This Book is Full of Spiders

I said, “Yeah, it clearly doesn’t work.”

John said, “We don’t know that. We just have to learn how to use it.”

I shook my head. “No. Remember the truck, and what happened to the guys guarding the thing. If They couldn’t control it, and They built the damned thing… well, in our hands we might as well be cramming gunpowder and ball bearings up our assholes.”

John said, “See, I got a different theory. I don’t think They built it. I think They found it, and had no idea what to do with it. But here’s the thing. At the moment when you were taking your piss turn off the tower, I was thinkin’ back to the best birthday present I ever got. I was nine, and my uncle had gone to a garage sale and found, for ten bucks, a cardboard box of GI Joe action figures. Even had all their guns, backpacks, everything. There were more than thirty of them in there, somebody’s entire collection. Then, well, you saw what happened to the men in the truck. I made that happen, Dave. With my mind. From a thousand feet away. We can master this thing. We just need practice.”

Amy said, “You almost started a forest fire.”

“Dave did. We’ll be more careful next time.”

Amy sat a plate in front of him and said, “Uh huh. You just turned a truck full of people into toys. But either way, good luck opening the box without me.”

Needless to say, it was never opened again. Until today.

* * *

I reached in and took the furgun by the handle. John said, “Uh, no.”

“What?”

“I actually agree that the gun isn’t safe in your hands. Give it to me.”

Amy said, “I’ll take it.”

She did. I said, “What am I supposed to use?”

John said, “We shouldn’t have to use anything at all. We get to a door—you know, one of the wormhole doors—and we go right to the water tower. We break their jammer thing, everybody’s phones work again, the world sees the city isn’t full of zombies and the bad guys got no choice but to call off the bombing. Tennet goes to jail and we all go to Waffle House and have breakfast.”

I nodded at the furgun and said to Amy, “We run into anybody, point and imagine something nonlethal. Just… imagine you’re Dumbledore, casting that spell that knocks people’s weapons out of their hand but doesn’t hurt them.”

She sighed and said, “You think I’m five.”

John said, “All right, I’m thinking we can’t use BB’s, because there’s probably a huge mob there by now and I’d prefer to not have to shotgun two dozen rednecks today. What’s the next closest door?”

“No. Think, John. We went through a door and came out here—right where we needed to be. You made that happen. Because of the Soy Sauce, you have control. You can control the doors the way They do. We’ll go back to the door we came in, the one out on the lawn. You’re going to concentrate—and I know you can do this—you’re going to concentrate on the water tower Porta- Potty and it’s going to take us right there. Right?”

Thunder rumbled outside. The wind picked up and the arthritic old building creaked under the strain.

John nodded and said, “Right. This is going to work.”

* * *

We ran to the front door. We dragged away the cabinet we’d used as a barricade. I took a deep breath, opened the front door and was immediately staring down a dozen gun barrels.

Armed townspeople were swarming the scene. Amy said, “Don’t shoot!”

I put my hands in the air and, to the firing squad in front of me said, “I know you’re all worked up, but listen to me. The feds aren’t going to bomb the hospital. They’re going to bomb the whole town. That means as of right now, we are all in the same boat. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, all of us are infected.”

The guy nearest to me, a big black guy who was built like a linebacker, screamed, “DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND LAY FLAT ON THE GROUND. THIS IS THE ONLY WARNING YOU GET.”

Then I noticed the earmuffs everyone was wearing. I took a deep breath and screamed, “THEY ARE GOING TO BOMB THE TOWN IN AN HOUR!” I tried to pantomime a plane dropping a huge bomb, but I think the motions conveyed that I was warning about a bird shitting on his head.

No response. To John and Amy, I muttered, “I’m thinking we need to go back inside.”

Under his breath, John said, “One. Two. Three—”

We spun and ran back through the big wooden doors—

* * *

—and I ran gut-first into a rusting Ford sedan. Amy slammed into my back. I looked around and realized that we were not, in fact, inside the main hall of the asylum. Rows of broken cars grew in a field of yellow weeds all around us.

John cheered. “HA! It worked! Screw those guys!”

Amy said, “This is not the water tower.”

It was, in fact, the junkyard south of town.

John and I spun around at the same time and saw the blue Porta-Potty standing in the weeds behind us.

“Damn it!” said John. “They moved the shitter. What is this, the junkyard? We’re way the hell on the other side of town.”

The first sprinkles of rain were coming down. I took a calming breath and said, “It’s okay. You’re going to concentrate, and we’re going to go back into the Porta-Potty, and you’re going to send us to the water tower. There has to be a door there we can come out of up there. You’re going to send us to that door. Any door in the vicinity. You are not going to send us back to the asylum. Right?”

Something changed with the light, like a shadow was passing overhead. I looked up and, for the second time that day, saw that a car was flying toward me through the air.

We ran screaming in three directions as a rusting sedan flattened the Porta-Potty with a thunder of rending metal. I stumbled, fell and got a face full of dried weeds. I scrambled to my feet and screamed for Amy, found her crouching behind a hatchback.

John screamed, “There! There!” and we turned to see a shrunken, dried-up old man who looked about ninety. He was maybe twenty-five yards away, standing near a twenty-foot-tall faded fiberglass statue of a smiling man holding a slice of pizza. The old guy looked completely normal, other than the fact that he had a huge third arm growing from his groin, and had massive leathery wings.

The old man bent over and with his dick arm wrestled an old engine block out of the dirt. He shrieked and threw the engine at us underhand, like a softball. The four-hundred-pound hunk of metal turned in the air, little sprays of rainwater flying out of its cylinders. We dodged again, moments before the engine crushed the roof of the hatchback in a cloud of glass bits.

John’s shotgun thundered next to me. It had absolutely no effect on the old man—I don’t know if he missed or if the old guy was immune to bullets. John broke open the gun and fumbled with three more shells. Two of them fell into the weeds.

“AMY! SHOOT HIM!”

Amy turned, raised the furgun, closed her eyes and fired.

The alien gun made that low, foghorn honking sound. The air rippled. The old man recoiled, his hands flying to his face. When his hands came away I observed that he now had a thick, white wizard beard.

John screamed, “GODDAMNIT, AMY! YOU’VE GOT IT SET ON BEARD.”

The man advanced. Amy fired again. The man’s beard grew twice as long.

I yelled, “AMY! YOU CAN GO LETHAL ON THIS ONE!”

“I’M TRYING!”

The old man was running now, terrifyingly fast, arms pumping. Running right at us. We ran away. Amy tried to turn and fire the furgun. The shot went wild and suddenly the fiberglass pizza man had a huge beard.

I screamed, “GIVE IT TO ME!”

Amy tossed me the furgun. Before I could turn on the old man, I was sent sprawling with a blow to my back