This Book is Full of Spiders

But the guns did not fire.

John screamed, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

“What? No!”

“We got ’em confused, we have to get out before they get their shit together and turn us into Swiss meat!”

He opened his door and dragged me out. He reached into the backseat and grabbed something—the green mystery box from my toolshed.

We ducked down, putting the Cadillac between us and the gun—not that there wasn’t another, identical gun on the other side—and ran. We hurdled the concrete barrier and there, in front of us, were the woods. Beyond it, a convenience store bathroom that would hopefully take us away from here.

Deja vu.

Only there were no soldiers chasing us now. No, now there was a crowd of armed townspeople, carrying shotguns and hunting rifles and machetes, half of them running, half of them aiming their guns and drawing down on us. And, unlike the National Guardsmen in those disorganized early hours of the crisis, here were people who knew what a breach in that fence meant. I risked a look back and saw the gaping hole we’d torn in the fence. Red jumpsuits were gathered on the other side, everyone gawking out at the outside world, as if a hole had suddenly been ripped open in the sky.

And then I saw the gathering crowd, onlookers on the other side of the fence—every one of them armed— with the exact same expression on their face. Two sides of a mirror, the same ideas dawning on both sides.

The fence was broken.

The sentry guns were not working.

Everything had changed.

Shots were fired. We plunged into the darkness of the trees, we scrambled across the muddy ditch, we emerged from the other side and ran for BB’s.

Assuming that BB’s is even still there…

It was. And this time, we didn’t even care where the magical shitter door spat us out, as long as it wasn’t here. If the door wasn’t working, if the network of interdimensional wormholes or whatever they were had been shut down by the shadowy fuckers in charge of all of this, then we were dead. We would be torn apart by the mob.

We tumbled into the bathroom and pulled the door closed. A gunshot punched a hole in the door right as the door did its thing and then, we were tumbling—

* * *

It was a baffling sensation. The whole world turned, like we were on an amusement park ride. I fell on top of John, both of us suddenly flat on our backs. The door that had been in front of us was now on top of us, we were looking up at it. I got a leg untangled from John and kicked the door. I was looking up at an overcast sky. I pulled myself out and realized I was emerging from the ground, like a vampire rising from his coffin after sundown. Boards and bricks and broken glass covered the grass around me. I climbed out, and looming above me was the old Ffirth Asylum. There was a huge hole in the wall, the debris of which was scattered all around me. We had teleported less than half a mile away. We were alone for the moment, but could hear the shouts of the mob down the street.

I stumbled out onto the wreckage and John emerged behind me. He stared down at the hole we had come from, confused, and then closed the door I had thrown open. I saw that the door and its frame were in fact laying loose on the ground, flung aside when the blast destroyed the wall. When John picked up the door again, underneath was just dead grass.

John said, “Shit, I left my shotgun shells back at the Caddie.”

I took a breath and said, “Look… you remember when we watched Star Wars with Amy? And she’s like, ‘Why is Princess Leia being such a bitch when those guys just rescued her?’ Well I don’t want to be the Leia in this situation and I completely appreciate what a sweet ramp job that was back there. But did you have any kind of a plan at all?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Because time is running out here…”

John was looking up at the old building, staring hard at the mossy brick walls.

I said, “What?”

“I took some Soy Sauce earlier.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. And I came by here.”

“Okay…”

“And… there were shadows here.”

I followed his gaze. The rows of windows in the moldy brick were boarded over with ancient, warped plywood. It kind of made it seem like the building had cataracts. I saw no shadow people.

I said, “Do you see any now?”

“No.”

He turned and saw something else, though, and said, “Here,” handing me the green mystery box. He jogged away from me, heading for the corner of the building. I spotted the ass of an RV parked there. I followed him. Faint shouts from the armed mob were growing louder.

“John! What are you—”

My words died at the sight of bloodstained grass surrounding the loose earth of a huge, freshly filled-in hole. Like a mass grave. John pulled out his ridiculous customized shotgun (he had it wedged down the back of his pants) and ducked into the RV. The windshield was busted out and when I followed John through the driver’s-side door, I saw that the tan upholstery of the driver’s seat was one big bloodstain.

Christ.

Leading with the shotgun, John quickly searched the inside. There were rows of hooks on the opposite wall that it took me a moment to realize were gun racks, all of which were now empty. John started throwing open foot lockers and found them stocked with at least four different types of ammunition.

“Bingo,” he said, stuffing his pockets with shotgun shells. “See? Things have a way of working out. We needed shells, and here they are.”

I looked around. On the floor was a busted laptop computer. At the very back, the floor was damp and it smelled like piss. There didn’t seem to be anything of use here other than the bullets—

I froze.

“Oh, no. Oh, fuck no. No, no, no…”

John joined me and said, “What? I think these were…” but his words trailed off. He saw what I saw.

Two objects, that a man in denial could have dismissed as meaningless: a mostly empty tub of red licorice, and an orthopedic pillow designed for people with back problems.

Amy.

It really only told me what I already knew. She’d come for me, because that’s who she was, and she’d find a way in, because she was too capable not to.

John glanced nervously out of a side window. The mob would wash in at any moment. He was saying, “Okay, we don’t know this was hers. And even if it was, we do know that isn’t her blood in the driver’s seat. Amy can’t drive…” but I was already jumping out of the RV. Outside, I immediately I saw another, smaller bloodstain, this one in the grass in front of an open basement window. Laying in it was a single empty shoe. A man’s.

I said, “Amy got somebody to give her a ride in. So they pulled up, something nasty came flying out of that window down there, and they killed the shit out of it. Look—next to the window. Spent shotgun shell. Maybe it got the driver first. Then the rest of the posse in the RV, and Amy if she was with them, they bail out and go inside. Probably in there right now. Then a hobo came along and pissed in the RV.”

“Dave, why would they—”

Ignoring him, I leaned my head down toward the basement window and yelled, “AMY! HEY! AMY? IT’S DAVE.” Nothing. “ANYBODY? IS THERE ANYBODY IN THERE?”

A shot was fired. A bullet took a chip out of the wall. We ducked and John grabbed my sleeve, yanking me