“There’s something wrong,” Captain Blue said, frowning at the flight deck instrument panel. “I think we’re off course.”
Captain Scarlet glanced across from his contemplation of the distant mountains of an unknown land that broke up the seemingly never-ending stretch of ocean below them. The flight from the Kamchatka peninsula to Wellington, New Zealand had been uneventful so far, so a little distraction was almost welcome.
“What’s the problem?”
“Extensive instrument failure.”
Blue’s response was terse because he was methodically flicking switches in an effort to reset the controls.
“I can see that,” said Scarlet, studying the control panel. “What I meant is: do we know why the instruments have failed?”
Blue shrugged. “Looks like human error: someone obviously missed something important last time this plane was overhauled.” He glanced at Scarlet. “Lieutenant Sand did say it hadn’t been off the ground for months.”
“He also said it was the only plane they’d got,” Scarlet reminded him. “So we didn’t have much choice, did we?”
Blue shook his head.
“Can you fix it?” said Scarlet.
“Oh, sure.” Blue met his friend’s hopeful gaze and added, “In a hangar with the right tools, it’d be a cinch. In flight? Not a chance.”
“I’ll radio Cloudbase.”
“Well, I don’t hold out much hope that they can do anything to solve the problem, but you might as well try…” Blue said, distractedly, as he tried another series of adjustments to the systems.
Pleased to be doing something constructive, even if it might not work, Scarlet settled to his task. “Captain Scarlet to Cloudbase… come in Cloudbase. Lieutenant Green, can you hear me?”
There was no response, but Scarlet kept trying until, after a few minutes, his patience ran out.
“Yoo-hoo, Cloudbase, speak to me, Cloudbase… If you’re playing a joke, Seymour, I’ll knock your teeth down your throat on my return…. Cloudbase?”
“Does it occur to you that they might be hearing you, but we’re not hearing them?” Blue mused. “The Old Man’ll have your commission for threatening Greenie like that.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that some dozy technician has passed this plane fit for flight regardless of the fact that the directional guidance, radar and communication systems are all faulty? I will be making a full report about this and heads will roll.”
“You do that,” Blue soothed. He doubted Captain Scarlet would do any such thing – a few discreet enquiries and a quiet word with the person concerned was far more likely. Scarlet wouldn’t risk costing a man his job; but he’d make that man understand that one more ‘cock-up’ like this and that person would find himself on the wrong end of a colour-captain’s animosity - if not his fist.
He glanced at his partner’s irritated expression and asked: “Meanwhile, do you have a compass?”
Scarlet rolled his eyes. “Now why would I have a compass?”
“You were a boy scout, weren’t you?”
“I was; but that’s an irrelevance. Anyway, I bet you were one too.”
“No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t allowed. But I thought they taught boy scouts to be prepared and that the training was supposed to last you a lifetime.”
“Well, shame-on-me. Promise you won’t report me to the troop leader or I’ll have to hand in my woggle,” Scarlet said with heavy irony.
Blue smirked. “What time is it?”
“About 12.45…”
“Cloudbase time?” Blue asked. Scarlet nodded. Blue’s head swivelled towards the sun. He pulled a face and narrowed his eyes. “So, we’re roughly going south-east – which isn’t the direction we’re supposed to be going. So, I would say that, on top of the major problem of a malfunctioning aircraft, we’re definitely lost.”
“I could have told you that without all that ludicrous play-acting.”
“Okay, Field-Commander Scarlet, what do you suggest we do about it?”
“Return to base, of course.”
“Which base, where? We don’t even know where we are exactly because we don’t know when the navigation system went off-line. If you care to look out of the window you will see a distant patch of dense jungle with some distinctly uninhabited looking mountains and apart from that, there’s water… lots and lots of water… everywhere. That’s because the Pacific Ocean is very big. So, where do you suggest we land and make repairs to the radar so we can work out where we are and tell Cloudbase to send a shuttle down for us?”
Scarlet sighed. “Stop trying to be cute. Under the circumstances, we’d better aim for that jungle: at least we’ll be able to walk on that and then we can try and do the repairs. Where do you think that is?” He screwed up his eyes and peered into the distance.
Blue shrugged. “Papua New Guinea, or possibly New Caledonia, at a rough guess.”
“Can we reach it?”
Blue nodded. “She’ll get us there, but probably no further.”
“Then aim for there. Better that than a watery grave …”
“There’s not likely to be an airfield there or even a mechanic, you know. It’ll be hard for Spectrum to find us, unless they’ve been tracking us as we travelled.”
“It’ll be a darn sight easier for them to find us there than it would if we were ‘full-fathom-five’ below the waves,” Scarlet pointed out, with a superior smile.
The SPJ swung towards the island and they limped along for about ten minutes with Blue murmuring sweet-nothings of encouragement to the plane. Ahead of them lay the slopes of a large mountain covered with dense tropical jungle almost down to the sea.
Somewhat randomly, just as they crossed the coastline, Scarlet asked: “Do you think there might be cannibals around here?”
“No.”
“It looks like the sort of place where ‘Heroes of the British Empire’ always used to encounter cannibals,” Scarlet explained. “I read about it as a child. My Grandfather gave me the whole series of ‘Biggles’,” he admitted.
“You should speak to Fawn; I think they can cure that these days,” Blue remarked distractedly, as he struggled to turn the plane’s nose towards the island. “But, if you really want cannibals, I’ll do my best to find you some.”
“Adam, this is serious…”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Blue replied. “I also know it just got a whole lot worse than you imagine.” He pointed over Scarlet’s shoulder at the starboard wing. “Engine failure. It was only a matter of time,” he added ruefully. “No chance to search for the optimum landing space now, Paul; she’s going to blow!”
“ Shhhhhiit!” Scarlet flicked the automatic Mayday beacon; after all, anything was worth a try. “We need to eject, right now, wherever we are, before this plane explodes.”
“You know they’ll find us, don’t you?” Blue reassured his companion as they quickly strapped themselves into the pilots’ seats. “I can’t believe Cloudbase wasn’t getting your messages.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Blue activated the ejector mechanism. For a moment they both feared the cockpit canopy wouldn’t open, but then it snapped back and the seats were thrown upwards clear of the plummeting plane. The parachutes deployed immediately and the seats’ rapid descent jolted to a halt, then began again in a more sedate fashion. The SPJ ploughed on through the trees and hit the steep slopes of the mountain in a ball of flame.
Unlike using a body parachute, it was difficult to steer the ejector seats and the captains were helpless when the blast from the plane crash hit them and blew the chairs apart from each other and towards the rim of a heavily jungled crater, about half way up the mountainside. Once over the rim, they were sheltered from the off-shore wind and the chairs plummeted down into the unknown terrain.
Blue’s chair came to rest slightly higher up the mountain, at the edge of what appeared to be a deep crevasse in the steep side of the crater. The parachute had caught on the jagged rocks that formed the rim, and he was left suspended against the sheer rock.
Scarlet’s chair was some distance from Blue’s when the parachute caught in the upper branches of a tree, at least 30 feet from the ground. He was unhurt and immediately began looking for a way to get down, aware that the inevitable fall would be more dangerous than climbing down under his own steam.
“Can you hear me, Adam?” Captain Scarlet used his Spectrum radio cap-mic, hoping Blue would be close enough to be in range of the uniform’s internal comms facility.
“Yeah; just about. You okay?”
“Stuck up a tree, but safe enough. How about you?”
“The parachute’s caught on some rocks, which is lucky as there’s a deep crevasse beneath me. Don’t know how long the chute will hold out though; the rocks look sharp. I’ve no idea how deep the fall would be.”
Blue’s voice was matter-of-fact and his report was precise but despite this apparent calm, Captain Scarlet was as reassuring as he could be when he replied:
“Hang on in there. I’m coming.”
Blue’s nervous snigger spoke volumes to his friend. “Very funny, Paul. Like I have a choice?”
Grinning with relief at his friend’s banter, Scarlet set about freeing himself from the ejector seat, which was unlikely to be secure for much longer, given its weight and the ominous creaking of the branches. He scrambled over the back of the seat and onto the branch, balancing precariously as he reached down to grab the emergency pack from underneath. To his dismay the backpack was only half full – another black mark against the Russian base - but thankfully, there were ropes included. He drew out the longest of the nylon ropes and hastily constructed a noose, which he fastened to a sturdy branch. He slid down to the end and dropped the remaining 15 feet or so onto the squelchy ground.
He stood up, wiping the rotting vegetation from his legs and took stock of where he was. It was about 800m to where he could just see the red fabric of the parachute caught on a jagged outcrop, but not the chair itself. Evidently, Blue was hanging on the inside the fissure.
Hoisting the emergency pack onto his back, Scarlet spoke into the radio mic. “I’m down okay. Keep talking, Adam, so I don’t get disorientated in this jungle. It’s like trying to walk through treacle on this ground.”
“At least you have some ground to walk on,” Blue replied. “I’d give a month’s salary for some good solid terra firma right now.”
“What can you see?”
“Nothing much. The chair’s twisted against the rock face, I can’t shift it and I don’t want to struggle too much in case the parachute tears. What little I can see is dark and pretty dismal. Doesn’t smell too good, either.”
“Any sound of water?”
There was a pause as Blue strained to listen. “No; but there might well be a lake down there. There’s a constant trickle of water down the cliff face. I’m getting soaked.”
“Well, at least you won’t die of thirst.”
“That’s right: always look on the bright side, Paul,” Blue replied, sardonically.
“Phew: I’m at the foot of the sharp incline now. I can see the red parachute about 20 feet above me. I wish I had a hover pack.”
“Me too. I’m really not looking forward to dropping into the pit.”
“You’re not going to drop! Sit still and wait to be rescued.”
“Yes, mama!”
Scarlet laughed as he started to climb up the deeply fractured rock face. The rain had eroded away the softer material, leaving razor-like jagged outcrops of hard rock that cut his hands and tore his uniform as he struggled upwards.
“Okay,” he said. “I guess that did sound rather like your mother.”
“No,” Blue said amiably, “it sounded like a mother, but not mine. After all, you didn’t include three non-related topics and a great deal of unnecessary explanation in those two sentences.”
“I like your mother,” Scarlet gasped, in-between hauling himself over the next ridge of sharp edged rock and sucking at another cut on the palm of his hand.
“So do I,” Blue said, “but I’m still allowed to make fun of her…” the sentence trailed off. When he spoke again there was an edge of fear in his voice. “Paul, there’s something moving down there!”
“What?”
“I don’t know; but something’s down there, below me in the darkness.”
“You’re imagining it.”
“I am not; I can smell it… ugh…”
“What is it? A snake?” Scarlet asked, hoping with fervour that it wasn’t. He had always had a problem with snakes. “Around here I guess they’d be pythons or boa constrictors but there may still be some poisonous ones.”
“It is not a snake.”
“Good.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s a spider.”
“A spider? That doesn’t sound too bad, unless you’re as scared of them as all the Angels are. Just don’t let it bite you, it might be venomous. Swat it with something.”
“I’d need an SPV, Paul. It’s enormous.”
“You sound like Rhapsody when she found one in her shower.”
“This wouldn’t fit in a shower, trust me. It’s bigger than me.”
“What? Are you having me on?”
“No. Honestly, it’s a man-sized spider. And I think it reckons I’ve dropped in for lunch… as the main course.”
“Shoot it.”
“I can’t reach my gun, or I would. The chair’s stuck against the rock face. I can’t move my arm. I told you.”
“Sit still. I’m coming!”
“Hurry up… please.”
Recognising abject terror in his friend’s voice, Scarlet increased his speed. As he neared the lip of the pit, he asked:
“Adam are you okay?”
“Ugh…. Not really,” Blue whispered.
“I’m almost there.”
“Oh, Jesus… hurry. Please hurry!”
As Scarlet peered over the rim of the crevasse, he could see what Blue couldn’t. Around the walls were thick strands of what must’ve been the spider’s web and Blue’s chair was entangled in several strands as thick as ropes. Evidently, the strands had been partly responsible for stopping the chair falling all the way down as they were supporting the weight, thus preventing the parachute fabric from tearing.
Blue was sitting facing towards him, but his gaze was riveted on the biggest spider Scarlet had ever seen. Its legs spanned the entire diameter of the pit, from which rose an indescribable stench. Its body was, as Blue had said, about the length of a grown man and its head carried two enormous fangs, each about the length of a human forearm.
“I’m going to be dreaming of this in my nightmares for years to come,” Scarlet whispered into his cap mic.
Blue did not reply. He was sitting perfectly still, taking shallow breaths so as not to attract the spider’s attention and initiate an attack. A bite from something that big, even if it wasn’t venomous, would surely be fatal.
“Don’t move, Adam,” Scarlet whispered into his cap-mic. Blue’s gaze shifted momentarily towards him, but he gave no other sign that he knew Scarlet was there. “I’ll try and distract it.”
Scarlet didn’t know much about spiders, but he reckoned they were attracted by movement; after all, they went after things that were struggling in their webs. So, as he got to his feet he waved his arms about and shouted. Immediately the animal turned towards him, as if it was sniffing the air at the prospect of new, and definitely live, prey.
“Come and get me, Incy Wincy … you don’t want that tough American; besides, he’s all tangled up in a nasty, inedible ejector seat! I’m good British Beefcake: I’m much tastier!”
Scarlet’s reactions were lightning fast, but he was taken aback by the spider’s sudden jump towards him. He stumbled and fell back onto the razor-sharp rock, drawing blood.
The spider jumped again, landing over him and imprisoning him within a cage of eight strong legs. Scarlet closed his eyes as the two large, pitiless dark eyes and four smaller eyes of the evil-smelling, hair-covered head, came closer, its two nicotine-yellow fangs open to bite.
He drew his pistol and blindly fired upwards several times.
“Paul!” Blue’s voice called faintly from the pit. “Paul, are you okay?”
It wasn’t a question Scarlet was quite sure he knew the answer to. He wiped the gelatinous goo from his face with the back of his hand, then used his fingers to wipe his eyes. He spat out the body fluids that had seeped into his mouth and struggled from beneath the still shuddering corpse.
“I’m covered in exploded spider,” he complained. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me…” He kicked at the corpse, almost retching as his foot made contact with the squelchy body.
“Paul, the parachute’s ripping!”
Still spluttering, Scarlet hurried to clamber back over the rim. Blue’s seat had become even more entangled in the web as he had struggled to free himself. It had sunk several feet lower down the side of the crevasse, and the parachute was finally beginning to tear apart.
“Sit still; you’re making it worse. If you slide down much further I might not be able to reach you,” he ordered.
He crawled around the rim towards his friend and once he was close enough to the parachute, he used one of the torn strips to secure himself to an outcrop of rock while he pulled the second, shorter nylon rope from the emergency kit. He carefully hooked it over a thickish outcrop slightly further down, before gingerly edging towards Blue, who was staring up at him with anxious eyes.
“You’re a disgusting mess, Paul,” he said, “but still a real sight for sore eyes.”
Scarlet grinned and reached down. “Don’t say I never do anything for you.”
Blue returned the grin and managed a shaky chuckle.
“Give me your free hand and then undo the safety harness.”
“I can’t move the other arm,” Blue reminded him. “It’s trapped between the chair and the cliff face, but at least it doesn’t feel like it is broken or anything. I reckon the web broke the fall.”
“Yeah; it looked like that to me. So maybe we owe the late Incy Wincy some vote of thanks, because it smells foul down there and I’d have been tempted to leave you rather than risk it!”
“Just get me out of here and I’ll never ask you for anything again,” Blue vowed.
“Doing my best…”
Cursing, Scarlet slithered down a bit further. When he could reach the safety harness, he said: “Put your free arm around my shoulders and I’ll undo the clip. Then, when you can move your other arm, grab the rope and haul yourself up.”
“Okay.” Blue slid his arm around his friend’s shoulders.
“On three…one, two… three! Grab the rope.”
Blue slid from the ejector seat which broke free from the web and slid down into the stygian darkness, landing way below them with an unedifying squelch and releasing a pungent odour that made them both retch.
For a moment they were dangling over the pit and in danger of falling, but the sticky web proved to be their lifeline and they managed to edge their way to the top by pressing themselves against the fibres.
Once he was safely over the rim, Blue sank down onto his hands and knees and heaved a sigh of relief.
Scarlet crouched beside him, catching his breath, he caught the dark shadow of movement from out the corner of his eye. He glanced up and managed to mutter through a mouth dry with shock and fear:
“Don’t look now, but I think the neighbours have come to dinner…”
There were two giant spiders scuttling towards the remnants of the first spider, but at least three more were not so anxious to devour their comrade that they weren’t interested in two more potential meals.
“I’ll sort them out,” Scarlet said, as he reached for his gun.
The holster was empty.
“Oh no; my gun’s gone. I’ve lost it.” He glanced towards the spider’s corpse. “I must’ve dropped it under Incy…”
“That’s both of us then,” Blue whispered. “I think mine’s gone down with the ejector seat.”
“So what do we do now? I don’t think we can take them without some sort of weapon. I mean, using hand to hand fighting against something with eight ‘hands’ isn’t clever.”
“There should be a flare or two in that emergency pack,” Blue said. “That might scare them off; give us a chance to think of something.”
Scarlet rummaged and pulled out two emergency flares and a powerful torch. He handed one flare to Blue.
“One at a time,” Scarlet said. “Let’s make them last. You first.”
The bright magnesium glare of the flare lit the jungle around them. Blue waved it in the faces of the advancing spiders and they both yelled as loud as they could.
The animals backed off; they could wait.
The captains waited as long as they dared in the gathering gloom of the early evening before Scarlet, sensing the approach of a spider, lit his flare. They managed to scare the watchers back again. But neither believed they’d stay away for long and now all they had was the torch.
“The batteries last a good while on these,” Scarlet said, determined to remain as upbeat as possible. “We should be able to fend them off for hours.”
“And then what?”
“By then we’ll have thought of something else.”
“Yeah; I hadn’t thought of that.”
Scarlet drew the water bottle from the emergency pack and they shared a drink.
“There’s some chocolate as well,” he told Blue.
“I don’t like chocolate.”
“You will eat it and like it. That’s an order.”
“S.I.G., Captain.”
Total darkness came quickly and when Scarlet turned the torch on, the light was reflected from even more eyes than before. He kept it moving, shining it into multiple dark eyes of each crouching spider.
Periodically, they shouted or clapped their hands to make a noise, but it wasn’t going to work forever, once the spiders got the message that their prey was basically helpless.
“They jump at you,” he explained to Blue, as his friend sank down into a crouch. “Very quickly, so stay alert.”
“I’m not likely to doze off any time soon…” Blue replied. He had been rummaging in the emergency pack. “There’s a penknife in here.”
“One penknife against… five, is it now?”
“Five or six.”
“Still, it’s better than nothing. Well done, Adam. Give it to me, while you have the torch.”
Blue handed the penknife up, but stayed crouching. He was obviously tired and in order to make sure he stayed awake, Scarlet ordered him to his feet and they stood back to back, facing the semi-circle of spiders that watched their every move.
They continued to pass the torch between them, trying to deter any attack.
“I bet these are a species unknown to science,” Blue said shakily, as he handed the torch back.
“Lucky science,” Scarlet muttered. The torch was starting to grow dimmer and he had no new ideas of what to do. “How long do you think we can keep this up?”
“Not as long as they can.”
“You know, Adam, although I appreciate your unfailing honesty, I wish you’d lie to me sometimes.”
Blue gave no response and as the silence dragged towards becoming uncomfortable, Scarlet said: “I wonder if my retrometabolism will work when a spider’s sucked the life out of me.”
“You’d better hope not,” Blue replied. “Unless you want to be the all-you-can-eat buffet… This one on the left’s moving closer. Quick! Give me the torch!”
Scarlet reached back to hand it over, but they fumbled it and the torch fell onto the ground and rolled some distance away down the slope. The light flickered and went out. The only light came from the full moon as it filtered through the high clouds.
“That’s done it!”
“We shouldn’t keep still, Adam. Keep pace with me.”
They moved in an ungainly tandem, careful not to trip over each other’s feet.
Scarlet said, “If I draw them off, do you think you can get down the cliff face and away before they come after you?”
“I don’t know and I’m not even going to try.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order. You could fetch help,” Scarlet reasoned.
“ You could fetch help,” Blue retorted.
“No reason we should both die and I, at least, stand a chance…” Scarlet said.
“No. We’re in this together. I’m not going.”
All the time, they were moving slowly round in a circle, away from the closest spider and back towards the rim of the pit, keeping a wary eye out for any sudden movement.
“You are disobeying an order from your field commander,” Scarlet reminded him.
“So court martial me.”
After a lengthy pause, during which Scarlet realised that, as well as being on a hiding to nothing trying to change Blue’s mind, he was actually grateful the American had decided to stay.
He said: “Thanks, Adam. Thanks for everything.”
There was a genuine warmth in Blue’s voice as he replied, “You’re welcome, Paul. It’s been… interesting.”
“You can say that again. You were the best partner I ever had.”
“Likewise, Mister Metcalfe.”
“Still, it would have been nice for one of us to have got out of this alive.”
“You were doing so well: don’t spoil it,” Blue complained. “I’m not going. End of discussion.”
They had reached the top of the pit and had nowhere else to go. They shared a rueful glance.
“We could jump,” Blue suggested.
“Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”
“If you like…” Blue chuckled at the thought then said: “Actually, we’d suffocate in the crap down there, so maybe…”
It was then that one of the smaller spiders sprang at them.
Instinctively, Scarlet pushed Blue aside and moved to stand in front of the enraged American. He ducked beneath the airborne spider, slashing upwards with the penknife blade and ripping furiously through the soft underbelly. The spider dropped to the floor, limbs twitching violently as a pale blueish liquid seeped from the wounds. He pushed the animal away from him, and then kicked the still-living spider down to the waiting circle of hungry mouths.
The others closed in, fangs ripping into the flesh.
“You okay?” Blue asked.
Scarlet turned. His friend was crouching where he’d fallen, and the hand that was clutching his thigh was covered in blood.
“Yeah; that should keep them busy for a while. What happened to you?”
“I gashed my leg on a rock when I slipped.”
“Brilliant. That’s all we need.”
“ Now you better go and fetch help…”
“Oh shut up. I thought we’d agreed that neither of us is going anywhere? Let’s see if I can fashion a tourniquet from some of that web…”
Scarlet hacked a few strands of the sticky web from the pit wall and wrapped it as tightly as he could around the gash in Blue’s thigh.
Blue was leaning back, his face pale in the silver moonlight. “I’m done for, Paul. I can’t stand up. I’m literally a sitting target.”
“Not while I’m here. They must realise we’re dangerous.”
“Even you can’t stay awake for ever. All they have to do is wait…”
“Yeah; but if I can take some of them down with us, I’ll die happy.”
Blue looked up at him as he stood beside him. “All I can hope is that we both die – quickly,” he said softly. “You know, some species paralyse their prey and inject enzymes to predigest them before they suck them dry.”
Scarlet glared at him. “There are some things I really just don’t want to know,” he said. “And that is probably top of the list.”
Blue shifted position and rested his forehead on his knees, hiding his face from his friend’s scrutiny. “I’m sorry, but I’m scared,” he said.
Scarlet only just caught the muffled confession. He placed a hand on Blue’s shoulder.
“I know. So am I. ‘A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once.’ Who said that?”
Blue looked up, intrigued. “Julius Caesar; according to Shakespeare anyhow.”
“Ah, yes, I remember now; we did it at school. I got to play Brutus.”
“The noblest Roman of them all,” his friend remarked, approvingly. “Were you any good?”
“No, I don’t think so; I think I only got the part because, at the time, I had the right sort of haircut to look ‘Roman’. But the point is, I’ve ‘tasted of death a thousand times’ and it is never easy and what’s more, I’m always afraid. If that is cowardice I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of, Adam.”
“You’re not a coward! You’re the bravest of us all.”
Scarlet shook his head slightly, a wry smile on his lips. “Nice of you to say so, but it’s debateable. Anyway, don’t worry about it, Adam; it’s not as bad as it looks.”
Despite his best effort to remain awake, Blue did doze off and Scarlet, who never needed much sleep, stood watch over him. He saw the faint glow of the approaching dawn and noticed that the spiders had come out of the burrows and dens once more, presumably looking for a final easy meal.
Scarlet had managed to collect a small pile of sharp stones and a few accurate throws ensured the creatures kept their distance until the sky started to lighten with the morning sun.
The spiders, wary of becoming the prey rather than the predator, slunk back into their own burrows and left the exhausted, filthy and dehydrated humans alone on the rim of the big pit.
Seeing that Blue was still asleep, Scarlet occupied the time peering into the distance for signs of human habitation, but there was nothing, not even the tell-tale wisp of smoke from a camp fire. He wondered if they could collect enough wood to make their own fire; surely that would discourage the spiders and act as a beacon for any rescue craft out searching for them. It seemed like their best hope.
He just wished he could share Adam’s faith about Cloudbase having received their radio messages.
His reverie was broken when Blue woke up, apologising that he’d slept at all. Scarlet gave him the last of the fresh water and half of the chocolate ration.
“I think we’ll build a fire,” he said. “There’s enough wood here to keep the spiders at bay later and it might be spotted by the rescue craft. If you can’t come with me, that’s okay. I’ll fetch some kindling and you can be fire warden and make sure it doesn’t go out.”
“What if it rains? This is a tropical rainforest after all,” Blue remarked.
“If it rains, you can fill the water bottle and we can boil it in the billy-can to make sure it’s safe to drink. Trust me; we can get through this, Adam.”
Scarlet was as good as his word and they had a nice fire going in a few hours, over which they were able to purify some water from a small waterfall, and quench their thirst.
Scarlet was still concerned though, as Blue was sleeping a great deal and at times looked to be almost unconscious. He had examined Blue’s injured leg, and was dismayed to see that it was still seeping blood and it looked red and inflamed.
“Come on, Cloudbase,” he muttered to himself, as he stood scanning the sky for sight of a plane. “If you don’t get a move on, it won’t be the spiders that kill him, it’ll be that gash.”
The sun was overhead and Scarlet had rigged up as much of a sunshade for Blue as he could, when he first caught the sound of an engine. He grabbed one of the flaming branches and waved it energetically.
A small single-seater reconnaissance helicopter flew over and circled round.
The voice over the cap radio was young, unknown and very faint: “Captain Scarlet? I am Lieutenant Auburn, from Spectrum’s Darwin base. I don’t have room to take you on board, but I’ve radioed Cloudbase for a medijet, sir.”
“Tell them to hurry, Auburn. Captain Blue needs medical help.”
“S.I.G, sir. I am going to lower an emergency kit.”
“We need water and something to eat.”
“Yes, sir; it’s all in there.”
“Great. Oh, and Auburn, tell them to get here before it grows dark. We might not make it to see another dawn otherwise."
Scarlet felt more confident about Blue’s chances of pulling through after he’d given him a good long drink and some of the rations from Auburn’s emergency kits. Blue was trying to be cheerful at the thought of rescue and he allowed Scarlet to strip the spider web tourniquet off and clean and dress the gash on his thigh with the basic medical supplies in the kit.
“You must’ve been taking lessons from Doctor Fawn,” Blue said, impressed that Scarlet had made such a neat job of the bandaging.
“It’s amazing what you can pick up without even trying,” Scarlet quipped. “I’m pretty much an expert at bandages and plasters. Mind you, I bet Fawn won’t think much of it when he gets you in Sick Bay.”
He sat back on his heels as Blue pulled the tattered remains of his uniform trousers back up his leg.
“I don’t suppose Auburn said how long the rescue helicopter would be, did he?”
“No,” Scarlet admitted. “He only said he was from Darwin and even that conversation sounded like it was being bounced off the Moon. I wish I’d thought to ask for a gun in the emergency pack though. Never occurred to me. I must be losing my edge.”
“You’ve been awake for the best part of three days,” Blue consoled him. “Even you need some sleep, Paul. At least we both have a penknife now, and some new flares and a torch. We’re better off even if we have to stick it out for another night.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I told you we’d get out of this, didn’t I?”
Blue rolled his eyes and grinned. “Yeah, and you’re never wrong, are you?”
“Not when it really matters.”
“Look, I’m feeling much better now, so why don’t you try and get some sleep? I’m okay to keep watch and I’ll yell good and proper if anything looks to be about to happen.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right, Adam. Forty winks sounds appealing."
Scarlet crept under the makeshift sunshade and curled up, quickly dropping into a deep sleep.
Blue sat nervously alert, one eye on his sleeping friend and the other watching the deepening shadows for movement. He added another branch to the small fire, comforted by the flickering light as much as by the heat when the sun sank and the temperature dropped.
He tensed, as he sensed, rather than saw, movement near where Scarlet was still sleeping.
He kicked Scarlet’s boot. “Wake up, Paul.”
Scarlet was instantly alert and he too turned towards the approaching spider. He reached for a stone and threw it with deadly accuracy. Even so, he was rather surprised when the spider scuttled away.
He turned to share a triumphant grin with Blue, but his smile froze on his face as he saw an enormous spider, bigger even than Incy had been, emerging from the pit behind his friend’s back.
The creature reared up and plunged down on top of Blue, jabbing down with fearsome fangs. Despite his initial surprise, Blue was fighting back, he had rolled over onto his back and was using his fists to fend off the attacks while trying to scramble free.
Without hesitation, Scarlet jumped to his feet and threw himself onto the back of the creature, slashing down with the penknife. It was only as he landed on the spider’s body that he realised it was alive with dozens of baby spiderlings. They swarmed all over him, sinking their small fangs into his flesh.
He brushed one off his face, gritted his teeth and kept stabbing at the parent spider. Blue had obviously been able to bring his penknife into play and soon the creature was buckling under the blows.
Blue managed to wriggle free and he heaved the spider’s body, along with the few remaining spiderlings that had decided to eat their parent rather than the tackle the other, surprisingly feisty, prey, down towards the watching spiders.
Then he turned to Scarlet.
Captain Scarlet was writhing on the floor, slapping at the spiderlings and rather ineffectually trying to pull them off. Blue went to help and was so preoccupied that he failed to notice the semi-circle of large spiders closing in on them until he felt a twitching leg on his shoulder.
Yelling, he brushed it off and turned to be almost face-to-face with one of the largest of the creatures.
“Get off me, you bastard!” He hit out with his fist and the creature backed off, but not far. It was obviously preparing to attack again. Blue felt faint, realising the struggle had opened the gash on his leg and he was losing blood.
“Paul, get up. I can’t keep it off on my own,” he pleaded. He sank to his knees, breathing heavily as his hold on consciousness began to fade. The spider, sensing victory, moved in for the kill.
Just before he lost consciousness and keeled over, Blue saw a blinding light shining down from the heavens and two figures walking towards him.
Cloudbase
Doctor Fawn washed his hands for the third time and tried not to shudder. Captain Scarlet’s body had been infested with spiderlings feasting on him, and they had had to decontaminate him before admitting him to the Recovery Room.
Even now, Fawn could not preventing himself compulsively checking that they had managed to eradicate every one of the little buggers. After all, giant spiders gorged on retrometabolic body fluids was not something he wanted to contemplate. Who knew if something of Scarlet’s unique ability might not be passed on to the creatures? That was one experiment even he would not contemplate
Once free of his unwanted fellow travellers, Scarlet had quickly made a full recovery and was soon sitting up in bed, eating the largest plate of fish and chips Fawn could remember.
Captain Blue was still unconscious and hooked up to intravenous antibiotics and a hydration pack. The gash on his leg had been starting to turn putrid and Fawn was taking no chances. In his opinion, both men had had a lucky escape: Captain Grey and the medical team had arrived just in time.
As Fawn started to write his report for the colonel he noticed the date.
Halloween… Yes; somehow that seems more than appropriate!
On a distant mountainside in a remote rainforest, a small colony of spiderlings, gorged on retrometabolic flesh, scuttled amongst the dense leaf litter, visible only from the faint green glow that emanated from their tiny, swollen bodies.
Author’s notes:
Thanks to Hazel Köhler for beta-reading services above-and-beyond brilliant – as always! Thanks also to Caroline Smith who was my companion in a conversation about possible Halloween stories and set me off on the trail of this one. Thanks, as ever to Chris Bishop for her wonderful website.
Happy Halloween!
Marion Woods
14 October 2019