Arachnosaur

by Richard Jeffries

  But then he had to concentrate on flipping his feet around, so he landed without breaking his skull or neck, as well as keeping whatever exposed flesh he had away from the webbing. Nichols’s limp body soared past him, and then his boots hit the padded floor.

  He managed to get another shot off, which he hoped hit the queen or Awar, then his knees bent and he was in a tight, fast, somersault. He came up firing again, moving forward as fast as he could. No way was he going to retreat or hide. The last thing he wanted was an extended shootout in this poisonous space.

  One more step was all it took to make him fully realize what was going on. Awar was using the queen as cover, which meant that the man knew the creature could take care of herself. He was basically forcing Key to all but jump into the monster’s maw. And it was quite the maw. Now that he was close, and the creature had shaken off most of its camouflage, Key could see just how big it was. It had to be at least six times the size of the largest arachnosaur any of them had seen.

  Key dove to the left, trying to find Awar behind the creature. But Awar was compensating for every move Key made, keeping the queen between them. She was so big, neither man had any room to maneuver. There was nothing for it. Key stepped on the joint of the queen’s second left leg, using it as a step. Before the other legs could stab at him, he vaulted up, twisted around, and rolled across the creature’s back.

  Awar jumped up in retaliation, trying to bring the Desert Eagle to bear. But the almost five-pound, ostentatious weapon was a beacon for Key’s boot. He tried kicking it back into Awar’s enraged face as he scrambled across the queen’s right side. Key grabbed at Awar’s gun wrist with his free hand, as Awar grabbed Key’s gunhand.

  Key landed against him, sending them both into the curved cave wall behind the queen’s left flank. They held each other’s arms up, their faces nearly touching. The weapon dealer’s expression, as well as weapon, told Key all he needed to know. The man was incensed to the point of mania, but also so arrogant he thought the Desert Eagle was his golden scepter. The overblown thing could only hold seven fifty-caliber rounds to the Beretta’s fifteen.

  It hardly mattered, because Awar had the strength of a madman. Maybe he wanted to scream obscenities and threats, but he remained silent, all but spitting as he tried taking Key down. The terrorist attempted to gain leverage. Key didn’t bother. He ignored his hands. Keeping Awar’s gun away, at the same time Awar held his own gun wrist, rendered his arms void. And Awar was so intent on kneeing Key’s groin that he forgot his feet.

  Key didn’t. He kicked under Awar’s left knee. If Awar had been able to take a step, the knee would fail and he would go down, but he couldn’t take a step. They were both wedged against the wall by the back of the queen’s bulbous abdomen. So Key lifted his left foot and stepped on a very specific spot on Awar’s shin. The terrorist’s face twisted in pain, then his eyes and mouth popped open as the pain changed.

  It was an acupressure point that Daniels once described as rebooting your existence. It went beyond any pain a human could experience. It wasn’t like a broken bone, a knife stab, or even a gunshot. It overwhelmed the senses in a way that was blinding, indescribable, and even personality-changing.

  Awar went down like a howling demon, but he didn’t let go of his gun or Key’s wrist. As the queen lurched outward, the two men slammed to the web-covered ground—sending up shards of the toxic strands.

  “God damn it,” Key yelled. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “What I should have,” Awar said in perfect English. “Making sure you die!”

  Key supposed he should have demanded to know how the terrorist survived in the queen’s chambers, how he weaponized Nichols, or what he thought he was doing here, but there just wasn’t time, especially after the queen jerked forward, pounced on the explosive pack Nichols had dropped, and ingested it like an vitamin.

  Awar laughed. “She is feeding her young! Her new brood will be even more virulent than the last!”

  “Neik,” Rahal swore in his ear. “She can lay thousands of eggs!”

  With the creature no longer wedging them, Key tried to bring his leg up, but just as he was about to tromp on Awar’s knees, something like a truck fell on him. He was slammed atop Awar so tightly that neither man could bring his gun to bear.

  “What is going on?” Lancaster asked. “We can’t see anything.”

  “The fucking queen crawled on top of us,” Key said in disbelief. “It’s grinding!”

  “It’s trying to mate!“ Rahal cried. “Find the epigyne on the underside of her abdomen! It’s near the joint between the front and back sections!”

  Key let his fingers scramble across the weight on top of him until he found a hole. Not even waiting for further instructions, he plunged his fist into it, digging around until his arm was in the arachnosaur all the way up to his shoulder.

  Then, finally, he felt what seemed to be the queen’s equivalent of the crap the others had pumped into the corpses they had vivisected.

  “Eshe!” he howled. “Have you found a catalyst for the spider shit yet?”

  There was a microsecond’s hesitation before she cried back. “We haven’t been able to test it yet!”

  “I don’t give a—”

  She yelled, “Salt!”

  The sea, he realized. They had been heading for the sea, where their excrement could have been depth charges for any ship that tried to stop them. And human hands, collecting the corpses, could have turned them all into land mines. What did arachnosaurs know of coroner’s rubber gloves or hazmat suits?

  He jerked his arm, pulling his glove free of his sleeve. Then he squeezed and punched with all his might.

  The queen made a sound that caused everyone listening to wince in pain. Then she vaulted herself off the humans, leaping almost as high as Daniels had elevated Nichols. Key scrambled to his feet, all but spitting out webbing that had crammed into the openings of his helmet and mask. He faced the queen, which had twisted to face him.

  The thing was gigantic, and extremely unhappy. Its legs chopped through the thick carpet of webbing that covered the floor, edging toward him. He looked up to see where his bullets had plowed harmlessly into its face. Now its eyes had turned almost entirely scarlet, with pumping veins of black coursing through it. It opened its maw, revealing its acidic, salivating rage. It quivered, ready to pounce.

  Key felt a blinding pain at his neck. He staggered forward, closer to the creature, who reared onto its back four legs in response. He managed to twist his head around to see Usa Awar. The weapons dealer and terrorist had hit him with his Desert Eagle, and was now pointing it directly between Key’s eyes.

  “You are the lucky one,” he said, a look of consummate triumph on his face. “You will die at my hands, not hers.”

  Awar pulled the trigger. The fifty-caliber bullet thudded into the queen’s maw, because Key was flying. Daniels had used Gonzales’s bungee-yo-yo, the same device they used to spring Nichols from Toussaint’s exhibit, to grab and lift him. Daniels threw Key into the ceiling’s maw so hard that Key practically speared all the way through.

  Daniels had grabbed the bottom lips of the maw, and hung there, looking back at a stunned Awar.

  “Fuckaduck, huh?” he said as Awar brought the gun up to target him.

  But then Gonzales, Faisal, and even Nichols yanked Daniels up, and out just before the pack of explosives the fifty-caliber bullet had inadvertently primed detonated.

  Key, Daniels, Gonzales, Faisal, and Nichols were already running, and were catapulted out of the entire burrow when the first detonation set off the queen’s egg sacs, the ones that Key’s sweat had primed. A second later, it immolated the entire cavern as if it had been painted with napalm.

  Key did not know how long he was out, nor how long he just lay there, staring at the Shabhut sky. All he could wonder was why he wasn’t dead. Not just from what he
had escaped from, but the webbing’s toxic infection.

  All he knew for sure was that the first human thing he heard was Daniels’s voice.

  “Heroic bullshit reporting for duty,” Morty drawled from where he lay beside him. “Sir.”

  Epilogue

  “So,” Morty Daniels said, leaning back in his Thumrait clinic bed. “Raped by a spider. That’s new for you, isn’t it?”

  Josiah Key looked at the sergeant from his own bed, trying to keep his expression blank. He failed. So, instead, he looked at Eshe Rahal, who stood in scrubs and lab coat, holding a clipboard, next to Lancaster.

  They were all in a large, isolated, sunlight-infused ward. If Key had thought the examinations after his concussion were thorough, they were nothing compared to what Rahal had just finished putting them through. Lancaster had wanted a clean bill of health for the survivors, and he got it.

  “How is Private Nichols?” Key asked, looking at the sleeping redhead across the aisle. “And why isn’t she dead?”

  The scientist shared a glance with Lancaster which expressed their appreciation that the man asked about her first rather than himself.

  “No longer a private if she takes my offer to join Cerberus,” Lancaster answered. He considered that statement for a moment. “Actually she’s probably going to be promoted whether she takes my offer or not.” Then he got back to Key’s question. “I told you about Cali-brake, Sergeant Major.”

  “But that was in the uniform, wasn’t it?” Key countered. When Lancaster merely smiled, Key continued. “All right, even if it was in her helmet, a fifty-caliber round fired point-blank at her head?”

  “It may have been fired directly at her head,” Rahal said, “but it didn’t hit there. I told you about her enhanced reactions, remember?”

  Daniels made an apologetic face on Key’s behalf. “Forgive him, doc,” he said with mock sympathy. “Spider-raped.” Daniels made a circular motion with his forefinger beside his ear. “Must’ve scrambled his brain.” He then looked at the retired general, simultaneously jerking a thumb at Key. “And you meant Sergeant Major, right?”

  Lancaster continued to just smile.

  Daniels gaped. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  Lancaster shrugged philosophically. “I got tired of saying the entire rank, so I shortened it, Master Sergeant.”

  “Huh?” Daniels replied, pointing at himself.

  It took a second for that to sink in, but when it finally did, Daniels beamed. “Call me MS,” he told Key.

  “With pleasure,” he answered before returning his attention to the others. “So. She dodged a bullet.”

  “Not exactly,” Lancaster chuckled. “It hit her, but not head on. There was a second when Awar basked in his power, which allowed her to start moving out of the way. You can review the video. The bullet struck the protective gear, then glanced off. Still, it was like a punch from a giant.” He glanced at her with sympathy, and then back at Key with irony. “Now she’s the one with the concussion.”

  “Shit,” Daniels said. “But I guess it’s better than a fifty-caliber hole in the head, huh?” He looked at Key. “What are you always telling me, Joe? Watch the guy holding the gun, not just the gun, right?”

  Key couldn’t disagree. “So, okay, now tell me. Why aren’t I dead?”

  Daniels sat up. “Yeah,” said the newly promoted master sergeant. “I kept far away from the webbing, but Joe’s face was smooshed in it.”

  Rahal and Lancaster shared a conspiratorial glance. The former opened her mouth to speak, but Key interrupted.

  “Let me guess,” he said with a tired smile. “You’ve hinted often enough. Something about an extra X and two-way transfusion?”

  Rahal blushed—making all the men smile—but only for only a moment. “Like a number of you have said,” she explained, looking deeply into Key’s eyes, “with the fate of the world at stake, I couldn’t just stand there and try nothing.” Then she straightened. “I felt certain that any possible harm would be overwhelmingly compensated by the curative effect.”

  Daniels leaned over to punch Key on the arm. “Ooo, you’ve got girl chromosomes, Joe, and you notice she only gave it to you, right?”

  “Yes,” Rahal countered sharply. “Because I knew, of the two of you, which one was more likely to be selfless.”

  “Hey!” Daniels retorted with mock hurt, tinged with real hurt. Then they all saw him thinking about it. “Well,” he confessed to Key, “I did watch you down in the pit for awhile, waiting for just the right moment to pull you out. I wanted to shoot the crap out of those two monsters, but you kept getting in the way.”

  Key slapped him on the arm in return. “You handled it right. Amazingly right. I thought I had suddenly gotten the power to fly.”

  Now it was Daniels turn to turn a little embarrassed. “It’s just what you taught me. Be smart, not badass. Well, not just badass.”

  “With your help, we’ve nearly developed a complete antidote at Cerberus Labs,” Lancaster assured them. “Just in case there’s still a straggler or two out there somewhere.”

  “Ah, the infamous Cerberus Labs,” Key grinned, grateful for the chance to change the subject. “Will Eshe ever actually get to see it, or is it like your imaginary girlfriend?”

  The change of subject was short-lived. Key’s humor faded as Lancaster’s face grew serious. “Sooner than either you, or I, might prefer,” he answered, then tapped his ear with a forefinger. “Gentlemen, please report to M Ward immediately.”

  Both Key and Daniels sat up in their beds despite their bruises and exhaustion.

  Before the remaining team members arrived, Lancaster continued. “After the destruction of the arachnosaur queen, the same hazmat team that served Captain Logan at the beachhead was ordered to make sure Shabhut was truly clean and Usa Awar was truly dead. Thankfully, it, and he, were. The only one who was initially left unhappy was the captain himself, who had crowed far and wide that it was he who had saved the day just hours before.”

  “Initially?” Key inquired.

  Lancaster nodded philosophically. “I let him have the credit for Shabhut, too.”

  “What?” Daniels exploded. “Oh, come on!”

  “Shut up,” Key told Daniels, then added as a respectful afterthought, “Master Sergeant.”

  Manuel Gonzales entered the room with Faisal behind him. They were both wearing outfits similar to the light, airy ones Key and Daniels had as CID men. They took up positions on either side of the beds.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Gonzales and Corporal Safar reporting, sir,” Faisal said quietly. His quietness was counterbalanced by the loudness of Daniels’s reaction.

  “You speak English?” he exclaimed. “How long have you spoken English?”

  Faisal couldn’t help but smile at the look of surprise on the bedridden soldiers’ faces. He looked meaningfully at Lancaster, who nodded permission.

  “The entirety of my life, aamirika albukm,” he told Daniels, using the Arab term for stupid American. “Ever since I was born in Dearborn, Michigan, and long before I was recruited by Cerberus.”

  “Corporal Faisal Safar, people,” Lancaster said, cutting through the surprise. “One of the pioneer Cerberus agents. He joined shortly after its inception.” Lancaster’s gaze went from one to the next. “I may have retired from the military, but I’ve never retired from why I joined the military. I try to make the world safe, but I soon found, to my chagrin, that even the greatest army can’t make the world completely safe.”

  He locked eyes with Key. “You know Logan. All too often, the military is like him. Hammers ordered to pound nails. And once they do, they stop, awaiting orders to pound the next one. But as long as it’s a nail, or something like it, our forces can handle anything.”

  “Anything,” Key echoed, “except things they don’t believe exist.”

  Lancas
ter nodded, with a widening smile. “Exactly. You see? That’s why I wanted you with us. And I knew you would bring like minds along.” He looked at each person gathered in the hospital ward. “I discovered that the dangers that threaten our world are much more than nails.”

  “Things like the arachnosaurs,” Safar explained.

  “Things?” Daniels said, suddenly catching on. “Plural?”

  Lancaster nodded again. “I’m afraid so, and I don’t use the word ‘afraid’ euphemistically. Many modern men wouldn’t believe that the arachnosaurs actually existed as far back as tens of millions of years ago, so they certainly couldn’t believe they returned just a few months ago. But, over my long career, I have acquired and established influence, so I used that influence to convince powerful people that these different kinds of nails were real and would not be stopped by conventional hammers.”

  “Cerberus,” Key said quietly.

  “Cerberus,” Lancaster agreed. “A well-funded, well-trained, versatile organization created to hunt down the threats that prey on people’s disbelief in order to survive and subjugate.”

  “And to hunt in an open-minded way that is tailored to, and effective for, each threat,” Safar elaborated.

  It was like the hallelujah chorus to Key’s ears. “That’s why Logan gets the credit, Morty. Hard to be versatile and effective if everyone knows about you.” He returned his attention to Lancaster. “So we may be seeing your imaginary girlfriend sooner rather than later because we’ve tripped over another nail?”

  “Like your use of ‘we,’ Soldier,” Lancaster replied. “Yes, Major. It has taken quite some time, but the pattern has become increasingly apparent.” He nodded at Gonzales and Safar before turning. “I’ll let Speedy and Faisal fill you in while I prepare for our departure.” He headed for the exit.

  The gunnery sergeant didn’t keep them waiting. “Corpses are multiplying in the border towns between Pakistan and India.”

  Daniels snorted. “Well that’s nothing new!”