The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(72)

“Promise?”

Her voice was small and full of sleep, and it almost killed him. Two years ago, when an agent was killed in the line of duty and Annie had found out about it, she’d made him promise to wear his bulletproof vest anytime he was out on the job, but it hadn’t felt like anything big to do. Yet for some reason this request made him hesitate. Could he really promise he’d be back? He didn’t really understand what was going on, and it was terrifying him. But he looked at the way Annie was looking at him and he realized none of that really mattered. What mattered was making her feel safe.

“I promise, beautiful. I promise I’ll come back to you. Back for you. I’ll come back for you, okay?”

Annie nodded again, and then he walked with her over to the boat.

It was all he could do to let her go.

“Anything else?” Rich said.

“Actually, yeah.” Mike lifted a duffel bag. “My backup pistol is in there.”

“Jesus, Mike. You think that’s really necessary?”

“I hope not.”

“I don’t even know how to shoot a pistol.”

“Fanny does. I taught her. The pistol is for her. It’s a Glock 27. It’s small. There’s two boxes of rounds in there and a spare clip,” he said. “There’s also a shotgun. That’s for you. Go out tomorrow and have Fanny show you how to load it and take a couple of shots to get the feel of it.”

“Mike—”

“Rich.” Mike stepped close, keeping his voice low. “There’s a quarantine out west. Martial law. I saw one of those f*cking things come out of Henderson’s face. You’ve got my daughter with you. Do you understand what I’m asking of you here?”

Instead of answering, Rich looked back over his shoulder at the boat. Annie was leaning into her mother. The light from the truck’s headlights cast odd shadows, but both men could see Fanny and Annie clearly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do, Mike.”

“It’s a Mossberg 500. A twelve gauge. There are four boxes of ammunition in there. You learn how to use it. It will take out anything in front of you. Like spraying a hose. The loads will spread. Shit for distance with that ammunition, but for personal defense it will do fine. Just point and shoot.”

Mike handed over the duffel bag. The two men shook hands.

Mike turned to walk back to his truck, but then he heard Annie calling for him. He went back to them.

“How come you aren’t coming with us, Daddy?”

“I’ve got to work baby, okay?” He bent over the rail of the boat and Annie got up and came over to him. She leaned into him and pressed her nose into his neck. “Don’t worry. Your mom and Rich are going to take care of you.”

“I’m not worried about me,” she said.

He tightened his grip on her. “I’ll be fine, beautiful. I’ll be fine. And I’ll come for you soon enough. I promise.”





American University,

Washington, DC


Melanie lunged for it, but her fingers only grazed the glass. There was nothing she could do but watch it fall.

It was close to two in the morning, and they were tired. They were all so tired.

They’d gotten the spider into the container safely enough, but Patrick put it down too close to the edge of the table, and then Bark’s hip banged against the side of the table. The container teetered. For a heartbeat, it looked as if it was going to be okay. One of those moments Melanie wished she could have back. But it wasn’t okay, and the container tipped and started to fall, and Melanie’s skin barely touched the glass before it spun off the edge, dropped, and smashed on the floor. The shattering sound woke them up. All four of them, yelling and fumbling and trying to catch the spider. It scrambled, alien and fast, up the table leg and across Julie’s lab coat and onto Bark’s shirt and then . . .

A thin split in Bark’s skin. An ooze of blood. The spider gone. Inside him.

They’d picked that spider out from the others because this one, Julie noticed, had subtly different markings from the others. They’d prepared and dissected three that were identical, plus the seven spiders that had died on their own, and those seemed to be the same as well. The only difference with the seven that had died—for no apparent reason—was that they were almost desiccated. As if they’d just sort of used themselves up. It didn’t make much sense to Melanie. None of it did.

They’d started by feeding the spiders normally. All the spiders in the lab were fed on a strict schedule, crickets and mealworms and other insects, but these spiders didn’t seem interested in insects. From the beginning, they’d been after blood. It was grotesque and fascinating. The way they overwhelmed a rat, stripping the flesh from the bone was amazing. It looked like a time-lapse video gone horribly wrong. They had assumed that the food needs of these spiders would correspond to those of the spiders they were already familiar with, and they’d been wrong. These spiders were voracious. And they weren’t patient.

When they first burst from the egg sac, they turned on one another, eating several of their kin in the frenzy of hatching, but they were quick to turn their attention to the rats. But then, yesterday, they’d counted again and realized that, even counting the dead ones, they were three spiders short. After a few minutes of panic, Julie suggested spooling back through the video, and they found footage of the spiders in the tank attacking and eating one another. The spiders that died on their own, the desiccated, used-up spiders, were left alone, but when it was time to feed, every living spider seemed like it was fair game. So instead of dropping in a single rat, Melanie decided to drop in a bunch of rats at the same time to see what happened. The spiders seemed pleased. The sound was disgusting, but it wasn’t long before there were a few more piles of bones.