“It explains the hatching patterns, too.” That came from Billy Cannon, who was on the chesterfield opposite Manny and Steph. “Right? One of the reasons this has been such a disaster is modern transportation. On their own, they seem like they could only spread a few miles. But with planes and trains and cars . . .”
“Yes! Exactly!” Melanie jabbed her finger at Billy, excited.
Manny ducked his head, trying to hide the small smile that had come across his face unbidden. Things would never go back to the way they had once been between him and his ex-wife, but seeing how excited she could get when she was in her element reminded him of why he’d fallen in love with her in the first place. Of course, it was that same passion for her work that had ultimately undone them, but that was another story.
“Ten thousand years ago, the spiders wouldn’t have been able to travel like this. We’ve done some analysis and, best as we can tell, there are a number of locations in China and in India that were primary sites for the emergence of the Hell Spiders, and then those spiders found carriers who spread eggs to other, secondary sites. Los Angeles was a secondary site. A hundred or two hundred years ago, North America would probably have been spared all of this. And, at least as of right now, New Zealand and Australia are both completely untouched. Ironic, of course, given how many poisonous things live in Australia.”
“Peru.” Manny said it quietly, and then he said it again, louder. “Peru. The Brits . . . Before we left the White House. The Brits said they thought this all may have started in Peru. Ground zero.”
Melanie nodded. “It’s possible. But that’s not the important thing right this second. What’s important is that we’ve got these three kinds of Hell Spiders, right? First wave seem like they’re there to spread as far as they can and to remove any possible threats. The second wave does something similar, but they also serve as feeders. They keep food cocooned up for safekeeping and seem to bring it to the queens while the queens are still developing in their egg sacs. Swipe over for slide three, four, and then five.”
Manny felt the wave of revulsion sweep through the room as people swiped. The first photo was recognizably a human body underneath a shroud of silk. The spiderweb was thickest around the upper body and head, thankfully, so he didn’t have to see the person’s face, but it was gossamer-thin around the person’s bare ankles and feet. The second photo was from a greater distance and a bit grainy, as if it had been lifted from surveillance footage, and it showed five different lumpy, cocooned bodies. The final slide was clearly satellite footage, and it showed a football stadium. He used his fingers to zoom in. He could see the Ole Miss logo partially and terrifyingly obscured by white-cloaked bodies at midfield. When he zoomed out so that he could see the whole stadium, there were a hundred bodies, maybe two hundred, and the stands were speckled with black dots that became more and more concentrated toward one end, until the southeast corner of the stands looked like a giant unified black mass.
Something caught his eye at the northeast corner of the stadium. He flicked his thumb and forefinger to zoom in. The picture was extremely high resolution, and as he kept zooming in, it didn’t seem to lose any detail.
“Melanie,” he asked, “how old is this photo? The one from slide five.”
One of the aides standing behind his couch responded before Melanie could. “Less than an hour, sir.”
Melanie cocked her head. “Why?”
“Well,” he said, “either I’m losing my mind, or it looks like there are two people in the stands.” He held up the tablet and pointed. “One of them is wearing what looks like a hazmat suit, and the other one is, well, an old lady. Near as I can tell.”
There was a scramble and buzz as people in the room started zooming in on their own tablets, and it was ten or twenty seconds before Melanie responded.
“Maybe Dr. Dichtel should take over for a minute. This is out of order, but, well, Will?”
Will, who had been leaning against the wall, pushed off with his foot and came to stand next to Melanie.
“Okay, so spiders don’t actually have teeth.” He held up his hand to forestall the inevitable questions. “Or certainly not in the way in which you’re thinking. The short version is that spiders use their fangs to secrete a venom that basically dissolves their prey. They might grind it up a bit with their pedipalps, but essentially they turn what they eat into a liquid slurry and slurp it up. What’s astounding about the Hell Spiders is how quickly they can do this. I’m sure you’ve all seen footage of them stripping a person to the bone in seconds. Now, spider venom comes in all kinds of varieties and is incredibly complicated. Dr. Guyer is just one of many researchers who have looked at the efficacy of spider venom in medical treatments, which is of particular interest because latrotoxins, which have a high molecular weight, trigger neuromediators—”
“Will.”
He glanced at Melanie. “Sorry. English. Okay, the point is that there are two types of venoms. The first kind is necrotic, or cytotoxic, which damages and kills the cells it comes into contact with. This is what the Hell Spiders are using to dissolve human flesh so quickly. Amazingly, the first-wave spiders seem to be able to alter their cytotoxic venom when they use a person or, I suppose, an animal, which would have been more likely in terms of evolution, as a host to lay eggs inside. That venom both dissolves flesh and heals it, allowing the spider to slip inside a body and essentially close up the wound behind it. We think this was probably a strategy developed in order to spread their reach. Allow the carriers to expend their own energy covering ground.
“The second kind of venom is neurotoxic, which acts directly on the nervous system. Here we’re talking exclusively about the second-wave spiders, the ones with the red stripes on their backs. The neurotoxic venom that they inject into their victims acts almost immediately as a paralyzing agent. I haven’t had the time to do extensive testing on its properties, but we’ve got video and enough accounts from witnesses to confirm that if one of them bites you, you go down like you’ve been shot, completely paralyzed. They seem to also have the ability to produce necrotic venom functionally identical to that of the first-wave spiders, which is not as surprising as you think; it’s not uncommon for spiders to be able to exhibit both necrotic and neurotoxic venom. Given how old the Hell Spiders seem to be, they didn’t develop these attributes specifically to kill people. And this gives us an advantage.”
Manny caught himself actually letting out a guffaw. Will stared at him, as did pretty much everybody in the room. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I just didn’t think of us as having an advantage here. I think it was . . .” He searched until he saw Dr. Nieder and then pointed at her. “You told me at an earlier briefing that you thought the spiders had stopped evolving because they didn’t need to anymore. You compared them to sharks as the perfect killing machines.”
As he spoke, Manny saw Melanie tap Will on the arm and whisper something in his ear. He whispered something back and then returned to his place against the wall, clearly annoyed at Manny’s interruption. Admittedly, Manny felt a little bad, but come on, what was it with these geniuses?
“The reason I called on Dr. Dichtel out of order,” Melanie said, “is that to go back to what you saw in the stadium, the man in what appears to be a hazmat suit, the lack of evolution is an advantage here. Yes, of course we should be terrified of these things, and the fact that they haven’t needed to keep evolving means that they were perfect. Were. Past tense. Because even though their necrotic venom opens flesh like a hot knife through butter, there are some things it can’t go through, namely, plastics, rubber, and glass. Dr. Dichtel has tested the venom on all those materials, and it seems to have no effect whatsoever. There might be other materials as well, but for right now, plastics, rubber, and glass are all fine, because those are the materials we use to make—”
“Hazmat suits.” Manny was excited. He blinked and motioned with his hands, apologetic for interrupting again.
“Exactly. We know that at least
one group of scientists in Japan was able to go into an infested area wearing hazmat suits and return unharmed. The suits also seem to function as some sort of disguise. The spiders don’t seem to—and I’m using this word in quotes here—‘see’ people wearing hazmat suits. So it’s quite possible that this guy in the stadium is . . .” She stopped, frowning. “Though that doesn’t explain the woman,” she said, touching her lips with one finger, “except that we also know the Hell Spiders leave a certain percentage of people untouched. We assume to ensure a food supply for the following waves, but we aren’t sure.”
“Snacks.” That was Steph staring brightly at Melanie. “Get to the good part.”
“Right. Snacks. Realistically, to the Hell Spiders, a human is just like a burrito, a soft wrapper with a tasty filling. The thing is, how is it that they know not to attack somebody? If a Hell Spider leaves a person untouched, how do the other Hell Spiders know to do likewise? And, more important, we now have many, many confirmed reports of people who have been left untouched more than once. In other words, it’s not just a single Hell Spider or a group of Hell Spiders that decides a person is off-limits, but that understanding seems to get passed on to all of them.”
Manny got it now. It meant the spiders were communicating. Melanie had alluded to that when he greeted her upon her arrival, but in the chaos and hubbub of trying to get the briefing going as quickly as possible—it had made sense to have her give the briefing just once, to a larger group, in order not to waste time—he hadn’t really gotten it. So the spiders had a way of talking to one another, of passing on information, and suddenly Manny felt . . . optimistic? Because if the spiders could communicate with one another, perhaps there was a way to disrupt that.
Melanie continued, describing what the scientists had worked through in terms of the way the spiders seemed coordinated. She discussed Teddie’s theory, that they looked almost fake in the way they moved, using the example of special effects made with early computer-generated images to illustrate her point. She covered some of the differences between types of spiders and how the Hell Spiders were both like and unlike all other spiders, moving through the briefing at a fast pace, occasionally stopping to answer questions and, as needed, having the other scientists, Dichtel, Nieder, Haaf, and Yoo, pitch in. It was a well-thought-out presentation, and she covered a lot of ground, backing away from the question of how the spiders communicated to explain as many things as possible before coming to the main point, to what Manny sure as heck hoped really was a game changer.
After nearly twenty minutes of talking, Melanie stopped, took a sip of water, and then looked around the room. She was clearly excited. Something approaching a smile was playing on her lips, and it reminded Manny of his thirty-fifth birthday. She’d never been good at keeping secrets, and the whole day she tried to play it cool, but at dinner, she pulled a small, elegantly wrapped box out of her purse. He was so surprised that he swore aloud in the quiet restaurant: a vintage TAG Heuer Monaco. The exact model Steve McQueen wore in Le Mans, with the iconic square case. It was the first watch ever to feature an automatic chronograph, and he’d mentioned to her that it was the kind of watch he aspired to. It must have run her five grand, and it was pristine. Absolutely cherry. And it was—right now, he realized—on a watch winder in the safe in his condo in DC. There was a good chance he would never see that watch again. He glanced at his wrist, not to check the time, but just to look at the tasteful Shinola Runwell Chrono he was wearing instead of the Monaco. He liked Shinola watches. They were made in Detroit, which sent a good message, and they were much more reasonably priced. This one had been about seven hundred new. He suddenly realized he couldn’t remember if Detroit had been on the list of cities included in the thirty-one that were obliterated by tactical nuclear strikes; perhaps, going forward, all Shinola watches would be vintage.
He felt the sharp dig of Steph’s elbow in his side. “Manny,” she hissed. He straightened up. A bad time to be daydreaming.
“Which brings us to now. There’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news first. When we, um, left our lab, one of the things we were watching for was signs of ecdysis. That’s when a spider molts. They shed their exoskeleton—the hard, crunchy part on the outside—so that they can increase in size.”
Manny felt a shudder go through the room.
“Our concern here is that we aren’t sure if this molting is simply so they can grow or for something else. Given what we’ve seen going from the first- to second-wave Hell Spiders and the difference between those two versions and the queens, we’re nervous that they might be preparing for something else—that there’s a new model, so to speak, on the way.”
Manny heard somebody groan. For all he knew, it could have been him. He asked, “Like what? One that spits fire or something?”
“Hardy-har, Manny,” Melanie said. And yet, the way she said it still reminded him of the night of his birthday, the way she had clearly been pleased with herself.
“Here’s the good news. There are a lot of reasons why the Hell Spiders have been so scary: they can reproduce so fast, they lay eggs inside hosts, they can swarm over somebody and strip the flesh from their body. But the thing that’s been the hardest for us to deal with, in my opinion, is that they work together. That threw us off for a while, because we were working under the model of other kinds of creatures that have a sort of queen structure, like ants, or bees. With them, however, there’s a sense that the queen is in control of the colony, but it’s different.” She looked directly at Steph. “No offense to you, Madam President, but when we think of insects that are controlled by queens, it’s a little bit like the way you work. The queens give orders, sort of, and then those orders are passed on and on so that eventually you get a bunch of people working together to accomplish something. Basically, you give orders, and the federal government does what you tell it—”
“You do realize a large portion of the US military is in the middle of attempting a coup, right?” Steph said drily.
Melanie continued unfazed: “—the federal government does what you tell it to do, but it’s not a monolithic entity. You’ve got hundreds of thousands of people, all more or less trying to accomplish what you’ve ordered but also sort of doing their own thing. With the Hell Spiders, it’s different. They aren’t individuals. They’re extensions of one another. I think, from the very beginning, we’ve had this all wrong. We’ve been acting like there are millions and millions of these spiders, tens of millions of them. But that’s wrong. It isn’t millions of spiders. It’s a few spiders in millions of parts.”
She spent a few minutes explaining what had happened in the lab at the NIH when Shotgun and Gordo demonstrated their spider-killing machine, the ST11. “And of course, while it didn’t seem to harm them, we realized that what it did do, essentially, was to disrupt their communication. The Hell Spiders seem to need constant input. Think of it like Wi-Fi. You want to watch a television show and you’ve got a great signal, no problem. Even with a cruddy signal, it will still download and you’ve got your show. But no Wi-Fi? You’ve got nothing. Just a dumb blank box on the wall with a spinning wheel instead of your favorite comedy. With the ST11 going, it’s like the spiders don’t have any Wi-Fi. They’re essentially harmless.”
The president leaned forward and slid her tablet onto the coffee table. She tapped her finger on the tablet’s glass. “So can we just, I don’t know, amp up this machine and block the signal? Can we do that?”
Melanie shook her head. “Even if we could, that’s really just a temporary solution. As soon as the ST11 is turned off, it’s like flicking a light switch. They go from being harmless spiders to being the Hell Spiders again.”
“I want to talk to this Shotgun fellow, because, to be honest, Melanie, I’ll take a temporary solution right now.” Steph’s face was deadly serious, her voice grim. “Our best efforts have left at least a hundred million Americans dead and vast swaths of the country in ruins. If there’s a stopgap solution . . .”<
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“No, no,” Melanie said, her voice wildly excited. “That’s the thing. We think we’ve got something better. Shotgun’s not here. He’s on his way to Atlantic City.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry,” Melanie said. “It’s a little complicated. But that’s why Amy and Fred are here.” She gestured over to the woman and the man with the dog.
The dog had been almost completely motionless the entire time, curled up at the feet of the woman, but as if he knew that he was suddenly the center of attention, he started thumping his tail against the carpet.
Fred raised his hand. “Shotgun’s my husband.”
Manny looked at Melanie and then back to Fred and Amy. “Okay, I’ll bite: Why the hell is your husband in Atlantic City?”
“Because he’s figured out how to find the signal.”
“Fred,” Melanie said, “I’ve got this.” She turned to Manny and Steph. “They retrofit the ST11 so that instead of blocking the communications signals, it can track them.”
Manny blurted, “Wait. You’re telling me that the Hell Spiders all get these commands that turn them into flesh-eating dynamos, and, using this machine, you can block the commands so that they’re essentially harmless?”
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