“Are you in charge, miss?” the obvious leader of the men said.
“No, that would be Jim,” she replied, pointing to the sick man on the makeshift bed. “Can you do anything for him?”
The captain — he’d introduced himself as Banks — sent the tall black private, Davies, to seeing if anything could be done about the sick man, then turned to the other men.
“See what you can do about getting these people fed and watered. Get a brew on. They look like they need it.”
There was food, coffee, and a feeling of safety to be had for the first time in days. The corporal, Wiggins, left with food and drink for the three others who were on watch at the main doorway and the windows of the two rooms in the corridor outside the chamber.
“We need to get Jim to a hospital,” Maggie said. “He’s got a raging fever for one thing.”
“I can see that,” Banks replied. “But first I need to be sure you’re the only four who survived. Do you know what happened to the others?”
She pointed to where Davies was working on the wounded man.
“Jim was the only one who saw anything and he didn’t stay awake long enough to tell us. The rest of the team was out in the city somewhere when it went down. But we heard shots and none of us carried arms. There were definitely rebels around.”
Banks nodded.
“Aye. We found one of them earlier but none of your team. If they’re alive, there’s a possibility they’ve been kidnapped for ransom. I need to call this in, see if they’ve heard anything back home.”
The captain left her in the chamber to make his call. Kim and Reynolds were eating and catching up on their coffee, so Maggie went over to see if she could help Davies with the sick man.
The tall private had finished bandaging up the wounded leg. He looked grave.
“He’ll lose that leg for sure,” he said, his Glaswegian accent coming through strong. “It’s not gangrene though, although it looks like it. Venom at a guess.”
“You think it was a spider, like the one you killed?”
“If you pressed me for an answer that fits, aye, I do think that.”
“But he’ll live?”
Davies didn’t reply at first, then said softly, “I think that’s in the lap of the gods. I’ve given him morphine, so he should at least be comfortable for a while. But you were right, he should be in a hospital.”
Captain Banks returned five minutes later and he too looked grave as he addressed Maggie.
“It’s what I feared. There’s been a video online; a group of rebel insurgents have the rest of your team held hostage. The brass doesn’t know where but can only say it’s somewhere within ten miles of here. And they can’t risk sending a chopper in for us in case the rebels see it as provocation and kill your people.”
“Surely there’s something you can do?”
“There is,” Banks said. “Trouble is dawn’s coming up fast so we might not have enough time to search. I’m leaving two men here with you, Davis to look after your man, and Corporal Wiggins. They’ll keep watch and stop anything getting to you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“There’s a town three miles down the riverbank that’s our best bet as to where they’re holding the hostages. That’s where we’re going. And we’re going right now. If we’re not back by dawn, Corporal Wiggins is in charge. Our helmet radios won’t work at that range, so I’ve given him the sat-phone. He’s a good man. If we don’t make it back, he’ll get you home.”
— 5 —
Banks led them out, with Brock and Wilkins behind and the sarge watching their backs. His nerves had settled; now there was a definite goal in sight, although the dead spider preyed on his mind. It was the wild card on the equation, the thing he couldn’t control so he compartmentalized it, put it away for later. As they left the building into the courtyard, he checked the roofs but if anything was up there, it wasn’t inclined to attack and they were able to make their way back through the quiet city without any interference.
He trusted Wiggins to keep everyone in the building safe. The squad’s main job now was to rescue the others. He focused all his intent on that as they trotted at double time, out of the city to the east and down a winding path that led off the escarpment. They moved quickly away from the walled city and down towards the river where the lights of a town twinkled in the distance on the south bank.
By his watch, it was three hours ‘til dawn. More than half an hour of that would be spent getting down there without being seen.
That doesn’t give us long to reconnoiter, get in, and get out.
But it was all the time they had, so it would have to do.
They stayed on the narrow track as long as they could then, as they approached the outskirts of the town, moved off twenty yards to one side and away from lighting, entering the town itself via one of the rickety wooden docks on the riverside. Given that it was the early hours of the morning, Banks didn’t expect anyone to be up and about but he did expect it to feel like a town, as if there was at least someone alive. This place felt as old and dead and still as the ancient ruins upon the escarpment.
The lights are on but nobody’s home.
They moved quickly away from the river and entered a long narrow roadway, tall sandstone buildings looming like a ravine on either side. He sent Hynd and Brock to the left and took the right with Wilkins.
“Watch the rooftops, mind your lines of sight, and don’t wait for an order to shoot if you need to take anybody out. Remember that there are civilians here somewhere. Let’s get them home.”
There was enough light from the stars to show their way, but the harsh street lighting in the narrow roadway only threw the scene that met them in even sharper relief. The same gray, fibrous material they’d seen in the well on their arrival hung everywhere they looked, fashioned in intricate webs that stretched across doorways and windows and, farther along the roadway, had been spun across their path between two lampposts. Something bulbous hung there in a cocoon, too small to be an adult person but whether it was a child or a dog, Banks didn’t feel like stopping for a closer look.
He noticed that Wilkins had come to a halt, unable to take his gaze from the webbing.
“Keep moving,” he said softly in his headset. “Remember the mission.”
Across the road, he saw Hynd and Brock making their way past the open awning of a shop that had been completely enmeshed in more of the web, a mass of fiber that ran across the whole face of the building, covering the windows even on the second story.
How many of these fuckers does it take to do that?
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
They reached the end of the road where it opened out into a wide market square beyond and he realized there had to be even more of the fuckers than he had imagined. The gray web blanketed everything; stalls, carts, camels, ponies, and people… a great many people, all dead. Some of the bodies were in pieces like the one they’d found up in the city, others were cocooned and wrapped up tight, hanging, suspended in web, between buildings and light fittings.
Young Wilkins threw up noisily beside the torn, dismembered body of a child. Banks put a finger to his lips for silence but in truth, he didn’t blame the lad; he felt gorge rise in his own throat at the sight.
“Eyes up here, lad,” he said, putting his face close to Wilkins’. “Remember we’re on a rescue mission. There might be someone alive to tell us what the fuck happened here.”
At first, that was a forlorn hope. A circumnavigation of the square found no one alive, no signs of life either in the bodies on the ground or in the suspended cocoons. Hynd drew Banks’ attention to a squat building in the north corner. A military jeep was parked outside, one that had a large-caliber gun mounted on the back.