Ollie grabbed for him, and I saw what was happening. At the same instant I understood why the head of the man in the doorway was missing. The thin white cable that had twisted around Buddy’s leg like a silk rope was sinking into his flesh. That leg of his jeans had been neatly cut off and was sliding down his leg. A neat, circular incision in his flesh was brimming blood as the cable went deeper.
Ollie pulled him hard. There was a thin snapping sound and Buddy was free. His lips had gone blue with shock.
Mike and Dan were coming, but too slowly. Then Dan ran into several hanging threads and got stuck, exactly like a bug on flypaper. He freed himself with a tremendous jerk, leaving a flap of his shirt hanging from the webbing.
Suddenly the air was full of those languorous bullwhip cracks, and the thin white cables were drifting down all around us. They were coated with the same corrosive substance. I dodged two of them, more by luck than by skill. One landed at my feet and I could hear a faint hiss of bubbling hottop. Another floated out of the air and Reppler calmly swung her tennis racket at it. The thread stuck fast, and I heard a high-pitched twing! twing! twing! as the corrosive ate through the racket’s strings and snapped them. It sounded like someone rapidly plucking the strings of a violin. A moment later a thread wrapped around the upper handle of the racket and it was jerked into the mist.
“Get back! ” Ollie screamed.
We got moving. Ollie had an arm around Buddy. Dan Miller and Mike Hatlen were on each side of Reppler. The white strands of web continued to drift out of the fog, impossible to see unless your eye could pick them out against the red cinderblock background.
One of them wrapped around Mike Hatlen’s left arm. Another whipped around his neck in a series of quick winding-up snaps. His jugular went in a jetting, jumping explosion and he was dragged away, head lolling. One of his Bass loafers fell off and lay there on its side.
Buddy suddenly slumped forward, almost dragging Ollie to his knees. “He’s passed out, David. Help me.” I grabbed Buddy around the waist and we- pulled him along in a clumsy, stumbling fashion. Even in unconsciousness, Buddy kept his grip on his steel pinchbar.
The leg that the strand of web had wrapped around hung away from his body at a terrible angle.
Reppler had turned around. “Ware!” she screamed in her rusty voice. “Ware behind you! ” As I started to turn, one of the web-strands floated down on top of Dan Miller’s head. His hands beat at it, tore at it.
One of the spiders had come out of the mist from behind us. it was the size of a big dog. It was black with yellow piping. Racing stripes, I thought crazily. Its eyes were reddish-purple, like pomegranates. it strutted busily toward us on what might have been as many as twelve or fourteen many-jointed legs-it was no ordinary earthly spider blown up to horror-movie size; it was something totally different, perhaps not really a spider at all. Seeing it_ Mike Hatlen would have understood what that bristly black thing he had been prodding at in the pharmacy really was.
It closed in on us, spinning its webbing from an oval-shaped orifice on its upper belly. The strands floated out toward us in what was nearly a fan shape. Looking at this nightmare, so like the death-black spiders brooding over their dead flies and bugs in the shadows of our boathouse, I felt my mind trying to tear completely loose from its moorings. I believe now that it was only the thought of Billy that allowed me to keep any semblance of sanity. I was making some sound. Laughing. Crying. Screaming. I don’t know.
But Ollie Weeks was like a rock. He raised Amanda’s pistol as calmly as a man on a target range and emptied it in spaced shots into the creature at point-blank range.
Whatever hell it came from, it wasn’t invulnerable. A black ichor splattered from its body and it made a terrible mewling sound, so low it was more felt than heard, like a bass note from a synthesizer. Then it scuttered back into the mist and was gone. It might have been a phantasm from a horrible drug-dream… except for the puddles of sticky black stuff it had left behind.
There was a clang as Buddy finally dropped his steel pinchbar.
“He’s dead,” Ollie said. “Let him go, David. The fucking thing got his femoral artery, he’s dead. Let’s get the Christ out of here.” His face was once more running with sweat and his eyes bulged from his big round face. One of the web-strands floated easily down on the back of his hand and Ollie swung his arm, snapping it. The strand left a bloody weal.
Reppler screamed “Ware!” again, and we turned toward her. Another of them had come out of the mist and had wrapped its legs around Dan Miller in a mad lover’s embrace. He was striking at it with his fists. As I bent and picked up Buddy’s pinchbar, the spider began to wrap Dan in its deadly thread, and his struggles became a grisly, jittering death dance.
Reppler walked toward the spider with a can of Black Flag insect repellent held outstretched in one hand. The spider’s legs reached for her. She depressed the button and a cloud of the stuff jetted into one of its sparkling, jewel-like eyes. That low-pitched mewling sound came again. The spider seemed to shudder all over and then it began to lurch backward, hairy legs scratching at the pavement. It dragged Dan’s body, bumping and rolling, behind it. Reppler threw the can of bug spray at it. It bounced off the spider’s body and clattered to the hottop.
The spider struck the side of a small sports car hard enough to make it rock on its springs, and then it was gone.
I got to Reppler, who was swaying on her feet and dead pale. I put an arm around her. “Thank you, young man,” she said. “I feel a bit faint.”
“That’s okay,” I said hoarsely.
“I would have saved him if I could.”
“I know that.” Ollie joined us. We ran for the market doors, the threads falling all around us. One lit on Reppler’s marketing basket and sank into the canvas side. She tussled grimly for what was hers, dragging back on the strap with both hands, but she lost it. It went bumping off into the mist, end over end.
As we reached the IN door, a smaller spider, no bigger than a cocker spaniel puppy, raced out of the fog along the side of the building. It was producing no webbing; perhaps it wasn’t mature enough to do so.
As Ollie leaned one beefy shoulder against the door so Reppler could go through, I heaved the steel bar at the thing like a javelin and impaled it. It writhed madly, legs scratching at the air, and its red eyes seemed to find mine, and mark me…
“David!” Ollie was still holding the door.
I ran in. He followed me.
Pallid, frightened faces stared at us. Seven of us had gone out. Three of us had come back, Ollie leaned against the heavy glass door, barrel chest heaving. He began to reload Amanda’s gun. His white assistant manager’s shirt was plastered to his body, and large gray sweat-stains had crept out from under his arms.
“What?” someone asked in a low, hoarse voice.
“Spiders,” Reppler answered grimly. “The dirty bastards snatched my market basket.” Then Billy hurled his way into my arms, crying. I held on to him. Tight.
X. The Spell of Carmody.
The Second Night in the Market.
The Final Confrontation.
It was my turn to sleep, and for four hours I remember nothing at all. Amanda told me I talked a lot, and screamed once or twice, but I remember no dreams. When I woke up it was afternoon. I was terribly thirsty. Some of the milk had gone over, but some of it was still okay. I drank a quart.
Amanda came over to where Billy, Turman, and I were. The old man who had offered to make a try for the shotgun in the trunk of his car was with her-Cornell, I remembered. Ambrose Cornell.
“How are you, son?” he asked.
“All right.” But I was still thirsty and my head ached. Most of all, I was scared. I slipped an arm around Billy and looked from Cornell to Amanda. “What’s up?” Amanda said, ” Cornell is worried about that Carmody. So am I.”
“Billy, why don’t you take a walk over here with me?” Hattie asked.
“I don’t want to,” Billy said.
“Go on, Big Bill,” I told him, and he went-reluctantly.