wrist.
He looked up and saw that the spider was directly overhead, with the gecko moving around it, snapping at its legs. It was too fast for the confused spider, snapping first at its front, then an instant later at its back, keeping the spider spinning in a vain attempt to defend herself. Any second it would fall.
Gritting his teeth, he pulled his hand against the rope and came up against an unexpected obstacle. The needle. If he tried to slip his hand through the rope, he’d drive the needle further into his wrist and that would really hurt. He looked up at the spider bravely defying the gecko and made his decision. He let out a yell as he jerked his hand against the rope.
The defiant scream turned into an agonizing cry. The needle, pushed by the rope, dug into his wrist. His hand slipped further through the loop. The rope caught under the needle, pulling it up and ripping it through skin, tendon and muscle. He clamped his mouth shut, biting back a second scream as the room echoed with the crack of the needle snapping. His hand slipped through the rope as the spider fell, landing on his naked chest with a quiet plop.
His first impulse was to swat the spider off with his newly freed hand, but he bit his lip against the pain shooting from his wrist and watched the spider sitting on his belly button. This time he wasn’t frozen with fear. He felt a certain empathy with the deadly spider. They had the same enemy. He looked up at the chattering gecko above and, as if the spider knew what the man was thinking, it side stepped away from his belly, slid down his waist, walked across the bare mattress, dropped a web to the floor and slid down, away from Jim.
He grabbed the chrome IV pole with his bloodied hand, pain shooting from his wrist as his fingers closed on it, but he was a man with a mission. He lifted it an inch off the ground, testing its weight and balance. Then he turned his attention to the noisy gecko, set his mouth in a tight grin and looked away. But instead of setting the pole back on the floor, he shot his arm upward sending the pole flying to the ceiling like a spear.
He missed the gecko by over six inches, but the clear plastic IV bag flopped up, hitting the reptile like a water balloon, stunning it and sending it falling with the chrome tube, and the clear bag. The metal pole made a clanging sound when it hit the tile floor. The half full IV bag made a loud pop as it broke open, spilling its gooey liquid contents. The gecko hit with a tiny thud.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, turned his head to see the spider, a black blur, dart across the room toward the fallen reptile. She was on its back as it came to life. She sank her fangs into its flesh repeatedly as it twisted and tried to throw her off, but she held on with all eight legs, riding the gecko like a cowboy rides a bronco. She stayed with it until it quit its death throes and lay still.
When she was satisfied her enemy was dead, she hopped off its back and did a little dance around the fallen reptile. Despite everything, Jim smiled when she spun around, and he watched as she moved across the floor to the door and began to climb back toward the ceiling. She paused where the wall ended and the ceiling began, but after a few seconds she started her trek along the ceiling. She didn’t go far. She stopped over the doorway. Stopped and waited.
Jim swung his bloody left hand over and untied his right. Once it was free, he pulled out the rest of the broken needle with a tight grimace. He was weak and still bleeding. He pulled the sheet from the bed and tore a strip off with his teeth. Then he wrapped it tightly around his wrist. Only when he was sure the bleeding had stopped did he untie his feet.
He still had to piss. He looked around the room and settled on the farthest corner. He climbed off the bed, made his way to it, where he lay his cast against the wall for support and urinated. Finished, he stumbled to the door and wasn’t surprised to find it still locked from the outside. He went back to the bed, picking up the IV stand along the way. A five foot long chrome tube would make a good weapon. He propped it up by the bed, then sat and massaged his legs. The only thing left for him to do was wait-like the spider.
The lights went out twelve hours later and he was still waiting and beginning to think no one would ever come. Twice more he stumbled to his corner. Once to urinate, once to squat. The pleasant, drug induced sensation was replaced by a raw, nagging hunger. One arm ached, the other itched, his head hurt. He was naked, alone and fighting for his sanity, when he drifted off to a fitful sleep.
He woke several times during the night, but no one came. When he slept his dreams were peppered with fire and monsters. When he was awake his thoughts were of death and pain. He didn’t know which was worse. But awake or asleep, through the fire or the pain, he wondered who’d brought a black widow halfway around the world to frighten him. Everyone that knew about his being bitten by a black widow and how terrified he was that day, was dead.
How did they know? Could they read his mind?
After a time that could have been ten hours or thirty he heard the sound of the deadbolt snapping open. He grabbed the IV pole and moved through the blinding black to where he imagined the center of the room was. He was weak and his grip on the chrome tube sent flaming stabs of white hot hurt shooting up from his mangled wrist, but the clicking of the turning doorknob grabbed all his attention. A man stepped through, backlit by the light flooding through the doorway.
“ Hey,” Jim heard a startled voice say as he swung the tube at the man’s head the way a home run hitter swings at a fat pitch coming down the pipe. He felt himself connect, but the tube slipped out of his hands as his eyes fought against the light.
“ Son of a bitch,” another voice screamed.
Jim squinted as the overhead light came on.
“ Get back or I’ll shoot.” It was the second man in black. The first lay dead on the floor. His face bashed in, the chrome IV stand at his side. “You killed him.” The man pointed a gun at Jim. His pockmarked face was flushing deep red and Jim could feel the heat of his anger. “The boss wants you alive, but I don’t think so.” He raised the gun and held it away from his body, pointing it at Jim’s heart as the black marble fell from the ceiling and landed on the man’s face.
The man screamed, because he knew what had just bit him on the cheek. The gun flew out of his hand as he flattened both palms to slap the spider off, but before his hands reached his face, Jim’s right foot connected with his balls. The man doubled over and the spider went flying. Jim moved in, grabbed the man by the hair, forced his head against the cold tile as the spider scooted away.
“ Where is she?” Jim demanded.
“ Fuck you,” the man said. Jim held his head fast against the floor, forcing him to face the retreating spider. The man shivered when it stopped and screamed when it turned and headed back toward him. “Get it away!”
“ Not a chance.”
“ You’re supposed to be terrified of it,” the man whined. “The boss said it’d scare the shit out of you.”
“ He was wrong. Now where is she?” The spider moved closer. The man’s eyes were open wide with fright and they turned cross-eyed as she came to a stop mere millimeters from his crooked nose.
“ She’s on the boat,” he croaked, an instant before his heart exploded. He died before he could say which boat. Frightened to death.
“ Jim, Jim Monday, are you in there?” Jim recognized the voice of Mohi Tuhiwai.
“ Here,” he called out. “I’m here.”
Mohi Tuhiwai burst in the room as he collapsed.
“ Thank you, girl,” he whispered and the black widow scooted away, hiding under the bed.
“ It’s 10:00, we only have two hours,” Mohi said, breathing hard.
“ No, we have a whole day.”
“ It’s Saturday night,” Mohi said, and Jim was crushed. He had been asleep and under the influence of the drugs for a whole day. He was almost out of time and he wasn’t any closer to finding Donna than before he’d been captured.
“ I know where she is,” Mohi exclaimed, breathless. “Reptil Rache, Linda figured it out. It means, Reptile Revenge. In German!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jim checked his damaged wrist in the light. It was already starting to scab over. He turned to Mohi. “I need
