A Man of Will and Experience: Robert Johnson dreams of spiders, thousands of them. When he wakes, the true nightmare begins: a tube has been attached to his head – to everyone's – but he's the only one aware of it. His cozy suburban life unravels into paranoid hallucination as Johnson fights to free himself from the control of unseen forces.A Trespasser in Long Lofting: An isolated, drought-choked village. A starving community. When something big, red and inhuman crash-lands in a cabbage field, the villagers are divided: is this a scrumptious dragon for the barbecue or a toxic demon to be destroyed? And what if it's something else entirely?
In the hatching chamber of the fourth tier the final spider advanced towards Agent Johnson.
He had one round left in the shotgun. The shot would scatter a little as it flew towards the creature but he still had to be accurate enough to kill it.
That was where its overgrown brain was.
His hands were shaking now. There had been so many of them. More than he’d ever anticipated and his backpack of ammunition, which had once seemed plentiful, was now used up. One of the smaller spiders had bitten him and he could feel the toxin slowing him down. He trudged like he was wearing an ancient diver’s suit with weighted boots and a brass helmet. As he backed away, the last spider gained ground.
This was the female, the guardian of the nest. She was huge, too: a leg span of almost three metres supported her body a metre above the ground. At such a size, she lumbered rather than ran but each ponderous step made huge gains. Johnson knew that if she caught him it didn’t merely mean an agonising end for him. She was pregnant and would lay her eggs at any time. She’d use him to feed her offspring and the whole nightmare would start again. Everything he’d fought for through the corridors and labs of the fourth tier facility would be worth nothing if she survived and he did not.
The stench of decomposition clotted the hatching chamber. This was where she’d brought the bodies that the male spiders had paralysed. Most of the carcasses had been devoured now and what remained rotted in the choking humidity. He knew that she’d been fertilised—he’d watched as she mated with one of the larger male spiders before sucking every drop of fluid from its body and discarding its monstrous husk.
Agent Johnson’s stomach knotted and spasmed in response the miasma in the chamber but he fought back his bile. He could afford no lapses in concentration, no mistakes.
He thought of Angelina and Professor Alpert. He remembered the other members of his team, Shuckman and Fiori, Matthews and Becker. All gone now and him soon to follow if he didn’t keep his nerve. He gripped the shotgun tighter to stop his hands from trembling. It helped but only a little.
Johnson chambered the last shell.
She was close enough that he could smell her venom now. It dripped from her fangs in a viscous plasma, steaming slightly where it spattered onto the cadaver-strewn floor. It smelled of sulphur and a sweet spice like cinnamon. He gagged again, knowing that same arachnid bane now flowed within his own blood vessels, slowing his reflexes and dulling his wits. The muzzle of the shotgun drooped downward.
He lifted it up once more.
She was within fifteen feet now. Another step or two and he would—
She lunged; he wasn’t expecting it so soon. No time to think—he squeezed the trigger. The shotgun leapt back in his grip as it had so many times that night and her face, if such it could be called, imploded. The spiny palps with which she’d held her prey shattered, her fangs disintegrating in an ochre mist. Every eye disappeared in the blast. She took two more steps and collapsed, spider blood and venom commingling in a sickening stream below her shattered head section.
Johnson was ready to collapse. Rest a while before he made his way along the dim corridors to the elevator that would take him out; sleep before he headed for the third tier and detonated all the charges.
He didn’t have the chance.
From behind her body he heard a pattering sound that reminded him of cows defecating on barn floors. It was the noise made by hundreds of eggs falling from her spinnerets and bursting as they hit the ground. Already he could see the frantic scurrying of hungry infant spiders as they raced towards him. Even these newborns were the size of his hand. He turned and pounded towards the chamber’s exit. There was no door so he couldn’t stop them from following. As he fled he discarded the shotgun and the pack, flinging them into the path of his pursuers.
All he had left were the detonators. He held one in each fist as he sprinted ahead of the spider brood so close behind him. He could hear their legs scrabbling against the walls and the ceilings of the corridors as he ran. Every door he came to he slammed, buying him a few seconds before the sheer weight of them forced the doors open once more.
