wind, until the deep green of the trees and bushes beyond were crisp and clear again. The air had grown silent.
“I can’t see a single bug,” Billy whispered. “That shit is good!”
They moved towards the door as one, and slowly pushed it open. The air smelled strongly of chemicals, but otherwise, the area was empty. The ground glittered with violet chitin; so many had fallen that the ground crunched as they walked.
“Back to the tents?” Billy asked.
“Uh, duh,” Jess said. “I wish we’d never left the beach.”
Jess moved ahead of all of them, rushing down the path littered with broken branches from their initial walk across the island.
In minutes, the stench of the spray had faded away and the island scents of palm and saltwater took away the horror of the hour before. Jess was almost smiling when they broke through the edge of the trees and bushes and stepped back out onto the golden sand where they’d pitched their tents.
Only.
The sun-bright grains of sand were largely obscured.
The beach in front of them appeared to move. A wave of purple spiders shifted one way and the other, creeping closer to the treeline with every moment. Jess had just opened her mouth to say something cheerful like, “home again!” when her eyes registered what was really in front of them.
Jess screamed.
The tents were crawling with the creatures, purple legs and feelers shifting to and fro as they explored and tasted the fabric.
“Holy shit,” Billy whispered. “There’s a million of them.”
Jess grabbed Mark’s arm and barely contained a scream. “We have to go,” she said for the second time that afternoon.
“Our stuff,” Casey said. “They’re all over our stuff. They’re probably in our clothes. And our food…we need to get to the boat.”
“I’m not just leaving our tents and equipment here,” Billy protested. “I borrowed most of this shit. Plus…” he pointed at the sun, now falling deep in the west on the horizon. “I don’t really want to navigate the keys in the dark if we don’t have to.”
“The hut had beds,” Mark suggested. “And an airtight door.”
Jess began pulling him back towards the trees instantly.
“I need my stuff,” Casey complained. She rubbed a hand across Billy’s shoulders. “Would you…get my overnight bag for me?”
Billy gave her a sidelong glance. “You want me to wade through a million spiders to get you your fuckin’ toothbrush?” he asked. “You’re serious?”
A shock of white-blonde hair bounced across her forehead as Casey answered with a vehement nod.
Billy rolled his eyes. Casey answered by making hers bigger, as her mouth turned to a pout.
“Big time,” was all he said, before wading into the purple sea.
The spiders didn’t part before his shoes. Instead, as he stepped quickly towards the tent, they followed him, a living wave of hunger. Before he reached the tent, some had climbed up the heels of his shoe and over the laces until they found the warm purchase of his ankle. He bent to slap at his shins, but soldiered on, brushing past the flap of their tent’s “door” without slowing.
In his head, he cursed Casey. She had great tits, and nobody had ever done the grind against him the way she did, but…as much as he liked to look at her, her vanity pissed him off sometimes. Times like now.
The inside of the tent was as alive with spiders as the outside. They ambled along the backlit walls of the tent as if delicately searching the threads for sustenance. His skin crawled as he thought about the hundreds of legs moving silently just above his head and back as he stepped through the tent. They crept slowly across the floor, and a couple dozen of them waited on the sheets of the blowup mattress Billy had intended to grind on with Casey later tonight.
Not now.
He saw her Hello Kitty bag tossed to the right of the bed next to their duffel bags. As he bent to grab them, something icy hot bit his ankle, first on one side and then the next. He slapped at it with his hand, and grimaced when the palm came back spattered with blood.
He looked down and saw his left ankle wreathed in purple spiders. The tickle of their feelers made the skin of his neck crawl, but he saw that several of them had stopped their forward crawl and had attached to his leg like mosquitoes. It was one of those that had shed blood when he’d slapped. His blood. The things were ballooning as they drank from him. Like eight-legged mosquitoes.
“Fuck!” he screamed, slapping at his legs again and again until they were clear. But the room around him at the same time began to move.
Closer.
Billy felt them drop from the low ceiling above his head to land on his bare back. The tickle of tiny legs skittered across his shoulders moving towards his neck, but Billy didn’t pause to swat them. Instead he barreled out of the front of the tent and ran across the swarm of spiders, crushing dozens of them with every crunching step on the sand. When he reached his friends waiting at the treeline, he threw down the bags and turned his back to Casey.
“Get them off me,” he yelled, as he bent and began to swat at the ones that had found their way up his legs and onto the strip of fabric serving as his loincloth.
A flurry of hands slapped at his head, his back and his ass as Casey, Jess and Mark all joined in to kill the spiders.
His body felt on fire with a hundred bites, and Billy reached down to itch at the worst of it around his ankles.
“You’re swelling up,” Mark said, drawing everyone’s attention to where Billy itched. Already the skin of his ankles had ballooned to obscure the edge of his old white sneakers.
“What if he’s allergic?” Jess gasped.
“What if they’re poisonous?” Mark said.
“I’ve got some Benadryl in my bag,” Casey offered.
“Damnit!” Mark complained, swatting at a handful of purple spiders that had latched onto his leg.
“Let’s get to the hut,” Billy said. “And then I’ll take whatever drugs you got!”
He grabbed the bags and led the way, limping slightly as he favored first one foot and then the other.
Gool
Billy dropped the bags and collapsed to the floor, gasping frantically for breath. They had run the entire way back to the hut.
“Make sure none of those damn things came in with us,” he said, and then dragged his nails up and down against the dozens of hive-size bites along his ankles and legs.
Casey kicked her bag a couple times with her foot before gingerly touching it and unzipping the latch to dig inside for a water bottle. Then she pulled a package of allergy medicine from her overnight bag before handing the bottle of water and a couple pills to Billy, who downed them in seconds.
She began to zip her things back up when Mark asked, “Got any food hidden away in there?”
Casey considered for a second and then reached back into the duffel to withdraw a bag of Doritoes. She tossed them to Jess, cautioning, “I don’t know if they qualify as food, but…”
Jess ripped open the bag and downed a handful of the chips before passing them on to Mark, who hungrily did the same.
“We need to get settled for the night,” Billy suggested, reaching for the Doritoes. “It’s almost dark and we don’t have a flashlight.”
He pushed himself up with a groan, and together, they explored the two rooms off the main. Each of them was just large enough to hold a small bed and a tiny bureau.
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would really just like to lie down,” Billy announced. “So I’m picking this room.” He pointed at the far door.
Mark nodded. “Early to bed, early to rise. And I don’t really feel like sitting here talking in the dark.”
