Something streaked across the sky, right over the spider’s head. Sheba ignored it. Then another object cut across her peripheral vision, moving in the same direction as the last. Somewhere to the north, an explosion vibrated the web. Then another, closer this time. The spider, finished with Gai Den, leaned toward Sheba. The jaws separated, leaving only a black void in between. Sheba saw a giant bat fly overhead. An object fell from the creature’s claws. Sheba closed her eyes believing that it would be the last thing she would ever see.
A final explosion deafened her left ear. The building that anchored this section of the web collapsed, dropping her and the spider to the street below. Sheba landed hard on the concrete and blacked out.
She woke in the prickly grass of her master’s yard. Clouds tumbled and unfurled in the blue sky. The screen door creaked open. The air was clean. Her mind was clean, too. No memories, no worries of the future, only the things that she could touch and taste and smell. The soft patch of mud under her paws. The taste of salt on her master’s ankles when he returned from jogging. The universe opened and kept expanding. Every day provided wonder and awe, the whole of existence tipping over and pouring out its contents.
Somewhere close by, a dog barked.
She wondered if the noise came from the brown dog across the street, the one who had forced her against the flaking paint chips of the garage. She both feared and desired this dog, the father of her children, her only link to them. Her longing for his warmth remained, even as her children faded. She could not stop it, and yet it felt right, this animal instinct boiling in her blood, never appeased, always hunting.
In the house next door, the orange cat sat on his windowsill. His curved spine lifted and fell with each breath, and yet his face remained still, save for the occasional blink of the eyes. When Sheba tried to turn away, she noticed that she was suddenly standing on her hind legs. Her front paws became like human hands.
The dog kept barking.
Sheba blinked a few times. She lay on her stomach. As she tried to push herself up, a patch of web peeled away from her face and remained stuck to the asphalt. She scratched another layer of the silk from her paws and arms. A few feet away, a rusted bicycle from the human era stood in ruin beside her, virtually melted into the earth from years of exposure. She took a few wobbly steps, dragging long strands of the fallen web like a bride’s wedding train. The spider was gone. In the empty stadium, several of the pods had burst open. Fires burned throughout the town. Ash and smoke drifted in the wind.
A dog barked nearby—a cry for help. On the sidewalk, the roll of silk containing Falkirk and Jomo squirmed like an egg about to hatch. A spiderling stood on top of it, trying to dig into the web with its fangs. The creature’s skin was completely transparent. The organs underneath pulsated, pumping fluid.
“No!” Sheba shouted. The spiderling wriggled its head deeper into the silk.
Pulling her knife from its holster, Sheba charged the spider. She stuck the knife into the base of its neck. The head reached for her, the fangs trying to clamp around her face. Sheba grabbed the fangs with both hands. The eight legs wrapped around her, but they could do no harm. With all her might, Sheba bent the fangs until she felt a crunch. The spiderling sank to the ground. She peeled the legs from her body, one by one. Lying there dead, the spider resembled a broken toy.
The husky continued to scream for help.
“Hold still,” she said.
Sheba hooked the blade under the web and sliced it away, unveiling Falkirk’s mouth. His eyes still covered, the dog gulped in air. Sheba ran the knife along the rest of the cocoon. It took only a small incision for Jomo to burst through the casing. The ant rolled to her legs. Her antennae poked around to confirm that she was free. She prodded the dead spiderling and then went about inspecting the rubble from the explosion.
Falkirk peeled the webbing from his face and flicked it away. He growled at the dead spider. But then his panting slowed when he saw Sheba, still brandishing her knife. His tail popped out of the webbing and flopped onto the asphalt. The husky reached out and embraced Sheba, licking her behind the ears. The silk strands glued their bodies together. She laughed and pushed him away. The warm sensation of his tongue tingled on her neck.
“Sorry,” he said. “You came back for me.”
“Dogs do that.”
Sheba heard shouting coming from the river. She spotted Gulaga limping over the rooftops toward the waterwheel. The beavers on the ground below fired their rifles at her, but the bullets had no effect.
Mort(e) stood on top of the wheel. The bat orbited him, carrying one of the eggs in his claws. Maybe the last one left. Gingerly, the bat placed the egg beside Mort(e) and flew away, joining the dozen other bats that zipped around the darkening sky. Mort(e) waited. The spider hooked its legs onto the wheel and began to climb.
“That cat really is crazy,” Falkirk said.
“You have no idea.”
When Gulaga reached three o’clock on the wheel, the bombs planted along the spokes exploded. Bop bop bop bop bop bop. Each blast severed a cord in the web that held the wheel in place. The wood groaned as the river forced it to spin once again. The beavers began to cheer. Their greatest engineering feat, the symbol of their city, had not functioned since this nightmare began. Right on cue, the humming started.
The spinning wheel lifted the spider into the air while Mort(e) and the egg descended. When Mort(e) lowered to eight o’clock, he leapt from his perch into the river, vanishing in a white splash. As the spider arrived at the top, another explosion erupted at the base of the wheel. The shock wave blew out the windows of the surrounding houses. The wheel broke from its moorings and toppled into the river. Gulaga flailed as she reached for solid footing. The structure collapsed onto the spider’s body in a great splash.
The humming stopped.
Sheba ran to the water, vaulting over collapsed walls and broken concrete blocks. In some places, the canopy still hung overhead, crisscrossing the rooftops. Elsewhere, the buildings smoldered in ruins, and the web lay across the street like a wrinkled bedsheet.
At the dock, she hopped over the metal railing and landed on the muddy slope that descended into the river, now littered with the remnants of the charred waterwheel. Chunks of wood clogged the flow of water, so thick she thought she could walk across. A team of mounted beavers gathered on the waterfront. One of them dragged the battered hulk of a spider egg by a rope, its ejected contents leaving a streak along the ground.
“Do you see him?” she asked the warriors.
One of them pointed to a spot twenty yards downstream. Something splashed ashore in the slippery muck.
“He’s over here!” someone shouted.
Mort(e) lifted his head. When he spotted Sheba, his ears swiveled toward her. He smiled. And for a moment, the shouts died out. Sheba fell to one knee. Mort(e), unrecognizable in all the mud, crawled on all fours to her.
“Found this,” Mort(e) said. He slid Sheba’s sword out from under him. She took the handle, slick with mud, and examined the blade. Overcome, she dropped the sword and embraced Mort(e).
“I saw you get taken up,” he said. “You were so far away.”
“I saw you, too. You—”
She was supposed to also say that he was so far away. That was what he was getting at. He wanted her to say they would not do this to each other ever again, that this was enough. No more. And having seen battle for the first time, she understood why. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to say these comforting things anymore. They were only words. So she held Mort(e) and stared at the river as the river carried off the discarded bones of Lodge City.
CHAPTER 10
The Trial
Mort(e)’s ears hummed while Sheba cradled him. He could feel her heart beating, but could not hear it. The mud that painted his fur had a wet odor, like fish and blooming algae. Throughout the town, towers of smok
e spiraled into the sky, spreading a light ash that carried the scent of charred wood and metal. Mort(e) and his toys had turned the city into a hellscape, like some volcanic planet spewing molten rock into the atmosphere.
Mort(e) rested his chin on Sheba’s shoulder. “Did you hear her?” he asked.
“Hear who?”
“The spider. She . . .” She what? She spoke. No, that couldn’t be right. But he heard her somehow. Or felt her. The spider told him to stop. She begged him to stop, in thousands of voices, hundreds of languages. And amid all the noise, he recognized someone speaking to him—Michael, the child from his past. Help me, the boy said. Save me.
“Let’s get out of here,” Mort(e) said.
The beavers had run off to rescue their friends from the web. Only Falkirk remained. When Mort(e) caught the husky staring, the dog dropped his gaze to the ground and joined the others. That’s right, keep walking, Mort(e) thought. Keep walking all the way back to your human city.
“I want to watch them free the hostages from the web,” Sheba said.
“Okay.”
The collapsed web resembled day-old confetti from a celebration. As they walked, Mort(e) grabbed a fistful of it and playfully tossed it onto Sheba’s head. She grumbled and laughed as she pulled the sticky strings out. Several blocks away, a stone building imploded. A few of the ants scrabbled over the rubble, hunting for baby spiders. The base of the waterwheel sat by the river, its beams twisted and amputated. The canals leading from the dam had ruptured in several places, flooding the streets. The water, however, did not reach the church in time. A mountain of fire engulfed the wooden building before it crumbled into cinders.
Eventually, Mort(e) was able to distinguish the ringing in his ears from the beavers’ humming. He followed the music to the heart of the web, the stadium. Falkirk was there, helping to lower one of the encased hostages to the ground. As soon as the pods touched the street, the beavers cut them open, not knowing who would emerge. The surprise prompted shouts and applause as each bewildered hostage tumbled out. The medics on hand tried to give the victims food and water, while the others stroked their fur and continued humming.
In the parking lot of the stadium, a beaver knelt over the bodies of a female and two kits. Barely alive, they were coated in silk, great sticky clumps of it, like tumors. Mort(e) realized it was Castor when he saw the pile of armor in a heap nearby. Weeping and sniffling, the beaver held out a bottle of water, pleading with them to drink. The female lifted her head and took a few gulps. Castor responded by tapping his nose to hers before moving on to the young ones. The children let out a weak humming sound, making Castor laugh and cry at the same time.
Mort(e) slipped his hand into Sheba’s palm. Here, things would start over. A new chance at life. It would ruin it to say it out loud.
Gaunt, of all people, had given him advice on what to do when he saw her again. When Mort(e) first went to the bats, Gaunt welcomed him to the cave. Mort(e) spoke with the elders of the cloud through a bat named Plug, who translated his words into Chiropteran. The old ones hung from the cave ceiling, a cluster of living stalactites. Mort(e) gathered from their body language that the older bats, with their white fur and silver beards, did not want him there. One of them showed his disapproval by defecating in the middle of Mort(e)’s story, splattering a fragrant log of guano at his feet. But Gaunt took Mort(e)’s side. Later, after the council voted in favor of helping the beavers, Mort(e) sat on the cave floor with Gaunt hanging above him. They talked about their families, about how they survived the war. Gaunt was no soldier, but he had witnessed far more than he needed to. The bats grew too quickly after the Change, outpacing their food supply. Gaunt lost his mate in the mass extinction that followed. Mort(e) changed the subject by talking about Sheba, their life on the ranch. Gaunt responded with a few squeaks, which Plug translated as, “You build it again.” Mort(e) didn’t understand. “You put it back together. You put life back together.”
“Yes, yes,” Mort(e) said.
“We spend all our life putting life back together,” Plug translated. “So you can live in that memory. Just her and you and the life you put back together. No human words you need.”
With that in mind, Mort(e) kept quiet and squeezed Sheba’s hand. She squeezed back.
A commotion began somewhere behind them. Two loyal beavers carried Nikaya on a wooden seat. The matriarch coughed when a breeze pushed some of the smoke in her face. When she got a clearer view of where the waterwheel used to spin, her head sank. She trained her eyes on Mort(e). He couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say.
Nikaya’s servants placed her seat on the ground. “This was all part of your plan, wasn’t it?” she said. “You wanted to destroy the city with these flying devils.”
More beavers converged on Mort(e) and Sheba. Fram approached, his finger on the trigger of his rifle. Mort(e) placed his hand on his sidearm—slick with mud but very much operable. Mort(e)’s smile dared the beaver to try something.
“We had to be sure,” Mort(e) said. Just then, an Alpha trotted by with a limp spiderling in her mandibles.
“Good girl, Sugar!” Sheba said.
“You see that, Matriarch?” Mort(e) said. “How can be you in such a foul mood when our ants are having so much fun?”
Sheba let go of his hand to point at a few other Alphas crawling across the roof of a house. “Look at them go!”
“Can’t you round up these animals?” Nikaya said.
“We’re not rounding them up. They’re staying. This city is their new colony.”
Above them, the bats flew in great circles, making the wind swirl.
“Where are we supposed to go?” Nikaya asked.
“You can go upstream. Downstream. Either way, it will be far from here. Far from us.”
“We spent years building this,” Nikaya said, trembling with rage. “What would you know about that, you choker? You were a pet. Your masters had a box for you to shit in. They fed you other animals. We had no masters. We were out in the wild. We—”
“Mother, that’s enough,” Castor said, entering the circle. “These people saved everyone. We didn’t lose a single hostage. Or a single Watcher.”
“Look at what they did!”
“We’ll rebuild. The water flows.”
“They brought the bats here! To insult us!”
“They made peace with the bats. I couldn’t have done that. And you didn’t even try.”
“We haven’t made peace quite yet,” Mort(e) said. “There is one last order of business.”
Mort(e) glanced at Sheba. She nodded, placing one hand on the hilt of her sword, the other on the gun holstered at her side. With that, Mort(e) let out an otherworldly shriek that startled everyone. Gaunt of Thicktree taught him the signal the day before. It triggered a frenzied movement among the bats. All of them, even those still orbiting the perimeter of the town, coalesced into a black tornado. Acting like a single organism, the bats descended on Nikaya, knocking her attendants away and lifting her above the houses. The beavers shouted over the wind. Some raised their rifles. Instinctively, Sheba and Mort(e) pressed against each other, back to back, to become one unit that could see in all directions. If anyone wanted to hold them responsible for what was happening, they would regret it.
Perched on the ledge of the post office, a pair of bats held Nikaya by her ankles. The matriarch looked to Mort(e) for an explanation. But she knew. She had to know.
Castor unstrapped his rifle and aimed it at the bats. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not doing anything,” Mort(e) said.
The tornado dispersed as the bats gathered on nearby rooftops. Some hung from the awnings, but most squatted, poking their heads over the ledges. Gaunt dangled from a street lamp and cloaked his thin body with his leathery wings.
“Ask her what she did,” Mort(e) said.
“Don�
��t listen to them!” Nikaya said, her voice straining. “They’re liars! They’re false prophets!”
“I’m not a prophet. I’m a messiah.”
Castor stepped closer to the horde of flapping wings. “Mother, what are they talking about?”
“They’re working with the bats! Don’t you see? They’re trying to destroy everything we’ve built here!”
“That’s enough,” Mort(e) said. He made a throat-slashing gesture. In response, one of the bats covered her mouth with his wing.
Fram leveled his rifle at Mort(e). “Messiah or not, you’ve got three seconds to let the matriarch go before I shoot you with your own rifle.”
Sheba tensed beside him. “You’re not shooting anyone,” Mort(e) said. “Your matriarch is the one who started all of this.”
The muffled screaming stopped. Nikaya must have known what was coming next.
“The matriarch ordered her closest aides to take one of Gulaga’s eggs and plant it near the bat cave,” Mort(e) said. “She thought the spider would take care of her enemies. But it backfired.”
Mort(e) told them that the spider almost succeeded in wiping out the cloud. When Gulaga discovered the cave, she spun a web across the entrance, forcing Gaunt and his comrades to gnaw their way out. Many died before they breached the silk barrier and burst out like air escaping a balloon. They knew who did it. When Mort(e) asked the bats for help, they agreed on two conditions. Lodge City would be destroyed, and they would take those responsible as prisoners to do with as they wished.
Castor did not bother to ask her why. The reason was obvious. Nikaya did it to protect her bloodline. And that meant keeping Castor in the dark.
“Who else?” Mort(e) asked. Nikaya tried to scream through the thick flesh of the wing, but no one could understand her.
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