David Wong: This Book is Full of Spiders

Amy said, “Oh! Wait! Ohmygod it’s so simple. We just—okay, we just have to get to an open area. Between us and the plane, so he sees it—the cornfield! Everybody go to the cornfield!”

To John, she said, “Get on the, uh, the speaker thing in the truck! Tell everybody to go to the cornfield!”

We didn’t need to tell anybody anything. Hundreds of people were flowing past us, through the ruined barricades, the city draining out through the highway like water.

We piled into the truck, managed to get it turned around without running over a dozen people, and rumbled off toward the cornfield.

On the way, Amy said, “The plane! Oh God I can’t believe I didn’t think of this! It’s flying low, under the clouds! We can see it! So it can see us!”

“I don’t understand how that—”

“The pilot thinks we’re zombies. We just have to show him we’re not.”

We rumbled to a stop in the field, refugees of Undisclosed scattering past us, on foot and in trucks and on bicycles, heading off toward the second military cordon that I was pretty sure most of them didn’t realize was there. What did they think they would find out there? Their out-of-town loved ones, waiting for them with a six-pack? The president, with an apology bouquet?

John took to the loudspeaker and said, “WE GOT ABOUT FIVE MINUTES TO PULL THIS SHIT OFF, SO LISTEN UP. GATHER AROUND. WE ARE GOING TO SPELL OUT A MESSAGE FOR THE PILOT OF THAT PLANE UP THERE. HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HE’S ABOUT TO BOMB. WE ARE GONNA SHOW HIS DUMB ASS.”

We all bailed out of the truck. The pickup carrying Owen, the Cowboy and Marconi, which upon further reflection is totally a cop show I would watch, pulled up alongside.

I glanced nervously up at the plane and said, “Son of a bitch. We don’t have time, we don’t have time—”

John said, “It has to be something simple! Like ‘HELP’ or something!”

“WE DON’T HAVE TIME TO FORM FOUR FUCKING LETTERS, JOHN!”

Marconi said, “You don’t need letters, David. You need a symbol. One that man up there is sure to recognize.” Marconi nodded toward Amy.

John said, “Right! He’s right!” John ran off, stopped a group of women and said, “Stand in a line! Right here! Hurry! You! Over there! Stand here! COME ON, GODDAMNIT, WE NEED AT LEAST A HUNDRED PEOPLE! MOVE!”

Spearhead:Loadmaster, we are six-zero seconds from primary payload release. Prepare to open bay doors, on my mark—

Stallion:Hey, uh, take a look at the barricade area. On the road, the uh, highway—

Spearhead:I see it.

Stallion:We have a, uh, crowd forming, are those REPER?

Spearhead:Negative.

Stallion:Friendlies Evac should have been completed by—

Spearhead:Negative, those are not REPER.

Stallion:Jesus, are we looking at Zulus here?

Spearhead:Affirmative, I’m seeing overturned vehicles and debris, it looks like the barricade has been overrun.

Spearhead:Will the blast get them out there?

Spearhead:Affirmative. Loadmaster, we are now three-zero seconds from primary payload release. Opening bay doors now.

Stallion:Look. Down at the uh, that area to the east of the highway. In that field.

Spearhead:Copy that, there is a crowd forming in the field—

Stallion:Look. Look how they’re standing.

Spearhead:Is that—

Stallion:Look at the rows, they’re perfect rows—

Spearhead:They’re almost forming the shape of—

Stallion:It’s not almost. It’s perfect, it’s too perfect a shape—

Spearhead:All right. This is—Uh, Command, this is Spearhead, do you read me? We, uh, I don’t believe what I’m seeing here, but we are observing a crowd of Zulus less than a kilometer outside of the target area and they are standing, uh, they are standing in the shape of a human penis. I repeat, the Zulus have organized themselves into a perfect shape of a human penis in an open field below us. We are looking at this with our own eyes.

Stallion:They are not Zulus.

We stood there, in the field, shivering in the rain, in the shape of the dick John had formed us into. Dr. Marconi was to one side of me, looking disapproving. Amy was in my arms, her eyes turned upward, rain bouncing off her glasses. She was praying.

The cargo plane growled toward us, swooping lower, so low that I wondered how the thing expected to escape its own explosion.

Amy closed her eyes and buried her face in my chest and said, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“It’s turning! Look!”

The hulking plane banked, making a gentle turn in the sky and veering away from the town. We nervously watched it humming off into the distance, making a wide circle to head back the way it came.

A cheer went up in the crowd around us. There were five planes in the formation, and we watched as one after another they peeled off and circled back.

Falconer walked up and said, “I just want to say right now that this is the stupidest shit I’ve ever been involved in.”

John said, “Hey, you don’t have to like our methods, but you can’t argue with the result. Everything turned out okay, right?”

Amy said, “Why isn’t that plane turning back?”

The trailing plane in the formation was not, in fact, changing its course. It growled straight through the air, swooping right over us. The crowd all watched it glide into the distance, heading toward the part of town that had become home to the quarantine.

The plane swooped lower and lower in the sky, as if it was going to attempt a landing. Only it was not slowing down, it was speeding up. It released its payload, following the bombs down until both bombs and plane met the earth. A silent, black plume instantly appeared in the distance, the boom reaching us two full seconds later. The detonation would be heard two states away.

We were too far away to realize it at the time, but both buildings of the old Ffirth Asylum had been reduced to a crater full of thousands of tons of shattered concrete and brick. All of it was cooking in a furnace fueled by aviation fuel, floorboards, old furniture and tons of other flammable debris that would still be smoldering ten days later. Somewhere, at the bottom of it all, rooms full of malformed inmates were vaporized in a fraction of a second. In the old administrative building next door, a single basement room full of computers and gigabytes of incriminating data on hard drives, all melted into a bubbling, black stew.

John said, “Now there’s a shitty bomber pilot.”

The rain was starting to let up. I took a deep breath of morning air and said, “The town is still there, Tennet. You played your hand, and you lost—wait, where is he?”

Falconer said, “Oh, son of a bitch!”

The blue pickup, which Tennet had apparently stolen while we were all standing in the shape of a dong and waiting to die, was barreling north up the highway.

I said, “Who cares? He’s going to run smack into the Army’s cordon. Hopefully they’ll arrest his stupid ass.”