David Robbins: Thief River Falls Run

The spider paused seven yards away.

Rikki held his katana in both hands and raised the sword to chest height, the blade vertical, his powerful arm and shoulder muscles tensed.

He had fought mutates before, many times, but never one of the rarer giants. As with the mutates, no one knew whether it was a consequence of protracted exposure to enhanced radiation levels, or a genetic imbalance triggered by one of the chemicals employed during the Big Blast, but cases of giantism occurred regularly. Five years before, four Family hunters, out after elk, encountered a giant wasp and were nearly killed. Inexplicably, the strains of giantism only appeared in insects or their close kin.

Like arachnids.

The spider, a six-foot-tall aberration of nature, moved several feet closer.

Rikki knew he’d seen this type of spider before, at its proper size, and he noted the features, trying to place it. The thing was black, with an extended, almost spherical abdomen, and two prominent jaw-like appendages. Its spindly legs, like the bulk of the body, seemed to possess a strange shiny quality.

Abruptly, Rikki remembered.

Just one spider, to his knowledge, had a strange shininess to its color.

The black widow Spider.

The black widow suddenly came at him, its jaws quivering, its toxic venom dripping from pronounced fangs.

Rikki couldn’t repress a shudder as the thing closed in. He waited until the last possible instant and swung the katana, the blade biting deep, raking the black widow’s eyes. He darted aside, to the left, swinging again, aiming at the cephalothorax, the front section of the spider, expecting an immediate kill. Instead, the blade deflected off the rock-hard carapace, the protective covering over the cephalothorax.

The black widow, despite its size, or perhaps because of it, was slower than a widow of normal size would be. It turned after the human, the fangs working expectantly.

Rikki backed away, searching for a weakness. He knew the arachnid was divided into three basic parts: the cephalothorax, the front portion; then a tiny waist, the pedicel; and finally the extended abdomen.

Familiarity with the flora and fauna was extensively taught in the Family school. With the decline of humankind after the Big Blast, the wildlife had surged to unbelievable numbers, reclaiming the land for its own. Knowing the habits and dispositions of the varied creatures became indispensable to the Family’s continued survival.

So how could he dispatch this menace?

The katana arcing downward, Rikki jumped in close to the widow, going for one of the rear legs. The meticulously forged blade did its work this time, completely severing the leg at its joint, a putrid liquid substance spurting over the ground. Before he could try for another appendage, the black widow hurtled sideways, its massive body slamming into Rikki and sending him sprawling. The jolt of the impact dislodged the katana from his fingers, the sword sliding a foot from his outstretched arms.

The black widow kept coming, its fangs snapping at Rikki’s feet.

Rikki rolled aside, avoiding the Widow’s mouth, lunging for his katana, and missing.

The black widow pushed itself forward, actually hopping, and landed on Rikki’s legs, pinning him to the earth.

Rikki was on his right side, his frantic fingers inches from the sword.

The black widow paused.

“Can’t say much for your dancing partners, pard,” said a deep voice, and Hickok came into view, running around the spider and stopping near Rikki. His Pythons were in his hands, cocked. “Don’t move!” he ordered.

“I’ll try and lead it away.”

“Save yourself!” Rikki urged, still striving to reach his katana.

“Be serious,” Hickok grinned. “If you’re hungry, gruesome, try eating these!” he said to the spider, pulling both triggers, the barrels pointed at the row of eyes above the mouth.

The black widow lurched, recoiling in pain, and heaved itself at this new danger.

“What’s wrong?” Hickok laughed. “Lead not to your liking?” He backed away from the arachnid, intending to provide Rikki with a chance to grab his sword. “Come on, ugly!” he taunted the horror.

“Don’t stand there!” Rikki shouted, finally free of the spider’s weight.

He scooped up his katana and leaped to his feet. “Kill it!”

“No need to fret, pard,” Hickok chuckled, still backpedaling. “This is a piece of cake.”

He tripped.

“Hickok!” Rikki yelled in alarm.

The black widow was eight feet from the gunman, an implacable killing machine, undeterred by its injuries.

Hickok, flat on his back, raised his Colts and fired at the eyes, again and again, one gun after another.

The black widow staggered but didn’t stop.

“Hickok! Move!” Rikki was in motion, running to the rear of the widow, his katana held over his head. He put every muscle in his body into a downward slash, uttering his kiai as he swung, the blade cutting like a hot knife through wax, cleaving the back of the abdomen in two.

The widow reared up and spun.

“Go for the eyes!” Hickok directed while reloading his Colts.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi obeyed, slicing his blade from one end of the row of eyes to the other.

In agony, the black widow thrashed and squirmed, one of its front legs catching Rikki in the chest and knocking him down.

“Don’t move!” someone commanded, followed by the booming of a shotgun, one shot after another, the buckshot blasting great chunks out of the spider’s face, spraying the grass with pieces of the spider’s flesh and a pungent sticky substance.

The firing finally stopped, and Rikki could detect a ringing in his ears.

He looked down at his clothes, both his tattered jeans and his faded brown shirt, and grimaced at the gunk covering his body.

The black widow was lying on the ground, its body shaking uncontrollably, its face a ruined shambles.

Hickok walked over to Rikki, his Colts trained on the quaking spider.

“Think it’s dead?” he asked uncertainly.

“Nothing could live through that barrage,” Rikki commented, rising.

“Who…?”

“Just little old me,” stated a stocky, black-haired man wearing a green shirt and pants made from an old canvas. His brown eyes twinkled as he approached, a Browning B-80 automatic shotgun cradled across his brawny chest. “I heard some shots and came running. Lucky for you I didn’t decide to have a snack on the way.”

“We were doing okay without your help,” Hickok said.

“White idiot speak with forked tongue,” the newcomer gravely intoned.

“Geronimo know better.”

“I’d like to have seen you fight this thing, using the weapons we have,” Hickok stated, peeved.

Geronimo, the only Family member with an Indian inheritance in his blood, grinned. “You went about it all the wrong way,” he said. “Anyone could see that.”

“And just how would you have killed this thing?” Hickok demanded.

“Your tomahawks wouldn’t of made a dent in it.”

Rikki chuckled. Hickok and Geronimo were the best of friends, but they never seemed to tire of razzing one another. Their continual squabbling was common knowledge and a constant source of amusement; indeed, someone had once remarked that the day they ceased teasing each other would be the day the world came to an end.

“I would have killed it the right way,” Geronimo remarked.

“Right way?” Hickok snapped, falling for the bait. “What are you babbling about?”

Geronimo made a pretense of yawning. “Everyone knows there is only one way to kill a spider.”

“How’s that, smart butt?”

“Simple.” Geronimo winked at Rikki. “You step on it.”