The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(32)

It was Henderson. No question.

The bottom half of his body was a mess of burns and exposed bone. The flesh and muscle and fat were completely stripped on one of his legs, and more than fifty percent gone on the other. Oddly, Mike realized he was more disturbed by Henderson’s torso: from waist to neck, other than a few flecks of ash on the long-sleeved T-shirt, Henderson looked as undisturbed as a mannequin in a department store. Thankfully, what natural light came in through the windows and the rent in the side of the plane left the man’s head hidden in the shadows. Mike played the beam of the flashlight on the wall and ceiling around Henderson. It must have been hell in here, he thought. The plastic was melted and buckled, scorched from the flames. Mike was just guessing, but he thought that probably fuel from the engines had spilled into the cabin. If they were lucky, they were dead from the crash before the flames reached them.

He stepped closer, the ashes crackling under his feet again, took a deep breath through his mouth—the smell of burnt plastic and flesh was too much for him—and fixed the flashlight on Henderson’s head. The sight made him gag.

The flesh above his right ear, stretching close to the middle of Henderson’s head, had been burned pink and deep, black ash mixing with blood and exposed fat, hair singed and curled back. That wasn’t what made Mike feel sick, however. It was Henderson’s left eye, his nose, his mouth, and his cheeks. Mike swallowed the sick down and closed his eyes for a few seconds so he could prepare himself to look again. He realized he was sweating, and he wiped at his forehead with the back of his injured hand. He opened his eyes when he felt something trickle down his wrist again: more blood soaking through the tie. He hoped to Christ it wasn’t dripping on the floor. He pulled his jacket off and wrapped it around his hand too. That ought to hold it for a bit.

He steeled himself and looked at Henderson’s face. The left eye was dangling from the socket, the impact of the crash popping it loose, the rest of the whole side of Henderson’s face just a dark cave, gone to the bone. Mike thought perhaps a splash of fuel had fallen on it. Worst of all was the mouth, which hung open, a dribble of blood and char at the corner, his tongue out and half-chewed. Jesus f*cking Christ. Mike hoped the FAA showed up soon so they could find the black box, because if this wasn’t an accident, he didn’t want to know what had happened. It did not look like Henderson had died peacefully. This was certainly proof that even billionaires couldn’t escape death. Taxes, maybe, with the right accountants, but not death.

Weirdly, miraculously, there was an unbroken crystal glass on the floor next to Henderson’s chair. Mike picked it up, half wishing there was still booze in it. He took a sniff. Whiskey? He put the glass down on the table in front of Henderson and then looked at his face again. He almost screamed.

It looked like something was moving. No, Mike thought, something really was moving. He knew that couldn’t be right, but it looked like something was coming out of Henderson’s face.

He shined the beam directly on Henderson’s ruined head, and then he did let out a scream, because something was coming out of Henderson’s face.

Mike stepped back and stumbled, and without thinking, he reached out with his jacket-wrapped hand to steady himself against the exposed wire frame of what had been a seat. “Fuck!”

That hurt.

“Everything okay in there, Agent Rich?” It was Moreland, the cop in the suit. He shined a light in, and Mike had to squint to look back.

“Yeah, just cut my hand pretty good. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Pretty nasty in there.”

“No shit,” Mike said back, but he’d already turned to look at Henderson’s body again, hoping that whatever it was he’d seen coming out of the corpse’s face would turn out to have been a trick of the shadows.

It wasn’t.

Mike could see it clearly. It was a spider, three-quarters of its hairy, golf-ball-sized body digging itself out from the flesh on the upper part of Henderson’s right cheek. Mike’s hand was throbbing and it was dripping blood freely now. The only noise in the plane came from Mike’s breathing and the spider making its way out of Henderson’s face. It sounded like . . . Oh shit. It sounded like chewing. Mike gagged again, and then couldn’t stop himself. He rushed back to where he’d entered in the opening of the jet, held on with his good hand, leaned out, and let loose what was left of his lunch. Most of it splashed on the ground, which was good, but some got on his pants, which was still better than puking right in the heart of an investigation. When he straightened up his nose was running and his eyes had teared up. He had to wipe at his face with the sleeve of his shirt. Ugh. He was going to submit his dry-cleaning receipt to the agency as a legitimate business expense. Fuck the director and f*ck this, he thought.

“Gross, huh?” Moreland looked pleased with himself.

Mike didn’t reply. He walked back down the funnel of the plane and splayed the beam on Henderson’s face again, and that’s when he wished he hadn’t puked already, because right now was when he really needed to puke: the spider was gone.

Frantic, he ran the light on the wall and then the ceiling, then across Henderson’s face and torso and down the burnt flesh and exposed bones of Henderson’s leg. And there. Relief. The spider. On the ground.

It was moving slowly. Mike knew it wasn’t the right word for an eight-legged thing, but it looked as if the spider was limping. He squinted and leaned over. There was clearly something wrong with the bug—two of its legs weren’t moving and it was dragging its body along the ground. Maybe it had been injured in the crash or gotten burned too? Mike shook his head. Who cared what happened to the spider? The only question that mattered was, how the f*ck had it gotten into Henderson’s head?