“What the fuck?” Melanie tugged at her ponytail and then pulled out the elastic. Her hair felt greasy. She couldn’t remember if she had even brushed it after her last shower. “Julie, pull the video back to when we dropped the new rats in.”
They watched it on Julie’s screen and then watched it again, slower. What had seemed almost instantaneous earlier was terrifying with the frame rate dropped to a tenth the speed: the spiders were already leaping before the trap door had fully opened. They met the rats’ bodies mid-drop. The spiders were feeding before the rats hit the ground of the insectarium. Except for the one rat and one spider. It was so quick and there was so much chaos going on with the other spiders feeding that Melanie understood why they’d missed it. The spiders had swarmed over the other rats, but only a single spider had gone to the surviving rat. But that spider hadn’t fed. It had . . . disappeared? No. The rat’s body blocked the angle from the camera, but they could mostly make it out. The spider lunged forward, gave a sort of shiver, and then was gone. It had disappeared inside the rat’s body.
“Scroll back again. Get me a clear frame of that spider before it burrows into the rat.” Julie found the frame, froze it, and then Melanie pinched at the screen, zooming in. “Look at that marking on the abdomen,” Melanie said. “Does that mean something?”
They spent several minutes watching the other spiders move around the tank before Bark spotted another with the same marking.
They were careful. They segregated the marked spider. They followed all the protocols. But something as simple as putting a container too close to the edge of the table?
There was always human error.
Sooner or later, but always.
And now the spider was gone. Smashing glass. Yelling. Blood. Gone.
Somewhere inside Bark’s body.
Julie marked the time: 1:58 A.M.
Highway 10, California