"Get down!" a voice came from in front of us. I didn't even look up to see who it was; I just hit the floor and started rolling.
Two more gunshots roared. This time, they came from only a few feet in front of me. The sound of the shots echoed around the room and inside me. I would never forget that sound and this moment for as long as my heart beats. Which, judging from this situation, would not be too much longer.
I was rubbing my ears, trying to get the ringing to stop, as I looked up and saw Justin, black handgun raised, standing over us.
I glanced back to see the spider curled up on the floor. No movement. It was lying on its back with all eight of its legs tucked in against its large underside. There was green goo oozing out of the bullet wounds, and a horrid smell that brought me awfully close to losing my stomach all over the floor. I wasn't as weak as Dr. Kale, so I was able to resist. But it was a close call.
"I can't tell you how happy I am to see you," I said, looking up at Justin. The corner of his mouth twitched as if he almost smiled.
"Just keep it in your pants," he said and helped me to my feet.
"We'll see how the rest of the day goes," I said and dusted myself off as he helped Dr. Kale up.
"Where's Darren?" Dr. Kale asked him.
"Out in the hallway. These big-ass spiders have sure made a mess of everything. We have a few survivors with us in the hallway," Justin said as he kicked the dead spider.
"How many is a few? And is it a few of THE survivors, or the few survivors?" I asked.
"We have a group of six, not counting me or Darren," Justin said. "As far as we could tell, everyone else is dead, eaten, or worse."
I didn't want to imagine what the 'worse' would have been.
"Darren or me," Dr. Kale muttered under his breath.
"What?" Justin asked.
Dr. Kale's eyes flashed to the smoking gun in his hand, then back up to Justin. "Nothing, just talking to myself."
"I don't think you were even correct on that one," I whispered to Dr. Kale so that Justin could not hear.
"Get used to talking to yourself; I have half a mind to lock you alone in here," Justin growled at him. "Lucky for you, I think the government's punishment for bringing these creatures back and having this many people dying under your watch is going to be a little worse than that. I want to watch what they do to you. I may even touch myself during."
Dr. Kale swallowed hard and looked at me.
"I probably won't touch myself, but I'm with the action hero over here. You're going to get the full shaft. They won't be gentle," I said.
Justin walked toward the door.
"We need to get the power back on," I said and followed him, Dr. Kale slouched behind us.
"No, we need to leave this place; we're not all going to die here," Justin said and stopped in front of the door.
"The entire building is locked down with no power," Dr. Kale said in a defeated tone. "No one gets in or out until it's back on."
"Is there no backup generator or anything we can use? I do not want to go into that room," I said.
Dr. Kale shook his head. "Besides, even if we got the door open, the fence is still on. The fence is powered by a generator that is kept somewhere outside the facility. The generator is hidden well, so it didn't get messed with by accident. With the fence still powered, even if we did leave the building; without any power to open the gate, we're still stuck."
"Fine!" Justin said. "We'll get to the power room; can you fix whatever those bastards did?"
"I, and only I, can get it working again, yes," Dr. Kale said.
I narrowed my eyes at him. He's not an electrician. I think he's using this as a ploy to stay alive. If he's our only way out, we're forced to protect him. But I couldn't fix it, and he had been here a while, so I guessed it's possible he knew how.
As long as the coward in him didn't get the rest of us killed, then doing whatever he could do to survive was fine with me. I didn't blame him for looking after himself.
"So, do you guys have a secure room where we can plan this out? A base of operations or something like that?" I asked.
"We made sure the weapon room is secure. We didn't know how bad it was out here, or we would have come more heavily armed. We can get there before deciding our next move," Justin said and led us to the hallway.
The sudden burst of sunlight as we entered the hallway blinded me for a moment. As my eyes began to adjust, I could only see Dr. Kale due to the decaying light of the sun as it moved toward setting.
After a few moments, my eyes adjusted to the light, and my vision became clear again. I now saw the advantage of the glass ceilings. With no power, there was no light, but the sun was giving us enough light to see everything. For now.
In the hallway, there were six people huddled together in white lab coats. Darren was leaning against the wall with a relaxed look.
Out of the six people, there was only one woman remaining; she had short, black hair tied back, so her face was clear. She was shorter than the rest of the men, but they all seemed to cower behind her. She was pretty and petite with eyes that matched her hair.
When we locked eyes, I wished I was one of the men cowering behind her instead of taking the brunt of her fiery gaze. I yearned to go back to the room with the spider watching me.
"Who the hell are you?" she said to me.
"Dr. Gale, but really, no one. I am nothing," I said and took a step back, trying to position Justin between me and her anger.
"Were you the one who did this?" she demanded of me.
"Oh, sweet Jesus, no, I wasn't," I said, too scared to blink. "If anything, I would have been the one who stopped it!"
"So it was you?" she said, turning toward Dr. Kale. I could feel my body shaking as I tried to relax. She was freaking terrifying!
"Please don't hurt me?" Dr. Kale whimpered with wide eyes.
She walked toward Dr. Kale, who also tried to hide behind Justin.
"Oh, hell no, I'm not taking this for you," he said and pushed Dr. Kale in front of him, then backed as far from the woman as he could.
She walked right up to Dr. Kale. Her face was so close to his that I wasn't sure that they weren't touching.
"What were you thinking?" she asked in the most terrifying whisper I had ever heard.
Don't say something stupid, Kale. Don't say anything stupid!
"It was for science?" he offered.
I closed my eyes. What. An. Idiot.
I opened them just in time to see her chamber her fist back and drive it straight into his nose.
He let out a cry and fell on his butt, blood trickling out from his nose. She whirled around and walked away from him, shaking with anger.
"You were lucky; she was gentle this time," Justin said and picked up Dr. Kale by his arm.
"Gentle?" he gurgled and tried to spit the blood from his mouth. He didn't spit correctly and ended up dribbling blood all over his chin and front of his lab coat.
"I think she's scarier than you," I said to Justin.
"Well, she's my sister," he said.
"Ah, makes sense."
I walked up to Dr. Kale to examine his nose.
"Yep, that's definitely broken," I said as I peered at it.
"Do it," he said and clenched his eyes closed.
"Well, I might--" I cracked his nose back in place mid-sentence, so he didn't have time to tighten up.
"Ow, my lord," he took a big sniff. "Well, it hurts like a bitch, but I can breathe again."
"I get the feeling that was not your first time being hit by a girl," I said with a goofy smile.
"The name is Karen," she said to me in a furious voice.
"Sorry," I said. "That was not your first time being hit by a Karen."
"Smart-ass," she said.
"Alright, so should we begin our trek to the weapons room?" I suggested, trying to sound cheery. Now that there were more people than just me and the creepy scientist, I was feeling a rush of confidence. Justin and Darren had shown they could kill the spiders. With the two of them leading the way, I figured we'd be just fine.
"We're going back out there?" one of the men in lab coats asked. "Why can't we just leave?"
"Can't leave the building without power, we're trapped in here until we turn it back on," Dr. Kale gave the CliffNotes explanation to the group.
The group grumbled their disdain for returning to any other part of the building, but no one had a better suggestion.
"Okay, so once we're in the room, what happens next? We just arm up, then walk around blind and hope we kill them before they kill us?" one of the men asked.
An idea hit me.
"Hey, that drone you used to see who arrived before opening the gate, is that running off the power here?" I asked Dr. Kale.
"No, it's not!" he said, smiling for the first time in a while. "We can use them to check halls and rooms before we go in! We can ensure we're not walking into a trap or certain death!"
"Yes!" I said with an arm pump. "Where is it?"
His smile faded. "It's in my room, six floors down from here."
"So we're going to be easy pickings until we can get that drone, but we're going to be walking into a death trap to get to it," I said and ran my hands through my hair, sucking in a deep breath.
"That's only if they're in the stairwell, they seemed to be focused on taking the lower levels. There haven't been that many this high up since their initial birth or hatch or whatever the hell you want to call it," Karen said. "We might run into one or two, but the majority are probably still on the bottom floors."
"There's only twelve left with the two that have been killed up here," Justin said.
"Alright, if we move quickly, maybe we can get to my room before we run into any more," Dr. Kale said.
Darren opened his eyes and stood up away from the wall. "Well, let's go."
The group fell in line behind Darren, while Justin took up the rear. At least we weren't going to get killed without knowing it was coming.
Darren held his gun out as we left the hallway and entered the all-glass-rooms again. Everyone in the group was eyeing every inch of each room as we walked by; I made sure to keep my vision high. I was not about to let one of those disgusting things loom over me again.
"Hey, didn't you guys kill a spider in the last hallway?" I asked Justin as the group continued to get closer to the stairwell.
"We did, why?" he asked, his eyes scanning the rooms as he talked.
"Why wasn't there a body?" I said.
Justin stopped walking; Darren noticed and stopped as well.
"What's up?" he asked Justin.
"There wasn't a body," Justin said as he thought back. "The first spider we killed, its body was gone."
Darren's face scrunched in a moment of concentration before it dawned on him. "It's not dead. It was faking."
"They know to fake their deaths? What kind of creatures are we dealing with here?" I said, and resisted the temptation to punch the glass walls. Everything seemed to be in the spiders' advantage.
"I told you they were highly intelligent," Dr. Kale said, avoiding Karen's spiteful glare.
"I tOlD yOu ThEy WeRe HiGhLy InTeLlIgEnT," Karen mocked.
"Also, they can survive gunshot wounds?" The confidence I had felt before was short-lived. Dread and my pal anxiety took its place.
"So where the hell is it now?" I asked, looking back and forth between Darren and Justin.
"We need to hurry," Darren said without hesitation, and took off at a steady jog. We all followed suit, but I fell toward the back next to Justin to try and keep an eye out for the missing spider. After a few twists and turns, we approached a glass door that led to the stairwell.
Several people made disgusted noises, and the rest started to pray. Leaning against the door were the remains of what had been, at some point, a human body. It had the majority of the skin on the face peeled off, leaving a large section of only bone.
The body was enclosed in a thick, white web, with the skinless skull sticking out. The worst part was that the body would have to be moved for us to get to the door. The skull had been picked clean, except for the eyes. With no eyelids, its eyes just stared back at us, sending chills down my spine.
"Why did they leave the eyes?" Dr. Kale whispered and turned away, his face returning to ghost white. He walked away to void his stomach contents again.