by Nora Penn
But in the wake of this thought came another suspicion that was even more harrowing.
The top floor of the lighthouse – where the light itself was housed – was comprised almost entirely of windows. These windows would be easy to break. Thus, the giant spiders could certainly get inside the topmost floor and then crawl into the lighthouse from the top. They would then be able to attack her and Ben by coming down from the upper floors.
“Shit…” Hannah breathed, realizing that she would have to go up and investigate. She would have to make sure the uppermost portal was securely closed.
She looked at Ben who once again returned to his Buddha-like peacefulness. He was cooing and gurgling and pulling at his fingers in a playful way.
“Well, little buddy…” Hannah said to her son. “I guess we’d better go upstairs and make sure everything is closed off. We don’t want to end up as a spider’s breakfast.”
Ben cooed in response.
Before going on a reconnaissance mission, Hannah decided that she should arm herself. The trouble with using the bug spray and lighter to make an improvised blowtorch was that she needed two hands to operate it, which meant that she couldn’t use her arms to hold little Ben. She wished Carol had left her One Direction backpack, so she could have put Ben inside it and carried him like an Indian squaw carries her papoose.
“I know…” she snapped her fingers. She came up with an improvisation.
She foraged around in her laundry and found one of her blouses. It was frilly with long sleeves. She tied the sleeves together and threw the whole thing over her shoulder, like a sling. It fit perfectly. The blouse itself was made of strong fabric and would hold a lot of weight, if need be. It was certainly strong enough to hold an infant.
“Okay, Benny Baby!” she said jokingly. “We’re going on a mission!”
She gave her newborn baby a little kiss on his forehead and very gently laid him inside her makeshift kangaroo pouch. The frills in the blouse were silky and soft, so she didn’t worry about Ben’s skin being irritated by the fabric. Once she got him situated, she took one of the frills and laid it gently over his head. She was careful to leave plenty of room for the child to breathe. Tucked away like this, she could easily carry Ben on her hip while using her two hands for other actions at the same time.
She armed herself with the bug spray and lighter, holding them both in one hand, and then walked over to the rickety ladder that led to the upper floors. Although she hadn’t been upstairs yet, she could see that the ladder went in a sort of zig-zag, changing direction with each floor above them. Hannah didn’t know for sure, but she would guess that there were three or four floors in total.
As she put her foot on the first step, however, the entire ladder made a pitiful squeaking sound and quivered as she stood upon it.
She took a tentative second step and the rickety ladder shook even more.
As nervous as she was, she began to shiver and shake a bit herself, which in turn caused the rickety ladder to shake even more violently than before.
“No way!” she said out loud, even though there was only the baby to hear her. “There’s no way I’m going to risk both of our lives by trying to climb this damn thing!”
She carefully retraced her steps back down the ladder and felt enormous relief as she put both of her feet back on solid ground.
“That was a stupid idea,” she said, again for the benefit of Ben alone.
She craned her neck and looked upward for as far as her eyes could darn the darkness.
“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” she whispered. “If those nasty spiders could break into the top of the lighthouse, I would have heard it by now.”
But as she said this a brand new sound reached her ears. It wasn’t the sound of breaking glass or of splintered wood, which would indicate that the spiders had found a way inside.
She cocked her ear to listen, unsure of where the sound came from.
It was an amplification of the boiling pretzel sound. And the same time it was higher-pitched and more multitudinous. As if…
Hannah’s brain tingled as she put two and two together.
As if…
As if the sound were being made by smaller spiders.
No sooner did she have this thought than a wave of tiny black spiders began pouring under the front door and flooding inside the lighthouse.
Chapter 29
James wiped the spider’s blood from his face and looked across the parking lot. The man who had shot at him was standing on the other side of the lot. He still had his rifle in his hand. Even at that distance, James could tell it was an old fashioned rifle, probably pilfered from some antiques shop once the spider apocalypse wiped out most of humanity. As James spied the man he was breaking open the barrel and preparing to reload it with bullets.
James had only a few seconds to act. He didn’t have any ammo of his own, or he would have shot the man. And he couldn’t pull the knife from the spider’s head, since that would have created more problems than it solved. So he did the only thing he could. He pushed the knife in the spider’s brain forward, steering the giant beast towards the gunman.
The giant spider had been shot in the part of its body that corresponded to a shoulder, but this wound did nothing to slow the spider down. If anything, the beast seemed energized and enraged by the gunshot. It charged at the gunman who shook with fear at the sight of the approaching beast.
James looked down at the man as the spider attacked. The gunman was about his own age, but he obviously hadn’t fared well in the spider infested world. He had the eyes of a drug abuser and some sort of splotchy disease had ruined ninety percent of his face. Normally James would have taken pity on the man, but his anger got the best of him. He urged the giant spider on with a sharp kick of his heels, the way a cowboy goads his horse into action by digging his spurs into the beast’s flanks.
The man had just slipped the bullets into his rifle but hadn’t yet closed the gun back up when the spider knocked him to the ground. No sooner had he fallen than the spider grabbed the man’s head with its pinching mandibles and twisted it clear off his body. There was a sickening sound of a spine being broken and a geyser of bright red blood. The man’s body continued to flail even in its headless state. James winced at the sight. He could hear Carol scream in the store and only hoped that his daughter couldn’t see the gruesome sight.
James tried pulling back on the knife to stop the spider from doing any more damage but the beast’s hunger proved stronger than the knife in its brain. After unceremoniously chomping on the man’s head, the spider set about eating the rest of their would-be attacker. James was stunned by how quickly the beast worked. Within seconds the man’s body, clothes and all, was inside the spider. The only thing left of him was the rifle that had proved so worthless.
At first James felt bad about letting the spider kill the man. But on the other hand, the vagrant had put him and his daughter’s life into great danger. And what’s more, their spider had most likely needed to eat. Now James wouldn’t have to worry about feeding the beast. And what’s more, it was less likely to turn on them now that it had had a fresh meal. He only hoped that whatever disease had ruined the man’s face wasn’t contagious or catchable by spiders.
Behind him, Carol continued to scream. James looked back to make sure that she was screaming because of what the spider had done to the vagrant and not for some other reason. With a glance he saw that she was okay, just startled by the giant spider’s act of violence.
When the spider was done with its grim feast, James used the knife in its brain to guide it back to the front of the 7-11.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” he asked Carol, who was standing in front of the store with a sad look on her face.
“I’m okay,” she said petulantly. “But that man isn’t okay.”
“No, sweetheart, he isn’t. But he shot at Daddy and our spider. He even hit our spider. See?”
James pointed at the bleeding wound on the
spider’s back.
“I heard a gun go bang…” Carol muttered.
“He was a bad man, sweetheart. I’m sorry he did what he did. But that’s what happens to people when they’re bad.”
James wasn’t sure what else to say about the man’s death. Rather than try to sum the gruesome event up with some pat philosophical saying he decided to drop the topic. Someday, when his daughter was older, he would explain such things to her. But for now the important thing was that they continue on their mission. He had to make sure that Carol would have a ‘someday.’
His daughter handed up the supplies she’d gathered and then grabbed ahold of James’ hands so that he could pull her up onto the spider’s back. He checked her backpack and saw that she had picked up at least ten bottles of water, plus plenty of beef jerky, and nuts of several varieties. He also saw that Carol had pilfered multiple candy bars and Jolly Ranchers. He decided not to give her a hard time about grabbing the extra candy. He would just make sure to portion them out so she didn’t eat them all at once and get a stomach ache.
Once Carol was seated securely behind him, James gave the knife in the spider’s head a tap to make it walk forward. He had gotten better at using the strange control. He thought of the knife in the spider’s head as a sort of joystick, like in the old fashioned video games that he used to play as a kid, like Frogger and Pac-Man. Having mastered the subtle art of driving a giant spider, he was able it let to amble along at a fast yet steady clip. If the spider kept living – and he figured it would – they should be in New York City in no time.
Chapter 30
Hannah watched in sheer terror as a wave of black spiders oozed across the room. The spiders were the normal sort, the kind you would see all the time back before the spider apocalypse. They were obviously still around and what’s more they must have some sort of psychic connection with the rest of the horrible beasts. After all, how else would the spiders be acting in concert with one another to take over the light house? It was if each individual spider, no matter how large or how small, was merely an atom or molecule in the larger organism that was comprised of all spiders. This thought occurred to Hannah as she watched the tiny creatures spread across the main room like a can of spilled paint.
It was too late by that point to make a dash for the makeshift blowtorch. If she even tried she was sure the spiders would swarm over her and eat both her and her baby. No, the only real option was retreat.
With little Ben still tucked away in the sling she’d made out of her torn blouse, she put her hands on the rickety ladder that led to the chamber above and steadied it to keep it from shaking. Then she put her foot on the bottom rung and began to climb. Because her nerves were entirely shredded, and her nervousness at a fever pitch, her whole body shook, which of course caused the ladder to shake as well. Even so, she managed to get up the ladder and make it to the second story. When she looked back down through the portal she was amazed to see that not only had the tiny spiders covered the floor, they were already swarming up the legs of the ladder below her, and were halfway up to the ceiling.
She shrieked in terror and slammed the trapdoor shut behind her. She breathed heavily, trying to catch her breath. She reminded herself that she was a woman who had just given birth, and it was hardly a good idea to go climbing up ladders. And Ben was a new born baby, for goodness sake, he should be rocking gently back and forth in a cradle. Or better yet, they should both still be in a hospital under direct supervision. How the hell did she ever get herself in this mess? Or rather, how did the world get itself in this mess?
She examined the trapdoor to make sure that its edges met the portal’s dimensions seamlessly. It did seem to be a tight fit. But of course it had to be absolutely air tight. After all, spiders can be very tiny. Some of them are the size of mites. But as tiny as they are, if they were to get into the room by the thousands, or the tens of thousands, they would be a serious threat. She stared at the line around the trapdoor for what seemed like an eternity, but saw no sign of any spiders crawling through the hairline cracks.
She finally sat back and took a deep breath.
“Well, we’ll just have to wait them out, won’t we, Ben?” she asked her little baby, who despite all the chaos had a smile on his adorable face.
There was a television on this floor, which obviously was useless, as well as a rocking chair and a tiny table with a checkerboard set up on it. There was also a porthole window which Hannah made a point of looking out. Yep, just as she expected, the entire yard was filled with spiders. The spiders on hand were all sizes, with the largest being as big as horses. As for the smallest, they were too small for her to see. But evidently they were what created the impression that the entire world was encased in a layer of black felt. The spiders, it could be said, truly owned the world.
As she had this thought, little Ben started gulping at the air and letting out tiny yelps.
“Oh, are you still hungry?” Hannah asked, and recalled that his feeding had been interrupted. “Well don’t worry sweetheart, mama is going to feed you.”
She sat down gently in the rocking chair and pulled her breast out, putting it in the baby’s mouth. He started feeding right away. The needy cries were replaced by contented sucking sounds.
As Hannah rocked ever so gently back and forth she found herself looking forward to a day when she and her family could finally relax and not have to worry about their survival. It would be a pleasure to just feed her baby and know that James and Carol were nearby. As it stood right then, she had the constant fear in the back of her mind that her husband and daughter were in danger. She tried to set aside these worries and focus on how happy she would be when they made it back home.
As her mind drifted off to happier dreams, Hannah became aware of a moist, chewing sound. She looked down and saw that Ben was feeding with gusto.
“My goodness you’re hungry!” she commented, watching him move his little jaw up and down.
But she had a strange sense as she watched her baby that the moist sound she heard was louder than Ben could make on his own. And furthermore, it seemed to be coming from somewhere else. She looked up and focused on the trapdoor across the room. Was the sound coming from there?
Her eye sought the edges of the portal and she wondered if some especially small spiders were working hard to get through the cracks. She wished she had brought some bug spray along so she could hose down the edges, but sadly she’d left the can of bug spray downstairs in her mad flight to escape the spiders.
Ben was still at her breast, sucking away, as Hannah rose from the rocking chair and went to investigate. She walked over to the trapdoor and stood looking down at it from a few feet away. What was that sound, she wondered? It was the sound of boiling pretzels. In other words, it was the sound of thousands upon thousands of tiny mandibles working in the spider’s mouths. Her stomach turned at the idea.
For reasons that Hannah couldn’t’ even explain to herself, she decided to take the ladder up to the third floor. Keeping Ben cradled in his little pouch, and keeping him against her breast, she put her foot on the bottom rung. At that precise moment the trapdoor lid between the first and second floor popped open from the sheer force of the amassed spiders that were bubbling up beneath it.
Hannah shrieked at the top of her lungs, which in turn caused Ben to open his mouth and scream. The spiders didn’t just crawl into the second story room. They exploded into it like a gushing torrent of water from a burst pipe. The room was suddenly half-filled with their writhing, wriggling black bodies.
Hannah scrambled up the ladder as fast as her fatigued body would carry her. When she got to the third story room, she turned around and slammed the trap door shut as fast as she could.
Chapter 31
As James and Carol rode the giant spider down 95 South, James had his daughter pull the URH radio out of her backpack and try to find Bigsby’s signal. Bigsby, he knew, tended to go on and off all day, broadcasting his colorful rambling monologu
es at random. Even if they didn’t manage to catch Bigsby’s broadcast, he knew that the crazy New Yorker would broadcast again at midnight. In that respect, Bigsby was like clockwork.
As Carol turned the radio on, James cursed himself for not having asked Carol to pick up batteries while she was raiding the 7-11. The radio had power for now, but James knew at some point it would run out. The important thing was to make contact with Bigsby so they at least knew where they could find him.
As James guided the giant spider down the highway, the skyline of the metropolis rose in the distance. They had been surrounded by the urban sprawl that oozes outward from the city for thirty or forty miles, but the buildings up ahead were plainly over ten stories. These clusters of urban architecture, he knew, were the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. Beyond these smaller skylines there rose the truly majestic skyline of Manhattan, with its towering skyscrapers and the monolithic Brooklyn Bridge, which they would soon be travelling over.
Their approach to the city was accompanied by the persistent sound of crackling static on the URH. Carol had been trying for several minutes to locate a signal, but trying to find any sign of humanity was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
“Let’s see that radio, darling,” James grunted.
Carol carefully passed the appliance to her father. He took the radio and placed it in a little nook that existed between the back of the spider’s head and the haunch of its body. He was careful not to jostle the knife in the spider’s head. He didn’t want the beast to suddenly lurch or rush forward, which might cause them to fall off the back of the spider or to drop the precious radio.
He played with the dial a bit and spoke into the mouthpiece like he’d seen truckers do on movies back in the 70s like “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Every Which Way But Loose.”