CHAPTER 9 - WHAT ABOUT THE COOKS?

The three biggest spiders I’d ever seen scuttled forward from the shadows. They made a bee-line for us. I had a sneaking suspicion those cocoons in the corner were the kitchen staff, and those spiders were aiming to add us to their collection. Not my kink.

“Run!” I shouted, rushing toward the door while I passed the mental command for my zombies to cover us.

One of the spiders jumped at Rosie, wrapping legs around him and biting his neck. Fortunately whatever venom these guys had didn’t seem to work on my zombie, because he kept fighting, and ripped a leg off the offending spider.

Alfred and Kat were right behind me, making for the doors, but the other two spiders ignored the zombies and kept coming at us. We weren’t going to make it to the back doors before they were on us. I turned to face the things.

I’ve got no real bone to pick with spiders. They do their thing, I do mine. I took enough biology classes to know that world without spiders would suck.

But these things were spiders of unusual size, so to speak. I didn’t think even Australia had critters this big. Their main body was the size of my head, and their legs were about as long as my arm. Like, these things were big, and that size meant they moved alarmingly fast.

One of them was on top of me almost before I could get the axe in to block, but I barely managed. The blow wasn’t strong, though, knocking it aside without really hurting the thing.

Beside me I was vaguely aware of Alfred fending off the other spider. His strength made moving the axe easier, and his blows were faster than mine even though I had the agility stone. I was starting to get a little magic envy.

My opponent came back at me, scuttling in at an angle. It was trying to bite my ankle. I had no idea what the venom of a spider this big would be like, but I definitely didn’t want to find out! Those fangs looked huge, and I was certain they’d inject a lethal dose.

I pivoted the axe and swung it like a golf club, blade coming in to meet the monster spider as it closed with me. This time I made a solid impact, slicing through one of the legs and making a shallow cut in the abdomen. I was half expecting a squeal or screech, but apparently that wasn’t happening. The spider was just as silent as I struck it as it had been before. It seemed like it had enough, though, because it dashed away from me, heading back toward the cocoons.

Guildenstern caught it halfway there, stomping his bare foot down hard on the middle of its back. Bug juice splattered, and the thing spasmed, then went still.

“Good job, Guildie!” I called out as I whirled toward the other two.

Rosie must have scared off his spider, because it was nowhere to be seen. There were a couple of spider legs on the floor, though, so Rosie had done some serious damage. Alfred was just finishing his spider off, his axe coming down hard in a powerful blow that bit into the floor tiles, breaking one. The spider stopped cold.

“Nice moves,” I told him.

“Thanks,” he replied. Was that a blush? Aw, cute. At least he was keeping it together.

Unlike my roomie. A glance her way told me she was freaking out. A certain level of ‘oh shit’ was to be expected, but I had a feeling she was going to go over the top. I went to the spider Guildenstern killed and tapped it, receiving another clear crystal for my troubles.

“Oh my god. What the hell was that?” Kat babbled. “They were spiders! They were coming for us and they… Ohmygod.”

I left her to sort it out for herself and checked on my boys. Guildenstern was unhurt, but Rosencrantz was looking a little ragged. He’d already taken some stab wounds from the goblins, and now he had spider bites as well. If the critters had venom, that at least didn’t seem to be affecting him. But these spiders had fangs the size of my fingers, and he’d been bitten more than once. His head lolled to one side, still mostly attached, but not as securely as it used to be.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

That sucked. Unlike Doctor Carver, I couldn’t just go animate something. I had to take control of an existing undead. I could see some plusses and minuses to each, and right now the damaging accruing was a negative. I considered dumping Rosie, just chopping his head off with the axe or something and controlling one of the other zombies from outside, but I hesitated. It might be hard to grab one of the things out of the crowd, and if even one of that pack of zombies spotted me I worried the rest would get interested really fast, same as back in the classroom building.

I’d stick with Rosie for now, and hopefully find some duct tape or something to patch him up. That settled, I turned back toward the others. “We need to keep moving. Those zombies won’t be far behind us.”

“Selena, we can’t just leave!” Kat said.

I shook my head at her, surprised. “I’m sorry?”

Far as I was concerned, leaving was precisely what needed to happen next.

“What about the cooks?” Kat asked, pointing at the cocoons.

I winced. I had a good idea what was inside those cocoons, and it really wouldn’t be super pretty, if I was right. Spiders had venom which broke down tissue into goop, so they could more easily eat it. With the size of these things, those cooks would be like a bird that had been caught in a web, encased in silk, then bitten a few times to ‘soften’ it up.

There was a study about what happened to birds caught in spiderwebs. If they were encased, and not rescued by a human, the mortality rate was one hundred percent.

“Kat, they’re dead,” I said softly.

“You can’t know that. We need to check,” Kat replied. She went to a tipped over block of knives and pulled one out as she walked toward the cocoons.

“We only killed two of the spiders,” I warned her. “The other is injured, but it’s still out there somewhere.”

That got her to stop for a moment, but then she shook her head. “It must be scared off. It’ll run for it and not come near us, now that we showed them we can bite back. Come on—we need to at least see if they can be helped. Aren’t you training to be a doctor?”

That stung. I was training to save people, and if these people needed medical help and I had a proper emergency room and a couple more years of experience, I could maybe do something. But even if they were alive, the amount of venom they’d have inside them would be lethal without access to a modern hospital.

The nearest hospital was Fletcher Allen, less than a mile away, but it might as well be a hundred or a thousand miles. We’d barely managed to get anywhere since all this started. Trying to make the trek to the hospital was insane.

But she wasn’t wrong. If it were me trapped in there, I’d want someone to at least try, right?

“Okay, we’ll check on them, but be careful”! I said. I pulled another knife from the block and went toward the nearest cocoon. I set both zombies to guard me; if they saw any dangers, they’d attack. Kat might think that injured spider was long gone, but I wasn’t so sure. Nor was I completely certain there weren’t more of the things, someplace nearby. It paid to be cautious.

I tapped the webbing with the knife, which stuck fast. Not great. I had to pull hard to get it free again. I tried again, this time deliberately hooking a chunk of fibers with the serrated part of the edge. Sawing back and forth on the silk took some doing, but the threads parted faster as I continued to work. Once I cut apart that little bit, I slipped the knife back into the cocoon and pulled out a little more, repeating the effort.

It was tough work, but after a couple of tries I was getting the hang of it, and the webbing was coming apart more readily. I felt like I was almost through to whatever was stored inside, but it was weird. I’d gotten a sense of the contents by pushing the knife against the cocoon a few times, and it didn’t feel solid enough to be a person, even though the shape looked roughly human. It was more…squishy. Like the cocoon was around a big water balloon.

I had a very bad feeling about this.

Finally the knife cut deep enough, and red liquid flowed out of the tiny gap I’d made in a dribble. I cut the gap wider, careful not to slice inside the cocoon in case the person was still alive inside, just injured. But deep down I already knew what I was looking at even more of the spiders’ victim dribbled out of the wider gap in the web. That wasn’t a person in there, not anymore. I backed away, gagging.

“You all right?” Alfred asked. He stood there, axe in hand, watching over me and Kat just like my zombies.

“Ugh. No, I’m not,” I replied. “They’re definitely dead. There’s nothing we can do for these people, and unless we want to join them, we need to move.”

Before Alfred could reply, Kat shrieked behind me. I whirled and saw precisely what I’d been afraid of: the missing spider, fangs deep in Kat’s calf.