For once traffic was with him as he sped to work. Martin arrived with five minutes to spare. He had barely driven onto the lot before he was driving back out, this time sitting behind the wheel of a SecureCo armored car.
His partner today was Chuck Kaufman. The other man sat in the passenger seat, a worn paperback clutched in his bouncing hands.
The book was four inches thick. It looked more like a dictionary than a novel. Martin noted the name Stewart McQueen printed in large silver letters across the back cover. The author's name was bigger than the title. A pair of glowing demonic eyes stared out from the black background.
"Why do you read that junk?" Riley asked as he drove.
Chuck Kaufman didn't look up. "It's not junk," he insisted as he read. "Besides, you've never read McQueen."
"He wrote Caterpillar," Martin said. "A book about a haunted bulldozer that's always driving over everybody. It's people like McQueen who make people like me crawl around on the floor every night looking for the damn bogeyman."
Chuck was no longer listening. Engrossed in his book, he continued reading as Martin drove.
Their first stop was the Orlando Greater Credit Union. Climbing down from the cab, Martin and Chuck rounded to the back of the armored car.
Following standard security procedures, the two men outside and the third man inside the truck used keys and codes to open the back. The bolt clicked and the door opened.
Some of the bags piled in the back were white. Most had taken on tinges of gray. The thousands of dollars they hauled daily quickly discolored the heavy money sacks.
Two dirty gray bags were brought into the bank. They retrieved ten more. In all, it took barely eight minutes before they were back out on the street and on to the next bank.
The rest of the morning went by just as quickly. It was a little past noon, and Martin had begun thinking about the twenty-minute nightly ritual of crawling around Janey's closet and checking under her mattress when something caught his eye.
As he sped down the highway, Martin saw a van in his side mirror.
It looked ordinary enough. Gleaming black paint shone bright in the white Florida sunlight. As it sped up, Martin realized he couldn't see the driver. The windshield was darkly tinted.
The van was driving up in the third lane. Fast. Martin flicked his attention back to the road ahead. When he looked into the mirror a few seconds later, the van had skipped over, pulling into the lane adjacent to Martin's. It continued to accelerate steadily. Some low instinct clicked in the chest of Martin Riley.
"Something's happening," he said cautiously.
"Huh?" Chuck asked. His nose was still buried deep in his book.
The black van pulled abreast the SecureCo truck. Though the side windows were tinted, too, the angled sunlight shone bright enough for Martin to make out the gloomy interior of the speeding vehicle. There was no one at the wheel.
Stunned, Martin opened his mouth to speak. The instant he did, the words froze in his throat.
Before his eyes the smooth black side panel of the van began to bulge. It was as if something from within were exerting enormous pressure against the vehicle's metal shell. The bubble swelled like a cancerous growth, extending out toward the side of the armored truck.
And as Martin watched, dumbstruck, a nub appeared in the side of the massive bulge. With impossible speed, it sprouted out into a slender black leg. It was joined by another, then another.
The eight legs grew with time-lapse rapidity. As soon as they were fully formed, the body popped free of the metal from which it had been born. As it clung to the side of the van, the huge spider legs twitched and stretched, seeming to test their own strength.
Another bulge formed at the top of the round body. This one formed not a leg, but a compact oval. Slowly, the fat nub at the end of the thorax turned to the armored car. And for Martin Riley, stunned amazement turned to abject horror.
It was a face. Or half a face. One eye, a mouth, a nose. Even indentations where the ears should be. The thing that looked at him from out of that hideous body wore the head of a human being. And its single, soulless eye was staring directly at Martin Riley.
"Sweet Jesus," Martin breathed.
"What?" Chuck Kaufman complained. He was straining across the driver's seat to see what Martin was staring at.
"The thing!" Martin yelled, his head snapping around. "That thing from the paper! It's out there!" A squeal of tires.
Martin spun back around.
The van was spinning out of control. Dropping back into two lanes of oncoming traffic. It hit the jersey barrier, flipping onto its side, bouncing back over. Sparks flew as it careered into a speeding station wagon. A minivan struck from the other lane, spiraling nose to tail.
Tires screeched as the pileup began.
The SecureCo truck sped away from the crash. Martin was blinking fear as he studied the mirror. Cars crashing. Smoke.
All rapidly shrinking in the distance. No sign of the spider.
A flash of something large in the side mirror. Skittering along the drab green shell of the armored truck. Martin's stomach melted when he saw the big black legs crawling quickly around the rear, out of sight.
"What the hell just happened back there?" Chuck was asking as he glanced at his own side mirror. His eyes grew wide. "My God!" he breathed.
A tractor trailer had just raced around a distant curve toward the pileup. Too late to stop.
The air horn bellowed as smoke poured from locked tires. Jackknifing, the trailer whipped around, flipping up onto the pile of stacked cars.
The explosion was massive and instantaneous. A plume of orange streaked with curls of angry black erupted high into the clear blue Florida sky. Speeding from the scene, the armored car rattled. With a sinking feeling, Martin knew it had nothing to do with the explosion.
He plowed on.
"Holy shit, Riley," Chuck breathed. His eyes were stunned as he spun back around. "We have to stop!" Martin was still hunched over the steering wheel, sweat beading on his forehead. Not only did he not slow down, his foot pressed harder on the accelerator. "Get out your gun," Martin ordered.
"What? Riley, we have to-"
"Get out your gun!" Martin screamed. One hand on the wheel, he wrenched his automatic from his hip holster.
His urgency was a spark that hopped between them. Confused, Chuck pulled out his own gun. The truck rattled again.
This time there had been no explosion to mask it. The pileup had already vanished behind them. Chuck glanced at Martin. "What is it?" he asked, realizing now that something was terribly wrong.
A long, torturous shriek of metal erupted from the rear of the truck. It was followed by the sound of gunfire.
The fear now large on his face, Chuck scampered to his knees, sliding open the panel between cab and back.
When he peered through the bulletproof Plexiglas, the shocked gasp that rose from deep in his belly struck a note of raw primal fear.
Something huge scampered freely around the interior of the truck. Crooked legs stabbed like black elbows from a rounded body. And in two of those legs was the third member of their team.
As Chuck watched, the spider lifted the man high in the air, one leg ensnaring his head, the other his chest. When the spider tugged, head went one way, body the other.
Beyond the creature, the twisted door gaped onto the vacant highway. The spider flung the bloody body parts out onto the racing tar.