The Spider Pt. 06

I've got to get Anna out of her, John thought, spinning around. Anna needs to get to a doctor, that sound when he hit her...

But the Spider was nowhere to be seen.

"Anna!" John yelled, smoke pouring in heavier and darker. John coughed. His eyes began to burn, he could see the walls of the warehouse, red hot, bursting into flames, the fire licking up into the cold black night.

"Anna!"

*****************************

John forced his way out of the door of the warehouse door, and fell to his knees. He vomited onto the grass.

He knelt there for a couple of minutes, blinded from the smoke, his lungs feeling as if they were torn to shreds even as they convulsed over and over again, looking for something to breathe. He threw up again, and again, until there was nothing left to cough up.

He laid on his side for a couple of minutes, he wasn't sure how long, the grass cool and wet on his smoke stained face as he wrapped himself up into a ball.

Anna, he thought. Oh, Anna. I hope you got away. I hope you aren't in there still. Please don't be dead and burning because of me.

John had looked for her, called out for her, as long as he could. He had reached out with his mind, flowing out in every direction, looking for his Anna under burning rubble, behind doors, up in the rafters.

Nothing.

In the distance, he heard the sirens howling. He had to get out of there. He dragged himself up, to his knees, dry heaving once more as he began to stagger away.

He stumbled towards his Lexus. He had to get home, safe behind his glass, had to have his women come and take care of him. Had to recover, find Anna.

If she was even alive.

He was overcome with coughing, and had to stop. He leaned up against a tree, trying to catch his breath. He didn't have much time to get out of there before the police arrived with too many questions for him to answer. There were a lot of dead bodies in those flames back there, and no amount of mind control would make all that go away.

But something caught his eye. There was a gasoline can lying on the grass, by the tree trunk. There was a black and viscous liquid on it, splattered there, thickly. It had to be blood, John thought.

Something told John to look up into the tree, and what he saw there was something that he would never quite be able to put far from his mind ever again.

It was the other security guard, Lewis. The man was hanging from a branch, higher than a man could easily climb. He was hanging there, suspended from what John couldn't see, and he was swaying back and forth in the wind.

Lewis' chest had been ripped open, from his throat all the way down to his sternum. Whatever the spread rib cages had held before was long gone by now, the security guard's ribs were spread out like grotesque wings, incapable of flight, holding nothing.

Lewis' entrails had been ripped out also, most were not visible to John. There were some remnants still hanging over the man's belt.

No blood dripped down. Lewis just swayed back and forth in the wind, back and forth, his eyes bulging in horror at whatever the last thing he ever saw was.

Fuck, John thought.

John staggered off towards his car. Lightning shot across the sky.

A storm was coming.