by Nora Penn
There was a resonant CRUNCH as James’ teeth punctured the spider’s thick hide.
“Good job Daddy!” Carol shouted.
There was a high pitched sound like the scream of an eagle and the leg was withdrawn. James saw that the leg was bent and felt proud that he had done so much damage. He only wished that he had some poison to inject into the spider so that the tables could be truly turned. As he had these thoughts the spider went into a fit of twitching atop the vehicle.
James took the opportunity to guide Carol through the window. He tried to be gentle but they had to move fast. As soon as his daughter was clear of the window he pushed her into the water outside.
“Swim to the other shore!” he shouted, and then turned to grab some random things. He didn’t have time to gather all of the equipment, just the essentials. Thinking as quickly as possible, he snatched up the holster with his pistol in it and the URH radio and shoved them into Carol’s One Direction backpack, which laid on the floor of the vehicle. He zipped up the backpack, slipped his arms into the hoops of the too-small item – a tight fit to be sure, but he made due – and then jumped through the window himself. By that point the windows of the RV were half under water so he had to angle himself so as not to scrape his back on the top of the window.
As soon as James was free of the sinking RV, he reached out and took Carol’s hand. His daughter clutched at him tightly while he swam away. Luckily, the shore was nearby and they managed to scramble onto solid ground. While Carol was still holding onto James’ arm, he turned around the see the RV as it sank lower and lower. The giant spider was having a cataclysmic freak out session as the water rose up around it.
Rather than attempt to brave the water, the spider clung to the roof of the RV. James and Carol watched the RV fill up with water. In a few seconds the vehicle would be completely below the surface.
And then a strange thing happened.
The RV stopped sinking.
“What the…?” James muttered, being careful to omit the final curse word while in the presence of his young daughter.
“Why isn’t it sinking???” Carol whined. Like James, she was afraid of the spider that still clung to the RV’s roof.
The answer was all too obvious.
“The river isn’t that deep,” James growled. He was as disappointed as she was. The RV was a loss either way, but at least he had hoped it would sink and take the spider down with it. The fact that the water was so muddy had masked the fact that it was only about six feet deep.
As the father and daughter stood watching on the opposite shore, James reached into Carol’s One Direction backpack and pulled out his pistol. Both it and the URH radio appeared to be dry. He cocked the weapon and slid over the Safety.
He was glad that he had done this as the giant spider that sat on the RV like a frog on a lily pad was eyeing them angrily. James was pretty sure it wasn’t just his imagination when he detected the fathomless hatred in the spider’s eyes. And besides hatred, there was something else present in the creature’s gaze: coldblooded calculation.
James was just about to tell Carol to run when the giant spider sprang from the RV’s roof. It was the kind of jump that only certain spiders can accomplish, but it put the giant spider safely on their side of the gulch. No sooner had the giant spider landed on the muddy shore than James pulled the trigger of his pistol.
There was a thunderbolt clap and the spider wobbled unsteadily. A trickle of black blood ran down the center of its hairy face. But even though the bullet had hit the wooly beast in the center of its head, the godforsaken creature kept on.
James fired again, this time aiming the shot a little higher – at where he figured the giant spider’s malevolent brain resided. This shot did the trick. The giant spider took another two steps and then collapsed in a pile of twitching legs.
“That was a close one!” Carol squealed, reiterating what James was already thinking.
“It certainly was, darling,” James agreed. He was just glad that he had the pistol on him, or he and his daughter would almost certainly be a spider’s brunch.
“Daddy! Look!” Carol cried and pointed up at the rim on the opposite side of the gulch.
James looked up and his heart nearly stopped. To his horror hundreds of giant spiders had begun to amass on the edge. Again, he had the distinct impression that the spiders were looking down at him and Carol with a rabid animosity. He usually reserved words like hatred and evil for members of the human species. But now he would have to change his stance on such matters, as these creatures were most obviously capable of hatred, and not only of hatred, but of the most diabolical and decidedly calculating evil.
James had already grabbed Carol’s hand and was backing away from the shore, when the first wave of spiders began to scuttle down their side of the gulch. Although the spiders hated water, they had seen the spider that was on James’ RV make a successful jump from the RV’s roof to the opposite side of the river. They were intelligent enough to calculate the span from either side of the RV. They could jump – one at a time – from their side of the shore, to the RV’s roof, and then to the side of the shore with James and Carol. In short, the father and daughter team were no longer safe.
James picked up Carol and began to run at a breakneck pace up their side of the gully. The sides of the gulch were slick with mud, and he slid back a few feet once or twice, but by sheer determination he made it halfway up the side of the gulch. At that point, however, the gulch curved so that the rim of the gulch was an overhang above them. James knew there was no way Carol could climb up this by herself.
“I’ve got a plan, sweetheart,” he said to his daughter. “Hold out your arms!”
Carol did as she was told and he put the One Direction backpack around her arms and tied it snug on her back.
“Now climb on my back,” he said hurriedly.
Carol did just as he asked.
The loosely dangling straps from the One Direction backpack were long enough for James to grab hold of. He pulled these around his front and tied them in a makeshift knot, so that Carol was securely fastened to his back. Then he stood up and looked at the overhang above him.
The overhang was mostly muddy and appeared to be composed of loose dirt that would crumble away if he tried to hang on to it. Still, there was a thick root up above that looped from the edge of the cliff. It looked old and tough. It probably belonged to a nearby tree that James couldn’t see due to their position. At any rate, it would have to do. Without thinking too much about how much danger they were both in, James leaped up as high as he could with Carol on his back and managed to grab ahold of the thick root with both hands.
Then it was just a matter of doing an old fashioned pull-up, like he used to do on the monkey bars in his playground back when he was a kid. The only issue, he realized, was that he needed to grab ahold of something over the lip of the gully’s edge, once he had his arm over it, so that he could pull himself and Carol up. If it was just loose dirt and grass, they would be royally screwed.
As he hung from the thick root, mentally preparing himself for the difficult move he had to perform, he cast a glance downward. This glance was met with a bit of good news and a bit of bad news. The bad news was that the spiders had made it to the bottom of the gully and were starting to amass in a bristling bunch along the opposite shore. The first spider was in the process of leaping to the roof of the RV. Actually “bad news” wasn’t the word for this development. Awful news is more like it.
The good news was that the ocean tide was starting to come in. James could see the rising line of waves in the distance and could tell that the river’s water had risen by an inch or two, so that the top of the RV was now half-covered with water. In a minute or two the RV’s roof would be fully submerged, which he prayed would stop the giant spiders from using it as a “hop to” point in their pursuit of him and Carol. Even so, he realized that plenty of spiders could make it to their side before that happened. So this wasn’t ex
actly great news. “Possibly promising” news would be a better way of putting it.
James shook his head to clear his thoughts and focused on the crucial task of getting him and Carol out of the gully. He tightened his grip on the thick root and pulled his torso upward in a pull up motion. James was in excellent shape and so he was able to pull both himself and Carol up. When he put his chin over the edge of the gully, he threw one arm over and felt around for something solid to grab onto. Luckily there was a hardy little shrub growing near the edge. He wrapped his hand around one of the shrub’s branches and began to pull himself and Carol over the lip of the gully.
As he twisted his hand around the shrub’s branch, however, the entire plant came loose in a spray of mud and gravel. Having lost his tenuous grasp on the earth, James and Carol fell backward into the gully.
The spiders hissed in evil glee.
Chapter 24
Hannah rocked her newborn infant while holding him close to her chest.
“Shhh Sweetheart,” she said while lightly patting him on his head. “It’s going to be alright.”
Ben had been crying fitfully off and on for an hour but he had finally calmed down. Hannah was grateful for this because she didn’t know if the spiders could hear the child. If there were any nearby, she certainly didn’t want them to know that the two of them were hiding inside the lighthouse. Hannah went to the porthole window that looked out at the veranda and peered through it for the tenth or twelfth time that hour.
Where Bill had been lying on the chaise lounge had turned to a pile of ashes. Beyond that there stretched the yard of the lighthouse. For the time being at least the place seemed clear. As she watched anxiously through the window, Hannah wondered how Sonja was faring on her mission to stop James and Carol before they made it to New York City. She said a silent prayer that all of them – James, Carol, and Sonja – made it back safely. Once that happened, they could start planning on how to survive until humanity started to rebuild. And if there was a God in Heaven, as she knew there must be, then He would provide a way to save Carol from the cancer that was slowly growing in her brain.
As Hannah scrutinized the surroundings outside, Ben started to make an urgent gurgling sound which she immediately recognized.
“Are you starting to get hungry, Sweetheart?” she asked softly.
Ben continued gurgling, with even greater insistence.
“Okay there, Mister Greedy,” Hannah said with a smile. “Just give me a second.”
Hannah pulled open her blouse, while carefully cradling Ben in her arms, and took out her breast for the child to suckle on. As soon as Ben had the nipple in his mouth he quieted down and sucked silently. His little face was a picture of perfect peace.
“I hope you never have to know how awful the world can be…” Hannah whispered to the child, knowing that he couldn’t understand but nevertheless wanting to impart this sentiment which came from the deepest part of her soul.
Ben’s eyes were closed. He looked like a little Buddha with his chubby cheeks and bald head.
“And maybe,” Hannah kept whispering. “By the time you’re old enough to understand the world, things will be better.”
At that point there was a sound that sent a chill running down Hannah’s spine. It was a freaky sound, like the tines of a thousand combs being strummed in unison. She recognized it, because she had heard it many times before. It was the sound of the hairs on a spider’s legs rubbing together. It was a sound the spiders made whenever they crawled in a large group. And it was accompanied by the sound of their chewing mandibles. It was the sound of boiling pretzels.
With her lower lip trembling she put her face back to the porthole window and looked outside.
She gasped at the sight that met her frightened eyes. And this gasp turned into a bloodcurdling scream.
Chapter 25
James and Carol skidded down the side of the gully, getting covered with mud in the process. Carol’s backpack straps came loose as they tumbled, causing them to separate. James frantically reached out to take Carol’s hand. At the same time he clutched at the sides of the gully, looking for anything that might slow their descent. They were barreling towards certain doom. For by that point a number of spiders had jumped across the river, using the RV’s roof, and were waiting for them at the bottom of the muddy slope.
The father and daughter finally came to a stop halfway down the gully’s side, at the point where the angle of the gully wall had started to taper outward towards the ravine. As soon as they came to a halt, James pulled his pistol from the holster and spun around to face the giant spiders.
He was just in time. One of the spiders was almost upon them. Knowing that he was running short on bullets, James aimed at where he thought the shot would do the most damage, which was the rounded top of the head that rose up behind the spider’s row of unblinking eyes. He pulled the trigger and an explosion ripped off the top of the rounded hub, exposing a grayish pink mass that looked as close to a spider’s brain as anything James had ever seen. Whether or not this was the case was beside the point, for no sooner had the bullet hit the brain than the giant spider collapsed, frozen in death.
Now that James had a surefire method of killing the things, he lifted his pistol and took aim at the second spider to approach. He saw that there were three spiders in all. These were the ones that had made it to their side of the river. Behind the three spiders the river water had risen to a point that completely submerged the RV, and thus removed the means of crossing for the rest of the giant spiders, who were waving their legs angrily on the opposite shore.
James wasn’t sure how many bullets he had left. Such was the disorienting nature of fighting off giant spiders. But he supposed that he had just enough to polish off the remaining trio. At least he hoped that would be the case.
The three spiders advanced. Again, James could see the unbridled rage in their eyes. It was an emotion that went beyond mere hunger. It was pure animosity; a hatred for humans that made the human race’s considerable capacity for hatred positively pale in comparison. The giant spiders were deadly hate machines, he reflected, and utterly without peer in the animal kingdom. Whether they had always possessed this hatred for the human race – even in their earlier, normal-sized form – and only now had a means to give vent to it, or whether it was a new development that coincided with their evolution, James couldn’t say. He only knew that the hairy beasts were dead set on his and his daughter’s destruction.
“Get behind me!” he shouted to his daughter.
Carol had no trouble obeying. The fact is that she had been crying from fear ever since she and her father had slipped back down their side of the gully. She wanted nothing more than for the giant spiders to disappear and was hoping to heaven that her father would somehow make them go away.
As the first of the three spiders scuttled towards them, with the other two just behind it, James leveled his pistol, taking careful aim at the creature’s brain, and pulled the trigger.
Bingo!
The top of the spider’s head was obliterated, sending a spray of grayish pink matter in every direction. The spider collapsed and the other two spiders scuttled over its dead body.
James focused on the nearer of the two and aimed. He pulled the trigger and the second spider’s head exploded, showering great gouts of spider brains in a glorious splash. This spider also sank and expired in a lifeless heap.
Two down, one to go.
The third of the giant spiders continued towards them unfazed. James saw the red rage brimming in its multiple eyes. He shook off the spooked feeling this gave him and took careful aim. Then he pulled the trigger.
And nothing.
The hammer clicked but there were no more bullets in the gun.
“Fuck!” James cursed, momentarily forgetting his no-cursing-around-Carol rule.
The spider raced ahead, front legs flailing, to attack them.
James dropped the pistol in the dirt and pulled out his knife. Rat
her than wait for the creature to sink its fangs into him he leaped forward, angling himself between the hairy front legs. As he flew through the air he lifted the knife in both hands, like a vampire’s stake, and brought it down with all his might.
The point of James’ fishing knife hit the spider in the exact center of its head, right where the spider’s brain was located. Because of the sheer force of the knife’s impact, the blade was driven all the way into the creature, down to the hilt. The sensation of the hilt making contact with the spider’s skull was profoundly satisfying.
James felt like a matador who had managed to slay his opponent. As he stared into the spider’s row of unblinking eyes he watched the malevolent gleam of its intelligence gradually dull. The light of the spider’s intelligence dulled, but strangely…it did not go out completely.
Nor did the spider stop working its mandibles. The mouth of the giant Black Hermit Spider is an especially grotesque piece of business. It has two sets of fangs, an upper and a lower set, with the lower set being larger, so that it has an almost boar-like look to its face. What’s more there are two sets of pincers on either side of its prickly maw. These pincers are used to pull food into the spider’s chomping mouth. The overall appearance of the thing is a maelstrom of grinding edges. As James stared at the ugly creature, it continued to chomp on nothing, as if it were running on some sort of auto piloted dementia.
On top of all that, the spider’s legs continued to writhe, even as its head remained lowered. To finally kill the beast, James decided to twist the knife. But when he did this something quite unexpected happened. By twisting the blade in the spider’s brain to the left, the creature’s left set of legs were activated. They began to pump up and down in a scuttling motion. As soon as he realized what was happening he twisted the knife back to the right. When he did this, the creature’s right set of legs were activated. He finally pushed back on the knife, which had the consequence of finally stilling the creature, although the dull light in its eyes continued to gleam ever so slightly.