The engine raced again, and the car lurched forward.
“Jackass,” she whispered.
As if the driver heard her disparaging remark, the car swerved across the street toward her, along the shoulder and—
—jumped the curb!
As the car barreled down the sidewalk toward her, she had a horrifying thought. He’s trying to run me down!
EIGHT
If not for the parking lot lamppost between Harvey Dufford and the giant tarantula, the creature was close enough to pounce on him. Any move to the right or left and the spider would be on top of him in a heartbeat.
The tarantula brought its front pair of legs down on either side of him, boxing him in. For a moment he stared at the eye mound, the size of a cake box, with its two rows of four beady black eyes. The tarantula hunted by sensing vibration and sound rather than detecting movement with its relatively weak eyes, but they were alien and unnerving nonetheless. Dufford imagined they saw well enough to classify him as a meal.
Abruptly, the spider raised its two front pairs of legs high in the air, elevating its cephalothorax in a threat posture. Its pedipalps, bristling feelers that also served as food handlers, waved in front of his face like a pair of truncated legs, just out of reach. The spider’s double-segmented chelicerae extended, twin fangs at the tips dropping down but too far away to inject him with venom.
The venom from a normal tarantula wasn’t fatal to humans, but a tarantula of this extraordinary size would produce a proportionate amount of venom. Dufford figured he would fare no better than a field mouse. And if this monster managed to grab him, the chelicerae would coat him with corrosive digestive juices. The spider would wait for his flesh to liquefy, then suck it into its straw-shaped mouth.
Dufford barely had time to catch his breath before the tarantula dropped down onto all eight legs and scampered around the pole. Backing away, he put distance between himself and the giant spider before turning his back and running full speed. As he scanned ahead, looking for a weapon or a gap between blocks of buildings, he saw a rustpocked blue Ford F-150 pickup truck parked in front of an orthodontist’s office. A white rag tied to the door handle indicated the truck was disabled and awaiting a tow, or possibly that the driver planned to return with a container of gasoline or a replacement part.
Harvey tugged desperately at the passenger door handle. Unfortunately, it was locked.
He circled around the truck and tried the driver’s side— also locked. Ducking behind the bed of the pickup, Dufford listened for the sound of the tarantula and marveled at how stealthy it was despite its enormous size. On hands and knees, he peered under the truck to track its movement. Thick bristling legs pranced around the other side of the Ford, but too few of them. Not nearly enough on the ground, with more rising out of view by the second.
The pickup creaked on its worn shock absorbers a moment before a broad shadow fell across Dufford’s hiding place. Almost too late, he dropped to his back and looked up. Bristly pedipalps swept over his head, while the creature’s fangs sliced the air, dripping venom as the tarantula strained to reach him from its perch in the truck bed.
As one leg, then another came down on the driver’s side of the Ford, Dufford rolled underneath it. When the spider seemed committed to his side of the truck, Dufford rolled twice and emerged from the passenger side. He climbed to his feet and pumped his exhausted legs back the way he had come.
Behind him, the truck’s suspension groaned under the weight of the monstrous spider. Dufford tried to put the sound out of his mind and focused on getting the hell away from the area. Nearly doubled over from exertion, his breathing became harsh in his ears, his stride erratic. But he was almost out in the open again.
Once he exited onto Bell Street, he could flag down a car or, even better, a police cruiser. He could find a store that hadn’t closed yet, a nightclub or tavern, and take shelter there. The tarantula was too big to fit through a doorway but not big enough to burst through walls. At least he hoped that was true. If its strength was proportionate to its size...
He chanced a look back over his shoulder—
—and nearly screamed in terror.
The tarantula was close enough that he could make out the individual hairs on its waving pedipalps. The red-banded front legs were a blur of motion, their tips touching down several yards behind him. And the gap was closing.
Ahead, he saw Bell Street. A white panel truck zoomed by before he could even raise an arm to try to catch the driver’s attention. But that flash of contact gave him hope that he could escape—
He stumbled, the sole of his right running shoe sticking in the asphalt as if he had stepped in deep mud. He pulled it free, but lost the shoe. Then his left foot became mired. Tugging against that resistance, he lost the other shoe—and promptly planted his right foot into more clinging softness. The ground gave way under him. Incredibly, he was sinking into the asphalt, knee deep, then mid-thigh, then up to his hips before it stopped.
The ground was solid again, and he was trapped.
Pounding the asphalt until his fists were bloody, he twisted around and moaned as he saw the tarantula looming over him, rearing up on its two back pairs of legs in its threat posture. It slowly lowered itself over him, the cephalothorax coming down like the lid of a coffin.
For a brief moment, he hoped—prayed—that it would lose interest in him, and move away. A moment of stillness in which Dufford heard another car breeze along Bell Street, then the ominous rustle of the descending pedipalps.
He took a deep breath and yelled, “HELP!”
A dark flash of the chelicerae preceded twin white blurs as the hollow fangs plunged into his back like a pair of butcher knives. White hot pain sliced through his body. He convulsed, whether from shock or pain or from the effects of the venom, he couldn’t know. The pedipalps curled around him, the bristling hairs raking furrows in his skin as the appendages tried to pull him up against the grinding teeth under the chelicerae. But his body was trapped in the hardened asphalt and offered too much resistance.
Instead the tarantula pressed down against him, the chelicerae rubbing roughly against his skin, pushing him bodily left and right. Sticky fluid coated his bare neck and back, where it was exposed from the tears in his sweatshirt. It soaked into his wounds, into the fang punctures, and burned worse than alcohol. It felt as if gasoline had been poured into those cuts and ignited. His flesh bubbled and hissed, lighting his nerves on fire until unbearable white flared behind his eyelids blinding him with screaming pain.
Again the tarantula pressed down on him, but now it was feeding. His ears roared with the harsh sucking sound of his liquefied flesh being consumed, siphoned away through the spider’s straw-shaped mouth. Again the chelicerae washed over him, this time pressing against his face and throat.
A more intense round of burning pain filled his shrinking universe. He tried to scream but his left cheek dissolved, leaving a hole that exposed all the teeth on that side of his head, so that only a panicked, gasping hiss emerged from his burning throat. In seconds his left eyelid was gone, and the exposed eyeball went dark a moment later, dribbling down what was left of his cheek.
When the chelicerae pressed down again, he raised his arms to hold them back. But his hands were bare and soon coated in the sticky digestive fluids. With his remaining eye, he watched as the flesh of his fingers and palms and forearms ran down his sleeves like hot candle wax. But not for long. The suctioning mouth was greedy and wanted more of him. When his arms were useless, the chelicerae pressed down, enveloping what was left of his face as the pedipalps gripped him in a single-minded embrace.
Briefly, he became aware of the bass rumbling of a truck engine and a flare of light washing over him, bathing the tarantula’s bristling body and appendages in sharp contrast. But those sensory cues were overwhelmed and forgotten as the suffocating pressure of the spider’s mass bore down on him.
Sight abandoned him, and then hearing, and finally his nerve
s, so long on fire, fell silent as his exposed brain was given the spider’s special attention.
The tarantula savored every liquid morsel—until it abruptly vanished.
Lucy stared in horror as the car bore down on her. She briefly caught sight of the distinctive grill, with the chrome bumper below it, but had no time to process the memory. An image of Steve’s face flashed in her mind and that, more than anything, spurred her to action. She dodged to the left and hurled herself over the waist-high picket fence fronting the nearest house.
The car swerved again, even further across the sidewalk, and the front bumper clipped every slat and post in the fence in quick succession with a rapid series of explosive cracks, like machine gun fire.
Lucy rolled across the grass and sprang to her feet.
The owner of the house, a woman in a bathrobe, poked her head out the front door.
“What the hell was that?” she demanded.
“Call the police!” Lucy yelled, her gaze tracking the receding taillights. “That car tried to run me down.”
“Who? What kind of car?”
Lucy walked across the wooden debris out to the sidewalk, deep in thought as she stared back the way she had come. She turned back to the woman, her eyes wide in realization.
“A ’68 Dodge Charger!”
“Wait! Where are you going?”
Lucy sprinted back toward Tony’s house. The car had killed Steve and had nearly killed her. But this time it hadn’t disappeared. She had a terrifying feeling that it hadn’t completed its night’s work.
She had Tony’s house in sight. She saw the Charger’s brake lights flare, the tires screaming against the asphalt as the car made an abrupt ninety-degree turn to face the front of the house.
“Tony!” she screamed.
As she ran, she shoved her hand into the pocket of her jeans, pulled out her cell and speed dialed her father. He answered on the second ring but static drowned out his voice.
“Dad! Come to Tony’s house now! It’s urgent!” she shouted, hoping he could hear her over the squawking interference, but a moment later the phone went silent. The light of the display and behind the buttons winked out, as if her battery had died in an instant.
Tony stood on the porch, leaning over the porch railing, confused as the Charger revved its engine.
“Hey!” he called, shielding his eyes from the bright headlights. “What the hell?”
“Tony, get inside!”
Instead of following her instructions, he looked over at her and shook his head.
“Lucy?”
The Charger lurched forward, engine roaring as it again jumped the curb, barreled across the front lawn, demolishing the small bushes Tony’s mother had planted, and slammed into the porch skirt.
Wood creaked and the porch sagged in the middle.
Tony staggered, grabbing onto the twisted railing to catch his balance.
The Charger reversed, nearly to the curb, then rushed forward again, smashing into the white planking of the porch floor. The center collapsed, in a V, and Tony pitched forward onto the hood of the Charger.
Lucy screamed.
The Charger reversed again, tires spinning and digging up clods of dirt from the lawn as Tony fell from the hood and whacked his head against the shattered planking. Dazed, he climbed to his feet and staggered in one of the long ruts in the dirt.
Tony’s father flung open the front door of the house, a baseball bat gripped in both hands. Behind him, Tony’s mother appeared, looking past her husband’s shoulder, her face stark white with fear. In the time it took Tony’s father to take in the scene, the Charger had roared forward again.
Tony was pinned in the lights, trapped between the ruin of the porch and the oncoming front bumper of the car.
Tony raised his arms—
The Charger rammed him back into the shattered porch, the grill and bumper of the car crushing him against unyielding wood.
Lucy looked away from the horrifying image of Tony’s chest bursting open, broken ribs entangled with jagged shards of wood as his blood splashed everywhere. She dropped to her knees and sobbed.
Tony’s father yelled, an unintelligible sound of rage and anguish, and swung the bat like an axe, cracking the windshield of the Charger and pounding the hood. The bat shattered but he continued to smash what was left of it against the Charger until his hands bled.
With a roar, the Charger reversed, spinning into a turn so that it faced Lucy. The engine raced and she realized she was next. She was too distraught to move. Nothing could stop this car. It would kill her just as it had killed Steve and now Tony. She wondered if she’d been living on borrowed time for the past year. Maybe they were all supposed to die in the crash that had killed Teddy. And this was just fate cashing in its unpaid bills.
Tony’s mother ran down to her son’s broken body, dropping down beside him in her bathrobe and cradling him in her arms. Sirens wailed in the distance.
Before the Charger moved toward Lucy, Tony’s father jumped in front of it and pounded on the hood with his bare, bloody fists. Once, twice, a third time—
—and his fists came down on nothing but air.
The Charger had vanished.
NINE
“We’ve been driving around aimlessly for fifteen minutes,” Sam said. “What exactly are we looking for, Dean?”
“It’s like the definition of porn.”
“What?”
“I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Don’t you think Chief Quinn or Jeffries will call if anything weird happens?”
“Maybe,” Dean said. “But by the time they get around to it, might be too late to do anything. Hey, nap if you want. I see a headless horseman, I’ll be sure to wake you.”
“Funny, Dean,” Sam said. “But if we’re gonna do this, I need coffee.”
“Place up ahead,” Dean said, nodding toward a white sign with red letters at the corner of a parking lot: “Mack’s Qwik Mart.” “Says it’s open twenty-four seven.”
Dean flicked on his turn signal as he neared the convenience store’s parking lot.
Beside him, Sam sat up straight, leaned forward.
“Wait, what’s happening?” he asked, peering ahead of him.
“Don’t know.”
A group of agitated people in the parking lot were yelling at each other, pointing at the ground, and backing away. A woman with facial piercings, wearing a distressed leather jacket and jeans, ran to the front of the store and pounded on the windows, screaming, “Get out!”
Walking on wobbly legs, an old man fell against the side of his Buick sedan, fumbled for his keys, then gave up and hustled out of the parking lot. A young woman with bleached blond hair dropped two plastic bags filled with soft drink bottles and unhealthy snacks and raced across the parking lot as if a Hellhound was on her heels. A few people dashed toward their cars, minivans, and SUVs, while others simply followed the blonde’s lead.
“Dude,” Dean said. “This is porn.”
As the old-timer who’d lost his keys lumbered heedlessly out into the street, Dean stomped on the brake pedal to avoid hitting him. Under bushy gray brows, the man’s eyes were wild.
“Get back!” he yelled. “Get back while you can!”
After that frantic warning, the old man continued his retreat.
Dean slowed to school zone speed and drove up to the parking lot. He was halfway up the entrance ramp when he hit the brake again—hard. Dean would risk his own life before he would imperil the chassis of the Impala. After all, the Impala couldn’t defend itself.
“Sinkhole!” he said.
“You think?”
Sam was right: the word ‘sinkhole’ didn’t begin to cover what was happening in the convenience store’s parking lot. The ground was falling away at an alarming rate, from the center of the parking lot outward, the blacktop was crumbling like burnt toast.
Dean shifted the Impala hurriedly into reverse. The cars lined up behind the row of cement bollard
s protecting the Plexiglas front of Mack’s Qwik Mart tilted backward as the back wheels lost their support. A metallic-blue Nissan Murano was the first to fall. It landed with a resounding crash, shattering the back and side windows. A silver Dodge Durango followed soon after, slamming into the Nissan with a concussive whump and a protesting screech of metal. The theft alarm whooped and wailed.
Dean twisted around to look through the rear window of the Impala. Seeing the road clear, he gunned the engine and the Impala lurched backward and accelerated away from the convenience store.
“Dean?”
“You’ll get your coffee, Sam.”
“That’s not what I—”
“That sinkhole’s eating cars,” Dean said. “Keeping my baby clear of that.”
Sam shook his head, rolling his eyes. “First things first, right?”
“Damn straight.”
Dean spun the wheel and backed into a parking space along the curb on the far side of the street, a couple of hundred feet from Mack’s Qwik Mart. A few moments later, they were out of the car and sprinting back to the site of the chaos.
Some of the people who had fled the store or abandoned their cars in the unstable parking lot stood on the shoulder of the road, staring in disbelief at the ongoing devastation. The Winchesters shouldered past the line of gawkers, repeating “FBI” and “Move aside” until they reached the parking lot.
Sam turned to the people and held up his FBI laminate.
“I need everyone to back up to the far side of the street,” he stated firmly. “For your own safety. Move!”
A few nodded, others grumbled, but they all backed up.
From the edge of the parking lot, Dean looked down into the sinkhole. More like a friggin’ abyss, he thought. A few cars parked on either side of the lot were within a few brittle blacktop inches of falling into the hole, but what concerned him more were the two people standing at the entrance to the convenience store. An attractive blond woman no more than thirty, with a panic-stricken look on her face, straining to pull away from the wiry teenaged boy wearing a nametag and green polyester shirt that probably served as a store uniform. The teenager had a firm grip on her upper arm to keep her from running headlong into the pit.
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