Chapter 109.
Alek Andrich is as frightened as she’s ever been in her life as soon as the door to her small room closes behind her.
Not because of the unknown.
Because of what she knows in this moment.
The reality of the inside of this room.
To this point in her life, she has survived wars, real ones, first at home and then in this “game.” She survived a knife fight with a man she’s still certain would have finished the job if given the opportunity.
But none of that has prepared her for the snakes and spiders crawling toward her now on the floor of this room.
Snakes and spiders of all sizes.
What appears to be an advancing army of them.
Making her skin crawl.
This is fake, Alek is already telling herself.
It has to be an illusion, some trick of technology.
Special effects.
Except that the terror and revulsion she feels couldn’t be more real.
This is her nightmare, slowly advancing toward her.
And there is no place for her to run.
Or hide.
Patrick Arrasmith
No chair or table on which she can stand.
No way for her to somehow climb up the wall to get away from these crawly things.
And isn’t that what people say when they describe the feeling of losing their minds?
I was ready to climb the walls.
Alek wishes there was a way for her to do that right now.
Except these creatures would probably follow her.
She looks down, already feeling them on her even though they aren’t, at least not yet.
Alek has always had a phobia—a pathological one, really—about any kind of snake or spider. The “creepy crawlies,” she’d called them as a child.
It was why, when she’d been given her choice, she had chosen Antarctica over Chile, which she’d been told was crawling with awful creatures.
She’d admitted that all the way back in Ohio.
Only now the creatures are everywhere.
This can’t really be happening, she tries to tell herself.
The Host often spoke about mind games.
That’s what these had to be.
It. Can’t. Be. Real.
Somehow it is.
She is wearing white jeans.
She can clearly see the first spider moving up from her left ankle now, taking its sweet time.
She starts shaking her leg frantically to get it off her.
It doesn’t work.
The spider keeps moving.
There isn’t a lot of light in this room. But there’s enough for her to see other spiders, and now snakes, circling her feet.
She tries to kick them away.
It just makes more of them appear.
Alek can’t help herself now.
She screams.
And then feels the first bite.
Looks down and sees the first black spider, which has already made its way up her left leg to her thigh.
She slaps at it frantically with her hand.
Still screaming as she does.
Now there is one on her arm.
She tries to swat it away.
Another appears.
Her skin is crawling now, in every possible and terrible way.
Now she is crying. Not just crying but sobbing in a way she never has in front of the others. Not wanting to look weak in front of them.
She sees the huge rattlesnake at her feet, coiling, looking up at her almost indifferently, its tail beginning to vibrate.
She tries to scream again.
But can’t.
No sound comes out of her.
She’s back in the freezing water in Antarctica, unable to breathe. Afraid then that she was going to drown before she got any air back into her.
She hears the hiss of the snake as she feels another sting. Looks down and sees an even bigger spider making its way up her right leg.
She swats at this one as she backs away from the snake, nearly falling down into the snakes and spiders between her and the door.
She tells herself she is hallucinating.
Has to be hallucinating.
Alek had told herself she would never quit.
Promised her mother she wouldn’t quit.
But this is finally too much, even for her.
Finally she is able to speak.
“Stop it!” she screams. “Please—stop!”
Alek turns and reaches for the door handle.
Locked.
More movement at her feet. Her hands shake so hard she can’t control them. She hates that. Hates it more than the fear.
She wasn’t a victim in the desert. She wasn’t a victim in the war. But this—
This is the thing she has never been able to outthink.
And that’s what makes it cruel.
“I give up!” she screams again. “Please—!”
Patrick Arrasmith