“You don’t carry a first aid kit in that bag of yours?”
“A small one. The one in the van is…”
“It’ll do. You can use my knife if you need to cut.”
“Miss Weston…”
“Do you want to talk, or not?”
Olivia glared at her in obvious frustration, but the blonde’s eyes were like steel.
“So be it,” Olivia sighed and fished a small white plastic box from her bag. “Turn around and let me see the injury.”
Maggie said nothing, but did as instructed.
Giving Adam a helpless look, Olivia stepped up closer to examine the girl’s back. Adam knew how she felt. Being this close to Maggie was giving him an ulcer. The fact she hadn’t even glanced at him once was small consolation.
“Hmmm,” the dark haired woman muttered, “I see it protruding under the shirt but I don’t see the hole it must have made. Billy, bring your light over here, please…thank you. Ah, there it is. I’ll pull it a little wider so I can see better and…wait…what in the world…Oh!”
Olivia stepped back and regarded the taller woman with an unreadable expression. She looked from the girl’s face, to her back, then up to her face again. For a brief second she seemed at a loss for words, then recollected herself.
“I apologize for the outburst, Miss Weston. I was caught by surprise.”
Maggie said nothing, just giving a one shoulder shrug. Adam wondered what in the hell was going on, but an inquiring look at Olivia only got him waved off with a cautionary look.
“But,” Olivia continued, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut your shirt off so I can see what I’m dealing with. You’ll need to remove your holster. If you wish, I can send Billy and Adam back down the bridge.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the girl answered in a dead voice as she unstrapped the holster. “Billy saw it when we were kids. He knows about it. Your man can stay…I don’t care.”
“Very well.”
Olivia removed a pair of small scissors from the white box and gave Adam another cautionary look. Then she put the scissors up to the collar of Maggie’s t-shirt and started snipping. She worked slowly, and with delicate care.
“So,” she muttered as she worked, “am I to understand this thing you have to do involves hunting down and killing a rather large spider?”
“Yep.”
“And what do you think your odds of killing this creature are? Especially keeping in mind your current condition.”
“Whatever they are, they’re the best odds I’m going to get. So they’re not a consideration.”
“I see,” Olivia grimaced. “And are you aware of the terms of the cease fire and what it will take to get a true treaty from the Matriarch?”
“I heard.”
“Then you know you’re endangering the whole thing.”
“Not my doing,” the big girl growled. “Y’all agreed to that plan after I had already started down this road.”
Olivia sighed and finished snipping.
“I see,” she said, and gave Adam yet another warning look. “I’m going to pull this off now. It seems to be stuck in places, but I’ll try not to hurt you. Billy, I need the light a little higher please.”
Picking up on her warnings for him not to react to what he saw, Adam leaned in and watched as she began to slowly peel the back of the shirt open from the collar.
The sticky crackle of the cloth pulling away from where dried blood had sealed it to her flesh made him wince. As the shirt parted, he noticed right away the discoloration starting below the line of the collar. The less than ideal lighting made identifying it difficult. At first he thought it might be scabs or bad bruising. But then he realized this covered the uninjured side of her body as well. It wasn’t until Olivia opened the shirt all the way to the bottom and then completely peeled the sides away that he finally understood what he was looking at.
Maggie’s back bore the same black and gold pattern as the spiders.
And it only took a second for him to realize they weren’t just markings. He could see the tufts of black and gold fuzz bordering the scabs on the right side of her body.
She is third generation…a once in a century phenomenon…her genome has been altered to the point it’s arguable whether she is really still human or not.
Olivia’s words rose in his mind as he watched her examine a shiny piece of curved metal protruding from Maggie’s inhuman back near the shoulder blade.
“This is a piece of the mine casing,” she stated as she pulled a piece of gauze from her box. “It’s part of the top ring, so that tells me it should either be the same thickness or thinner throughout its length. It looks like it’s curved up under your scapula, which is why it interferes with your arm motion.”
“Okay. What can you do about it?”
“I can remove it. But I assure you this is going to hurt. If I could only use the medkit in the van…”
“Just pull it out.”
Olivia gave a brief glare at the back of the girls head, then shook her own in resignation.
“Very well. Please lace your fingers together over your stomach and grip tight. As strong as you are, I don’t relish the idea of you lashing out in reaction to the pain and hitting me.”
“I won’t.”
“Humor me.”
Maggie didn’t answer, but did as instructed.
“Alright then, let’s get this over with.”
Adam’s stomach went queasy as Olivia put the gauze up against the wound and grasped the piece of metal with her other hand. She was not a tiny woman, but standing next to the powerful Amazon made her look alarmingly slender and frail. He briefly considered offering to do the deed instead, but realized she would refuse due to his lack of training.
All he could do was watch.
“Here we go,” Olivia muttered and began to pull.
She pulled slowly, and with a surprising amount of effort, but the piece of metal began to move. It slid out in a steady curve, and the gauze she had pressed over the wound turned a sickly shade of yellow as it did. Apparently the infection ran deep. A nasty smell reached Adam’s nostrils as the process continued. A few seconds later the piece finally slid free.
“That’s it,” Olivia exhaled. “It’s done.”
Maggie hadn’t moved, nor made a sound, during the whole process. She stood silent a few seconds longer as well. Then she stepped forward, lifted her arm, and slowly swung it in several directions. More blood ran down her alien looking back as she did.
“It’ll do,” she grunted. “Billy? Throw me that clean shirt.”
“I’m curious,” Olivia waited until Maggie pulled her shirt on, then walked around to face her. “What makes you think you will be able to find this creature now? You’ve been hunting her for months.”
“I don’t need to find her. I know where she is. And this time I won’t be followed around by a backup team she can detect from a mile away.”
“You know where she is?”
“Yep.” Maggie started strapping on the holster with the large pistol. “She’s about five hundred yards down the road.”
All of them looked down through the fog at the other end of the bridge. While Adam realized the distance Maggie described amounted to a little over a quarter of a mile, hearing it measured in yards made the thought of a truly giant spider being so close out there in the darkness unnerving.
“That would be the Morlin farm,” Olivia recalled. “How do you know this?”
“That’s the place,” Maggie grunted again as she cinched the holster tight. “She said something to her last victim, and I read it off of her before she killed the woman. Now I’m going to drop by and say hello.”
“And there is no way I can talk you out of this? Not even by pointing out all the lives of your own people you might be saving by letting us end this war?”
The other woman said nothing. She simply knelt on the asphalt and started pulling small boxes of ammo from the brown paper bag. Then sh
e opened the boxes and started loading the bullets into the spare magazines Billy brought with them.
“Maggie, please.” For the first time Olivia used the girl’s first name. “This is insane. You are either about to die horribly, or sentence us all to more years of killing, suffering, and possibly exposure to the outside world.”
Maggie clenched her jaw and kept loading bullets.
“Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Don’t your own laws mean anything to you? Don’t you care?”
Still no answer.
“Maggie, do you care at all about other people? Even your own?”
“ENOUGH!” the big girl roared and came to her feet.
Olivia stepped back in alarm and Adam instinctively moved in beside her. He didn’t know what the hell he could do, but he would be damned if this creature attacked Olivia without him at least getting in the way.
“Why the hell should I care?” Maggie’s eyes were now red with rage. “You want to know what caring has gotten me? It was because I cared that I went racing to save a screaming little boy from being eaten by a spider that was getting ready to peel open the car he was hiding in! It was only because I cared that I held her off while my Dad pulled him out of the car and into our own truck. And because I cared enough to do all that, our laws said I was responsible for dealing with the matter when his detective showed up waving pictures around. Only the Elders weren’t sure I was ready for the outside world yet, so my dad had to take my responsibility! AND HE DIED DOING IT!”
Holy shit! Realization dawned on Adam as he gaped at Maggie’s contorted face. She’s the one who saved Tucker? No wonder she wanted to kill me so badly. Down deep, she thinks her father’s death is somehow her fault!
“I don’t even know where he’s buried! The Elders decided it was too dangerous to even look into it! But they damn sure didn’t mind sending me out to hunt for the bitch who started this mess. And they wouldn’t even listen to me on how to do it. They kept handicapping me by having this ‘backup team’ following me around and the damn spider could sense them a mile away!”
“Maggiieee…” Billy soothed in a strained voice. “Calm down.”
“And it’s because I care about our laws those bastards are still breathing! Yeah, I’ve screwed up. I have lost my way and shamed myself beyond redemption. I can never fix that! But it’s only because I care about our laws I didn’t slaughter every Elder there when they told me they were going to kill Molly!”
“Maggiiii…”
“And that is where I draw the line!” The girl somehow shouted and sobbed at the same time. “No more! No MORE! I am NOT losing anybody else! I am going to save my companion, and I’m going to do it by our laws, or I’m going to die trying. And if that throws a kink in everybody else’s plans, then to hell with all of them! They damn sure don’t mind invoking those laws when it suits their purposes!”
“Maggie, stop it!” Billy gasped. “You’re making Molly crazy!”
That broke the spell of Maggie’s tirade, and they all looked up to see the big spider had crept halfway down the steel beams toward them. It stopped, raised its forelegs at them, and hissed like a busted pipe.
“Molly…no,” Maggie whispered as she looked up at the creature with an entirely different type of sadness on her face. “Go down to the end of the bridge and wait for me. I’ll be there in a minute.”
The great arachnid hesitated a second, then raced down the girders and disappeared into the fog.
Maggie set her jaw and started putting the rest of the little ammo boxes from the bag into her pockets. It was obvious to Adam she was preparing to leave, and there would be no reasoning with her.
“So you are going to do this,” Olivia confirmed softly. “You are set on this path.”
“Yep.” Maggie paused to retie the laces of one of her boots.
“Then may I ask one favor of you?”
“You want a favor from me?” the blond snorted. “I ain’t in much of a position to be doing favors, but I guess you done right by me with my arm. What do you want?”
“Let me join you.”
That brought everything on the bridge to a stop. Adam stopped breathing, Billy stared at the woman in shock, and even Maggie paused in the act of tying her boot.
“Join me?”
“Yes. Let me help you kill the rogue.”
Maggie now looked at her with open skepticism.
“You want to go with me when I do this? Why?”
“Because this way, maybe everybody can win,” Olivia answered evenly. She was suddenly her normal self again, speaking with the calm assurance of somebody who had figured all the angles. “With me along, your chances of success increase. And if we succeed, you and I will approach the Matriarch…each bearing a fang from the rogue. Then she will hopefully grant what each of us asks…or if she won’t, I will give you my fang and you can use them both to save your companion.”
Adam couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and even Maggie looked surprised…and once again, unsure.
“I don’t know…” she muttered.
“There is no downside for you,” Olivia continued. “Your odds of survival increase, and if you do you’re guaranteed to get the boon you want from the Matriarch.”
“And you will do that? You will actually give me the other fang if she only grants one reward?”
“You have my word.”
Adam could see the damaged girl struggling to think this through. He could even tell she wanted to believe it. But centuries of warfare and mistrust were not wiped out so easily.
“Why?” She regarded the dark haired woman with suspicion. “Why would you do that?”
“Because,” Olivia replied, “whether or not the Matriarch grants us the treaty, the rogue still needs to die before she becomes all of our undoing. And even if we don’t get the treaty, people will remember we killed her together. It would be a starting point we could build on later. I’m willing to live with that if it’s the best deal I can get.”
Adam looked from one to the other, and part of him really hoped the crazy chick would turn Olivia down. The idea had been to come out here and try to talk the maniac into giving up and getting medical attention…not joining her on this crusade. Especially not doing something like this.
While he had heard about the rogue’s dimensions earlier today, he now looked at an empty span of the misty bridge and tried to picture what a twenty-five foot spider really looked like. The image he formed made him want to throw up. How the hell could Maggie even think she could take on something like that? And now Olivia was offering to join in the insanity. He realized he was now honestly hoping for Maggie’s surly nature to blow this.
But it wasn’t to be.
“Billy…” The bloody woman came to her feet, her undamaged eye regarding Olivia with a measuring gaze. “It’s time for you to get out of here. The Elders will nail your skin to a tree if they find out you’re involved in this. You’re not strong enough to keep the rogue from sensing you coming, so you can’t help us anyway.”
The boy started to protest but Maggie’s glare silenced it in a big hurry. Realizing there was nothing he could do, Billy grumbled a wish of good luck, then turned and slouched off toward his car.
“Okay, lady,” Maggie continued. “You win. Let’s go kill ourselves a spider.”
She turned without another word and started walking toward the other end of the bridge.
Adam struggled to suppress a groan of despair as Olivia pulled out her cell phone and called back to the van. She muttered a few words into the device before ending the call and picking up her bag. Then she faced him. The pain in her green eyes matched the knot in his chest, and he could see what she was working herself up to say.
“Forget it,” he cut her off. “Whither thou goest…remember?”
The pain in her eyes deepened, but she gave him a weak half smile and nodded. He understood it perfectly, but she was just going to have to understand that looking out for each other went both ways.
And he guessed there was no time like the present.
“You heard the lady.” He gestured in the direction Maggie had disappeared into the fog. “Let’s not keep her waiting.”
With nothing else to say, the pair of them crossed the bridge into the foggy night beyond.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE BATTLE OF MORLIN FARM
“Wake up. We are no longer alone.”
Sonni’s eyes flew open. She lay on the couch in the farm house’s tiny living room, clutching the rifle to her chest. She had picked up a whole new layer of dust and cobwebs from her sojourn into the tiny attic. Filth and lack of sleep gummed her eyes but she sat up in an instant. Their enemies weren’t supposed to be here till Saturday! What was going on?
Were they under attack?
Her new friend’s housewife avatar stood near the front facing window of the room. And she looked concerned. Anything that concerned her alarmed the hell out of Sonni.
“Stay low,” her compatriot warned. “And leave the lights off. But you should be able to see her down on the highway.”
Right.
Sonni hit the floor and scurried on her hands and knees over to the window. She paused a second with her back against the wall, panting with anxiety, then carefully raised her head to peek over the sill.
Fog shrouded the world, but her eyes darted straight to the distant figure standing alone on the road. The shape stood right at the very edge of visibility, and Sonni could make out no details. It neither moved nor made a sound. It just stood out there like a lone harbinger of bad things to come.
Who is that?
“That is Maggie, the woman you encountered at the river. It looks like she has changed strategies and didn’t come with a backup team this time.”
Oh reaaaalllyyyy. A nasty smile spread across Sonni’s face and she raised the rifle and sighted in through the scope. Well let’s see how tough little Miss Attitude is when I’ve got a gun, too.
“Very tough. If you do not kill her instantly, she will kill you within the next two seconds…normally.”
Normally?
“Yes. I’m blocking her so she can’t sense you. Not to mention, with my children hatching she has other things to listen to. This evens the odds a little. And while I cannot change your physical properties to make you as strong and durable as she is, I can block your ability to feel pain so no injury that isn’t fatal or structurally debilitating will affect your ability to fight.”
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