Chương 98: 96: Come Into My Parlor

Right. Now that we'd gotten rid of Bryce, we should probably get Megan some levels, too.

"We had a very productive day yesterday," Jack said, a little too brightly. I gave him a look and said, "Your parents killed a lot of rats while we were out."

"I knew Mom'd gotten a mage class, but Level 10?" Megan yanked a tissue out of the pack and blew her nose. Pulling out another, she wiped her eyes before saying briskly, "I want in. What do I need to do?"

"We need to find a rift," I said. We were driving into Spruce Gap, on the cute downtown main street, and Missy was going slowly enough that I thought my jacket might be able to lead us to one. The thought came with a pull to the left. My jacket guided us along side streets until we reached a grocery store parking lot. The rift shimmered dead center of a shopping cart corral, with shopping carts scattered around it like bumper cars at an amusement park.

Missy drew the car to a stop several parking places away from the rift. The Highlander wasn't the only car in the parking lot, but the few other cars were at the edges, either avoiding the rift or where the employees usually parked. The store's exterior was trashed. Whatever monsters had come out of the rift had gone straight through it, leaving behind smashed glass, twisted metal in the doorframe, jagged marks in the walls that looked like claw marks, green ichor in puddles on the ground.

Not looters, but creatures. We all got out of the car, dogs included. The rift was right there, but I was still looking at the store. Spruce Gap wasn't the smallest town in North Carolina, but it was a long way from being the biggest, either, and that grocery store held resources that people needed. I glanced at Bear, who was sniffing at the nearest green puddle. She liked exploring, but I didn't like the look of that green stuff. Instead, I turned to Jack.

"Hey, Jack." I tilted my head toward the store.

"Think you can stealth in there and see if any monsters are huddled up inside?"

"You want to go shopping?" he asked, surprised.

"No, but people in this town might. And…" I looked back at the store windows. I didn't see movement inside, but it felt like a trap to me. Was it just the quiet of the parking lot, the lack of people around a place that ought to be a central gathering spot in a town this small? No, that wasn't it. Through the broken glass, I could see a stack of bottled water, an end-cap sale. Why was that water still there?

During the pandemic, when COVID went viral (so to speak), people stocked up on bottled water as if we'd all collectively decided the virus was going to contaminate the water supply. You couldn't find it on store shelves for love or money. Hurricanes go the same way, with a somewhat stronger rationale. If the store still had bottled water, no one had gone shopping in the past six days. And no one had looted either, despite the broken door.

It seemed a hell of a lot more likely that people who went into the store didn't come back out again.

"There's something in there." I nodded toward the puddle.

"Something with green blood that's killing everyone who enters." Jack laughed.

"So you want me to go inside?"

"Stealth inside. Be sneaky. If it's been in there for six days and it's killed anyone who's tried to go shopping, it's probably leveled up a few times." If it was anything like the boar, it might be more than Jack could handle on his own, Void-Touched Dagger or not.

"Don't take any dumb chances," I added.

"Just find out what we're dealing with and come right back." Jack gave me a thumbs-up before turning into a shadow and beginning to drift across the parking lot.

"Wow," I said, almost involuntarily. He'd shown off his favorite ability in the sewer, but in the dark he just disappeared. Out here in the sunshine, he wasn't invisible, but intangible. His opponents might still be able to track his movement in the midst of a battle, but how do you fight a shadow?

"I thought you wanted to get to New Jersey." Missy sounded more worried about Jack than New Jersey.

"Is this my chance?" Megan asked, looking resolute.

"Should I go in, too?" Bear lay down on the asphalt, gaze focused on the store. My job, her ears said sulkily. I explore. Monsters? Zelda's tail beat a nice little staccato against my leg. Let's go. Time to hunt!

"We're just going to find out what we're dealing with first," I said, eyes on the store. Jack's shadow had disappeared inside. I still didn't see any movement, which was probably a good sign. Or at least a sign that the monsters inside hadn't noticed him yet. And then I did see movement. Lots and lots of creepy-crawly fucking icky movement.

"Oh my god," I breathed out the words through incipient panic. It was spiders. It was a shit ton of teeny-tiny spiders, flooding out of the store like a tidal wave.

"Oh, no," Missy said next to me.

"Oh, no, we don't." She started spraying water from her fingertips like a hose.

"Glad I'm wearing boots," David said. He moved out ahead of the water and started stomping as fast as he could.

"They're probably venomous," I said to Missy.

"Save some mana for your regeneration heals." Warden's Edge in my hand, although I didn't remember pulling it out, I joined David in the stomping. My personal stomping came accompanied with lots of yelling of the "Die, you fuckers," variety. Why did monsters have to be so goddamn icky? Bugs, slime creatures, rats, and now spiders? At least critters were reasonably easy to kill in large numbers, but still.

I hadn't thought about using [Mana Absorption] before beginning to stomp, but once I was out in the middle of the ick, I gave it a try. It did something. I could see a change. But I couldn't tell what happened. The spiders didn't fade away into nothingness, and the light mana fog I pulled away from them felt like static. If, you know, static was a feeling. The dogs were barking up a storm, but most of the noise was extremely disgruntled. I guess spiders weren't their favorite opponents either.

They were killing them in ones and twos, a bite or a paw smack at a time, when the swarm contained hundreds.

"Don't eat them," I ordered a little too late. Bear was licking her muzzle with a very puzzled expression. I slowed in my own stomping to see if she was okay, and then had to shake spiders off my leg with a yelp. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Crunchy, Bear told me. Not good.

"Get back," Megan shouted. She'd emerged from behind the car with a lighter in one hand and a can of hairspray in the other. She flicked the lighter, held it out in front of her, then sprayed through the flame, aiming at the ground. The jet of fire blasted the swarm as she swung her arm. Spiders became ashes. Suddenly, Jack was next to me.

"You were right. We've got to go in there."

"Killing spiders at the moment, dude." I was still stomping with all my might.

"Yeah, okay. I'm going back then. Come when you can."

"Wait, what?" I looked up, but he was already gone. I growled in frustration and whistled for the dogs.

"A little more information would have been nice, Jack!" I yelled, in case he could still hear me. The tidal wave had stopped flowing and our spider massacre had been reasonably effective, but there were still plenty of them left to kill. I left Jack's family to the destruction and followed Jack into the store. It was a typical chain grocery store layout: cashiers in the front, aisles of dry goods and cans, produce and deli to the right, freezer section and wine to the left.

I stopped right in the entrance and gave the dogs the hand signal to stop, too. The store looked normal. Okay, some broken glass by the windows. But otherwise, the aisles were stocked and clean. Nobody'd been throwing fireballs around. Battles hadn't destroyed shelves, nothing was spilled. The lights were off, there was no hum of ventilation. The air didn't smell great: the produce section probably held some rotting fruit, and odors from the meat case were leaking through their plastic wrap.

But otherwise, it looked fine. I didn't move. I couldn't tell you how I knew. Maybe it was the Perception, maybe it was one of those traits, maybe it was some subconscious horror movie osmosis. But I knew I had to look up. And I knew I didn't want to. I lifted my eyes, barely moving my head. Then I stopped breathing. Instinctive response, nothing I could do about it. I wanted to back out. Then maybe I'd go vomit in the bushes.

And then after that, I was going to head straight home, make myself a cup of mint tea, huddle in my blue throw, and not move for an hour. I'd just sit in my sunroom, as much of Riley on my lap as would fit, and shudder. But I'd do all that after— after— we dealt with the spiders all over the ceiling, including the ridiculously gigantic one in the back corner, and all the webbed… body bags. That's what they were, those webs. Body bags. I bit back my whimper as I realized why Jack was in a hurry.

Some of the body bags were moving. Not gently swaying in a draft, which would still have been awful, but bulges appearing on the exterior then disappearing, then reappearing. The people inside were struggling. Maybe trying to get free, or maybe fighting for oxygen. Or maybe just… suffering. I already knew I didn't have a spider-killing ability, but I took a quick glance at my abilities list anyway, hoping that somehow miraculously [Flamethrower] had shown up. It hadn't.

And I had nothing, absolutely nothing, that was going to help me kill spiders. Once they attacked, [Verdant Reprisal] might fire. If it did, though, would it impale the webbed people, too? A quick death might be better than this slow one, but I didn't want to make that choice for them. The dogs were growling, all three of them, low in their throats. Only Bear seemed to understand what we were looking at, though. Dogs don't look up any more than people do. And what could they do against spiders?

Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. The words ran through my head as I met the gaze of the big spider. At least I thought I was meeting its gaze. The eyes—and there were way too many of them—reflected the light, shining back at me like, I don't know, something awful. Like the monster it was, of course, the one under the bed that kids were afraid of, with the glittering eyes looking back at you out of the darkness. It was waiting for me.

Waiting for us, really, to step closer, to get within reach of its webbing. How far could it throw? I tapped [Analyze]. Level 14. Shit. The monsters were getting tougher. But this one had probably spent six days sitting inside a grocery store munching on people, so maybe it was tougher just because it had eaten a lot. Yeah, I really wanted to forget about that alternative integration enhancement thing.

"Level 14, Jack," I called out.

"On the big one." Rapidly, I scanned the others, counting and checking levels at the same time. There were eleven I could see and none of them were anywhere close to the big one: all levels 2 and 3 with one that had reached 4.

"The smaller ones are lower level." One of the smaller ones scrambled across the web, heading toward us. I didn't take a step closer. Letting it come to us sounded like an excellent plan. But I shouted over my shoulder, "If you've got a bow, Megan, now would be a great time to get some practice in." Things started happening very quickly after that. Jack appeared above the big spider and dropped onto it, dagger in hand. He stabbed, stabbed, stabbed again, hacking into its cephalothorax like a frenzied serial killer.

Unsurprisingly, it did not sit still for this. The noise made by the vibrating web and its thrashing legs and clacking fangs was bad punk rock, with the dogs adding a drum line of furious barking. Megan stepped up beside me and started shooting. I shot a quick glance in her direction. I knew nothing about bows, but the thing she was using didn't look medieval to me.

"Did you—" I started.

"Big Hunger Games fan, yeah. Gave it up a few years ago, never thought it would come in handy. The bow was in a box under my bed. That was how I convinced Bryce to go to my parents first, before coming to Spruce Gap." Megan killed three spiders while she was chatting. Arrow, notch, pull, dead spider, arrow, notch… you get the idea. It was a thing of beauty. As she aimed at the fourth, killing it with the same easy competence, Missy and David joined us in the store.

"Oh, God, Jack—" Missy put her hand over her mouth in dismay. And then she straightened her shoulders and aimed at the nearest spider, shooting it with a water bullet.

"I wish I still had my poker. I would smash those things like you wouldn't believe."

"Are those—those are people in there, aren't they?" David ignored the spiders in favor of the webbed sacks. Fair enough, since apart from the one Jack was still stabbing, the rest of the spiders were basketball-sized and scrambling away from Megan's arrows and Missy's bullets.

"We need to figure out how to get them down safely. Maybe a ladder? I'll check the back."

"Kill the spiders first, dear," Missy said.

"Right, right." He pulled his hammer off his shoulder and looked for a spider to kill. The big spider made one last raucous noise and fell. Jack rode it partway down, then grabbed a strand of webbing and hung from it, dangling six feet up. The spider landed on the ground, took a couple of faltering steps forward on its ridiculously long, terrifying legs, then dropped, its legs giving way. It shuddered, green ichor trailing down its spiky body, then stopped moving. The eyes still shone, but they looked duller.

"Did you get a notification?" I called out as Zelda shook the body of one of Missy's kills like it was a dog toy.

"Yeah, it's dead. Let's get these sacks down."

"Still a couple left," Megan replied, stepping to one side to try to get a better line of sight.

"You and Mom are ranged. Take 'em out while Dad and I help these people." What was I, chopped liver? But I didn't say anything. I'd help if they needed me to, but in a choice between a) touch spider webs and b) don't touch spider webs, I was clearly fine with option b. Alas, option a became mine sooner than I would have hoped. Jack and David got the body bags down and laid them on the floor, but they could move faster if they didn't need to cut the cocoons open.

Jack gave me back the dagger for the moment, and I sliced people free. Not, unfortunately, nearly as many people as I would have hoped. We saved six people. And recovered eleven bodies. The oldest bodies—by which I mean the ones who'd been dead the longest, not the oldest people—were partially liquefied. They smelled like a nightmare, sweet and bloody at the same time, like the heaviness of an overwhelming rose perfume inside a butcher shop. Not rot, but fresh blood turned into honey.

And I guess when I say it smelled like a nightmare, it was because I knew I'd be having them. On the scale of Jack dissolving in the lizard's acid and Pen's brother hanging from my bougainvilleas… well, it was right up there. Was it ironic or just sad that Reverend Barrow's exploding head wasn't even in my top three anymore? The people we saved were not ungrateful. But they were also fucking traumatized. One, a woman around my age, just kept soundlessly crying, the tears running down her face in a steady flow.

She functioned, gathering with the others, talking about bodies and notifying next of kin, food distribution and water, but the entire time, the tears just kept coming. I nudged Zelda to go lick her, but whatever Resilience boost she got from [Emotional Support for the Win] didn't make a dent in the dripping. It was awful. Jack and Megan discreetly collected their spider loot, including a cool black cloak from the big spider for Jack and packets of spider silk from the smaller spiders.

I, also discreetly, shoplifted a couple cans of baby formula and one bag of Zelda's favorite style of treat. When we were leaving, David asked one of the guys if he thought it would be okay to leave the car in the parking lot. The guy glanced back at the store, a little helpless, and replied, "The store manager… I recognized his shirt. He… I'm sure it's fine."

He laughed, although it sounded like it came from exhaustion, not humor, and added, "No overnight parking, but the police never tow, they just say they will." By the time we'd gathered our belongings and stepped into the rift, I was so ready to take my dogs and go home. Long road trips are always tiring, but long road trips interspersed with killing monsters were worse. But we stepped out of the rift into Enclave Team Fellow Survivors and into a party. Really, it was a party.