What A Tangled Web We Weave

Every nerve in my being exploded in a flash of pain. My eyes were on fire, and that was the worst. I could not even produce a tear to quench them. I ran for some place anyplace - cool and dark to hide. Then waves of sickness passed over me as I felt gravely ill in every cell of my body. I realized that death was as near as my shadow, and just as impossible to escape. But once I saw this, a sense of purpose overpowered the fear and the pain as I realized what I had to do. Most would die, but perhaps a few would survive. I could only wonder if it might not be too late already. But I was desperate. So I tore open the egg sack that I had carried for so many days, releasing my young into this noxious and poisoned world. My heart broke as hundreds of my children were born into fear and pain - only to die knowing nothing but agony for their brief lives.

The can spit and sputtered, then finally fell silent as clouds of insecticide danced and whirled between the shadow and the light. "That'll teach you buggers to mess with Skeeter Davis and the U.S. Army" exclaimed the lanky sergeant in a heavy West Texas drawl; an accent thickened by a juicy plug of tobacco tucked under his lip.

For the last two years, Skeeter was Maintenance Supervisor at this missile silo somewhere outside Fort Worth, Texas. The bugs that originally inhabited this place before he arrived did not respect man's intrusion on their territory. Skeeter battled these creepy crawlers daily with a maniacal passion. The Army knew how to deal with such things, and created XR-13 specifically to combat insects that would become immune to other pesticides. XR-13 caused genetic damage or something like that, and the insects it didn't kill became sterile, so they couldn't pass on resistance to the next generation. The new concept was to destroy the gene pool. Suddenly, Skeeter didn't feel comfortable breathing all that XR-13 himself. Who knows what could be happening to his own gene pool . . ..

Jason survived the poisonous onslaught, but most of his brothers and sisters did not. His two back legs were paralyzed. If he was going to live, he was going to have to eat. His spinets had not been injured, so he set about building a web as best he could with his useless legs. When it was done, he sat motionless, feeling for prey to strike the web. Hours passed before a moth finally caught in his web. But the moth was too big for the tiny spider's web and broke free before Jason could hobble to him. His web was a shambles, and he was getting hungry. He began to rebuild. Patience is crucial to a spider's survival.

Commander Allen first saw Jason several weeks later. The Commander was sitting on the john rereading a magazine when he first saw a silver-dollar-sized shadow out of the corner of his eye. It was Jason - full grown and following the scent of water. The commander's breath caught in his throat, as his pulse raced and beads of sweat popped out on his brow. He was deathly afraid of spiders ever since exploring a dark cellar as a child and nearly dying from the bite of a brown recluse spider lurking in some unseen shadow. Now, this spider was between him and the only exit. It seemed an eternity before Jason disappeared into a crack in the tile. Commander Allen felt drained, but glad that none of the guys saw him panic at the sight of a small, crippled spider. Tomorrow he would see if Skeeter had requisitioned more XR-13 . . ..

The death clouds of insecticide were almost completely effective. The lack of any predatory competition was Jason's salvation. Enough flying insects had either evaded the poison or been drawn down the ventilation shafts since the final onslaught to provide the crippled spider with a steady diet despite his handicap. Jason now had another duty beckoning him. He must find a mate. He would have to venture into a land of hostile predators where his handicap would be more than an inconvenience - it could be lethal. Worse yet, he sensed his crippled legs were not the only changes brought about by the poison. Jason knew he faced his greatest challenge yet. A force of nature as old as the damp limestone walls drove him to mate or die.

Slowly, deliberately, he climbed through narrow fissures and across great ravines straining to reach the daylight. It was nearly a mile to the surface. During this trek he would have nothing to eat, and very little to drink once he got beyond the limestone into the drier layers of sandstone above. Hour after hour, day after day, he pushed forward. It was exhausting, it was painful, and yet Jason felt a vague sense of excitement as he ascended from the dark, lifeless and unnatural world in the underground silo and emerged into the brightly shining sun of an alien world.

When he reached the surface, he was bathed in a magnificent brilliance he had never experienced in his life. A kind of joy filled his heart as he breathed deeply of the arid desert air. A shadow briefly blocked the warm light. Suddenly Jason heard a terrific noise above him as a huge flying creature dropped from above with rapier talons poised, ripping up the gravel nearby as it missed him. Jason darted for cover. This beautiful new place could be quite deadly.

Soon Jason's hunger drove him from the safety of his refuge to seek a proper spot to erect a web. It had been days since he had eaten, and spinning a web would be a long process. But with the same single-minded determination that had driven him to this point, he ignored his aching body and found some thorny sagebrush to frame his web and began the tasks of survival.

A few afternoons later while fixing some loose anchor points on his web, Jason saw a shadow darting nervously in the mottled sunshine. "Predator or prey?" he wondered as all his senses went on full alert. Every muscle froze as he remained completely motionless, waiting for the shadow to move again. Agonizing minutes later, a timid vision of loveliness crept into the light.

Daphne had eight tawny legs covered with soft, silky hair that glistened seductively in the afternoon light. Her body was slender and much smaller than Jason's. She was very young with a pretty face and a hundred enchanting eyes. She was just a girl really; but she was the only girl Jason had ever seen. The call of destiny and hormones that drove Jason all this way was now screaming in his ears.

He began his courting ritual, a primordial dance indelibly etched by millions of years of evolution into the deepest corners of his psyche. Each movement gained intensity as powerful instincts unleashed a torrent of ancient memories that possessed his entire being. Each step was taken as his father had, and a million of his father's fathers had. He no longer thought of food or his vulnerable exposure. His only thoughts focused on the enticing young girl that stood mesmerized, like her mother and a million of her mothers' mothers had. Jason slowly drew closer. . ..

Jason knew he had no chance to escape his mate's inevitable death grip with his crippled legs, but he had done what he felt he must do. There was a sense of ironic closure within him as he died in the arms of the woman who would bear his offspring. Either Jason had not received a large enough dosage of XR-13, or else he was genetically tolerant of its disruptive effects, but the beautiful and healthy Daphne was pregnant. Slowly she drained him of life as his body fluids began to nurture the hundreds of tiny lives he had just spawned.

One cool spring afternoon Daphne instinctively knew the time was right to slit the fragile paper-like shell that encased the tiny young lives she had cursed so long and grown to hate. Though she had never born young before she could sense there was something unnatural about this whole pregnancy, and she was eager to terminate it. The children of poor crippled Jason would be on their own now.

Daphne screamed with terror as a sea of hideous mutants poured from her belly and surrounded her. A sudden, piercing pain racked her entire being, choking off her breath. She was dying, poisoned by the venom of her own children. Hundreds of eight-legged horsemen of the apocalypse were now freed upon the countryside - and they were hungry . . ..

Kitto raced ahead of his siblings, looking for some kind of shade. A tiny spider's body will dehydrate quickly under the full desert sun. Behind him, his brothers and sisters were cannibalizing their own mother and each other. Survival has few rules and no sympathy.

Ahead, Kitto could see that some of his siblings were heading into an open pit. It would be cool in there, but it could be very dangerous as well. Kitto decided to go for the cool. As he drew nearer, a rush of wind tore at him, making retreat impossible. As his grip loosened, he went tumbling into the abyss. Kitto was committed to whatever lay at the end of this long tunnel.

Captain John "Old Man" Rivers knew radios like a connoisseur knows wine. They brought him many friends from around the world, many of whom he has never met in person. Right now John was cursing the Sat-Comm link as communications were down again today because of a solar flare. Normally they only last a few minutes, but sometimes resetting the encryption protocol was a real pain in the ass. Anytime communications were broken a complicated procedure had to be followed to synchronize the data encoding with their Washington Data Center and to verify the identities of both parties before they would be cleared for secure communications. And of course, everything going to or from the silo required secure communications, even if it was as trivial as a requisition for more toilet paper. Captain Rivers pulled the access panel from the control board and reached inside to set the dip switches to start sending the timing sequence. A sudden sharp pain made him pull his hand back. "Dammit!" he shouted as a tiny blister raised on the tip of his thumb. "Those God-damned engineers ought to stick their pricks in here by the power transformer where they expect me to reset these friggin' switches!"

Kitto had barely escaped being crushed by the human's hand as it fumbled through the darkness. Fear coursed through him like a flooding river as he pinched down on the surprisingly soft flesh and injected a full load from his poison sac. That was far too close for comfort.

Old Man River's hand convulsed into a grotesque claw as the poison began to take effect. A searing tide rolled steadily up his arm. He knew electricity like his own son, and this was not anything familiar. The pain was so bad he couldn't move. He couldn't scream. He couldn't even cry like a child with a skinned knee. Five agonizing minutes later, his eyes dimmed as the life in them went out.

Commander Allen called Skeeter to check on Old Man Rivers. The Sat-Com link always took a while to reestablish but it shouldn't take this long. It always made Allen a bit uneasy when they were out of communication. Here, a mile below the surface, you had no idea if the rest of the world really existed. That final puff of smoke could rise in the air and then he and his 4 men would be the last humans for a thousand miles, and possibly the last humans on earth. Sometimes, the responsibility of writing the epitaph for the human race weighed more heavily than the sole authority he bore to launch his 24 ICBM's when they were out of communication like this.

Skeeter found Old Man Rivers' body in the radio room. The only thing that he could think of was how painful the end must have been. Never had he seen a dead man look like he was still screaming in pain... This must have been the "big one" that the Doc had warned him of for years. But Old Man Rivers would not change the lifestyle that took 50 years to grow into. If he could have known how he'd look at the end, he might have thought differently. Now Skeeter was the only backup for the radio operator and he was a bit rusty. They were supposed to swap duties twice every month, but there were so many rules and this was one of many that had been overlooked.

It was time to alert Doc and Commander Allen, then start digging through the manuals to refresh his memory. There would be hell to pay for being off line for so long, but given the circumstances it would probably only amount to a bad tongue-lashing.

Doc had never seen a body as tortured as Emile Rivers'. He would have to do the best he could for an autopsy, but they were not really set up to do lab work, and he would have no outside contact while they were locked down. That would mean another 2 weeks before they could ship Rivers out.

Skeeter finally got all the manuals together and had a rough idea of what he needed to do to get communications up again. There were 3 codes that had to be sent in a timed sequence, and each successive code varied according to the authorization code received. That way, no one could know the next key in advance. He had a thirty second window to decode the authorization and enter the next key. The Old Man could do it easy, but Skeeter always cut it close. If he missed the window or mistyped the 16 character key he had to wait fifteen minutes to try again from the beginning. His first attempt was miserable - he hadn't even finished decoding the authorization before the window expired. Something moved in the shadows of the console, distracting him. More of those damn bugs, and he was out of XR-13. This looked like a little spider. He took the manual and vented his frustration on the tiny creature, turning it into a gooey stain on the panel.

Before he had more than a minute to relish his kill, Skeeter heard a loud cry from the infirmary down the hall. He ran in and found the Doc convulsing in a fetal position on the floor. "Shock...Ana-kit..." the Doc wretched out. Skeeter went to the first aid box on the wall hoping the kit would be in there. He had no idea where to find it if it wasn't. His niece Erin was allergic to bee stings, and he had seen her nearly turn blue and have to be rushed to the hospital after just one sting. The Epi-pen in the Ana-kit had saved her life. Skeeter had learned how to use it, but he'd never needed it after that one episode. The Doc was worse off than Erin had been, and he wasn't sure he would be in time. These things could progress fast, but he hadn't been more than a few seconds down the hall. He found the kit, loaded the needle, and stuck the Doc with the Epi-pen. Doc relaxed just a little, and Skeeter thought it might be working. But then he convulsed hard, pissing his pants and biting clean through his bottom lip. Blood spewed everywhere as he choked for a breath. Doc relaxed once more, and simply said "Spider." His face was fire-engine red, and sizzling hot. His next breath barely squeaked in, and his eyes rolled back and dilated. Skeeter checked for a heartbeat, and heard none. He started CPR and kept it going for ten full minutes, but he knew before he even started that it would be too little, too late.

No one knew the Doc was allergic to spiders, it should have shown up in his physical and been on his dog tags. He went down the hall to let Commander Allen know what happened. With Doc and Old Man Rivers dead, they were rapidly approaching a critical situation. He was the only one left who could establish radio contact to get them some help down here. Meanwhile, they were time-locked in this hole for the duration.

Commander Allen was worried. Two strange deaths amounted to a huge coincidence, and those little spiders seemed to be everywhere lately. He knew that he was hypersensitive to the sight of them, but it had been noticeable to Skeeter as well. Skeeter also informed him that they were now out of XR-13, so their best weapon was now gone. They could use some Boric Acid solution from the medical kit to try to keep them away for a little while. Meanwhile, he would announce these latest events at mess today.

Prometheus had found the most wonderful territory for a spider to flourish. It was bursting at the seams with bait for all kinds of spider food. There was flour and sugar as far as the eyes could see, and that meant he could get fat on the parade of insects that followed the delicious scents. Even though they only did two week stints in here before the next rotation came in, they were provisioned with a year's supply of non-perishables, just in case.

A mouse too excited by the smell of food wrecked his web out of pure carelessness, and in anger and fright he had given it a venomous bite. The bumbling creature died immediately. Prometheus found a tender spot by the mouse's nose where he could suck life giving fluids until he fairly exploded. This beat the hell out of waiting on insects.

Wolf turned on the lights in the pantry and saw the dead mouse lying near the shelf where the fifty pound sacks of flour were stacked. "I thought I told that idiot Skeeter not to be spraying that poison in here around the food. The fool is going to kill us all!" he said to no one in particular. Wolf got his name by sticking to himself, and the rare times he did talk it was usually to himself. Cooks don't often make friends in the company, the U.S. Army was NOT in the restaurant business. He grabbed a dust pan to pick up the mouse. He didn't see the spider until it was too late.

Chill Mitchell showed up for his K.P. shift to find the lights on but nothing started. He called for Wolf, but there was no answer. The fires were off, and nothing was prepped. Dinner was going to be really late, and they would here about this for the rest of this trip. He noticed the pantry door was ajar, but bashed face first into it when it didn't open. Something was blocking it from the inside. He leaned his shoulder on it and pushed. A little trickle of blood oozed from his nose as he confronted the mortal remains of Charles "Wolf" Robinson.

Royce Allen now had half his command dead of unknown causes. They were out of contact, and while Skeeter was doing his best, they would be a while before they could get help. He was on his own with this sudden plague of silent death. "Don't ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee..." rung eerily in his head. He had to find the cause of this somehow. But what?? Skeeter had told him the Doc said "Spider" - but what spider could kill a full grow man? Even the black widow was a threat to the very young and very old only. True enough, he had seen more spiders recently, but that could the result of running out of the XR-13 pesticide. Was the doctor allergic? Had they perhaps been unlucky enough to have had three people (or more?) allergic to spiders happen upon this assignment? Or did they have a variety of spider that was different from all known species in a lethal way? There were so many questions and so few answers. They desperately needed some answers...

"We need to get up a search party." Allen said. "We need to find out what the hell is going on here."

"What the hell are we looking for, the heart attack monster?" Mitchell cut back.

"I think we have a problem with spiders." I need each of you to go to the air shafts and shut them down to make sure no more of those things get in here. I'll stay here and keep in touch with both of you and get us switched over to the CO2 scrubbers.

As Skeeter went down this hallway, he remembered all the timed he had come this way with his can of XR-13 and couldn't help wondering if the bugs had decided to wreak revenge upon their human hosts. Things were eerily silent, and Skeeter slowly came to realize there were no bugs down this way. It was the first time this had ever happened. So where were these spiders that had Allen so worried? He got to the power box to shut down the air vents. He was glad they were cycled off now, since it could be a pain to do this when they cut in and start kicking the dust around. There were no signs of spiders or any other bugs yet except...

"Commander, I think I have something here, Over."

"Go ahead, Skeeter. Over." replied Allen.

"The breaker box is covered with spider webs. I think I want a shot of Jack Daniels and some armor before I try this. Over."

"We're fresh out of bourbon, but come on back here and we'll see if we can't rig up one of the fire suits for armor. Allen out."

There was a faint hum as Allen heard the vents kick into the "ON" cycle. Down at the end of the west hallway a dozen half ounce angry critters had their escape aborted as the gale force turbines drove them back down into the dark shaft and onto the head and shoulders of a terrified Skeeter Davis He was too shocked to even scream. It wouldn't have done any good.

"I wonder how much of this stuff Skeeter used." mused Mitchell as he picked up a second empty can of XR-13. He pulled the switch on air shaft one and started to read the label on the can while was walking back. Suddenly he realized what was going on.

"Commander!" came the urgent voice of Mitchell over the hand-held. "Those spiders didn't come IN from anywhere, we MADE them!"

"What do you mean?"

"This crap Skeeter has been spraying around causes genetic damage - I think we have mutated some bad-ass spiders down here."

Mitchell walked a little faster and then began to run back to the safety of Commander Allen and the control room. He slid in a puddle of water outside the kitchen and careened into the tables in the mess hall. He must have left the freezer door open when he found Wolf earlier. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he felt the tickle of invisible silk on his face. Tiny little legs marched across his cheek. His heart was exploding in his ears and he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. But he dare not. His shin was bleeding and his ankle ached but he didn't move a muscle. His lungs shrieked for air but he forced long, slow breaths. The sweat rolled down his face. A drop caught the legs of the tiny creature and washed him down to Chill's neck. It reacted by biting down hard. Mitchell's hand convulsed around his radio leaving the mike open. His death screams echoed through the control room and chilled Allen to the bone.

Allen's worst nightmare had invaded his reality. A spider would finally kill him after all. Worse yet, they were likely to kill many others if they ever got out of here. He noticed the top sheet of the duty roster fluttering gently. The air vents were still open! Those things were on their way out of here, if they hadn't gotten out already. There could be an epidemic going on right now outside of their little desert hideaway and he would know nothing of it. There would be an epidemic if he didn't do anything about it. But what?

Commander Allen's left leg exploded in a flash of pain that quickly advanced from the tiny puncture wound on his ankle. He never even saw his killer, had no time to react or to panic. The commander dragged his agonizing and uncooperative body with it's all but useless leg to the control room console, hoping to somehow seal off the fate he knew awaited him. Waves of sickness passed over him as he felt the poison coursing through his veins, wreaking havoc upon every cell of his body. He realized that death would be swift and inevitable. Eventually a sense of purpose overpowered the fear and the pain as he realized what he had to do. Many would die, but perhaps a few would survive. He could only wonder if it might not be too late already. But he was desperate. This could not spread any further or the survival of humankind could be in jeopardy. He entered the firing code and his password as he blacked out and died hanging over the machine. There were no alarm buzzers or a big red button to push. Just a timer counting down the automated firing sequence on the main computer display terminal in the center of the control room.

Dawn came to Fort Worth, Texas 1 hour and 17 Minutes early. Behind it came the devastating nuclear storm. No one would ever know they had been spared a greater holocaust.