come in handy.
Duggan thanked him and led his men up to the chopper. They laid the shotguns on their laps. Take-off was pretty bumpy, but not as bad as they’d been anticipating in the weather conditions.
In tense silence, they headed back to Rook’s Foot Canyon.
‘I told you there was a shelter round here,’ Brad, the one-handed scientist, beamed.
Abbott slugged him hard enough to simultaneously take him off his feet and wipe the smug look from his face. ‘Those poor girls are dead because of you,’ he growled, jamming a boot into Brad’s ribs.
‘I just saved your life.’
‘Not yet you ain’t,’ Abbott said. ‘There’s still a country full of them fucking things out there, thanks to you. Now the other scientist’s dea
th I can make peace with – you motherfuckers can damn well reap what you sow – but those girls, they will haunt me till my dying day.’
Brad said nothing, just bowed his head.
‘Now where in the hell has that ginger prick gotten to?’
A quick look around the shelter revealed that there was someone lurking inside.
Abbott spotted him straight away.
‘You stand out like a steer’s prick, you fucking idiot,’ he bellowed into the darkness. He loaded his magnum, letting the hammer slam down loud enough to echo round the shelter. ‘Y’hear that?’ he mocked. ‘That’s the sound of my magnum’s hammer slamming down. The next time you hear that it’s gonna be a split second before your guts are getting sprayed up the wall. ’Less you come out from there right now.’
Abbott waited, clacking his tongue with each second that passed by.
‘Right, I’m coming in there.’ He heaved the metal racks out of the way, sending cans of food clattering to the floor. He grabbed the man by his collar and pressed the magnum hard into his temple.
‘Start talking. Cos I’m not a patient man.’
The man stared up at him with eyes like golf balls. ‘I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘The big ginger prick. Where did he go?’
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’
Abbott pulled at the man’s black flak jacket. ‘Private fucking militia, ain’t you? Working for the man I’m looking for.’
‘I-I just stole the uniform from a body,’ the man blabbered. ‘My clothes had my wife and kids’ blood on them. I couldn’t stand having them on me anymore. I swear that’s the truth.’
‘You’re a shit liar, son. Now tell me where the redhead is ’fore I send you to meet sunny Jesus and his ever-loving apostles.’
‘I swear I—’ the man’s eyes darted off to the side, just for a split second.
Abbott followed and saw a trapdoor on the floor. It was raised only by a few millimetres, but it was enough to be noticeable. It ducked back down again a split second later.
Abbott’s years of experience told him that there was a shooter in there, so he carefully adjusted his position.
‘Ok, son, I believe ya,’ he said, patting the stunned-looking actor on the shoulder.
From the corner of his eye he watched for the hatch rising again.
It stayed down.
‘I’m sorry, son,’ Abbott said, doing a better job of acting than the prick in the flak jacket was. ‘How long have you been in here?’
He glanced over to Brad, who was doing his best to open one of the tins of food Abbott’s motions had knocked to the floor. He seemed oblivious to the danger in the trapdoor.
Abbott pulled the man to his feet, faking caution and helpfulness. The man feigned weakness to lure Abbott in.
Fuckers must think I was born yesterday, he thought, trying to keep the smile from his lips.
While he tended to the man he kept a sly watch on the trapdoor. He kept checking the man’s eyes and it was clear he hadn’t noticed Abbott’s surveillance of the trapdoor.
The lid raised a few tentative inches, then, when Abbott failed to turn towards it, opened to about a foot.
Without saying a word, Abbott put a bullet through the forehead of the man who emerged from the trapdoor, spraying his brains up the wall behind him in a cloud of blood. The man fell down the trapdoor, a wordless scream on his lips.
While the soldier in the shelter tried to make sense of what had just happened, Abbott darted in and grabbed him around the throat from behind.
‘Hope you’re a better shield than you are an actor,’ he grinned.
A second man popped up out of the trapdoor, the blood and brains of his colleague adorning his face and chest.
He managed to get a shot off, hitting Abbott’s shield square in the shoulder. The blood sprayed onto Abbott’s face.
The man’s scream made Abbott’s grin widen.
‘Think I was born yesterday, you sackless fucks?’ he bellowed, putting the man down with a perfect headshot. The bullet drilled a crimson third eye in his forehead, making him slump back, pinning the trapdoor open.
‘Send the ginger prick up and I might think about letting the resta you dick jockeys walk outta here in one piece,’ Abbott shouted.
A burst of machine gunfire from the trapdoor was his reply.
Each of the rounds hit the man in the flak jacket hard, further splattering Abbott in his blood.
Abbott kept his grip on the dead man’s throat and moved towards the trapdoor. It was much harder since the bullets had stolen the man’s life but Abbott was strong and determined.
He fired a round, just missing the shooter as they ducked back into the trapdoor.
A second burst chewed further lumps from the dead man’s flesh.
Abbott quickly reloaded then charged the trapdoor, throwing the dead man down just as the gunman popped up for round three. There was a thud and a series of muffled curses. While Abbott had them reeling, he fired his gun empty.
When he looked down into the shelter, he saw the shooter sprawled under the dead man’s body, the weapon agonisingly close to his hand, but knocked loose by the impact.
Abbott put him out of his misery with a shot to the temple and climbed down into the shelter.
He saw the ginger prick standing by a section of wall and heard him laugh. He loosed off a few shots, smashing the concrete around him, but missing except for one shot in the shoulder of his flak jacket. Still the big man flinched as if kicked by a mule.
The section of wall slid back.
‘Tell the devil I sent ya,’ the man laughed as he disappeared into the wall.
Abbott fired again, then went up to the shelter proper as he heard Brad let out a startled cry.
He followed his terrified gaze to see a long, grey leg poking through the open door of the shelter.
‘I’m scared for them,’ Warden said.
‘I know,’ Carroll said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’d have gone without question, but I’m glad I got a black cap.’
‘We all feel that way, son,’ Lennon said. ‘We can keep in touch through the radio. I have a feeling they’ll do it, but I think we might be seeing some of them for the last time.’
‘Yeah I feel that too,’ Caitlin Craggs said. ‘I hope it’s not the case.’
‘You’d best get up here,’ Scott shouted down from the roof.
‘What is it?’ Lennon called up.
He, Caitlin and Warden went up. A look through Scott’s binoculars revealed a group of people building a huge wooden ramp at the transporter bridge.
‘You think they’ll get over the bridge with that?’ Warden said.
‘Doubt it,’ Lennon said.
Right on cue, a white BMW shot up the bridge, hit the ramp and took off across the gap. It got closer than previous efforts had, but still fell at least twenty feet short of the other side.
‘They’re getting closer,’ Caitlin said.
‘We’d best get out and destroy the rest of the road, huh?’ Warden said.
‘Yeah, that’d make doubly sure they don’t get over that gap.’
‘Give us something to do as well,’ Scott chipped in.
Scott, Warden, Gooding and a few of the prison guards set out to destroy what remained of the roads onto the island.
Chuck and Jon hauled the final cross beam up and nailed it into place.
‘Fuck me, this is tiring shit,’ Chuck said.
‘Yeah. We could do with a metal fence really,’ Jon said.
‘Let’s walk before we can run,’ Chuck winced.
‘That should hopefully do for now, but I think we should head into town tomorrow, see if there’s anything worth scavenging.’
‘You might be onto something there.’
A few miles from Rook’s Foot Canyon, Duggan took the opportunity to speak to his men.
‘Now, we may not all make it, but remember why we’re doing this. These creatures
took your town, killed your friends and neighbours, in some cases families. We owe them all the suffering we can give.’
‘Hell yeah,’ Craggs shouted.
The others echoed his cry.
‘Now,’ Duggan said. ‘I want Hennessee and Weiland to guard Peterson. Craggs, Winters and me will go into the lab.’
‘I want to go in too,’ Hennessee said.
‘We need two men on Peterson,’ Duggan said. ‘If he dies there’s no way back to the island. We’d be fucked. So please, Randall, stay here and help guard him.’
‘If that’s where you want me, that’s where I’ll stay. But I’m not happy about it.’
‘We’ll keep in touch,’ Duggan said. ‘Winters, Craggs, are you upto this?’
‘Fuckin right we are,’ Craggs said.
‘You said it, Jack. Gonna bust some scaly heads,’ Winters grinned.
‘That’s the spirit, guys, but we need to sneak in as far as possible before we start shooting, ok?’
‘Yeah,’ Winters said.
‘No problem,’ Craggs said.
‘Use your coshes wherever possible, then get the Taser in there.’
‘Where do you want me to drop you?’ Peterson said.
‘Just do a lap of the woods, we’ll check out our options.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Abbott said as he realised that Cormac had opened the shelter’s door to let the arachnoids in. ‘Well ya gonna get away from there or what, son?’ he asked the scientist who was staring at the door in stoned wonder.
The scientist backed up. The door opened to its full extent, revealing the first arachnoid. Two clusters of dark eyes, seemingly glued to them, gleamed in the light. Its pale grey body and face were spattered with gore and gobbets of flesh, thickest around the vicious vertically hinged jaws that clacked against each other in excitement.
Abbott backed up fast, releasing a burst of gunfire that put out one of its eyes and made its screech double in volume.
The creature was already in the shelter.
‘Follow me, dickhead,’ Abbott said, going down into the shelter as fast as he’d moved in all of his life. He grabbed the trapdoor and pulled it down as the scientist landed on the shelter floor with a pained exhalation.