by Nora Penn
There was a sound that could only be called the spiders’ screaming. The wheels of the Volkswagen began to spin, catching the soft pliable bodies of the spiders in its traction and spinning them around, breaking the creatures, and spitting them out behind the vehicle. The spinning wheels turned the spiders into a sort of black mud. The spiders were frantically trying to get away from the wheels, but there were so many of them that they couldn’t move fast enough. Steve kept the gas pedal pressed down to the floor, spinning the car’s wheels, grinding up spiders, until the Volkswagen managed to “eat” its way through the spiders and back down to ground level. As soon as the car touched down on solid pavement, it shot forward like a rocket.
Steve had to hurry up and slam on the breaks, since he couldn’t see for all the spiders that still clung to the vehicle. The entire windshield and all of the windows were still covered with a thick layer of spiders. He hit the windshield wipers to clear them off the front, but this had minimum effect.
He drove slowly, hoping that they wouldn’t run into another parked car or a building. As luck would have it, the Volkswagen was aimed in an open direction, so that the three of them didn’t crash into anything. The spiders finally managed to clear themselves away from the moving vehicle and the Volkswagen emerged from the swarm like a pebble left on a shore by a retreating wave.
As soon as the car was free from the spider swarm, Steve sped back up and began swerving to hit as many of the fleeing creatures as he could. Each time he struck a spider, the car lifted slightly, as if passing over a small speed bump. This impact was accompanied by a sickening splat as the spider’s body exploded beneath the weight of the wheel. As disgusting as this sensation was, James found it extremely satisfying. The fact is that he despised the loathsome creatures and wanted Steve to kill as many of them as possible.
A sort of manic bloodlust seized both Steve and James. For several minutes they forgot about the mission to reach the hospital and simply drove around looking for spiders to run over. Even Carol had stopped her sobbing and watched transfixed from the back seat. The entire time Steve kept the windshield wipers going, to keep the glass clear of the slime that squirted every which way whenever a spider was crushed.
Running over the spiders was grim business, but somehow it felt necessary. It seemed to James that the more spiders they killed now meant less they would have to kill later. Although if he stopped to think at all about the sheer numbers involved, their little killing spree would have instantly stopped making sense.
The liquefied matter of the crushed spiders had started to collect inside the wheel hubs and underneath the chassis, where it started to clog up the car’s parts and even get inside the engine. James became aware of this first and put his hand on Steve’s shoulder.
“That’s it, Steve. We’re done killing these things. We need to get to the hospital.”
Steve looked at James’ hand and then at his face. He seemed to come out of a daze.
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right buddy,” he mumbled.
He stopped chasing the spider that was in front of him and started driving at a regular speed.
“I think the hospital is that way…” James said, pointing.
Steve took the turn as instructed. The Volkswagen was running a little funny from all the spider guts that had gotten caught inside the grill, chassis, and undercarriage. The car sputtered like an old man coughing up phlegm. For all that, however, it still managed to run and eventually Steve got them to the hospital.
Chapter 9
To call Massachusetts General Hospital a sight for sore eyes would be an egregious understatement. To James, the hospital looked like the very gates of paradise. For one thing, the place actually had lights. Which meant that it was the first place James had seen lit up by electricity in over a month. His boat – The Happy Clam – had electricity, as did the boats of most of the other survivors, but that’s because they all ran on gas power. The power grid on land had gone down. The hospital, on the other hand, obviously had its own generator.
Steve pulled the Volkswagen right up to the hospital’s front door. The place was obviously occupied by survivors because it had been effectively barricaded. The glass doors that formerly welcomed visitors had been blocked with nailed up planks of wood to keep the spiders out. All of the windows were likewise blocked.
Steve left the car running.
“Hey buddy, I’m gonna stay here with the car. It’s got a full tank of gas, or mostly full, so it can run for a while. That way I won’t need to hotwire it again. Anyway, I’ll stay with the car and wait for you guys. How long do you think you’ll be?”
James thought about this and decided it was a good idea. “Okay, stay with the car. As for how long we’ll be, I haven’t a clue. It could be five minutes or five hours.”
“No problem,” Steve said. “Either way I’ll be right here.”
Steve said Thanks and then he and Carol got out of the car and walked up to the hospital’s barricaded front door. Looking back at the Volkswagen they could see that it was covered from top to bottom with destroyed spider residue and black blood. You couldn’t even tell what model car it was.
As they approached the front door, the portal cracked open a half inch and a voice from within asked them what their business was.
James explained to a pair of eyes in the darkness that his daughter was very sick. He explained her headaches and the fact that medicine didn’t seem to help. He held Carol in his arms so that whoever it was inside could see her and know that he wasn’t lying. After a few minutes of interrogation, the barricade was pulled back for the two of them to enter.
Inside the hospital was a skeleton crew of nurses and doctors, along with patients who were lucky enough to have been let inside. James recognized the stout nurse who had administered Hannah’s spider bite, back when Hannah was a resident of the cancer ward, before the spider apocalypse.
He noted with a sense of sadness that the nurse had lost a drastic amount of weight and was no longer so stout. What’s more, her face was pale and seemed to have aged ten years since he’d last seen her. He knew that the intervening weeks couldn’t have been easy for her. Instead of waddling because of her rotund figure, she now hobbled from either fatigue or some injury that she had sustained, or both.
“Hi sweetie,” she said to Carol. “What can I help you with?”
Something about the way the nurse spoke made James think that she didn’t recognize them. He wasn’t too surprised by this. Recent events had been drastic and had a way of scrambling people’s brains a little. Also, she was a nurse and had probably seen hundreds of patients since Hannah was there for her cancer-curing spider bite.
“I’m having really bad headaches,” Carol said with a pout.
James nodded in support. “My wife and I have been giving her Algopyrin. It helps, but her headaches still keep coming back.”
“Well, you’re in luck,” the nurse said. “We’re the only hospital in town with a generator, so we can run our machines, including our MRI. That’s upstairs on the fourth floor. We’re not set up to take payment, obviously, so we ask that if you find yourself with extra time to spare that you drop by again to help volunteer. We’re all volunteers here, and we could use a strapping young lad like you.”
“I’ll be sure to do that,” James said smiling, and he meant it, although he didn’t know how soon he would get a chance to fulfill his promise.
He took Carol by the hand and led her up the stairs. Although the hospital was running on a generator, the elevator wasn’t functioning. Taking the steps was a small price to pay if it meant they could finally get to the bottom of Carol’s headaches.
When they reached the fourth floor, James explained Carol’s headaches all over again to the nurse who operated the MRI. This nurse was just as understanding and very kind to Carol. She offered the young girl her hand and then took her off to get her tests.
While Carol was off getting her MRI James paced nervously in the waiting roo
m. The fact is that he hated to let Carol out of his sight. Even though she was with medical professionals, the world had taught him to be suspicious of everyone and to look for danger everywhere, even in situations that seemed otherwise innocuous, like say a hospital. Thus he was enormously relieved when the nurse finally walked back into the waiting area, holding Carol by her hand.
“Daddy!” his daughter cried happily and ran over to hug his legs. He knelt down and gave her a hug and a kiss on her forehead.
The nurse who was with her smiled and told James the MRI results would be ready shortly.
Despite the nurse’s assurances, it took a while to get the results. During this time James flipped through outdated magazines while Carol colored in a coloring book that had seen better days. After about half an hour had passed the nurse appeared in the doorway.
“Excuse me, Mr. Dresden…” she began softly.
“Yes?” James stood up.
“Could I speak with you privately?”
James swallowed a lump in his throat. He could feel his heart beating like mad in his chest. “Carol darling,” he spoke to his daughter. “Daddy is going to talk to the nurse. I want you to stay right here with your coloring books, okay sweetie?”
“Okay daddy.”
James followed the nurse off to one side. As made sure to keep his eye on Carol who stayed in her place in the waiting area. His daughter was just far enough away to ensure that she wouldn’t hear his conversation with the nurse, but still close enough for him to keep an eye on her.
“Yes, nurse. What is it? What did you find?”
The nurse pulled some images out of a Manilla folder and handed them to James.
“Do you see these dark spots here?” she pointed at the MRI scan. James looked at the blurry image and saw what appeared to be shadows lurking in the convolutions of gray matter.
“Yes,” he said with a voice that was entirely bereft of happiness.
“These are tumors,” the nurse said in a matter of fact manner. She knew that there was no way to sugar coat the information and so she didn’t even try.
James looked over at Carol and then let his head drop down to his chest.
“Normally, I would suggest the hospital’s spider bite therapy,” the nurse said, “but for obvious reasons that is no longer an option. It’s not that the venom doesn’t work. It’s that the spiders we had on hand for that purpose have grown and are now all the size of sheepdogs.”
James stayed silent for a long moment and finally breathed a deep sigh. “So what now?” he asked.
“What I would suggest is that you keep her comfortable. And make sure that she stays out of strong sunlight and away from loud noises, as these things can intensify her headaches. No one knows how long this spider situation is going to last. If we can get things back under control in the near future, bring her back and we’ll see what we can do. In the meantime just do your best to keep her comfortable.”
“That’s easier said than done, especially in a world that has basically turned into a hell on earth.”
James said this in the spirit of being realistic, but realized as the words came out that it sounded like he was complaining.
“I promise to do everything I can,” he added.
“Oh, one more thing…” the nurse said. “Keep giving her Algopyrin. It really is the best medicine in the meantime.”
“I mean to ask you about that,” James replied. “Does the hospital have any they can give me? Because she has so many headaches, my daughter goes through the Algopyrin pretty fast, and it’s becoming harder to find in the pharmacies around here…”
The nurse sighed. “I’m sorry to say that we don’t. We’re actually very short on almost every drug. Most of our medicines are stored in a warehouse next to the IGE laboratory, which is deep in spider territory. Every team we’ve sent thus far hasn’t come back.”
This wasn’t at all what James wanted to hear, but at least he had an answer for what was going on with his daughter. And all hope wasn’t lost. He would continue to raid local pharmacies for the Algopyrin, do his best to keep Carol comfortable, and then – if and when the spider apocalypse ended – they could look into a longer lasting medical solution.
He looked across the waiting area to Carol and smiled. His daughter was scribbling contentedly in a coloring book. She was smiling and rocking her legs back and forth under the chair. From looking at her you would never know that she had a life threatening medical condition.
“Come on, darling,” he called out to Carol, who tossed down the coloring book and crayons and promptly came running over.
“Thank you,” he said to the nurse and smiled.
“My pleasure,” the nurse said sweetly. “I hope we see both again in the future, so we can give your daughter the treatment she needs.”
James reached out for Carol’s hand. Instead of making his daughter walk down the four flights of steps he picked her up and set her down on his shoulders so he could give her a piggy back ride. They got to the bottom floor and walked to where the barricades were set up. The helpers moved the barricades so the two of them could leave.
When James stepped outside he received a shock. The slime-covered Volkswagen, along with its driver, the unpredictable Steve, was nowhere to be seen.
“Where the heck did he go?” he wondered aloud.
James knew that another spider attack may have occurred, necessitating that Steve suddenly take off and perhaps drive around before doubling back. But in the back of his mind an unpleasant doubt had begun to gnaw.
He stuck his head back inside and asked the hospital staff if they had seen the car that was parked out front. None of the people there had seen the car or the driver. James thanked them and stepped back outside with Carol still sitting on his shoulders.
“Hey Daddy, where’s that guy that came over with us? The guy with the funny sunglasses?”
“I’m not sure, sweetheart.”
“Do you think the spiders got to him?”
“Maybe.”
James was aware that his voice was tense and he worried that Carol would be able to pick up on his emotions. He did his best to keep his worries to himself, however, and merely jogged in the direction of the south docks. In addition to having a longer hike ahead of them without the car, they were traversing territory that was known to have more than its fair share of spiders. The entire time he jogged along, he kept his eyes and ears open for any sign of their hairy beasts. Living in this age of sudden danger, James had grown accustomed to having adrenaline present in his body more often than not. Even so, he felt as if he were having an out of body experience from being in a state of heightened awareness. His breathing increased, his eyes opened wider, his heart beat with the speed and intensity of an African bongo. Being the sole source of protection for a young child tends to do that to a man.
As luck would have it, there were no more spider incidents as they traveled to the docks. James considered this the first and only lucky stroke that they’d had all day. He wondered if there was a god looking down at them, who gave them challenges as he saw fit, but never gave them more than they could handle. For some reason this thought brought him solace, although he couldn’t say why.
By the time they made it to the water, James was starting to feel slightly exhausted from having Carol on his shoulders. He put her down on the ground and let her walk beside him, pulling her hand as they walked. He knew that his pace was faster than Carol would have liked, but he was eager to get back to The Happy Clam and make sure that Hannah was okay.
As they walked back to where they’d left the boats tied up, they passed the same older couple they had helped earlier. The older couple had obviously been out on their boat and was now faced with the task of reloading the boat back onto their RV. Under normal circumstances, James would have helped them again, but this time around he ignored them.
As they neared where the boats had been docked, James’ jaw dropped and his heart dropped with it.
; Both boats were gone.
Chapter 10
James no longer attempted to hide his desperation from Carol. He dropped down to his knees to look his daughter in the eye.
“Listen sweetheart. Daddy needs to act very fast. So it’s important that you follow my instructions, okay?”
Carol’s lip shook as she realized that her father was upset. Without asking him why she merely nodded.
“Okay Daddy!”
He picked her up in his arms and ran with her back in the direction of the older couple, who were still struggling to get their boat out of the water. When James came upon the older couple he didn’t have time for diplomacy.
“I need to use your boat…” he said quickly. “Please! It’s a life or death matter.”
The older folks were startled by the sudden appearance of this man carrying his daughter. And they were understandably taken aback by his curt command.
They looked at each other with worried expressions and then the old man cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry,” the old man said. “But I can’t loan you our boat. We need to go out and check our lobster cages.” He pulled his wife closer to him.
“I’ll bring it right back!” James said in exasperation.
He could tell that the older couple was wrestling with the idea, but knew also that they had probably been burnt before by helping someone and were once bitten, twice shy.
“I don’t think so,” the older man said. “You’ll have to ask someone else.”
James didn’t want to do it, but he had no choice. He pulled his pistol out of his holster and aimed it at the old man.
“I’m taking your boat, mister. I’m sorry to do this. If it wasn’t an emergency I wouldn’t trouble you. And please know that I will bring it back as soon as I can.”
The couple started to panic. Instead of protesting they merely stepped back from the boat. James was sorry that he had to resort to threatening them, but the tactic had worked.