by C. Gockel
Oh. Her brain is inconveniently wired, too. His hands tighten on her waist, and his eyes move to her lips…
From below comes a “Cheep?” and from above comes skittering thumps.
Amy’s face goes pink. “We, ummm…better go.” She pulls herself forward on the beam out of his grasp and looks down. “Think I can do that…”
Following her gaze, Bohdi sees below them is a eight or ten foot drop to a sort of hammocky gangway about three feet wide. “I’ll go first,” he says. Swinging over the beam, he lowers himself as far as he can with his arms and then drops down, letting his legs bend to absorb the impact. He needn’t have bothered; the floor gives like a trampoline. He tests it with a few bounces.
“That looks easy enough,” Amy says. She tries repeating his moves, but when she lowers herself, her arms shake and give out. She drops like a stone and bounces with such force she nearly flies off the gangway. Bohdi catches her and steadies her without comment, but inside he feels a cold wash of worry. Women have less upper body strength, and she’s already overtaxed herself trying to climb the cocoon—and trying to save him from falling.
“Thanks,” Amy says, pulling out of his arms and ducking her head. “Look at the railings,” she says.
Bohdi inspects the lines of silk that line the gangway. Instead of being at right angles, the “railings” are set at four, five, seven, and eight o’clock relative to the walkway.
“To accommodate eight giant legs…” says Amy, her eyes widening.
Mr. Squeakers suddenly pops up from the railing at eight o’clock and gives a hiss. A chittering behind them makes the hairs on Bohdi’s neck stand on end.
“Down!” says Amy, her eyes trained over Bohdi’s shoulder, very wide with alarm. Mr. Squeakers vanishes on a line of silk, and Amy slips beneath the railings. More chittering rises down the gangway. Bohdi doesn’t even bother to look, he just squeezes himself between the silk railings—and finds himself in a layer of more support beams. Amy is sitting on a large tree-trunk-wide beam. “Seems to be alternating layers of walkways and supports,” she says.
Sliding to sit beside her, Bohdi blinks down and verifies her analysis. Above, he hears loud chittering. “I’ll go first again,” he says. He lowers himself, bounces, and calls up to her, “Now!”
Amy lands beside him with about as much grace as before, and Bohdi catches her without comment. “Thanks,” she mumbles.
They pass through three more alternating layers like this. Occasionally, they see cocoon-tombs of strange creatures suspended in the web, but no more spiders.
Bohdi feels the chill leaving his bones. And actually, without threat of imminent death…
Bouncing on a gangway, he looks up at Amy sitting on a beam of silk and can’t help himself. He grins. “This place is fun.”
Chapter 8
Sitting astride a beam of spider silk, Amy looks down at Bohdi bouncing cheerfully on a gangway. He’s wearing a pink dress shirt. It strikes her that she’s only seen ADUO agents wear white or blue beneath their coats. It suits his brown skin, and the warmth of the color is in striking contrast to the muted grays of the spider silk.
“Don’t you think this place is fun?” he says.
She gives him a tight smile and steels herself for the drop below. Her arms and fingers are shaking, even when she isn’t exerting them. Swinging a leg over, she tries to lower herself and falls—again. She hits the gangway, bounces hard, and almost soars over the railings, but once again, Bohdi catches her without comment, complaint, or even a scowl. She feels her face heating as she mumbles her thanks.
She can’t meet his eyes. She’s slowing him down and she hates it. With a deep breath she looks around. There’s still enough light to see by, but now, instead of like being outside on a bright snowy day, at this level of the nest, it’s like being outside on an overcast snowy day. At least there are no spiders. But how much further is it to the ground…and how much longer will they be alone?
“Ready?” Bohdi says, snapping her from her thoughts.
“Right,” says Amy. She and Bohdi slide between the railings to another level of scaffold. Before Amy’s even braced herself on the large beam, Bohdi’s sitting comfortably, peeking down below. “Hmmm. This is different,” he whispers.
Amy peeks down. Below them, instead of a gangway is a sort of room. Instead of being at right angles, it’s ovoid, with walls the same texture of web as the roof had been.
Beside her Bohdi whispers, “Should we try and clamber through the supports or drop down and—”
Right above their heads comes the skittering of feet, and loud chittering. Amy’s and Bohdi’s eyes lock. Amy looks down, and she nods at Bohdi. He nods back, black hair flopping over his dark eyes. His darker features are indistinct in the low light, but the sharp angle of his jaw stands out, and is oddly familiar.
Amy looks away, something in her chest tightening. The chittering above them gets louder; a silvery limb pokes the air in front of them. Without a word, Amy and Bohdi drop into the space below.
The drop is farther than the others, but the floor is springy, and it doesn’t hurt. As usual, Bohdi’s fall is graceful, and Amy almost bounces off her feet. Taking her hand, he silently steadies her.
The room is fairly small—only about the size of Amy’s bedroom. There are round doorways in front and behind them. Toward one side poking out of the floor, slightly to the side is a bush crowned with dead leaves. Amy’s jaw drops. Not a bush.
“A tree top,” she whispers.
Bohdi’s eyebrows hitch up. He gives her a nod and then puts his fingers to his lips. She watches his eyes slide to the walls and his brows constrict. The walls are about eight or nine feet high and solid. Bohdi could probably jump up and swing himself over. Amy’s hand tightens on his and she swallows. She’s not sure if she could. If he wants to go that way…
From behind them, she hears skittering footsteps. Mr. Squeakers, suspended on a line of silk, drops down to the floor and starts hopping in the opposite direction. Bohdi follows the mouse, pulling Amy along. Right before they enter the next room, he tugs her so she’s leaning against the wall and pokes his nose cautiously around the door. Amy looks in the direction they just came from. She hears chittering and footsteps getting louder, but sees no spiders.
Before she knows what’s happening, Bohdi pulls her into the next room. It’s a lot like the first, but longer, and with multiple doors. Dead tree tops poke through the floor and the walls. More chittering rises outside the door they just entered, and Amy looks over her shoulder as Bohdi pulls her along.
There’s still no sign of spiders, but she swears she hears more of them.
Bohdi gasps, and she snaps her head forward. She’s relieved to see there isn’t a spider in front of them.
But that relief only lasts a moment.
Bound to a wall with fine spider silk is a hominid figure with dragonfly wings. Obviously long dead, it’s still terrifying. Through the silk, Amy can see its skin is sunken to its bones. Its mouth is open in a silent scream—revealing fangs nearly as long as Amy’s pinky fingers.
“Adze,” she whispers.
“Oh,” says Bohdi. His Adam’s apple bobs. And his eyes slide down the creature, its shape still visible beneath the nearly translucent silk.
“So um…did the spiders take some parts off of him, or do adze…” He winces.
Amy follows his gaze to the adze’s sexless groin. “They come like that.”
“Ahhh…” he says. “Still disturbing.”
And it is. The creature’s body is smooth like a Ken doll, and there’s something about it that makes Amy feel like her hair is being brushed the wrong way.
“Which way?” Bohdi whispers. Mr. Squeakers hops over to one of the doorways and disappears. From the way they just came, the chittering increases in volume.
Without further conversation, Amy and Bohdi bolt after her mouse and find themselves in a narrow hallway. Instead of loft-like scaffolding above them, there is a smooth roof
. Mr. Squeakers darts down a side hallway, and then another. At one point, he slips through a narrow space in the floor, just large enough for Amy and Bohdi to slip through one at a time. They work their way through another jungle-gym-like obstacle course of silken support beams and then pop out another tiny hole into a narrow, twisting hallway.
As they follow Mr. Squeakers down the corridors, Amy notices they’re slowly going downward. It’s getting progressively gloomier, and the sound of spider chittering seems to be rising around them everywhere—from the walls, ceiling, even the floor.
Amy gulps. They’re in the spiders’ living quarters…which explains the seeming lack of stickiness in the web.
Ahead of them, Mr. Squeakers makes a sudden break right. Bohdi and Amy follow him down a narrow hallway that drops abruptly about eight feet or so into a cavernous room. Mr. Squeakers keeps hopping forward, extending out a bolt of silk to lower himself. Bohdi and Amy come to a skidding halt.
The room is slightly larger than an Olympic swimming pool, and the chattering of spiders echoes through it, though Amy can’t see any of the web’s inhabitants about. But then, it’s impossible to see very far. The room is filled with treetops that rise at least twenty feet from the floor. The branches are adorned with their own dead leaves, brown withered ivy with dark black fronds, wispy cobwebs, and odd bits of spider silk.
“Weird,” whispers Bohdi. And Amy knows what he means; everywhere else the spiders’ webs have been spun with engineering precision. Here it looks like cheap Halloween decorations.
Mr. Squeakers bolts between some of the tree limbs. Amy feels herself tremble, and Bohdi meets her eyes. Without a word, they slip down the drop and follow Mr. Squeakers, trying not to step on dried husks of plant matter that litter the floor.
They’ve only gone a few feet when Bohdi gives a low hiss. He veers away from the path Mr. Squeakers is weaving and goes to a wide, loose, pile of spider silk, barely visible in the gloom.
Amy looks at where Mr. Squeakers sits patiently, and then back to Bohdi, now kneeling by the silk.
What is he doing? Why is he stopping?
Biting her lip, Amy walks over to him. She is about to put her hand on his shoulder, to remind him that they are in a nest of giant, human-eating spiders, when he grabs hold of the silk and pulls it away.
Amy’s jaw drops. Beneath the layers of silk is an airplane. Well, not an airplane. At about eighteen inches high, four feet long, and maybe eight feet wide it is obviously not for passengers.
Kneeling on the ground, Bohdi looks up at her and whispers, “RQ-487 Albatross. Spy drone.” He shakes his head. “These things were only prototypes when I was in the Corps.”
Amy swallows. So Steve and company—or someone on Earth—is looking for them. She wishes she could feel more relieved, but all she wants to do is get out of here now. The spider chitters are making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
Unfortunately, Bohdi doesn’t seem to share her urgency. Still kneeling, he runs a hand down its frame and whispers, “Looks like the electronics are out… If I can get it out of here, I might be able to turn it on, maybe re-launch it, and get a message to Steve.”
“We have to get out of here first!” Amy whispers. And how he will carry that ungainly thing, she has no idea.
Bohdi blinks at her, and then his eyes snap back to the drone. “Right.”
Instead of getting a move on, he picks up the drone. It must be lighter than it looks because he lifts it with one hand. Raising it to eye level, he studies it and then pulls a lever beneath its body. The wings and tail finny-things fold inward and collapse until they are flush with the body of the plane. Suddenly Bohdi is holding something that looks more like a very long baseball bat than an airplane, although, where there would be a handle on a baseball bat, there is a rather sharp, pointy tail end.
Her face must show some surprise because Bohdi whispers, “Know why they call it the albatross?”
Amy’s brain does a little blinky-away-from-reality thing. “Because it doesn’t look like it can fly?”
Bohdi’s jaw sags. “Yeah.
Bouncing on her feet, Amy whispers, “Can we just go?”
Somewhere nearby something crunches in the leaves. “Right,” he whispers.
Together they follow Mr. Squeakers, Amy’s heart dropping as they do. The chittering echoes in the room are getting louder.
Beside her Bohdi whispers, “Do you think he knows where he’s going?”
Amy can only shrug.
Mr. Squeakers hops up to a wispy curtain of spider silk adorned with dry leaves, and stops. A faint breeze stirs, and the silk rustles.
Bohdi goes forward and glances through the cobweb. Inhaling sharply, he whispers, “Uh-oh.”
Slipping to stand beside him, Amy peeks past him. Her legs immediately go weak. Beyond the curtain is a break in the trees. About thirty feet in front of them there are two massive spiders, plucking at something on the far wall, concealed by their bodies. Writhing between their legs are smaller spiders chattering madly. They range from the size of miniature poodles to golden retrievers. Where the large spiders have legs that are long and spindly in comparison to their body size, the little spiders have short stubby legs. Instead of smooth, silvery carapaces, the little ones have soft downy white fur. One turns its head briefly, and Amy notices its six red eyes are very large in its little head, and its mandible is proportionally very tiny.
All of the spiders have their backs turned to them—the better to shoot them with web. She blinks. Whatever the large spiders are doing has the little ones very excited. Their chittering is becoming deafening. A few shoot wispy bits of webbing from their butts. It doesn’t look strong or go very far.
“Spider babies?” Bohdi whispers.
“Yes,” Amy whispers back, not really afraid of being overheard over the deluge of chatter. They’re kind of cute, and if she was watching a Natural Geographic special, she’s sure she’d be utterly besotted.
She wonders what has them so excited. And then one of the large spiders steps sideways, and Amy sees what it was plucking at.
No. Not plucking. Stabbing. The adult has a forelimb protruding from the chest of an adze—and although the adze’s head is lolling downward, its wings are still trembling. Blood is gushing from the wound. Little spiders are hopping up and down trying to catch the geyser in their mouths.
She hears Bohdi take a sharp intake at the same time she does. She hopes with all her might the adze is unconscious. As soon as the thought crosses her mind, the adze raises its head, hisses, and then begins lunging against the spider’s forelimb, driving it further through its chest. Seemingly oblivious to the pain, the adze roars, clawing and gnashing its fangs at its captors. At the adze’s feet, the little spiders make a sound that sounds like a baby’s coo.
Bohdi and Amy both jerk their heads away.
Amy scrunches her eyes shut.
“Mr. Squeakers,” Bohdi whispers. Amy opens her eyes. Bohdi points through a little hole in the curtain.
Amy hears a hiss from the adze, and despite herself, her eyes go in its direction. The other adult spider has jammed a forelimb through its chest. The creature is pinned against the wall, its head is rolling from side to side, and its teeth are bared. At its feet the little spiders begin hopping excitedly again. On their short legs they don’t hop very high.
Tearing her eyes away, Amy follows Bohdi’s gesture. Mr. Squeakers is skittering across the floor, almost invisible among the dried leaves and cobwebs. As she watches, her mouse goes to a wall to the left of the spiders and climbs up to an opening roughly eight feet above the ground. Her eyes follow the wall and she sees other similar openings, all set above ten feet. She looks at the little spiders and their tiny hops. The openings are baby spider proof. They’re in the spider nursery, and apparently it was designed to keep the babies from getting out.
How touching. Unfortunately…Amy swallows as she looks at the opening. “I don’t think I can jump that high.”
> Bohdi pulls away from the curtain. Looking her up and down, he puts a hand to his chin. “I can and you don’t have to.” He doesn’t sound at all afraid, or angry, and it’s such a relief she could kiss him.
“How?” she says, instead.
Leaning close, Bohdi says. “We make a break for it. I go first. I reach the wall first.” He interlocks his fingers and raises his hands. “I throw you up in the air.”
Amy’s jaw drops, about to protest. She won’t make it…and then he won’t make it and then…
Cocking an eyebrow he says, “We don’t have time to argue, and I’m not going anywhere without you.”
She bites her lip.
He looks cautiously through the hole in the curtain. She follows the direction of his gaze. The adult spiders have lowered the adze to the ground, and the little spiders are crawling all over it, making sounds that sound eerily like the laughter of small children. They seem focused, but she can’t imagine the feeding frenzy will last long.
“Ready?” he says.
“No.”
Bohdi’s teeth flash white in the gloom as he grimaces—or maybe smiles. “Me, either.” He shrugs. “Shall we?”
Amy nods. “Yes.”
“On three,” Bohdi says. “One.”
Amy takes a deep breath, her hands trembling.
“Two.”
She exhales slowly, trying to stay calm. Bohdi drops to a sprinter’s crouch, still holding onto the drone. Amy does the same.
Pushing the curtain of cobwebs aside with the drone nose, he whispers, “Three,” and bolts. Amy follows.
Bohdi is terribly fast. It seems like she is instantly several paces behind him. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the baby spiders lift their heads. They make a sound like, “Oooooooooooo.”
A loud deeper chittering fills her ears. The adults. She doesn’t turn, she just pumps her legs faster. In front of her, Bohdi has already dropped the drone, fallen to a crouch by the wall, and entwined his fingers. “Now!” he shouts.
Her heart is beating in time with her feet. One, two…there. Her foot connects with his hands, miraculously on the first try. She jumps, and he lifts, and she is soaring through the air. Her gut catches on the lip of the opening, knocking the wind out of her. Mr. Squeakers gives a squeal somewhere beside her, and she yanks herself up and into the tunnel. She turns. Below her Bohdi shouts. “Catch!”
