The Glass Spider Tour

© 1998 Matthew Venditti
All rights reserved.

PROLOGUE: Now.

In the small shed, the roar of the shotgun was deafening. It bucked in Stuart's hands and the butt punched him in the shoulder, jolting his entire body. A fresh shock of agony seared through his shattered leg. The muzzle flash lit the shadows allowing him to see the blast tear a ragged hole through the ancient, wooden ceiling overhead.

Both the silence and the darkness that followed were absolute.

He gritted his teeth against the pain and waited for his senses to recover. In the stifling heat, his nose was assailed by the combined odors of gunpowder, sawdust and rusting metal. Stuart was in hell, complete with fire, brimstone and his very own personal demon just outside, waiting to mete out his sentence of eternal damnation. Hands trembling, he double-checked his remaining shotgun shells. There were two, as he knew there would be. He replaced the Mossberg's clip. While he waited, he tried to believe that two shells would be enough, but doubted it.

He strained to listen, but was unable to hear any sounds coming from outside. Stuart could not decide whether that was because his hearing was still stunned, or that there was simply nothing to be heard. He made a silent wish. His eyes began to readjust to the darkness and he could see the starry heaven of a clear night-sky through the smoking hole above him.

How much longer would he have to wait? Manny had left him there well over an hour ago promising to find help, so he should be back any time now. Provided Manny did not run into 'Carl' along the way, that is. The thought sent a shiver down his spine, and he wiped a fear-moistened palm on the front of his sweatshirt. The shirt was stiff with dirt and dried blood. With his fingertips he could feel the silk-screened pattern printed on it beneath the grime and absently traced the familiar letters 'U-S-U'. Aware that there were other letters surrounding the logo, he did not bother to touch them as he already knew what those spelled as well: 'Utah State University, Department of Paleontology'.

PART ONE: Then.

I

The Wyoming hillside that they were working on looked quite striking from a distance as Stuart had seen that morning from Professor Weatherwax's large, green jeep during the bumpy ride there from camp. At three hundred feet, the imposing hill stood out from the surrounding flat, arid landscape, it's striking red summit topping bands of infertile earth that varied in shades of color from bright orange to a dusky brown. That particular afternoon they were working on one of the uglier, darker brown bands towards the bottom. There, the earth was comprised primarily of a packed sedimentary stone that forms when layered silt and mud are exposed to a few million years of pressure.

Besides himself, there were four others enduring the afternoon heat on that almost-too-steep slope, most of them filling buckets and bags with bits of stone which they had dug out of the earth using an assortment of small tools and brushes.

Stuart and his two fellow graduate students were digging into that ancient compost heap searching for dinosaur bones and masters degrees. While they toiled, their supervising professor, Carl Weatherwax, was walking the hillside and scanning the ground for any tell-tale signs of a great find that might be hidden just beneath the rocky surface.

The professor, or Carl, as he preferred to be called by just about everybody, was a tall man with close-cut, graying black hair and quite fit at fifty-three-years old. An eccentric person with a taste for denim and an ever-present 'lucky' pith helmet, he was one of the best in his business. Carl had been a central figure in many of the most exciting discoveries in paleontology, since even before the 'Lucy' find in Ethiopia; each of the students had fought hard for the privilege of working with him.

A dog was running in tight circles around the professor, his master. 'Digger', the fifth member of their team, started joining Carl on his excavations four summers ago, when the dog was first old enough to go along. No one was surprised when the friendly, charcoal-gray mutt quickly became the department mascot.

It had been a disappointing day with just two small fossils having been found in an area that, geologically, ought to be rife with them when Manny called out.

"Hey, 'Fessor! Take a look at this," he hollered, managing to draw only Carl's attention.

Digger, the only other truly curious party on that hillside, was at Manny's side and wagging his tail before the professor could take his third step in that direction.

Whoopee, Stuart thought. Now we have three fossils to show for six and a half hours of work rather than two.

Due to his perspective, Stuart was treated to the illusion that Carl's legs were missing just below a wavering knee and, spookily, he appeared to float over the hot, bright hillside instead of walk. Stuart wondered what that actual temperature was, and then decided that it was probably best that he didn't know. Earlier, the group had seen that the day was going to be much too hot for the sort of digging and drudge work required of them, which was why Carl had magnanimously decreed that they would only put in seven hours of work on the hill today, as opposed to their usual ten. Even though everyone truly enjoyed what they were doing, the heat was just wearing them down. At four o'clock they would stop and go back to the jeep, practically empty-handed. He looked at his watch reflexively. It was twenty minutes 'til.

Stuart heard a sigh and looked towards its source. Nearby, Julie Feiner paused, and, tilting her head back, took a long swallow from her canteen, emptying it. Then, tucking sweat-matted, auburn hair back under her tie-dyed bandanna and out of her face, she resumed digging. Her crystal-blue eyes betrayed her weariness. Julie showed absolutely no interest in whatever it was that Manny had found, but then, always seeming preoccupied, she never acted too enthused by anything. Of course, she was heinously deep in debt with student loans that were about to come due. Stuart understood her frustration and knew that, in many respects, he felt the same way. He couldn't help but wonder, at times, whether or not earning a sheepskin was really worth the costs that it involved.

Hell, if it weren't for having up to four different jobs at a time I wouldn't be able to get my degree either, he thought finding himself unable to decide which of their approaches were the best.

Stuart noticed the professor's legs reappear when the man got to the spot where Manny was crouched, and continued to watch while he knelt down on one knee next to him. Handed a small brown stone by the student, Carl dutifully examined it, turning it over in his hands. Then, holding it out to Manny, he pointed to the rock and, saying something that Stuart could not catch, tossed it aside. Digger chased after the stone as the professor stood up and patted the young man on the back before resuming his wandering course across the rock field.

Manny took Carl's negative opinion of his possible find in stride and began checking the ground anew, deferring to rank the way he trains others to do one weekend a month and two weeks every Spring as a member of the Army Reserves. Even though Sergeant Manuel DeCosta always claimed to have put his GI Bill to good use by attending U.S.U., he still insisted on sardonically comparing the conditions that they were currently living in to 'fond memories' of his basic training days.

Shaking his head, Stuart wearily took up his pick again. Three weeks in the field and they had not found anything of real value. Now, there were less than twenty minutes before another whole day, their next-to-last one, would also be a complete wash-out.

Nothing good will be unearthed today, Stuart predicted pessimistically. Now, it was his turn to sigh, but his chance to was lost when Julie spoke.

"Oh, my god...", she said in a soft voice that was barely loud enough to be called a whisper. Closer than the others, Stuart had heard her and was just turning back in her direction when, startling everybody, Julie suddenly began to shout.

"Carl! Oh, my GOD! Carl! You have got to see this!"

With Digger following close behind him, the professor hurried to her side. The others, curiosity getting the best of them, halted their own tasks as well and rose to their feet. Soon, Julie had everyone clustered around where she sat, all anxious to see what had the usually stoic woman so excited.

Upon seeing her discovery for himself, Stuart's first thought was that he could easily appreciate Julie's extreme reaction and supposed that the others could as well. They would almost have to, given the fact that everyone in their field was required to have at least some degree of proficiency in geology. Aspects of that discipline were vital in many areas of paleontology, such as when selecting a good excavation site. Another example would be that they all understood exactly how the different processes of fossilization took place and the type of fossils that one could expect each of them to produce. The object that Stuart saw before him, however, resisted all of his attempts to understand its creation.

He immediately identified the small stone as having once been the upper-most portion of a dinosaur's tibia, or "shin-bone", if judging it only by its size and shape. It would have otherwise been a rather unremarkable little discovery - except for its composition. In that respect the fossil was completely unlike anything he had ever seen or heard of previously.

"What the hell is that?", the professor wondered aloud as he knelt down beside Julie to be able to give the fossil a closer examination. Hoping for a better view themselves, both Manny and Stuart leaned in closer until they where all but hovering over the others' shoulders.

The fossil appeared to be entirely composed of some bizarre type of crystal. Visible through the few surface areas that were not dirt encrusted, Stuart could discern hundreds of dull-gray, metallic threads that looked as though they could have actually been woven through it. The ashen flaws ran along the edges of the crystal's inner facets to form complex circuits of right angles, cubes and lattices throughout its volume. Stuart imagined that, in a future era, the three-dimensional pattern within the crystal could have very well been mistaken for the map to an alien labyrinth, drawn by some incredibly advanced Theseus.

The professors watch abruptly began to play its high-pitched, atonal rendition of "America The Beautiful", signaling the arrival of the hour and the end of their workday.

"Good, I cant wait to get this one on the table," he said and pressed a button on his watch halting its recital. "Let's get staked-out and head back to camp for some fun." Using hands that were trembling with excitement, Julie slipped the stone into one of her softer sample bags.

Stuart knew that, to Carl Weatherwax, 'fun' meant the systematic process of identification they put their finds through every night at their camp site. There, using the field-lab equipment, they would examine their three finds. Julie's first, of course.

Forgotten for all too short a time, the day's oppressive heat was swiftly remembered as they gathered the tools and marked their individual areas with small, orange 'U.S.U.' flags. They were drenched with sweat by the time the jeep was loaded and the ride back began.

The vehicle was just big enough to accommodate all of them. Carl drove and Julie took the front seat, this time, while Manny and Stuart had to squeeze into the back, as most of the space was occupied by a gun-rack that the professor had fastened to the roll-bar last summer. Between the seats, Digger settled down into his usual position on the floor, his head by the gear-shift for easier petting. Stuart had barely seated himself when Carl put the jeep into gear and pulled out. He hurriedly found his seatbelt and fastened it, strapping himself into the seat for better or worse. Manny ignored his. In fact, Stuart could not recall ever having seen him use one.

To the Sergeant, this must seem like a smooth ride. After all, he's probably used to traveling in tanks and half-tracks, he reasoned.

By moving at a conservative speed, Carl tried to drive carefully over the broken terrain, striving to keep the wheels within the slight ruts made by their previous trips to the hill. Despite the professor's proven driving skills, the ride seemed to be rougher than any of their previous trips had been. Nevertheless, Stuart found himself quite pleased with the cool breeze the open vehicle's motion provided.

The jeep hit a particularly jarring bump and, despite his seatbelt, Stuart was thrown sideways against the gun-rack, slamming his left shoulder painfully into the butt of the loaded shotgun secured there. He rubbed the injury afterward, trying to work out the sting and determine the amount of damage. No bones were broken, of course, but the soreness confirmed his suspicion that by tomorrow he would be sporting a breathtakingly colorful bruise there. Stuart promised himself that he would make more of a conscious effort to stay in his seat and away from the gun-rack for the rest of the ride. After what was intended to be a final, casual glance at the rack, however, he soon wound up forgetting about almost everything other than the shotgun that it held.

His father being an avid hunter, Stuart had fired many types of rifles and shotguns before, but he had never used a gun like the one he was looking at. The professor's usual Remington 12-gauge shotgun had been replaced since yesterday by what appeared to be a 10-gauge, semi-automatic Mossberg. Carl, a cautious man, always made it a point to bring some kind of protection with him out into the field. He called it his "Puma-Insurance" and felt quite justified in bringing a weapon along, especially after Julie claimed to have seen a mountain lion last summer. Stuart generally agreed with the professor's prudence, but thought the Mossberg was a little bit too much for anything less than fending off an armed assault. Besides, the area's alkali ecosystem probably couldn't sustain anything larger than the few horned-toads which he would occasionally spot hiding beneath the sparse sage brushes.

It was a beautiful weapon, though.

Carl must be showing off a new addition to his collection, he figured. The gun certainly looks new. He had ridden in the front on the way out from the campsite and hadn't really looked at the gun-rack.

It was then that Stuart realized that this was the professor's way of fishing for compliments on his purchase; by suddenly substituting it for his older, worn Remington. Only, no one, except for Stuart and his sore shoulder, seemed to have noticed that it was there. Poor guy. He made a mental note to say something nice about it to him later, back at camp.

The trip passed quickly and soon they topped the ridge that backed their base camp. From his elevated vantage point Stuart could see their campsite below. The four green tents, one for each person, had been pitched around a big, red tarp with netting for walls, that served as their equivalent of a field laboratory. About fifty feet away from the perimeter of the camp was their small cooking area of a stove, water jugs, and a food storage chest. Next to the 'galley' was parked the large, open-backed truck that they used for hauling their bulkier equipment and supplies.

While Carl navigated the jeep down the rutted path, Stuart was surprised to realize that the combined colors and shapes, as seen from above, made the camp look as though it had been erected using huge versions of Monopoly pieces. He could imagine the structures below to be made of solid plastic, placed there by some titanic child. There were green houses, a red hotel and even a metal truck for a playing piece. Even though the thought itself seemed light-hearted enough on the surface, Stuart shivered despite the heat at the strange image, and looked away from the camp.

Farther off to the west, Stuart could see the rough access road that they had originally used to get to their campsite. He could even make-out the small, rusting shed they had passed soon after getting onto the road from the State Route. Squinting, he tried, but was unable to see the distant black strip that would be the State Route, which was no doubt hidden from his view by a change in the grade of the intervening land and the setting sun's red glare.

They soon reached the camp and Carl pulled to a neat stop beside the old brown truck. The moment after he shut the engine off, Digger sprang up onto Manny's lap, bounded over the jeep's low, metal rear-door and was out. Then, everyone else got out also, removing the equipment before their personal packs and sample bags. The tools were placed in a pile near the galley for washing and then, as usual, they all went their separate ways for a few minutes. Manny and Stuart went to their tents, while the professor stayed at the stove after dropping his tools, probably brewing a cup of tea. Julie tossed a pack into her tent and then hurried to the lab with her sample bags, obviously intent on cleaning and, if possible, cataloging her unusual find.

From his own tent, Stuart could hear Manny in the one beside him trolling the radio stations for some acceptable music. Unlike himself, DeCosta wasn't much of a country-rock fan. Sinatra was more to his taste, which was a shame because stations this far out usually didn't have much of 'Old Blue Eyes' in their repertoires.

Manny continued to audibly work his way back and forth through the sparse selection of music on the radio, while Stuart pulled out a fresh 'U.S.U.' sweatshirt from his footlocker. It was actually a little too hot out still for a shirt that heavy, but he knew from experience that the sun would completely set within the next half-hour and that the temperature would fall with it. He took off his soiled T-shirt and, after tossing it into his small laundry crate in the tent's corner, pulled the clean sweatshirt on over his head.

Running a hand through his mussed short, red hair, Stuart left his tent and headed for the lab. He entered the darkening tent just as Carl arrived himself, sipping a steaming cup of tea and genteelly removing his pith helmet even though the tarp could only marginally be considered 'indoors'. Together, they joined Julie who was seated at the specimen table, already busily cleaning her fossil. The professor reached above their heads and clicked on the rechargeable electric light that hung there, illuminating the entire tabletop. The fossil sparkled in Julie's hands.

Carl looked at the crystal for a moment, then turned towards Manny's tent and called out for him.

"Manuel! I want you to take a look at this, too!"

Seemingly before the professor finished speaking, Manny was parting the mesh seam that served as a door and was facing them from the other side of the table. From outside, Stuart caught a few strains of "Witchcraft" playing over the radio and shook his head. DeCosta was amazing sometimes. As one, the men directed their attention to the shimmering fossil. Carl paused for a moment and then spoke to all of them.

"Well, first of all, can anyone tell me the species this tibia belongs to?"

Stuart guessed, "Deinonychus?"

"Possibly; though with what we have it would be impossible to tell for certain until we get it back to the University. But yes, it does appear to have come from a man-sized, bipedal specimen," Carl observed. "Good, Stu. Now for the toughie. How do you guys think this fossil may have formed?"

'Toughie' was an understatement and a half, Stuart thought.

They had all been at a loss to explain it earlier and were only more perplexed now that Julie had been able to clean the bone up somewhat.

Realizing that, without prodding, silence was the only answer that he was going to be getting from his students, Carl continued his impromptu lecture.

"C'mon guys, let's use our heads. Julie found the fossil at the K-T boundary, so let's start from there."

Manny spoke up then: "Okay, since large-scale crystal formation near the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary would be unlikely in this area, then maybe the fossil isn't actually from the layer it was found in. Could it have been insinuated there from a later one? By earth-tremors, maybe?"

Stuart saw an immediate problem with that idea. Dinosaurs large enough to have a tibia that size had all but died out from the fossil record after the K-T Boundary. In fact, one of the hallmarks of that particular layer was that it was rich in iridium. The discovery of that element's presence was, as a matter of fact, a major motivating force behind the theory of an asteroid impact having caused the decline of the dinosaurs in general. The theory made sense because iridium, while quite rare on earth, is an element very commonly found in meteorites. The recent discovery of a probable impact site at the north-eastern edge of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula only lent more credence to the idea. Stuart, however, preferred to believe that, falling stars or not, the dinosaurs could not have all died out that quickly. Always having been a firm believer in the basic tenets of Darwinism, he felt certain that there had to have been some process of natural selection or elimination involved in their decline.

By the time he had finished his train of thought, Carl had also finished speaking, and Stuart realized that he had missed everything that the professor had just said. Thankfully, Carl hadn't looked up from the table to see that he was not paying attention. Stuart looked back at the fossil.

Julie took a small spray bottle from the instrument tray beside her and wet down the stone with a fine, distilled water mist. With all of the dirt removed, the crystal shined colorfully in the bright, white light. The surface was absolutely smooth, except for the damaged end that had fractured as if it were glass, a clean break with sharp edges. This meant that the fossil had to have been broken some time after its fossilization process was complete. A good thing because, if that were indeed the case, they should certainly be able to locate more of the unique remains in the same area.

The others returned to kicking around more, sometimes fantastic, theories in their efforts to explain the bizarre nature of the find while Stuart, staying mindful of the light overhead, leaned further across the table to better see the stone. Looking at the fossil from his improved vantage point, he was again awe-struck by the obvious complexity of the patterns that were traced through its interior by the gray, metallic impurities he had noted earlier.

Oddly, even though the network of threads was unlike anything he had ever encountered before, the ashen substance itself seemed somehow familiar. He tried to recall why, but the answer eluded him.

Feeling foolish for not being able to supply the answer himself, he was forced to ask the others: "Hey, um, guys, do any of you know what this gray stuff inside it is?"

Without missing a beat, Carl looked at Stuart and, twisting his face into an exaggerated grimace, barked at him: "Dammit, Stu! I'm a bone-digger, not a rock-hound!"

The professor's impression of Star Trek's Doctor McCoy was so unexpected, and so terrible, that everyone in the tent turned towards him and burst into laughter, prompting Carl to do so as well.

Maybe because the day had been so miserable for him otherwise, the welcome hilarity brought tears to Stuart's eyes. Everyone was looking at Carl and guffawing when Stuart bent his head down to dry his eyes on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

He was still chuckling when he saw the fossil move.

At first he thought that somebody must have jarred the table, causing the sparkling stone to slide a couple of inches. The one person actually touching the table, however, was Julie, but her hand was resting only lightly upon the tabletop.

Since nobody else was looking, Stuart was the only one to see the fossil as it continued to move, rolling impossibly across the flat surface of the table and toward Julie's hand. Stuart stopped laughing and stared in mute disbelief as the stone tumbled to a stop within an inch of her hand. Still facing the professor, Julie was too busy trying to recover from her giggle-fit to notice the fossil's motion herself.

Instinct kicked in and Stuart was instantly certain that he could sense an almost predatory malevolence emanating from the strange stone. He opened his mouth, planning to shout a warning.

He was too late.

Before he could even utter a syllable, Stuart saw a needle-thin piece of the grayish material within the fossil break through its glossy surface. Stunned with horror, he watched as the thread suddenly shot out from the stone and pierced the soft skin of Julie's palm.

She began to scream.

Stuart's shout, catching in his throat, came out as a strangled gasp and he stared wide-eyed at the fossil as it pulled itself into her open hand, like an expert fisherman reeling in his catch. Startled, both Carl and Manny jumped back from her in surprise. To all but Stuart and Julie herself, it looked as if she were holding the fossil of her own volition.

Julie's scream turned into a bestial grunt and she began to convulse in her seat. Outside, Digger began to howl.

Her apparent seizure became more violent and, before either Stuart or Carl could catch her, Julie pitched backwards off of her stool, falling heavily to the tent's earthen floor. As Manny started around the table to assist, Carl quickly stepped forward and dropped to a crouch beside her.

Cradling Julie's head in his lap, he shouted to the other two: "Hold her arms and legs down! We have to keep her from hurting herself!"

Stuart tried to find his voice long enough to tell him what he had seen, but everything was happening too fast. Manny immediately knelt down and grabbed her arms as ordered. Stuart, however, stood where he was, paralyzed with shock.

The professor noticed his hesitation and, correctly interpreting it as fear, but misidentifying its cause, yelled at him: "Do it now, asshole! Epilepsy isn't contagious!"

Despite the professor's mistake, Stuart felt nonetheless chagrined by the habitually genteel man's use of profanity. Keeping his eyes on the fossil she held, he bent down, grasped her ankles and struggled to hold her legs as still as possible.

The convulsions became increasingly more powerful and he was doubting that he could hold onto her for very much longer, when Julie's seizure came to an abrupt end. Stuart took advantage of the sudden calm.

"Carl! It was the fossil! It moved. It attacked her, I saw it! We've got to get it away from her!"

The professor was looking at him as if he thought his student had gone insane when, peculiarly, Stuart felt Julie's ankles quickly begin to swell within his grip. A gasp from Manny, who was still holding her arms to her sides, told him that the phenomena wasn't confined to her legs alone.

Unable to keep their grips on her rapidly engorging limbs, first Stuart, then Manny, were both forced to release their holds on her. The professor looked up at them questioningly as they stood up and started to back away from her. Then, his eyes widening, Carl snapped his gaze back down to his lap where her head was still resting. Julie's face had begun swelling also and, within seconds, her head bloated grotesquely to almost half-again its normal size. Worse, there was no indication that it was going to stop.

Horrified, Carl quickly, yet carefully, rested her head on the floor and began sliding away from her. Coming from somewhere deep within Julie's body, they could hear a muffled, almost electrical, 'crackling' sound. The professor leapt to his feet and backed away from her, joining the others. Behind him, Stuart heard a low growl. Glancing around for an instant, he saw the dog slowly approaching the tent through the early evening gloom.

In that moment, Digger's tail lowered slowly between his legs and his hackles raised. The dog's quivering upper lip flashed wickedly sharp teeth that Stuart couldn't remember the mutt ever having before. Digger's growling was becoming more insistent, but, despite his threatening stance, the dog stopped his approach at a point just beyond the mesh entrance and crouched. Julie breathed a gurgled cry above the quickening crackle and Stuart's attention was snapped back to the woman's tortured form.

Stuart let out a cry himself when he saw Julie, who now resembled a giant, red balloon-animal, and he noticed that the fossil had been completely engulfed by her massive fist. They all heard fabric tear as her body grew too large for the clothes she wore. Her shirt-sleeves ripped at the seams and buttons popped. The zipper on her jeans broke open.

Beginning as another strangled gurgle, Julie screamed again. She didn't stop this time and the screaming increased in pitch until it became a keening wail. Helpless, the men joined in with cries and shouts of their own.

All of her features were completely distorted. Her lips started to bleed and two spots of blood began to soak through the front of her T-shirt. Julie's breasts enlarged obscenely beneath the fabric, threatening to shred the whole thing to rags. She was turning purple.

Stuart and Manny started backing closer to the tent door. The professor, appearing faint, stayed were he was.

Julie's screaming stopped when she exploded.

Somebody shouted: "Jesus Christ!!!"

The interior of the entire tent was sprayed red with blood and the men were blinded by the torrent of gore. Digger was barking frantically. Pieces of flesh flew into Stuart's gaping mouth and he doubled up, retching from repulsion. Blood sizzled on the lamp's bulb allowing it to cast only a meager, scarlet light. The mesh walls held the viscous liquid, seeming to hang in the air like magical, sanguine tapestries.

The crackling, rather than stopping after Julie's spectacular death, had instead gotten louder. It continued to come from about where Julie had been lying, but, given their new position in the tent, the specimen table and the encroaching shadows of dusk effectively conspired to hide the source of the chilling sound from the men's view.

Stuart straightened and fought down the gag reflex that the sight before him was provoking. Unrecognizable gore and auburn clumps of hair hung from the walls and ceiling.

Julie had been pulped.

The strange noise stopped without warning and was replaced by a less obtrusive hum, barely audible above Digger's now crazed barking. Shocked, all of them stepped towards the door a few paces this time. Speaking was impossible for them because, until whatever insanity that was occurring played itself out, instinct reigned.

Surveying the carnage around him, Stuart had just morbidly realized that he hadn't seen any bones yet, only soft tissue when, startling them all, a figure agilely pounced onto the table from the obscuring shadows. Stuart desperately wanted to believe that it was one of Carl's mythical pumas because of its size, but, when the thing crawled forward and into the light, he was forced to witness the abomination before him in its entirety.

It had five appendages, like a starfish, and stood as a spider would. Stuart saw that the creature was composed of veined crystal, as the fossil had been. Then, to his horror, he saw that the 'legs' had been created from portions of Julie's skeleton with four of them being her arms and legs. The last one having had been her spine, its limbs ended with her feet, hands and skull. Likewise, the thing's 'body' was a mass of tangled bones: Julie's ribs, shoulder blades and pelvis, to be exact. It looked as if her arms had been driven down to her hips, collapsing the ribcage along the way. Where it needed to, her hands and poor Julie's skull were being used as substitutes for feet. Digger's furious snarling was replaced by small, pathetic whines when it dawned upon Stuart that the earlier sound, and now the humming that the men heard, were both made by the spider.

Manny turned and ran from the tent. Stuart was about to follow him when the spider jumped from the table and, with amazing speed, landed on Carl, wrapping its legs around him. He shrieked in its embrace. Stuart saw the skeleton's fingers, toes and teeth puncture the man's clothing through to the flesh. The professor began to convulse exactly as Julie had and Stuart sprinted from the tent just as Digger bolted in. From behind him he heard feral growls and the sound of claws scratching against glass as the loyal dog tried vainly to protect its doomed master.

Carl's screams continued as Stuart fled for his life. Outside, the dusky eastern horizon cast a crimson hue upon everything he could see. To Stuart, rather than being confined to merely the lab tent, it appeared as though his whole world, earth and sky, had been bathed in Julie's blood. Ahead of him, Manny jumped into the driver's seat of the jeep and fumbled for the ignition.

The engine started. Drowning out any other sounds that might be heard around them, Manny was noisily grinding the jeep's gears when Stuart reached the vehicle and dove into its back seat. The jeep lurched forward and they pulled away from the campsite. Stuart righted himself in the seat and looked out the back. The lab tent glowed spectrally from within and strange shadows danced like demons across its walls.

Stuart was still watching their dwindling camp when the creature burst through the mesh wall of the lab enclosure. Bloody shrouds of netting tore free and fell loosely around it. There was no sign of the professor. From what he had seen, he could only guess that Carl was suffering the same terrible fate as Julie had. The spider-thing stood outside of its abattoir for a moment, posing almost as a king would, as though it were draped in velvet upon a regal, red carpet.

"It's coming! It's coming!!" Stuart hollered to Manny, unnecessarily urging him to hasten.

As if cued, the spider started smoothly scrabbling after the retreating jeep, seeming to glide towards them as it sped over the rocky terrain.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit", Manny was almost chanting in the front.

Stuart's racing heart beat to the same rhythm as Decosta's impromptu mantra while they drove down the small slope that marked what the group had thought of as the edge of their camp. The tents were obscured from Stuart's view as clouds of dust billowed out from beneath the tires. He managed to get hold of the roll-bar with one hand, just in time to avoid being thrown out when the jeep fish-tailed onto the service road that both of the men fervently prayed would lead them to safety.

Keeping his eyes on the top of the slope behind them, Stuart reached out with his other hand to grab something else to further steady himself. Beneath his fingers he felt something smooth and cool that he couldn't immediately identify. Then, Stuart realized what it was. Carl's shotgun!

The spider crested the hill and paused, its crystal facets glinting violet in the glow of twilight. Stuart forgot the weapon when the spider sprang into the air from the side of the slope and, its 'legs' tucked in closely, sailed above the jeep. The thing looked remarkably like a hockey puck after a slap-shot. It landed squarely onto the road just ahead of them and Manny screamed.

"My God!!"

The glass spider stood in front of the jeep, completely revealed by the powerful headlights. What Stuart saw before him could easily have escaped from a psychotic's nightmare.

The monstrosity's form had changed drastically in a very short time. Its limbs no longer held any resemblance to bones; they had smoothed-out and thinned into long, tapering cones, each of them ending in lethally sharp points. The spider held itself upright on two of these shimmering members, apparently having spiked them into the loose, rocky soil on impact. Another was kept coiled, almost protectively, about its bulbous body while the final pair whipped madly at its sides, slashing the air like spastic pythons. All of the creature's movements were sinuous, almost tentacular, despite its stony composition.

The usurper of Julie's skeleton had completely remolded it, as though it were sculpted of modeling clay. Stuart tried, but could find no hint of humanity remaining in its new form to indicate that the spider's body had ever had a previous owner. Julie Feiner had been physically erased from existence and replaced by the blasphemy they were still hurtling towards.

Stuart had thought that they should have either hit or passed the spider by now, when he figured out that the creature had landed farther away from them than he had originally guessed. As the jeep drew closer, he understood his mistake. The spider had stretched-out its body to achieve the net-like pose it was holding. Looming ahead, the nightmare was easily nine feet tall and Stuart knew that it was simply waiting to ensnare the jeep should they come close.

They didn't.

Finally shaking off his own shock, Manny jerked the steering wheel to the left and hit the gas. They almost didn't have a moment to spare. As the jeep was swerving, the spider fell forward towards them, uprooting its legs in the process. Its four outstretched limbs were quivering and, audible even above the engine's roar, whistled loudly as they cut the through the air. It landed just to the right of the jeep, a tentacle scoring the outside of the passenger's side door, but missing them entirely otherwise. Then it was gone, lost in the cool, evening darkness.

For several seconds the jeep bounced so severely that Stuart thought he would surely be thrown from the vehicle and straight into hell. Narrowly avoiding a large boulder, Manny veered them off of the track's periphery.

This guy is good, Stuart observed as the jeep was expertly maneuvered back onto the road.

The jeep continued to shudder as it raced down the choppy path, but Stuart forced himself to return his attention to the shotgun. After only a moment's hesitation, he turned around and began pulling at the two blue nylon straps that held the weapon to the rack. Stuart quickly untied the bottom one and, wedging the stock in the crook of his arm, started working on the last strap.

A glint of scarlet through the make-shift rack's steel grating distracted Stuart from his endeavor. His eyes focused on its source and he saw that the light of the jeep's red running lamps were reflecting off of something just behind the rear bumper.

It was the spider, scuttling less than five feet behind them like a bloodstained tick on speed.

Stuart grabbed the Mossberg with both hands and yanked. The barrel suddenly tore free of the loosened restraint. The momentum of its abrupt release caused Stuart to fall ass-first onto the jeep's rattling floor.

There was a metallic "pop" and a translucent pike sprouted from the steel grill above him. It began wriggling about and making grasping motions, as if seeking purchase. Stuart had to swiftly pull his legs away from the tentacle to avoid losing them, or more. Manny, intuitively understanding the nature of the clamor behind him, started to weave the jeep back and forth across the road, trying to shake the creature free.

Stuart heard himself jack a shell into the shotgun's chamber.

The spider had managed to wrap its leg firmly around the remnants of the gun-rack, and was beginning to haul another one up to join it, when Stuart pulled the trigger.

During the ensuing flash, Stuart saw both the rack and tentacle disintegrate in the blast. With an ear-splitting squeal that sounded like a chainsaw cutting a tin can, the spider fell away from the jeep and was swallowed by dust and darkness.

"Go!", Stuart shouted and, still clutching the shotgun, pulled himself back up off of the floor with his free hand. The back seat was littered with bits of metal and small, blackened pieces of cold stone that had once been part of the demon's leg.

He'd hurt it.

Out the back, the spider was nowhere to be seen. Stuart looked towards the front, past Manny's hunched shoulders, but saw only more dirt and rocks on the road ahead.

Off to the right, Stuart caught sight of a tall, rectangular form outlined against the horizon. Crazily, Stuart was reminded of the enigmatic monolith from Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey." As they approached it, however, he could see that the figure could only be the old service shed.

They were almost at the State Route! Hope welled within him.

Stuart remembered seeing this very same hut just over an hour ago (could it have been so short a time?). His heart practically stopped when, horrified, he recalled the jeep having labored up a short, but steep, slope shortly after encountering the shed during their trip in, three weeks ago.

Worse, Manny wasn't slowing.

Neither of them had time to react before the front wheels hit the top of the recollected slope and the ground dropped from beneath them. The jeep was launched violently over the bank's edge and into the void.

The crash recorded itself in Stuart's mind as a series of images and sensations. Like snapshots of reality, they lacked any time reference and could be viewed at any rate, from instants to hours.

Stuart screamed as the jeep flew through the air. The front end dipped forward and the seat began to pull away from him. Manny levitated similarly, his hands still clamped to the steering wheel. The bumper slammed into the ground and tires burst; Stuart lost hold of the shotgun. The hood began to buckle and both of the men were hurled clear of the rapidly contorting vehicle. The jeep's horn sounded once, then, crushed by the impact, failed. Flying, he had an almost euphoric sense of weightlessness.

Stuart heard his femur snap when he hit the ground. Then he felt it.

Agony coursed through his body. He tried to scream, but couldn't. The pain was too much. There were swarms of bees buzzing by his ears. He was trying to raise an arm to slap them away when he lost consciousness.

II

When Stuart awoke it was to the sound of metal being hammered and the tangy odor of gasoline. Stuart opened his eyes.

Manny was nowhere to be seen as he turned his head towards the sound. The jeep was totaled. Its front end had collapsed inward. The engine sizzled on the plastic upholstery of the driver's seat. The spider, like some aberrant canary, was perched atop the jutting roll-bar. Holding onto the bar with three of its legs, the beast was stabbing the fourth into the mangled jeep's exposed engine block. All that remained of the fifth leg was a jagged stump, but Stuart could see that the rough end had already begun to smoothen. It was healing itself, and fast.

The shit just got deeper, he thought.

The muscles of his body tensed-up from the primitive instinct to run, far and fast, causing a fresh explosion of pain to burn through his ruined leg. Unable to quell the urge, Stuart let out a nauseous groan.

The spider froze.

Stuart sat still, fearing to even breath while his mind raced: Where's the damn shotgun?

The spider began to hum. Stuart felt the deep, pulsating sound vibrate through him. To his dismay, he realized that it was somehow using the humming to search for the groan's source: him. Then, disturbingly, it went silent.

Without further warning, the spider jumped from its roost. Landing on all-fours, it stood, motionless once more, on the ground between Stuart and the jeep. There was a quick movement near one of its legs. He watched as a startled horned toad tried to stealthily crawl away from the threatening, new presence.

Lightning fast, the spider darted out a leg and impaled the unfortunate lizard. The toad wriggled for a moment, then seemed to freeze over as crystals began to form from its flesh. Seconds later, it had become what looked like a fist-sized snowball. The spider shook its leg once and the 'snowball' fell away from it in delicate clumps that crumbled completely on hitting the ground.

What? No mini-spiders? Stuart observed silently.

The spider began humming again and Stuart knew that it would only be a short matter of time before it would 'feel' him, too. The sound stopped and the spider, for whatever reason, began to move to the left and away from him. Stuart had almost allowed himself to believe that he was going to survive the minute, when the creature paused. Waving a tentacle, it scanned the air - for motion, perhaps. Stuart held his breath. The spider spun around several times, then came to a slow stop. Its leg was pointing in his direction and, like a boy scout following a compass, the demon began to creep slowly towards him.

The spider was about five feet away when it stopped and lifted itself up, once again, into its 'net' position of standing on two legs and whirling the other two around at its sides. However, using its damaged limb, the spider couldn't quite conceal its body this time. Within the sphere of its body, Stuart could see a large bundle of the gray veins from where he lay and thought that it looked a hell of a lot like a brain.

The thing towered above him and, ignoring his agony, Stuart began vainly trying to drag his battered body away from the shining predator. Not about to let its prey escape, the spider fully extended its spikes and fell forward, intent on capturing him.

There was a flash of light to his left and one of the spider's legs on the same side shattered into hundreds of darkening shards. The creature was tossed, wailing, to the right by the blast's impact and tumbled out of Stuart's immediate sight. From the opposite direction a haggard shape materialized out of the darkness and began limping towards him. There was a shotgun in its hands.

A shiver of pain racked through Stuart's body as he watched his savior approach and kneel beside him. A cut across Manny's forehead was bleeding freely and Stuart could see that the sergeant was favoring his ankle, as though it were sprained, or worse.

His voice came in gasps: "How ya doin', Stu? You dying on me?"

"Not yet," Stuart croaked, "Where did it go?"

Then, over Manny's shoulder, he saw the spider top the hill above the demolished jeep. It was crouching close to the ground on its three remaining legs no more than fifty feet away from them when it let out an unearthly screech and coiled to spring.

Manny was spinning around towards it with the Mossberg when the demon vaulted into the air.

Suddenly inspired, Stuart shouted: "Hit the center! The center!!"

Manny snapped the barrel up and aimed above them at the incoming horror. He didn't shoot. Stuart, knowing full well that he wouldn't have enough time to use it himself, was about to make a grab for the weapon anyway, when Manny finally fired.

The Mossberg thundered. He hit the spider with a marksman's accuracy. The creature's 'brain' appeared to detonate, shattering its body. The spider's legs flew away from each other, blackening rapidly from root to tip in mid-air and the onyx limbs broke into even smaller pieces themselves, inert, before striking the ground. Manny continued pulling the trigger spasmodically, without result, while they were both pelted with what could have easily been mistaken for coal.

Then, silence.

Manny, still unmoving since he had ceased trying to fire the spent weapon, began to piss himself.

Relaxing somewhat also, Stuart felt his own fear-induced adrenaline rush begin to wear off and became woozy as the brutal pain from his leg blossomed anew. Manny seemed to shake off his spell and turned to face Stuart again.

"I think it's dead," he said, sounding not quite sure. Then, looking at Stuart with more concern than before, asked: "Is there anything, uh, broken?"

Through gritted teeth, Stuart told him of his broken leg and, upon reflection, his probable concussion. Likewise, Manny had, in addition to his gashed scalp and urine-soaked jeans, a few bruised or broken ribs and what he hoped was only a badly sprained ankle.

In short, the jeep was a complete loss and they were both total messes.

After a hasty discussion, they decided that Manny would go for help. Stuart, unable to walk, would have to wait in the nearby shed until the other could return with the 'cavalry'.

Manny pulled a canteen and an old plastic bottle from the wreck. After filling them from the vehicle's only remaining intact water canister, he began searching the twisted wreckage for anything else that might prove of use. It wasn't long before he found a working flashlight wedged in among the chaotic mass of plastic and wires that had been the dashboard. Further, and more significantly, he also discovered a crushed box of 10-gauge shotgun shells beneath the stress-warped back seat and collected three of its least damaged rounds.

The sergeant hauled his hastily scavenged load over to the shed and, placing it all beside the shelter, examined its door. It was secured only by an aged pad-lock and chain. The rusted lock gave easily with two sharp blows from the shotgun's butt and the chain rattled to the ground. Then Manny came back for Stuart. With his bad ankle, he was forced to drag his crippled companion to the rundown shelter. Stuart shrieked in helpless anguish the whole way.

Once inside the empty shack, Manny reloaded the Mossberg. Stuart, regaining a modicum of composure, saw that the magazine had been plugged as a sport-hunting weapon would be and understood that it was only capable of holding three cartridges.

Jacking a shell into the chamber, Manny handed him both the shotgun and the plastic bottle of water.

"I'm going to shut the door when I leave," he said. "The State Route ain't far and I know I saw a house, or gas station, or something all lit-up, just before we crashed. I'll be back soon. In the mean time, drink the water. That's your job. Out here dehydration is your real enemy," Manny finished, sounding as if he were trying to imitate one of his old drill instructors.

Stuart was about to say something sarcastic back at him like: "What's the shotgun for, then?", but was unable to get it out before Manny had turned and left, pushing the creaky metal door closed behind him.

Through simple, rotten luck, Stuart found himself left in complete darkness, cold, alone and gravely injured.

The bees returned and his vision began to tunnel. Holding the shotgun close, Stuart passed out.

III

His watch had broken at some point during his escape, so Stuart couldn't say for certain how long he had lain there, drifting in and out of consciousness as the pain and exhaustion took their toll on him. However long he was out, it had been enough time for the sealed shed to have become uncomfortably warm. His clothing was soaked with sweat and he dearly hoped that he didn't have a fever now as well.

Eventually, Stuart realized that not all of the incessant buzzing that he heard was coming from his ringing ears. Once he knew this he became able to isolate the external noise and, hearing it clearly now, instantly recognized the throbbing hum for what it was: a glass spider on the hunt. Stuart finally understood the terrifying reality of his situation.

Oh, shit! We forgot about Carl!

Stuart listened to the hum, trying to determine the direction of its source. Each time that he thought he had it pinpointed, however, the sound would seem to move. Stuart's head was soon jerking around so much in an effort to keep up with the direction changes that he should have feared whiplash. He had just about reached his wit's end when it dawned upon Stuart that, in an almost feline way, the spider was actually playing with him and that, even though the humming continued unabated, 'Carl' already knew exactly where he was.

Just when Stuart was certain that the noise would go on forever, it stopped.

Something heavy landed on the flimsy, plywood roof above him and the entire shed quivered dangerously under the weight of whatever rested on top of it. He prayed that the thin walls would hold up long enough for him to get a shot off.

Stuart had held the shotgun aloft as securely as he could from his prone position and aimed for the center of the dilapidated ceiling when he squeezed its trigger.

PART TWO: Now.

Stuart kept his eyes on the wrecked ceiling until he decided that neither it nor the spider was going to be crashing down upon him, and hoped that it would remain that way. Returning his attention back to his immediate surroundings, he was starting to search the nearest shelves for anything that might prove useful when he noticed that he could see the interior of the shed better than he been able to earlier. The light had markedly improved and in only a few minutes.

It can't be dawn already, he told himself.

Pausing to think, an activity that was hampered by his constant pain, Stuart realized that the increasing glow was coming from above him. He looked up and saw a bright, full moon hanging in the night-sky. The man-in-the-moon leered at him through the ceiling's new opening.

The ghostly, pale illumination seemed to leech the color from all it touched. Large, billowy cobwebs hung all about him, glowing a hoary white. By comparison, the already tar-black shadows appeared to thicken even more, as if retreating into themselves as they fled the encroaching light. Everything else, including Stuart himself, had turned a lifeless, ashen gray.

Strangely, while he quietly awaited the predator's next assault, he noticed that, in the current lighting, his skin appeared to be almost exactly the same shade as the veins he had seen in the spider. Again, he felt as though the gray substance was somehow familiar to him.

This time, however, Stuart was able to recall why.

As an undergraduate he had taken an elective course in metallurgy. Besides being shown how metals are extracted from their crude ores, he had also been taught about alloys, such as steel or nichrome. It was during one particular lab-class that the instructor had shown the students examples of some common alloys and their constituent elements. Among the labeled samples was a small, gray lump of metal. Stuart remembered having guessed that the mineral was platinum just before reading its typewritten namecard.

He'd guessed wrong.

ELEMENT: Iridium

Iridium spiders? Stuart thought, marveling at the idea's implications.

Julie had found the original, tainted dinosaur bone at the K-T boundary, a strata which happened to be known for its unusually high levels of the rare element. Unbidden, the image came to mind of tyrannosaur-sized 'spiders' stalking the Cretaceous swamps, humming. He had even begun to populate the imagined, antediluvian environment with smaller versions of the creatures as well when, recalling the incident with the horned toad, he corrected himself.

No mini-spiders, he remembered, even though he still wasn't sure why not.

Another mystifying point was the sheer quantity of iridium that the Julie-spider had contained. A human body may contain trace levels of the element, but certainly nowhere near enough to account for what he had seen.

Somehow, the spiders had to be creating the iridium during their grisly births. If he were right, then any useful prey would need to have a minimum amount of mass in order for the transformation process to be successful. Otherwise, they just got 'snowballs'. Therefore, the early mammals, which had not been much bigger than a horned toad at that time, would have probably been largely ignored by the glass spiders.

But, where had the creatures come from? And, for that matter, where did they all go?

Recalling the way the dead spider fell to pieces, Stuart had a possible answer for the latter question almost immediately. Their remains could be found in the geological record as the iridium layer, the K-T boundary.

Maybe (Stuart was hypothesizing even more freely now), after landing on the earth with the Yucatan asteroid, the spiders had found a particularly bountiful environment and simply reproduced until the supply of worthwhile game was exhausted. Stuart followed that line of thought to its logical conclusion. Death by overpopulation. Logical or not, however, he figured that what was more likely, given his current predicament anyway, was that the monsters had instead gone into a sort of hibernative sleep. Were they like bears during the winter, merely waiting until the next killing season or eon, in this case? Had Julie accidentally woken one of the bears up? The possibilities were dizzying.

Or is it just the pain?

Stuart couldn't be sure which one was the source of his haziness, but stopped worrying about it when something started to scrape roughly against the frail wall opposite him.

He brought up the shotgun and pointed it at the wall and was about to fire, but stopped himself. With only two shells left, he had to make each one of them count. Stuart had to wait for a clear shot which meant, due to the confined space, letting it get close. His heart started to pound against his ribcage and Stuart was fighting the growing urge to panic, when the scraping stopped.

Where the hell is Manny??

The sound, now more of an insistent clawing, began again. This time, however, it was at the door. In his mind's eye, Stuart could 'see' the spider that had once been his professor just outside that door, yearning to conceive another of its kind through the bloody union of his soft, wet flesh with its cold, crystalline perfection.

The clawing became more pronounced, shaking the door and causing it to begin opening outward.

Stuart, finding that he was too weak to slide his battered body any farther away from the shed's make-shift aluminum door, aimed the shotgun at the ever widening gap between it and the frame. Typical of the luck he was having today, a cloud chose that moment to pass over the light-giving moon and the shed was plunged into nearly complete darkness.

Despite his having anticipated what would happen next, Stuart was still startled when the thing at the door stormed inside. In the poor light, the creature was just one more shadow among a plethora.

The Mossberg went off.

The shed's entire interior was bathed in a burst of sulfurous, yellow light. During that moment, he was able watch Digger's head as it vaporized in the blast and see the fragile door blown completely open by the shrapnel.

Damn! It was just the dog!

His dismay stemmed more from foolishly wasting a round than regret at killing the kindly mutt. He'd have time for that guilt later, maybe.

Totally deafened, and all but blind from the blast, Stuart's mind reeled. Had it been the dog outside the entire time? But, what had been on the roof? Had he even heard the 'humming' outside at all, or had it just been an agony-spawned hallucination? And, what had Digger been doing there, still alive, in the first place?

Too many questions, too fast.

Red afterimages of the muzzle-flash strobed on his retinas as his head spun from the shock, pain and confusion. The only thing that he could be certain of just then was that the shotgun had only one round left in it after killing Carl's dog.

Stuart stopped cold as two words echoed in his mind: Carl's dog

Beyond the opposite wall, he heard a muffled, but familiar, tune begin to play.

It was "America The Beautiful."

At about eye level, twin spikes punched through the wall opposite him, their sparkle muted by the gloom. Stuart gaped at them dumbly and, already badly disoriented, he was struck by the gut-wrenching sensation of vertigo, because, while feeling no motion himself, the world suddenly seemed to tip as if he were falling forward. He assumed that he was passing-out again, yet when the tilt had reached a point at which his head should have struck the ground, but didn't, Stuart grasped the nature of what was really happening. He wasn't falling at all, the shed was being lifted. The spider, like a seagull with a mussel, was removing the hard shell from its prey in order to expose the tender flesh within.

The tune ended.

The structure quickly reached such a severe angle that, top-heavy now, it began to topple over. The ancient, metal walls, twisting beneath the changing distribution of their own weight, began to buckle and groan as they fell. The brittle, plywood roof dislodged and slid off, breaking apart as it went. Desiccated insects and wooden splinters filled the air.

The shed hit the ground as one piece, then collapsed in upon itself, throwing up a choking cloud of dirt and grit in the process. A rusty, jagged edge slashed across his back, slicing him shoulder to shoulder through sweatshirt and skin. Raw pain flared from the gash as the blood began to flow and everything he saw gained a faint crimson tint. Stuart was only peripherally aware of his latest injury, however. Its voice joined in the symphony of his torment, flavoring the melody, without significantly adding to it.

What concerned him now was that, in the obscuring dust, he couldn't see more than a foot in front of his face, much less locate the spider.

He forced himself upright with his left hand and, clutching the Mossberg's pistol-grip in the other, Stuart searched the swirling debris for a sign of his adversary.

The moon started to peek out from behind its vaporous shroud and the dust glowed around him. The relative brilliance of the light gave the cloud a more tangible appearance even as its particles began to disperse.

In front of him was Digger's decapitated body. He watched as steam rose from the dog's corpse and into the cool night air. Stuart found it easy to imagine that he was actually witnessing the release of the dog's soul.

Out of the corner of his left eye, he saw something move.

The spider was standing right beside him and despite the moon's neutral illumination, the creature's glassy body was somehow sparkling red, like a spot-lit ruby. As fast as he could, Stuart swung the shotgun towards it and prayed for a miracle.

He didn't get one.

'Carl' struck out at Stuart with a tentacle before he could get the barrel fully around, piercing his left arm through the wrist. His arm felt like it was on fire and the pain, eclipsing all of his other injuries combined, savagely began burning its way up the bone to his elbow.

Stuart knew that he was worse than dead, he was becoming a 'spider'. Fighting the anguish, he turned the weapon on himself, instead, placing the barrel under his chin. He was already squeezing the trigger when the spider disintegrated beneath a sudden, bludgeoning hail of anonymous gunfire.

Shocked, his concentration was broken and Stuart found himself no longer able to contain the cruel tremors that the spreading transformation was causing. The white-hot pain was approaching his shoulder and his entire body began to shudder uncontrollably. Lying enveloped in flickering red lights, which he belatedly understood were coming from nearby emergency vehicles, Stuart knew that he dare not wait a moment more and fired the shotgun.

There was a warm, yellow flash and he felt the empty Mossberg fall from his hand. As he was losing consciousness, Stuart fervently hoped that it would be peaceful, and one hell of a lot less noisy, where he was going.

EPILOGUE: Later.

When he woke up, Stuart had no memory of the sequence of events that had led him from suicide to the windowless, toothpaste-green hospital room he found himself in. The first person he saw in the fluorescent lit space was also the only person in the room other than himself. An M.P. with an assault rifle was standing by one of the two doorways that he could see. Upon noticing his stare, the soldier unlocked the door, then leaned out and hollered something he found unintelligible, all the while keeping his eyes glued warily on Stuart. Apparently beckoned by the M.P., a thin, black man wearing a green smock immediately entered the room. Coming over to the bed he produced a pre-prepared syringe from his chest pocket and grabbed Stuart's right arm. He tried to lift his left one to fend the man off, but couldn't. He looked to what was stopping him and was just realizing that he no longer even had a left arm, when Stuart felt a needle-prick on his remaining one. He swiftly drifted back down into the darkness.

Spiders scuttled through his dreams.

He came to again, but not in the same place.

Sunshine filled the 'Navajo'-patterned room, streaming in through the open windows. The smell of dew mingled with the odor of rubbing alcohol. He could tell that it was morning, or a morning, to be more precise, and that he was in a hospital. His broken leg was in a bulky cast and his left arm was still missing. Stuart had a lot of questions that he wanted answered, now.

He decided to ask the dozen or so doctors and military-types that were standing around him, as they seemed to be waiting for him to say something anyway. In that respect they turned out to be very helpful.

Stuart was first informed that, after his rescue, he had drifted in and out of his recuperative slumber for a good two weeks before he truly came back to reality, such as it was nowadays. They then told him what he really wanted to know and that was how he had survived.

As it turned out, back at the shed, he was shaking so badly from the monstrous conversion of bone to crystal that the barrel of the Mossberg had swayed to the left and was pressing against his numbing shoulder, rather than being beneath his chin, when he fired. Stuart had blown his own arm off, saving his soul.

The six Wyoming state troopers that were Manny's 'cavalry', on the other hand, had saved his life. The police must have gotten the surprise of their lives when they saw the situation that they were responding to was not, in fact, an 'officer down' as Manny had cleverly led them to believe. Calling them from the closed Texaco's pay-phone, what else could he have said? That a giant, spider-looking monster was running around killing people?

Stuart would always be grateful for that lie.

In one of the many reports that he had been given to read, a witness described what was found at the scene after the paramedics had "evac'd the victim out." The only thing on the list that Stuart hadn't seen at the shed before losing consciousness was listed as: "a delicate, crystalline object measuring approximately two feet long by six inches wide (with a slight bend exhibited at its midpoint) which lost cohesion when transport was attempted."

Stuart identified the object for them as what had been left of his own arm and, during the next week of his recovery in what he had found out was a military hospital, was called upon to recount his entire story several times in the presence of many different people. They came to his bedside wearing all manners of suits, uniforms and medical scrubs.

During the afternoon on the day before he was to be released from the hospital, Stuart received an unexpected, but long hoped for, visit from Manny. Now, however, he was Lieutenant Manuel DeCosta. He explained that he was on active duty now, having given up on graduate school and opting for a life that was a little more structured. Stuart wasn't surprised, especially since the army had bought the land that included their excavation site for miles around, ostensibly for a new training area, but, as he was told earlier by Colonel something-or-other, the good ol' U.S. of A. was really more interested in its 'national security'. It was a phrase he had heard often lately.

They sat and discussed what they had been through, both knowing that it would probably be the last time they could speak of it to anyone, ever - again, national security.

The official story had nothing to do with glass spiders or exploding people.

Oddly, they chose to attribute the deaths to a "hydrophobic mountain lion." The media ran with the rabid puma story the moment it was leaked to them, of course, and by the time Stuart had even heard of it the tale was already considered by almost all of the world as the truth.

In return for their silence, the government "awarded" Manny with a field commission as an officer, and all of Stuart's student loans and hospital expenses were paid, including the costs of a lifetime supply of prosthetics. The hundred grand they deposited into his bank account didn't hurt much either. He felt as if he had won some macabre game show.

Frankly, Stuart was simply glad to be alive, even if it wasn't in one piece.

Their conversation took a bittersweet turn as they chatted fondly of Carl and Julie for a while, swapping tales of their experiences together.

The hours quickly passed and dusk began to settle. After recounting a particularly hilarious anecdote involving Digger, a chicken coop and one really pissed-off farmer, Manny announced his imminent departure. He was shipping out that night and, as he wasn't allowed to tell anyone his destination, both of them knew that they were being purposely kept apart. That way if they chose to break their silence it would have to be done alone. Their story, told by one voice, would almost certainly be ignored, or worse, wind up in a supermarket tabloid. Stuart could almost see the headline now: "Glass Spiders Tour Wyoming Desert! Army Covers It Up!"

After awkwardly shaking Stuart's only hand, the soldier stood and they said their good-byes. He walked to the door and opened it. As he left the room, Lt. DeCosta turned and snapped a crisp salute to his friend.

The door's spring-hinges caused it to close behind Manny and when it banged shut with a note of finality, as if slammed by some unseen, malevolent force that was bent on keeping its secrets. Alone once more, Stuart began to reflect on his own plans for the future.

He, also, had decided to leave paleontology, but not the University. It had become clear to him that there had to be a deeper pattern to the mass extinctions that occasionally ravaged his world and that, as soon as possible, he needed to learn more, much more, about global ecology, geology, astronomy, statistics—all of it. That way, much like Professor Weatherwax, he too might be able to see the truths that are hidden and expose the things that lie buried beneath the surface. Stuart's probe, however, wouldn't be confined to only the Earth's surface, as his late teacher's had been. Instead, his search would have to encompass all of human reality, because, by putting together all of the clues that he can find, no matter how obscure, he must try to discover the pattern behind those prediluvian seasons of death.

It was vital that his quest begin soon, because there existed absolutely no doubt in Stuart Lyon's mind that the hibernating spiders would awaken from their tenuous dormancy someday and try to reclaim this world. He was equally certain that mankind's survival depended almost entirely upon knowing when.

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