She looked back to the spider things. The slippery coating of glass covering the floor slowed their progress, but they were closing the distance quick enough. “Go! Now! Let me do this!”
Hawkins understood that the desperation in her voice wasn’t just fear of death. It was also fear of some kind of afterlife and a God who might judge her. She wanted to die doing something right. She wanted atonement. And he wouldn’t deny her. “Thank you,” he said, and then ran to catch up with Bray and Blok.
Green stood her ground. The device on the back of her neck chimed incessantly. As the creatures closed in, she opened her arms as though to embrace them, and in a way that’s exactly what she did. The spider things sprung up as one, striking her body with a tangle of spindly black legs, twisting tails, and jabbing stingers. Green stumbled back under their weight, but had been ready for it. Instead of falling straight back, she stumbled backward before tripping. As she spilled back toward the floor, her head and neck passed through the outer radius. She, and the shelled spiders disappeared in a bright plume of light.
The powerful explosion shook the building and sent a shockwave rolling through the hallway like a mudslide. The force of it knocked Hawkins, Bray, and Blok to the floor. They were quick to their feet, but three more of the creatures rounded the far corner at the end of the hall, blocking their path to the exit.
“Hawkins.” Kam’s voice was loud and all around them, booming from a PA system. “Take the next right. Then the second door on the right.”
“We can’t trust him,” Bray shouted back.
“No choice!” Hawkins shouted. They ran toward the creatures and took the hallway on the right, sprinting for their lives.
Blok paused at a T junction at the end of the hall. He looked left and right. “Push doors in both directions.” He started to the left, no doubt trusting Kam as little as Bray did.
But Hawkins knew they’d still be prisoners if it hadn’t been for Kam. “Go right!”
Blok hesitated, but when he saw how close the spider chimeras were, he dove right and shoved through the doors. Bray rounded the corner, right on his heels. Hawkins went around last. The door was still open from when Bray went through. He could see them, just ahead, entering the second door on the right. He could also hear the creatures right behind him.
In a dead sprint from one set of doors to the next, he knew he couldn’t make it. So instead of running, he spun.
Two of the creatures charged along the linoleum, their spindly legs a blur, their tails reaching up and over. The third was airborne. Its eight legs were splayed open, ready to grasp Hawkins’s torso. A pair of mandibles was primed and ready to clamp down. The tail whipped around, aimed for his waist. And the stinger, like some kind of sick phallus, had already emerged and was jutting back and forth in excited anticipation.
Hawkins saw all this in the second it took him to grip the door with both hands and swing it shut as hard as he could. The well-oiled, heavy metal door flew shut and collided with the airborne creature first. The door shook from the impact. Two more less powerful thuds struck the door. Hawkins couldn’t see what had happened, but thought the running pair must have collided with the stalled airborne creature before striking the door.
With his pursuer’s momentum arrested for the moment, Hawkins sprinted to the second door on the right, slipped into the more dimly lit room, and eased the door shut behind him just as the double doors burst open. He waited by the door, hand on the padlock, ready to turn it. But he didn’t dare turn it yet or they’d be trapped inside. Instead, he listened. He could barely hear the tapping of the spider feet outside the room, but they were there, unsure at first, but then scurrying again.
“Hawkins,” Bray whispered.
Hawkins held up his hand, asking for silence. When he could no longer hear the creatures anymore, he locked the door. The deadbolt snapped loudly into place. When he turned around, he found Bray and Blok standing to his right, looking suspiciously at the room’s third occupant: Kam.
But Hawkins immediately saw they had nothing to fear from Kam, one of their two Judases. A knife had been buried in Kam’s abdomen. It was a mortal wound, especially without a real doctor within hundreds of square miles, let alone a surgeon qualified to repair the damage. But Kam wouldn’t die quickly, especially with the knife still wedged in place. Whoever had done this wanted him to suffer. And here on the island, that narrowed the suspects down to one.