This Book is Full of Spiders

you know it.”

John said, “Shit yeah, I’m on Team Amy now.”

I said, “Who the fuck is Shane?”

Tennet said, “That accomplished nothing. That pilot will be convicted of treason. But before he can even be prosecuted, They’ll get hold of him. There’ll be nothing I can do about it. Do you have any idea what They can do? Maybe They’ll inject him with Compound 66. That’s a serum that will turn a man into a cannibal. Let him eat his own children before they arrest him.”

Two dozen spacemen were on the scene now, guns raised, creeping forward. Falconer got an arm around Tennet’s neck and was using him as a human shield.

Falconer said, “Call off the planes. It’s over.”

The word “call” triggered something in Amy’s mind, and she dug into her pocket and pulled out her phone. “Hey! I’ve got bars!”

Tennet said, “You have absolutely no leverage here, detective. You shoot me, my men will cut you to pieces. The bombs will drop and nothing will change. I’m sorry your supercop fantasy isn’t going to play out like you wanted. But you have no cards left to play here.”

Falconer repeated his demand, but Tennet went silent. Falconer threatened him with creative bodily violence. Tennet gave no reaction. Minutes passed this way, and I sensed the time bleeding away from the bomber countdown. I glanced nervously at the sky, then back toward the town.

And then, in the distance, came the crackle of gunfire.

19 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed

We all rushed out, looking toward the sound. Down the hill and toward the highway, where the REPER barricades had stood since the morning of the outbreak. A pickup truck had crashed through the barriers and was laying on its side. REPER spacemen were filling it full of holes.

Then, a spaceman went down. And another. On the other side of the barricade was the Undisclosed angry mob. And they were armed.

Amy said, “I think somebody figured out that they are about to be bombed and remembered as zombies in their obituaries.”

John said, “There! See? It’s over. The word is out. You’re not going to be able to cover this up, doctor. Call off the planes.”

Tennet said, “You would be surprised what They can cover up.”

I said, “You call off the planes, and he’ll let you go. No charges. You get out of the country, change your name and go retire in Argentina like Hitler.” I looked at Falconer and said, “Right?”

Falconer said, “Yep. Absolutely,” in a way that did not convey an ounce of sincerity.

To the spacemen behind us, Tennet said, “On the count of three, if he does not release me, start shooting. If you can get him over my shoulder, that would be nice. But if you have to shoot through me, so be it. This is bigger than me.”

Falconer withdrew his arm from around Tennet’s neck, grabbed something small and black from a pocket and held it in front of Tennet’s face.

“Do you know what this is, shitbird?”

I didn’t, but Tennet nodded.

“And you know what happens if I push this button?”

Tennet didn’t answer. But he knew, and didn’t like it.

“Yeah, I know more than you fucking thought, don’t I?”

To me, Falconer said, “Look to your right. See that big-ass monster truck thing with the huge wheels? We’re all going for a ride.”

Falconer put an arm around Tennet’s neck and dragged him toward the vehicle that did in fact look like an armored monster truck. Amy and I followed. John took off the other direction, then came running back with the furgun. Through all of this, the spacemen kept their weapons trained on us, waiting for an order that never came.

To John, Falconer said, “Can you drive this thing?” and before he finished the word “thing” John was already behind the wheel. Falconer forced Tennet into the passenger seat at gunpoint, then took the backseat so he could keep his gun pressed to the back of Tennet’s skull. I went around and slid in next to Falconer, Amy jumped in beside me and slammed the door. John made the engine of the monster truck rumble to life, and a hundred miles away a seismologist saw the needle on his machine twitch.

Amy mumbled, “I cannot imagine the penis of the guy who designed this thing.”

John said, “Where to?”

Falconer answered, “Right down there, past the barricades. Inside the blast zone. Let’s see if that motivates this asshole to pick up this radio and call off the planes.”

With no hesitation, John rumbled down toward the area that was about to be bombed into scorched rubble. Somewhere, the ghost of Charles Darwin smiled and lit a cigar.

16 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed

There was a road. John did not take it. He tore diagonally across the cornfield, tearing through broken cornstalks toward the mass of angry humanity at the Highway 131 barricade.

The spacemen were winning. There were a lot of them, and they had taken cover behind their vehicles, rattling gunfire into the crowd. We rolled to a stop just short of the mayhem. I heard a stray bullet ping off the grill of the truck.

To me, Falconer said, “Watch this.” He told John, “You see that button there, marked ‘loudspeaker’? Punch that. Turn that volume knob all the way to the right.”

John did. Falconer pulled the little black box from his pocket.

“Open the mic. Click the—yeah. Hold it there.”

Falconer reached up toward the mic mounted on the console and pressed a button on his little gadget. I could almost hear the noise the little gadget made. In the cab of the monster truck it felt more like an irritating vibration, like if you pulled a long strip of crinkled aluminum foil between your teeth. I saw Amy wince.

But the effect on the spacemen was immediate. They flinched, or fell to a knee, or dropped their guns. Some collapsed entirely. The longer the tone played, the more debilitating the effects.

Several of them turned their guns on the truck and opened fire, bullets plinking off the armor and leaving white bird shit–like pockmarks in the bulletproof windshield. Then the spacemen charged the truck. One of them climbed the front bumper, and I realized he had found the loudspeaker on the roof. Others reached the doors and clawed at the handles. I flinched at the sound of something crashing against the window next to me, and saw a spaceman rearing back for another blow on the glass with the butt of his rifle. He slammed it again, and made a crack. Amy ducked.

Meanwhile, the guy on the hood was going after the loudspeaker, smacking it with the butt of his own rifle. But none of the men had a fraction of their usual strength. Falconer kept his thumb on the death buzzer, and the spaceman collapsed onto the hood, landing right in front of the windshield, his faceplate shattering with the impact.

Amy gasped.

Two open, dead eyes looked back at us. The eyes were different colors, one brown, one blue.

The rest of the face was gone. What was left was a skull, held together with pink tendons and ribbons of fraying, decaying muscle. Running all through the skull, twitching between the gaps in bone and sinew, were ropes of something that looked like spaghetti, twisting and pulling and, I was sure, reaching down through the ruined body