“Every once in a while, Alex, the flower produces a ghastly new leaf. And when this leaf grows, my father must cut it off, then press it to the neck of . . . a victim. The leaf takes the . . . life force away from a person. It absorbs it—totally, and at once. Every mote of energy in the body. Instant decomposition. Nothing left, not even bones. Then the leaf is pulped into their mixture and . . .”

For a moment the old man seemed unable to go on. “That night, the night I finally put it all together, is the night I left them, Alex. I was almost out of my mind. I stole his spring-heels, hoping it might hinder him in his hunting, and I ran—”

With a sudden final scream from the wood, a metal awl came tearing through the floor. Alex caught a glimpse of the robot attached, like a happy toy mole, with this nightmarish drill-bit as its nose.

As it touched the mound of salt, the machine fell back through the hole it had created, roughly four inches in diameter. More salt fell in after it. Scuttling sounds came from under the floor, then silence.

Alex’s grandfather raised his cane. Across the room, the barricade collapsed a little as the door was forced open a crack. The dogs gave a low growl.

“Mon dieu,” Metz whispered, on the verge of blind panic. Alex followed the man’s wild, wide-eyed stare.

What looked like two pieces of long, thin wire had appeared out of the hole. They reached up from below, wavered in the air a moment, then bent to start tapping delicately around the opening, testing the ground. After a second, they were joined by another six wires—then the strands stopped moving, braced against the floor, and something came hauling itself up through the hole, followed rapidly by another, and then another and another.

More kept coming. Spiderlike things. Fat, fuzzy black bodies supported on glistening, hairlike wire legs. Each sported a pair of cartoonish felt eyes. More than twenty had come out and were scurrying toward them.

Metz suddenly rolled his chair forward and laughed, half-hysterical. “These? These are what we are hiding from? No need to waste ammunition on these,” he said, turning his shotgun and holding it by the barrel, like a club.

“Ah, please be careful,” Alex’s grandfather called. “Probably safer if you just come back here, old chap.”

“What do they do?” Alex asked.

“No idea,” the old man replied. “These are new to me. What’ll we call them? I’ve already used crawlers for something else. Spiders?”

The spider-things had come to a stop at the salt semicircle. They lined up along it, fat bodies bobbing grotesquely on spindly legs. Then, with a sudden flex, one jumped, fast and high.