“Doesn’t matter. Up is the only way out.”
“How can you be so sure?” Fran asked.
Guy looked upward. “Because I’ve done this before.”
“That’s not…”
Guy lifted up a hand. “Many times, Fran. You have to trust me.”
Fran knew the doubt was still painted on her face from the way Guy looked at her.
“I know it sounds crazy. I know nothing makes sense right now. But we’ve made it this far. We just have to make it up a few more flights.”
Drake’s quavering voice drew their attention. “What… what the hell is that?”
They followed his trembling finger. The stairs that led to the seventh floor were interlaced with ghost-white strands of gossamer ropes. Almost like…
“Spider web,” Guy said. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. They shone their beams upward. The webbing covered the stairwell as far as they could see.
Drake whispered hoarsely. “What kind of a spider could do that?”
As if in answer a thick strand swung from the darkness and latched onto his face. Before he could scream, before they could even react, he was snatched up into the dim alcove. His body flailed helplessly before the darkness swallowed him.
Filaments of Chicanery
Everything was blurry and dark, slightly unfocused. Trees hovered threateningly over Lieutenant Guy as he led a troop of soldiers across a stream of black water. After he crossed over he threw his fist up, halting his men. He scanned the shadowy foliage. The trees and branches were twisted into macabre positions that a dark imagination might interpret into deformed bodies.
Sergeant Xenia quickly joined him. Her startlingly blue eyes took in the scene. Her helmet shadowed a face almost cherubic, too delicate for a soldier if appearances counted. She brushed a stray strand of shock-white hair from her face.
“Is this it? Is it the Aberration?’
Guy stared steadily. His arms were prickled with goosebumps. He had long since learned the identifying signs of an approaching invasion. “The Threshold is close. Something is coming.”
Xenia looked back at the tensely waiting soldiers before lowering her voice. “We might be the last two left, Guy. I haven’t heard from anyone else since the Trinity detonation.”
Guy didn’t want to think about that. “For me it was Bermuda. Flight 19. Where Antenor…” He took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter, though. Doesn’t change what we have to do.”
Xenia looked back at the soldiers behind them. “They have no idea what they’re getting into. What do we do?”
“The only thing we can do. Keep fighting. Never look back.”
She pulled a medallion from inside her jacket. An antiquated pronged key hung from the leather thong. “Maybe I’ll finally get a chance to use this.” She kissed it as she always did for luck.
“That ever open any of the gateways?”
“No. But the Other that I slew had guarded it closely. I think it opens the gateway. The main Threshold.”
“You mean the gateway to the Other One? I thought that was only a legend.”
Her eyes glittered like blue crystals. “What is any of this, Guy? We know better than anyone that all the stories are real.”
“Only the ones without happy endings.”
Someone screamed.
They turned to see one of the soldiers as he was snatched into the trees with horrific force. Guy whirled, pointing his rifle. Another soldier was snatched, then another. The air rang with their cries.
“Where is it?” Xenia was as bewildered as he was, her rifle swiveling.
His eyes widened when he saw the thin, near transparent webbing latch on to her pack. He threw out a hand.
“Lose the pack!”
She frantically tried to unbuckle the straps. As he reached for her, she was yanked upward. His fingers grasped for anything as her scream seemed to swell all around him. He tumbled backward, the key medallion in his hand. Her body was swallowed in the canopy of shadowed limbs.
Sergeant Guy opened fire.
The muzzle flashes revealed something enormous skittering across the treetops. Xenia’s body was violently yanked through the treetops, snapping branches.
Snapping bones.
Guy continued to fire. His vision blurred, his mouth opened in a wild scream…
Fran’s voice sounded shaky. “I think he’s in shock…”
Michael shook his shoulders. “Guy… you ok?”
Guy looked around wildly for a second before realizing where he was. “I’m… I’m fine.” He placed a trembling hand to his temple. “It’s just that I’ve… seen this before.”
“What about Drake?” Fran’s face was waxen, her eyes almost too large.
Michael looked up.
Drake’s twitching body was swallowed by the web-lined darkness above their heads. Lightning flashed. It seemed that Drake still had enough frantic ingenuity to hold on to the pistol that Guy loaned him. The retorts where the only sound in the world; thunder that shuddered the railing metallically in response. With every muzzle flare Michael caught a glimpse of the Drake’s flailing form. He was helpless as a fly in the webbing that snared him, gossamer ropes that sadistically yanked him up through the thin alley between the stairwells.
The click of empty bullet chambers told him that Drake was finished. The silence that followed was worse than that echoing clamor that preceded it. Michael realized that he held his breath; he couldn’t seem to find the will to command his lungs. He shot a panicked glance at Guy and Fran; they both stared upward as though carbonized in shock.
Blood rained on their upturned faces.
The crimson shower resurrected their lucidity. Michael released his breath in a shuddering gasp, gripping his knees. Fran almost bowled him over when she barreled into his chest, sobbing. Even Guy looked sickened; he gripped his shotgun as though it was a magical key to transport them away from the nightmare they were trapped in.
And in the corner Greg’s corpse lay as though mocking them. There is no escape, it seemed to whisper. Look at me, and witness what will happen to you…
Michael clutched Fran protectively as they backed away from where Drake had been seized. “Guy… we can’t go up now. Not with that… thing waiting for us.”
“It’s one of the Others.”
Guy seemed to be unaware that Michael and Fran were still there. He muttered as though thinking aloud. “Just like the rat… it would have kept growing if we hadn’t killed it. The first time it was insects… one of the spiders must have killed all the others, and grew… larger and larger. Then it came up the stairwell, as a… sentry. It guards the passage…”
“Uh, Guy? Still with us?”
Guy gave a start. “No choice. We can’t go back. The Others have fully evolved by now. They won’t let us go back down. No way to go but up.”
“Are you crazy?” Fran’s screech almost shattered Michael’s eardrums. “Didn’t you just see what happened to Drake?”
“It changes nothing.” Guy checked the shells for his shotgun methodically, as though he had all the time in the world.
“Jesus, Guy. How can you be so callous? This was someone we knew, for Christ’s sake.”
Guy looked up coldly. “Would you rather it were the whole world, Michael? Don’t you get it? That’s what we’re up against.” He pulled the long dagger from its sheath. “Better men than him have been sacrificed for the sake of this war. I know, because I was there. So listen. I’ll go first, and keep this ready. If the spider tries to snag me, hopefully I can cut the strands in time.”