by Ray Garton
Moody fired his gun at the creature.
The spider was on him and had him on the ground before Dixie realized it had moved.
Moody screamed as the clicking sounds began. He kicked his legs, flailed his arms and he fired a round into the air. His scream became a gurgle as the spider made those slurping and sucking sounds. Then Moody fell silent.
Lewis screamed as he turned and ran away. His footsteps faded into the dark.
Dixie wanted to scream, but her throat was dry. She realized she’d been holding her breath. She suddenly sucked air into her lugs, but her breaths came fast as panic set in.
“Help me!” Decker cried in a hoarse, broken voice. “I’m hurt! I think it cut an artery in my leg, I’m bleedin’ bad!”
Dixie fired again, and so did Crump.
The spider turned away from Moody, it’s four fangs spread wide. It was on Crump in a heartbeat; it reared up and pinned him against the tree.
He screamed, “Help me please help me oh god oh Jesus oh – “
His screams were cut off by the clicking, chattering sound. The spider moved almost as if it were humping him. When it backed away, the top half of Crump’s body fell forward and landed on the ground. His legs remained standing against the tree.
The spider pounced on Crump’s torso and began clicketing as it slurped and sucked.
Dixie heard footsteps running toward them from behind. Other deputies probably had come down off the slope when they heard the gunfire.
It all had taken place in the space of ten or fifteen seconds.
Dixie fired her gun at the spider again – two, three, four times.
It turned toward her. The four black, individually articulate fangs, now dripping with blood, were open wide. It moved fast, but for Dixie, it was slow motion. The fangs got bigger as it got closer.
“What’s happening?” Deputy Reese said behind her. He cried out when he saw the spider, an inarticulate cry.
The instant it was on her, the spider’s fangs began to work. It cut open her abdomen and was eating her organs an instant before she died.
Fifteen
Harker parked in the middle of Creasey Hill Road – there was no room on the turn out with four cruisers parked there already. No one used the dirt road except for teenagers coming to the lookout, so he wasn’t worried about getting in the way of any traffic.
Flashlight in his right hand, the spider book tucked under his left arm, he went to the edge of the embankment and looked down, listened. He didn’t see anyone, but he heard something. He frowned and cocked his head, trying to identify the sound.
It was someone crying. Someone with a deep voice. A man, maybe. But it was muffled.
“Hello?” he called. “Hello!”
When he got no response, he became suspicious. He unsnapped the strip of leather across the top of his holster, ready to draw his weapon.
The crying continued. He listened carefully, and realized it was coming from behind him. He turned around and faced the four cruisers. He saw a figure at the wheel of one of them, but couldn’t tell who it was. He walked over to the car, leaned forward, and looked into the driver’s-side window.
“Lewis?” he said when he recognized the deputy. “What’s wrong? Lewis?”
Deputy Herb Lewis was blubbering like a little boy who’d just fallen of his bike.
Harker rapped a knuckle on the window a few times, and Lewis yelped and jumped in his seat, cried out, and turned to Harker with wide, teary eyes.
“Roll down the window, Lewis,” Harker said.
“You’ve gotta get outta here!” Lewis cried, his voice high with panic. “Or get in here with me, get in, right now, before it comes!”
“Before what comes?”
“It’s killing them! It’s killing them all!”
“Dammit, Lewis, roll down the window.”
“Get in the car! Get in the car for god’s sake Tony before it comes!”
Sighing with frustration, Harker walked around to the other side of the car and got in, closed the door. “What’s going on, Lewis? Tell me.”
“It had so many legs, that thing, it was ... “ He stopped a moment and clenched his eyes shut, shook his head, and spoke through clenched teeth. “It was a spider, Tony. A huge spider. And it killed Hanscom, and hurt Decker, and it was gonna kill ‘em all, so I ran, I had to run, my god, I couldn’t just stand there and be next, I couldn’t!”
Oh, shit, Harker thought. “Where did this happen, Herb? Where?”
Lewis nodded toward the edge of the embankment. “Down there. In the woods.”
Harker put the spider book on the dashboard, the flashlight on the floorboard, and grabbed the radio microphone. “Dispatch, Harker. I need back-up at Lovers’ Lookout, now. Back-up at Lovers’ Lookout.”
“Ten-four,” Shelly said.
Harker replaced the microphone.
“It’s a spider, Tony,” Lewis said. “A spider! How can that be?”
“I don’t know, Herb. I don’t know.”
Harker wasn’t sure what to do. He wanted to get down there to his deputies, but he was afraid that if he went down alone, he’d end up dead and then be no good to anyone. But it had to be done. He took the shotgun mounted between the seats and opened the door.
Lewis gibbered, “No, Tony, don’t go out there, don’t, don’t, it’s huge, and it’s fast, it’s so fast you can’t even see it move, it’s just sort of, sort of gone, and then it reappears somewhere else.”
“Who was down there?” Harker asked.
It took several seconds because he stuttered and stammered, but Lewis listed off the names of the deputies down in the woods with the spider.
“Oh, Jesus,” Harker whispered. “Look, Herb, you stay here, okay? Just stay right here in this car, don’t get out. I’ve got more deputies coming. Tell them to bring their shotguns down the slope. You hear me? Will you tell them that?”
Lewis nodded jerkily.
Harker took the flashlight from the floorboard, pushed the door open and got out.
“It’ll kill you all, it will, it’ll kill you and then it’ll eat you, don’t go, don’t go down there, don’t fucking go!”
Harker closed the door and went to the edge of the embankment. He made his way down the slope as fast as he could without falling.
“Cavanaugh!” he called. “Decker! Moody!”
No response.
Every little sound he heard made him jump.
He swept the flashlight back and forth as he zigzagged between the manzanita bushes. He went into the darker part of the woods, among the oaks and pines.
He heard rustling in the weeds behind him. He spun around and it stopped. He started to turn back and heard it again, then again. It was getting closer.
Harker aimed the shotgun low, ready to shoot.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t very big. It got closer. He saw a small shape in the weeds.
It meowed at him. It was a calico cat.
Harker sighed with relief, then turned around and continued on.
When he found them, he had to look away for a moment. It was Tiffany Huff all over again, but now there were seven of them. At first, he thought there were eight, then he realized Crump was in two pieces.
“Oh, Jesus holy Christ,” he said in a breath as he turned the flashlight on each of them, one after another.
Their uniforms had been shredded, abdomens ripped open, organs eaten. Their thighs were gone, with only femurs left behind, the bones picked clean. Their throats had been ripped out and eaten, heads almost severed on a couple of them.
They stared up at him with dead, dull eyes.
He shone the flashlight all around, but there was no sign of the spider. He was relieved by that. His eyes welled up with tears as he looked over the small massacre again. He clenched his teeth and ground them together a little. Sick to his stomach and feeling weary, he turned around and headed back for the slope.
The coroner would be paying his second visit of the night to
Lovers’ Lookout.
Sixteen
Harker assembled the other deputies who’d arrived at Lovers’ Lookout. They stood behind the four cruisers parked in the lookout.
“I’m going to get on my radio,” he said, “and I want you to hear what I have to say. I’m telling you now, this is not a joke. Listen close.”
There were three deputies there, and they followed him to his car. Harker got in, and they closed around his open door. He took the radio microphone and depressed the button with his thumb.
“This is Harker to all units,” he said. “You’re not going to want to believe what I have to tell you. I don’t have time to try to convince you, so for the sake of your job, you’re just going to have to be convinced. If I hear of anyone expressing even a little disbelief, I’ll shitcan you, understand me? You have to believe me, your lives will depend on it. There is a big spider in Hope Valley. I repeat, a very big spider. It’s a sun spider, and it’s got a body about five feet long, and ten long legs. This spider is very dangerous, and it is very fast. Take your shotguns with you wherever you go, and if you see it, empty them into it. Do. Not. Hesitate. I repeat, this is a very dangerous, very fast spider. You see it, shoot to kill. Harker out.”
Harker put the microphone back and got out of his car. He turned to the deputies.
“You all get that?”
All three deputies nodded.
“Anybody got a problem with it?”
They all said, “No, sir.”
“If you don’t believe it now,” Harker said, “you’ll believe it when you see the corpses down there in the woods. Get the coroner down here, and tell him to bring the wagon. And call an ambulance for Lewis, he’s lost his fucking mind with fear, he needs to be sedated, or something. And move your damned cars so I can get out of here.”
Harker waited while the deputies moved their cars. He drove farther up the road where there was a place he could turn around, then headed down the hill.
One question repeated itself over and over in his mind: How in the hell do you go after a spider?
He knew of no way to lure or track it. It moved fast, so it could cover a good distance in a short time – who knew where it might turn up again?
Harker wasn’t even sure he knew where he was headed.
He thought of the book he’d left on Lewis’s dashboard, and considered going back for it. The book might provide some valuable information about the sun spider.
The book reminded him of Rodney Lepke. He’d known enough to get the book. He’d said his little brother was some kind of spider geek. Harker didn’t know of spider experts he could consult immediately. And even if he did, he thought he might check with the kid first.
He got on the radio.
“Two-oh-six,” he said. He was more collected now and gave his I.D. number instead of using his name. “I need a street address for a Lepke, no first name.”
He waited until Shelly gave him the address in Hope Valley Heights. He flicked on his siren and lights and got there as fast as he could. He turned the siren off as he passed through the subdivision. There was no point in waking up everyone in the neighborhood.
Seventeen
It was T.J. Stone’s last delivery of the night and he wanted to get it over with. He wanted to go home and take a book to bed and read himself to sleep. He read a lot of science fiction and usually had two or three books going at once. He kept them scattered throughout the apartment so whatever room he happened to be in, he could pick up the nearest book and lose himself in other universes.
It was so much better than delivering pizzas.
T.J. was twenty-three and had two jobs. Some nights, like tonight, he delivered for Prime Pizza in Hope Valley, and other nights, he delivered for China Express in Newbury. On weekends, his friend Stanley paid him to help build Stanley’s new house in Ridgeton. When they were finished with the house, T.J. would find some other weekend work. He made enough money to live on and to support his book-buying habit, as long as he bought his books at flea markets and yard sales and used bookstores. Not that he needed to buy more – his apartment was cluttered with stacks of hard covers and paperbacks he had not yet read. In his bedroom, he’d cut through the stacks of books a narrow path that allowed him to get to his desk and bed.
He rolled down the window; the cool spring air felt good on his face. He cocked his left elbow and propped it on the edge of the open window.
T.J. turned on the radio. It was tuned to the heavy metal station, and an old AC/DC song was playing, Back in Black. He turned it up until the beat was pounding through the car’s body.
He stopped at a red light and waited, moving his head to the beat.
He saw movement from the corner of his left eye and turned to find himself looking into a monstrous face with three enormous black fangs. It closed those fangs on his arm. As T.J. pulled away from the window with a gasp, the face pulled away from the car and disappeared.
T.J. looked down at the bloody stump that jutted from his shoulder. As he screamed, he stiffened his legs and his right foot slipped off the brake and hit the gas. The car lurched forward into the intersection. An oncoming car on the left slammed into T.J.’s front end.
T.J. continued to scream.
His car came to a stop diagonally at the corner of the intersection. He tried to pull the parking brake, but his quaking hand kept missing it. Finally, he gave up and struggled with the seatbelt as he made throaty whimpering sounds. He felt warm blood running down his left side from the stump that used to be his arm. Once he unfastened the seatbelt, he reached over with his right hand and opened the door. He fell out of the car, screaming for help.
Blood continued to pump from the jagged stump of his arm.
Eighteen
Sixteen-year-old Lizzie Turner’s shift had begun only an hour ago, and yet she was already thinking about going home. Her parents started drinking around five or six, and they got into a fight almost every night. She was so tired of it that she would offer to do some overtime work for no pay to avoid going home until she knew they were in bed.
She put two Max Burgers and an order of curly fries into the white Max Burger bag, then handed the bag through the window to the woman in the minivan waiting outside.
“You have a good night,” Lizzie said.
“Thanks, you too,” the woman said as she drove away.
The bell rang – another user had just driven over the cable across the concrete by the menu. They referred to their customers as users because so many of them came back again and again, as if addicted to Max Burgers. Those who came in regularly were called heavy users. And heavy was exactly what most of them were.
A Chevy pick-up truck pulled up to the window. Lizzie made change for the man at the wheel, put together his order, and handed it through the window.
The bell rang again.
“You have a nice night, now,” Lizzie said.
The man drove away without comment.
The bell rang repeatedly – ding ... ding-ding ... ding ...
“Are them kids out there messin’ with the bell again?” Mandy said as she walked by.
“I’m not sure,” Lizzie said. She looked up at the monitor. The outside camera mounted on the brightly-lit menu showed no one near the cable.
Lizzie leaned out the order window and looked to her right.
Something big but hunched up came around the corner and headed straight for her, something fast – frighteningly fast. It was on Lizzie before she could pull herself in the window, and its fangs closed around her head. With a quick, crunching movement, it took Lizzie’s head off. It dropped the head and pressed its face to the spurting stump of her neck and sucked at the blood as Lizzie’s body slowly slid backward, then fell to the floor inside Max Burger.
Mandy was the first to see her, and the first to scream.
Nineteen
Monty Burnham went out his back door and flicked on the flashlight in his hand.
Something had knocked over all the garb
age cans beside the house. He’d just shut down his computer in the bedroom and had been about to go to bed when he’d heard the terrible clatter. His wife Connie was in the living room watching television.
Monty wore his robe and a pair of corduroy slippers. The night air was chilly on his bare legs. He stepped onto the back lawn and swept the flashlight across the yard.
Something moved just outside the glow of the beam and Monty shifted the flashlight to the right to follow it. The beam landed on the big doghouse he’d made for Tucker, their St. Bernard.
Whatever it was, it had gone into Tucker’s house.
Tucker was usually in at this hour, but on that night, Monty’s eight-year-old son Chris had talked him into letting Tucker sleep in his room. When he’d finally acquiesced, Monty had told Chris not to get used to it, that it was a one-time thing.
“What is it?” Connie said.
Monty turned around and saw her standing in the back doorway.
“I think there’s a dog in Tucker’s doghouse,” he said as he headed for the doghouse in the back corner of the yard.
Connie turned to go back inside.
“Pretty ballsy dog,” Monty said with a chuckle, “walking into another dog’s – “
There was an explosion of spindly legs that came out of the square doghouse door, and the legs pulled with them a body. The spider blossomed like a flower from the doghouse, and it was on Monty before he could finish his sentence.
Twenty
“Monty?” Connie said as she turned back toward the yard. There was a note of alarm in her voice because she’d heard Monty make a sound like a yelp. She saw the flashlight drop to the ground and Monty went down. She stepped out onto the back porch and said, “Monty, what’s wrong?”
She heard more than saw something moving toward her. It made a quiet thumping sound on the ground, which grew louder as it neared, and in the dark, all she could make out was a blur of movement.
