“We already know they’re killing people and—”
“No,” she said. “Watch the way this group moves to the side and this other string funnels them in. It’s not just a bunch of spiders attacking people. They’re hunting as a group. Like a pack. It’s coordinated.”
Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton,
San Diego, California
She couldn’t sleep. Kim got out of her bunk and wandered outside. She figured she’d be the only one up that time of night other than the patrols, but Mitts was leaning against the side of the barracks, drinking a beer. He nodded at her, reached down to the six-pack at his feet, and handed her a bottle. The beer was warm, but it was good.
She took a few sips, neither of them saying anything, neither of them wanting to talk about how many empty bunks there were inside. After a few minutes, she leaned into him and he silently put his arm around her.
The White House
Not even twenty-four hours since the spiders started dying in Los Angeles and it was over. How many millions of people dead across the world? But it was over. Manny reached for his Diet Coke and realized his hand was shaking. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he last slept. Three days? Four? But what he knew for sure was that the reports everywhere—India, China, Scotland, Egypt—were that the spiders were all dead. All that was left was the cleanup. How come it couldn’t be as simple as only having to deal with the fucking Staples Center?
“Sorry,” Melanie said. “You know as well as I do the Staples Center is just what’s obvious. You think because you kill one spider in your bathroom that there aren’t others hiding somewhere else in your house?”
Steph was lying on the couch. Not exactly dignified behavior in the Oval Office, but it was just the three of them. She had her eyes closed, but she clearly wasn’t sleeping. “Please tell me you didn’t say that.”
“But can’t we just, I don’t know, soak all of them in gasoline and then light the whole thing on fire?” Manny said. “Okay, so the whole idea of spraying insecticide over Los Angeles was a fiasco—”
“Honestly,” Melanie said, “it wasn’t the worst idea.”
“Sure, if we had enough insecticide and planes to spray more than a few square blocks, and then if the insecticide we used had actually worked. But fire? Right?” Manny said. “Set the Staples Center on fire? That should take care of any we don’t see.”
“I’m not talking about the Staples Center.”
“Then what are—”
“The spiders aren’t all the same,” Melanie said. “They just look the same because we’re seeing them as a group. You get a mass of these spiders, a swarm of them, and it looks like a unified group. We’ve been thinking about it wrong, trying to figure out what kind of spider it is, and then thinking, oh, they’re dying and all that’s left is the egg sacs. But it’s not just one kind of spider. There are spiders. Plural.”
Steph sat up and put her feet on the floor. “I don’t understand.”
“The spiders display patterns of eusociality similar to Hymenoptera and Isoptera, and I think, in a similar fashion, these spiders have different castes too.”
“Melanie,” Steph said, “I know you think what you’re saying makes sense, but please understand I’ve barely slept since this started, and nothing you just said makes any sense to me. We aren’t scientists, okay?”
“Spiders are normally loners. There are about thirty-five thousand known species, and mostly they live by themselves, but there are about two dozen species that display eusociality. Which just means they work together. They all help care for the brood and share resources, all that sort of stuff. So when I say Hymenoptera and Isoptera, you should think ants and bees and termites. Colonies. They work together, and they take on defined roles. You know, worker bees and queens and that type of thing.”
Manny leaned forward. “You’re saying they have queens? That all we have to do is kill the queens?”
“No, I’m . . .” She paused. “Well, maybe. Fuck. Okay. I have to think about that. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Just stay with me for a minute. We’ve got a kind of spider that isn’t like any other we’ve ever seen, but it’s not just one kind of spider. In the lab, we’ve already figured out how to differentiate between feeders and breeders, but it also looks as though there’s more than one kind of breeder. There are the spiders that use hosts to carry their eggs, the ones that lay eggs inside people, and there are breeders who lay eggs in sacs in places they’ve cleared out. Some egg sacs hatch quickly, some seem to be slower. Maybe it’s the same breeders and they just choose what kind of sac to make depending on the conditions, but I don’t think that’s it. It’s like they are on parallel but different tracks. There are the ones that behave like normal spiders and seem to develop at a normal pace, and there are the lightning ones.”
“Blitzkrieg,” Steph said.