'Nids Part 9

"I'm going to get on my radio," he said, "and I want you to hear what I have to say. I'm telling you now, this is not a joke. Listen close."

There were three deputies there, and they followed him to his car. Harker got in, and they closed around his open door. He took the radio microphone and depressed the b.u.t.ton with his thumb.

"This is Harker to all units," he said. "You're not going to want to believe what I have to tell you. I don't have time to try to convince you, so for the sake of your job, you're just going to have to be convinced. If I hear of anyone expressing even a little disbelief, I'll s.h.i.tcan you, understand me? You have to believe me, your lives will depend on it. There is a big spider in Hope Valley. I repeat, a very big spider. It's a sun spider, and it's got a body about five feet long, and ten long legs. This spider is very dangerous, and it is very fast. Take your shotguns with you wherever you go, and if you see it, empty them into it. Do. Not. Hesitate. I repeat, this is a very dangerous, very fast spider. You see it, shoot to kill. Harker out."

Harker put the microphone back and got out of his car. He turned to the deputies.

"You all get that?"

All three deputies nodded.

"Anybody got a problem with it?"

They all said, "No, sir."

"If you don't believe it now," Harker said, "you'll believe it when you see the corpses down there in the woods. Get the coroner down here, and tell him to bring the wagon. And call an ambulance for Lewis, he's lost his f.u.c.king mind with fear, he needs to be sedated, or something. And move your d.a.m.ned cars so I can get out of here."

Harker waited while the deputies moved their cars. He drove farther up the road where there was a place he could turn around, then headed down the hill.

One question repeated itself over and over in his mind: How in the h.e.l.l do you go after a spider?

He knew of no way to lure or track it. It moved fast, so it could cover a good distance in a short time a who knew where it might turn up again?

Harker wasn't even sure he knew where he was headed.

He thought of the book he'd left on Lewis's dashboard, and considered going back for it. The book might provide some valuable information about the sun spider.

The book reminded him of Rodney Lepke. He'd known enough to get the book. He'd said his little brother was some kind of spider geek. Harker didn't know of spider experts he could consult immediately. And even if he did, he thought he might check with the kid first.

He got on the radio.

"Two-oh-six," he said. He was more collected now and gave his I.D. number instead of using his name. "I need a street address for a Lepke, no first name."

He waited until Sh.e.l.ly gave him the address in Hope Valley Heights. He flicked on his siren and lights and got there as fast as he could. He turned the siren off as he pa.s.sed through the subdivision. There was no point in waking up everyone in the neighborhood.

Seventeen.

It was T.J. Stone's last delivery of the night and he wanted to get it over with. He wanted to go home and take a book to bed and read himself to sleep. He read a lot of science fiction and usually had two or three books going at once. He kept them scattered throughout the apartment so whatever room he happened to be in, he could pick up the nearest book and lose himself in other universes.

It was so much better than delivering pizzas.

T.J. was twenty-three and had two jobs. Some nights, like tonight, he delivered for Prime Pizza in Hope Valley, and other nights, he delivered for China Express in Newbury. On weekends, his friend Stanley paid him to help build Stanley's new house in Ridgeton. When they were finished with the house, T.J. would find some other weekend work. He made enough money to live on and to support his book-buying habit, as long as he bought his books at flea markets and yard sales and used bookstores. Not that he needed to buy more a his apartment was cluttered with stacks of hard covers and paperbacks he had not yet read. In his bedroom, he'd cut through the stacks of books a narrow path that allowed him to get to his desk and bed.

He rolled down the window; the cool spring air felt good on his face. He c.o.c.ked his left elbow and propped it on the edge of the open window.

T.J. turned on the radio. It was tuned to the heavy metal station, and an old AC/DC song was playing, Back in Black. He turned it up until the beat was pounding through the car's body.

He stopped at a red light and waited, moving his head to the beat.

He saw movement from the corner of his left eye and turned to find himself looking into a monstrous face with three enormous black fangs. It closed those fangs on his arm. As T.J. pulled away from the window with a gasp, the face pulled away from the car and disappeared.

T.J. looked down at the b.l.o.o.d.y stump that jutted from his shoulder. As he screamed, he stiffened his legs and his right foot slipped off the brake and hit the gas. The car lurched forward into the intersection. An oncoming car on the left slammed into T.J.'s front end.

T.J. continued to scream.

His car came to a stop diagonally at the corner of the intersection. He tried to pull the parking brake, but his quaking hand kept missing it. Finally, he gave up and struggled with the seatbelt as he made throaty whimpering sounds. He felt warm blood running down his left side from the stump that used to be his arm. Once he unfastened the seatbelt, he reached over with his right hand and opened the door. He fell out of the car, screaming for help.

Blood continued to pump from the jagged stump of his arm.

Eighteen.

Sixteen-year-old Lizzie Turner's shift had begun only an hour ago, and yet she was already thinking about going home. Her parents started drinking around five or six, and they got into a fight almost every night. She was so tired of it that she would offer to do some overtime work for no pay to avoid going home until she knew they were in bed.

She put two Max Burgers and an order of curly fries into the white Max Burger bag, then handed the bag through the window to the woman in the minivan waiting outside.

"You have a good night," Lizzie said.

"Thanks, you too," the woman said as she drove away.

The bell rang a another user had just driven over the cable across the concrete by the menu. They referred to their customers as users because so many of them came back again and again, as if addicted to Max Burgers. Those who came in regularly were called heavy users. And heavy was exactly what most of them were.

A Chevy pick-up truck pulled up to the window. Lizzie made change for the man at the wheel, put together his order, and handed it through the window.

The bell rang again.

"You have a nice night, now," Lizzie said.

The man drove away without comment.

The bell rang repeatedly a ding ... ding-ding ... ding ...

"Are them kids out there messin' with the bell again?" Mandy said as she walked by.

"I'm not sure," Lizzie said. She looked up at the monitor. The outside camera mounted on the brightly-lit menu showed no one near the cable.

Lizzie leaned out the order window and looked to her right.

Something big but hunched up came around the corner and headed straight for her, something fast a frighteningly fast. It was on Lizzie before she could pull herself in the window, and its fangs closed around her head. With a quick, crunching movement, it took Lizzie's head off. It dropped the head and pressed its face to the spurting stump of her neck and sucked at the blood as Lizzie's body slowly slid backward, then fell to the floor inside Max Burger.

Mandy was the first to see her, and the first to scream.

Nineteen.

Monty Burnham went out his back door and flicked on the flashlight in his hand.

Something had knocked over all the garbage cans beside the house. He'd just shut down his computer in the bedroom and had been about to go to bed when he'd heard the terrible clatter. His wife Connie was in the living room watching television.

Monty wore his robe and a pair of corduroy slippers. The night air was chilly on his bare legs. He stepped onto the back lawn and swept the flashlight across the yard.

Something moved just outside the glow of the beam and Monty shifted the flashlight to the right to follow it. The beam landed on the big doghouse he'd made for Tucker, their St. Bernard.

Whatever it was, it had gone into Tucker's house.

Tucker was usually in at this hour, but on that night, Monty's eight-year-old son Chris had talked him into letting Tucker sleep in his room. When he'd finally acquiesced, Monty had told Chris not to get used to it, that it was a one-time thing.

"What is it?" Connie said.

Monty turned around and saw her standing in the back doorway.

"I think there's a dog in Tucker's doghouse," he said as he headed for the doghouse in the back corner of the yard.

Connie turned to go back inside.

"Pretty b.a.l.l.sy dog," Monty said with a chuckle, "walking into another dog's a "

There was an explosion of spindly legs that came out of the square doghouse door, and the legs pulled with them a body. The spider blossomed like a flower from the doghouse, and it was on Monty before he could finish his sentence.

Twenty.

"Monty?" Connie said as she turned back toward the yard. There was a note of alarm in her voice because she'd heard Monty make a sound like a yelp. She saw the flashlight drop to the ground and Monty went down. She stepped out onto the back porch and said, "Monty, what's wrong?"

She heard more than saw something moving toward her. It made a quiet thumping sound on the ground, which grew louder as it neared, and in the dark, all she could make out was a blur of movement.

Connie spun around and went inside. She swung the back door hard behind her as she ran through the kitchen, but she did not hear the door shut. Instead, she heard thumping and sc.r.a.ping on the kitchen floor, following behind her.

She ran down the hall to the closet where Monty kept his rifle. Connie opened it and reached in a a but something grabbed her from behind and lifted her as it pulled her back away from the open door.

Connie's scream became a strangled cough as the spider's fangs entered her back.

Twenty-One.

Jerked from his sleep, Chris Burnham sat up in bed when he heard his mother scream. He found Tucker sitting on his haunches at the door, staring at the k.n.o.b. Chris swung his legs over the edge of the bed and wondered if he'd really heard that, or if he'd dreamed it.

Tucker got up, walked in a circle, then sat down and stared at the doork.n.o.b again with a quiet whine.

Chris stood, went to the door, and opened it.

Tucker hurried out the door and his claws clicked on the hardwood floor as he went up the hall.

Chris scratched the back of his head and yawned. He turned and started to shuffle back to bed in his Star Wars footed pajamas when he heard Tucker whine again. The whine started high and went low, then stopped.

He heard what sounded like a distinct crunch sound, followed by a dull thump.

Chris went back to the door and stepped out into the hall. "Mom?" he said as he turned his head to the right.

The closet door was wide open, and a few feet away from it lay his mother. Beside her lay Tucker.

"Mommy?" Tucker said again, but higher in pitch, as he hurried up the hall to his mother's side.

There was so much blood. She lay face-down, and there were three big, b.l.o.o.d.y holes in her back.

Tucker lay beside her, and a couple of feet from the dog was the dog's head.

Chris's vision blurred with tears as he lifted his eyes to look at the dark, open closet. He sobbed as he wiped away his tears.

The darkness in the closet moved. Long, skinny legs curled out of the open doorway and pulled a golden body out into the hall.

Chris knew he had to be dreaming. How many times had his parents told him there was no such thing as monsters? How many times had they told him they were only in movies, they were only special effects? How many times? And here, right in front of him, was a big, hairy, full-blown monster, as big as life, so he had to be dreaming. Even when he screamed, he knew he had to be dreaming, and he would wake up any second now, open his eyes and sit up in bed, and Tucker would be there, and he'd be able to pet him, and everything would be normal and safe.

But he did not wake up.

The spider moved forward and closed its fangs on the screaming boy.

The house fell silent for a moment. Then the hallway filled with the wet sounds of sloppy sucking and eating.