Fifty-one
Caitlin woke Rex three hours later. "Doc's not
breathing right, and I think they're going to try something over in
the trees. It's almost light out."
Rex climbed out of his sleeping bag and knelt
before Doc. He took his pulse, then patted him on the cheek. "Doc, come on, wake up."
Rex looked up with a grim expression. "He's
unconscious and burning with fever. Loosen his clothes for me."
Caitlin unbuttoned Doc's shirt and his belt.
He was alarmingly hot even by her own standards. She dragged him a short distance from
glowing embers of the fire and then retreated to the far end of the
shelter to cool off in an environment more suited to her enhanced
metabolism.
Rex roamed the perimeter of the shelter,
studying the trees in the early morning gloom. "Looks like they're
going to rush us from two different directions. Caitlin, I need you
at the north end."
He was carrying his rifle. He nodded to
indicate the revolver tucked in her pants. "Squeeze off one round
when I tell you. We need to let them know there are at least two of
us and that we're both armed and dangerous."
Caitlin watched the edge of the trees through
the crack in the boards. She saw a small, dark figure start to
zigzag into the clearing. "I've got one coming this way," she
called out.
"Same here. One shot. Whenever you're ready."
Caitlin fired deliberately high. Rex fired at
the same time.
Doc's eyes flew open to the noise. He looked
up at horror at the cocoon hanging over him, but just as quickly
lapsed back into unconsciousness.
"I nailed one," Rex said without enthusiasm.
"I missed."
"Is he retreating?"
"He's tripping all over himself."
"Then give it a rest. We've made our point."
Rex sat leaning against the wall. Caitlin
heard his teeth chattering. She went over to sit at his side. "Do
you mind?" she asked when it occurred to her that he might not want
her near.
He smiled and shook his head. "You're
trembling. Are you cold? No, scratch that. Stupid
question."
"I'm hungry."
"How bad is it?"
It was terrifying. Without a caterpillar, there was nothing at all she
could do to help herself. "If it gets too bad," she said, "I'll
have to go find my caterpillar. Any caterpillar."
Rex eyed the spider-woman suspended from the
roof support. "You'd risk that?"
The spider woman looked dead and shrouded in
cobwebs, as if she had been hanging there for years.
"That's what will happen to you if you mess
with that godforsaken bug, Caitlin."
Caitlin could see the hump behind the
enshrouded spider woman pulsating and shifting about. It would
emerge soon. The new creature, whatever it was, was going to be a
lot bigger than a caterpillar, bigger by far than even a human
being.
"It won't be long," Rex said.
Caitlin eyed the camcorder with mounting
anxiety. The camcorder would record suffering beyond human
endurance. She wanted to smash it for invading the spider
woman's privacy, but who was ever going to see it? Nobody, was
her most profound suspicion. Many would experience such a
death. Nobody would be left to watch a recording of one.
"Do what you have to," Rex said finally.
"There's nothing I can do to help."
"I know."
"None of it was your fault," Rex said. "I've
been angry about what happened to Connie, but I never really blamed
you."
It was all Caitlin needed to hear.
"I should have stood up to Leon when you came
to me for help. I was a coward. I'm thinking of all the
years I suffered keeping you at a distance. Wasted years.
But if we gotten together, Caitlin, it would be far worse now.
Nothing we have ever done has come to anything."
She waited to hear more. Maybe he wanted
her to disagree with him, but she didn't.
The waiting was as
bad as the hunger. She wanted to hear how he felt about her. If he
loved her, then everything was okay. Regardless of what happened,
they would be together at the end.
