I was able to tear my gaze from the unwavering, dead eyes and onto the door. Sloppily written in blood across the door was "SPIDERS IN HERE DO NOT ENTER" with the end of the R smeared to the floor. I felt bad for considering the writing sloppy. If I was being forced to write a warning in my own blood, I was not so sure my penmanship would be all that fantastic.
"He was probably attacked from behind as he wrote this," I said. "Never had a chance."
"It was written in blood. I think he knew he was already dead," said Darren as he examined the body, trying to find a way to move it.
"So what do we do now? We think there's, at best, one spider-thing wandering around up here that is probably pretty pissed," Karen said.
"Probably pretty pissed," I said to Dr. Kale under my breath.
"Oh, the fun of alliteration," he said.
"... but," Karen continued with an angry throat clearing, "this guy was pretty certain there were some of those things in the stairwell too."
"What do you think?" I asked Justin.
"What choice do we have?" he said with a shrug.
"We can't just sit up here; we have to move, and the stairs are the only way," I said. "We need guns and electricity, or we won't live long enough for help to arrive."
The sound of a soft tap bounced around the hallway.
The sound muted the group. It was a tapping we all recognized.
"We need to get through the door now," I whispered to Darren. He nodded and began hacking at the webs with a small knife he pulled from his pocket.
The tapping grew louder and closer.
I closed my eyes.
Oh dear God let it be anything except-
A vicious hiss came from behind me.
…that.
I turned around to see two of the spiders standing in the hallway, their soulless red eyes burning into us.
Before I could scream, they ran at us. So then I screamed.
One of the spiders ran along the ceiling and one came toward us on the floor. My eardrums exploded as Darren and Justin began firing shots at the spiders, but they avoided the bullets with ease. Jumping from the floor to the wall, then to the ceiling with grace at incomprehensible speed, not a single one of the bullets found its target. The bullets hit the walls of the hallway and kept moving harmlessly down the hallway.
"Reloading!" Darren called out, and Justin went to fire more shots at the rapidly-approaching spiders. His gun clicked when he pulled the trigger, and nothing came out.
"Shit, me too," he said and popped the clip out of his gun.
One spider pushed off the ground and sped through the air toward the group.
Justin jumped back to get out of the path of the spider while trying to reload. He backed into Darren and knocked the clip Darren was trying to put in his gun to the ground, out of his reach. I hit the ground and covered my head. The spider leaped over my head and into the middle of the group, landing on one of the men.
His screams stopped as fast as they started; the spider's pincers and fangs tore into his throat. He was dead within seconds of the spider landing on him. The second spider had stopped moving, and a green liquid was forming at its mouth. I followed its eyes and saw it was glaring at Karen, who was too horrified at watching her friend get ripped apart to notice she had become a target.
This is stupid. This is so, so stupid! I told myself as I pushed myself up and ran at her. I jumped and tackled her to the ground right as a green glob flew through where she had been not even a full second ago.
The spider let out an annoyed hiss as the glob landed on the human body tied in the web. The web, along with whatever skin was left on the body, began to sizzle and melted away as soon as the glob made contact. Only a naked skeleton remained. The glass wall was left unaffected by whatever the spider shot.
"Holy balls. Okay, note to self: do not touch the green stuff," I said from the ground next to Karen and through my attempts at gasping for air. Karen nodded her agreement in silence, looking too sick to talk.
Justin had wrestled the spider off the man it had killed and was trying to avoid its pincers as they rolled on the ground. The spider was too strong for Justin; using its eight legs, it was able to flip him around and pin him beneath it. Its pincers made a terrible grinding noise as it moved in for the kill.
Darren, with an eerie calm, slapped a clip into his gun, walked up to the spider, put the gun against the side of its head, and fired. The spider let out a screech and dropped to the floor, still on top of Justin. Darren continued moving forward with a calm face and smooth, controlled motions. He pulled his knife back out and began to cut through the back of the creature. It wasn't going to fake its death this time.
From the floor, Justin slid his gun across the floor to me. I caught it and looked at him.
"Nine shots. Squeeze, don't pull," he said.
I rose up on my knees and turned to face the second spider; it had closed the gap between us and was almost on me. I raised the gun, resisted the urge to close my eyes, and squeezed the trigger.
The force of the gun going off almost made it jump from my hand. I was able to grip it enough to hold on. The bullet struck the body of the spider. It jerked to the side and stumbled, but kept its balance and was still moving forward.
Eight shots.
It let out a fingernail-on-chalkboard-like screech as green goo began to squirt from the wound. The sound caught me off guard, and I fired five consecutive shots that ricocheted off the floor and walls harmlessly away from us and the spider. The spider did not even make an attempt to avoid the bullets, my shots were that off.
The screech of the spider intensified as it picked up speed, coming toward me. The shriek sent chills down my back, and I started to shake and brought the gun up to fire once more. I still struggled to control the gun, and another shot went blazing past the spider.
Three shots, I think. Or was it two? Either way, I was going to pull the trigger until the bullets stop coming. All or nothing.
The spider was within a dozen feet or so of me at this point. I wanted to shut my eyes and fire wildly.
The screech of the spider was well past the point of unbearable. It was like I had shoved my head into a tornado siren. I grimaced and ignored the sound the best I could. I steadied, then aimed the gun once more.
Despite my body wanting to cower and panic, I took a calming breath. I tried not to imagine what would happen if I missed these final shots.
This time, I was prepared for the recoil. I braced myself and tightened the grip I had on the gun. With a quick breath in and then out, I pulled the trigger until the gun clicked empty.