Rodney dragged in a long, rumbling gasp.
It was a spider, just as Brandon had said, an enormous golden spider with legs about five feet long and a black-striped abdomen.
Heidi screamed again and kept on screaming as the creature turned and faced them head-on, then climbed up onto the hood with its back half hanging off. Two black beady eyes positioned very close together stared in through the windshield above the nightmarish maw. Its three black fangs, one on top and two beneath them, articulated separately at the bottom center of its round, hairy face. Rodney realized in a fleeting way that it was missing a fang, the one on the top left side.
He stomped his foot onto the gas pedal and the car bolted forward. He turned the wheel back and forth, swerving the car to the right, to the left, back to the right again.
The spider slid off the hood on the left side and fell to the road, and Rodney got the car on a straight course again, but he did not slow down.
Heidi continued to scream.
Rodney looked in the rearview mirror.
It was following them, chasing them. And although it was several yards behind, it was keeping pace with them.
"Stop, Heidi, stop!" he shouted.
She stopped screaming and sobbed instead.
He drove faster as he kept glancing in the mirror.
The spider was falling behind.
He rounded a corner with a faint squeal of tires, then sped down another straight stretch.
It was gone. It had given up.
"Did you see that, did you see it?" Heidi cried.
"I saw it, all right," he said as he kept driving.
A furniture store commercial played on the radio, completely ignored.
Rodney finally slowed the car to a stop at the side of the road. He put the gearshift in park and unfastened his seatbelt. "We're trading seats, Heidi. Come over here." He pulled on the door handle, but the door stuck. He slammed his weight against it a couple of times and it popped open. He got out and walked around the front of the car to the driver's side as Heidi unfastened her seatbelt, then clumsily climbed over into the passenger's seat as she continued to cry.
Rodney turned to her and put his arm across her shoulders. "Are you all right?"
She was calmer now, sniffling. She nodded erratically. "I-I'm j-just a little shuh-shook up, is all."
"That makes two of us."
Rodney's heart was speeding in his chest, and his hands trembled. He leaned over and kissed Heidi. "You gonna be okay, now?"
"I ... I don't know. I mean, I-I-I can't believe we just ... saw that."
"Neither can I. But that's what Brandon said, remember? He said it had a lot of legs, just like a spider."
She nodded.
"Seatbelts," Rodney said.
They fastened their belts, then Rodney put the car in gear. He checked for traffic, then made a U-turn on Cutter Way.
"What are you doing?" Heidi said, her voice rising higher with each word.
"We have to go back."
"Why? Can't you just take me home?"
"I will if you want, but we've got to tell the sheriff, and he's more likely to believe both of us than just me."
He drove back the way they'd come.
"What if it's still there?"
Rodney increased his speed. "Then I'll run over it."
"We're going back to the sheriff's office?"
"Not right away. There's someone we need to talk to first, someone who can tell us exactly what that thing was."
"Who?"
"My little brother."
Twelve.
The crescent moon was an amorphous glow behind the dark smoke from the BioGenTech fire as Rodney drove home. The smoke moved in a thin mist through town, creating halos around the streetlights. The night had grown chillier in the last hour. Rodney drove down Center Street to the southern end of town, where the Lepkes lived in a subdivision called Hope Valley Heights.
Rodney looked at his watch; it was ten minutes after eleven. His parents would be in bed already, which was fine. His dad was going to be very upset about the damage done to the Mustang and Rodney did not look forward to explaining it to him.
His little brother Harold would still be awake in his room, playing a video game or watching a DVD, maybe playing with Gideon, his tarantula.
Rodney pulled into the driveway. Dad's SUV and Mom's Toyota were parked in the closed garage.
"So, you think your little brother will know what kind of spider it is?" Heidi asked as they got out of the car.
"He's nuts for arachnids," he said. "He's got a tarantula, a scorpion. Harry's real smart, but he's a little weird. Kind of a geek."
Rodney went to the rear of the car to inspect the damage.
There was a hole a few inches around in the edge of the trunk. There were two, actually, but one had something lodged in it ... something long and black with a lump of viscous pus-like goo on the top end of it. Rodney wrapped his hand around the black object and pried it from the hole in the trunk.
It was about a foot long, as smooth and hard as bone. It was round and cylindrical at the top, but in the last few inches, it became flat and narrow with a serrated edge that culminated in a very sharp tip.
"What's that?" Heidi said.
"When it was in front of the car, I noticed it looked funny that it had only one fang on top," Rodney said. "It lost one in the trunk."
"That's one of its fangs?"
"Yeah. My little brother's gonna love this. If he believes it."
Holding the fang in his right hand, Rodney led Heidi up the front walk to the door. His keys jangled as he unlocked the door and they went inside. They went down the hall to the first door on the left, and Rodney knocked quietly.
"Harry?" he said just above a whisper. He didn't want to disturb his parents. He could hear a movie playing in the bedroom. Without waiting for a response, he opened the door and led Heidi inside.
Eleven-year-old Harry sat at his cluttered desk facing the computer screen. He was watching an old black-and-white movie on the monitor. Rodney recognized it as one of Harry's favorites, Black Scorpion, about a giant scorpion. Harry must have seen the movie a hundred times, but he never tired of it.
Harry turned in his chair. He'd inherited their mom's blond hair and wore black-rimmed glasses with thick lenses. He was chubby from spending so much time inside and too little time exercising.
There were posters on the walls of spiders and scorpions, including two movie posters a Black Scorpion and Tarantula. Models of a variety of arachnids covered the shelves on the walls. Hanging from the ceiling in one corner of the room was a spider mobile. Shelves held rows of books on one wall. There were a few regular toys here and there, but the room was dominated by arachnids.
"Hey, Harry," Rodney said.
"Hey," the boy said.
"This is Heidi," Rodney said. "I've told you about her."
Harry stood, facing them. "Hello, Heidi," he said.
"Hi, Harry," she said. "It's nice to a " She gasped.
Harry wore blue pajamas, and clinging to the front of the shirt over his chest was a large tarantula.
Heidi stepped back and moved behind Rodney.
"Can you put Gideon away for now?" Rodney said.
Harry went to a shelf that held two terrariums. He gently plucked the tarantula from his shirt, lifted the top on one of the terrariums, and put the spider inside.
"What do you want?" Harry said.
"Harry, you're not going to believe this," Rodney said, speaking quietly.
"Believe what?"
"We just saw a spider."
"So?"
"It wasn't an ordinary spider. It was half the size of my car."
A frown slowly grew on Harry's forehead. "This a joke?"
"No, it's not a joke."
"It's not," Heidi said. "My heart's still pounding from it."
"It attacked my car," Rodney said. "I can show you the holes. You think I'd damage my Mustang for a joke? It also killed Tiffany Huff tonight. And it left this stuck in the hole when it bit the trunk of the car." Rodney held out the black fang.
"Have you been doing drugs?" Harry said as he walked over to Rodney. He took the fang in hand but didn't take his eyes from Rodney's for a moment. "There are no spiders that big."
"Well, there is now, Harry," Rodney said. "Take a look at that thing."
Harry inspected the fang, then looked suspiciously at Rodney. "Did you buy this at the novelty shop over in Ridgeton?"
"No, dammit, I'm telling you, it was stuck in the trunk of my car. The spider actually bit the back end of my car."
"What do you want me to do about it?" Harry said, looking at the fang again.
"I want to know what kind of spider it is, then I'm going to tell the sheriff about it."
"The sheriff?"
"It's a long story, Harry, just trust me on this, okay? We're kind of in a hurry."
Still frowning suspiciously, Harry nodded slightly. "Okay. What'd it look like?"
"It's gold colored, and it has a lot of hair on it. It's abdomen has black stripes. And it's got a lot of legs."
"If it's a spider," Harry said, "it's got eight legs."
"Well, it looked like it had a lot of them."
"Can you draw it?" Harry said "You know I can't draw very well, Harry."
"You can't describe it very well, either."
"Okay, I'll try."
Harry handed the fang to Heidi, then turned to his desk and opened a drawer. He took out a sketchpad, took a pen from the desktop, and handed them over to Rodney.
Rodney took the pad and pen and sat down on the edge of Harry's unmade bed.
As Rodney tried to draw the spider he and Heidi had seen, Harry turned to Heidi and said, "You wanna see my scorpion, Caesar?"
"Uh ... not really, Harry," she said. "I'm not too big on bugs."
"Scorpions aren't really bugs," Harry said. "They're *nids."
"*Nids?"