The Hatching

by Ezekiel Boone

“All of them,” Manny said. “We’ve got a couple of coolers full of spiders on ice being rushed back to you now to take a look at. But right now, it’s suddenly weirdly calm. Which means the question is: What do we do about this basketball stadium full of spider eggs?”

  “For starters,” Billy said, “we should probably cancel tonight’s game. Though the Lakers probably would have lost anyway.” No one laughed.

  Alex touched her arm. “Are we fucked?”

  Coming from the national security advisor, who looked as if she could be cast as the grandmother in some sort of feel-good Christmas commercial, the question was almost funny. Almost.

  “It depends,” Melanie said. Her phone stopped ringing, kicking to voice mail, but then it dinged with a text. And then another. And another.

  “I’d say it probably doesn’t depend,” Billy Cannon said. “I can make all the jokes about the Lakers I want, but when those things hatch, we’re talking how many? Millions more? And what does it mean that one day we have this swarm in Los Angeles, and the next they’re all dying or dead?” He pushed his chair back and launched his coffee cup at the trash can, missing by a good two feet. “Fuck,” he said. “What happened to regular war?”

  Melanie fished her phone out of her pocket to read the texts, suddenly realizing they had to be from Mike in Minneapolis. If those egg sacs were getting warm, getting ready to hatch, then . . . But no. The texts were from Julie.

  She’d left Julie a sobbing mess outside the biocontainment unit back at the National Institutes of Health. Not that she could blame Julie. To see the nurses and the surgeon go down under the swarm of spiders, let alone Bark, still opened up on the table, and Patrick. At some point, Melanie knew, the scientist part of her was going to get overwhelmed, and she’d be crying heaps too.

  Spiders at NIH dying. The first text.

  Call me! The second text from Julie.

  And the third, longer: The spiders behind the glass are all dying. Just falling over. Almost all of them. All at once. Called lab. Some dead. Some alive. But Melanie: egg sac at lab! Got to see it.

  “No,” Melanie said. “We’re not fucked. Or, maybe we are. Like I said, it depends. Manny, you’re wrong. The problem isn’t what to do about a stadium full of eggs. Though you’re going to need to start searching to see if there are other infestation sites in Los Angeles. The question that really matters, however, isn’t what you need to do, but when you need to do it. For now, you’ve got to get somebody into the Staples Center to take the temperature of the egg sacs. Before they hatch, there’s a spike in temperature. Maybe this will give me a sense how much time we have,” she said. “Oh, and I want somebody in Minneapolis.”

  “Minneapolis?” Alex Harris looked alarmed. “Why Minneapolis?”

  EPILOGUE

  Los Angeles, California

  Andy Anderson never thought he’d be pleased to have his dog take a shit on the kitchen floor, but all things considered, he was happy not to take Sparky out for an early-morning walk. He’d spent the night huddled under the covers with the dog, listening to the sounds of sirens and gunshots and screaming. But for the past hour, it had been quiet.

  He decided to risk it. He clipped the leash to Sparky’s collar, gingerly opened the door, and stepped out onto the walk. The sun came down unfiltered, but there was a nice breeze to cut the heat. He took a few more steps until they were on the sidewalk. Sparky seemed unconcerned, so Andy decided to walk past a few houses. Nobody was out, though he could see a station wagon that had smashed against a tree partway down the block, and past that, two lumps in the middle of the street. He started to walk closer but then, realizing what the lumps were, stopped. The breeze gusted into a stiff wind, and he heard something skitter and bounce behind him.

  He stumbled and twisted, trying to turn, knowing he’d made a dumb mistake, that the spiders were still out there, but it was nothing. Just a few leaves skating across the pavement. One of them landed against his shoe and he realized it wasn’t a leaf. It was a dead spider. A husk. He looked around him more carefully. There were carcasses everywhere.

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  Mike had never seen so many uniforms in one place. As near as he could tell, every cop, fireman, EMT, National Guardsman, and federal agent in three states was painstakingly searching each and every inch in the two square miles surrounding where Henderson’s jet had crashed. But so far? Zip. Nada. Nothing. Just the three egg sacs from the warehouse, and those were already in insectariums and winging their way to Washington and Melanie’s lab.

  He double-checked with the bureau chief that he was good to go, told Leshaun to head home and get some rest, and started driving north.

  American University,

  Washington, DC

  And there it was, in the insectarium at the lab. An egg sac. Chalky looking, a fresher version of the one that had been sent from Peru. She wanted to put her hand in, to feel it, to make sure it was as cool as she expected it to be, but there were still two spiders alive and moving around the insectarium. The rest were dead. The two live ones didn’t have the markings, but they were big—bigger than the dead ones—and after what had happened with Bark, she was keeping the fucking lid closed. There were more egg sacs coming, from the microsite in Minneapolis and from the giant brood in Los Angeles, plus a sampling of dead spiders from all over the world. Manny promised he had jets scrambling everywhere to get her what she needed.

  But it didn’t matter. She’d figured it out.

  It was worse than she expected. Much, much worse.

  Alex Harris had called it: they were fucked.

  Càidh Island, Loch Ròg,

  Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides

  Aonghas put his hand on Thuy’s shoulder. She was sipping a cup of tea and pretending to read a mystery. A rather inferior mystery, in Aonghas’s opinion, but he knew he was biased. Not that Thuy was actually reading it. She was doing the same thing he was, which was keeping part of his attention on the BBC and part on looking through the windows at the old man walking circles around the rock.

  Desperation, California

  Gordo was pretty sure Amy had thrown the last round of Catan. Fred never won, and he seemed extraordinarily pleased with himself, but they were all glad for the distraction.

  Shotgun tapped his tablet and changed the music to Lyle Lovett while Gordo filled a bucket with ice and beer. Amy and Fred reset the game. In the corner, Claymore let out small moans in his sleep, his legs twitching, running from something in his dreams.

  The CNN Center,

  Atlanta, Georgia

  “I don’t know, Teddie.” Don played the loop again. “I don’t think we can go with it yet. It’s barely been twenty-four hours since Los Angeles got quiet, and it’s time to start thinking about stories of the aftermath. We’ve got dead spiders everywhere. People want to see positive stories. Stories of survival. It’s over.”

  “Come on,” she said to her boss. “You can’t tell me you don’t see the pattern?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s just . . . What’s it mean?”

  She let her chair rock back. He was the only real boss she’d ever had, and he’d told her to go for it, but she knew this was a little out there. Still. She could feel it. She was right. “They aren’t moving randomly. Like stupid bugs.”

  Don hit the button again, the loop playing across the screen once more. “Okay. But what does it mean?”

  “They’re hunting.”

  “We already know they’re killing people and—”

  “No,” she said. “Watch the way this group moves to the side and this other string funnels them in. It’s not just a bunch of spiders attacking people. They’re hunting as a group. Like a pack. It’s coordinated.”

  Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton,

  San Diego, California

  She couldn’t sleep. Kim got out of her bunk and wandered outside. She figured she’d be the only one up that time of night other than the patrols, but Mitts was leaning against the s
ide of the barracks, drinking a beer. He nodded at her, reached down to the six-pack at his feet, and handed her a bottle. The beer was warm, but it was good.

  She took a few sips, neither of them saying anything, neither of them wanting to talk about how many empty bunks there were inside. After a few minutes, she leaned into him and he silently put his arm around her.

  The White House

  Not even twenty-four hours since the spiders started dying in Los Angeles and it was over. How many millions of people dead across the world? But it was over. Manny reached for his Diet Coke and realized his hand was shaking. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he last slept. Three days? Four? But what he knew for sure was that the reports everywhere—India, China, Scotland, Egypt—were that the spiders were all dead. All that was left was the cleanup. How come it couldn’t be as simple as only having to deal with the fucking Staples Center?

  “Sorry,” Melanie said. “You know as well as I do the Staples Center is just what’s obvious. You think because you kill one spider in your bathroom that there aren’t others hiding somewhere else in your house?”

  Steph was lying on the couch. Not exactly dignified behavior in the Oval Office, but it was just the three of them. She had her eyes closed, but she clearly wasn’t sleeping. “Please tell me you didn’t say that.”

  “But can’t we just, I don’t know, soak all of them in gasoline and then light the whole thing on fire?” Manny said. “Okay, so the whole idea of spraying insecticide over Los Angeles was a fiasco—”

  “Honestly,” Melanie said, “it wasn’t the worst idea.”

  “Sure, if we had enough insecticide and planes to spray more than a few square blocks, and then if the insecticide we used had actually worked. But fire? Right?” Manny said. “Set the Staples Center on fire? That should take care of any we don’t see.”

  “I’m not talking about the Staples Center.”

  “Then what are—”

  “The spiders aren’t all the same,” Melanie said. “They just look the same because we’re seeing them as a group. You get a mass of these spiders, a swarm of them, and it looks like a unified group. We’ve been thinking about it wrong, trying to figure out what kind of spider it is, and then thinking, oh, they’re dying and all that’s left is the egg sacs. But it’s not just one kind of spider. There are spiders. Plural.”

  Steph sat up and put her feet on the floor. “I don’t understand.”

  “The spiders display patterns of eusociality similar to Hymenoptera and Isoptera, and I think, in a similar fashion, these spiders have different castes too.”

  “Melanie,” Steph said, “I know you think what you’re saying makes sense, but please understand I’ve barely slept since this started, and nothing you just said makes any sense to me. We aren’t scientists, okay?”

  “Spiders are normally loners. There are about thirty-five thousand known species, and mostly they live by themselves, but there are about two dozen species that display eusociality. Which just means they work together. They all help care for the brood and share resources, all that sort of stuff. So when I say Hymenoptera and Isoptera, you should think ants and bees and termites. Colonies. They work together, and they take on defined roles. You know, worker bees and queens and that type of thing.”

  Manny leaned forward. “You’re saying they have queens? That all we have to do is kill the queens?”

  “No, I’m . . .” She paused. “Well, maybe. Fuck. Okay. I have to think about that. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Just stay with me for a minute. We’ve got a kind of spider that isn’t like any other we’ve ever seen, but it’s not just one kind of spider. In the lab, we’ve already figured out how to differentiate between feeders and breeders, but it also looks as though there’s more than one kind of breeder. There are the spiders that use hosts to carry their eggs, the ones that lay eggs inside people, and there are breeders who lay eggs in sacs in places they’ve cleared out. Some egg sacs hatch quickly, some seem to be slower. Maybe it’s the same breeders and they just choose what kind of sac to make depending on the conditions, but I don’t think that’s it. It’s like they are on parallel but different tracks. There are the ones that behave like normal spiders and seem to develop at a normal pace, and there are the lightning ones.”

  “Blitzkrieg,” Steph said.

  “What?”

  “Not everything is comparable to the Nazis,” Manny said.

  “Lightning war,” Steph said to Melanie. “Blitzkrieg. Fast, overwhelming attacks as a military doctrine.”

  “Yeah. I guess. They hatch and grow in this crazy accelerated fashion, and they die more quickly too.”

  She looked at Manny and Steph, but they didn’t seem to get it. “I’m explaining it wrong. I’m talking about some of the spiders being feeders and some of them as breeders, but that’s the wrong way to think of it. It’s about timing. These ones, the ones we’re seeing out in the wild, they’re the colonizers.” She leaned over, putting her hands flat on the table. “They’re like pioneers, clearing the land.”

  Steph squinted at her. “Clearing the land? For what?”

  Melanie felt sick. She didn’t want to say it. “For the rest of them. Think of it as an advance team. These spiders, the ones we’re seeing, they’re just the first wave.”

  Steph put her elbows on her knees and let her head sink. “You’re saying this is just the beginning?”

  “It’s part of their evolutionary advantage. They come out with a first wave and clear out any potential predators. They’re designed to breed quickly and feed on anything that gets in their way, but the price of that fast growth is that they burn out. That’s what we’re seeing now. The first wave has hatched and cleared out space to set the table for the next stage.”

  “So, what’s next?” Steph asked.

  “More,” Melanie said. “Worse. The next ones are the real ones. Those will be the ones that are in it for the long haul.”

  “How long?” Manny said. “How long until they come back?”

  “Again—I can’t stress this enough—I’m working by feel here. I’ve never seen spiders like this, and I don’t have a lot of data. But looking at the egg sacs, looking at the variations in the spiders?” She stopped. “I’m not completely confident—”

  “Melanie,” Steph said. “Just give me a number. How long?”

  “Two weeks,” Melanie said. “Three if we’re lucky.”

  Soot Lake, Minnesota

  Every fifteen minutes or so, Annie would stick her foot into the lake. With the sun out, it was hot enough that she wanted to swim, but in April, in northern Minnesota, no matter how warm the air was, the water was barely different from ice. She sighed and went back to coloring. It was better to be out here, on the dock, than inside her stepdad’s cabin. All her mom and Rich wanted to do was sit around the radio and read the news on their stupid tablets.

  She waved her hand around her head. The black flies weren’t bad yet, but there were already mosquitoes. Their whine was a constant part of cottage life. She whisked her hand back and forth a couple of times before she realized the buzzing wasn’t the sound of mosquitoes. It was a motor. She jumped to her feet. She could see her daddy at the helm of a boat. He was coming to get her. Coming to tell them it was safe to go home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing a book is a solitary endeavor, but getting a book out into the world requires a great deal of help.

  Emily Bestler at Emily Bestler Books / Atria Books is a terrific editor, smart as hell, and a joy to work with. And while most writers are lucky if they have even one editor like Emily in their whole career, I’m about as lucky as it gets, because I also got to work with the magnificent Anne Collins at Penguin Random House Canada and, in the UK, with the excellent Marcus Gipps at Gollancz, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group.

  Bill Clegg at the Clegg Agency is my literary agent extraordinaire. I can’t thank you enough. I’ll keep trying, though.

  Erin Conroy at William M
orris Endeavor Entertainment. Crushing it, as always.

  At Emily Bestler Books / Atria Books, thanks to: David Brown, Judith Curr, Suzanne Donahue, Lara Jones, Amy Li, Albert Tang, and Jin Yu. At Penguin Random House Canada, thanks to: Randy Chan, Josh Glover, Jessica Scott, and Matthew Sibiga. At Gollancz, thanks to: Sophie Calder, Craig Leyenaar, Jennifer McMenemy, Gillian Redfearn, and Mark Stay.

  At the Clegg Agency, thanks to: Jillian Buckley, Chris Clemans, Henry Rabinowitz, Simon Toop, and Drew Zagami. Also thank you to Anna Jarota and Dominika Bojanowska at the Anna Jarota Agency, Mònica Martín, Inés Planells, and Txell Torrent at MB Agencia Literaria, and Anna Webber at United Agents.

  You guys didn’t actually do anything, but thanks to Mike Haaf, Alex Hagen, Ken Rassnick, and Ken Subin. Shawn Goodman, you actually did help, so thanks to you as well.

  And, of course, thank you to my brother and his family, my wife’s family, the friends who are family by choice, and to my wife and daughters. But no thanks to my dogs. You two are not super helpful.

  THEHATCHINGBOOK.COM

  lives in upstate New York with his wife and children.

  Follow @ezekiel_boone on Twitter or visit ezekielboone.com.

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