could see out of those hollow eye sockets. Hawkins wanted to turn and run, but couldn’t leave Bray and Blok behind. He also had no idea what was behind him. There could be another creature lying in wait. Hawkins took one fast step back, intending to look over his shoulder. Instead, he collided with something solid.
A wall. The hallway was a dead end!
With just ten feet separating the pair, Hawkins wedged the machete between his legs and held it there. He fumbled with the captive bolt stunner, looking for a way to open it. He found a small button lock, pushed it in, and slid it forward. The bolt stunner snapped opened.
The sound of the stunner opening focused Jim on Hawkins’s position. The big man swung wildly, and with renewed vigor, but the swings were broad and slow. Despite Bennett having turned Jim into a mindless killer, he hadn’t done anything to improve Jim’s health. The big man was tiring.
Hawkins slipped a new cartridge into place and closed the stunner. The blades attached to Jim’s arms whooshed past Hawkins’s chest. Dangerously close. He could charge forward and attack with the stunner or the machete, but didn’t think he’d manage a killing blow without also being skewered. So he aimed to immobilize.
Jim swung and missed by mere inches. While he was overextended, Hawkins brought the machete down on Jim’s arm, cutting through the tube feeding him morphine—he hoped—into the man’s ravaged body.
Hawkins ducked Jim’s next blow, the blade zinging across the concrete wall over Hawkins’s head, leaving a trail of bright orange sparks in its wake. Hawkins swung for the other arm and connected, successfully severing the second liquid-filled tube. Jim staggered briefly and Hawkins took the opening to dive past him.
But instead of running, Hawkins got back to his feet and turned to face Jim as he bumbled around.
“Hawkins,” Bray yelled. He and Blok stood in the hall, holding the door to the surgical suite/cellblock shut. The door shook from impacts on the other side. The other spider chimeras had emerged from Jones’s body. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
“I won’t leave him like this,” Hawkins replied.
His voice drew Jim toward him. Hawkins backed away, hoping to tire the man even further. Jim’s swings slowed more and he began to grunt, at first from exertion, but then in pain. Whatever drug had killed the pain was wearing off without a constant supply.
After one last big swing, Jim’s energy seemed to disappear. He fell to his knees, heaving with each labored breath. He tried to raise his arm to swing at Hawkins again, but failed.
The door shook from a heavy impact. “Hawkins!” Bray shouted.
Jim didn’t react when Hawkins stepped closer. Whatever fire had burned inside the man had gone out, at least temporarily.
“I’m sorry, Jim,” Hawkins said.
Jim turned his head up toward Hawkins’s voice and moaned. He sounded desperate and tired.
Hawkins placed the bolt stunner against Jim’s head and pulled the trigger. With a puff of air and stab of metal, Jim collapsed to the floor at Hawkins’s feet, just short of the door.
Bray looked at Hawkins like he was crazy. “Can we go now?”
The door shook again.
“They’re hitting the door all at once,” Blok said.
“How long between strikes?” Hawkins asked.
Bray leaned into the door. “About ten sec—”
The impact caught Bray off guard. The door opened for just a moment, but long and wide enough for Hawkins to see the three creatures on the other side. One for each of them. It would be a short fight, but the same drawn- out, horrific, and painful ending shared by Jones and DeWinter.
Hawkins put his hands against the door and pushed. “After the next strike, just turn and run. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a ten-second head start.”
“Ten seconds isn’t going to mean much against these things,” Bray said.
Hawkins agreed, but wouldn’t say so. “Have any other—”
The door shook from an impact. Before Hawkins and Bray could continue the debate, Blok was up and running. Hawkins and Bray quickly gave chase.
As they sprinted down the plain white hallway, Hawkins counted down the seconds. At eight, the door exploded open. He looked back and saw all three spider chimeras spill out into the hall.
But they didn’t give chase. Instead, they pounced.
On Jim.
Hawkins stopped and watched.
Each creature stung Jim’s corpse three times. The man’s bulbous rolls of flesh immediately began to shake.
Finished with the corpse, the spider chimeras spun their attention back to the fleeing prey. Seeing Hawkins in the hall, the black tails rose into the air, shaking with excitement.
Bray’s hand fell hard on Hawkins’s shoulder and yanked him around. “Ranger, let’s go!”
Hawkins turned and ran, following Bray down a side hall.
The
42.
The smooth, linoleum floor squeaked under Hawkins’s feet as he ran. The sound, heard throughout the world’s shopping centers on rainy days, would have normally been a minor annoyance, but here, it might get him killed. The eight-legged chimeras didn’t have a direct line of sight on him—they’d woven a confusing path through the facility’s many hallways—but the ceaseless squeaking made them easy to track. Had he time to pause, Hawkins would have removed his shoes and gone barefoot. Howie had taught him to hunt in silence and sometimes that meant giving up modern comforts, but now it would mean giving up his life.
Even without pausing, he could hear the clacking of the spiders’ claws growing louder. And since he had no intention of allowing one of those things to leap on his back and inject him with their young, it was only a matter of time before he’d have to turn and fight. The outcome might be the same, but at least he’d have fought.
Ahead of him, Bray and Blok ran like men possessed. Neither knew where they were headed, but they moved without pausing, like there was a yellow brick road guiding them. And nothing stood in their way. Bray had twice run into trays of equipment and neither had slowed him down. Hawkins, on the other hand, had to leap over the debris. As a result, he was ten feet behind Bray. Yellowstone rangers often joked with visitors that the best way to survive a bear attack was to be faster than your companion. It got good laughs, but Hawkins never found it funny, mostly because it was the truth.
The clacking of tiny feet on the floor grew louder. Hawkins looked back. The things had rounded the corner behind him, just fifty feet back.
“They’re gaining on us!” Hawkins shouted. “We need a barricade!”
Blok started checking doors to rooms as he passed them. All were locked. Given the sheer size of the building, Hawkins thought it would have been easy to find a hiding spot. But all the hallway doors swung both ways and had no handles to wedge something in, nor locks. They’d passed a large number of windowless doors labeled with letters and numbers, but all were locked.
Hawkins looked back.
Forty feet.
A shout turned Hawkins forward in time to see a pair of hands reach out, grab Blok, and yank him into a side room. Bray stopped, raising his weapon to strike, but then followed Blok into the room, shouting, “Ranger, in here!”
Hawkins didn’t need to be convinced. Whatever and whoever waited for him in the room couldn’t be worse than being turned into a living incubator. He slipped on the floor as he rounded the corner and barreled into the room, colliding with Bray and spilling to the floor.
The door slammed shut behind them. A heavy lock
