With my messed-up leg, I couldn't be engaged in much fighting. Liz told me to let her take care of things, and stay out of harm's way.
Although using ranged weapons was highly desirable, I couldn't get my hands on a gun because, one, having never held a gun in my life, I didn't want to misfire and hit her by accident—or hurt myself in the process—and two, even though we were in the countryside and other households were a good two kilometers away from where we lived, it would be loud enough to get us in legal trouble; we'd be completely defenseless against those spiders while cramped up in a prison cell.
My father used to hike on the mountains. He taught me if I were ever unfortunate enough to run up against large predators in the wild without any sharp objects nearby, I'd have to accept that my chances were very low, and, if I was lucky enough to survive, I'd walk away from the incident without a leg or an arm.
My father said that with a tiger, I should gouge out its eyes.
With a bear, I was supposed to ball up into a fetal position to protect my inner organs and play dead until it got tired of trying to kill me.
For an alligator, the only thing to do was to push down on the back of its tongue with my hand and let water enter its mouth so it wouldn't be able to breathe.
After sharing with me all this knowledge, he then told me to toss all of it out the window and accept that, realistically, we would never stand a chance against these animals one-to-one; death was the only expected outcome.
After those encounters with the spiders, it was a miracle that I could still sit here and breathe, but I was seriously wondering how long we'd be able to keep up with this.
In order to maintain a safe distance from those fiends, we needed a longer weapon, so I bought a couple of those long pruning shears for defense.
Those spiders had a human body on the upper half, so maybe we should try to aim for their vital organs like the windpipe, the heart or the head.
Last time, when Liz put the chili powder in their eyes, it had some sort of an effect so I guessed their human half was vulnerable to some extent.
Or at least I hoped it had an effect on them. From all our encounters with these things I'd not heard them utter a single sound. If the chili had made them feel anything at all, then they should've reacted with a little more than a slight recoil.
The one thing we hadn't tried was the pesticides.
This time I bought a fogger for them and some full-face gas masks for us. The pesticide bomb might take a while to fill the area so I'd puncture the side of the tin can with a knife and then throw these things their way to see how they'd respond.
It was almost 10 pm.
Last time we were attacked around this hour.
All the windows were shut and bolted.
The front metal door was only slightly closed, since the locks were useless against them. If things go bad we would just make a run for it. This time at least I'd get to see how they'd enter the building.
Liz was sitting at her desk, her head buried in a textbook just as she'd planned. She was doing it as a way to calm herself, although I doubted anyone would be able to read anything in these situations. The shears stood leaning against the desk.
It was five minutes past ten.
I held my breath.
So this was going to be my life now.
Liz told me to act natural. She didn't even want us to put on the mask beforehand. The reason was that she suspected the spiders could read minds and would only enter when we were distracted. That was exactly how it'd happened last time so she might be right on that.
She told me that in her head, she would read out the words on the pages, to make it look like she was engaged in reading and the noise would hopefully drown out her real intention.
The homeless man said the spiders would only come for her, and that, to them, I'd be nothing more than a slight inconvenience. They could also read our intentions. In that case, the only question now is wher—
I turned my head to check on Liz.
Her hand was already on the shears. She was shaking.
It all happened too fast.
On the desk stood a spider roughly 230 cm tall—237 cm. The black-skinned human head almost touched the ceiling.
With her weapon in hand, she jumped back. The wooden chair slid away, screeching.
I scrambled for the knife and the fogger cans behind me, my eyes still glued to the fiend.
Hold on, Liz.
The spider stood still and observed its prey.
Liz had her back facing the front door.
My hands got hold of the can. I tried to puncture the side in the middle with the sharp tip of the kitchen knife. The metal was much harder than I expected.
"Liz!"
Long black poles were phasing through the front door. When they pushed against the horizontal rope hovering near the floor, the pulley came into motion, causing the bag of chili powder to flip and pour its content on the thing below. The powder rained down and bounced off the floor like red mist. Liz didn't even bother to turn and look at the second encroaching beast. She lunged forward and thrust the pair of shears at the other spider.
Fsh—
The thrust landed on its body but couldn't dig very deep. She pulled out her shears and jumped to the side as sharp black appendages punctured the brick tiles where she'd been.
She closed the distance again, got under its leg and made a clean cut in an arc. No liquid came out from the three appendages. No sign of pain. Another leg immediately appeared from behind and under its belly.
"Liz!!"
Pok
She caught it with her free hand. Another leg came down behind her head. Liz dropped on her knees and cut a single arc above. The blade went through both legs.
The spider pulled back then jumped forward on the floor.
My knife finally went through the canister.
"Hold that breath!" I shouted and tossed the can in the direction of the spider.
Liz reached for the gas mask on her desk. I put on mine.
The spider staggered away from the can toward the front door where the second spider was slowly crawling in.
I reached for the second fogger.
"It's slowing me down," she said.
"What are you doing?" I shouted
Liz dropped the pair of shears on the floor. She picked up the 15 cm kitchen knife and held it out in front of her.
I've got this, she muttered. From inside the mask, her breathing was getting heavy.
The two spiders were prowling side by side. They got into position.
Liz walked straight toward the spiders. Her arms now hanging loosely to the sides instead of guarding her front. She was trying to save on stamina and catch her breath. Her head and rib cage were completely exposed.
"Save that can for another day." She meant to tear off her mask but decided to keep it on. The spiders were now crawling toward her. Their upper halves carried the human forms of a man and a woman, black skinned and wearing crumpled white-sleeved shirts. Due to the lighting, their extreme proximity to the tall ceiling made it difficult to see their facial expressions.
We could always run, but there was nowhere else for us to go. No home could ever shelter us against these natural abominations. It was do or die.
The giant monsters circled the girl. She stood under the flickering white neon light, one of them fast approaching from behind her.
Suppressing the impulse to scream, I squeezed the fogger in my hand, waiting for the moment we'd need it.
Shuk.
An appendage hit her from the back, piercing a shallow hole between her shoulder blades. Liz didn't budge. The puncture didn't go through her, even though the force was strong enough to rumble the floor all the way to where I was standing. The puncture could not go through. She was being reckless.
Liz swiped with her knife in an arc and the leg came right off. Dislodging the black hairy javelin between her shoulder blades with the free hand as she twisted her body around, she used the momentum to throw the appendage through the human head of the spider behind her.
Another spider was already lunging straight for her, the black leg pressing on her scalp.
It stopped.
Blood trickled down her temple.
I looked frantically for why the spider stopped dead in its track, then I saw the knife lodged inside its human head.
Both spiders crashed on the ground in unison.
When did she throw the knife? Although I thought I had been watching the whole time, keeping track of every movement, every dodge and parry, I couldn't tell the exact moment she threw, even if my life depended on it.
While she was hurling the leg like a javelin at the first spider, the other one was coming directly for her head. These two actions took place simultaneously. But then the knife was already on its own head.
I could not see her throwing the knife.
With the fogger and knife in each hand, I staggered toward the spiders.
"No, stay right there!" Liz shouted, her voice muffled by the mask.
With short breaths, Liz reached up and pulled out the knife from its head.
The pull only brought the human form closer to her feet on the ground.
Standing in silence, she waited for any sign of life from these animals.
After ten seconds, she placed the knife under the human head.
I instinctively turned my eyes away. Although they weren't human, the sight was still hard to watch. She'd said that if she survived, this would be her way of making sure they'd stay dead. Although neither of us knew whether it would stop them from coming back.
The process took a while from what I could tell, even though the knife was far from blunt. The muscles were sinewy just like any other regular human heads, and were difficult to slice through. Perhaps she was right for being cautious.
After both heads were removed, we dragged the giant bodies into our backyard and doused them in gasoline. They were surprisingly light, considering their sizes. I thought maybe we had to cut them up if we wanted to fit them through the back door, but that wasn't necessary—even though we could hold onto them, their giant bodies phased right through the door frame and parts of the wall.
I lighted the heap on fire and we looked as bright flames wrapped up their bloodied faces.
As black smoke rose and twisted and the gasoline choked the air, I waited for their ugly heads to char.
The bodies did not burn.
Both the human half and the black shell remained perfectly intact. The skin refused to melt in the fire. Not even a trace of the slightest burn.
We waited for the charring, the sizzling and the bubbling of exposed fat and blood.
Nothing.
The flames shrank little by little, frantically shrouding and licking at the bodies like warm golden fabric until they eventually died out.
I put a hand near the carcasses; intense heat emanated from them, but when I tried to quickly tap the human head with a finger, it felt like I was touching a cold, wet stone.
"We can't be doing this for the rest of our lives," I said. "There has to be a cure for all of this."
"Next time they come over, we'll ask them."
"Who?"
She pointed at the two bodies.
"They won't tell you anything," I said. "They won't even make a sound when you cut off their legs."
"We'll find a way," she murmured, wiping the line of dried blood on her temple with her hand. "We'll find a way to make them talk."
A chill ran down my spine. I looked her in the eye with a hope to find the meaning of those words. She wasn't smiling. But those eyes were gleaming with an expression I couldn't fully understand.
Those round, big black eyes.
Liz—there was something different about her now.
That fight she'd just had with them. It felt like a magic trick, a grand demonstration of sleight of hand. There were these brief moments when my eyes simply couldn't keep up.
The longer I stayed with her, the more I came to accept the idea that she was nothing like us.
Maybe this whole affair was a tragedy for me. For her, it was different.
Liz stepped forward to kick the lump of flesh. "Guess we'll make some space for a pile over here," she said. "Not like anyone can see them." She turned to me, "you got the bandages?"
Right. And hydrogen peroxide. Even though she'd said her body could heal overnight, we both agreed that she was still going to use first aid.
"Does it hurt?" I asked.
"Barely felt anything."
She was tending her own wound in the bathroom and wouldn't let me help.
"Don't worry, pops. They won't keep getting away with this. Next time, I'll make them talk."
"That looks pretty serious." I wasn't looking—just watching the clouds at my front door. "You should keep your distance and be more careful next time. Use longer ranged weapons so they can't close up on you. Are you absolutely certain you don't want me to join, next time they come here?"
"Those scissors don't feel right. It's easier for me to move around with the knife."
"And get stabbed again? In that case, I'll deal with them. Stay in your room tomorrow."
"They won't touch me again."
"How do you know that?"
"They won't."
I turned to her. "You're talking like you let them get to you on purpose or something."
She looked down and pressed her lips.
"Is this a game to you?" I could hear echoes of my own voice across the empty fields. "It's too dangerous. Don't come out of your room next time."
"You can stay out of this."
"What was that?"
"It's not a game. I'm serious." As she finished bandaging, she walked out of the bathroom. "You can stay out of this."
Where could I go? We were stuck in this hellhole together. Where could I possibly run off to?
I'll make them pay, she'd muttered.
It was hard to pin down exactly where she was coming from when she said that.
She hated the spiders just as much as I did, but there was also something else that I was seeing in her.
I realized now that I wouldn't be able to change anything if I kept raising my voice like that. Maybe I should try again at another time.
We were going to have that conversation sooner or later.