“Your dad? Does your dad live close by?”
Tina pointed to the apartment complex that housed the supposed terrorist. Slim and Pino radioed in their suspicions. They heard there was movement behind the vertical blinds. The man, who called in to having a bomb, was pacing near the sliding glass door connected to the balcony.
“Why hasn’t he left? Will he be leaving?” the National Guard reserve named D’Shawn asked the girl. Before she could get a word out, Slim joined the questioning.
“Kid, what’s your dad’s name?” he cut in.
“Sheppard,” she said. “Can I go now?”
Slim’s eyes flicked over to Pino.
“Don’t think you can do that,” Pino said, reaching the others. His goggles were up. “We need to have a talk with your dad.”
“Why? What’d he do? I’m supposed to bring food to him. He was going to make us dinner.”
“Is there somebody else with you?” D’Shawn asked, digging through the grocery rations. He picked out an animal cracker and opened the box. “You think I can have some of this?”
“I don’t want to get in trouble, mister.”
“D’Shawn, my name’s D’Shawn,” he said. He popped a couple of rhinos into his mouth. “I’ve been here all day and I’m very hungry. Sorry about that, Tina.”
“How’d you know my name?” Tina asked, perturbed. All three regulators glanced at each other.
“Nobody’s getting in trouble, kid,” Slim said. “We just want to talk with you. You think you can do that?”
“We’ll give your dad his food, later,” Pino said. “So don’t worry.” Pino grinned at Slim.
Slim smiled back, chuckling. “Yeah, no doubt.”
“My dad’s expecting me,” Tina said. She started to roll the bicycle again.
“Can you come with us?” D’Shawn said, beaming brightly. “We’ll replace your snack with something better.”
“With what?”
“Animal crackers.”
“No,” she said and resumed her walk.
“Kids these days,” he said and bear hugged her, hoisting her up as she kicked and screamed. He raised her off her feet, and, as he turned to take her to the mobile unit for further investigation, he heard a loud crack—the sound of gunfire.
V
Her father watched this entire incident through the scope of a hunting rifle. The first shot hit its mark. The gun kicked back on his shoulder as he observed a spray of gristle and gore jet backward from the open wound of the soldier’s neck.
VI
D’Shawn collapsed in a heap of blood as it gushed out of his torn carotid. Blood spewed up in a fountain, spraying on Tina’s shirt and face. She shrieked in horror. The victim dropped her and she quickly got to her feet.
She ran without her bike or the food to the nearest home, crying, as assault rifles and guns detonated all around her, discharging muzzle flashes and smoke, as the regulators shot up the side of the apartment, spraying it with bullets.
The nearest house was Embry’s. Morgan opened the front door to let Tina in.
VII
Gunfire erupted in the midsection of Maple Street. They blasted onto the third floor. Helicopters picked up this scene and relayed it to the public. On ground level, Embry was still in his room, when he heard the firestorm of hot lead ricocheting and chewing into the third-story complex, blowing out windows, shattering glass. The balcony became riddled with holes.
He couldn’t believe it. They were shooting on innocent civilians. Not all the people had evacuated. Embry extracted a cigarette with jittery hands, and lit the tobacco. He puffed, breathing streams of smoke out his nostrils.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Stay away from the windows.” Both children stared at him with trepidation. Tina was crying, cheeks flushed and wet, wanting her daddy. Morgan looked calm as ever. Embry went to his bedroom and fetched his semi-automatic pistol. He checked his clip, slammed it back into the chamber, and hustled to the living room. He took his cell phone and snapped pictures, videotaping the incident happening beyond his front yard.
His mind wandered to whom he’d call—his wife? Where was she? She had gone out earlier without telling him where she was headed. When he called, she didn’t answer her phone. His voice messages were still unanswered in her inbox. He knew. He tried his mother-in-law’s number. That didn’t go through, either. What if they were hurt? What if—
He whirled around when he felt a hand touch his leg. It was the Brewster kid
“They didn’t make it,” he said.
“Who?” Embry asked as the gunshots kept cracking. He had to shout to make himself heard. “Who didn’t make it?”
“The woman.”
“My wife?”
Brewster nodded. Just then, a ringtone began to chime, and Embry rummaged in his pocket. It wasn’t his phone, because his was on vibration. Tina picked up her pink smart phone.
“How do you know that?”
“The spiders told me,” Morgan replied. He cocked his head as the gunfire ended. Morgan had laid the tightly sealed jar on the ledge of the window.
The sun dipped behind the clouds, then reappeared. The frumpy grey nest of haze was coming in from the west, growing darker—the sign of a storm brewing. The room inside Embry’s house dimmed and lightened up again, throwing shards of sparkle off the empty jar.
“What is it with these spiders?” Embry asked.
“They’re us,” Morgan said, gently touching the lid. “But it’s too late.”
“Hello?” Tina said into the phone. “Dad? Is that you? Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”
“How are they us?” Embry asked, confused and afraid in equal measure.
“You know,” Morgan said with a half-smile. “You’ve seen how they took your wife. Didn’t you?”
Embry nodded his head. For the past several days, Hanna had been transfixed with the hole. It was all she ever talked about. Yes, she wanted to find her sister, but, most of all, the damn hole was on her mind so much she had stopped going to work. She sat spellbound in front of the nightly news, pacing outside, toiling in the garden, coming back in as if it was a routine.
“What is it? What are they, Morgan?”
“Souls,” Morgan said, smiling. “Souls.”
“Souls?”
“Hello? Dad? Are you there?”
The whole thing was creeping him out, but there was logic to what Morgan was saying. Why else was bad shit happening?
“So all of this has to do with the hole? Is it a portal, another dimension? What’s at the bottom?”
“She knows,” Morgan said, pointing to Tina who had hung up. The reception on the other line was shoddy and she heard nothing but static. “She knows,” he glowered. “And we have to kill her.”
VIII
The hole was getting bigger, Sheppard saw. He reloaded his rifle. He tried calling his daughter’s number again, but it went straight to voice-mail. He got a hold of her once and begged for her forgiveness, but he knew she couldn’t hear him because of the noise.
Right now, though, he had to leave. Surrender was out of the question. He stumbled out the front door of his apartment. He jogged to the emergency staircase and took the flight of steps two at a time, leading him to the exit.
chapter nine
Slim and Pino were cornered as a barrage of bullets sliced through the air, pinged, and whistled, thumping all around them. A flea-pit of craters pummeled them from all directions. Pino didn’t know where the gunshots were coming from.
Take cover!” he yelled, trying to determine the location of the shooter. “Everyone, get down!”
His fellow shooting partners looked dazed. What the hell was wrong with them?
“You want to get yourselves killed? I said get down!”
Nobody listened. Officer Pino looked around, trying to find the muzzle flash and ra-ta-ta of the shells being pumped.
II
In the apartment complex that housed Don, and Hanna’s mother (a
nd seventy other residents who had refused to leave), two Saudi Arabian terrorists managed to direct a couple of pipe bombs, a few pressure cooker bombs, and several guns and ammunition into a laundry hamper and roll it down the corridor.
The heads of residents poked out. The Saudis screamed in Arabic, threatening them with their semi-assault rifles, and the doors slammed shut. They made it to the elevator. One of them punched the down button. He waited, humming a tune of seventy two virgins in heaven.
III
Overhead, a drone was being piloted by Ray Winsted out in West Virginia. The news agency copters were grounded. All the cameramen were forced to stop shooting their reels. No aircrafts were allowed in the air space between the perimeters set up at a hundred kilometers in both directions.
Ray saw a figure on the roof of the apartment building. It was dark under the thermal imaging camera, totally devoid of light. It glided across the roof and stopped still. It moved like a spider.
“Are we clear to engage?”
“You are clear to engage,” came the response.
Ray unlocked the safety button and initiated a hellfire missile.
IV
It fell from the sky like lighting, exploding on contact and sending flames rolling into the air. The explosion could be heard from miles away as the walls shook and the glass reverberated across the city.
Two more missiles rained down. The first one collided in the fifth floor elevator shaft as the Saudi men were pulling their explosives inside the sliding doors. Their innards burst outwards, charring and turning to ash, scorched up before they could get a word out. The wall of fire blazed high and intense, burning everything in its sight. The emergency sprinkler system engaged went off, showering the floor.
The second missile made contact on the floor below, pulverizing furniture, bedding, and walls. It ripped a hole in the floor below. Everything from the top fell down and crashed around Hanna’s mother, and then on top of Don, killing him instantly.
V
Nancy Robins drove the truck headfirst into the group of armed military men. Some of the soldiers were launched into the hole. Others fired at the vehicle, pumping their brass on the hull. Nancy sprung out of the truck and she pulled the trigger of her deceased husband’s firearm.
Her shot was perfect, hitting Slim in his face. Blood splattered behind the goggles and mask. He screamed. Fresh blood rushed out, streaming, meat hanging on his cheek.
The state and federal agents and guards continued firing. The SWAT and police officers regulated their peacetime treaty, each blowback sending plumes of smoke and powder, scenting the air with the end of their barrels. Clifton joined, popping his .45.
A thousand rounds were fired in total.
Yet Nancy still staggered and lurched, spitting blood out of her mouth. Her eyes showed white. She gargled, heaving a column of ruby wine and what looked like spiders out of her mouth. An infestation. They crept and crawled and wriggled in masses. The mounds appeared to take shape into a human form, piling higher and higher.
“Burn that shit!” James Clifton shouted, giving orders. Nobody was taking control, so he would. “Burn her down!”
A soldier with a flamethrower squeezed a squirt of liquid accelerant, shooting flames in her general direction. Her body caught on fire, then sizzled and cracked. The spiders squirmed, and then, disappeared as if they never existed at all.
“Did you fucking see that?” An officer screamed, hoarsely. “Did you see that?”
“Oh God,” Pino whispered, pulling his friend, Slim, closer. “You okay? You okay?”
“My face!” Slim shrieked up toward the sky, gripping his gouged cheek. “My face! Where’s my face!”
“Let me look at it! Let me see!” Pino said, eyes frantic. He wanted to help his partner, but, first, he had to know the extent of the damage. Slim removed his friends clutching hands from his face. Pino pulled to the side and vomited. Slim viewed Pino with one eye. He fished his pistol out of his holster. Slim aimed and shot Pino in his chest as he bent up.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Pino screamed, flinching in pain as his Kevlar vest protected him. Slim kept firing.
“They’re here! They’re here!” Slim rambled, shrieking with laughter. “I see them!”
Pino stumbled, fumbling for his own gun, unhooked it, and shot his friend in the head. Slim slumped on the ground, gyrating, feet drumming as his scalp gushed blood. Something yanked Slim into the hole. He managed to grip on the edge with whatever strength he had left. His nails chipped, then broke, and then, he disappeared into the void.
VI
The fleet of convoys and trucks began to follow Slim, one after another.
VII
The spiders twitching in the sky slowly dropped down on their webbings, in the hundreds, in the thousands. The soldiers and secret agents fired into the sky. When the bullets entered the spider’s bodies, they vanished in a wisp of dark haze. The bullets that were fired into the sky fell back to earth, striking the soldiers below. Blood flowed in torrents.
The hole opened up and grew larger—large as a crater.
And, the carcasses of these men slid inside the hole, dropping and tumbling.
chapter ten
“What the hell happened here?” Clifton raged. Smoke and flames licked at the shattered remains of the apartment complex. Bullets hailed from all directions.
Occupants screamed. The air tasted of fear and hot blood, and even Clifton, the man who had seen it all and thought that such feelings were behind him, felt his stomach knot and his muscles tense as he surveyed the carnage.
In response to what looked like an unprovoked attack on the building, the waiting public sat back numbly, wanting to fight back, but dared not. Driven by fear, the forces opened fire, indiscriminately mowing down citizens who came too close to the scene. More helicopter gunships were now on the scene, hovering above the chaos and waiting for the command to open fire.
Although it was impossible to hear amid the screaming and gunfire, the hole thrummed and pulsed as it fed on the symphony of emotions resonating on Maple Street. Only Morgan noticed. His eyes flicked towards the window, and he knew what he had to do.
Clifton, on the other hand, didn’t. He stared bug-eyed as society began to crumble around him. The street was now a thriving mass of activity, as the public rioted and attacked the army, who fought back without mercy.
Bodies littered the street, and although Clifton had shouted himself hoarse trying to call a ceasefire, nobody it seemed was listening to him. He knew well enough when things were out of control, and this was one such situation. He glared at Grimshaw, who for his part looked completely horrified.
“Get me some support in here. I need more men.”
“Is that wise, sir? I—”
“Do it now or so help me I’ll throw you down that damn hole myself.”
“What do you need, sir?”
“Call in and tell them to send everything they have over here right now.”
Grimshaw reluctantly made the call.
II
Embry glared at Morgan, and then shifted his eyes to Tina.
“Nobody is killing anyone, I don’t want to hear talk like that. It’s bad enough out there.”
“It will get worse,” Morgan said again, flicking his eyes towards Tina. “If we give her to them, they said they’ll make it stop.”
Embry strode over and stood in front of Tina, putting a barrier between her and Morgan.
“Look, kid, I know you have some kind of gift or ability, but killing isn’t an option.”
“You don’t understand. This is bigger than she is. You need to do as I say.”
“Look outside, kid, it’s chaos out there.”
Morgan smiled. “It’s not as bad as it will be. It will get worse if we don’t give them something.”
Embry went cold at the way Morgan said it. There was something about the kid; some magnetism and presence that made his words seem completely believable. The chaos outside
was deafening, but Embry’s world consisted only of the boy from across the street. Fear surged through him, and Morgan shook his head.
“Don’t be afraid. It makes them strong.”
Embry stared at the child, and something passed between them. Some kind of bond or knowing. The boy nodded.
“Let me show you,” he said, then walked to the front door.
“Hey, wait! You can’t go out there!” Embry said, taking a half-hearted step toward Morgan. The child smiled.
“They can’t hurt me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not scared,” he said, then opened the door and stepped outside.
“Hey, kid! Wait!” Embry said as he ran to the window. He knew he should follow, but the truth was that he was afraid. War was easy to watch on TV, but when it was right outside the window, it was a different story. Even so, the thing he saw was so unbelievable, so impossible to comprehend that Embry found himself opening the door and watching from the doorstep, Tina beside him. At that moment, the hell on earth that surrounded them was thrown into insignificance, all because of a child named Morgan Brewster.
III
Sheppard clambered to his knees in the ravaged remains of the apartment complex, trying to make sense of the world which had exploded around him. His apartment was somehow still in one piece, and he felt bad for thinking that his god had abandoned him, for his survival truly was a miracle. The air was thick with the taste of smoke, and the intense heat of the fire. His ears were still ringing and, when he wiped a forearm across his brow to rid it of what he thought was sweat, he was surprised to see his sleeve bathed in claret.
Coughing, he crawled to the shattered remains of his window and looked at the chaos below. The hole seemed to have grown even larger, its bottomless depths seeming somehow a haven of peace compared to the hell surrounding it. He saw two things in quick succession that first filled him with hope, then fear that perhaps there was more in this world than humanity gave credence to.
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