by Joe Hart
I was about to protest again when Kotis stepped forward. “I understand what yer saying, mate, I really do. I would probably sprint that hill and take on all of hell if it were mine in there. But a few hours of sleep and planning might make the difference between success and the end of all things.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but then remembered that there was more on the line than my family’s lives. There was the world I stood in, Earth, and somewhere else, a place of pure beauty and goodness, all of which relied upon our choices. If I made the wrong one, I would doom innocents to death and tear worlds from moorings I didn’t fully understand.
“Sometimes all you can do is wait,” Fellow said.
I sighed, my shoulders slumping in defeat. Ellius stepped forward and squeezed my arm, his brown eyes kind and reflective of the pain that burned within me. “Please, Michael, we’ve come this far.”
I nodded, feeling something break inside me. “Let’s get off the path before we’re spotted.”
Ellius gave me an encouraging look, and headed into a patch of bushes and brush that grew from the unforgiving rock. I threw another look at the crater’s rim, then followed my friends to make camp.
The pungent air tousled my hair and whispered in the bushes around us. I studied my companions in their various states of sleep. Ellius lay on his back, his lips parted just enough to breathe through. Fellow was beside him, propped against an angled rock that jutted from the ground, his eyes shut tight. Kotis and Scrim lay curled together, the giant’s hand resting on the bird’s back. I’d volunteered for the first watch, since we all agreed it would be smart to sleep in shifts.
I stood, gradually easing myself up, taking care that my feet didn’t scrape across the ground and my coat didn’t brush against one of the outstretched branches of the scrub that concealed our camp. With a cautious step, I moved out of the lightless ring and ducked low to avoid another tangle of dead bushes. If one of the others woke, I would use the excuse of going to the bathroom.
No voices floated after me as I made my retreat, and I heard no sounds of movement, wakeful or otherwise. In a few minutes I was back on the trail, standing just where we had an hour before. The rim of the crater stood in contrast to the horizon, its dark mouth open to the vast sky. My heart pounded harder as I took a step toward the waiting aperture. I looked to the right one last time, at the spot I knew housed my friends, and said a silent goodbye to them. I knew when they awoke they would be alarmed and angered by my absence, but it was the only way. I couldn’t ask them to venture any farther on my behalf. Each of them had almost died at least once, and I couldn’t risk their lives again. Besides, the knowledge that my family was so close wouldn’t let me rest. The burgeoning questions of their safety prodded me until action was the only possible answer.
My feet barely made a sound on the worn path. My head felt like it was on a swivel, my ears pricked to the noises of a few aberrant leaves skittering across the uneven ground, far from any trees that could have produced them. I identified with them. My home so distant it seemed like an imagined thought, a story I’d created in my mind to keep it from tilting over, so top-heavy from the madness I’d seen.
A line of darkness edged closer on the ground, and when I looked up I saw what caused it. The sun was directly behind the crater, throwing its ragged shadow toward me, but something else caught my eye and sent a lancing jolt of fear through my stomach.
Above the crater, storm clouds gathered.
There was no mistaking what they were, their heavy bellies bulging with rain, tumorous with barely restrained power. They hung in the sky, unrelenting in their oppressive boiling darkness. I stood, paralyzed on the beaten path, staring at them, terror building in my veins. I watched the storm, hoping that it wasn’t on the course it seemed to be on. A low growl built from the corners of the sky and continued to heighten, until the air was filled with thunder. It concussed the ground until the rock beneath my shoes thrummed with its energy. A forked tongue of neon lightning ricocheted through the clouds, then shot downward and out of my sight, while the last peals of thunder drained away, leaving a vacuum of silence.
My legs shook with the effort of holding me up, and at that moment I had to restrain myself from running for cover. This was the root of my addiction; it suspended itself from the heavens and laughed in a voice of anger and violence. This was what robbed me of happiness and stole what little solace I sought from the help of alcohol. Fury blossomed in a fiery veil that coated my mind. I wouldn’t fail my family again.
Bracing myself against a large boulder, I ignored the small cuts it reopened on my hand and focused on the pain it brought. I took two deep breaths and then began to walk once more, my head down until I was well within the shadow of the crater. When I glanced up again, relief washed over me upon seeing that the buttressed wall blocked the sight of the storm.
The ground rose, evenly at first and then in sharper jags that jumped in stair-like columns, sometimes five to ten feet high. I climbed without looking back, and held tight to the rock when blasts of thunder reached over the top of the crater to slap at my ears. The pass rose higher and higher, switchbacking for hundreds of yards at a time; all of my energy became centered on the next step. Sweat broke out beneath my coat, and I patted the pocket with the pistol inside, its heft little reassurance but better than none.
After what seemed like hours of climbing, the path leveled and turned in a sharp corner. I stood facing a hallway of sorts. The crater’s edge was still hundreds of feet above me, but a crude archway cut through the rock, creating a tunnel that held oily patches of darkness before relenting to the stained light of the storm on the other side.
I stepped back, concealing myself from the passage. The tunnel was at least fifty feet across and a hundred feet deep, opening up to the vastness of the depression. I strained my eyes to see inside, and tried to spot any abnormal shapes in the waiting darkness. I remained still for five minutes before drawing the pistol and moving onto the path again.
My footsteps came back to me in short crunches that echoed off the tunnel’s sides beneath the archway. Long, gouged striations graced the rock in several places, as if the hole had been scraped open. The shadows deepened around me, and I swung the pistol to either side, a feeling of eyes watching my progress from all angles growing on the skin of my neck. The sensation agitated a sixth sense on the basest level and told me to flee, but if something was there, I couldn’t see it, no matter how hard I searched.
Just as I was about to take another step, I became aware of something else. It was as feeling so preposterous that I almost dismissed it immediately. The darkness churned in the tunnel, and I let the déjà vu wash over me in waves, each one pulling on a string of memory that faded when I tried to bring it to light. I looked up and to either side, trying to jump-start another bout of familiarity, but the feeling only came when looking ahead at the pitch black. A flash of lightning lit the tunnel in flickering strobes that revealed nothing impeding my way, chasing the déjà vu from my mind. For the first time I was thankful for a storm’s light. I let out a held breath, then emerged from the overhang, walked to the edge of the tunnel, and looked down.
The sight stole any semblance of sequenced thought from me and robbed me of movement. It thrust itself into my eyes, raping my senses as it went deeper and deeper, furrowing a gaping wound on my consciousness.
The crater’s interior writhed with movement.
A black, pulsing musculature veined with twitching tendons coated the entire depression. Enormous internal organs pumped fluids through semitransparent arteries, their varicose glaze feeding into various orifices that belched and sucked at the air. A coating of yellow bile ran steadily from an open sore on the opposite wall of the crater and multiple lesions bled freely, creating a pool of gore at the lowest point. Digestive bubbles expanded and burst on the surface of the burgundy slick.
I gasped at the hot smell that assaulted my nostrils. Until then, it had been the same stench tha
t pervaded the air outside the crater; but within, it was noxious and insurmountable, physically hindering as it pushed against me. The meager mush Ellius made earlier frothed behind my tongue, and I choked, my eyes watering as I doubled over. The vomit flew from my mouth, and even as I coughed and tried to regain my balance, my mind registered the last detail I glimpsed before being sick.
On the glistening, exposed muscle of the crater floor lay three forms, two small and one larger.
I swiped at my watering eyes and cleared them enough to stare down at the spot where my family lay. Even across the distance, I knew their shapes. Jack lay closest, his small legs curled tight to his chest with his arms laced around them. He slept that way sometimes in his bed at home, especially on nights after a nightmare stampeded through his young mind. I would comfort him the best I could, stroking his hair and telling him a story of a bright day. Sara was beside him, her body only a thin line stretched out straight beside her brother, her arm wrapped protectively over his shoulders. Her hair twitched with the exhalations of a giant, toothless mouth embedded in the nearby wall. Jane was next to Sara, her knees drawn beneath her and her hand on Sara’s arm. Her head tilted forward so that her hair obscured her face. None of them moved.
I almost called out to them but cut the yell short. The thing that took them from me could be anywhere. Scanning the pit’s pulsing interior, nothing moved besides the conglomeration of bowels and flow of unnamable fluids.
I ran from the lip of the tunnel, down a ramp made of corded ligaments. My feet sank sickeningly into them, and I nearly slipped twice on my way down. All the while I kept my eyes on my family. I couldn’t get to them fast enough, and the need to hold them was all encompassing. I wound my way around a pile of excrement that boiled from the crater’s floor, and glanced in different directions to make sure we were still alone. The gun felt heavy in my hand, but I kept it pointed in front of me, my finger hovering on the trigger. Skirting movement flashed to my left, and I spun, the gun outstretched and the hammer almost all the way back. Nothing leapt at me or shot in my direction. I slid the sights of the pistol 180 degrees and then lowered the weapon, releasing the tension on the trigger.
Something was here with us.
I was sure of it. The urgency to be gone from the crater howled inside of me, a warning siren only I could hear. Sweat poured down my back, and I flinched when a fractured rod of lightning split the air above me. I ran again toward my family, not bothering to look back to see if anything followed. Either it would be there or it wouldn’t, but it didn’t matter because I was intent on holding my children and my wife again, even if it was the last thing I did.
Rounding a curled pillar of exposed nerves, I found myself in the open area. The taut muscle beneath my feet was sticky and flexed in metronome timing. It made me feel as though I stood below deck on a ship at sea, unaware of how the floor would move next. My nostrils filled with the odor of blood until I was sure I would never smell anything else. But all the assaults on my senses dulled in comparison to the surge of relief and love I felt at the sight of my family.
Jane saw me first, and I realized why she sat the way she did. She stayed upright to watch over Jack and Sara. When I stepped into view, her head jerked up as though she’d been dozing, but from the deep bags beneath her eyes I could tell that sleep hadn’t visited her in some time. Her mouth opened in an O of surprise, and I didn’t know if it was the sudden movement or the sight of me standing there that elicited the response. I smiled, and tears flowed from my eyes, spilling down my cheeks.
“Honey,” I said in a choked voice.
Jack and Sara sat up, and my heart ached at how thin their faces looked. Their skin was white and drawn, tightened by hunger and fear. Their hair was dirty, and I saw smudges of gore on their bare arms.
“Dad?” Jack asked. His small voice in the midst of the alien setting was almost too much for me.
“Dad!” Sara cried and jumped to her feet.
Three steps and they were in my arms. I pulled them tight to me, Jack in my left arm, Sara in my right, Jane pressed in behind them. Their skin and hair against me, Jane’s lips seeking mine, frantic to know it was me. All the while she whispered, “You came, you came, you came,” like somehow she’d expected me at any moment. I soaked them in, every ounce of the love that poured out of their hugs and tears. The landscape around us faded and we were one again, a family, unbroken and whole.
I knelt with Jack and Sara still in my arms. Jack nearly choked me with his embrace, but I didn’t mind. Sara just cried on my shoulder. Jane leaned her head against mine as I told my daughter it would be okay.
“How?” Jane asked, her voice hoarse.
“I found a way.”
Her face crumpled as more tears rolled from her eyes. “I knew you would, I knew you would.”
As much as I wanted to stay that way forever, the awareness of where we sat was too much to contend with. I rose, setting my children on their feet. “We have to go now. We need to be quiet and fast, can you guys do that?” I asked.
Sara seemed shell-shocked, but Jack’s eyes were wide and alert. “Dad, they haven’t been here for a long time, they’ll be here soon.”
“Who? Who’s going to be here?” I asked him. I looked up to Jane for more explanation, but her face was a mask of pain.
“I tried to stop them, Michael. I tried, but there was so many. They bit them, drew blood. I’m sorry ...” Her voice trailed off in a soft sob, and she leaned against me for support.
“Stop what?” I asked.
Jack raised both of his arms and held them out for examination. “The heads bite and talk,” he said. I squinted, and realized that I’d been wrong in thinking the streaks of blood and crusted scabs were from the bare muscle below us. Within the clots I saw spots, punctures, and scrapes.
Teeth marks.
I heard a noise over the gesticulation of organs and bubbling fluid. At first I thought it was raining, but then the sound changed and took on other nuances not associated with the pattering of water. I listened for another second, then recognized it for what it was: the scrabble and tapping of movement all around us. I spun and stepped forward, shielding my family from whatever approached. The handgun trembled in my grip, as a blast of thunder detonated and shook the mass beneath us. The storm was so close I could taste it, an atmospheric tang of burned air and cold rain. The fear of what moved toward us was nearly overridden by the clashing power above, and my right knee unhinged, trying to drop me to a crouch on the ground. I wanted to huddle with my family for comfort, but instead I took another step forward and peered around the bundle of nerves.
There were hundreds of them. Their chitinous bodies articulated toward us, emerging from every nook and hole in the organic crater. Long, segmented legs skittered, some brown, some black, all covered with spiny fur. Swollen abdomens swung with their movement, and teeth gnashed with hunger—human teeth.
The spiders were roughly the size of small dogs, and were biologically similar to most I’d seen on Earth, except for their heads. Their heads were human. The faces of men, women, and a few children glared at me with fury and excitement as they made their way over the bulbous landscape. Their skin was unblemished and fully human from the neck up, their eyes flashing in the flickering light of the storm.
“Oh, he’s come to rescue them. Ain’t it sweet,” a woman’s voice said from my left. The spider that spoke had a head that belonged to a pretty woman with full blond hair and green eyes the color of the Caribbean Sea. “We’ve been tasting your kids and wife for a while, honey. Took you long enough to join us.”
I staggered back with shock, unprepared for seeing what moved toward us. I raised the pistol at the woman’s face, and she grinned.
“This is what we’ve been waiting for?” a man’s voice asked, and I turned to see another spider approach from the right. Its face was a middle-aged man with dark stubble growing from his cheeks, matching the spider fur on the rest of its body. “I’ve been holding back
for days because of this? Oh, I can’t wait to feed on your little ones, and now I can finally give your wife this.” The spider reared back on its four hind legs to show me a throbbing human erection hanging obscenely from its abdomen. “She’s been eyeing it up. I bet she can’t wait to su—”
The man’s face exploded in a spray of bone and brain matter. His jaw hung slack, and blood fountained down into his open mouth from where the bullet had done its work. The long legs holding up the body seizured and then gave out, dumping his bulk onto the ground, where it lay still.
The pistol barrel smoked as I pointed it at the female spider. Again the sight above the muzzle jittered, but this time my muscles were full of rage, not fear. These things had bitten my children and wife. They’d tried to prey on them while I wasn’t there. My finger tensed on the trigger.
“Get back!” I yelled and took a step forward. I motioned for Jane and the kids to follow me.
“You’re not going anywhere, darlin’,” the blond spider said. I fired again, and she mewled in pain, her distended hindquarters spewing ichor in black gouts.
“Get the fuck out of my way!” I yelled.
I pointed the gun back and forth at the upturned faces that cursed and spit at us as we edged toward the distant tunnel. A spider bearing the face of an elderly woman with ringlets of gray hair lunged forward. I swung a kick at her and felt her jaw tear free beneath the sole of my shoe. Teeth dripped to the ground, and her tongue dangled and swung in the open air.
“Get back!” I yelled again.
The knowledge of the last shot in the gun pounded in my brain. Sara cried out from behind me, and I turned, swinging the gun at a spider with a black man’s face.
“You can’t get out,” a spider hissed in a boy’s voice.