The Spider Pt. 37

Thanks for being patient, everyone. I am always so happy to think that people like this story, and that it means a lot to some people. It means a lot to me, also- so I promise that I won't ever stop with the Spider until it's all done.

That being said, though, Covid-19 has really destroyed my time for writing due to a bunch of reasons you can probably all guess.

This is sort of a placeholder, then- it'll set the scene for the action to come.

Thanks again, I can't tell you how much your liking my story means to me. Stay healthy and safe!

-Immanuel

Anna took a bite of her apple and scanned the sky.

Another one was up there now. There was more and more each day.

She stood under an enormously tall apple tree, much higher than one would ever grow on Earth. She looked up through the thorny branches, trying to estimate the height of the tree that sheltered her. This one was a couple of hundred feet tall, she guessed, but there were taller ones in the garden behind her.

Anna tossed her apple aside, and reached up for another, being careful to avoid the long and sharp thorns that jutted from the branches, hidden amongst the leaves.

But she didn't bite into her apple. Instead, she watched the Red Eyes soaring above, watched it dip and swoop with wind currents that she could not feel below. She saw its tail lashing angrily back and forth in the red sunlight.

She shuddered, remembering the barbed tail stabbing into her, remembering the poison spreading through her veins.

"Another one?" May asked from behind her.

"Yes."

"More and more. It won't be long now, I don't think. Have you seen the woman?"

"I don't think so."

"The Red Eyes are dumb animals- she is the danger."

"I hate them."

May seemed surprised.

"Why?" the older woman asked. "You should feel sorry for them. They are only predators that were too successful for their own good, and having destroyed the other creatures in their environment, have now turned on each other."

"So?" Anna asked.

"Well, that is what our people are doing- that is what humans are doing. We've eaten the Earth, and now we turn on our own children."

"Are they the only things that live here now, then?"

"No," May said, thinking. "There are some other predators that live in the skies, larger creatures that only land on the ground to lay their eggs. They lay their eggs in the enormous obsidian cliffs that overlook dead oceans- or at least they did, last time I saw that. But while those other things kill Red Eyes from time to time, the Red Eyes destroy those eggs like they do everything else. Soon there will only be Red Eyes, and they will kill each other until they are all gone, and then there will be nothing left."

"Except for you, though, May. You'll be left, with your garden."

May looked up at the sky and saw another Red Eyes had joined the first one. She shook her head.

"I don't know if myself or my garden will be left."

The two women heard a loud shriek from behind them.

"Look out," Anna cried, pushing May and herself up against the apple tree's trunk.

One of the Red Eyes was diving out of the sky toward them, its wings lying flat across its back, its claws outstretched, tail stiff behind it. Its eyes were narrow slits, focused on the prey.

"OK, OK," May was whispering.

Anna wrapped herself around the small woman, shielding May with her body.

The Red Eyes soared in low for the kill.

The creature screamed out suddenly, in pain. A branch of the tree had shifted, blocking the Red Eyes. The creature flapped its wings, impaled on sharp thorns.

Anna stood up, and watched the tree wrap the struggling creature up in branch after branch, tightly.

The leaves covered the animal up, but Anna could hear it scream in pain, weaker each time. She could hear the wings beating, slower, slower, as the creature struggled.

Apples fell from the tree, gentle thumps landing on soft grass.

Soon, there was nothing except the sound of weak claws scratching ineffectually into strong wood high above. The leaves shook, then fell quiet.

Black blood dripped from the branches high above.

Anna took a bite of the apple that she had been holding the whole time.

"I think you might be OK," she said, looking up into the leaves and branches as the blood dripped down below.

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

Amanda put the car in park and stepped out into the cool night air.

She pulled a little map of the grounds from her jacket pocket, consulted it under the dome light for a minute.

When she knew where he was laying, she got out of the car. It was time to say goodbye.

Her boots crunched on the cold gravel as she walked, looking at the names on the stones. Overhead, a full moon shone brightly behind gray clouds. She walked briskly, pulling her jacket close.

Finally, she got to her destination, the moonlight bright on the fresh cut stone, the smell of freshly turned earth in her nostrils. A set of plastic flowers were staked to the grass.

What a small stone, she thought. Maybe I should have bought a bigger one. It looked bigger online.

But what does it matter.

John Allen Claire, the stone said. There were some numbers that Amanda didn't like to think about, too close together for a father.

I wish you could have met your child, she thought. I think you would have been a good father. I think that would have given you the direction you needed in life to put the hurt behind you, to settle down, to learn to hope again.

You needed some hope. You grabbed at what you could from me so desperately- you needed me so much-

She stiffened in the wind, looking around. Someone was here.

Fuck, she thought. I should have known.

She looked back at the grave.

"I loved you," she told him. "I won't let anyone hurt our child. I'm going to destroy the man who killed you, so your child and me can be free. I promise. I won't let anyone hurt us."

She wiped a single tear from her cheek.

"Oh, I wish we had more time," she whispered. "Just a little more."

She turned away.

Back to work, she thought.

He was leaning against his squad car parked next to hers.

"Hello," he said as she approached.

"Officer," she said curtly. "I was hoping not to be disturbed here tonight."

"You remember me, then? James Candy? I tried to arrest you last time we saw each other, but you disappeared."

"I remember you, Officer Candy," Amanda said, looking at him directly in his eyes. "You aren't going to arrest me tonight, either. I recommend that you don't try. But if you do, I will not allow it."

"I'm not aware of anything I need to arrest you for."

"The police are having a rough time, aren't they? One of your officers was just found in an alley with his throat ripped out, and a credible witness that says he was going to rape her, and now a dozen or so other victims have come forward."

"I heard."

"You've probably heard that there is talk of a citywide vote to disband the entire police force, to have the state take over. Or defund you people entirely. You might be out of a job soon."

"I can probably find something else to do," he said. "I am a little tired of being a police officer at the moment also. You certainly do know a lot about what is going on with the police in this City."

She didn't say anything.

"I suppose you would, though- you were married to a police officer, weren't you? Rex Sanders, wasn't that his name? Your husband?"

Amanda only nodded.

"My condolences on your loss- it was a shock to all of us when he took his own life. Tragic."

"Thank you."

"But maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising, though. After all, he was the officer who shot that kid- Shawn, wasn't it? Wasn't that the kid's name? I think so. And then of course the whole City burst out into riots for the next couple of weeks. I'm sure you remember."

"I do."

"And of course, the whole time your husband said that the kid had attacked him, that it was self-defense. In his suicide note, though, he revealed that wasn't quite true, was it? He never should have shot that kid."

"I didn't know anything about that."

James narrowed his eyes.

"I imagine not- he probably lied to you like all the rest, until he just couldn't live with what he had done any longer. I have to be honest with you, though. One big reason I might be out of a job soon is because of your husband- "

"Ex-husband."

"- shooting that kid. Shawn. Shooting Shawn."

"That was a long time ago."

"It sure was. I'm not here to bring up bad memories for you. Of course, you got married again pretty quickly after Rex took his life. Ken? Wasn't that his name?"

"Yes. We divorced."

"I know. I interviewed Ken shortly after that. He was pretty confused about the whole thing. He said he had no idea who you were, and then one day out of the blue John Claire told him to marry you, so he did. Ken told us that you disappeared one day, never came back, and later he got a call from John saying the marriage was off and that divorce papers would be coming shortly for him to sign, which he did."

"I think I need to be going soon."

"Ken barely had any idea who you even were when I talked to him. He just did what John told him to do for some reason, and he had only met John a couple of times himself. Can you think why Ken would do all that?"

"Things can be complicated."

"They sure have been for you, haven't they? Not so much for Ken, though. They seemed very simple for Ken, for some reason, he did everything he was told to by Mr. Claire, without question. But, speaking of complicated, though, have you told her?"

"What?"

"Heather. Your ex-husband Rex is the cop that killed her brother Shawn. Does she know that?"

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

The Hawk squinted her eyes against the bright red sun, looking at the garden.

She was miles away from it, but that didn't matter anymore. She could see the garden perfectly.

Very little was left of the woman she had been. The Detective had changed her, bit by bit, until she had become what he needed her to be. It had been a painful process, one that broke her apart mentally, spiritually as well as physically.

In the end, though, he had remade her into the perfect killing machine: tall and strong, easily a couple of feet taller than her human form had been on earth. Instead of the artificial wings she had used to clumsily soar around on her home planet, she now had real ones, long and light wings, not unlike what a bat would have. These wings allowed her to soar, and pivot, and dive like she never had been able to before.

Her teeth had been sharpened into long fangs, like what would be found in the maw of a barracuda. Her fingers were sharp talons that could rip apart the thick, chitinous skin of a Red Eyes with no problem.

Her fingers shook in anticipation of how easily she would be able to rip Anna apart.

"What do you see," the Detective said from behind her.

The Hawk sniffed the air.

"I can't see anything, really," she replied. "The trees are even thicker cover than they were a couple weeks ago. Whatever a week is, anyway."

"She's been growing them thicker in anticipation of our assault."

"Yes. Thicker and stronger- more of those thorns, also. Thousands more."

He took a step closer.

"Will the Red Eyes be able to get through? Get to her?"

The Hawk shook her head.

"I doubt it. No matter how many we throw at them, it probably won't matter. The trees will catch them, rip them apart, just like it did with that one I sent this morning."

The Hawk sniffed the air again.

"No more smell of blood from Anna," she went on. "She's not bleeding any more. She's probably all healed up."

The woman turned to face the Detective, looking into his emotionless black eyes, deeply sunk in his distorted face.

"And she is different in some way," she told him. "I can't quite place it. I never knew the smell of her before, but she smells... cleaner, in some way. More pure. If I had to describe it, I'd say she smells more like Earth, and less like... this place."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know."

"So you are telling me that Anna is healed up, growing stronger, and safe in the garden with May? And there's nothing we can do about it?"

The Hawk laughed- or rather shrieked in approximation of what her laugh used to be.

"Not at all," she said, her face in a smirk. "Your problem is, the only person you had helping you before was the Power, or the Fist, or whatever that dumb bitch's name was."

The Hawk turned again towards the garden, eyes narrowing.

"Now you have me. And I know exactly what to do. When I am done, there will be nothing left of the garden, that woman May, and I'll rip Anna's throat out with my very own teeth."