"Thanks, Sheriff."
"Thanks for coming in here and telling me all this," Harker said. "You did the right thing."
After they left, Harker sat at his desk and wondered what he was going to do next. He would have to warn his deputies a there were several out at Lovers' Lookout, and others at BioGenTech.
He decided to take the book, the fang, and head out to Lovers' Lookout first.
PART TWO.
Night of the Sun Spider.
Fourteen.
Deputy Dixie Cavanaugh slowly passed her flashlight beam over the ground at the foot of the embankment below Lovers' Lookout. Like the other deputies who were scattered around her and above her on the slope, she was looking for tracks that would show a bear or a mountain lion had been through there recently. So far, she'd seen only the tiny tracks of squirrels. Her back ached from bending over for so long and she was getting tired. But until Sheriff Harker said otherwise, they were to keep looking.
Dixie had been off duty watching television with her husband and son when she'd gotten a call from the station to come to work. Otherwise, she would be in bed with her husband Craig now.
She was twenty-nine years old and had short blonde hair. She was plump but curvaceous. She'd never quite been able to lose all the weight she'd gained when she had their son Cory. Craig had not complained; he liked the fact that her breasts were bigger than they used to be, and that made her happy.
She heard rustling in the bushes around her, but assumed it was other deputies.
Her flashlight beam passed over a crushed Coke can as a chilling sound rose from nearby a a man's shrill, ululating scream.
Dixie stood up straight and turned in the direction of the scream.
It went on and on. The sharp crack of a gun being fired reverberated through the night as several frantic voices rose around the scream.
Dixie bolted toward the commotion. She heard others running through the brush and weeds in that direction, too. The beam of her flashlight in her left hand jittered and jumped as she ran. She took her gun from its holster.
The scream was cut off, only to be followed by another cry, a horrified, high-pitched, "No! No! No!"
She darted around manzanita bushes and into a grove of oaks and pines until she saw them: Five men, two on the ground, three simply staring in silent shock, their flashlight beams on a creature that Dixie could not understand at first.
Deputy Oliver Hanscom lay on his back on the ground, his arms spread out at his sides. His gun was still clutched in his left hand. The creature that was on him had what looked like a dozen legs, all of which came up from the body, then curved sharply downward. It was yellow in the glow of the flashlights with the back half of its two-segmented body striped with black. It moved on Hanscom and made horrible sounds a slurping, smacking, sucking, and chattering clicking sounds.
Deputy Charlie Decker was on the ground, too. He tried to crawl away from the creature on Hanscom. Decker seemed to be wounded, and with each movement, he cried out in pain.
The other three a Deputies Herb Lewis, Steve Moody and Danny Crump a stood as if in shock, their mouths gaping. Lewis and Moody were on her left, Crump on her right with his back against the trunk of a pine tree. Moody and Crump had drawn their weapons, but Lewis was frozen in place, sidearm holstered.
"What're you waiting for?" Dixie shouted as she stepped toward the creature. She leveled her gun and fired once, twice.
The creature turned around and faced her, and Dixie felt her mind unravel like a ball of yarn, because it was a spider a a spider! a and it looked directly at her.
Moody fired his gun at the creature.
The spider was on him and had him on the ground before Dixie realized it had moved.
Moody screamed as the clicking sounds began. He kicked his legs, flailed his arms and he fired a round into the air. His scream became a gurgle as the spider made those slurping and sucking sounds. Then Moody fell silent.
Lewis screamed as he turned and ran away. His footsteps faded into the dark.
Dixie wanted to scream, but her throat was dry. She realized she'd been holding her breath. She suddenly sucked air into her lugs, but her breaths came fast as panic set in.
"Help me!" Decker cried in a hoarse, broken voice. "I'm hurt! I think it cut an artery in my leg, I'm bleedin' bad!"
Dixie fired again, and so did Crump.
The spider turned away from Moody, it's four fangs spread wide. It was on Crump in a heartbeat; it reared up and pinned him against the tree.
He screamed, "Help me please help me oh god oh Jesus oh a "
His screams were cut off by the clicking, chattering sound. The spider moved almost as if it were humping him. When it backed away, the top half of Crump's body fell forward and landed on the ground. His legs remained standing against the tree.
The spider pounced on Crump's torso and began clicketing as it slurped and sucked.
Dixie heard footsteps running toward them from behind. Other deputies probably had come down off the slope when they heard the gunfire.
It all had taken place in the space of ten or fifteen seconds.
Dixie fired her gun at the spider again a two, three, four times.
It turned toward her. The four black, individually articulate fangs, now dripping with blood, were open wide. It moved fast, but for Dixie, it was slow motion. The fangs got bigger as it got closer.
"What's happening?" Deputy Reese said behind her. He cried out when he saw the spider, an inarticulate cry.
The instant it was on her, the spider's fangs began to work. It cut open her abdomen and was eating her organs an instant before she died.
Fifteen.
Harker parked in the middle of Creasey Hill Road a there was no room on the turn out with four cruisers parked there already. No one used the dirt road except for teenagers coming to the lookout, so he wasn't worried about getting in the way of any traffic.
Flashlight in his right hand, the spider book tucked under his left arm, he went to the edge of the embankment and looked down, listened. He didn't see anyone, but he heard something. He frowned and cocked his head, trying to identify the sound.
It was someone crying. Someone with a deep voice. A man, maybe. But it was muffled.
"Hello?" he called. "Hello!"
When he got no response, he became suspicious. He unsnapped the strip of leather across the top of his holster, ready to draw his weapon.
The crying continued. He listened carefully, and realized it was coming from behind him. He turned around and faced the four cruisers. He saw a figure at the wheel of one of them, but couldn't tell who it was. He walked over to the car, leaned forward, and looked into the driver's-side window.
"Lewis?" he said when he recognized the deputy. "What's wrong? Lewis?"
Deputy Herb Lewis was blubbering like a little boy who'd just fallen of his bike.
Harker rapped a knuckle on the window a few times, and Lewis yelped and jumped in his seat, cried out, and turned to Harker with wide, teary eyes.
"Roll down the window, Lewis," Harker said.
"You've gotta get outta here!" Lewis cried, his voice high with panic. "Or get in here with me, get in, right now, before it comes!"
"Before what comes?"
"It's killing them! It's killing them all!"
"Dammit, Lewis, roll down the window."
"Get in the car! Get in the car for god's sake Tony before it comes!"
Sighing with frustration, Harker walked around to the other side of the car and got in, closed the door. "What's going on, Lewis? Tell me."
"It had so many legs, that thing, it was ... " He stopped a moment and clenched his eyes shut, shook his head, and spoke through clenched teeth. "It was a spider, Tony. A huge spider. And it killed Hanscom, and hurt Decker, and it was gonna kill *em all, so I ran, I had to run, my god, I couldn't just stand there and be next, I couldn't!"
Oh, shit, Harker thought. "Where did this happen, Herb? Where?"
Lewis nodded toward the edge of the embankment. "Down there. In the woods."
Harker put the spider book on the dashboard, the flashlight on the floorboard, and grabbed the radio microphone. "Dispatch, Harker. I need back-up at Lovers' Lookout, now. Back-up at Lovers' Lookout."
"Ten-four," Shelly said.
Harker replaced the microphone.
"It's a spider, Tony," Lewis said. "A spider! How can that be?"
"I don't know, Herb. I don't know."
Harker wasn't sure what to do. He wanted to get down there to his deputies, but he was afraid that if he went down alone, he'd end up dead and then be no good to anyone. But it had to be done. He took the shotgun mounted between the seats and opened the door.
Lewis gibbered, "No, Tony, don't go out there, don't, don't, it's huge, and it's fast, it's so fast you can't even see it move, it's just sort of, sort of gone, and then it reappears somewhere else."
"Who was down there?" Harker asked.
It took several seconds because he stuttered and stammered, but Lewis listed off the names of the deputies down in the woods with the spider.
"Oh, Jesus," Harker whispered. "Look, Herb, you stay here, okay? Just stay right here in this car, don't get out. I've got more deputies coming. Tell them to bring their shotguns down the slope. You hear me? Will you tell them that?"
Lewis nodded jerkily.
Harker took the flashlight from the floorboard, pushed the door open and got out.
"It'll kill you all, it will, it'll kill you and then it'll eat you, don't go, don't go down there, don't fucking go!"
Harker closed the door and went to the edge of the embankment. He made his way down the slope as fast as he could without falling.
"Cavanaugh!" he called. "Decker! Moody!"
No response.
Every little sound he heard made him jump.
He swept the flashlight back and forth as he zigzagged between the manzanita bushes. He went into the darker part of the woods, among the oaks and pines.
He heard rustling in the weeds behind him. He spun around and it stopped. He started to turn back and heard it again, then again. It was getting closer.
Harker aimed the shotgun low, ready to shoot.
Whatever it was, it wasn't very big. It got closer. He saw a small shape in the weeds.
It meowed at him. It was a calico cat.
Harker sighed with relief, then turned around and continued on.
When he found them, he had to look away for a moment. It was Tiffany Huff all over again, but now there were seven of them. At first, he thought there were eight, then he realized Crump was in two pieces.
"Oh, Jesus holy Christ," he said in a breath as he turned the flashlight on each of them, one after another.
Their uniforms had been shredded, abdomens ripped open, organs eaten. Their thighs were gone, with only femurs left behind, the bones picked clean. Their throats had been ripped out and eaten, heads almost severed on a couple of them.
They stared up at him with dead, dull eyes.
He shone the flashlight all around, but there was no sign of the spider. He was relieved by that. His eyes welled up with tears as he looked over the small massacre again. He clenched his teeth and ground them together a little. Sick to his stomach and feeling weary, he turned around and headed back for the slope.
The coroner would be paying his second visit of the night to Lovers' Lookout.
Sixteen.
Harker assembled the other deputies who'd arrived at Lovers' Lookout. They stood behind the four cruisers parked in the lookout.