“There’s spiders around here somewhere.”
“No shit, Sherlock?” Wiggins said at her back but Banks took note and stopped at the front.
“Yes,” he said. “I smell them too. But what choice do we have?”
He turned back and continued onward. After only a dozen more paces, the corridor opened out into another worked area, an empty, cathedral-like space of pillars and arches that was more recent than anything else they’d seen so far. Half a dozen opening led off to the left and right and they could see, right at the edge of the gun lights, a darker, larger opening leading out at the far end to the north. Fresher air came from that direction and Banks led them toward it, upping his pace.
“Late Persian. 4th century,” Kim said. “A storeroom at a guess.”
It was a fine feat of architecture but there were no carvings, no statues and Maggie took some pictures where the light allowed it, more to document their trail than from any archaeological curiosity as they made their way through the large, empty area. It was while she was taking one more photograph that the relative quiet was shattered by a loud rat-a-tat clattering from behind that was immediately joined by others, coming from openings both to the left and right.
Banks broke into a run and they all followed.
When they reached the exit at the far end of the chamber, they found it was a wide and high archway, leading into a man-made tunnel of expertly worked stone, eight feet in circumference. Banks stood aside to let Maggie, Kim, Wiggins, and the injured Brock in behind him. The other four soldiers stood in a line at the entrance, waiting for an attack.
None came, although the clattering rat-a-tat echoed from all the other exits and when Banks swung his aim at the nearest to the left, it showed two sets of the red compound eyes reflecting back at them.
“It’s as if they want us to go this way,” Maggie whispered.
“Aye,” Banks replied. “We’re being herded, like so many bloody sheep.”
She didn’t ask what they might be being herded toward.
I don’t think I want to know the answer.
— 21 —
Banks stood under the archway for several seconds, weapon trained on the exit off to his left, but the eyes of the spiders merely gazed implacably back at him, the beasts showing no sign of pressing an attack, content merely to block off the exits.
The sense of being herded got even stronger when Banks turned away and once again led the group down the worked tunnel. Hynd spoke in his helmet after twenty yards.
“They’re following us, Cap. Staying beyond our light. Should I let them have a volley?”
“Negative. Save your ammo. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need every bullet before too long.”
The excited clacking of the spiders echoed around them as they went down farther into the tunnel. It descended in a gradual slope but there was little danger of falling as the path was dry and even underfoot. All they had to worry about was the spiders, which matched their pace, coming on at their back.
All of Banks’ instincts were telling him they were heading into trouble but he’d brought them all this far and at each stage had made what he’d thought to be the correct decision for their safety. He could only hope he’d get a chance to make another.
He was starting to worry about the descent — it had taken a turn westward and was surely taking them under rather than toward the town walls. Judging distances in his head, he was pretty sure they were at the outskirts of town already and going deeper into the hill hadn’t been on his agenda. But there were only spiders and death at their backs, so he kept them on their course.
They arrived at the foot of the slope when the tunnel opened out into a far larger cavern beyond where they stood on a rocky ledge. There was evidence here that there had been a cave-in and recently at that, for rubble and dirt lay strewn around the cavern and high above, some thirty yards up a rocky slope to their left, the last of the daylight showed at an open hole. It was the dim light that had caught Banks’ eye first, so he was only alerted to the rest when Wiggins spoke, too loudly, at his back.
“Fuck me.”
Banks dropped his gaze from the daylight above and took in the rest of the chamber.
It was as large and high-vaulted as a medieval cathedral but instead of stained glass and tapestries, this one was decorated in web, in traceries and rope bridges, vast flowing sheets as smooth as silk, and nets as geometrically perfect as any fisherman’s. And right in the center, some thirty yards below where the squad stood on a ledge, in the center of all the webbing, sat a spider from out of an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare.
It was all white, as white as the webbing in which it sat, the only color in it the deep, blood-red of the huge set of compound eyes and the twin jet-black fangs, each as long as a man’s leg. The thing’s legs, each more than fifteen feet long on their own, sat splayed on the web, monitoring the vibrations, while the bulk of the body lay in darkness beyond, a swollen, bulbous, fleshy thing, rounded like a globe and pulsing obscenely, as if ready to burst. The spider wasn’t paying them any attention; all of its effort was going into feeding, as it plucked a human-sized cocoon from a pile in front of it, put it to its mouth and sucked like a child with a drinking straw, an obscene sound that echoed around the cavern.
“Where’s Sigourney fucking Weaver when we need her?” Wiggins said at Banks’ back.
Now that Banks’ eyesight had adjusted to the light in the cavern, he saw that there were numerous other caves leading off down below them, passages from which the dog-sized spiders scurried to and fro. He realized with dismay what kept them so busy. They were retrieving football-sized white balls from the rear of the large spider and ferrying them off in their scores down into lower levels of the system.
Those are eggs. Hundreds of eggs.
He turned to Hynd and spoke softly.
“How many of those wee gas canisters do we have, Sarge?”
“Two, Cap. Want them?”
“Not yet. If we start a fire now, we’ll fry ourselves into the bargain.” He pointed up the rocky slope to where the light, fading fast to darkness, had come in.
“There’s our way out. We head up there, double time, and if we get a chance, take this big fucker out from up there. We have to stay alive long enough to get above ground. I can call in the chopper once we’re clear.”
As a plan, it had the benefit of simplicity. But he’d forgotten about Brock’s injury.
“I’m not sure Badger can make it up yon slope, Cap,” Wiggins said.
“I’m fine,” Brock replied but his skin had taken on a pale, greasy look and his eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. Every movement caused him a flare of pain.
“We’ll fucking carry him if we have to,” Banks replied. “But we’re going up and we’re going now before we get noticed.”
Getting off the ledge proved to be the first hurdle to cross. The access to the slope and their way out was eight feet below their current position and no easy way to get to it.
“Sarge, Wilkins, watch our backs,” Banks said. “We’re going to have to take this as a relay.”
Davies, as the tallest of them, went first, lowering himself off the edge then dropping lightly to his feet on a large slab of rock below.
“It’s stable, sir,” he said. “Send them down.”
Banks helped Wiggins drop Brock down next. Davies managed to take the weight off the other private’s bad ankle but Brock let out a yelp of pain on landing. The white spider paused in its feeding and its left front leg trembled, testing the web, but Banks was able to let out a slow breath when it went back to its feeding.