Dallas Run

Chapter Fourteen

Should they go for it?

Hickok estimated the distance to the stairs as 20 feet. Only ten feet separated them from the top of the nest and the roaches. The bug were bound to catch them if they tried to head for the hills. He decided to wait until the cockroaches departed, and he glanced at Melanie to insure she would stay put. She was scarcely breathing, her eyes riveted to the mound.

He saw them widen and looked up, knowing and dreading what he would see.

A roach poised on the rim stared straight at them.

“Go!” Hickok bellowed, and shoved her toward the corner. “Up those stairs.”

Perplexed, she stood and turned, taking a few precious moments to perceive the stairs in the shadows.

The roach on the rim started down.

Hickok gave her another, rougher, shove, and she took off like a frightened doe being pursued by a cougar. He raised the Henry to his right shoulder, aimed for the area between the eyes, and squeezed the trigger.

As it collapsed in its tracks, the mutation’s antennae waved wildly, then fell flat.

Hickok retreated, risking a glance at Melanie and finding her only two thirds of the way to the stairs. He faced the mound in time to observe four cockroaches scuttling down the slope, and he levered off four shots in swift succession, going for the head in each instance.

All four went down, two onto their backs, kicking and thrashing.

Spinning, Hickok sped toward the stairs. He saw Melanie climbing rapidly, and he prayed the door at the top of those stairs wasn’t locked.

Clicking sounded to his rear.

The gunman looked over his left shoulder, his skin crawling at the sight of cockroaches swarming over the rim. There were too many to count! He poured on the speed, his moccasins flying, his arms pumping. At the bottom of the stairs he stopped and whirled, sending a hasty round into the foremost bug and grinning when the impact flipped the mutation backwards into its fellows. He slung the Henry over his left arm and ascended.

“Move your ass!” Melanie bawled from above.

What did she think he was doing? Taking a Sunday stroll? Hickok halted on the tenth step, drawing the Pythons, and gazed down.

The roaches had reached the stairs.

“Hurry!” Melanie cried.

Hickok thumbed the hammer, working the double-action revolvers ambidextrously, firing six shots, and with each blast a cockroach stumbled and fell. He deliberately went for the leaders of the pack, and the six jumbled bodies formed a temporary obstacle for the bugs following.

“Damn your butt! Quit showing off and move!”

Showing off? Hickok dashed up the stairs and joined her on a narrow platform.

“I can’t get this frigging door open!” she declared, nodding at a recessed gray metal door.

Hickok snatched at the vertical handle and lifted, using just two fingers on his right hand, but nothing happened.

“They’re coming!” Melanie screamed, gazing down. “Get the damn door open!”

The Warrior slid the Colts into their holsters and grabbed the handle with both hands. He braced his feet and wrenched up with all of his strength. Still nothing.

“Oh, God! Please get it open!”

Hickok didn’t bother to look. He knew the bugs were closing fast. Again he yanked on the handle, and yet again it refused to budge. The door must be locked after all!

Melanie gasped. “They’ll be on us in seconds!”

Enraged at the prospect of being done in by a passel of mangy insects, Hickok absently, accidentally twisted the handle to the right, and the motion produced an audible snapping noise.

The door swung inward on creaking hinges.

Hickok seized Melanie’s left wrist and forcibly propelled her through the doorway, then leaped through himself as something nipped at his left heel. He grasped the heavy metal door and heaved it shut, hearing the thump of cockroach bodies as they threw themselves at the door to get at him.

“You idiot! You almost got us killed!” Melanie said.

Taking a deep breath, Hickok leaned his back against the door and mopped at his sweating brow with the back of his right hand. “Is that a fact?”

“They almost had us!”

“No thanks to you,” Hickok said, listening to the ruckus the bugs were making on the other side of the door.

“Me?” Melanie repeated in astonishment.

“Yep. You’re the one who runs like a girl.”

She sputtered and seemed about to fling herself at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I am a girl!”

“I thought you were a lady,” Hickok reminded her.

“Lady! Girl! Woman! What’s the difference?”

“None. Most females run sort of funny.”

Melanie’s eyes narrowed. “We run funny? How do we run funny?”

“You know. Women sway sideways instead of runnin’ straight.”

A tremendously loud thud vibrated the metal door.

Her cheeks turning a beet red, Melanie clenched her fists and stepped close to the gunman. “If I was a man, I’d pound you to a pulp.”

“Simmer down, for cryin’ out loud.”

“You swell-headed, stuck-up, stuffy, stupid son of a bitch!” Melanie exploded.

“Wow! Can you say that ten times real fast?” Hickok quipped, sidestepping her and studying the corridor in which they found themselves. Sunlight poured in a broken window five yards from the door, revealing a dusty, tiled hallway leading to a wooden door 40 feet away.

“We’d better skedaddle before those varmints figure a way to get through the door or the wall.”

Melanie glanced at the metal door, her anger dissipating in an instant.

“Do you think they can?”

“I vote we don’t stay and find out.”

They hastened to the far door.

“Hold up,” Hickok said, and took the time to reload his weapons. Once the Pythons were snug on his hips and the Henry was in his hands, he twisted the doorknob and eased the door inward.

An incredibly huge chamber stretched before them, bathed in the sunshine from large windows spaced at ten-foot intervals. Rows of enormous machinery, silent sentinels signifying the complexity of prewar civilization, were arranged from front to back. Dust caked everything, and a preternatural silence pervaded the air.

“Sort of spooky,” Melanie remarked, gazing over the gunman’s right shoulder. “What do you think this was?”

“A factory, I reckon,” Hickok said, entering the chamber.

“It’s too bright here for the roaches,” Melanie stated. “We should be safe.”

The Warrior glanced at the floor and halted, puzzled by a set of six-inch-wide tracks in the dust. “Maybe not.”

“Why?” Melanie asked nervously, and then saw the tracks. “What made those?”

Hickok knelt on his left knee and inspected the prints. They were almost circular and there was no indication of toes or nails. “Beats me. I’ve never seen any like these.”

“What if the thing that made them is still in here?” Melanie asked, scanning the machinery.

“It could be,” Hickok admitted, standing. “Try not to wander off,” he advised, advancing warily.

“I’m right behind you,” she promised.

The gunfighter probed the spaces between the machines. Where could a critter hide, he wondered, when the gigantic gizmos, the benches, and the floor were all clearly illuminated? The tracks weaved among the machinery and were all over the place. Maybe, he hoped, the creature was nocturnal.

They covered 35 yards without incident.

“Look!” Melanie declared, pointing at a pair of doors visible far ahead.

“A way out!”

“Keep the racket down,” Hickok cautioned. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

“Then let’s get our butts in gear,” Melanie said.

Hickok trekked another 30 yards. He paused next to a looming machine, staring at the dials and the gears, curious about its purpose.

He’d studied books during his schooling years at the Home on various aspects of the industrialized societies dominating the globe prior to the Big Blast, and he knew there were once factories that manufactured everything from buttons to bombs, from toys to automobiles, but he had no idea what might have been constructed by the machines surrounding him.

A loud rustling noise interrupted his reflection.

“Did you hear that?” Melanie whispered.

“Yep.”

“What was it?”

“How the heck should I know?”

“You’re a big help.”

Hickok stepped forward, mystified. Oddly, the rustling had sounded very near, yet nothing was in sight. The floor consisted of cement, eliminating an underground source. There was only one other direction from which the noise could have come.

Overhead.

The gunman looked up and froze, his skin crawling.

“What’s the matter?” Melanie demanded, and bent her neck backwards. Her breath caught in her throat. “No!”

They were suspended in webs attached to the ceiling, from one end of the chamber to the other, patiently waiting for any prey to appear. Over a dozen bulky, squat, brown spiders fixed their multiple eyes on the pair of humans. Each spider had a body as big as a full-grown German shepherd and thick, hairy legs. Each rested in its own web, the strands encompassing a 20-foot section of the ceiling. And the repulsive features of each were accented by two large fangs protruding from the center of a thin mouth.

“What do we do?” Melanie queried breathlessly.

“Well, it’s a cinch we can’t step on them,” Hickok replied.

“Why haven’t they attacked?”

“Maybe they’re all takin’ naps.”

“Be serious!”

“Okay,” Hickok said, placing his left hand on her back and shoving.

“Run!”

They sprinted for the far doors.

Cocking the hammer on the Henry, Hickok ran on her heels, watching the spiders. If he survived, he planned to inform the Elders about the giant insects proliferating in Dallas. Giantism in insects and their close kin, arachnids, had become a common occurrence in postwar America. No one knew whether the giantism was a consequence of prolonged exposure to enhanced levels of radiation, or whether a genetic imbalance had been triggered by the chemical weapons employed during World War Three.

The spiders hadn’t moved.

The Elders could ponder the issue of why there were so many giants in Dallas. Since the city had not sustained a nuclear strike, Hickok guessed the cause must be chemical in nature. He wasn’t about to waste time puzzling over the matter in depth. Discovering the reason for mutations wasn’t his bailiwick. Killing them was.

A spider suddenly plummeted from the ceiling and dangled directly in their path, ten feet above the floor, affixed to a thin, silvery strand. Its mouth opened and closed, its fangs dripping saliva or venom.

Melanie stopped and screamed.

Stepping to the left so the woman wasn’t blocking his aim, Hickok sighted on the arachnid’s eyes and fired. The thunderous shot knocked the spider from its strand, the slug tearing completely through its body, and the creature fell to the floor on its back, its legs kicking spasmodically.

The shot served as a signal for the remaining spiders to launch themselves at the floor.

“Go!” Hickok shouted, pushing Melanie, and she dashed forward.

Another spider materialized to their left, on top of a hulking machine, evidently intending to leap on them as they passed.

Hickok snapped off a round as he ran, and he was gratified to see the arachnid slammed backwards by the impact and disappear from view. He spotted another spider to the right, but it ducked behind a bench before he could shoot.

“There’s one!” Melanie yelled, jabbing her left forefinger at a mutation hanging from a thread approximately 18 yards to the left.

The Warrior fired, the bullet unerringly on target.

Struck in the eyes, the arachnid swung wildly, its body spinning clockwise.

Three down.

Where were the rest?

Hickok scrutinized the chamber, hopeful the others were in hiding. He felt confident the Henry could keep those that appeared at bay.

“Look!” Melanie said, nodding at an object stretched across the aisle in front of them. She slowed, recognized the object as a skeleton, and jumped over the bones to continue her race for the double doors.

The gunman glanced down as he leaped over the dusty framework of bones, noticing several busted ribs and two prominent punctures in the cranium. Near the outflung right hand lay an old sword. Whoever it was had gone down fighting.

They came within 40 feet of the doors, and still the spiders had not launched a concerted assault.

“We made it!” Melanie cried prematurely.

Hickok wasn’t so sure. He wouldn’t feel safe until they were outside the factory. With the cockroaches downstairs and the spiders upstairs, the plant served as a breeding ground for mutations. Possibly the cause was in the factory itself, either toxic chemicals or some other element the roaches and the arachnids were exposed to.

Melanie giggled as she rushed to the exit and placed her hands on the horizontal bar in the center of the right-hand door. She pressed on the bar but the door refused to open. “Help me!”

The Warrior reached the left-hand door and applied pressure on the sturdy bar with the same result.

“Kick it open,” Melanie suggested.

Hickok took a pace backwards, about to enact her recommendation, when the nape of his neck suddenly tingled. He whirled, leveling the Carbine.

Less than 30 feet from the exit, forming a half circle and creeping toward the gunman and the woman, were 11 spiders.