“Together,” he said, gesturing with his light. They both aimed at the front of the place and then swept their lights slowly towards the back. Alan was thinking about the time in the hotel again. Back then, it had been impossible for them to see the creatures directly—they were too well camouflaged. But with lights at different angles, they were able to spot inconsistencies with the shadows.
“Wait!” she said.
Alan backed up his light a little. He didn’t see it until she jiggled her light. His shadow didn’t match hers. The underside of the cabin floor consisted of rough-cut beams supporting planks. The shadows should have been all straight lines. But there was one place where the angle of her light cast a shadow that was different from the one that his light cast. It didn’t match.
“Spiders,” he said.
“Where?”
“No, I mean, I don’t see any.”
Amber nodded.
“Okay, watch out, I don’t know how far this stuff goes.”
He saw her shaking the can of spray.
“Wait!” he said. It was too late. She was already spraying it. Before he backed away, he thought he saw the shadow move.
Sixteen: Amber
The bear spray didn’t come out in a consistent jet, like she expected. There was also a fog of the spray and it clouded around her hand before it blew back in her face.
Alan yelled, “Wait!”
It was too late. Her finger was off the plunger and Amber realized that she couldn’t breathe. When she tried, her lungs shut down and forced all the air back out with a hoarse cough. The world was already spinning as her chest was racked with another cough. Amber fought for air.
Something grabbed her foot and pulled.
She kicked and thrashed, but it was dragging her backwards. Her hand tightened around the bear spray again and she tried to aim it down towards her feet.
“No!” Alan yelled. This time she heard him before she released more spray. She let up and struggled to get her eyes open so she could see. It was Alan who was dragging her away from the cabin. He got her to sit up and slung her arm around his shoulders. Propping her up, they stumbled a few steps.
Amber doubled over with coughing. As soon as she got a breath in, it burst back out. This time it was followed by retching and a line of mucous from her nose.
“Open area,” he said. “You have to use that stuff in an open area. I should have thought of that.”
He lowered her to the ground and then she heard pounding. A moment later, he was helping her back up.
“This is cold, but try to rinse your eyes. I’ll get the snowshoes.”
He guided her hand to the jagged edge of the ice and she found the cold water beneath the surface. It numbed her fingers immediately. When she raised a handful of water to her eyes, the relief was instantaneous. She wanted to plunge her face into the water and take away all the pain. She settled for scooping more water out with her hands to wash more of the burning away.
“Can you breathe?” Alan asked. He was panting.
Amber tried to take in a deep breath. When it reached the bottom of her lungs, she started coughing again and her vision swirled. She had to brace her hands on the ground to steady herself until the vertigo passed.
“Better,” she managed to say.
“We’re getting out of here,” he said.
Amber scooped water one more time to rinse her eyes. She felt him grab her foot and clip the straps of the snowshoes. A moment later, he was pulling her to her feet. He helped her with her gloves and took her hand to guide her.
“We’ll go slow until you catch your breath. You let me know when you can go faster.”
“Faster,” she said right away.
They walked.
Amber lifted her feet high, stepping blindly. The air hurt her eyes too much. She couldn’t keep them open.
“Faster,” she said again.
“We’re almost at the top of the hill.”
“Hold up,” Amber said. She turned back and forced her eyes open. When they cleared, she saw all the tracks they had left to and from the cabin. “Burn it.”
“What?”
“Burn it down. You saw it too, right? Burn it down and there will be one less of those things in the world.”
“No,” Alan said. He urged her forward, nearly pulling her off her feet when she resisted.
“Alan, I’m serious.”
“So am I, Amber.”
She had no choice but to start walking again. The effort made her start coughing.
When she finished, he explained.
“We didn’t come up here to find and kill one of them. It’s good that we figured out a potential hiding place, but we came up here to get all of them. We’re not going to do anything to jeopardize that until we have a plan. It’s bad enough that you woke it up when you sprayed it. What if it has a way to warn the others?”
Amber didn’t have a response.
It felt like they walked forever. She had no way to know how long they had been walking. She opened her eyes at one point and saw them tracing their tracks down the hill. There was no snowmobile in the distance. It was just stinging eyes, burning lungs, and an endless line of footprints in dirty snow. Next to her, Alan was huffing and puffing as he struggled to support her.
“Let go of me,” she said. “I can follow you by the sound.”
He seemed reluctant to obey. When he did let her go, she only made it a few steps before she stumbled.
“I’m okay,” she said before he could lay his hands on her again. “I’m fine.”
Amber tried to open her eyes again. It felt fine to squint. She couldn’t make out details, but she could see enough to follow Alan.
Amber appreciated that he didn’t slow down much. The pace forced her to push herself and soon the snowmobile grew from a black and yellow dot into something that she could touch. Blinking, she
