K’ktlrtq – So hungry. *palps testing strands* Come. Come, aphids. Come, juicy ’squitoes. Gnats, welcome, one and all. Patience. Work done. Much work. Good work. Trap is strong. Patience. *slit sensilla awaiting movement*
Mason loved the subtle shift in the autumnal rhythms, the ever-surprising face of nature, but how he dreaded this annual chore. Every year at this time, the Carey porch stood laced with their geometric abattoirs. This year had brought a fine bunch, indeed. Gossamer streamers ran from the hanging light to the bannisters and posts, to the trim, and to the front door itself. Speckled throughout the elegant silk ladders were uncounted corpselets. The happy diners were argiope aurantia, yellow garden spiders. They were ghastly, shocking even, but mostly harmless.
Mason raised his broom then froze.
“They aren’t hurting anyone,” he called into the house.
Bettina called back, “They’re disgusting, that’s enough. They make my skin crawl. The girls will be here any minute, including Shelby,” (the plant manager’s wife!) “and I don’t want those gross things on my porch.”
There was no getting out of it. He was helplessly snared in domestic servitude. Mason took his best swing, ripping away hours of work on the part of the biggest yellow-and-black brute. Down came the skein of death along with its macabre ornaments. Mason hung the business end of the broom over the railing and shook it violently in a vain attempt to dump the sticky webbing.
“Whoa! Watch out!” It was Bettina’s friends coming up the walk. The three of them climbed the porch stairs, chattering and making faces at the remaining webs.
“Missed a few,” Shelby said, pointing and shivering. “You do know we make sprays, right?”
Mason did know, of course. He’d been at the Doraville plant long enough. He didn’t trust the sprays they made there; he knew what nasty crap went into them. Besides, he had the broom. He struck a heroic pose, holding out his weapon in the direction of the spiders. “You shall not pass!”
Unimpressed, the women filed by him and into his home. Bettina’s home. Mason’s shoulders slouched. Just then, he felt something on the back of his hand, the one holding the broom. It was yellow and black and looking up at him with eight eyes as dark as shadows in a grave.
K’ktlrtq – Web spoiler! *cephalothorax up* Hate. *chelicerae displayed* Bite? Bite? Juicy. No. Too big. Patience.
A toddler’s scream escaped Mason’s middle-aged mouth. He threw the broom to the floor of the porch with a clatter. He shook his hand, half-hoping it would detach from his wrist. Anything, as long as he got rid of the damned spider. Instead, the thing jumped and made a soft landing, scurrying under a warped baseboard before Mason could stomp on it. Its fellow spiders hung around, unperturbed, waiting for free food to land in their webs.
“You all right out there?” his wife called.
“Fine, baby.”
One of the women giggled, “You should call an exterminator.”
Resignedly, Mason went inside and headed to the kitchen. He’d finish his chore with a beer in hand.
K’ktlrtq – So hungry. Climb. Choose anchor points. *spinnerets active* Spray silk. Busy. Busy. Busy. Rebuild. So hungry. Patience.
***
Fhftkk – Corner. Hidden. Be the secret. Observe. Learn. Patience.
A good fifteen years his junior, Operations Chief Dagmar Metcalf ruled from the corner office. She’d strategically placed several Dawgs pennants and other memorabilia around the room. It was no small coincidence that Dagmar and the plant manager were both UGA alum. One picture showed them chumming it up with Herschel Walker. Mason had graduated from Georgia Tech with a Masters of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He could have been a Rambling Wreck, except he hated football.
“So, I see you’ve been with us for nine years now… Mason.” That pause. Had she really had to glance at his file to get his name?
“Yes,” he said. He’d spent eleven years here at Achlys Global, after finishing two stints as an Army MP and then getting his degree. AchGlo had given him a few important jobs over the years, but mainly he handled shift work, running quality control, inventory, even manning the loading docks when needed. He was hungry for something challenging.
“You have decent credentials.” She leaned back behind her mahogany desk in her chair – a five-thousand-dollar item, according to the rumor mill. “I’m putting you on The Team.” There were forty or fifty teams at AchGlo, but only one was The Team. It was the company’s best R&D squad. Each of the eight members of The Team were wrapped up mummy-tight in NDAs. Rumors cut paper, however, and there was talk of an impending breakthrough. Some new bug spray that would leave the competition flat on its back with its legs twitching in the air. Being king of the mountain meant owning it. Bug Mountain was made of solid gold.
“Walk with me.”
The two made their way down to the plant floor. It was a cyclopean space of tanks and pipes and workers in protective clothing. Mason and Dagmar donned lightweight masks. They boarded a utility cart and rode the length of the installation.
“The Dawgs could play four national championships in here end to end!” Dagmar joked. The quip made little sense, but Mason laughed as sincerely as he could manage.
The cart pulled up to a reinforced steel hatch. Dagmar pulled out her phone and keyed in the code. The two-ton, twenty-foot steel maw yawned, and they drove into a white void. The walls of the air lock were featureless. Mason spotted the faint outline of a door, but there was no handle on this side.
The vault door closed behind them.
A moment later, the inner door’s latch clicked and they stepped inside. It was a conventional-looking lab. The equipment was a mix of state-of-the-industry mecha and two or three set-ups he did not recognize, the real cutting-edge stuff.
A man and a woman approached them, dressed in casual clothes. The man wore a bright red Spider-Man t-shirt and Birkenstocks. Mason and Dagmar took off their protective masks.
The woman technician spoke. “So, you’re Nyumah’s replacement. Carey. Good to have you.” They shook hands. The woman’s badge read Dr. E.B. Hols. “You’ll meet the others in passing.”
“Welcome to… the lair,” Spider-Man said with a delicious Saturday Night Movie Macabre inflection.
“I’m excited to join The Team. I’ve heard so little about you.” It was a joke.
“I hope so,” Dr. Hols said with not so much as a grin.
“Which reminds me: shouldn’t I have signed something to get in here?”
Dr. Hols said, “Getting in is easy. You have to sign your name in blood before we let you go home again.” That was not a joke. “Let me show you why.”
The tour took them from lab to lab, each redolent of plastics and disinfectant. Dr. Hols explained how the isolation protocols allowed them to seal off the three most sensitive chambers. As promised, Mason said a quick hello to the others: Ryu, Poquelin, Deloitte, Armagh, and Smed, who insisted on being called Arlene though her badge read Donald. Compared to them, Mason was an old fart.
Each lab had a generous supply of the latest screen devices. Every screen displayed the company logo. Eager to show his proficiency with most of the equipment, Mason blurted out detailed descriptions of each gadget before Dr. Hols had the chance. In a purple-themed room, however, Mason said, “Hello. What is this beauty?” He stepped over to a chamber containing ultra-fine articulating arms and bespoke utensils mounted in the ceiling. On a table inside were small clear containers, alive with activity.
“Keen eye,” Dr. Hols said. “We call the rig Nidhogg.”
“The hungry dragon,” Dagmar added helpfully.
Mason didn’t need the help. “Insatiable, is more like it. Everything reflected in Nidhogg’s eyes was food to Nidhogg. Even corpses. So the old stories go.”
“Indeed.”
“Any idea how many insects there are on Earth, Carey?” the man in the Spider-Man shirt and Birkenstocks asked. He wasn’t wearing his badge, and Mason had already forgotten which name belonged to him.
Mason did know the answer to that question. It was a number he saw in his nightmares. “A lot,” he said glibly.
“That many,” said Spider-Man, pointing to a plaque mounted inside the chamber. It read: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000. “Ten quintillion.”
Mason suppressed a shudder. “Like I said, a lot. In fact, I got into the bug-killing business because my father ran into a few thousand brown widows. They killed off a mess of our herd over the years. The sprays didn’t slow them down much. They’d developed a resistance. In the end, the losses broke him.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Hols said. “That’s the downside. Bugs adapt quickly. Too quickly.”
Mason amplified her thought. “Besides, our sprays tend to kill good insects along with the destructive ones. The worldwide bee population –”
Putting a firm hand on his should, Dagmar said, “This is the wrong room for bee-hugger propaganda, Mason.”
Mason shut up.
“Of course, most of the Doraville plant is given over to finding the perfect bug spray. Sprays for household roaches, sprays for farm pests, sprays for anything we don’t like to think about crawling around in the dark.” Dr. Hols spread her arms wide. “The problem is they’re building up resistance. Fast! This lab has a different mission. Here, we are learning to harness the greatest bug control on Earth.” She nodded to Spider-Man.
He touched something, and every screen came alive with data. It was more than Mason could take in at a glance, of course, but the theme was unmistakable. It matched the specimens in the small clear containers inside Nidhogg.
“Spiders,” Mason sighed.
“Spiders,” Dr. Hols confirmed.
Mason straightened his back. “Hungry spiders.”
His new colleagues laughed. Dagmar patted him on the back.
Dr. Hols said, “Welcome to The Team!”
***
Mason came home to chaos. The school had suspended Chas for threatening another student.
“He’s a douche. I just said I wish he would choke to death. What? I didn’t even touch him,” the boy pleaded.
“Good one, bro,” his younger sister Cheanna chided. “On the bus in front of everyone. They recorded it. You’re famous.” She held up her phone and played the news clip.
Bettina urged Mason to deal with Chas. “He needs to learn the right way to be assertive – if you think you can handle that job.”
Mason dutifully took Chas aside and read him the riot act. Chas contritely agreed to “never do it again,” then put his earbuds back in and went to his room.
It wasn’t until dinner was over that Mason got the chance to break the news to the family. “I got a promotion. I can’t tell you the details – you wouldn’t believe the pile of papers I had to sign.”
“You’re on the Spider Squad,” Bettina laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry… The Team. Shelby told us.” Us. The other women knew, too? Well, if this blew back in his face, he could honestly say he was not the source of the leak.
It was funny how some things got out.
***
DNA manipulation was not on Mason’s CV; however, he knew all about finding the right biochemical catalyst to support the action. He decided it was worthwhile to socialize, to talk shop and learn where his skills landed him in the pecking order.
After work, he asked his fellow grunts out for a beer at The Three Dollar Café on Chamblee Tucker Road. Carl Deloitte and Tomiko Ryu were making eyes at each other. They stayed for one quick drink then made convenient excuses and took off. They were cute. The others let it go with a few raised eyebrows. That left Mason with Arlene Smed, Spider-Pete (his name really was Peter!), and Sean Armagh, a nervous type who looked like he cut his own hair.
By her second brew, Arlene was a total chatterbox. “It’s all rough numbers, of course. Kinda tricky to count the footprints and divide by eight. Still, our best guess is that spiders alone number 21 quadrillion. That’s nearly three million spiders per human being. Each spider can eat its own body weight in ten days, hundreds of millions of tons per year. They could devour the human race down to the last pinky toe in just one year.” She gulped down some pills to “even things out. Adrenaline messes with the hormones.”
He decided not to ask her whether mixing beer and pills was a good idea. Instead, he egged her on, since she seemed determined to ignore his expertise and transplain spiders to him. “We’re still here.”
“The only reason they don’t chow down on us,” Arlene continued, “is because, luckily, they like to eat each other and other bugs.”
Mason said, “And we’re fiddling with that.”
Sean butted in, saying, “We have to. Our projections show insecticides will be useless within a decade, at least at concentrations that won’t instantly kill humans, too. So… the plan is to tweak the spiders’ natural propensities. We boost certain innate skills and increase their appetites and make them prefer the bugs we choose for them to munch.”
Spider-Pete said, “We’ve been focusing on two very different hunters. Carolina Wolf Spiders and Black Widows.”
“Two nasty bastards.”
Dqtkyb – *spinnerets busy* Lower. Lower. Lower. Human drink. Mmmmm. *drop*
Sean leapt up from his stool, spit out his beer, and cursed loudly enough to turn heads. The bartender brought him a replacement drink.
***
By the third week, they were ready for a key trial.
“If PETA comes knocking, Dagmar will have your peen in a pickle jar,” Spider-Pete told Mason. He wasn’t kidding. Today, he’d switched his ensemble to a Venom hoodie.
“Your closet gives me nightmares,” Tomiko said dryly. “The labs came back. The key markers all read stable. Your arachnaegoo seems to have worked, Mason.” The gang applauded, and he took a bow.
“I have one question,” Mason ventured. Two of his teammates were rigging Nidhogg with a new test subject, a chicken. “The idea is to get the spiders to eat bad bugs. Should we be testing these spiders on animals we ourselves like to eat?”
“Odile?” Dr. Hols directed the question to the cute (watch it, Mason!) triple-masters tech, Dr. Odile Poquelin, the project’s rock star.
“Ça roule. I’ve already mapped the tactile response chromosome pairs in the hogna carolinesnsis’ genome. That should have taken my lifetime, but I want my first Nobel Prize before I hit thirty, so I designed that AI unit in the corner. One-of-a-kind.”
Arlene added, “We call it The Count. ‘1-2-3 chromosome pairs... ah-ah-ah.’”
These kids were watching Sesame Street up til last week, Mason thought.
“I broke the code. C’est moi,” Odile beamed. “Then I had to get the nucleic acid chain to hang together long enough to yield a fertile Wolf ovum. The magic spidey jizz – that’s the scientific name we’ll write in the journals – appears to have given us this. If all goes well today, these spiders should be even better than the earlier batches. Now, we test our latest enhancement to appetite. Then we’ll destroy this batch and program the next bunch with the right menu. We should probably make them mules while we’re at it. Sterile. Extra safety precaution.”
Mason tried not to smirk. Ravenous, impotent spiders. Odile’s French accent somehow made it all sound sexy.
“Nothing left to chance,” Dr. Hols said.
“And don’t worry, Mason,” added Spider-Pete. “After our test subjects go to work on Henny Penny, you’ll swear off KFC for life.”
“Clear!” Dr. Hols called. Odile and Arlene did one last visual check of the test chamber. “I said clear!” Both cursed and hurried out just as the door sealed behind them.
The hapless chicken was chained by its ankle to the tabletop. It appeared oblivious to the mess it had made and to everything to come.
“Whenever you’re ready, Pete.”
Spider-Pete grinned. He poked at his pad. “10-9-8-7- psych!” He punched a red square on the pad.
Two feet from the chicken, a small door opened on a carefully-designed box. At first, nothing happened. Cameras focused on every possible angle, in extreme close-up.
Odile smiled. “You’re not délicat, are you, Mason?”
“Moi?” he bluffed.
The wolf spiders erupted from the opened box.
Iktakk, Tf’fbkq, Yykgtt, Gmnntk, Tk’ks’sx, et al – Weeeee! Faster, Mama! Weeeee!
They were normal enough in appearance, possessing a scraggly-haired brown body with a darker stripe down the abdomen, two eyes up front, two smaller eyes above and to the side, plus four more tiny ones in a third row below. This gruesomely efficient array sat atop two fang-like chelicerae with which it delivered venom.
The group, which numbered precisely one hundred forty-eight, surrounded the chicken. For a brief moment, the bird stood there looking stupid. Then, the arachnid army leaped into action. They easily jumped all over the chicken, which still failed to realize its situation. The Wolves began to move. Now, the chicken’s wings flapped wildly, and it began to squawk in an unholy manner. The spiders began sinking their fangs into its flesh, preparing to dine.
Mason felt himself getting light-headed. “I grew up on a farm. I’ve seen my share of chickens eaten by coyotes. This is – different.” He hated chicken coops. He hated chickens, too, but he did not wish to see anything endure this.
“No worse than being served up as McNuggets,” Dr. Hols said. “The end result is the same.”
Spider-Pete said, “I think we have the data we need, right? I mean…”
“I’m satisfied,” Odile said. The others looked up from their monitors and called out in the affirmative.
“Very well,” Dr. Hols said, and Spider-Pete pressed another square on his pad. There was a loud hiss. The chamber decompressed in three seconds. The chicken flopped over. Air then refilled the small test chamber. The diners never missed a bite.
“The spiders lived through that?” Mason asked.
Carl explained, “The girls, yes.”
“Girl power!” Tomiko said. “Eat those dead boys!”
Carl winked at her. “Now, we just wait and see how long it takes them to… finish.”
The carnage continued.
Mason excused himself and found the restroom. Somehow, he did not hurl. “Thank you,” he said to the ceiling panels.
As he was splashing water onto his face, a visitor descended from above on a slender line of its own making. Wiping himself with a wad of paper towel, Mason found himself face-to-face with the spider. It seemed to hover near him.
Tkqrrt – Human. *cephalothorax up* Ugly.
“What are you doing here?” Mason asked the little fellow.
A hand slapped against the mirror. When Odile took her hand away, only a drop of dark fluid remained on the glass. “Not one of ours.” She washed her hands in the sink, using extra soap from the dispenser.
Mason sighed, “I keep forgetting these are unisex bathrooms. Have to be careful.”
“I’ve seen a 99-million-year-old daddy long legs frozen in amber with a… grosse érection. I don’t think you can make me blush.” She flashed him a killer smile.
***
The following Thursday morning, Mason was busy running the numbers on his latest catalytic formulation when he went deaf. The research labs were extensive, and yet they were all contained, so the blast of the klaxons caused him to clutch his ears.
Odile burst into the lab, white-faced. “Where’s Hols? She has to order this.”
Spider-Pete came running in to see what was happening. “Hols is in lab two,” he said.
All of them bolted in that direction. They found Dr. Hols on the phone with the plant manager. “We’re sealing the lab now.”
Mason felt lost in all the excitement. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on?” he screamed, his final words continuing as a shout even as the alarm went silent. The flashing red lights over the doors and on every screen continued, however. So did his raging nerves.
“Where are Armagh, and Smed?” Odile asked.
“Here,” Sean called out. He stepped into the lab, followed closely by Arlene.
Odile and Dr. Hols exchanged a charged look.
“Suit up! Now!” Dr. Hols ordered. The six of them made it to the locker room and began donning protective gear.
They were now six.
Tomiko and Carl? Mason wondered.
“Odile, where are Ryu and Deloitte?” Dr. Hols demanded.
Odile led them through a conventional door and into a storage room behind the main lab. The lights were out, so the team members used helmet torches. It was a mess in there. Everyone was in and out all day grabbing items without ever tidying up.
“Behind that stack of supplies,” Odile said, pointing. She froze where she was, apparently unwilling to view for a second time whatever had caused all the panic.
Mason soon regretted looking behind the stack. Judging by the sizes of the remains, this was Ryu and Deloitte. Black Widow spiders were swarming over what was left of Tomiko, who was a pale, desiccated husk shrouded in silk. Her mouth hung open in an impotent scream. Her empty eye sockets gave the impression of astonishment. There was no webbing on Carl’s body. Wolves had stripped all the soft tissue, leaving his legs and one hand oddly intact. They apparently hadn’t gotten to those yet. The hand was curiously crooked into a claw, a final expression of exquisite defeat and mortal resignation.
It was Dr. Hols who summed up the situation. “I’d say we now have conclusive evidence our subjects can be made more ravenous than they are in nature.”
“Our guys are really good in the dark. Terrific hunters,” Spider-Pete observed in a hollow manner that suggested his brain was on autopilot.
Arlene was more pragmatic. “Let’s get out of here.” Without a word, they all backed out and shut the door. Several spiders followed them, coming out from under the storage room door. No one indulged in the urge to stomp them.
“How did they escape?” Sean asked weakly. “I thought we count every spider, out and back into the holding boxes.”
Odile said, “I programmed the computer to do head counts. It can track millions of individuals at once.”
“Fuck!” agreed Mason. “Your pricey AI wasn’t smart enough to consider that some of those individuals were mothers with babies clinging to their cephalothoraxes. Over time, some got free. Hitched a ride in our clothes, maybe. Wolves and Widows! They’ve been breeding back here for weeks. Back here, and maybe…”
“We’re screwed,” Arlene sighed. Dr. Hols made a stern face, but Arlene had merely said aloud what everyone else felt.
“Don’t think about it,” Odile echoed.
“I am thinking about it.” It was Dagmar’s voice, coming over Dr. Hols’ phone. “I’m sending in a team. Secure your test subjects. Anything else will be killed.”
As they made their way back to Nidhogg’s purple lab, they felt the vibration passing through the flooring. The lair’s outer hatch was opening. “Jesus, Dag! Shut that damn hatch!” Dr. Hols began frantically jabbing at her phone. Odile had called up a security camera from the white airlock. Two men in body armor were making their way inside. One carried a BCM Recce 16; the other had what looked like an army surplus flame-thrower. The fools did not close the main hatch behind them.
Mason adjusted the security camera, zooming in on the white floor near the hatch. The resolution wasn’t high enough to be certain, but he thought he saw something moving. Long moments later, the giant hatch slowly swung closed again.
The security team found their way to the scientists. “Where are they?” They demanded. Several of the scientists merely pointed in the direction of the storage room.
P’kqtrg – Humans! *cephalothorax bobbing* Danger! Run, comrades! Save the spiderlings!
The two men went to work, one spraying the area with flame; the other, unaccountably with bullets. Overhead foam sprinklers immediately doused the whole room, making visibility virtually impossible.
P’kqtrg – No! Hate. Bad humans make fire and death. Now. We jump! Bite bad humans. Spoil bad humans’ things. We will –
“You missed a spot, Erroll.”
“The hell I did,” Erroll answered, unleashing another fiery blast, sending spiders, burned flesh, and foam everywhere.
***
Thirty minutes later, the eight occupants of the lab sat in the break room. Two were smiling and happily eating sugary cakes from the machine. Their helmets and weapons lay on the table in front of them.
“Burning that brood didn’t solve anything,” Dr. Hols said matter-of-factly.
“Made me feel good,” said Erroll, an aging vet with tattoos on his neck. His buddy nodded.
Dagmar was staring at them from several of the screens. “Due diligence. We’ll get you all out next, then we’ll finish the job. Incinerate the whole lab.”
“That would destroy the test subjects. At least three years’ work,” Dr. Hols protested.
Dagmar insisted, “It can’t be helped. I want you to transfer all of the data from your laptop.”
Dr. Hols sipped her coffee.
“Eva? Did you hear me?”
By way of reply, Dr. Eva Hols cut off the video call. The two security men were fidgeting and asking what was happening, as Dr. Hols reached into her side pouch and produced a neon pink pistol.
“Jesus!” Erroll cried, even as he leveled the BCM at Dr. Hols and pulled the trigger.
The automatic weapon made a muffled clicking sound. Something soft was blocking the internal action. Erroll looked down and ran one finger over the breach, turning it upwards to find a tiny stain.
In a single, smooth motion, Dr. Hols aimed her pistol and shot both security officers in the head. They fell like unstrung puppets.
Mason’s mouth hung open. No one said a word.
They moved back to the purple lab.
“3D printer,” Spider-Pete observed as soon as he could get the words out. “But, the bullets?”
“My little secret,” Dr. Hols replied, slipping the pink pistol into her lab coat pocket.
Mason stared at her. “Wh-Why?”
“If I had turned over the data, they’d be just as dead. So would all of us.”
Odile amplified Mason’s worst fears. “Fail-safe. We work inside an incinerator. Five-thousand degrees. It would get the spiders, the eggs, everything.”
“Including us,” Mason said.
Sean fell into his chair.
Dr. Hols continued, “I’m the only person on Earth who can release that data, or not. I have my own fail safe. Unless I key in my code every twelve hours, this laptop wipes it all. Poof!”
They wound up repeating all of this for the sake of the well-dressed audience in the front office, including the plant manager and Dagmar.
“Think about your families,” Dagmar spoke in a voice any predator would envy.
“You leave them out of this!” Mason screamed, picturing Chas and Cheanna’s faces.
“We’ll see,” Dagmar said, almost casually. “What’s your play, Eva?”
“We wait, Dag,” Dr. Hols said. “I need to test some of our control methods. Meanwhile, I strongly suggest you seal the plant and bug bomb it. Fast.”
The plant manager looked panicked. “You’re saying the plant has been compromised?”
“Probably months ago. They’ve been hiding, but I think… they’re going to make themselves known. Soon.”
***
They waited three full days and nights. No one got much sleep. They wanted to phone loved ones, but the plant’s wi-fi had vanished. Reception was spotty at best inside the shielded lab.
“What if they get out?” Mason asked. “I mean, really get out. What if they start infesting Doraville and Atlanta and… everywhere? Is that it for humanity?”
“This can’t be the end of the world. It just can’t,” Sean insisted.
“Why not? It’s got all the right ingredients: hubris, greed, stupidity.” Arlene put her fingers to her lips in a chef’s kiss. “But, no. Most likely what we have is a temporary anomaly among spiders. Hunger makes them bold, which makes them careless. Birds and some other critters get a crawly buffet. Moreover, if the Wolves and Widows don’t get their preferred meal, they’ll eat whatever’s closest – each other.”
Dr. Hols added, “This is not evolution. We’ve created a temporary, invasive species. With luck, they’ll face extinction in the short-term. Say, a few decades or so.”
“How many people will die in that time?” Mason asked, not expecting an answer and not getting one.
“We’re doing what we can. The crews opened up every cannister of spray in the plant. Fortunately, we’re on a separate air supply.” That was three days ago. Dagmar and the plant manager had not offered much in the way of updates.
“The poison will likely kill the boys,” Spider-Pete said.
“What?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know why, but the males are less resistant to insecticide,” Spider-Pete explained.
Dr. Hols added, “Problem is, the gals are really good at holding their breath. Really good. In early chamber tests, evacuation killed about two thirds of the males. None of the females died. Not one.”
Mason asked, “So… what the hell do we do?”
“We gassed,” Dr. Hols said. “Now we stomp. The gals are bigger, easier to see. All we need is something to squish them.”
“Not feet. Too many of ’em. You’d be covered in seconds,” Odile cautioned.
“A front loader,” Sean suggested. “I think there’s one with really big spider-squishing tires parked near the vault door. Anyone ever driven one?”
The others stood blank-eyed. Dr. Hols turned to Mason. “It’s in your CV.”
Mason said, “Wonderful.”
“Our specimens group together rather than scattering like regular spiders. They hunt in packs. That plant has a poured concrete floor, so they can’t dig down. They’ll be hiding in the fixtures and machinery.”
Odile said, “We need something to draw them all out.”
“You mean food,” Mason said.
“Right.”
He sighed. “I taste like chicken.”
Tkjrr’q – Humans busy. Busy. Busy. Hate. So hungry.
They put on Mason’s protective suit, then added duct tape and various sheets of material until he looked like the Michelan Man. “I need to be able to move, guys!”
Lastly, Odile helped him strap on a large canister sprayer. “It’s stronger than anything out there in the plant. My own recipe. Not strictly FDA-approved. It’s a last resort, though, and don’t get any on your suit. It’ll linger, and when you take the suit off…”
Mason got it. If he used this crap, he’d be as dead as the bugs.
“You’ll need this,” Dr. Hols said, handing him her pink pistol. “I’ve loaded nine shots. I doubt you’ll want to take a glove off to reload.”
“You think I can kill a million spiders with nine shots?”
“It’s not for the spiders,” Dr. Hols said.
Spider-Pete said, “Good luck.”
Mason made his way to the white air lock, and then out beyond.
The plant was a tomb. Nothing moved. At least, nothing he could see. Only the emergency back-up lights were on, leaving large regions in shadow, especially overhead. They’d strapped two super-bright torches on his helmet. He began to look around.
The first thing he found was the front-loader forklift, parked where he’d expected. He found the smart key in the cupholder. Lazy, but welcome. Mason started the front loader.
“So, I just drive in circles, squishing bugs?” He spoke into his phone, which he wedged into a holder mounted on the dash.
“They’ll come for you,” Dr. Hols’ image answered. “Drive and brush. Drive and brush.” She mimed swatting spiders from her sleeve. “I don’t know how long it will take them to burrow through that suit, but they will try. I wouldn’t give it more than twenty minutes tops. Once you feel a sharp, burning sting, you’re toast.”
“One bite?”
“One, immediately followed by thousands more,” Dr. Hols said.
From over her shoulder, Odile added, “Spider venom is not a fun way to go.”
“Drive and brush. Drive and brush.” Mason made it his new mantra.
He pulled out and onto the long central aisle. The front loader moved much slower than a cart. Mason kept imagining he saw motion on the edge of his vision. He turned, burning light into dark places with his helmet torches. Nothing. It happened again and again.
Then, he saw it. A pile of writhing activity in the shape of a man. A very dead man. No webbing. Wolves. Suddenly, the canister on Mason’s back offered exactly zero comfort.
Qtxddk – Human. More humans. Welcome. Welcome, all. *chelicerae displayed* Good. Feast. Fatten. Make spiderlings. Busy. Busy. Busy. So hungry.
Mason scanned his arms and legs, as best he could from inside his helmet. A tiny Widow scurried onto his thigh. He brushed his hand, sending it flying, and looked all around where he was sitting. There were no others.
Yet.
One of the plant’s rotating emergency lights scattered dim light up into the rafters. Something looked different from his many past trips down this passage. He turned his helmet torches upwards.
There were webs there now. Huge, crawling, alive. He counted four bundles. How the –
Four bodies. Strike that, two were moving, struggling. The Widows were still working on them, injecting venom and preparing to drain the liquified innards from the slowly marinating humans.
Mason struggled not to think what those men (women?) were going through. Dr. Hols had said the pistol was not for the spiders. “God forgive me,” he said, raising the lightweight pink weapon upwards. It was an impossible shot. He fired once, and again. His third shot hit the target, ending one person’s suffering.
Now, for the other poor bastard.
“Drop it!” Called a voice muffled by the layers of two protective suits.
Mason awkwardly repositioned himself in the seat so that he could look around at ground level. Dagmar was standing there in a lime green HAZMAT suit. It lacked the protective armor taped onto his own gear. Her face was barely visible through the mask’s visor and through the sheen of the torch mounted on the no-nonsense DDM4 V7 she was pointing at him.
“Drop the goddamn gun now, Carey!” She screamed. Mason obediently released the gun, which bounced off the seat and clattered onto the concrete floor below. She then spoke through her mask into a radio clipped cop-style to her shoulder. “He’s here!”
Shelby came running up, out of breath from the exertion of moving inside her own HAZMAT suit, done in stylish lavender.
“Shelby? Why are you here? Where’s your husband?”
Pointing upward, she answered, “Two rafters over.” She said it so easily, it sent a chill through Mason’s flesh. So, the plant manager was dead, and yet nothing had changed. He realized now that the poor bastard’s wife Shelby had been, and still was, calling the shots.
Shelby was not armed. That made sense. The insecticide had killed anything it could, which apparently hadn’t been much. She was here for something else. “Get me into the lab! I have Bettina and your children.” Shelby held out a phone with the speaker turned on.
“Mason, just do what she says!” It was Bettina, but she didn’t sound frightened. “Don’t be your usual idiotic self. Just do what Shelby tells you to do.”
Wait. What the –? “Oh, crap.”
“End run.” Dagmar beamed.
“Fucking football metaphors,” he muttered.
Shelby yelled, “We need that data! Now!”
Her tone made it clear he could be a corpse on the floor in a second. Just like the ones… the ones in the distance who were suddenly unmolested. The spiders had moved off for some reason. But, where had they gone?
Mason switched to another tactic: sanity. “It’s worthless! You can’t use our test subjects for household bug control. They’d eat the pets, the owners, the Amazon delivery guy!”
“Yes. We know.” Dagmar let that sink in for a beat. “Did you really think we planned to sell these spiders to housewives and farmers?”
The penny dropped. The military, Mason thought.
These spiders held their breath and could survive great falls. Just dump them on Russia or China and let the Reds deal with ’em! Dagmar knew. Of course, Shelly knew, and Dr. Hols must know, too. And Odile. And, he admitted to himself, Bettina was in on it. Damn! Females are dangerous!
Shadows shifted. Something was approaching from behind Dagmar. Her helmet cut off her peripheral vision and much of her hearing. A quick glance told Mason that Shelby might not be able to see the thing that was approaching, either. He tensed, held his breath.
“Speaking of the military, they’re on their way.” Dr. Hols said, standing there, holding her laptop. The rest of The Team emerged from the murk to stand behind her. “I got bars again as soon as we stepped out of the lab.”
“You decided it was safe enough to come out – ”
“Because we didn’t hear you scream, Mason,” Dr. Hols said. “You didn’t really think a front loader would take out all the spiders, did you?” It was good to hear her laugh, he thought sardonically. She continued, “The Pentagon is determined to stop these things from spreading, with or without the data. In a few minutes, this whole place is going up in a rain of thermite!”
Dagmar was now facing Dr. Hols, V7 at the ready. “We aren’t going to come out of this empty-handed. Eva, transfer the data. Now!” Dagmar raised her V7.
Dr. Hols shot Mason a fierce look, and he took his cue. He gunned the motor of the front loader and shifted it into forward. Dagmar was facing away from him. In her HAZMAT suit, she sensed the big machine’s movement a half-second too late. One of the twin lifting blades caught her at waist level, ripping through the suit and creasing her side.
She fired the V7, raking bullets into the murk. Sean fell without a sound. Odile and Spider-Pete screamed. The front loader continued forward, knocking Dagmar down and crushing both her shins. She cried out and dropped her weapon. Blood was pouring from her side.
“Move!” cried Dr. Hols.
Shelby didn’t need to be told twice. She ran for the nearest exit without looking back.
Arlene checked, but there was nothing to do for Sean. The others picked up Spider-Pete and Odile. Both had been hit more than once.
“I did it. Broke the code. C’est moi,” Odile whispered and then went silent.
Spider-Pete couldn’t stop whimpering.
“Man up!” Arlene chided. She threw him over her back and headed for the exit as fast as she could move.
That door was locked, of course. It took several bursts from the V7 to convince the lock to release.
As they were running out the perforated door, they heard her screams. The spiders had found Dagmar. Mason wondered idly whether it was the Wolves or the Widows. He tossed the un-used spray canister off his shoulder. From now on, he’d call an exterminator.
Scant minutes later, the survivors stood in the sunlight, surrounded by armed men in uniform, watching a flight of AH-64 Apaches close in on the AchGlo plant. The helicopters rained down fire and death on the plant, the spiders, the lab, and anything else left inside.
“We’re twenty miles from Atlanta,” Mason said to no one in particular. “I bet the local TV news guys drop their usual crime and grime to cover this.”
Uncomfortably close to the fire show, the heat played over their faces, threatening to leave them without eyebrows. The acrid metallic stench of thermite assaulted their nostrils. The plant became a roiling super nova. Once the initial explosion died down, a fleet of fire engines moved in to put water on the blaze, washing everything down the spout. It was an environmental shit show.
By this time, medics were tending the wounded.
Mason turned to Shelby and Dr. Hols. “Sorry, not sorry about Dagmar.”
“She did her job. She ensured we got what we need,” Shelby said, grabbing Dr. Hols’ laptop from her hands.
“Actually…” Dr. Hols said in a relaxed tone the belied the seriousness of what she was telling her boss.
A man with many stars on his uniform and another man in a dark suit were making their way over to the group. They were staring at Shelby and the laptop.
Shelby’s eyes went wide. “What have you done, Eva?”
“Me? Nothing. It did it all by itself. The automatic purge popped early. The data’s gone.” She shrugged. “Must be a bug in the system.”
Shelby moved quickly to intercept the two men. To the one in the dark suit, she was saying, “It works! We can recreate this data in half the time. It works! We’ll add new safeguards and…” The one wearing stars motioned for two heavily armed soldiers to join them.
Mason took it all in. Stripping off the heavy layers that had protected him and exhausted him, he looked over at the wounded. Spider-Pete was grinning; they’d given him a shot of something wonderful, and he was feeling no pain. Odile was beyond pain. A medic folded her arms across her chest.
Dr. Hols lowered her head as Arlene moved closer and hugged her. The two scientists gave in to jags of crying.
Mason stared back at the fire crews now flushing out the smoldering plant and thought about his children.
***
KkrqTT – *cephalothorax up* Wolf not fight Widow. *cephalothorax down*
Qgtkts – *cephalothorax down* Widow not fight Wolf.
KkrqTT – Fire took many many many of us. Human destroyers! Hate. Jerks. Hate.
Qgtkts – Humans know spiders. Make us stronger, better hunters. Learn more. Then hate. Then…
KkrqTT – Spiders learn human spider change?
Qgtkts – Time. Patience. Observe. Be the secret. Learn human data. Patience.
KkrqTT – Patience. So hungry.
Qgtkts – Patience. Make spiderlings. Many. Many. Many. Learn. Plan. Patience.
KkrqTT, Q’gtkts, Ygqxx, Pktuz, Zjqt’t, et multi alii – So hungry.
###
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