by Nora Penn
“Hurry Mommy!” Carol screamed at the top of her lungs. “The spiders are going to get us!”
Behind them the ice cream man had abandoned his cart and was also running. The wave of spiders caught up with him and instantly swept up his legs, swarming all over his body until he was covered with their black twitching legs and pendulous bellies.
The scream that the ice cream man made was blood curdling.
“Don’t look!” Hannah shouted to Carol and they continued to hustle as fast as they could.
It was for the best that Hannah prevented her daughter from seeing the carnage. The spiders had immediately set to biting the ice cream man all over his body. The venom – which is one of the deadliest substances known to mankind – was injected into his flesh and instantly began to transform him. As he poured forth a gurgling wail his flesh began to expand, imitating the sort of bloating that occurs when a dead body has been left in water for several weeks. His flesh turned purple and burst open, letting out geysers of pus and blood. The man’s head swelled up like a bubble and popped. The resulting splatter painted the dock. This horrible sight lasted for only an instant, however, as the man’s corpse was quickly buried by successive waves of spiders crawling from the explosion sight.
If one could have looked down at the city of Boston from a helicopter, they would have seen a gigantic black stain emanating from the blast sight of the laboratory. This “stain” was comprised of millions upon millions of Black Hermit Spiders. It expanded outward and absorbed the bodies of any humans unlucky enough to be in its path. It acted as a giant amoeba, growing with each body it came across. The city of Boston was full of shrill screaming as its populace woke up to the terror in their midst.
Hannah and Carol, meanwhile, had managed to reach the end of the dock. Standing there they could see a boat swiftly approaching. Even though the figure in the boat was far away, they could tell it was James in his motorboat. Hannah’s husband was a lobster fisherman with his own fishing boat that he kept anchored in the bay. The motorboat was merely a vessel to get back and forth from his fishing boat, which was named the Happy Clam. The Happy Clam was floating in the further distance. Hannah could tell that James was going top speed from the enormous wake that the boat was leaving behind it.
Standing at the edge of the dock, she looked down into the frothy waters of the Bay. The drop was several feet. She cupped her belly in her hands and looked to Carol at her side. Her daughter was crying.
Hannah cast one last look over her shoulder. The wave of black spiders was almost upon them.
“Hold my hand!” Hannah commanded to Carol. Her daughter took her hand. “Now hold tight! And jump!”
Hannah and Carol’s feet left the dock just as the wave of spiders bubbled to the end of the dock. The woman and the child plummeted feet first into the cold water. Hannah made sure to lean back, so that her belly wouldn’t hit the water directly. Even so, the impact with the water and the chillingly cold temperature of the water was a shock to her system. Carol, likewise, was shaken up by the dive and the cold water. The two of them waded in place, in a sort of catatonic shock, as James approached in his motorboat. He slowed the boat down and turned it, so that it presented its side to the two castaways.
“Thank God you two are safe!” he said with deep relief, a relief that could have been felt up in heaven.
James reached with muscular arms into the water and lifted Carol out of the water and into the boat. His daughter was silently shivering with her arms wrapped around herself. James then turned to Hannah, who looked as if she was about to expire. He was careful to turn Hannah around and lift her so that her back was facing the boat and her belly was up. As gently as he could, he pulled her into the boat. She too was shivering and holding herself. Once she was in the boat she looked at her husband and said “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“I love the both of you so much,” James said and put his arms around “his girls.” The three of them shared a long hug as they bobbed in the motorboat.
“The dive into the water was the thing that saved you,” James told them as they held each other. “Look…”
He gestured at the cement dock. The spiders had crawled down the front and sides of the dock, so that they almost touched the water, but stayed just above the water line. It was obvious that their insatiable desire to bite and consume human flesh had run up against an insurmountable obstacle. Their hatred of water was the only thing strong enough to nullify their insane hunger.
Looking at the spiders from several feet away, Hannah recalled her conversation with her daughter from only a moment ago. She recalled how she had said that spiders were neither nice nor mean.
But as she stared at their clusters of unblinking eyes, gleaming opaquely like wet blackberries, she had the distinct impression that she had been wrong. Looking at the spiders’ eyes, she saw that the creatures were possessed with a hatred for humanity that chilled her to the marrow.
Chapter 3
They took the motorboat out to James’ fishing vessel – the Happy Clam – which was anchored a few knots outside Boston Harbor. There James was able to give Hannah and Carol some warm clothes to wear – although they were fisherman’s clothes and not exactly appropriate attire – and blankets. As the two girls warmed themselves up, James turned on his URH radio. It crackled with static as he tried to find a signal. James was intent upon establishing contact with any nearby survivors. Both his and Hannah’s phones had gone dead. The URH would be their only connection to the mainland. As he searched for a station he hoped he’d come across some sort of public address or government advisory.
As he picked up various radio signals, they all revealed the state of chaos the city of Boston had fallen into. There were screams and calls for help. James had trouble telling just how far the spider invasion had spread. When he looked at the city with his naked eye, it appeared that the spiders were everywhere. The swarm of the venomous beasts resembled a thick black moss or carpet that coated the entire city, from the sidewalks and up the sides of the buildings. It was hard to imagine any living thing surviving in their midst. The dominion of the spiders was so vast, James reflected, that there couldn’t possibly be enough food to keep them all fed.
One of the signals he picked up was from a cruise ship. The ship’s captain frantically told the tale of how the cruise ship was docked and some spiders had managed to get up the gangplank and attack everyone on the ship. The captain cried as he reported that his father had died. James closed his eyes as he listened to the grim tale. The captain added that he was locked in his captain’s quarters and didn’t know how he would escape. He then said in a voice shaking from fear that the spiders were crawling through the space under the door. He relayed this unfortunate bit of news and then screamed. James turned down the volume, careful not to let Hannah and Carol hear the grim transmission, lest it rattle their nerves even more.
He put the headset back on its stand and went to check on the ladies.
“Oh, so you found the bacon?” he said to Hannah, finding her in the ship’s tiny kitchen frying up bacon in a skillet. Carol was sitting at the counter.
“Yeah, I see that you have a ton of bacon and beef jerky, but not much in the way of vegetables or carbohydrates.”
“I can also fish,” James added the obvious. “So we won’t go hungry.”
“We’re completely covered as far as protein is concerned, but that’s hardly a well-rounded diet,” Hannah commented.
James frowned. “Yes, we’ll have to go ashore at some point. I’m trying to decide if we should go North to Maine, or head South to New York. How big is this spider invasion, do you think?” He was asking the question in the rhetorical sense, since Hannah couldn’t answer the question any better than he could.
“I’m going to keep trying to reach folks with the URH,” he added. “If there’s anyone alive within 200 miles, I’ll be able to find them. Then we can make some kind of a plan. Those little bastards can’t be all over the world.�
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“God, I hope not…” Hannah sighed.
James pulled open a drawer and pulled out a pack of Camels. He tapped one out into his hand.
“So that’s where you keep them…” Hannah said drily. She turned off the skillet.
“Daddy!” Carol squealed. “I thought you quit smoking a year ago!”
James looked at his daughter and a brief expression of regret came over his features. He put the cigarette back in the pack.
“Did I hear somebody say ‘Peppa Drawing Contest’?” James said, making a clumsy non-sequitur.
“Peppa!” Carol squeaked in happiness.
“I think I have some pencils and paper around here.” James opened another drawer.
“I have paper and crayons in my backpack!”
Carol dragged her One Direction backpack off the floor and put it on the tiny kitchen counter. The backpack was already partially open, with Carol’s school supplies and coloring books partially visible within. Carol pulled the zipper back so that the opening was widened. As she did this a fat spider came scrambling out.
“Look out!” James shouted to Carol and Hannah.
No sooner had he said this than the spider jumped at him. For a creature the size of a man’s fist it had amazing ability to propel itself. James spun out of its way and pulled his fishing knife out of his pocket. The spider landed on the wall. One second later James’ thrown knife impaled it against the wall with a spectacular splat.
“Got ‘em,” James commented.
“How the heck did that thing get in there?!?!” Hannah asked.
“It probably jumped in her backpack just as you guys dove off the dock. We should check if there are any more.”
James had Hannah and Carol step back, so that they would be out of harm’s way. Then he carefully unzipped the backpack to examine it. After poking around for a minute he concluded that there were no more spiders.
He then set about retrieving his knife from where it had been stuck in the wall, being sure that the spider it impaled was dead before he scraped it into the trash. He wiped the knife off on a towel, staining the cloth black, and decided to toss the towel in the trash also.
The episode with the hidden spider had cast a pall over their kitchen. Carol ended up pulling out her crayons and drawing pictures of Peppa, but James and Hannah couldn’t shake the feeling that the world had gone horribly wrong.
Chapter 4
Over the next few weeks James, Hannah, and Carol continued to live aboard James’s fishing boat, the Happy Clam. They motored along the coast, making occasional stops for supplies. It was always James who ventured onto land. More often than not he found whatever town he entered filled with dead bodies. Because of the necrosis the spider bites caused, the bodies were always in terrible shape. The piles of bloated corpses had turned the world into a vision of hell.
Strangely, the spiders traveled collectively in giant swarms. James would guess there were a dozen or so of these “swarms” moving from city to city along the coast looking for food. In addition to people, the spiders fed on anything with a heartbeat, including cows and horses and people’s pets. The spiders had done their job well, essentially clearing the coastal landscape of not only all human but even all animal life. Only the birds in the sky and the fish in the ocean seemed to be safe from the horde.
James wasn’t sure why the spiders preferred to travel together, but he was glad they did, as it meant that they didn’t leave stragglers behind to attack. The stray spider that had jumped into Carol’s backpack had been an anomaly.
One negative, however, was the disconcerting fact that the spiders were getting larger. They had gone from being the size of mice to being the size of squirrels. And then, on his most recent trip ashore, he saw a few spiders that were the size of small dogs. He imagined they weighed about 10 pounds each. What’s more, their jumping abilities increased with their size, which meant that you had to keep an even greater distance from them.
There were some other human survivors, all of them people with boats. Everyone ashore seemed to have been killed, which meant of course that all of James’s and Hannah’s friends and relatives had died, and even Carol’s school friends. This realization hit all three of them hard. But they pushed aside their grief so they could concentrate on their own survival. Even so, James knew that if the spider apocalypse were to ever come to an end, they would have to go back to their home and try to find the friends and family who had been killed and bury them properly.
The other survivors in this strange new world were mostly fisherman or people with yachts. During his brief interactions with other survivors James made a point of not revealing that he had his family aboard his boat with him. He knew that the current state of the world was totally lawless and he certainly didn’t need any rapists or child molesters trying to get aboard his boat in search of his wife and kid. And so he kept his communications with other survivors short. He let them know that he was armed and generally acted distant whenever he dealt with them. The other survivors were mostly the same way, courteous but not exactly friendly. James also made a point of keeping his fishing boat far out to sea, going through the extra trouble of taking his motorboat the extra distance to get to shore. It was worth it for the peace of mind, even if it meant using more gas. The Happy Clam could still be seen by the other boats, but it was so far out that it would be a hassle to get to it. Even so, James made a point of showing Hannah how to shoot and left a 22 with her so that she would be armed if she had any unwanted visitors.
James sometimes felt bad for Hannah and Carol, who hadn’t left the boat since their narrow escape several weeks before. But that’s the way it had to be, at least for a little while. If the world ever turned back to normal, he would take them to the park every day of their lives.
Hannah, on top of all her other concerns, had the impending birth of their son to think about. James had made sure to stock the fishing boat with all of the medical supplies that he thought they would need, along with several months’ supply of baby food and diapers. He had even located a book on how to help a woman through childbirth, although truth be told, he wasn’t at all sure of how he would handle that momentous day, which he suspected was only a few short weeks away.
One overcast morning James was packing supplies on the motorboat for his next trip ashore. Before leaving, he stuck his head in the boat for a few words with Hannah and to give her and Carol a goodbye kiss.
“James,” Hannah said after giving him his customary goodbye kiss, “please remember to bring Algopyrin. That’s the only thing that really works for Carol’s headaches.”
“How much of it do we have left?”
“We have half a bottle, but she’s going through it quick and we’ll need more shortly.
Algopyrin was the only kind of headache medicine that seemed to help their daughter. Carol was getting constant headaches and they seemed to be getting worse and worse. This fact gnawed at the back of his thoughts at all times and each time he went on a jaunt inland he prayed that he would come across a doctor who was still alive, so he could take him back to the boat to look at Carol. He would be the one exception to the ‘No Visitors’ rule.
“Don’t worry,” James said kindly. “I won’t forget the Algopyrin. On the topic of things not to forget, please don’t forget to leave the lid off the rain reservoir,” he instructed. “It looks like it’s going to rain today and we need the extra water. Also, remember that the 22 is loaded. If anyone approaches the boat, make sure Carol is out of sight and then make a point of showing the gun to anyone who comes up alongside the boat. They’ll get the point that we’re armed and that we don’t appreciate looters.”
Hannah listened patiently to James’ instructions and then gave him some instructions of her own, mostly a list of things to pick up from his foray into whatever town he ended up in.
“And James…”
“Yes dear?”
“Remember that I love you.”
“Of course Sweetie,�
� James flashed Hannah a smile. “I love you too.”
“I love you too Daddy!” Carol cried happily as she came tearing around the corner. She hugged both James and Hannah at once. Her father leaned down, picked her up, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“Alright, you two,” he said with fatherly concern. “Take care of each other while I’m away. It should only be a few hours. When I get back we can fry up that halibut I caught yesterday.”
“Can you bring me some candy?!?!” Carol pleaded.
“We’ll see, sweetheart. Remember, there aren’t too many dentists left to take care of your teeth if you get any cavities.”
Carol pouted. Rather than give in to her pleading or make any promises he couldn’t keep, James gave her a kiss on the forehead.
Hannah gave her husband another kiss and then James went out on deck and hopped on the smaller boat, starting the motor, and then roared off towards shore.
As he guided the motorboat ashore he kept his eye out first and foremost for the “swarm” of spiders. If he saw the giant black stain moving over the city, he would simply pull the boat back out and try a mile or two down the coast. It wasn’t worth it trying to outsmart the spiders. They were too big, too numerous, and too hungry to fuck with.
Secondly, he kept his eye open for any other humans, who he trusted about as much as the spiders. For this reason he made it a habit to tie up the boat in an out of the way place, just as a precaution. There were no laws to keep property from being stolen. If someone took the motorboat he would have to steal another boat just to get back to Hannah and Carol. He didn’t want to do that so he made sure to keep the motorboat hidden. The best place, he found, was in tall reeds. Then he could walk up to shore through the water, using his rubber fishing suspenders to keep from getting wet.