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334 pages, Hardcover
First published July 5, 2016
The camera crew finally gave up on the traffic and set up on McCarthy Quad at the University of Southern California. It was the perfect shot for a reporter who couldn't get an angle on the real action. The dichotomy of reporting on fear and chaos from the middle of an ivory tower oasis. Students walked past in the background as if nothing was going on twenty-five miles across town. The reporter blathered excitedly, filling time in the way that only a seasoned pro can fill time when the facts are almost entirely speculation.
And then, the spiders came gliding down from the sky.
At first, there weren't many. The camera caught a few black dots against the cerulean sky, cotton candy trails of silk streamers looking like vapor trails. But then some of them started drifting down. For a few minutes, it was almost comical. The camera recorded one landing near the reporter who promptly squashed it with his shoe. There. What was so scary about that? If you've got a shoe, you're safe. Around the reporter, however, students were pointing and beginning to scream. And then the camera caught one student flailing her alarms, five or six of the large black dots scurrying over her, and then a burst of blood from her face, her shirt staining crimson. And more screaming. And more screaming. And more and more and more and more. And the camera suddenly dropping. All Teddie could see on her screen was pavement and shoes and socks and the alien movement of spiders, and then just the lower body of the reporter, his legs kicking and then kicking more weakly, and then not moving at all. And all of it, Teddie realized, running live because she hadn't ordered it cut away.
That's when she threw up the second time.
"You think because you kill one spider in your bathroom, that there aren't others hiding somewhere in your house?"