WebWorld (5.3)

And so began our time as prisoners.

To say that it was weird feels like an understatement.

And at the same time, it doesn’t. Because we did an approximation of going on living. We were no longer confined to the main hall, we could come and go, we could read and cook and garden and take walks around the perimeter. We could continue like a functioning community, and the newcomers inserted themselves into all the same roles, working on gardens and repairs, cooking and washing and digging just like everybody else. Some of them would talk to some of us. One of theirs showed Todd his gun, and agreed to teach him to use it if his mum and dad said okay.

If it wasn’t for the fact that we were all under guard, followed, observed, by people who carried guns openly and despite their overt friendliness seemed willing to use them, it would almost have been like they really had joined us rather than invaded us and taken us over.

Chloe took care of Greg. And she seemed to have some idea what she was doing. She said she’d encountered something like this before. She told me quietly that the man had died, that they had been able to improve his condition, but he’d been old and just too weak for his body to rally again.

So, the operation was a success but the patient died?

“I made progress,” she told me, only a little sharply.

“And Greg?”

“He’s doing well. Look, it isn’t pretty, there are a lot of internal injuries. The main thing is to keep him strong so his body can repair itself. You can help. Your connection is how you knew to save him in the first place. You can sense more if you don’t fight the visions and open yourself up to them.”

Bullshit. At least, I thought, probably bullshit. How would you know? Their declared expertise annoyed me. They’d read some reports, but they hadn’t shovelled the same shit we had. I was in no mood to admit to myself that they might have waded through some of their own shit reaching this point.

I tested the water with Chloe – a healer, so surely, someone who wanted to save people not hold guns on them and send them off to die.  “Are you really okay with this? Holding us all hostage like this?”

She looked at me seriously, “We gotta do what we gotta do.”

“Who’s yours? Is it Greg? Do you put a bullet in his head if Seth says so?”

Greg was right there, eyes half open, an expression that – beneath wrenching pain – portrayed mild curiosity.

“We do what we have to. This is the only way.”

“You believe that?”

“I do. Nate, the world’s gone to crap. If we can fix even some of it, why wouldn’t we?”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“Because I’m not the one who won’t make it?”

“Yeah.”

“Would it help if I told you I’d shoot myself in the head if you died?”

“What?”

“Would it?”

“What? No. How would I know if you were lying?”

“Fair point. But if it makes you feel better, there’s a decent chance we’ll all die if you can’t pull this off. Our lot. Your lot. You could just fail if you wanted to.”

“I’m not even sure I understand. I don’t think I’ll need to fail on purpose. It’s not like I know what I’m doing.”

“You know more than you think you do. Those subjects – the human ones – didn’t need training. Their instincts kick in.”

“Yeah, and let’s say mine don’t.”

“Then it won’t have been easy for me to say after all.”

I didn’t know if I felt hot or cold. There was a calm about her that chilled me and pissed me off. “Maybe I’ll just grab that gun off your hip right now.”

It didn’t help at all that she softly laughed out loud.

“That was a long shot,” Greg murmured after she walked away.

I’d been watching him suffer. Day after day. It was written on his face nearly constantly. I wondered about what she’d said, but also, I was scared. I asked him “Can you take this?”

One eyebrow, fractionally raised.

“The pain. Is it too much?”

“You… offering…?” his voice started failing but the context was obvious.

Was I? I didn’t think I had the guts. And what if he was destined to live? Chloe seemed to think he might probably come out the other end. “No, not that,” I said, “what she was saying.”

“Tristan reckons you saved my life. Well, for a second time really.” He reduced his voice to whisper once he was too tired to speak fully out loud.

“I’m not sure if I did or didn’t. I don’t know what’ll happen if I try it again, what she said: it’s a bit too much like letting them take me over. I don’t know…”

“You have… an armed guard.”

A thin, dark-haired guy with a bushy mo. Seth, kept an eye as well, but it was Zara he made a point of staying vividly close to, a constant warning in that proximity, and one he knew would resonate with me.

That guy – was his name Brad? I thought it might’ve been – and Chloe would be keeping tabs. If I went rogue, went all killer-arachnid, they’d have to act. Right?

And I wanted…

Not just to help Greg, but to see… to know…

Greg just murmured, “Go on.” His eyes told me how searingly bad it was for him.

It wasn’t hard. The visions were always just on the edge of my mind. Even if I couldn’t see an overlay of web on the real world, I could feel it scratching at my head. If I stopped pushing back against the scratching, the images came flooding in, the room became a web-packed whiteness, with strange flowers growing, little blue lights, lines like buried electrical cables running through everything. It was murky, faintly blue-greenish, as if sunk beneath leagues of hard-pressing ocean. My lungs felt that. My skin felt something constantly brushing against it, my ears were aware of a diluted buzzing.

Greg looked different too, his skin shot through with a tangle of glowing blue-grey threads. He looked as if he was gasping for breath.

My hands knew their own way. They had a better idea than my mind did. They found that spot on the back of his shoulders and started digging in. There was a music to what I was doing, as my fingers moved out of their initial position and sought places deeper inside, following veins and muscles, reaching into his heart and lungs. I could feel those rhythms, and instead of being scared shitless about the fact I was calm. It felt slow. It felt like an aquarium at a doctor’s or dentist’s office. Tufts of white fibre floated past me like jelly-fish, the air – more like water – took a silver tinge that became bright, and yet at the same time clearer, distinguishing figures with a humanoid outline…

I came back to myself without knowing I intended to. I was nauseous and still felt a bit like I was floating. Chloe was beside me, and Greg was lying next to me, unconscious, his forehead beaded with sweat.

Chloe saw my alarm, “It’s all right, Nate. It’s okay that he’s sleeping it off.”

“Did I hurt him?”

“No. I think you helped him.”

Which was good, right? Anything that could push him past what he was going through? But the other side of it loomed: I could do this, so I could do the rest. Maybe? A chance at least. And if I could and I should…? But fear of death ran through me like a razor, I could feel my courage bleeding all over the place. The cold I could feel tearing at me was as much shame as fear.

I could see Seth through the corner of my eye. I knew he’d observed all this. I stood up and walked over. “You and I need to talk.”

#

Seth wasn’t intimidated by me – God knows he wasn’t – and I refused to be intimidated by him. We moved over to one of the alcoves where a window seat overlooked a sports field.

“Hey,” Seth said, “I’m sorry about this. You seem like a good guy; I don’t want to have to do this to you.”

“Bummer, that.” I responded.

There was something that flickered through his expression, but he reined that in quickly, “What’s up?” he said.

“I want to make a deal.”

“I’m not sure you’re bargaining with anything.”

“Shut up and listen.”

Seth just nodded. I’m not sure if there was a modicum of respect in that, or if he was just sort of curious to see what I was going to come up with.

And God knows, he had all the cards. I was pretty much the only card he didn’t have. I said, “Okay, so I’ll co-operate with you. Fully. Fatally. Just how you want it.”

He looked as if he considered saying that he didn’t actually want me to die, but changed his mind and just nodded solemnly.

“But I want some stuff in return.”

“Go on.”

“Proper care of Greg.”

“Well, obviously…”

“I want to keep healing him. With Chloe helping. And then… when I’m dead… I want her to keep it up, keep taking care of him, until he’s better again. Even if you have to go out into the scary bits for the good drugs. Okay?”

Seth said, “Okay. Of course, Okay.”

“And the rest of them. Our guys. You let them go.”

“Once we’re done with this, I won’t need them. And they won’t go anywhere without you beforehand.”

“Yeah, well I want your word.”

“Okay.”

“A promise. Tell me once we’ve done this, you’ll let them go free. You won’t hold them anymore. Say it in so many words.”

“When we’ve done this attack, whatever the outcome, if your friends want to leave, we won’t stop them, if they want to stay, we won’t boot them out. They’ll be free to come or go as they choose. I’m giving you my word on that.”

I was encouraged by the seriousness with which he seemed to use the expression ‘my word’ – a chance he actually meant it.

He said, “Is that all?”

“Yeah, I think so. I might think of something else later.”

“We have a deal.”

“Good.”

“You haven’t told the rest of them?”

“I only just decided to do this.”

“Are you going to?”

“I guess. I don’t know.”

“Your girlfriend’s going to tear my skin off in layers.”

“Good, you deserve it.”

“Look, I’d never hurt her if I didn’t have to. I’m not some thug. I’m glad I don’t have to hurt anyone.”

“Except me,” I said, failing to hold down the bitterness. My throat ached with it. The injustice. I walked away, afraid he’d see the tears struggling to escape through my eyes.

#

“All righty,” Seth sat on a table in the dining hall, big army-style boots rested on the back of a flimsy camp chair intended to be sat on by twelve-year-olds. “This is the plan.”

We all sat or stood around listening. One way or another we were in on this now, and were going to have to see it through. For better or worse.

Greg was sitting over against the north wall. The healing sessions were scary, but they seemed to have been proving effective.  I’m not sure to this day if he’d been dying before they started, but the improvement was stark: he was healing at the speed I had. The pain was no longer all-consuming, and I could feel his gratitude. He admitted, “it was breaking me, I really wasn’t sure I’d come out of it with my mind – assuming I came out of it at all.”

I was glad I could have helped him. Maybe it was going to be the last thing I could do for any of them, apart from the one thing. I wanted to feel calm and resolute, but I was shaking so badly inside most of the time that it astonished me that it didn’t show on the surface.

Seth didn’t seem scared, he had not only the calm resolution I craved for myself, but a cliched military enthusiasm. He was in his element. He said, “We have twice what poison we need, but I want to use all of it. And there’s industrial quality spay bottles. We can’t do the aerial drop the army did, that’s the bad news,” - though his tone didn’t make it sound like bad news at all – “we are going to have to get in there and do it by hand. And when we do, there’ll be resistance-”

I spoke up: “I don’t want my guys on the front lines.”

Seth frowned, “We need everyone.”

“I said I might think of something else.”

“Yes, you did, but we need numbers.”

“Fine. Your guys take the lead. They go first.” Yes, Chloe, Brad, some others whose names were beginning to connect with faces: Logan, James, Brian, Daniel, Rona, Eric.

“Okay,” Seth’s mouth creased into a small smile. “Fair enough. We’ll all have knives and firearms. Please don’t shoot each other,” he caught Zara with the corner of his eye, “the situation’s too critical for that.”

She just glared at him.

“Maybe later,” he offered her. I’m not even sure if it was meant to be something like a joke.

She had nothing but an eviscerating glare for Seth. She had used up the angry, hate-infused words, her weapon was a vicious silence that I knew Seth felt.

He said, “Okay, so we go in there…”

I said, “And not Greg.’

Greg started to object.

“Shut up,” I said sharply, “you can hardly walk. You can’t fight.”

Seth said, “Fair enough.”

“Or Todd.”

He hesitated.

“He’s a fucking kid!”

“Okay.”

I didn’t think I could push any more names through: Zara, Tamsin. I could imagine that wry look on his face as he asked if I was going to go through all seven. And then who?

Not yours, asshole.

But I don’t think he’d have wanted to hold back. He wanted to be in the fray. A side of him was enjoying this. It was if he was born to do this. As if in the Great Spider Apocalypse, he’d found his calling.

Maybe they’ll call it that. It’s not like I’m ever going to know.

When I wasn’t scared or angry, I felt sorry for myself, or sometimes sorry for Zara, or guilty for what I was doing to her to save her. I was actually kind of a mess, for which all I can say – listen up, posterity – is ‘give me a fucking break, it’s a really short straw I’ve gone and drawn here.’

“Okay,” Seth went on, his tone laced with impatience. “Most of us will have spray bottles and firearms, and knives. We’ll have the people from that commune…”

“Except the pregnant women,” I interjected, perhaps in part to annoy him.

“I hear that’s most of them.”

“They’re still pregnant.’

“They’ll have a choice,” he said, “We need that girl, but I won’t force anyone else to come with us.”

Right, cos you’ll be giving them guns, and I know what I’d like to do with mine when you place it in my hand. If you do.

Seth told us, “The fight will be about ten minutes. It’ll seem longer, and it’ll be exhausting, but then the poison will start to kick in and they’ll switch their mode of attack. It’ll get psychic. It’ll be like being blasted with the migraine from hell, and there’ll probably be massive sensory disturbances before the internal bleeding. I’m being straight with you, this’ll be ugly. But that’s when Nate and Karen will step in, they’ll be able to counter the attack, or at least focus it on themselves.”

Poor Karen. She doesn’t deserve any of this.

“Nate and Karen shield us. I’m not sure for how long, but after that, the gum dies, it withers away, and we’ve fucking won! This whole area for hundreds of ks in all directions is going to be free of that shit, crops are going to grow like normal, civilisation comes back.”

I didn’t think it was going to be that easy. But I was past arguing. The world might or might not be past saving. The reaction might not go that far, the gum might rebound, it might grow again. But my part in all this stopped before those considerations. I was going to save Zara, as many of my friends as I could. That was going to have to be it.

Seth had maps of the area, he had photos of what he called ‘the nursery’ – it looked like a crack in the ground, a wound on a corpse. I stopped paying attention. The room filled with webs and exotic fauna, I let it flood in, I sailed on it, I willed myself to stop caring about anything.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work