The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(81)

There had to be a reason for it. There had to be more to it. She was sure of it. The answer was a sort of itch she couldn’t reach. She knew she’d figure it out if she had enough time, but that was the problem. Did she have enough time?

Inside the containment unit, the surgeon was still bent over Bark’s body, assisted by three nurses and an anesthesiologist. Patrick was in there too. He had the lab’s expensive SLR camera plus a video camera, and he was alternating between taking pictures and shooting film. She tapped on the glass to try to get his attention. Video was fine for now. It was high-definition. She wished they’d brought a tripod from the lab. If they’d had a tripod, Patrick could have left the video camera running and bounced around with the SLR, but a tripod was another thing they’d forgotten. It was a miracle they weren’t shooting video on a cell phone. Like idiots, they’d rushed Bark from the lab without thinking it through other than to get him to the biocontainment unit. Nobody brought a laptop or a tablet, which didn’t seem like a big deal at first, until they realized that, with the egg sac starting to hum and heat up, it might be a good idea to look back at the data from the other egg sac. When Melanie stepped out of the isolation unit to get ready for her Manny-mandated helicopter pickup, she sent Julie scurrying to get on a computer to see if she could access their data remotely. The big question was: How hot was too hot? How soon was this sucker going to hatch? It was one thing to watch the egg sac in the lab hatch, another to actually have the numbers in front of you for comparison. Julie needed to get her ass back there as quickly as possible so that Melanie could crunch the numbers. She wanted to make sure that, if necessary, she could get Patrick and the medical team out of there with time to spare.

She leaned her head against the glass, suddenly exhausted. There was so much she didn’t know or understand about these things, but it wasn’t exciting anymore. It was just scary. She knew she could be detached sometimes, that she didn’t always get upset the way some other people did, but in there, through that glass, lying on the operating table, his chest and abdomen split open, was a young man she’d been sleeping with—okay, dating—until a few days ago. And she was being called to the White House to tell a bunch of generals and cabinet members and the president how to kill spiders. A rolled-up newspaper? Would that joke go over? Probably not. She didn’t know what she could say.

It would be different if there were just a few of them. If she had them in her lab and had the time to study them. There were so many questions. Just the egg sacs to begin with. Why were there two kinds? One for longer incubations and a softer, sticky one for immediate delivery. How could some of the spiders hatch so quickly? It was as if some of the spiders were on fast-forward.

“Doctor Guyer?” She turned, expecting to see a suit, but it was a man in full army combat gear. Or maybe navy or Marines. In their fatigues, she didn’t know how she was supposed to tell them apart. She nodded. “Your ride’s here, ma’am,” the young man said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t hear the helicopter come in. Let me just . . .” She trailed off. She was about to say that she needed to tell Patrick she was leaving, but she caught sight of Julie coming down the corridor, running. Running.

No. It was too soon. Not twenty-four hours or even twelve hours yet. They should have more time! But Julie was running and screaming and Melanie knew it meant she’d gotten access to the data from the lab. Melanie turned back to the glass and started to bang on it with her fists, to get the attention of the nurses and the surgeon and the anesthesiologist and Patrick, to get them the hell out of there.

Too late.





Minneapolis, Minnesota


Mike knew he was out of his depth. But sometimes, when you’re thrown in, the only thing you can do is swim. Or, phone a friend.

They cordoned off the whole block, cleared the warehouse of anybody who wasn’t wearing a badge, and called in four more agents plus the bureau chief. But then, honestly, they just sort of stood around. Nobody knew what to do. They all stared at the egg sacs and made serious faces and serious sounds, but there wasn’t really a protocol for it. One of the junior agents came back with a big glass jar and scooped the dead spider from the floor into it, but other than that?

And then Mike remembered the card from the scientist in DC. He pulled it from his wallet. Melanie Guyer. Dr. Melanie Guyer. She’d written her cell phone number on the back. It was 8:30 A.M. Minneapolis time, so 9:30 A.M. in Washington, DC, but Mike figured that with all that was going on and with a lab full of those suckers, she was probably out and about. What he didn’t expect was for her to be on a helicopter.

He had to speak loudly, and with the hush in the warehouse—it was easier to look serious if you were kind of quiet—everybody turned to look at him. He held up his hand in an awkward apology and headed outside.

“Agent Rich—”

“Mike.”

“Mike, listen, not really a good time right now.”

“I found a few, well, I guess egg sacs? I can text you a picture.” There was no response for a few seconds. He listened to the staticky chop of the helicopter blades. “Hello?”

“Sorry. I’m just . . . I just watched spiders hatch from a living human.”

Mike pulled the phone back from his ear and looked at it. He knew it was a strange thing to do, but it was also a strange thing to hear, and he needed to make sure it wasn’t something he’d imagined. He put the phone back to his ear. “In DC?”