Sand shifted underfoot as Jay stepped out of nothing onto the bright summer beach. Blinking in the sudden light he threw up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, blinding in the clear blue skies. The sea sparkled as each ripple caught the light. It was heavenly, and all he wanted to do was lie down on the beach and nap.

If he did, he knew he would never wake up.

His new employers didn't send people like him to safe places. This time he had been told only that he should remove his collar on arrival and not to get bit. Jay's first thought had been zombies, but in this tranquillity that seemed impossible. He'd have heard them coming surely, seen some signs that they had been here. Instead it was peaceful, beautiful, and hot.

Round the curve of the bay, he could see buildings, a dock, and a jetty which even had a rowing boat moored to it. Whatever the supposed threat to all life was it hadn't destroyed those, but if he took his collar off he would.

Reluctantly he reached for the metal, looking at the trees swaying in the light wind, the forest that stretched up from the shores. It was beautiful, light glinting between the trees, silver rays twinkling in the air as the wind moved the branches. But whatever this was, it was so bad that if Jay hadn't gone they would have sent LaVonna and hoped. So bad that they hadn't sent Salman, claiming he would make it worse since he couldn't get the whole island at once. So bad that they would have done that even knowing there were still people here.

Jay couldn't do it, not without knowing, not without being sure there was no way to save anyone. The briefing said the people were part of the problem, but with the translator he could talk to them. Negotiate with them, possibly. Maybe this time there would be no murder.

It was too hot to jog so he walked along the sand, enjoying the tropical morning. Out in the bay white lines glistened along the waves, fish tangled below the waterline. If the nets were out someone had to be here. Along the top of the nets the light brown specks he had to shade his eyes to see did little to mar the pristine whiteness of the lines.

The skin on his shoulders was beginning to redden and Jay picked up the pace. The buildings were ahead. After he had checked them, if there was no one there he could get into the forest and out of the sun. If there was, a bottle of water and some sunscreen would be really great about now.

Jay stopped well short of the buildings, remembering far too many horror films. Getting shot by a survivor would be embarrassing. They were in good repair, a larger building that had to be a dock office and a lean-to shed alongside it. The door of the larger was half-open, propped by a rock.

"Hullo? Hi?" He called out, and waited. There was no response, just the tranquil silence of the island broken only by the faint rustling of leaves and the sound of waves on sand. There wasn't even birdsong.

Jay tried calling again, and again there was no answer. Dead silence and abandoned buildings. He tensed. He had seen enough horror films to know when he was in one. A finger ready at the collar release, he crept sideways towards the waterline, trying to get a peek through the half-open door. There were no people in there, no bodies either, just a desk with something wood and metal in pieces on it. Creeping a little closer, the smashed object looked like an old-school radio, and a smashed radio wasn't a good sign.

He jumped back, looking up. In the shadow under the overhanging roof, it had seemed like the shadow moved. Staring straight at it Jay couldn't see a thing, virtually blinded by the bright sun. Since he wasn't an idiot he wasn't going any closer. Entering the building to search for clues meant walking under the eaves. Yeah, no.

Picking his way round the side of the buildings, expecting to be jumped at any moment, Jay kept to the sand. The shade of the forest was nice, but he wasn't going to risk the forest until he knew what was doing on. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of patches of bark shimmering oddly, shadows that seemed to be the wrong shape. It couldn't be the sun playing tricks, he was certain: some of the darker patches were changing shape when he looked away. Almost he pulled the collar away, let his curse take the forest, but - his mother's clothes empty on the kitchen floor - he couldn't do it. If there were people here he could spare, people here he could save, he had to try.

He was glad when he got passed the buildings, back to the full width of the bay and the safety of the hot sun. The little wooden jetty stuck out here, more of the fishing lines trailing from it into the water. By the shore on the tideline, legs in the water and tangled in the fishing lines, there lay a person.

"Hi?" Jay called again, nervously, seeing the odd glitter off the surface of the jetty. From what he could make out in the glare, the person's legs were rising and falling limply with the waves. Corpses weren't going to answer.

The outline looked a bit off, softened somehow. Maybe the culprit was someone like him, a victim of a power they could not control. Someone he could help, like he'd been helped. Jay walked down, resolute, but trying to watch the buildings, the forest, and the person at the same time. He had to know.

It was a man's body, face down in the sand for which Jay silently thanked everything. The stink wasn't as bad as he'd expected, even with the dark morbidities marking the limbs and darker patches under the fine silk blanket that covered him. The blanket trailed into the water, extended into the fishing lines that ran into the sea. The dark shapes were moving, running along the lines from the water onto the body. He couldn't breathe. His mind wouldn't assemble the pieces, allow him to recognise what he was seeing as what looked like rot moved under the skin. Each of the patches was moving as he watched, moving like the underside of the jetty in the shade, moving like the treetrunks in shadow, flowing as a rip opened in the skin and the legs extended out, like hairs, like a river of spider crawling out from under the skin, crawling towards -

Jay screamed, ripping the collar from his throat as he stumbled back and fell on his backside in the sand. The onrushing spiders curled up and died, smoke rising upwards from the thousands of tiny corpses as more charged forward only to die and smoke in turn. Jay didn't move, he couldn't, as he watched the tide charge and die, a slowly expanding radius of horror as his power, the gas that gave him his name, spread on the air. The man's corpse began to smoke, to burn, the jetty to dry and rot. There was a crash from inside the radio building but Jay could only focus on the pattern of tiny brown bodies, eight legs curled in their death throes, falling like rain from under the eaves.

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He scrambled to his feet, nowhere to run, for he was the safest place on the island, but he wanted the chance if he could. He really didn't want any part of himself touching the sand. They almost sent LaVonna, and that thought horrified him before he realised they'd have sent the child without a collar. She wouldn't have seen any of this, just seen the island and trees dying around her.

With a crash the first of the trees fell at the edge of the forest, burned through. Behind it the jungle's true canopy blocked the sky, not leaves but a thick blanket of silk that blocked the sun and under it the horrors. Bird skeletons were revealed as the edges smoked and burned away, and then the first larger bipedal one swung free as its anchor ropes rotted. The people were part of the problem? That was a sick way to put it, he thought, furious at the briefing. What crashed to the floor, hands pinned behind its back, had once been a woman. His curse meant he did not have to look at it for long. It was still too long.

The spiders were scattering, rushing upwards to cluster at the top of the trees. A cloud of spiderlings rose into the air on silken parachutes, carried on the sea breeze across the island and out over the sea. Jay laughed bitterly. They might float, the spiders might make seagoing rafts where they fell to the water's surface, but they were driven by the same winds that carried his curse, and his curse was faster. The rear of the cloud of spiders was simply falling away as the effect spread through, and the cloud was gone in seconds. They had been right, Salman would have been worse than useless with the pressure waves from his explosions scattering the spiders far further than the wind alone would take them. Jay jumped as a crash echoed, nearly losing his footing in the sand. The remains of the radio hut's roof fell in as the rafters collapsed, and the wooden lean-to was already gone. There was nothing here left to handle. Reluctantly, wanting this over with faster, he walked up towards the forest of dying trees.

Jay had been more nerd than jock in school, prefering bands and vigilante posters to sports, but he was fit enough to run even in this heat. Picking up the pace, struggling a little in the sun he began to run round the beach, following the island's perimeter. The forest, the spiders, died in his wake. He'd taken out a town overnight, without even knowing. What he was doing to the island would be much the same, but this horror deserved it.

If he could get upwind, then he wouldn't have to move again, wouldn't have to see what other -

Jay wasn't ready for the man, already smoking, already dying, who threw himself at him knife upraised. The blade fell from skeletal fingers a second before the bones did. They were gone before they reached the grass. The hell? Were the locals actually defending these things? Jay almost put the collar back on. Almost, and then he remembered the woman's hands had been tied. He slowed, approached more cautiously.

"Quickly!" It was the first human voice he had heard since arriving and the translator handled it effortlessly. "Quickly, we must save the Little Sisters. Get the egg sacs to the canoes." Yeah, people were trying to save things that ate people. Why'd he suspect their plan involved putting other people on the menu? Not happening.

Jay ran towards the voices, not even thinking anymore, through forest that smoked and burned into nothing before he got close, trees trunks that fell towards him and were smoke and nothing before they hit.

Skidding over rocks and loose soil, the leaf layer underfoot gone before his feet touched down, he saw the wooden canoes as he came to the widening edge of the forest. The canoes rotted and burned. The spiders that covered them died instantly.

"Monster!" A stone hit his back lightly, fell away smoking as Jay turned. The men glared furiously from beyond the forest's retreating edge, inching backwards as more of the greenery began to smoke. They had stone-tipped spears slung across their back, and the one who had thrown his glared furious resentment at Jay. "You will not rob me of my vengeance!"

The men behind him were holding clay pots, the lids sealed. Jay could guess what was in them, but it was the sea of spiders massing at their feet yet giving clear space to each man, that set Jay's skin crawling.

"Who are you?" Jay called, across the increasing distance.

"Naeta," the leader said, readying another spear. Jay braced himself to dodge, even if he didn't need to. The wood would be gone before it reached him. The fringes of the forest pushed back as he waited, forcing the islanders to give another step.

"What are you doing with those spiders?" Jay called again. If they could talk, maybe they could negotiate. Maybe the vengeance was justified and he was going after the wrong people. Maybe he wouldn't have to kill anyone else. Naeta drew himself up, speaking in English as his mouth movements suddenly matched his words.

"They are my little sisters, born from the body of my brother, Nokiki. When we were forced from our island he cursed this place and came back here to die." There was an implacable hatred in his words, and it sounded justified. All Jay could think of was the body at the tide-line, the woman with bound hands. Without his curse, he'd have died screaming too.

"But the people here?" He hoped that had been the spiders alone, an accident, because the alternative was downright creepy.

"The invaders who claimed to love the island? To want peace here." Naeta drew himself up regally "They have died from the curse." And the spiders smashed the radio and tied the woman's hands, Jay thought. An island full of human-eating spiders and a psychotic fanatic trying to help them.

"And what are you going to do with the uh-" Creepy as hell spiders - "your Little Sisters?" If the guy really thought he was preserving his family, then Jay guessed he could understand. Even if Naeta needed serious psychiatric help. Maybe they could negotiate a way to give the island back to him, since the spiders could obviously tolerate the locals. He sure as hell didn't think anyone else would want to live here.

"Send them. Every country. Every city. Everywhere not of this island. The curse shall spread to all who did not help us. All not of the island will die screaming." There was a fanatical light in Naeta's eyes and Jay's sympathy evaporated. If it had been LaVonna here she didn't have his range, didn't speak any language, couldn't destroy dead matter like spears. They would have murdered the child without a thought.

"And the people who've suffered just like you?" he demanded, kind of guessing that reasoning from a man claiming his sisters were deadly spiders wasn't going to work. "The Native American reservations, the genocide survivors, the -"

"They did not help us!" Naeta's bitter shout condemned the world. It wouldn't be the people responsible who'd suffer though. The normal people, Jay thought, like him, like his family and friends, all dead because of this guy. His hometown, not waking to a nightmare of ghosts and empty clothes, but screaming, convulsing, bodies being webbed in silk as the Little Sisters crawled industriously across birds and pets and people. It would be a new nightmare for him and he wasn't grateful for it.

"Wait until he turns his back," one of the men said, dropping back another pace, "and then I shall throw my knife in it."

Jay looked up sharply, saw the incredulous expression on the men's faces and gritted his teeth.

"Yeah, asshole, I understood that."

He stepped forward.