Luckily for him, he had his arms free and got his pistol out in time to put two spiders down that were almost on him.
Wiggins was yelling profanities when Banks and Hynd arrived at their position.
“What the fuck happened?” Hynd asked as Banks put two shots into a large spider. It fell backward and took four more with it as it rolled away in a tumble of rock and rubble, buying them precious seconds of respite.
“Badger’s playing the fucking doomed hero,” Wiggins replied.
They all looked down the slope and saw Brock fumble in his jacket. The flare of yellow and orange as he flicked on a lighter showed as a bright spark in the gloom.
A mass of scuttling spiders encroached on his position. His yell of defiance carried clearly up the slope.
“Come and get it, fuckers.”
Brock applied his lighter to the web below him.
— 23 —
Banks saw what was about to happen in his mind’s eye even as the flames took hold and Brock burned.
“Run,” he shouted. “This place is going up.”
Without needing to be ordered, Wiggins and Wilkins, as two of the men with the most ammo remaining, covered the rearguard action while Davies hurried Maggie and Kim on at the front. Banks and Hynd, both now reduced to their handguns, were in the middle doing what they could to both run and pick off any of the attack that the two men behind them couldn’t handle. What firing they were doing was limited to an occasional swivel, turn, and shoot, for the bulk of their attention was on running; the fire in the cavern had quickly turned into a conflagration.
The white giant thrashed and clacked its fangs like gunshots as molten, flaming web dripped down from the roof and spattered across its body, staring new fires in the web around it. The huge bulk of its body quivered and it thrust itself out of the space it had been inhabiting, making for the slope, either hoping for escape upward, or attempting to seek revenge on the squad. It hardly mattered which, for if the beast reached them before they reached the top, it would be game over for all of them.
Banks was already feeling the strain of the climb at calves and ankles and his breath came heavier at the exertion. The white spider and a large entourage of others of various sizes, were advancing fast, coming up and out of what was now a wall of flame below them. Waves of scorching heat washed up from below, fanning the flames in the cavern to greater intensity and Banks saw that it was now spreading over the roof. If it burned above them, they’d have the napalm-like drips to worry about as well as the spiders.
“Sarge, we’ll need that gas,” he said.
Hynd took one canister for himself and Banks took the other.
“Do we light them?” Hynd asked.
“No, lob them down towards the fire. Once they heat up enough, they’ll go up like Roman candles. The delay might buy us enough time to get up top.”
They tossed the canisters in unison, lobbing them high over the heads of the two men at the rear and down towards the spiders to land in front of where the giant was leading its troops upward. Both cans came to a stop outside the range of the flames.
There was no time to stand and wait to see if the flames would engulf the gas canisters; the pack of spiders, too many to be held back, scuttled towards them. Many of the beasts were burning and flames licked at the rear of the mass of them, taking heavy toll of their numbers. The rat-a-tat clack of a chorus of fangs echoed loud above the gunfire.
The squad fled upward, as fast as they could manage.
The canisters went up as Davies and the women reached the opening at the top of the slope. One of the small tanks blew directly underneath the giant white, blowing a huge, burning hole in its belly that spread quickly to engulf the whole beast. Its death throes screeching rang around the chamber like nails on a chalkboard. The second canister took out a dozen of the smaller beasts and two of the horse-sized ones and set more flames dancing around what few patches of web were not already burning.
The heat had become stifling, every breath a searing hot pull of pain in Banks’ chest. Only the sight of the opening and Davies and the women waiting for them at the top of the slope kept his aching legs pumping. Wiggins and Wilkins were now running alongside them, both men having expended their rifle ammo in the retreat.
Spiders snapped and clacked at their heels and the first drops of molten, burning web began to spatter around them from the ceiling high above.
They arrived at the top ahead of a wall of flame falling from the roof in a fiery waterfall and threw themselves out of the chamber and upward into fresher, cooler air.
There was no time for rest. Heat came up behind them as if they stood in front of an open furnace door and spiders, some burning, were right at their backs.
The opening led, not outside into the open ground as he’d hoped, but into the inside of a ruined tower. A wall of rubble blocked any quick escape out onto the escarpment and the only immediate retreat available was up an internal flight of stairs against one of the tower walls.
“Up,” Banks yelled, pushing Davies ahead of him. “It’s our only chance.”
The staircase was narrow. Davies went up first, Maggie and Kim hard on his heels, Wiggins next, then Wilkins, with Hynd, then Banks at the rear. The nearest spider, one of the dog-sized ones, was on him as he reached the bottom step. He used his rifle like a club, swinging the stock hard against the beast’s body, sending it sailing away to tumble downward. The opening below him was already filling with a mass of burning spiders, all attempting to flee the flames at their back, only a few of them paying attention to the escaping squad.
One of the larger, cattle-sized ones took note of Banks’ position and came forward onto the steps after him. He tried to use the rifle to club it like the last one but this beast was onto the trick and caught the weapon fast between its fangs. A tug of war ensued, one that threatened to pull Banks off the stairs and back down into the thronging spiders below. He let the spider have the weapon and, in the same movement, drew his pistol and put a single shot into its eyes. It fell, a dead weight, down onto the stairs at his feet, providing a barrier that served as a blockage to allow him to retreat faster upward and he was half a dozen steps higher before the dead beast got tugged aside by three of the smaller ones. They all stared directly at Banks as they came up the stairs behind him. He retreated, firing.
By the time he reached the top of the flight and joined the others on top of the tower, he’d nearly emptied the clip of the pistol.
More spiders kept coming up the stairwell.
He expected the others to have come up with a plan of escape but found them all standing on top of an open tower, looking out over the escarpment. He saw why they hadn’t descended when he looked down.
It was full dark now but the carpet of stars and the red glow from fires provided more than enough light to see by. Several vents on the hill billowed out smoke and flame even as spiders came up out of them; hundreds, thousands of spiders, a mass of them covering the whole of the hillside. They varied from the dog-sized ones, to the cattle-sized ones and several that looked to be the size of small houses.
— 24 —
Maggie went to Davies’ side when he stepped forward to cover the stairwell; he was the only one of the squad with ammo remaining in his rifle and she had Wiggins’ pistol. The scene down the stairs was one from hell, a fiery conflagration in which spiders scurried up and over and around each other in frenzy to try to reach the stairwell and safety. There were some of the smaller ones on the stairs, coming up. Davies let them close in, hoping for a clear shot.