ATOMIC TALES – Strange Invaders #36: Spider Kingdom

Agent One

“I don’t like it, Ray,” Agent Six, “Roughhouse” Rick Donlevy, said as I pulled our agency Studebaker onto the deserted main street of Hen Creek, Oregon. “Where is everybody? It’s like that ghost town you and Ruth found last summer with that giant centipede.”

I gripped the steering wheel tighter at the memory. “I’m sure this will be different.”

“Let’s hope so. Brr…” Six pulled up the fur-lined collar of his trench coat against the chill. The southern Oregon weather had stayed well above freezing—not particularly cold for February—but it wasn’t swimsuit weather.

I spotted the Mayor’s house, a faded white Victorian close to the middle of the town, and pulled into the driveway.

“Halloween come early here?” Six pointed to a prodigious display of cobwebs in the corners of the house’s porch.

“Mayor Colby told our switchboard that they’ve got a spider infestation problem. She said it’s out of control, and they’re not sure how to handle it.”

“So, the USSB does exterminating now?”

I laughed. “Plus, there were reports of strange lights in the sky.”

“Naturally,” Rick scoffed. “Spotting flying saucers is a national craze. Everybody’s doing it.”

“I can assure you not all of the reports are swamp gas—or the kind of scam that Sister Starlight was pulling.”

Rick whistled. “Before she turned into a human bee.”

I knocked on the front door. “Let’s hope we don’t find anything similar here.” When no one answered, I knocked again.

“Mayor’s expecting us. Right?”

I checked the knob. “Door’s open.” I went in, and Rick followed. “Mayor Colby? It’s Agents Ray and Rick from the US Science Bureau. You wanted to speak with us?”

The house, like the rest of the town, lay eerily silent. The sour odor of a full litterbox filled the musty air—as well as something… rotten.

Roughhouse wrinkled his nose. “Did she fire the cleaning staff?”

More cobwebs hung inside the home than outside. Gossamer filaments clung to every corner. The place looked like a horror movie set.

“Good thing Agent Three’s not here,” I mused.

My companion looked puzzled. “I can’t imagine Suzanne being afraid of spiders.”

“She’s not. She just hates cobwebs… Some wartime thing. She doesn’t like to talk about it.”

Rick nodded. Many of us had been through hell in Korea or World War II prior to joining the USSB.

I spotted someone in a rocking chair in the living room. Spiderwebs covered both chair and the person. “Mayor Colby…?”

Agent Six paled. “Jeeze Louise!”

I cleared the cobwebs from the victim’s face. Mayor Karen Colby looked to be in her forties, trim and fit, but pale as death. I took her pulse. “She’s alive. She might be suffering from spider bites.”

“You think?” Rick eyed the profusion of cobwebs nervously.

“Get the antivenom kit from the car. I’ll pull her free.”

“Check.” Six headed out the door.

As I tore away the sticky webs, the mayor’s eyes flickered open.

“Save them…” she groaned.

“Save who?”

“Ray…” Roughhouse called from near the car, “…There are spiders out here!”

“Stomp on ’em.”

“They’re, uh… Jumping!”

“Stomp ’em anyway!”

“Okay…”

Mayor Colby focused heavy-lidded eyes on me. “Save… my cats…!”

“I’ll try, ma’am.”

“They were so small to start…” Colby moaned. “But now…!”

Bang! Bang! Shots echoed from outside.

“Ray…!” Agent Six’s voice, more urgent. “Now they’re too big to step on!” He crashed through the front door and slammed it behind him.

I left the mayor and rushed to his side.

“You’d need Donna to stomp ’em, now!” he said, panting. “The ones I shot were the size of chihuahuas—and, I swear, they’re growing. How is that possible?” Donna Hayes, wife of a fellow agent, had grown to giant size during the invasion; we still didn’t know why.

“How is any of the stuff we’ve gone through lately possible?”

He swallowed hard and handed me the med kit. “If the Russians are behind this, I don’t wanna see what else they‘re cooking up!”

I peered through the front windows. Outside, a dozen hairy red and brown spiders—including some the size of a tackle box—scuttled and leapt across the otherwise-deserted streets. “Watch them. I’ll give the mayor a shot of antivenom.”

Rick nodded and pressed up close to the glass. He looked nervous, and I couldn’t blame him.

I grabbed the appropriate anti-toxin, and injected it into the unconscious mayor.

As the medicine hit, her eyes shot open and she blurted: “Save my cats! Get them to the vet!”

She seemed so panicked that I replied instinctively: “I will.”

Mayor Colby let out a long sigh and collapsed unconscious once more.

I picked her up and carried her to the front door, where Six waited nervously. “Look after her, Rick.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I promised to save her cats.”

“Don’t take too long. Those spiders aren’t getting any smaller.”

A glance out the window confirmed what Roughhouse said. More large jumping spiders roamed the streets now.

I suppressed a shiver and hurried through a couple of rooms. I found the cats in the kitchen, next to a pile of blankets that one might use to wrap a nervous animal and a pair of wire mesh pet carriers. The cases stood empty and the cats lay beside them, all webbed up, desiccated… mummified.

Mayor Colby must have been trying to rescue them when she fell victim herself.

Six looked away from the front window as I hurried back. “Find ’em?”

“Yeah. Dead. Let’s get her to the car.”

“We’ll have to fight our way out.”

“What else is new? You carry her, I’ll keep the spiders off our backs.”

“Check.” Rick gathered the unconscious mayor into his arms.

I opened the door and we charged out. The Studebaker sat parked only ten yards away, but an increasing number of spiders skittered and jumped around between us and it.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

I shot one as big as a miniature poodle and then put two bullets in a beagle-sized one leaping at me. I’d swear that some of the critters were growing, even as we battled toward the car.

I stepped on two saucer-sized arachnids, but had to put a half dozen slugs into one the size of a footlocker before it stopped leaping and dissolved into a familiar, foul-smelling green goo.

That got us to the Studebaker. Rick set the mayor across the back seat while I opened the trunk and pulled out some of the agency’s latest and greatest gear. I handed a flamethrower to Rick.

“What’s this for?” he asked. “Aren’t we getting out of here?”

“Yep. But I’ve just had a crazy idea…”

He looked concerned. “Crazy… How?”

“I spotted a couple of pet crates in the kitchen—big enough to trap some of these spiders. You hold ’em off here, while I get the cages. Then we’ll bring the Teragons some samples to crow about.”

Six shook his head, but replied: “You’re the boss, Agent One.”

He stood guard next to the car as I rushed inside. I heard several pistol shots, and one whooshing roar from the flamethrower, as I raced to the kitchen. I grabbed the blankets and the cages and, on my way out, the antivenom kit I’d set aside earlier.

Agent Six stood ready, flamethrower in hand, as I dashed back to the car.

“This put the fear of God into ’em,” he boasted. “They scampered off, but they’re already starting to regroup.”

I dropped the anti-toxin kit on the front seat and then opened both cages and set them by the trunk. “I’m gonna throw these blankets over a couple of the small ones and toss them into the cages. Don’t burn me to a crisp while I do it. Then we’ll get the hell out of here.”

Six switched from flamethrower to pistols. “Check.”

The smaller, faster spiders came at us first, which seemed to make my plan a lead-pipe cinch.

While Rick picked off the bigger brutes, I stomped two or three too small for the cages and then threw a blanket over a football-sized rascal. I scooped it up, chucked the blanket into a cage, closed my improvised trap, and dumped it in the trunk.

That success made me giddy, but the increasing size of our foes quickly dampened my enthusiasm.

“Ray, I can’t keep this up much longer…”

“Just one more,” I insisted.

A spider as big as a hubcap looked like a perfect victim. I netted it easily with my remaining blanket as the black-eyed fury leapt for my throat. But my hairy eight-legged prisoner struggled mightily as I wrestled it into the cage.

A sharp pain stabbed into my left forearm. “Ah! It bit me!”

Rick looked worried. “You okay?”

I slammed the cage door, thrust the second carrier next to the first, and banged the trunk shut. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Six gave our enemies a final blast with the flamethrower as we retreated into the Studebaker.

Gritting my teeth, I injected myself with anti-venom and then hit the gas.

Rick smiled triumphantly. “Boy, Donna could get a full-time job with the agency stomping these sons-of-guns!”

We sped down Main Street and out of town, crushing and plowing through dog-sized spiders as we went. The houses down at this end of town were almost entirely covered in webs, and I knew we’d have to call Spider Squadron to mop up the place as soon as we reached safety.

Just before we left Main Street, though, I spotted a sign in the window of Shatner’s General Store that may have explained our problem: Hideaway Hunny – Sweetest in the Nation.

We knew from past experience that brand attracted more than just giant bees.

Agent Six whooped and pounded triumphantly on the back of the front seat as we raced away from the city limits with the mayor in the back and a pair of giant spiders stowed in the trunk. “Woo! We did it, Ray! The Teragons are gonna give us a medal for this!”

“That’d be great,” I admitted woozily. “But would you take the wheel? I’m gonna pass out.”

THE END

About “Spider Kingdom”

It probably won’t surprise you to know that this story started as a series of images in my head of spiders roaming the streets of a deserted, western-style town (you know, one long dusty main street… vacant or closed store fronts, etc.). Interestingly, the spiders in my daydream were growing as they leapt and capered down the main avenue. And thus, another Atomic Tales: Strange Invaders was born.

In addition to all these monsters, my head also contains a list of cool movies that have contributed to the amalgam that is AT. One of those films is Kingdom of the Spiders, which is a super-creepy thriller from the 70s staring personal fave William Shatner. In it, perfectly ordinary (though large) spiders terrorize a town, eventually covering nearly every square inch with cobwebs. Mayor Colby is named after Woody Strode’s character in the film, and you’ll find another name tribute or two as well.

While the webbed-up town idea was probably inspired by KotS, the idea of the spiders growing as our agents watch may have come from Eight-Legged Freaks. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that cool giant spider movie, so I’m not sure. The notion may have just come from SF/horror movies featuring fantastic growth in general. That E-LF also has huge spiders jumping around—because that’s so much easier to do with CGI mutants than with actual spiders—was also part of my original images for the story.

However, the decision to make the deadly arachnids actual jumping spiders came from doing some research on what spiders were hairy. I didn’t want to use tarantulas again, I’d just blown up a big one outside of Doctor M’s lair, and the pictures of the jumping spiders were just so cute! And at the same time, they’d be terrifying if they grew to the size of a dog or larger.

Once again, in this story, one of our agents get hurt. You may have noticed that happening more often as the invasion they’re battling grows and the danger escalates.

Hopefully, you’ve also noticed the accumulation of pieces to the puzzle of what’s really going on here and who the ultimate threat might be.

Are you keeping all the clues straight?

Good. Because I’ve got a 15,000-word series bible and numerous other notes to keep me on track.

Feel free to keep your own scorecard.