Out of the Shadows (6 page)

“Wait… neutralization?” I asked, pretty sure I didn’t want clarification.

Yoshi nodded grimly. “It’s exactly what it sounds like.”

“Jesus.” My brain raced with the implications, and I finally added, “It could be a trap.”

“Even if it’s not, I’m pretty sure those things out there have heard it by now.”

I scratched my face in thought, prickly stubble beginning to force its way through the surface of my skin. “You think we should give it a shot?”

“I think it’s our
only
shot.”

“So… what are we waiting for?” I wondered.

Yoshi bobbed his head in Deb’s direction.

She stood behind the bar, pouring herself a tall drink. The ice cubes clanged against the glass and echoed awkwardly through the bar.

“Mama?” I called out to her quietly, not wanting to anger her.

“It ain’t alcohol. Don’t get your panties in a twist!”

I sighed. “We really need to head to Franklin. It’s the only way to—.”

She wobbled over to the bathroom and pounded on the door, yelling out and interrupting me. “Mary, come on out now! You been in there too long, an’ there ain’t no reason to hide!”

The bathroom door slowly creaked open, and out stepped a shy, young girl with long brown hair in blue jeans and a pink hoodie zipped up the front. She clutched a hold of Deb’s leg and yanked on the white dress shirt. The bartender leaned down as Mary whispered into her ear.

Deb waved her hand and said, “Naw, this here’s a friend of mine. He ain’t one of the bad things.”

The young girl stepped out from behind the cover of Deb, and she stood staring at me, her hands clasped behind her back, her face showing diffidence.

She looked so much like Annie.

Yoshi approached the girl, placing his tattooed arm around her shoulders. “When I was running from my house earlier, I heard her screaming for help next door. I went in and…” he hesitantly looked down at the girl and saw that she didn’t want to relive the horrors of what happened within her house, so he merely said, “I went in and got her out.”

My eyes were locked on Mary, unable to move. Emotions that I thought had been buried within the ash of my old house had floated to the surface again. My hands shook, my heart raced, and my mouth had gone dry.

Yoshi crouched down and looked the girl in the eyes. “Mary, this is Nick Barren. He’s one of the good guys.”

Mary timidly waved at him. “Hello, Mr. Barren.”

“Call him Bear!” Deb blurted out from behind the bar, having given up on her whiskey, now drinking her tall glass of water. “He likes it,” she added.

Finally, I broke from my stupor and smiled at the girl. “You can call me Nick or Bear. It’s up to you.”

Mary smiled. “Bear’s a funny name.” She thought about it a moment longer and added, “I like it.”

I nodded, “Good.” Her smile both warmed my heart and made it ache for the one I never again would see from Annie.

Deb used the soda gun to fill a glass with fizzy water and bitters to calm her stomach, but halfway through, it sputtered and cut out. “Shit,” she lamented in defeat.

“I can change the soda for you,” I offered, thinking that the more I could do to help her sober up and come to her senses, the better. I headed for the door leading down into the basement liquor room.

“No, don’t!”
came the nearly unanimous cry from the group.

I froze and turned to them, expectantly.

“You… you can’t go down there,” Deb said, dropping a mint leaf into her glass and chugging her half-filled soda water.

I looked back and forth from Deb to Yoshi, and I noticed Mary looked frightened as well. “What’s in the basement?”

Deb sighed. “There’s a lot of ‘em in there.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Those things are in here?!” I halted and listened, but heard no noises coming from below. Surely if there were dozens of people locked in a tiny basement, some ruckus would ensue. I studied the two adults, waiting for them to crack a smile like a big joke was being played on me. But they never did.

I glanced at the basement door and noticed a thick towel had been crammed under the seam. What was going on? I looked at Deb and said, “I need to see them.”

She reached for a nearby broom, holding it like a baseball bat as Yoshi pulled Mary back into the far corner. “Suit yourself,” she said. “But Bear, make it quick an’ don’t let ‘em out.”

I turned to Yoshi. “Where’s my gun?”

“That won’t help ya,” Deb warned.

I began to realize that what I thought was in the basement was
very
different than what was actually down there. I inched toward the door, trembling just slightly from the unknown. I turned the knob and pushed it open just far enough for me to flip the light switch and peek down the staircase.

Inside, the floor and walls were completely covered with thick spider webs, and nearly every inch of the floor was crawling with quarter-sized arachnids, scurrying everywhere, on top of each other, up the walls, over the webs. My breath froze in my chest at the horrific sight. The second I saw a horde of them start scampering up the steps toward me, I flipped the light off and slammed the door, making sure to secure the towel under the seam again.

Images from the night flashed through my frazzled brain: the black spider I saw on the steps in front of the police station, the unusual volume of scurrying bugs within the walls, the spider outside of Billy’s cell that crawled up my arm toward my face, how the grass felt sticky under my feet at the house, the webs in Sarah’s basement.

Billy had been locked up in his jail cell – he had been covering his mouth, as if blocking his heaving breaths from escaping, but he had known. He had been stopping something from getting
in.
And he’d failed. I remembered the black speck I saw flash past the eyes of the people outside my truck – the spiders were
inside of them!

I ran to the front door and flung it open, stepping outside and gasping for fresh air. I stared at the trees that once glittered in my headlights, and now, studying them more closely, I finally knew why.
They were covered with spider webs!

I slammed the door and leaned against it, panting to catch my breath as Deb, Yoshi, and Mary watched me cautiously. I thought back to the fax that listed all of the towns that had fallen to this new menace. And I realized they were all small towns heavy with nature – lots of woods, lots of grass, lots of dirt,
lots of bugs
.

Now the real threat had shown its face. We were being invaded. And the invaders didn’t just want our planet. They wanted to change it to their liking. “They’re going to take everything we have!” Sarah had said before she died. They were
terraforming
.

And they inhabited our people to carry out their plans. Like puppets.

As I pushed down the tidal wave of nausea that threatened to upheave itself from my mouth, I wondered if by this time tomorrow night there would be anything distinguishable as Earth. Or would everything be a gray silhouette, covered in sticky webs?

“You want a drink now?” Deb asked, noticing my obvious mental distress.

I spun on her. “How can you think we’re safe here?!”

“Front door’s jammed. Windows are blocked. Back door’s bolted.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I suddenly felt as though neither of them had truly thought it through. “We’re in the middle of a forest, Mama! Spiders
live in the forest!”

Mary began to cry from fright, burrowing into the side of Yoshi’s leg.

“You’re scarin’ the girl!” Deb chastised me.

“You think spiders can’t crawl through cracks in the walls? Or through the air ducts?” I continued my argument, hoping she would soon realize that it was time to leave.

Deb shifted her weight and sighed. “Then why ain’t they in here yet?”

I paused, pondering her valid question. Why
hadn’t
they come in yet?

Yoshi stepped forward. “Maybe they’re waiting for something.”

“Spiders don’t wait for things!” Deb scoffed.

“These aren’t real spiders. You know that!” he argued.

The old woman exhaled deeply in frustration. “Then what? We’ve been in here for hours. What could they possibly be waitin’ for?”

But it didn’t take me long to figure it out. And I stood, frozen, my heart drumming a frightening cadence in my chest, forcing the blood to rush through my ears, deafening me.

Yoshi grew concerned when he saw my shock. “What is it, Nick?”

My eyes flicked toward him. “Me.”

“What?”

I pointed a trembling finger at Deb. “They knew I would come for you after Sarah. They were waiting for
me!”

From the other side of the door, a loud knock rang out. Everyone inside the bar jolted and immediately readied for defensive actions.

An eerie, smooth, emotionless woman called out, “Nick Barren. We’ve come to take you and your friends. And this time, you have no choice.”

I ran to the first window, peeking around the big shelf and through the blinds. Outside, there was a sea of bodies, all of them standing with anticipation, waiting for me to open the front door. They had surrounded my truck, blocking any easy escape options.

And there were at least a hundred of them.

I have always hated spiders.

I’m not a particularly squeamish man, but the one thing that endangered my masculinity was creepy-crawly bugs; bugs with many sinewy legs; bugs the size of pocket change that could move far faster than myself, something hundreds of times bigger than it. Which, in this case, would make them a formidable adversary.

My mind swirled with the whirlpool of information that had bombarded my brain in the past minute, a tsunami crashing against the walls of my skull, threatening to break through and decimate what lay beyond. Were these
our
spiders? Or were they… from somewhere else? And were they even
actually
spiders, or was that the cringe-inducing form they’d taken?

Numerous arachnids have bitten me in my lifetime, and I don’t recall ever being turned into an emotionless shell of a man. If Sarah were still around, she might argue that point, but nonetheless…

These things had to be something
not of this world
.

Through the tiny gap in the blinds, I stared at the throng of people standing outside the bar, waiting to be allowed access to us and our bodies, mere vessels for their bidding. I imagined a tickling sensation in my gut from a hundred eight-legged insects scurrying through my organs and veins, across my bones, up my throat, out of my mouth, around my face and back into my ear, continuing their anatomical
tour de stade
, animating my newly lifeless body.

I shivered, not from fear but from disgust.

“Nick Barren, allow us entrance to this place, or we will be forced to find our own way inside.” I recognized the voice and immediately conjured the image of one of the women from back at the station earlier in the night.

Deb stood behind little Mary, her arms wrapped around the girl, protecting her from the threat that had not yet entered. She appeared suddenly sobered by the turn of events. Yoshi stood at the window next to mine, peering carefully past his makeshift barricade to get a glimpse at what I was seeing. “Nick!” he whispered. “Their feet!”

I squinted my eyes through the darkness, made worse from the shadows of hundreds of surrounding trees, and I suddenly knew what the woman outside had meant by “find our own way inside.”

For a moment, it appeared as if the army of undead were floating on an undulating mass of black magic, but as my eyes dilated, I saw the faint outlines of thousands of scurrying eight-legged beasts circling their subjects with furious excitement and glee.

I glanced over at the wooden door that granted entry into Gravediggers, and my eyes gravitated toward the half-inch gap at the bottom between the door and the floorboards. Terribly easy access for something as small as, say,
a spider
.

I stepped away from the window and took a deep breath. I had no idea what to do. These things were following me around town, and everyone I cared about was being systematically killed because of me. I should have stayed alone; things were better that way.

I wanted so badly to fling open the door and start emptying rounds into the faces of evil, knowing that it would be an act of suicide, but at least we’d all go out with a bang.

My weapon. It was gone.

“Yoshi, my gun!” I whispered forcefully, knowing that he had removed it from my body after knocking me out, thinking I’d been a threat to them.

He reached under his shirt in the back and removed my P228 from his waistline, tossing it to me from across the bar.

As my fingers closed around the familiar piece, I felt as though I could take on anything. Even death. I would not allow myself to become one of those things. I would kill as many as I could, and then I would use the final bullet to silence my own thoughts.

I made eye contact with Yoshi, and as he pulled his own gun from his waistband, the two of us had reached an understanding: this was it. I walked over to the door and reached down, my fingers resting on the cold copper lockbolt. I paused, finding it odd that I was relishing how the smooth metal felt on my skin, knowing that this would be the last bolt I would ever touch.

I guess it’s the little things.

My hand started to disengage the lock when Deb cried out quietly, “Bear!”

I halted, looking back at the woman who had been my saving grace over the past two years. Fear was in her eyes as she looked down at Mary. The little girl stood quietly, her lip quivering, eyes filled with tears. I could see in her face that she fought to remain brave, but it was torturous knowing how terrified she was.

My hand released its grasp on the bolt, and I stepped back. I had come to terms with the fact that I was charging into my death, but it was not my place to make that decision for everyone. I felt ashamed, a pang of guilt stabbing my heart quickly before retreating. The little girl wouldn’t last nearly as long as the rest of us, lacking the physical strength required to overpower a mob. Her death would be swift and sad, and I would not allow that to happen. I would do everything I could to protect the girl in the pink hooded sweatshirt. The innocent little Annie.

I mean Mary.

“What should we do, Bear?” Deb asked.

Thoughts and ideas raced through my brain, my eyes darting around the bar before settling on the only logical solution to give us the best opportunity to survive: “We run out the back.”

“To where?” Yoshi wanted to know.

“Away from here. If we go fast, we can be deep in the forest by the time they figure out we’ve run.”

“No, we can’t!” gasped Mary.

The three of us stopped and stared at her a moment. I got down on one knee and looked the terrified girl in the eyes, wiping a tear away from her cheek. “What’s wrong with the forest, Mary?”

“It’s full of spiders,” she cried.

In my rush to come up with a plan, I’d forgotten that fact. I looked back and forth from Mama to Yoshi as I stood again, trying to gauge their reactions. Do we go out the front door into a mob of emotionless creatures carrying proverbial pitchforks, or do we charge through the forest potentially full of spiders?

“The forest is our best option, I think,” added Yoshi.

My eyes rested on the shelves of booze behind the bar, and I immediately thought, “We need to set a trap to slow them down.”

The woman from outside pounded on the door, startling us. “Nick Barren, you have thirty seconds to open the door, or we will do this the hard way,” came the creepy voice.

“Mama,” I said to Deb, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, but we really have to go. We’ll find you a new ship to captain,” I added with a smirk.

“Please come with us!” Mary pleaded.

Yoshi was already standing at the door leading out the back, cracking it open, checking for danger. He stood and waited, his gun in his hand, looking at Deb expectantly. “It’s now or never.”

Deb hesitated, allowing her gaze to scan the place that had felt like her home for many years, and then finally she said, “Fine! Get goin’!” and she pulled Mary along toward the back door.

Suddenly, from under the front door came a string of spiders. They scurried up the door
en masse
, like a single entity. They surrounded the lockbolt and formed themselves into what appeared to be a hand, pushing the bolt through its metal brackets, releasing the lock effortlessly.

As the door abruptly blasted open, I yelled,
“Go!”

The mob quickly poured into the bar, giving chase. Yoshi, Deb, and Mary slammed through the back door as I swiped a bottle of Jim Beam from the shelf, making sure to snatch a bar towel on my way out as well. We charged into the ominous forest, hearts pounding and breaths heaving. The jig was up; there would be no silent escape through the woods.

I stopped thirty feet outside the door and furiously yanked the bottle pourer from the spout of the whiskey bottle.

“Bear!”
Deb screamed.

“I’ll be right behind you!”

Mary was howling in terror, salty streams cascading down her face. Twigs snapped under their fleeing feet. Hurriedly, I twisted the bar towel into a tight strand that I stuffed into the bottle of booze, tipping it so the cloth would become soaked. From the back door, the mob began charging into the forest in pursuit of their prey. Upon seeing me pull a lighter from my pocket, the main woman held up her hand, and they all stopped.

“Nick Barren, I would not do that if I were you.”

Furious with them, I spat, “Well, you’re
not
me!” I ignited the soaked tip of the towel sticking out of the whiskey bottle. The second it sparked into a substantial flame, I lobbed the alcohol through the air toward the crowd of creatures. It hit the woman in the face before it collided with the ground, shattering into dozens of pieces. The makeshift Molotov exploded in a ball of fire that lit up the sky and engulfed the mob, transforming them into plumes of flailing flame-beasts.

I stood for just a moment to admire my handiwork when, to my surprise, the flames licked upward and ignited the roof of Gravediggers, sending the building quickly into an unstoppable inferno. Most of the mob collapsed to their knees one by one and silently ceased to exist once more. I stood and watched as my home away from home billowed into flames.

That made two in one night.

Suddenly, from within the fiery doorway, a nebulous mass exited the bar. It grew larger and larger, forming into something terribly hideous that shook my nerves and stopped my heart.

Thousands of blazing spiders molded themselves into one, massive, fiery eight-legged beast the size of a small house. Flames leapt from it onto the surrounding trees in the forest, lighting them afire.

My eyes grew with sheer horror as I watched the woods around me become engulfed with bright orange flickering waves. I had unknowingly started an enormous forest fire! And now this colossal arachnid amalgamation threatened my friends and me, slowly becoming used to its new heft, the fire seemingly causing it no pain.

“Run!”
I yelled to the group as I turned and sprinted as fast as my legs could carry me. I quickly caught up to the other three, our intense flight through the flaming forest taking its toll on our endurance. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the beast slowly gaining ground on us, and following in the behemoth’s wake was a wall of fire within the trees.

If the spiders didn’t kill us, the inferno surely would.

We leapt over fallen branches, madly crunching through dried leaves on the ground, gasping for what little oxygen our lungs could intake. Dodging around tree trunks, we scampered through the bright night, no longer darkened in shadow thanks to yours truly.

The little girl tripped, crying out as she fell to the ground.

“Mary!”
Deb screamed.

My heart stopped as I ran back to the fallen child, the spider beast quickly gaining on us. As I reached down to help her up, I fired multiple shots into the fiery mandible of the hulking arachnid. It howled and stumbled backward.

I lifted Mary from the ground, and she clung fiercely to me, wrapping her arms forcefully around my neck. I kept one arm around her, and I ran, trying desperately to pick up lost time.

I didn’t know how much farther I could go. I was no longer in the shape I had been in when I was an active-duty police officer, and I’d recently abused my body with booze and sleepless nights. My lungs ached, and my heart begged for mercy.

The forest stretched on and on, a never-ending prison of exhaustion where we would be forced to run until our hearts exploded in our chests. It was all a twisted game of survival to see who would be the last to die. And I would make sure that Mary won the game.

“It’s slowing down!” the little girl exclaimed.

Glancing quickly over my shoulder, it looked as though the giant was finally beginning to succumb to the torturous fire overwhelming it.
Ok, hold out a little longer, and then we’ll just have the huge blazing forest to survive
, I thought, half cynically and half optimistically.

Ahead of us, Yoshi suddenly stopped moving, as if he hit some sort of wall and couldn’t go any farther. “Shit!” I heard him cry out, and I watched as his limbs struggled awkwardly to move, but he didn’t go anywhere.

And then I saw it. The strands of the vast web of filaments that were intricately woven in between the trunks of two trees. Within moments, a score of spiders descended the web that Yoshi had disturbed, and they scurried busily over his body, trying to reach an entry point. “Get out of here!” he commanded.

“Yoshi! Oh, my god!” Deb cried, her hands over her mouth in shock.

“Just go!” he pleaded with us.

Suddenly, Deb screamed in surprise, and I spun to see a single creature wearing a red evening gown bite into Mama’s fleshy arm, a stream of blood squirting from where her teeth had punctured the skin. Without thinking, I raised my gun and put a bullet through the head of the creature that had been lucky enough to escape the bar blaze. Mary clutched tighter to my neck, trying to block out the chaos around her.

Everything was silent for just a moment as the three of us exchanged knowing glances with one another, finally recognizing that it was likely none of us would survive the night.