He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to. If we don’t find the fruit, we need to find the Springers again—and this time, we will be the ones attacking.
I wanted to talk to them, to make peace, but they ambushed us. Unprovoked. We did nothing wrong. They started this fight, not us. We’re out of food and out of options.
If it’s war they want, they messed with the wrong girl.
Ahead, the city’s vine-covered walls rise above the trees, stretching in either direction from the river that cuts between two towers. White spray rages up from twisted bars and bent grates that perhaps once prevented anything other than water from passing through, but judging by the amount of rust, that was ages ago.
On top of the towers, I see long tubes that resemble the ones on the spiders’ backs. Weapons. Once upon a time, I bet those protected the city. Now they are just rusted junk.
The spiders stick to the river, easily walk by the water-gate’s remnants. Past the wall, Uchmal’s four-sided buildings—abandoned, but not destroyed. The buildings are smaller here than they are around the landing pad, but they get bigger the farther in we go.
We hear the waterfall long before we see it. When we turn a bend, there it is before us. The river just drops away; beyond it, open air and an amazing view of the city. The Observatory soars higher than any other building, so obnoxiously large it makes the rest of Uchmal look small and weak.
We pass by the switchback steps that Spingate, Coyotl and Farrar climbed. Like the spider that chased us then—or we thought was chasing us then—our three spiders don’t seem interested in tackling those steep steps. Off to my right, I see the pool where Bishop saved me from falling, where he held me, where he kissed me. If he remembers that moment, he gives no indication: he stares straight ahead.
I’m pretty sure the landing pad is southwest of us, but the spiders are heading due west.
“Bishop, where are we going?”
His brows knit with worry. “I don’t know. I told them to go to the shuttle. Maybe they’re heading to their nest.”
We now know it’s not a “nest,” but the word still works.
“Should we get off?” I ask. “Find our own way back?”
He considers it, shakes his head.
“Your wound is worse than you think. The less you walk, the better. We’re still getting closer to the shuttle, just not heading straight for it. Let’s stick with the spiders for now.”
—
Three spiders stride down the middle of a narrow, vine-choked road. On their backs ride five tired, hungry people.
Bishop guessed right—up ahead is the nest building. It is a strange construct, and big. Not as large as the Observatory, of course, but easily bigger than the food warehouse. Vine-covered, like all the rest, although it’s not a ziggurat. If anything, it reminds me of a really, really big version of…
…no, that can’t be right.
“Bishop, what does this place look like to you?”
He turns his head left, then right, taking it all in. “It’s long and narrow. It’s the only one I’ve seen with a curved top. I guess if it wasn’t covered in vines, it might look a bit like…”
His eyes go wide. He stares at me, astonished. “It looks like our shuttle.”
I nod. That’s what I thought, too. It’s a hundred times larger, so large I thought it was a building, but beneath a deep blanket of vines is the same streamlined shape as the ship that brought us down to Omeyocan.
We approach. I see lumpy piles of vines, some in the street, some closer to the nest. We pass one: it is an unmoving spider, blanketed by plants and moss. In places, little flowers jut from it, petals in shades of red and yellow. Tiny blurds buzz in and out.
How long has it been since this spider stopped moving?
Our mount walks past it toward a wide, open archway in the ship-shaped building. Blackened metal lines the archway’s edges, like there was once a door here that was melted, ripped down and burned.
The unmanned spider enters first. We follow it in, Coyotl right behind us.
This building…it’s cavernous. Huge girders soar above. Attached to them, machines that haven’t moved in years. Here and there, holes overhead, rusted-out spots with dangling vines and sunlight cascading down.
Rust is everywhere. Rust and wreckage.
Unmoving, five-legged spiders are scattered all over. Some sit in an endless line of small, cozy stalls that seem to run the length of the building, nestled in like we were in our coffins. Some spiders on their sides, some on their backs, legs curled in as if they were real spiders, dead and dried up.
And in places, pieces of spiders. A rusted abdomen attached to a rack on the wall here, piles of ruined and useless legs there, stacks of metal tubes over there.
I think of Grampa’s watches, all the little bits needed to make them run.
“Those are spare parts,” I say, pointing to the pile of legs, the stacks of tubes. I gesture to the whole building. “This was some kind of factory, I think. A place to fix spiders that stopped working.”