The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(51)

“Most spiders?”

“They hunt,” she said. “Bugs. That sort of stuff.” She turned to Manny. “Okay. What’s the deal?”

Manny ran his fingers through his hair. It was a familiar gesture, something he did when he hadn’t had a lot of sleep and when he was feeling overwhelmed, and the sight of it made Melanie smile a little. But only a little.

“This might sound crazy,” Manny said, “but are there spiders that eat people? I mean, giant swarms of spiders? Does even asking the question make me sound like I’m out of my f*cking mind? If there are, it seems like the sort of thing you would have brought up at a dinner party.” Melanie smiled for real this time. She’d been to so many boring political dinners, and her one solace had been scaring the shit out of whoever was sitting next to her with stories about all the dangerous creepy crawlies out there. “Are there?” Manny said. “Are there spiders like that?”

To Melanie’s right, Billy had drifted over to a shadow box on the wall that held a mounted spider. For a second he looked as though he was going to tap on that glass too, but then he saw Melanie watching. She glared at him and he lowered his hand. Melanie looked back at Manny. “You know how many phone calls and e-mails we get a month from people who think they’ve gotten bitten by a spider and are going to die?” she said. She stepped over to the smaller dorm fridge that was next to the larger lab fridges. She opened the door and pulled herself out a can of soda. She held one up to Steph and then Billy, both of whom shook their heads. Without asking, she handed one to Manny. She didn’t have to ask. He never turned down a Diet Coke. She cracked open the can and took a swig. The bitter sweetness felt like an extra hour of sleep under her belt.

She hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to share her new spiders with anybody outside the lab yet. She’d never seen anything like them, and she knew the discovery was going to be the next big step in her career. The ten-thousand-year-old egg sac hatching, the spiders themselves, and then the way they interacted? How many papers would she get out of this? And then she looked over at Steph and remembered again that she wasn’t just Steph. She was the president of the United States. “May I ask what this is about?”

Manny glanced at Steph. Steph gave a small shake of her head. Manny sighed and popped the top on his soda. “Take my word for it,” he said. “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”

“Honestly, Manny, you know what I always tell people about spiders: there’s really no reason to be afraid of them.” Melanie walked to the back bench. “But that was before a couple of days ago, because these things scare the shit out of me.”

She put her Diet Coke down next to a stack of cages holding lab rats. The rats were mostly quiet, huddled against the sides of their cages, moved as far away from the insectarium—which was already nearly three meters away—as possible. She picked up one of the cages. As Melanie carried the cage closer to the insectarium, the spiders started launching themselves at the glass. The thud of their bodies was rhythmic and desperate.

“They just came out of the egg sac yesterday, and it was something to see. Like an explosion. I haven’t pulled one out for dissection yet, but I’ve never seen a spider like this. It’s something new.”

She held the rat cage above the insectarium.

“Are these—”

Melanie cut off her ex-husband. “Just watch.”

Julie had rigged it so there was a double-chambered entrance; they could keep the spiders enclosed, add a rat to one compartment, and then close up the whole thing before dropping the rat in with the spiders. For a second, as Melanie dumped the rat in, she felt bad for it: the little thing was squeaking and clawing at the glass, trying to climb away. Below it, even though they couldn’t see the rat in the top chamber, the spiders were frantic. They could smell it.

Melanie hit the lever, and the floor below the rat fell away, dropping it into the tank with the dozens of waiting spiders.

This was the fourth rat she’d sacrificed.

The sound of chewing hadn’t gotten any easier to tolerate.

Clearly, the sound bothered somebody behind her too, because she heard retching.

“Holy crap.” It was Manny, at her elbow.

Among other things—he was funny and smart as hell, maybe even smarter than she was—the fact that he had never been afraid of spiders was one of the things she loved about him.

“No shit. Spiders aren’t supposed to chew. Normally they liquefy their food and sort of suck it in. I have literally never seen anything like this.”

“Where did these spiders come from?” he said.

“FedEx,” Melanie said.

The president moved next to them as well, staring down and looking through the glass. The spiders had eaten half the rat, and one of them detached itself from the dead animal’s flesh and started trying to get through the glass to Steph. “What are these things?”

“I’m serious,” Manny said. “Where did you get these spiders?”

“I’m serious too,” Melanie said. “FedEx. From Peru. Remember the Nazca Lines? A friend of one of my graduate students was on a dig there. He found it and he shipped the egg sac to our lab. Probably ten thousand years old.”

“Sorry?” Steph said. “Did you say the egg sac was ten thousand years old?”