Crowley drove the van with surprising skill. The trees on the slope weren't too thick and he was managing to find wide enough open areas to get through. As the van bounced and lurched, the headlights flashed on scenes out of hell. There were large areas of white webbing stretched between trees and in them he could see forms that were without doubt human. For a moment he thought he saw a pair of pleading eyes that were swiftly covered by a weaving spider.
“Something ahead,” Crowley said. “Looks like a light of some kind.”
Decamp moved up to Crowley. Calvin looked over his shoulder. Beyond the trees ahead of the van was a weird, coruscating purplish radiance.
Decamp said, “It looks like it’s inside the mouth of a cave.”
Calvin was about to ask a question when something smashed through the rear window. The front part of a wolf spider pushed through the opening. Something else hit the side of the van and the vehicle fishtailed and slammed into a large shape that shrieked and thrashed for a moment before quieting.
Everyone was thrown to the floor of the van. Calvin got his 9mm out and shot the spider stuck in the window. The sound was incredibly loud in the close confines of the van. One of the side doors had popped open and Jenkins started screaming as a spider lurched through the door and sank its fangs into him. A moment later Jenkins was jerked through the door into the dark.
Shit!” Tessa said. She drew her Glock and lurched over to the door. She shone her flashlight out and fired several round. “Jesus! They’re tearing him apart!” She continued firing until the Glock hit empty.
Calvin hurried to Tessa’s side and gently pulled her away from the door. “There’s nothing we can do.” He slid the door shut.
Crowley said, “We need to move before they swarm all over us.”
“Agreed,” said Decamp. “We’ll have to make for the cave.”
Perez said, “The cave? Are you fucking nuts? It’s probably full of these things.”
“It’s the only defensible position and our only chance of finding the source of these creatures.”
Calvin said, “Same drill as before? Flash-bangs, then run like hell?”
“Why mess with success?” said Crowley.
Calvin got two grenades ready. Perez opened the door, firing a short burst with his M-4 in case anything wanted to come in, then leaned away as Calvin threw the flash-bangs. With Mag-lights on full, the group climbed out of the van and started running toward the cave.
From the corner of his eye Calvin saw what Crowley had smashed with the van. He wished he had not. Scorpions were creepy enough without being the size of a horse. The thing was still alive and still twitching. They were lucky. The tail had been broken away from the base of the vile thing.
Calvin swept his rifle left and right, firing at anything that came close. Perez's cousin Guillermo stayed in the center of the group, obviously terrified of getting left behind. Tessa had the rear guard as always, and West was staying a little further to one side of the group than he probably should have. Calvin yelled for him to tighten up the formation but he didn't seem to hear.
Decamp moved along, using the sword when he needed. Crowley seemed to be able to evade the spiders, almost as if he knew what they were going to do before they did it. If by some miracle they got out of this alive, Calvin was going to have a lot of questions for the pair of 'occult specialists’.
Oddly enough, the number of spiders seemed to be diminishing as they neared the cave. It was almost as if the creatures didn't care for the sickly radiance which fluoresced from within.
Calvin sensed movement to his right and veered away. It was well that he had because a big area of the ground suddenly seemed to rear up and a bulbous head sporting long mandibles shot forward. West screamed as the mandibles closed on his leg and pulled him toward the dark gaping hole under the raised disc, which Calvin could now see was composed of webbing covered with earth. His memory flashed on a documentary he had seen one night on PBS. He was looking at a giant trap-door spider. It built a layer underground and waited for prey to pass close by. Then it sprang out, grabbed them, and pulled them into its hole to devour at leisure.
Calvin almost gagged at the thought of what would happen to West if they didn't help him. West was flat on the ground on his stomach, clawing at the earth as the spider tried to drag him into the lair. He was screaming and maybe even crying. Calvin tried to line up a shot, but in the darkness, with West flailing around, he couldn't draw a bead on the spider. A moment later it was too late as West vanished from sight.
Calvin started toward the area of ground that hid the hole, but he felt a hand clamp onto his arm. He turned to find Carter Decamp.
“You can't help him now. Keep moving or you're dead too.”
“But he's still alive. Down there in the dark with that thing.”
“I know. Nothing we can do. Go over there and there may be another one waiting. Now move, Calvin!”
Decamp took off and Calvin followed, hating Decamp and hating himself. A moment later they reached the mouth of the cave. It was bigger than Calvin expected, tall enough for them to stand inside, and miraculously, there didn't seem to be any spiders inside or anywhere close to the entrance. Maybe he had been right and the spiders didn't like whatever was in the cave. And Calvin really didn't want to meet anything those monsters feared.
Decamp and Crowley moved deeper into the cave and the others followed. There was something about the purple light Calvin found painful. At first he thought it was hurting his eyes, but then he realized the pain was deeper, as if the light was actually flowing into his brain, probing at his thoughts, and twisting through the maze of his memories.
They rounded a corner in what had become a tunnel and found a gigantic chamber. Calvin had been to the tourist attraction, Ruby Falls, when he was a kid and this was like that. A massive underground room filled with stalactites and strange formations of stone. The purple radiance played across these forms, casting deep, flickering shadows.
The floor of the chamber was cluttered with the white bones of animals and humans. A great mass of webbing hung in the center of the vault with thick strands stretching from floor to ceiling, supporting the mass. Directly below the webbing stood a tall, thick stone, pointed at the top and covered with carvings of some sort. It was the source of the purple light and the sickly glow flowed off it in waves.
“What the hell is that?” Tessa whispered.
“What we've been looking for,” Crowley said. “That stone is the artifact that's causing all of this.”
Tessa said, “There's something inside that sack of webbing.”
Calvin looked back at the mass. At first he thought the light from the stone was just making it look like the web was moving, but now he could see the surface was twisting and undulating. There was definitely something alive in side. “So we need to destroy the stone and all of this ends, right?”
“In theory,” said Decamp. “But there may be more to it than that.”
“Fuck that,” Perez said, raising his M-4.
Crowley said, “No, you idiot.”
But it was too late. Perez unloaded on the stone. Calvin didn't blame Perez. It was just rock after all, right? The shells from the M-4 should be able to shatter it and that would stop these monsters, right?
But that wasn't what happened.
The bullets glanced off the stone and ricocheted around the chamber. The stone began to give off a whining sound like a giant, angry hornet, and the purple glow grew in intensity. Above the stone, the movements in the web sac became more frantic and violent and then the sac ripped open along the bottom and something big fell out and landed with a wet, meaty thud among the bones.