Each creature stung Jim’s corpse three times. The man’s bulbous rolls of flesh immediately began to shake.
Nine more, Hawkins thought. In just over a minute, there will be nine more of those things.
Finished with the corpse, the spider chimeras spun their attention back to the fleeing prey. Seeing Hawkins in the hall, the black tails rose into the air, shaking with excitement.
Bray’s hand fell hard on Hawkins’s shoulder and yanked him around. “Ranger, let’s go!”
Hawkins turned and ran, following Bray down a side hall.
The tick-tack of twenty-four oversize and frenzied spider limbs followed.
42.
The smooth, linoleum floor squeaked under Hawkins’s feet as he ran. The sound, heard throughout the world’s shopping centers on rainy days, would have normally been a minor annoyance, but here, it might get him killed. The eight-legged chimeras didn’t have a direct line of sight on him—they’d woven a confusing path through the facility’s many hallways—but the ceaseless squeaking made them easy to track. Had he time to pause, Hawkins would have removed his shoes and gone barefoot. Howie had taught him to hunt in silence and sometimes that meant giving up modern comforts, but now it would mean giving up his life.
Even without pausing, he could hear the clacking of the spiders’ claws growing louder. And since he had no intention of allowing one of those things to leap on his back and inject him with their young, it was only a matter of time before he’d have to turn and fight. The outcome might be the same, but at least he’d have fought.
Ahead of him, Bray and Blok ran like men possessed. Neither knew where they were headed, but they moved without pausing, like there was a yellow brick road guiding them. And nothing stood in their way. Bray had twice run into trays of equipment and neither had slowed him down. Hawkins, on the other hand, had to leap over the debris. As a result, he was ten feet behind Bray. Yellowstone rangers often joked with visitors that the best way to survive a bear attack was to be faster than your companion. It got good laughs, but Hawkins never found it funny, mostly because it was the truth.
The clacking of tiny feet on the floor grew louder. Hawkins looked back. The things had rounded the corner behind him, just fifty feet back.
“They’re gaining on us!” Hawkins shouted. “We need a barricade!”
Blok started checking doors to rooms as he passed them. All were locked. Given the sheer size of the building, Hawkins thought it would have been easy to find a hiding spot. But all the hallway doors swung both ways and had no handles to wedge something in, nor locks. They’d passed a large number of windowless doors labeled with letters and numbers, but all were locked.
Hawkins looked back.
Forty feet.
A shout turned Hawkins forward in time to see a pair of hands reach out, grab Blok, and yank him into a side room. Bray stopped, raising his weapon to strike, but then followed Blok into the room, shouting, “Ranger, in here!”
Hawkins didn’t need to be convinced. Whatever and whoever waited for him in the room couldn’t be worse than being turned into a living incubator. He slipped on the floor as he rounded the corner and barreled into the room, colliding with Bray and spilling to the floor.
The door slammed shut behind them. A heavy lock thunked into place.
Several impacts shook the door a moment later, but they stopped within seconds.
Hawkins pushed himself up and Bray’s bone saw came into focus beneath him. Another inch and the blade could have carved through his face. He rolled away from Bray and found a feminine hand extended toward him. For a moment, he thought it was Joliet, but then saw how long the fingers were. The woman leaned forward. Her aquiline face gave her the appearance of a hawk about to attack. But she wasn’t angry. She was terrified. He took the woman’s hand and got to his feet.
There were four more strangers in the room—two men, three women total—all dressed similarly in tan slacks and white buttoned shirts, which were stained with sweat and blood. The room was like a small cafeteria, with several long, benched tables, a kitchen area, and cabinets lining the walls. The space was modern, lit by recessed ceiling bulbs and air-conditioned. It felt as though they’d been transported from a tropical hellhole to an office building in Anywhere, USA.
Hawkins turned to Blok, who stood at the door, looking through the small, rectangular window. “What are they doing?”
“Just standing there,” Blok said. “Three of them.”
“Just three?” Bray asked.
Blok craned his head back and forth, looking down the length of the hallway in both directions. “Just three.”
“Where are the rest of you?” the woman asked impatiently.
“The rest of us?” Hawkins replied.
“You mean our friends who gave birth to those spider-turtles?” Bray said. “Or do you mean the big guy your boss turned into a walking Ginsu knife?”