Spider Legs (21 page)

CHAPTER 31

Snack

A
LEG CAME
over the rail. Then another, followed by the great snout. Another siege was starting.

Natalie saw it. She had her Llama .32 automatic, but only one more bullet. Her mouth opened wide, making a short guttural sound. The muzzle of her gun wandered back and forth. She trained the gun at the head as it appeared, knelt, and fired.

She missed. The head had made an unpredictable jerk, dropping back down into the water. The pycnogonid couldn't have timed it better if it had tried. It was as if fate was with it.

The boy with the viotar had just removed his hexagonal rimless glasses, cleaned them, and put them back in place, hiding two pink spots high up on his nose. Suddenly he saw the sea spider and his glasses dropped as he screamed. One lens cracked. He should have run immediately, but instead he got down to scramble for his glasses.

The creature's sinewy organs of manipulation groped for the boy and grabbed him around the thigh. The pycno's leg tapered from a thickness of a human hand at the point where it held the boy to more than two feet in diameter where it disappeared over the rail and descended into the sea. It was brown on top and pearl white on its underside, where various sharp spines protruded.

The boy looked to his right, seeing what had grabbed him. His eyes opened wide. “Get it off me! Take this friggin’ thing away!”

“Oh God,” Nathan whispered.

The leg began to pull the boy toward the rail. From the boy's pocket fell a small aerosol bottle of breath freshener. The deck began to leave splinters on his arms. As he was just about to be pulled into the sea, he grabbed onto the rail and yanked himself back onto the deck.

“Help,” he yelled as he looked at his hand. A sharp crescent of metal on the rail had torn the nail on his thumb right off; all that remained was a bleeding half-circle of ragged flesh. The leg pulled some more.

“Hey, help me. Do something,” he cried in shock and pain. As he opened his mouth, some of the smooth bristles from the creature's leg entered it, caressing his tongue and gums. A quick gagging noise came from his throat. “Damn it, do something.” One of the bristles abraded his lips, surely igniting sparks of pain all the way to his skull.

“Christ,” Nathan said as he came out of the coffee shop to see what was happening.

Natalie was the closest, and she grabbed the boy around under his armpits and pulled as hard as she could. For a second she made some progress, but than the leg began to exert even more force. The spider might be somewhat haphazard when it cast about, but once it had something, it had enormous power. Both Natalie and the boy were drawn across the deck. A half empty pack of chewing gum fell from another of the boy's pockets.

Nathan joined them and pounded on the pycno's leg with a ballpoint pen. It was all he had at the moment. For a second it seemed to have an effect, surprisingly, but he realized it was probably because the spider was trying to take stock of this minor distraction.

Then another giant leg rose out of the water toward them. It grabbed a chunk of Natalie's hair and pulled it out by the roots. Just as suddenly as it appeared, this second leg disappeared back
into the water, with the black hair still in its grip. Natalie thought of all those shampoo commercials about split ends, and started to laugh, and then to scream.

The leg appeared again and began to make scratching sounds on the ferry's deck. The tip of the leg slapped Nathan in his side. It felt as if he had been hit by a cold hammer. Then it slammed Natalie and grabbed her arm.

“Someone give us a hand,” Nathan shouted, not having time to consider how strange those five words sounded in this context.

But no one came. Those who hadn't sensibly fled remained too terrified to respond effectively. They just stared, backing away.
Where was Falow?
Nathan thought.

Natalie looked down and saw the first leg around the boy's hips. It was working its way into his skin. The boy grimaced in pain as some of the spikes tore like razors through the fabric of his
Star Trek
T-shirt. The spikes dripped some clear liquid. Where the liquid touched the boy's shirt, tiny holes appeared. One spike dug deep into his shoulder and blood began to ooze from the deep hole the leg spikes left.

Natalie tried to wedge her hands beneath the creature's leg to dislodge it. Nathan saw her grit her teeth; she should have had heavy gloves for this, because the surface was rough and spiked throughout.

Meanwhile the motion across the deck continued. Now the boy's legs dangled over the ferry's side. One of his sneakers fell into the sea. Natalie and Nathan continued to pull at the boy while trying to avoid the creature's legs. Nathan wished he had the crowbar that had been lost in the sea.

From out of the ocean appeared the pycno's proboscis. It was black and muscular like an elephant's trunk, except it was much bigger. It slowly made its way to the boy like a snake crawling toward its prey. Halfway from the end of the proboscis were two large death-bright eyes, which began to swivel in the direction of the boy. The beast hung there, half on the deck, much bigger than an African elephant—still, fierce, colossal.

The pycno waited a moment in all its majesty, and then it slowly moved. When the proboscis was a foot from the boy's face, his screams became continuous. Then he just gave up, stopped screaming, as if he could scream no longer. His eyes bulged. He collapsed on the deck, as far as the leg's grip on him allowed. Other legs were closing in, forcing both Nathan and Natalie to let go of the boy and retreat, lest they suffer the same fate. The power of the monster seemed overwhelming.

The proboscis stroked the boy's belly—then seemed to reach
into
it and started sucking on him. The boy let out a single shallow gasp. His fingers twitched, an involuntary nerve reaction. Green goo oozed from the sucking appendage, perhaps digestive enzymes, and poured out onto the boy and the deck of the ferry. The lidless, clear-glass eyes seemed to radiate hatred and hunger.

More legs were rising from the deep. Some were small, others thicker than the trunk of an oak tree. The bigger ones had little claws on their ends. Natalie and Nathan charged in again and pounded on the proboscis, which started to withdraw from the boy's belly. But then it re-established its position and they saw it was sucking his organs and blood, eating him alive. The legs closed on them again, and again they had to retreat.

“God almighty,” Natalie murmured, horrified. The pycno seemed totally unconcerned with all but the boy. It ignored the man and woman and continued to feed as if they were not there. The boy began to cough, and an ugly blue color began to spread to his cheeks.

“Take this,” said Bill from the coffee shop as he handed Nathan a broken cola bottle. Nathan grabbed the bottle and tried to shove it into the pycnogonid's body, but the hard exoskeleton resisted all his efforts to puncture it.

“Falow, where are you?” Natalie screamed. The tension was building to a crescendo. She touched the boy's face, but he did not move.

“I have another idea,” Bill said as he ran back to the coffee shop. A minute later he came running back with a hot dog in his
hand. He shoved it into one of the leg's pincers, and jumped quickly back. Maybe the hot dog would distract the sea spider from the boy, Bill evidently thought.

The pincer squeezed the hot dog and brought it into the sea. For a moment the proboscis withdrew from the boy's belly and quested for the hot dog. The spider wasn't well coordinated, with the snout seeming not quite to know what the pincer was doing.

As the proboscis left the boy, a loose slew of the boy's intestines spilled from the hole in his belly. The boy's face was ghastly with its colorless lips and waxen skin.

Unfortunately, the creature soon figured things out, swallowed the hot dog in an instant—and immediately went back to feeding on the boy. Natalie approached again and touched the boy's neck, attempting to find a pulse. The boy seemed sunk in a deep level of unconsciousness and did not react to either Natalie or the pycno. He was limp, every muscle unresponsive.

“There is a pulse,” Natalie said as the legs drove her back again. “I think his heart is oscillating strangely and occasionally exhibiting severe tachycardia.”

“What?” Nathan asked.

She almost smiled. “Sorry. I mean it's beating excessively rapidly. It's a bad sign.”

“Because his guts are being consumed,” Nathan said. “And we can't do a thing about it. I hate this!”

“Here, tie this to his body so he can't be pulled off the deck into the ocean,” yelled Bill. He handed Natalie a half-inch, hawser-laid nylon rope with a breaking strength of one thousand pounds.

Falow came out of the coffee shop and when he saw what was happening he started to run. He grabbed a nearby chair and flung it across the deck at the pycno. The shattered pieces of the chair fell to the floor: instant junk.

Other legs began to rise from the sea and to grab at Natalie and Nathan, so they retreated farther from the boy and dropped to their hands and knees.

Falow pondered a moment, watching one of the spider legs spasm, then ran to within six feet of the creature. He had his gun. The spider did not have an instinctive fear of the man or the gun, but it was evidently capable of cold caution in these unusual circumstances. Perhaps it remembered the sound the gun made and the pain it had caused. Maybe, Nathan thought, its bowels undulated nervously within its body and legs as it prepared to finish imbibing the boy.

Meanwhile the boy seemed in a coma as deep as the ocean. Nathan saw his body shuddering with the force of its own heartbeat. His heart rate might have risen to over two hundred beats per minute.

“Get away,” Falow shouted to Nathan and Natalie who still crawled along the deck. Falow then fired at the pycno and probably hit a ventral ganglion. As a result, nervous information to and from the spider's fourth walking leg was halted. The creature's leg hung limply at its side.

“Got you,” Falow cried, his voice rising with the increased pounding of his heart.

“Score one for the home team,” Natalie muttered.

The boy's body remained on the deck. The boy was not yet dead. His arms moved and his blood dripped like raindrops onto the wet floor. Sometimes his eyes rolled back into his head, as if he were having convulsions, but these episodes were now interspersed with near lucidity. A low moan escaped from his barely moving mouth. His gaze met Nathan's and had a pleading look. Then his deep-set eyes dilated in sudden pain as more of his intestines were yanked from his body by a spike in the creature's leg.

Bill then grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it at the proboscis eyes, and the creature immediately responded. Its leg shot out at the rail, tearing it off as the proboscis lifted the boy into the air, broke the nylon rope, and tossed him into the sea. There was a dull snapping sound as the boy hit the water. He was probably still conscious as his broken body floated on the cold ocean waves.

Nathan saw the boy's eyes look at him, cold blue eyes barely alive, bleak with the pain of dying. A few snowflakes frosted his eyelashes. This was no longer a carefree musical teenager; this was a person who had aged a lifetime in a few awful minutes. Suddenly he fell forward into the swelling waves, swallowing a mouthful of salt water so cold that it might have made his tongue ache. His face was shriveled, the skin of his fingers blanched of all color. Deep water, impenetrable as ink, stretched all around him, with no possible escape. He seemed to struggle for a second and Nathan noticed three pale gray slugs as big as men undulating toward him. Their mouths were full of needle-like teeth that quivered like quills on a porcupine. A moment later he was dragged beneath the water.

Nathan turned away, his own eyes wild and searching. He felt a lump in his throat that presaged considerable emotional turmoil to come. Then his eyes met Natalie's, and he realized that she was near tears as surely as lightning bugs were a sign of approaching dusk.

But Natalie could not afford to go into emotional retreat now, any more than he could. She was looking for Falow. When her eyes finally met Falow's, Nathan could see that they were radiating both anger and despair. “Where where you?” she screamed at him, as if she were the chief and he a deputy. Nathan hadn't seen this side of her before, but he understood her anger. If Falow had been there when the pycno first grabbed for the boy, they might have saved him.

Indeed, Falow recognized his error. “I was in the bathroom, didn't hear what was happening—” He was cut off by a splashing sound in the sea. It was the pycno.

From high above on the bridge, Captain Calamari shone a bright spotlight into the pycno's eyes, trying to further blind it. The deck below smelled of death.

“Look at its eyes,” Calamari whispered. Anyone who cared to look over the deck saw the furious reddened orbs of the pycno peering out from inflamed, irritated sockets. Falow shot a few more times. They were good shots, considering the fact that
Falow had a bad angle leaning against a table and was firing at shadows which moved against a bright background. Brains number two and four were soon destroyed by the gunfire.

For a moment, the beast seemed as if it were paralyzed and unable to move its great mass. However, within a minute ganglion seven evidently took over, and the spider began treading water again. Its motions were more jerky. It began to submerge like a submarine.

A deep cry came from Falow's mouth. “If we ever survive this, I'm going to kill that son of a bitch, no matter where it tries to hide.” The anger and despair seemed out of place on Falow's face, like a splattering of ink on a Mondrian painting.

Captain Calamari was on the radio to the Coast Guard. “Get out here now!” he screamed into the microphone. Rain started to fall from the sky, streaking through the floodlit section like sugar threads from a cotton candy machine.

“What is your position now?” said a voice on the radio. Before Calamari could respond, Nathan looked to his left and saw the pycno rear up on its posterior legs, catch hold of the boat, and begin to climb up to the bridge. As he watched, he caught a whiff of the fragrant melange of blood and ammonia. When the creature came to the smooth metal surfaces of a tower, it hauled itself up with the agility of a spider. Its legs were near the ferry's antennas as it pawed obscenely at the metallic projections.