by John Everson
Something crashed in the hallway.
Her eyes opened all the way. It sounded as if something had just hit the wall.
There was another thud, and she pushed her feet off the couch and stood up. She had only taken two steps toward the hall when the reason for the noise came to her.
Anders and Terry fell into the front room, both men locked in a wrestling cinch. Terry kneed Anders in the groin, but the bigger man pulled back an arm and slugged Terry in the gut. They both struggled not to double over. Anders drove his shoulder into Terry, pushing him towards the couch, but the other man fought back with a clip to Anders’s jaw.
“I warned you to get away from my family,” Anders said. He pounded his right fist into Terry’s belly again and again.
“Didn’t anyone…ever…tell you…what…divorce means?” Terry gasped, rolling back from Anders’s punches and then pushing off to slam a shoulder into the other man’s chest, linebacker-style.
“Didn’t anyone…ever…tell you…to keep your hands…off another man’s…woman?” Anders spat back. With each word he landed a roundhouse volley of punches against Terry’s gut and chest.
“That’s enough!” Rachel screamed, and kicked Anders as hard as she could in the back of the leg. Her ex lost his balance just as Terry caught him with a hook to the jaw, and Anders went down on one knee. He was starting to get up, eyes full of fury when a voice came from the hall.
“What’s going on?” Eric asked.
“Your father’s being an ass,” Rachel said.
Terry took that opportunity to back away from Anders, disengaging from the fight as the other man started to stand again.
“Dad, what are you doing?” Eric asked. He rubbed his eyes with a fist.
Something clicked in Anders’s head, and he stopped himself from going after Terry again. Both men backed up to opposite sides of the room, breathing heavily.
“I want to take you and your mom home again,” Anders said, between gasps. “You’ve been gone long enough.”
Eric frowned. “Please don’t hurt Terry,” he said. “He’s been really nice to us.”
“I’ll bet he has,” Anders said. His voice sounded nasty.
“This is ridiculous,” Rachel said. “I always knew you were a Neanderthal, but do you really think you can just throw me over your shoulder and drag me back to your cave? Seriously?”
She walked over to Anders and stood in front of him, staring straight into his eyes. “It’s over,” she said. “It was good for us once. But people change. I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want you anymore. You have to let this go. You have to let me go. If you want your son to respect you, then you need to act like a man, not an ape.”
Anders began to raise his arm towards her, as if to slap her, but Rachel didn’t budge. And before his palm was halfway up, he let it drop.
“I just wanted my family back,” he said. His voice was dangerously quiet.
“You need to move on,” Rachel said. “You need to start a new family with someone. And don’t make the same mistakes you did with us. That’s what I am trying to do with my life here.”
“Let’s all just sit, and chill out for a little bit,” Terry suggested.
“There’s some beer in the fridge,” Rachel suggested. “Or I could make some coffee.”
Anders rubbed his jaw, and nodded. “Beer’d be good,” he said. Then he looked at Eric. “Go on back to bed, boy. Everyone’s all right.”
Rachel gave Eric a hug, and then walked him back down the hall to his room.
Terry nodded towards the kitchen. “You want to talk?”
Anders shook his head. “Not really.” He walked into the kitchen and pulled out a chair at the table.
Terry nodded, and pulled out a chair on the other side of the table. The two men sat in silence until Rachel came back.
“Figures,” she said. “Neither one of you knows how to serve yourself.”
She pulled open the refrigerator door and brought three Yuengling lagers to the table. Nobody spoke as the tabs popped, almost in unison.
Anders tilted his back and gulped three long swigs. Terry sipped his, rubbing his jaw at the same time.
“Anyone really hurt?” she asked.
The two men shook their heads.
“We need to get out of here tomorrow,” Rachel said. “And I think we’ll have better luck if you’re not trying to tie us up or beat us up. So here’s what we’re going to do…”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Wednesday, May 22. 5:30 a.m.
“The flies are gone!”
Eric was kneeling on the couch in front of the picture window in the front room. Rachel walked up behind him, rubbing her eyes. It was barely dawn and she hadn’t gotten much sleep. Understandably. Anders had promised to behave, but it was hard to trust him. It had always been hard to trust him, but after last night’s stunt? She’d made Eric lock his door from the inside, and she and Terry had done the same.
But when she wasn’t thinking about what her ex-husband might try next, she was thinking about bugs. Every few minutes, she’d felt an itch or tickle or something on her legs or her arms, and she’d slapped a hand over the area, sure that she was killing a spider.
But her hand always came back empty, though her skin burned from her attacks. Each time Terry stirred beside her…she knew she was keeping him awake too. She couldn’t shake it though. Her skin kept crawling with the thoughts of tiny legs creeping over her pores.
The living room was still shadowed in the early morning light. Anders had left the guest room and was lying on the couch. She hoped he was dead.
“Look, Mom,” Eric said as she walked up. “It’s all clear!”
Rachel peered through the fuzz of web that now obscured the view of the front yard. The spiders had apparently continued their work from the side yard to extend their web all the way around the house. But Eric was right…beyond the occasional scurry of eight black legs across the web outside, the air outside appeared clear.
“Eye of the hurricane?” Terry suggested, walking up behind them. He put a protective hand around Rachel’s midsection.
“Our cue to get the hell out of this hellhole,” a heavy voice croaked from the couch.
Rachel’s heart sank. He wasn’t dead.
“We have food and water here,” Terry began to argue, but Anders shut him down.
“If I can get Eric to the truck without being bit, he and I are leaving here. It’s not safe. You two can stay here and be eaten alive, or come with us. That’s your choice. But Eric and I are leaving.”
“Where will we go?” Eric asked.
“Anyplace but here,” Anders said. “I didn’t see any spider webs ’til I hit this creepy town.”
“I want mom to come too,” Eric said.
Anders stood up with a grunt. “That’s up to her,” he said. “I’ll take all of you.”
Rachel looked at Terry, who held her gaze. After a second, he nodded.
“We’ll all go,” Rachel announced. “But first we need to pack some food and clothes.”
“You’ve got fifteen minutes,” Anders said. He walked to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and upended a plastic jug of milk to his lips.
Rachel closed her eyes and bit back her complaint. She hated it when Anders drank straight from the jug. And he didn’t even live here! This was just his way of showing her that he still “owned” her. But she refused to rise to the bait. She didn’t need to rile him up just before getting into a car with him. Instead, she walked to the bedroom to pull down a suitcase from the closet shelf.
The spiders had wreathed the entire house in a web thick as a cocoon. Rachel stood in the doorway that led out of the kitchen and into the carport. There was spider web everywhere. And as she stared, she could see the shadows moving in the tunnels that led throughout the enormous web. The flies may have left, but the spiders were still working on building a fortress around her house.
Terry spoke softly. “We can make it to yo
ur car if we’re quick. They’ll be alerted by sound and motion.”
“I’m not leaving my truck,” Anders began.
Terry shook his head. “If you try to break through that web, you’ll be bit a dozen times before you know it. We’ll use the car to break through. If you want to get out once we reach the street, that’s your call.”
Anders let it drop. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Go!” Terry said, and they all piled through the door, each carrying a suitcase or a box of food from the kitchen. Essentials.
Rachel popped the trunk and threw her case in before walking to the driver’s door. She grabbed the handle of the door but then jerked her hand back as if scalded. It came back sticky with web. Terry reached around her arm and yanked the door open. “No time,” he cautioned, and pushed her inside.
Eric had already hopped in and slid across the backseat. Anders followed him in and slammed the door.
Terry ran around the other side and opened the passenger door.
“Hurry,” Rachel called. She could see the web at the front of the carport quickly turning dark. The spiders were alerted to their exit. The ground was already moving just a few feet from the car. A swarm of black legs in motion.
The door slammed, and Terry was inside. Rachel started the engine, and put the car in reverse. The car plowed easily through the web, but now her back window was obscured by a cloud. And thousands of black legs shifted and moved in the middle of it all.
As they backed away from the house, Anders let out a gasp.
“Holy shit,” he said.
“Whoa,” Eric said.
As they pulled back, they all saw that the house was almost completely obscured by spider web. But it wasn’t just their house. It looked to be the entire block.
“It’s like they’ve captured our house!” Rachel said.
“It was only a matter of time before they got inside, to get to the prize,” Terry said.
“Us,” Eric breathed.
“Oh no, we’ll be safe in here,” Anders said with a drawl.
Rachel and Terry ignored the dig. She pulled out of the driveway and turned into the street.
“Stop!” Anders demanded. “We’re not leaving my truck.”
“We’re in this one together,” Rachel said. “And I don’t think you’d want to try to get in your truck anyway.” She pulled up next to the vehicle, which had its own cocoon forming around it. The street itself seemed alive. The spiders were a wave of black legs, running from grass to asphalt and back to grass again. They shifted back and forth, spinning thicker webs. The crunch of their bodies beneath the tires was audible inside the cab as she pulled away. Anders didn’t demand to be let out at his truck, when he saw the number of spiders running up and down its driver’s side door.
Rachel drove slowly through the neighborhood, looking at the homes that had been captured by the spiders. Passanattee looked as if it had snowed overnight. And it never snowed here. Ever.
“Mom?” Eric asked, as they passed Tracie Wilkins’ house. “Do you think anyone is still alive inside these houses?”
“Maybe,” she said. She wasn’t about to tell him that his friend was probably lying inside, being eaten by spiders. “We were.”
She turned onto Main and drove slowly through the center of town. It was still early, but the road seemed strangely empty.
Empty except for the spiders. They were everywhere. And it was quickly apparent that it wasn’t just Rachel and Eric’s neighborhood that had been overrun, seemingly overnight. The webs were everywhere, obscuring buildings, covering automobiles, stretching from trees across the road. Rachel drove through it, and used her windshield wipers to clear them away from her view. Black legs skittered ahead and behind the wipers like angry rain.
“Where did they all come from?” Eric whispered.
“I’d say from there, and there…and there.” Terry pointed at three silk-wreathed forms lying on the sidewalks of the downtown. It was clear that the web surrounded people. Or rather, corpses.
“I don’t think the spiders came from people,” Anders snorted.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Terry said. “These spiders are some kind of new parasite. I don’t think they’re really spiders at all, but some kind of mutation. We were talking about it a couple days ago, after we found the first animals dead by the Everglades. I think they actually hatch inside the body and gestate there until they’re fully mature. Then they eat their way out of the bodies to hunt for other food. We found some animals near the edge of the ’glades that had these things streaming out of them. And it was clear that some of them were just tiny babies. They hadn’t shown up to feed…they were born there.”
“Gross,” Eric said.
“I can’t say exactly where they came from,” Terry added. “But some of the ones running around this street probably did come from those poor people.”
“That is fucked up,” Anders said.
“Language!” Rachel warned. “I’m trying to teach Eric not to swear, I don’t need you to show him a bad example.”
“I think he can handle it,” Anders said. “This is kind of an unusual situation right now. And it is absolutely—let me be blunt here—fucked up.”
They passed through the center of town and were moving back into a residential area when Eric suddenly said, “Mom, stop the car!”
She hit the brakes. “What’s wrong?”
“Look at them!”
Eric pointed out the front window to the street ahead. “They’re not moving.”
It was true. The street was still covered in the bodies of spiders, but the movement of the carpet of legs had stopped. Here and there a spider crept one way or the other, negotiating around the still forms. But mostly, the spiders were frozen. It was as if their batteries had all run down, and they’d stopped in place.
Rachel took her foot off the brake and let the car roll forward. One block went by, and then another. The spiders were legion. And eerily…still. She pulled up along the curb, and put the car in park.
“What are you doing?” Anders asked.
“Susan lives here,” Rachel explained. “I want to see if she’s okay.”
“We really shouldn’t go out there,” Terry suggested.
“They’re dead,” Rachel said. “Something has happened. Maybe the Public Works department got off their asses and sprayed some pesticide.”
“We tried spraying them,” Terry countered. “RAID didn’t even slow them down.”
Rachel shrugged. “You guys can wait here, but I just want to check on her.”
She opened the door and started to step out onto the parkway.
“I’m coming with,” Anders and Terry both said at the same time. As soon as the words were out, they glared at each other over the seat.
“C’mon,” Terry said to Eric. “We’re sticking together.”
They all followed Rachel, four doors slamming almost in unison. She walked quickly up the sidewalk to Susan’s place, a small four-story apartment with brown brick and faint green siding. Spider bodies crunched like popcorn beneath their shoes as they walked.
Rachel rang the doorbell, and waited. She turned away from the door, looking at the other three. They were watching her, and stealing glances side-to-side at the horde of still bugs all around. Nervous.
If the things all suddenly came alive, they would be overcome before they could scream. But Rachel didn’t think there was anything to worry about. When you stopped and really looked at them, most of the spider bodies nearby were now nothing but shells. They were paler than their moving brethren. Pale because you could actually see through them. They were like locust shells—whatever had been inside them had moved on, leaving behind the skins.
Nobody answered the door.
“Maybe she’s not home,” Terry offered.
Rachel shook her head and pointed to the blue Mazda parked on the street.
“That’s her car.”
Rachel trie
d the door knob of the big wooden door, but not surprisingly, it was locked. She knocked a few times and then stood back to wait again.
“Mom, look over there.” Eric was pointing to the side of the building. He stepped off the stoop and began to cross the yard.
“Eric, don’t go over there!” Rachel pushed past Anders and followed her son, grabbing him by the arm just as they reached the object of his curiosity. A body. And like the ones they’d seen in town, it was covered in spider web. Terry and Anders appeared a second later. They separated naturally, one taking up position on the opposite side of her than the other.
“Oh Jesus,” Rachel breathed, and forced Eric’s face to her belly, forbidding him from looking.
Susan lay on the ground on her back. A million strands of silk tied her body to the grass, and partially obscured some of her clothes. Spiders had spun their silk across her face too, but not enough to obscure the damage that they had done.
Susan’s eyes were gone.
In their place, were two dark red tunnels into her skull. Rachel could see the glimmer of white deep inside her friend’s braincase that might have been the edge of one of her eyeballs. But she wasn’t going to step closer to find out.
As she struggled to stifle the tears that demanded to come, she saw the legs of a black spider curl up over the edge of one of Susan’s empty eye sockets, and pull itself out to stand on the base of her nose. Another followed.
“That’s fucked up,” Anders said.
Rachel shook her head, willing the image away. She hugged Eric close and stopped herself from seeing the ravaged body of her friend…
“Hey, you people!”
Rachel, Anders, Terry and Eric turned as one to see who’d called out. The voice came from across the street. There was a woman standing on the front porch of one of the houses there. As they watched, the woman used the handle of a broom to break a hole in the webbing that partially obscured her from their view.