He narrowed his eyebrows and squinted to check for the body of whatever was attached to the six legs, but it was still out of sight. There was no way in hell he was going to crawl out to see what it looked like. Instead he waited, trying to hold back a cough from his scratchy throat.

A scream shocked the creature into motion, and with a flash the legs were gone. Overton took a deep breath. He had almost forgotten about the girl, but as her screams grew louder, he knew the Organics were onto her.

With a grunt he suppressed his fear and pulled himself from underneath the vehicle. In less than a second he was running toward the creatures.

He almost halted when he got his first good look at them. There were at least a dozen. And they looked, just as he feared, like spiders. The creatures had stocky torsos and small heads sporting a bone-like mandible rimmed with black, jagged teeth. He couldn’t see any eyes, but he imagined they were focusing on their next snack—Little Miss Ankle Biter.

I fucking hate spiders.

On the top ten list of the things he disliked the most, spiders ranked pretty damned high. Fortunately for the little girl, arachnids were at number two and kids were only at number seven or so. As he ran past the sleeping worm, he realized he was going to have to consider bumping number ten and adding giant alien worms to the list.

He neared the end of the parking lot without attracting attention. The spiders were now far ahead, and closing in on the girl’s location. Overton dug deeper and pushed his legs. The muscles strained and pulled but held strong as he maneuvered between the empty vehicles, trying to hug their frames for cover.

Another scream ripped through the night. His HUD glowed to life with dozens of contacts. He switched off the infrared and skidded to a halt, ducking behind another truck. The worm was two car lengths from the Dumpster the girl was hiding behind. It was working on digesting the last orb between them.

Overton switched his attention to the spiders that were slowly closing in on the girl, their legs clawing through the air as they approached. He counted a total of nine. Not as many as he thought, but still terrible odds.

He had only moments to create a plan. He scanned his gear and saw three electromagnetic concussion grenades hanging off his belt. Without further thought he unclipped one of the grenades and tossed it into the air. The device landed on the concrete with a metallic crack and rolled to a rest a few feet from the worm. He shut off his HUD and tinted his visor to prepare for the vicious blast.