“Spiders,” the man said.
Tessa said, “I know they’re fucking spiders. How did they get so big?”
“We’d better save explanations until we reach a more defensible position,” the man said.
Calvin noted that the guy spoke very precisely. “We’re not safe in here?”
Here looked to be a conference room, sadly with no windows to the outside. Still, the walls and doors looked solid enough. It was lit by the yellow glow of emergency lighting.
The man shook his head. “The ceiling is the problem. This building is really one big room, partitioned off, and with false ceilings added. There’s a crawl space above the entire office and there are definitely things crawling in it.”
Tessa said, “Do you work here?”
The man shook his head. “No, like you two I’m here in response to the threat.”
“You’re a cop?”
“I’m an English professor. Retired. My name is Decamp.”
Calvin said, “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“I do, but we don’t have time to talk about it. The wolf spiders are hunting us. Listen.”
Calvin listened. He could hear scratching sounds from above. “Shit.”
“Precisely,” said Decamp. “Our best bet is to get out of the building. The wolf spiders don’t like the daylight.”
Tessa said, “That’s what they are? Wolf spiders?
“For the most part. Arachnida Lycosidae. There are some others as well.”
“Like the Black Widow.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Decamp,” Calvin said. “You got any idea how we can get out of here?”
“That other door leads to a hallway that connects to the manufacturing plant. One of the loading dock doors is open. That’s how we got inside.”
“Who’s we?”
“I came with an associate.”
Tessa said, “Speaking of associates, I hope Perez and the others didn’t walk into this hellhole like we did.”
Particles of dust began to fall as the ceiling panels began to shake. Calvin said, “We need to go. Now.”
“We do,” said Decamp, “Though there is one problem.”
“What?” said Tessa.
“The plant is full of spiders too. That’s why I ran in here.”
Perez moved in first, not because he had command of the situation, but because he’d been there before and thought he knew the best entry point. There was a large bay door that was already open, so that point became moot.
West came up on his left and then Jenkins was on the right. Perez was five feet, eight inches tall. He worked out every day and he knew that, pound for pound, he could hold his own against damned near anyone. That didn’t stop him from feeling better knowing Jenkins was on his side. In high school they’d called Douglas Jenkins the Ogre, because he was a full foot taller than Perez, and he had him by easily a hundred pounds of hard muscle.
West was taller too, and he was good enough at his job despite his bad jokes, but the thought that West had his back was somehow less comforting.
The lights were out. Emergency lights illuminated just exactly enough of the vast interior to let him know they were fucked. There were exit signs over every possible way out. There were powerful yellow lights in the corners of the vast room. There were also eighteen foot tall warehouse shelves, carefully labeled and approximately ten feet apart from each other in both directions. There was exactly enough room, according to his cousin Guillermo, to let a slow moving fork lift get through. Not one of the gigantic forklifts like they always showed on TV, but a small one, roughly a third the size of a squad car. Unbelievably the lifts still carried a thousand pounds with ease, and Guillermo had once explained that the weight at the back of the lift was literally a one thousand pound counterbalance. All told the lifts weighed in at close to a ton.
Which is why when Perez looked at the forklift, where it rested, smashed through two full lines of anchored, metal shelving, he was nervous.
“Bad day to forget how to drive,” West was talking mostly to himself, but Perez skewered him with a hard look. Guillermo was supposed to be working today. He normally drove the forklift.
It took everything he had not to run in screaming his cousin’s name.
Jenkins looked hard at West and let out a small noise of disgust.
West ducked his head in a move that was fully unconscious. As a rule no one ever wanted to piss Jenkins off, strictly because they had all seen him in action on a few occasions and never wanted to risk getting hit that way.
They worked methodically, scanning a different section each, Mag-lights cutting through the darkness in spears that revealed less than what Perez wanted to see.
He worked his way through the twilight to the forklift. There was something dark and hairy at the end of one of the massive tines at the front of the machine. Whatever it was had been pasted into so much goo when the forklift hit the shelves. Bits and pieces of the thing were painted across several surfaces. Enough to let him know that whatever it had been, it most certainly wasn’t human.
“Arturo.” His name was hiss-whispered from his right and when he turned that way a wave of relief poured through him at the sight of Guillermo.
Before Perez could open his mouth, his cousin was pointing up and making a gesture to tell him to go softly.
Looking up was maybe the biggest mistake of his life. Once he saw them he couldn’t unsee them. Across the ceiling of the warehouse there were hundreds, possibly thousands of spiders. There were so many that they literally crawled over each other and they varied in size from just a little over the length of a hand to something that looked closer to a prize-winning pumpkin. They came in different colors, different patterns, and enough varieties to make his mind dizzy. He barely noticed that last part because he was trying to suppress a scream.
Perez had always had an issue with spiders. Maybe not a full on phobia, but he didn’t like them. They gave him the creeps. This? Every hair on his body was standing on end. There was a part of him that wanted to run away, wanted to get the fuck out of the building and head for the hills.
That wasn’t going to happen.
He swallowed hard and then nodded. His pistol was aimed for the roof. He intended to keep it that way.
He waved to Guillermo to come to him and his cousin nodded.
Jenkins loomed behind him and spoke softly. “The fuck man? Ain’t no way those are real.” Hearing the tremor in his friend’s voice was oddly reassuring.
West spoke up too, his voice loud and snarky. He had not looked up apparently. “Number of times I’ve said that to a stripper is scary, man.”
Jenkins looked blue murder at the other cop. Another voice spoke softly, coming from the left. “You’re not very smart are you?”
Perez looked at the source of that voice. He was dressed in a nice suit, dark blue. The man was a cop’s nightmare when it came to descriptions. Average. Average height, average haircut, Caucasian male. His hair was brown. His eyes were brown. He was nondescript in the worst possible way. The only thing remarkable about him was the expression of exasperation on his face.
The man was staring hard at West, who looked right back, irritated at being talked to that way by a civilian. West sucked in a hard breath and was maybe thinking about making a nasty retort, but he stopped when the man pointed to the ceiling.
“Oh. Fuck.” The words were whispered. West actively grew paler as he stared at the shapes above him, his mouth dropping open in surprise.
Above them the teeming nightmares continued to crawl and, oh Madre Dios, they were growing. Perez stared hard at one of them – a black, glossy nightmare that almost looked like it was made of polished glass it was so shiny. It was impossible, but the thing was growing bigger.