“Oh really? I think we are going to be stuck in here for a while. I want some company, some female company. It will help pass the time don’t you think?” said Al, he was waving the knife at them and smiling through his bushy beard.
“Al, what are you talking about? We are leaving, and we are leaving right now. So would you mind opening that door?” said Lorna.
“I’ll open the door if you both blow me,” said Al.
“I’ve heard enough of this,” said Shannon and advanced on Al. He stood his ground and held the knife out in front of him.
“You start blowing, or I’ll cut you. I swear I’ll…..” Shannon cut him off with a stiff thrust kick to Al’s abdomen. He made a loud hoofing sound and fell to the floor clasping his stomach. Lorna made for the door and managed to get half of the bolts undone before Shannon joined her. They got the door open and Lorna led the way out. Shannon got three steps out before Al managed to crawl over to her and bury the knife deep into her left calf. Her scream echoed around the flat and the empty shop down the stairs. Shannon lost her footing and fell forwards, knocking Lorna off her feet and down the stairs to the shop floor. Lorna was momentarily dazed, but she managed to get herself in a kneeling position. She did a quick check of herself to make sure that there were no injuries. Her right ankle was hurting, she had probably given it a pretty good twist on the way down. Her thoughts were put on hold when Shannon came rolling down the stairs too. Even in the semi darkness of the room Lorna could see Al’s knife sticking out of Shannon’s leg. She was gritting her teeth and moaning in pain. She caught sight of Lorna.
“You have to pull it out. God, it hurts so bad,” she said.
Lorna crawled forwards until she was next to the knifed leg. “Are you sure about this?”
Shannon nodded and then squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath. Lorna gripped the knife handle in both hands. She tore it from the wound as fast as she could. Shannon bellowed in pain and gripped her leg. Blood was pumping out of the wound and soaking the tiled floor.
“You fuckin’ bitch. I’m not just gonna let you blow me, I’m gonna fuck your arse, you fuckin’ bitch.” It was Al, he was walking slowly down the stairs, still holding his mid-section. Shannon looked up and she saw him coming. She yanked her pistol out of her belt, loaded a fresh clip, and fired one shot at Al. The bullet struck him in the nose which was blown apart in a blast of blood and flesh chunks. The bullet headed downwards at a slight angle and took out Al’s spinal cord right at the first disc. Al barely had time to register that the bullet had hit when his entire body became paralyzed from the waste down. He dropped backwards on the stairs and there he stayed until he had choked to death on his own blood. Lorna saw the bullet hit home and then she turned her head away, not wanting to see the aftermath.
Shannon put her gun away and the two women made a pressure pad for Shannon’s leg using Al’s old shop curtains. Lorna got the door open and the shutter up. Then she came back to Shannon and got her to her feet. Lorna’s ankle was paining her to walk on, but she didn’t have time to fuck around with it now. They had to get back to the van so they could punch their ticket out of there. They got out onto the street and they went over to the van. Shannon could see Johnny in the driver’s seat. She waved at him but he didn’t respond. Such was Johnny’s surliness that he often didn’t respond to her. She thought nothing of it. They went round the side of the van and then they had a clear view of the rest of the street.
“What the hell is going on?” said Lorna.
The top half of the street was awash with the spiders. Every building was coated with a layer of spiders. The right hand turn to Knowsley street was also coated in spiders. As they looked on, a figure came running from the turning. It took them both a moment to realize who it was.
“Briggs,” said Shannon in a pained voice, “It’s Briggs,”
“Where is the queen? And why didn’t Johnny go with him?” said Lorna.
Briggs was nearly with them. “The queen, the queen spider is coming. We need to get out of here.”
“Didn’t you use the tranq dart on it?” said Lorna.
“Yes I did. I think it just pissed it off. We need to go,” said Briggs. He pulled the van door open and was about to climb in.
“Briggs, Shannon’s leg. She’s hurt. We need to get her to a hospital,” said Lorna.
“O.K. we can go straight over to Hemmington, it’s the nearest city, or at least I think it is,” said Briggs, getting an arm round Shannon to help get her in the van. “Johnny, let’s get the hell out of here,” he shouted.
Johnny didn’t move.
“Johnny, come on let’s go,” bellowed Briggs.
Johnny didn’t move.
Briggs went up to Johnny and gave him a shake. Johnny was dead. Johnny’s eyes were staring up at the ceiling. His mouth was hanging open and Briggs could see something moving deep in the back of Johnny’s throat. There were tiny spiders in there rustling around and falling over each other. They had nothing more than black spots for bodies. The legs were long, spindly and varying in size. Briggs could see that they were money spiders. Johnny had been the host for thousands of money spiders. They erupted suddenly from Johnny’s throat, splattering on the dashboard of the van in a black slab. Then they started to untangle themselves from each other and began to make a beeline for Briggs. He turned to the two women.
“Get out of here NOW!” he roared. He helped Shannon out of the door and then pulled Lorna through the exit. He managed to pull the door shut just before the first of the tiny mutants made it to the exit.
They were back on the road again. They barely had time to gather themselves before there was an inhuman shriek from above them. It echoed around the walls of the town and it made Briggs want to cover his ears. They all looked towards the direction of the noise and then they saw it rounding the corner from Knowsley Road. The queen was on the move.
At first impressions, it looked like a huge overgrown spider, one that was the size of one of the buildings on the high street. One of its back legs looked like it had lost a little of its feeling. It was dragging the leg along behind it.
“Oh my fucking God…Oh Jesus, It’s Laurence,” babbled Lorna in a high gobbling voice.
Laurence was hanging down from the underbelly of the monster. He looked like he was almost part of the creature. His head was rolling backwards and as Lorna looked on his eyes popped open.
“He’s alive, he’s fucking alive!” yelled Lorna.
“There’s nothing you can do for him. We have to go right now,” yelled Briggs. The queen was starting to make its way towards them.
“Fuck that,” roared Lorna. She let go of Shannon and at the same time pulled Shannon’s pistol out of her belt. She stepped forwards towards the towering monster in the road and fired the gun at it. She must have hurt the creature because it began to roar and shriek at her. Lorna could see Laurence’s eyes. They were open and they were fixed on her. She swore that she could see him mouthing her name. She let out a scream and fired the gun over and over at the creature until it was empty. One of the bullets had caught Laurence in his head. The chasm in his skull was allowing a combination of blood and brains to seep out and splatter all over the floor. The monster was roaring in a frenzy and thrashing itself around. The spiders that were coating the buildings were starting to move.
“Come on, we have to go,” roared Briggs.
Shannon suddenly started to scream, loud enough to be heard over the queen. Briggs let go of her and she fell to the floor and began to thrash around. Lorna ran towards her and was about to grab her to haul her to her feet when Briggs pulled her away. A split second later, Shannon’s face was covered in mutated money spiders. Her limbs thrashed around and her screams started to become weaker and weaker. The spiders were burrowing into her skin and stripping it off in small shreds. Lorna tried again to go and help her but Briggs’ grip was firm.
“Run,” he yelled in her ear and gave her a shove. They both began to pound their feet d
own the main street, dodging corpses as they went. The spiders began to charge forwards, creating a river of blackened bodies and legs. The queen shuffled along with them, slowed by the wounds that Lorna inflicted upon it with the gun. Briggs was about to give up hope when he saw something. There were people in the road ahead. Not just any people, but a film crew. They saw them coming and the spiders that were about one hundred yards behind them and they started to get into the van. One of them waved them in.
“Go, go,” he shouted to Lorna and Briggs and they piled into the back. The van sped away leaving the spiders and the queen behind.
26.
Simon Evans got as far as the roadblock when he heard on the scanner that the bombing run was underway. He pulled the van over to roughly the same spot where they had been earlier and he punched the steering wheel. Ken and Ray had gone back into town. There was a huge part of him that wanted to keep going back into the town but he didn’t quite dare. He knew that the bombs were on their way. There was nothing he could do to stop it. He had even put in a call to Jamie to see if he could pull any strings to get it halted. Jamie had just told him to get away from there, but make sure it was somewhere with a good view so he could film the whole thing. He now realized that Jamie in a crisis situation was like oil and water. He sat at the roadblock looking at the view of the town. The spider dome was all but gone and he couldn’t make anything out from here other than the buildings. He caught a sound that was low, but getting louder. He popped open the van door and killed his engine. He could hear something that sounded like an engine. A few moments later Ken’s van came into view.
“Thank God for that,” said Simon.
The van came screeching to a halt, almost next to Simons. Ken was in the passenger seat. He rolled down his window. “We have to get out of here, the army…”
“Are going to bomb, I know I heard it on the radio,” said Simon.
“We heard on the news that Briggs the terrorist is threatening to blow the place up himself,” said Ken.
“That’s bullshit.”
“I know, we ran into him and a woman. We got them the hell out of there. The spiders are on the move. They would have got us had Briggs and his friend not created a diversion.”
“Why what did they do?”
Ken shook his head and bit down on his bottom lip. “They threw Phil out of the van. I kicked ‘em out afterwards. They just threw him out of the van and the spiders got him. They waited until we were clear and then they got out. We have to get out of here now,” said Ken looking up at the sky. There was a rumbling beginning to build somewhere within the clouds. They both knew it was the bombing run. It was coming.
Simon ran back to his van and got it started. By the time he had turned it around, Ken was long gone. He sped away from the town, gripping the steering wheel hard. He heard the jets flying over and he heard the bombs hit their targets. The van felt like it was momentarily lifted off its wheels when the shockwave hit. He saw the town in his rear view mirror. It was nothing but a ball of fire. He decided to head home. Something was telling him that all of this was far from being over.
Epilogue
Briggs and Lorna were just outside of the bomb blast radius when the end of Newtown came. They both went down to the grassy floor when the blasts hit. For a moment it was hard to breath as the shockwaves passed over. Then they both sat up and watched as Newtown and the spiders were vaporized.
“Laurence. What happened to him?” said Lorna.
“I wish I knew. I wish I knew exactly what that queen was. To me some parts of it looked…”
“Human. I saw that too. The hands and the feet. It looked like it had stuck itself to him,” said Lorna.
“Have you ever heard of the Black Widow spider?” said Briggs.
“Yes I have. It’s pretty venomous, I know that for a fact.”
“The Black Widow consumes the male after mating, hence the name. I’ve heard that other spiders have the same habits. I can’t name you any, but I know that it happens,” said Briggs.
“What are you trying to say?” said Lorna.
“I don’t know, I really don’t know.”
“I need to get out of here,” said Lorna, her voice breaking with emotion.
“I think we should stay a while,” said Briggs.
They stayed for about an hour watching the town burn. Then they kept on walking. It was almost totally dark when they returned to the car park where Lorna’s car was still parked. The keys were still in the ignition and the driver’s side door was open. They got in and Lorna found her handbag still on the floor. She picked it up and fished her phone out of the side pocket. There was a message from Laurence on it.
I brought Chloe Jones home with me last night. You see I can fuck around too you fucking bitch.
It was only then that she began to understand.
Somewhere high above the skies of the burning ruins of Newtown the first beginnings of clouds began to gather.
There was a storm coming.
Dawn of the Spiders: Special Edition Page 16