They Came After Me

by C S Allen

  “I don’t feel anything or have any pain for that matter,” John said, still wiping and looking at his hand for anything.

  “That’s not blood, Will, that’s red skin around the spider bite marks,” Olivia said, looking concerned.

  John huffed and then walked around to the driver’s side door of the police car and sat down inside it. He then pulled down the sun visor, and some papers and a brochure fell down into his lap, making us all jump “Oh shit, I’m having an allergic reaction to getting bit. My eyes feel like there burning,” [pe11]John said, as he looked into the visor mirror. “Well, at least we have an ambulance coming soon, maybe not,” John said. He smiled at the both of us.

  “Maybe you need to just sit in there, John, and rest. I don’t want you to pass out or die on us before help gets here,” I said.

  “You’re a good kid, Will; just don’t go into the medical field with that bedside manner of yours,” John stated, and we all got a good laugh.

  By now, fifteen or so minutes had passed, and none of us could hear any emergency vehicles. “John, can you call in to dispatch and ask where everyone is?” I asked.

  “That shounds about right. I don’t hear anyfing, and surely someone would have called back,” John replied. John reached over to the microphone and then began to speak into it. “Dishpash, dishpash . . . thish . . . ish Helo one, over,” John said.

  “John, look at me,” Olivia stated. John turned his head, and we could see a red mark down his forehead, and across his right eye. “John, you’re slurring your words and that red mark has spread,” Olivia stated, sounding more concerned.

  John looked into the mirror again and said, “Oh my goch, wha the hell?”

  No one replied on the radio, so Olivia took the microphone from John’s hand and pressed the button two times. The clicking sound should have been heard through the speakers, but nothing came across. Then Olivia blew into the microphone to hear herself making noise, and again nothing came through. “The friggin’ radio is dead!” Olivia yelled, as she banged on the microphone and then dropped it.

  “What about the chopper, John?” I asked.

  “It wown’t wok because I qwashed the thing,” John said, trying to speak.

  “Why in the hell are we staying here? Let’s go and meet whoever is coming on the way,” Olivia said impatiently.

  “Yeah, let’s get out of here,” I replied, looking at Olivia.

  “Guysh, I will staysh heah, tell ‘em I’m in the cahs. My legz ah numb and cahnt move,” John stated with difficulty.

  I didn’t want to say what was going to happen to John since he was becoming numb all over. He obviously had toxins in his body, causing him paralysis, and more than likely he would die soon. “John, we’ll stay with you until help comes. We can’t leave you by yourself with whatever else is out there. We at least owe you that much,” I said.

  We stayed with John and waited for the emergency crew to come for over an hour. During that time, John’s health got worse, and he couldn’t speak or move. Olivia and I knew it was only a matter of time before John would die in front of us, and it was heartbreaking.

  Finally, in the distance, I could hear what sounded like a vehicle driving on the dirt road. “Do you hear that?” I said excitedly to Olivia. Olivia looked at me and then looked toward the dirt road. “It’s a car! I hear someone coming!” I looked at John and then reached in to grab his shirt. “John! They’re coming for us, hold on man!”

  As I shook John, some kind of liquid came out of his mouth, and then there were gurgling sounds. John’s eyes were open, but he had died without us knowing. I backed away from John out of fear of the gross stuff coming out of him. “John’s dead, Olivia,” I said sadly to her.

  Olivia looked over at John, and she winced like she was in pain. “He saved me, Will,” Olivia said.

  “I know, and this is a bittersweet ending. Look, someone is coming,” I said, pointing at a white van followed by two vehicles.

  We waited for the vehicles to come to a stop before walking over to them, but something seemed wrong. The driver of the van didn’t get out, and then, out of nowhere, men dressed in tactical gear and equipment went running by us.

  “What the hell?” Olivia said to me.

  “Let’s just keep walking and get out of here,” I replied.

  As we walked past the van, men dressed in suits got out of the two vehicles. We stopped walking because they converged on us and were now in our way to leave. The man closest to us put his hand up, as if he knew us.

  “Hello, you must be Olivia and Will, right?” the man asked.

  “Yeah, how do you know that?” I asked. He was standing in the way of us leaving.

  “Oh, where are my manners? My name is Doctor Raymond Ford. And the men who are standing behind me are my colleagues. We work for the US government, specializing in what you have just witnessed with those spiders. We have been monitoring your situation on the police radio and got your names that way. We had no idea where the spiders had gone until you called for help. I need you to come with us to our main facility so we can ask you questions on what has happened these past two days. Then we will drop you off back at school or with your families,” Dr. Ford stated with a friendly smile.

  While he was talking, I looked at the front license plates, and they had ‘US government’ written on them. I didn’t know what to do. I stood there, looking at the six or seven men who were staring at me and Olivia. Our situation felt like we didn’t have a choice.

  “What the hell is going on?” Olivia spouted before I could say anything.

  “Olivia, what you two have witnessed is absolutely awful and I’m sorry. But before I can say anything else to you or Will, I will need you to sign a confidentiality agreement form. Once you have signed it, we can spill the beans, so to speak, on everything that you were involved in here. The emergency vehicles that the both of you are waiting for are not coming; we are your emergency vehicles, and you both need to come with us,” Dr. Ford stated with a smile.

  “Do we have a choice in the matter?” Olivia asked.

  “Yes and no, Olivia. Yes, you can walk about five miles to the local store to call someone to get the both of you. And no, Olivia, because you’ve been bitten by one of the spiders and are dying[pe12],” Dr. Ford said with a sad look on his face.

  “I didn’t get bitten, what are you talking about?” Olivia spouted out in anger.

  “Will, would you mind looking on Olivia’s back where the spiders were?” Dr. Ford asked me.

  I looked at Olivia, and she nodded her head for me to look. I looked at her shirt first and didn’t see anything. “I’m going to lift your shirt up a bit now,” I said to Olivia.

  I lifted her shirt halfway up her back, and then I stopped. “Olivia, you have red, black, and blue marks on your back,” I stated and then put Olivia’s shirt back down.

  “Kids, I need to bring you back to our facility or Olivia will die a painful death. Luckily, she was bitten by an immature spider or else she would be dead by now,” Dr. Ford said.

  Olivia looked at me and said, “I don’t want to die, Will.”

  I stared at Olivia for a few seconds and then turned back to the doctor. “So, I guess no, no, we don’t have a choice,” I commented.

  “Okay, so there we have it. We have a helicopter coming for Olivia to bring her to our medical lab for treatment. It should be here shortly since Olivia doesn’t have much time before she has the first symptoms. Let’s go to the cars and wait until the helicopter gets here, shall we?” Dr. Ford suggested, as he stretched out his arm and pointed at the cars with his open hand.

  The two cars were like shorter versions of a stretch limo. The men standing behind Dr. Ford turned around and lead us over to the vehicles. I could hear a helicopter coming in the distance, and I looked at Olivia, but I was worried. “Oh shoot, the bird approaches, so I guess I’ll have to speak with you later, Olivia.”

  “Doug, can you escort Olivia to the chopper?” Dr. Ford asked
one of the men standing by.

  “Olivia, you’re going to be okay. They’re going to treat you, and we’ll catch up later, all right?” I said, giving her a hug. When we let go of each other, Olivia gave me a serious look. “It’s going to be okay, and we’ll catch up later.”

  “You better be right, Will,” Olivia stated, as she punched me in the arm.

  “Come with me, please,” Doug said, as Olivia followed him back toward the cabin.

  I heard a chainsaw roaring, and it sounding like it was cutting into a tree. I took a step to the side of the dirt road to see what was going on. The tree that was blocking the road was being cut by one of the men who had gotten out of the van earlier.

  “Will, please have a seat in this first car, will you,” Dr. Ford said, as he opened the car door. I took one last look at Olivia walking away as the helicopter landed, and I got in the car. The car had a bench seat so I scooted all the way over to the other side of it. Dr. Ford got in next beside me and then closed his door. Two men got in the front seats, and then the passenger in the front turned around and gave Dr. Ford a two-way radio.

  “We’re all set, sir,” the passenger stated and then turned back around to face the front.

  Dr. Ford pushed a button on the radio and stated, “White one, we’re ready to go.”

  There was a pause, and then someone came back over the radio. “Roger, holding pattern for Eagle one to lift off in thirty seconds, standby.”

  I felt uncomfortable sitting in a vehicle with someone I totally didn’t know. What the hell is going on? Who are these people? Are they some kind of special branch of the government? Are they going to let us go or make us disappear?

  “Will, I’m glad you told Olivia that she was going to be okay. She is going to be treated for a spider bite and then released back to us,” Dr. Ford said with a smile on his face.

  The sound of the helicopter got louder, and I assumed that it was taking off. I tried looking out the window and then up at the treetops to get a glimpse of it. I couldn’t see anything other than spiderwebs.

  “Moving, sir,” the driver stated, as he put the car in drive. The white van started forward, and we followed behind him. The tree and the police car that John was in had been moved out of the way.

  “How did they get the police car moved?” I asked, looking at Dr. Ford.

  “Simple really, we either hotwired it or broke the column to start it,” Dr. Ford replied.

  As we got closer to the cabin, I could see a man with a flamethrower burning the side of it. Another man with a big canister on his back was spraying the grass and trees with some kind of liquid. The van that we were following stopped, and we did a U-turn to leave the area.

  “Why are they burning down the cabin?” I asked Dr. Ford, as I was still looking out the window.

  “We have to; the whole area is infested with spiders, and what better way to get rid of them than to burn everything?” Dr. Ford said, looking forward.

  “Well, what about the water? One of them came out of the water, I think,” I said, looking at Dr. Ford.

  “All in good time, Will. I know you have lots of questions, but I can’t answer them all. We have scientists who can answer most of your questions back at our facility. They have questions for you as well,” Dr. Fort stated, looking back at me.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was a long, uncomfortable thirty- to forty-minute ride without talking to anyone. I wanted to jump out and run, but I knew that they would find me eventually. We entered an area posted with red and white signs that stated ‘No Trespassing Government Property.’ Then we passed an area that had ten-foot-tall fencing with razor wire on top. More signs were posted that stated that if caught trespassing they could be shot on sight. My God, where are we going for the government to state that someone could be shot on sight? We pulled up to a fence gate that had a small building on one side of the road and another the same size on the opposite side of it. Men who resembled soldiers wearing combat uniforms and bulletproof vests came out of the buildings at the same time with machine guns. The driver of our vehicle rolled down all of the electric windows so that these military men could look at us.

  The driver then said, “Dr. Ford and his team arriving with a visitor.” One of the men standing beside the driver’s side door pulled out a visitor’s badge from his shirt pocket and gave it to the driver.

  “All clear?” the man asked, looking over at the others. The other men replied clear and then stepped back from our vehicle. The gate rolled back and out of the way as our driver rolled the windows up.

  “Pretty good security, hunh, Will?” Dr. Ford asked me.

  I just nodded, not wanting to say anything. We then went on our way on what looked like a one-vehicle road. We drove about a half mile when a one-story building came into view that was green in color. It was like whoever had painted the building wanted it to be camouflaged. I broke our silence by asking a question. “Why is the building green, Dr. Ford? I asked.

  “I don’t know to be honest with you. I’m guessing that since the building is a military operational facility, some general in DC thought to camouflage it. The military always thinks that everything they have should be green or blend in with its surroundings; it’s ridiculous. Or maybe the hardware store had a sale on green paint,” Dr. Ford said, laughing at his last comment.

  We ended up stopping in front of double doors to the building that didn’t have windows. I wasn’t sure if we were going in the back way or where we had stopped was the front.

  “Okay, Will, here we are. We will be going inside through those doors over there,” Dr. Ford stated, as he pointed at the doors that I was already looking at. “Mike, visitor’s pass, please,” Dr. Ford stated to the front seat passenger. The passenger then turned to give Dr. Ford the pass from the front gate to me. “There’s a clip on this pass; be sure to have it attached to your shirt before we go inside, Will.”

  As I looked down to attach the visitor’s pass to my shirt, my door opened. Surprised that my door opened, I did a little nervous jump in my seat. I looked out, and a woman was holding the door open for me.

  She said, “Hi, you must be William?”

  “Ah yeah,” I said, still sitting in the car.

  “Come on out of there, unless you want to go to the parking garage and hang out with the driver,” the woman said, waving for me to come out of the car. “By the way, my name is Michelle, and I’ll be your guide to where you will be going today. I see you’ve met Dr. Ford already,” Michelle said while I got out of the car.

  I looked over at Dr. Ford, who was already out of the car and coming around the back side.

  “He’s quite a talker this one is,” Dr. Ford replied, as he walked past us. The car that had been following behind us from the cabin had already parked and unloaded its people. “Okay everyone, we’re going to the conference room now, follow me, please!” Dr. Ford shouted to everyone and then walked over to the double doors.

  There was a small security box on one of the doors, and Dr. Ford placed his right index finger on it. One of the doors popped open with a click, and he opened it and went inside the building. I waited for the other people to go in first, and then I followed.

  Michelle stayed behind me and made sure that I went in as she gently placed her hand on my back. “It’s okay, William, this won’t take long,” Michelle said.

  I walked inside the building and followed the others by taking a left down a hallway. No offices or open rooms, just a long hallway, and then we turned right down another boring hallway. We got to an elevator and that surprised me since the building was only one level.

  “Okay, everyone will go to level two except our guest Will and Michelle. They will go to conference room A, and we will meet up with them in an hour,” Dr. Ford stated, as the elevator opened and the others walked in.

  “William, we’ll wait for the next one,” Michelle said, as she placed her hand on my shoulder.

  I didn’t have anything to ask or say to Miche
lle. I just wanted to get in and out of that building and go home to my parents. I had a bad feeling in my gut that something was either going to happen, or I was already trapped. I didn’t trust anyone who I didn’t know, especially that Dr. Ford with his smiling about everything. The elevator made some noise, and then the doors opened. As they opened, I walked in with Michelle and turned around to face out, and she giggled a bit and then pressed a button.

  “Go ahead and turn back around, Will, the other side is about to open,” Michelle said with a big grin on her face.

  As I turned around, the back of the elevator opened, surprising me. I had never seen an elevator that had two entrances to it, and that’s why Michelle was grinning.

  “Pretty cool elevator, hunh?” Michelle said, walking out while looking at me.

  “That’s pretty cool,” I replied, as I followed her.

  We had a choice to go either left, right, or straight down a hallway, and Michelle asked me, “Which way do you want to go, William?”

  Of course, I had no idea where I was going, so I said, “The shortest way possible, please.”

  We went straight ahead, walking halfway down the hallway, until we saw a glass door. “We’re going in here, William,” Michelle stated, pointing at the door. Michelle opened the door for me to enter the room first, and then she came in behind me.

  The room was big with plain white walls and a large brown conference table sitting in the middle. About fourteen chairs sat at the table with what looked like a conference machine at one end of it. There was another door at the other end of the room with a security box on it like the front door coming into the building.

  “William, please have a seat anywhere you like at the table, and then we can get started,” Michelle stated, as she walked to the other end of the table. She pressed the machine that was on the table and said, “Maggie, can you call the others and let them know we are ready?” Michelle then released the button.

  A voice came from the machine and replied, “Yes ma’am.”