by Troy McCombs
***
“What the hell's going on?” Steve said, standing from the chair. A small group of people, mostly patients or relatives of patients, stood, curious to know what the blood-covered nurse had been running away from. He joined them, Josh joined him, and together they peered down the hall, too. More doctors went to the room, but none would walk in.
“Dad, is that the room they took Rachel? It is, isn't it?”
“I don't know, buddy. Christ, I hope not.”
“It has to be. She's dead, isn't she?”
“I don't think so, Steve. You just wait here. Okay? Don't fucking move!”
The boy knew his father was serious. When he used the F-bomb, he meant business.
Josh walked down the brightly-lit hallway and toward the three doctors standing outside the room. They didn't move; they just stared into the room, their expressions all the same: What the fuck is this?
“Stay back!” the broad-shouldered Indian doctor warned Josh in his cabbie accent.
“Like hell I am! My daughter was brought back here. I want to know what's going on! Those people back there want to know. We have a right to know, being in this hospital and all.”
The Indian cringed a little when Josh said the words my daughter. From his vantage point, he could see a little girl lying dead on a table, soaked in her own blood. Josh couldn't, not from his angle. But he didn't have a good feeling about it, about her. He wasn't sure he wanted to take any steps further. Maybe it'd be best if he didn't. Somtimes ignorance was better than the cold, hard truth.
He could see the threshold, that's all, nothing less, nothing more. Where the room stopped and the hallway began, spiders stood in formation—like they were saying, you bastards keep out of this room and don't come one step further; this is ours. They were also slightly bigger than they had been when they'd ruptured through Rachel's arm. Their translucence had faded a bit, but the color they were now was a hue no earthbound human had ever laid eyes on before. Josh tried to remember a crayon color he used from his daughter's 64 color Crayola box that resembled the color of their bodies, their legs. He couldn't. It left an overwhelming feeling of mystery in everyone witness to it.
Sets of eight eyes stared at sets of two eyes. Neither lifeform made a move. Both waited. The woman doctor, a short, petite blonde with pale skin, crept toward the little insects. That's all they were—or should have been—to her. Yet, in the background, behind them, there were three dead bodies and a room saturated in blood.
The need to know drew her forward.
“What are they?” the Indian doctor asked.
“What color is that?” the other male doctor wondered.
“Where did they come from?” the nurse asked, edging closer.
“For pity sakes, get back, Amy!”
She did, stepping away. “We need to capture at least one of these, to see what we're dealing with.”
Silence must have filled that ER for a while. Not just silence—stillness. Nobody made a sigh; nobody shifted, not in the Lobby, and not any of the several spiders. The pale-skinned nurse wondered what continent they came from. South America? Asia? Australia? Some remote cave? How had they gotten here? One patient, a man with a red and black lump on his head, thought they were an experiment from Osin Labs, an experimental laboratory on the other side of town. They were always polluting the waters, the air with their toxins. Perhaps they created a superspider with their special toys... Mr. Bundchen, the paramedic covered in Rachel's blood, stood furthest away. He didn't want near those abominable insects with a taste for human flesh. If one bite could do that to a child, a couple bites could do the same to him.
The Indian doctor, who couldn't take the anticipation any longer, broke the silence, “We need to kill them before they hurt or kill anybody else!” He tried to do just that. Irritated by everyone else's inaction—and more scared than anybody else—he jumped up in the air, the girth of his feet more than large enough to crush the battalion of creepy-crawlers.
“No!” one of the women said.
Mr. Bundchen turned and ran toward the EXIT.
The doctor failed as he landed on them. They did not crunch, splatter, or turn to goo. Their bodies remained unhindered by the force of the much larger creature.
He lost his balance and fell, the back of his head colliding with the floor. Infuriated, the spiders attacked him, jumping on him, biting him, burrowing into him. The other two doctors retreated in opposite directions. Josh stepped forward, close enough to glance into the room to see his only daughter lying lifeless on the stretc—
“Dad! Is—“ Steve started to say.
Josh spun around and covered his son's eyes before he, too, could see Rachel's body. “We gotta go.”
“What about Rachel?”
He didn't have the heart to tell him the truth.
They ran toward the entrance as the downed Indian doctor pierced the first floor of Merrison Valley Medical Center with a glass-shattering scream. Patients scurried, scattered, their faces ridiculous-looking with fright. They all rushed toward the EXIT like scared insects themselves. One person was trampled while trying to fight his way out through the sliding glass doors. Steve was nearly knocked to the ground during the human stampede. Eventually, everybody (except the trampled victim) made it outside. Panicked people ran to their vehicles, got in, and sped off. Two cars: a Chevy and a Honda, rammed into each other while they were backing out. The Chevy stalled. The Honda went forward, zooming from the parking lot and onto the main road.
“What are you doing, Dad?” Steve demanded. Both father and son were sitting in the Highlander. Josh wouldn't take his eyes off the hospital's entrance. The doors slid together, closed between the trampled man's outstretched left arm, then opened, and repeated.
“We're going in a second.” The thought had nagged him since he saw it—the spiders standing in formation. What bug did that? What bug attacked humans? What bug didn't back down from a fight—especially if its foe was a thousand times bigger?
“Why are we waiting? What if they come out—let's go now!” Steve cried, shifting nervously in his seat.
Josh shoved the key into the ignition. Turned it. Vroom!
“Okay, let's go! Let's get out of here and—“
“Shut up, Steve, I want to see.”
“See what?”
“If the spiders follow.”
“Why?”
“Because, they stopped by the threshold of that one room. I don't think they'll leave... not unless they feel threatened. They're... territorial.”
“What?”
Josh shook away all his curious thoughts for the time being. “Never mind. Let's get out of here.”
“Thank God!”
The Highlander sped from its spot and joined the Hampton Highway, narrowly missing sideswiping a Taurus as it pulled into the steady flow of traffic.
Josh yanked the phone out of his pocket and dialed Mary's number. It rang several times, loud and impatient to his ear.. “Come on, dammit, pick up!”
Eventually: “Yeah? I'm on my way there, honey. I'm going, like, fifteen miles over the speed limit.”
“No! Mary, turn around and go back to our new home.”
“What? Why? Is Rachel okay now?” She sounded relieved.
How do I explain this to her? Your own daughter just got bit by a small spider, died horribly, and we released death upon the world by moving into our dream house?
“Something happened that I need to tell you in person. Just turn around and meet me at home. And...“
She interuptted, “Why can't you tell me what the fuck's going on?”
“Because—I don't know what's going on. I can't even wrap my head around what I just saw. Steve is with me. We're headed back home. When you meet us there—if you get there before we get there—you wait in the goddamn car. Got it?”
“Josh, would you...“
He hung up the phone. Steve looked up at his dad and couldn't believe his adolescent eyes. The man he loved, admi
red and wished to become was doing something he'd never seen him do: cry.
“It's that bad, isn't it, Dad?”
“It's that bad, buddy. It's that bad.” Josh tried to give him a reassuring smile; instead, he only wept harder.
