Without wasting time, we began butchering the frozen meat chunks from the refrigerators, carefully stocked by Hunter. An icy steam rose from the hard, stone-like blocks. Then we took out almost all the two-pound cans of meat, vacuum-packed canned sausage, and several packets of hardtack, which crunched in our hands like dry breadcrumbs. A pile of our last food supplies formed on the floor of the ATLAS's cargo bay.

  "Will this be enough for such a number?" Sarah doubted, mentally estimating the total weight of the food. "What do you think, Professor," she addressed me, ignoring the others, "how many spiders are there in the shelter?"

  "Probably over ten thousand," Howard answered for me.

  But Sarah had already returned to her usual state and pretended not to hear him. She was waiting for my confirmation. I silently shrugged.

  "If there are ten thousand of them," she repeated, still looking at me, "can you poison them with one gas capsule?"

  "Of course not," I agreed, setting aside a bloody knife. "If only we could mix in something else... too bad we don't have any potent poison."

  "We could use dirt from the radioactive fallout," Howard blurted out, cutting me off.

  Sarah again pretended not to hear the lieutenant, but judging by her short, almost imperceptible nod and the way her gaze darted to the fogged-up viewport, she agreed with his suggestion.

  The thawed meat, sausage, hardtack, and canned goods were chopped into small pieces, drenched from above with the drained blood from the thawed meat chunks—a dark, almost black liquid already beginning to thicken in the cold—and placed in the disassembled tent, which was then carried outside. We needed to act fast, before the frost started to bind the laboriously minced food with ice.

  "We'll have to risk it," Sarah said.

  She retrieved from her boxes a rubberized robe, rubber gloves, and several medical masks, putting them on one over another.

  "At least some protection, for lack of a gas mask," she explained to us.

  Then, asking us to stay in the cabin, she put on high rubber boots and went out. Our bait, exposed to the icy wind, was already beginning to be coated with radioactive fallout—a sticky gray dust settling from the eternal fog.

  Sarah, meanwhile, put on the gloves and rubberized robe and, very carefully, with the edge of a small shovel, began collecting dirt saturated with radiation, along with many other dangerous impurities, into plastic bags. She scraped it up, trying not to raise a poisonous cloud. After gathering several bags until she deemed it sufficient, she, pulling the mask over her face, laid out our food in a thin layer on the tent and, holding the first bag of radioactive dirt at arm's length, tore one corner and began moving the bag over the minced food. The gray dirt evenly covered the bloody mess. Then she took a small plastic camping bucket and poured over it all a pre-collected layer of lime dust, also impregnated with radioactive dust, and kneaded it all like dough. The rubber gloves made soft, squelching sounds as they pressed into the sticky mass.

  When everything became one homogeneous, large lump with a sharp, nauseating smell of meat and lime, she distributed it among the bags, carefully wrapped them in canvas, took off her rubberized clothing and boots, and placed them on top.

  Seeing the bait was ready, we joined her and, taking the ends of the tent with the spider bait, moved in full combat gear towards the shelter entrance.

  The operation to clear the shelter had begun.

  I don't know if the others understood the danger we faced descending into the shelter, but I was sure: the spiders, having long since stripped the few shelter personnel to the bone and driven mad by hunger, would certainly not let us carry the bait to the atrium where we planned to lay it out, once they caught the scent of meat and blood.

  For greater safety, we decided to involve everyone in the operation, except, of course, Colonel Daniels with his injury. Lieutenant Howard went first in our combat column. He carried one of the three spotlights removed from the ATLAS; its beam cut through the darkness ahead, illuminating the rusty walls of the shaft from the gloom. I followed him. A loaded rifle hung around my neck, several loaded magazines were on my belt, and my pockets were stuffed with spare cartridges. Clyde and Stanley, with rifles slung over their shoulders, carried the meat bait carefully wrapped in the tent; their faces were tense from the weight and concentration. Close behind them, for lack of more rifles, walked Baz with a large-caliber hunting shotgun at the ready. Behind Baz were Emily and Kyla. They carried the little remaining food in tightly wrapped plastic bags and spare clothing in heavily stuffed backpacks. Sarah carried her steel container and her rifle, which she had grown fond of and wouldn't give to anyone now; a second spotlight hung around her neck, its beam darting across the ceiling and walls, searching for movement. She walked last.

  As soon as we passed through the ventilation chamber and began descending the metal steps, we immediately sensed that a whole pack of spiders was following on our heels. Irritated by the smell of meat and blood, they fought among themselves, emitting a soul-rending grinding of mandibles, but for now did not attack, restrained by the light and our numbers.

  "Wait a minute," I said to Howard behind me and, squeezing past Clyde, Stanley, Baz, and the girls, went up to Sarah, who was walking last.

  Taking position behind everyone, I emptied two magazines, one after the other, upwards into the darkness. Gunfire flared, briefly illuminating the walls hung with something dark and squirming. When a bacchanalia of mutual destruction began up there—the sound of gunfire replaced by wild squealing and crunching—I turned the spotlight from Sarah's chest onto her back. The bright beam of light immediately revealed a terrible sight: twenty steps above—a tangle of vile creatures, locked together by sharp mandibles, tearing at their own kind and, driven into a frenzy by fresh blood, now paid no attention even to the beam of light. While the spiders consumed the wounded and the dead, we had a chance to break away from the pursuit.

  "Now quickly, down!" I shouted, and we, trying not to fall, ran down the steps. The steps rang loudly under our boots. I don't know how long the descent lasted, but it felt like an eternity.

  The protected control room the technicians had spoken of was in a side branch of the corridor leading to the technical section of the shelter next to the treatment station. Baz quickly entered the code on the panel by the door; the metal doors creaked open, releasing a stream of old, stale air. As soon as the doors opened, the lighting automatically came on, and we saw we were in a room the size of a large living room, entirely dedicated to shelter management.

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  In the center of the room was the main control panel—a huge console with a matte screen and many buttons, toggles, and blinking indicators, on which the operation of the entire shelter depended. Next to the console stood a desk with several old-fashioned wired intercom telephones connected to other shelter sections.

  Behind the desk, in a chair, was the body of the duty officer in military uniform—already desiccated and shriveled, with bones in places protruding through the remnants of flesh on his arms and face. One hand lay on the desk where instructions and observation logs still lay, already covered with a thin layer of dust. Under the chair lay a 9mm caliber pistol, and nearby was a small, long-dried, dark-red puddle. Evidently, the duty officer had locked the door and hid here until he realized the shelter had been overrun by spiders and there was no help to be expected. And he chose the simplest way out.

  Silence filled the room, broken only by the steady hum of working computers and the flickering of indicators. The life support panels, after we turned on the electricity, had activated automatically, and it seemed the long-dead duty officer continued invisibly to manage the shelter systems.

  While everyone stood shocked by this sight, not daring to approach the console, my gaze caught something in the room that held far greater significance for us now than the long-dead duty officer in the chair. Against the wall stood—two tracked, still wrapped in plastic packaging, military cargo and ammunition transport drones for use in conflict zones. They were the latest models, created literally just before the catastrophe, undergoing final software installation in my laboratory.

  "Now we're saved!" I exclaimed and began tearing off the cellophane, which crackled and ripped in my hands.

  Quickly opening the protected part of the hull, under which was a small touch control panel, I entered the greeting program and then activated one of them. The robot, its new rubber tracks gleaming, waved its loading manipulators; on the small information screen, a green message flashed: "We will help you... We will help you..."

  Making sure the drones were charged and ready, I disconnected the battery, turned, and for the first time since the catastrophe, saw smiles on the faces of my unfortunate comrades. Everyone was smiling. Even the super-serious Sarah nodded in approval.

  "While I load the program, you, Sarah, prepare the bomb," I addressed her.

  As I've written before, with technological progress and the development of aerial drones that hunted soldiers from above literally around the clock, supplying ammunition to the front lines of military clashes became an increasingly dangerous task. Ground robots capable of delivering provisions and ammunition while operating under constant threat of destruction were required. Through the joint efforts of engineers and IT specialists, they managed to construct not only hunter-drones but also transporters possessing elements of autonomous, environmentally-adapted behavior and a wide range of applications. These two drones meant more to me now than a platoon of soldiers.

  I quickly began configuring their programs. My fingers slid swiftly over the cold touch screen, and I no longer doubted our success.

  Sarah, meanwhile, opened the container and very carefully extracted the bomb with the ultra-dangerous gas, which this time was supposed to bring us salvation. Deactivating a safety catch known only to her with a light press in a hidden spot and setting the mechanical timer for a twenty-minute countdown, she put on fresh rubber gloves and stuffed it deep into one of the plastic bags with food.

  "Well, that seems to be everything," she said with relief, then went to the sink and began thoroughly soaping her hands up to the elbows, washing away invisible bacteria.

  "And we're all set," I said with a sudden, poignant joy and pressed the program start button on the control touch screen.

  As programmed, the drones simultaneously approached the bundle of bait and, carefully lifting the load with their manipulators with a quiet pneumatic hiss, placed it on the platform of one of the drones.

  We turned both spotlights to full power and, under the guard of four rifles and a large-caliber shotgun, exited into the corridor. At the massive doors of the treatment station, beyond which gaped the weakly lit, vast empty space of the atrium, we stopped, aiming our weapons into the darkness.

  "When you reach the middle of the room, drop the cargo and return!" I confirmed the program on the screen, and the drones obediently, with a steady hum of motors, headed for the center of the atrium.

  As soon as they moved into the open space of the atrium, they were already awaited. Thousands of bloodthirsty creatures lunged at them from all sides. Some tried to gnaw through the tent wrapped around the bags of meat chunks, others chewed at the metal tracks of the drones, and a third group jumped onto the platform with the cargo and, like demons, immediately threw off the boots, gloves, and robe from there. Seeing that the spiders might gnaw through the bait and the bomb could detonate before as many creatures as possible gathered, we opened a barrage of fire with all weapons. Spiders fell from the platform right under the tracks of the drones, indifferent to the unfolding horror, which continued methodically executing their programmed task. But immediately others appeared, crawling out from behind cabinets, furniture, and ventilation grates, and again, and again we opened fire on them, trying to clear the path for our helpers.

  The drones unhurriedly covered the designated distance to the center of the atrium and, unloading the bags from the cargo platform, calmly turned back, their headlights picking out squirming, hissing masses from the gloom.

  Drawn by the loud sound of mandibles and the smell of blood emanating from the atrium, spiders poured in waves from all over the shelter. Thousands of bristling beasts ran literally under our feet, clicked their mandibles, and lunged at us, and neither our gunfire nor the blinding beams of the spotlights could stop this insane, blood-crazed avalanche.

  "Horror!" Stanley shouted, his voice breaking. "Run back!" He was the first to turn and run towards the control room.

  "Not so fast! Someone needs to cover the retreat, or they'll hit us in the back!" I said and began backing away behind the others, simultaneously firing at the spiders, frantically aiming at the nearest, jumping silhouettes in the half-darkness. Fighting our way back, we reached the hall and finally found safety in the control room, where the heavy door slammed shut behind us with a dull thud, cutting off the sounds of the carnage outside.

  Sarah rushed again to thoroughly wash her hands, then her face, scrubbing invisible contamination from her skin. We occupied all available space: several chairs and a small sofa against the wall, while Howard, not without disgust, moved the duty officer's corpse into a corner and covered it with a piece of canvas, then gestured for me to take his place.

  Sitting in the chair, I quickly began searching the management computer interface for the protocol we needed for eliminating disturbances in the shelter. Finding it, I activated the program. Immediately, obeying the pre-installed program, the heavy external ventilation shaft shutters closed with a dull thud, initiating air recirculation. And the system began pumping the poisoned air through every corner of the shelter, contaminating everything in its path. While I was busy with this, my companions sat in oppressive silence the whole time, trying to recover from the horror they had just witnessed.

  "What do we do next?" I finished, turned in the chair, and asked Sarah.

  "First, wait. And then, when it's all over—the most critical and, it seems, impossible part," she replied hopelessly. "We need to gather all the corpses in one room and burn them," she rubbed her temples out of habit. "Then block it off permanently, and place these two helpers of ours there as well..."

  "Lose the drones?!" I exclaimed indignantly. "No, I'll never agree to that!"

  Sarah just shrugged. The others lowered their eyes. I don't know what my comrades felt, but personally, I was deeply convinced: such punishment for the kindness these two drones had shown us was more like betrayal. After all, if not for them, we would all have been torn apart and eaten before taking a few steps towards the atrium. But apparently, it wasn't just about gratitude. I was accustomed to viewing computer programs and everything they controlled as living beings. More than once I had been convinced: computers and the machines they controlled were far more decent than the people who created and directed them.

  "How long until the gas starts acting?" I asked Sarah, trying to change the subject to return to it later.

  "Immediately," she answered confidently. "But... to be sure, we need to wait 24 hours, then open the vents and activate the ventilation mode. Before we go out, we must be sure all the gas has been expelled."

  "So, in a day we can leave here?" I wanted a precise answer from her, but she only shrugged.

  Clyde, who had intended to deal with the spiders himself, without anyone's help, using a homemade flamethrower and who believed neither in poison nor gas, just waved his hand hopelessly.

  "In 28 hours..." Sarah said, but seeing our still frightened, pale faces, added, "The spiders that survive will seek revenge..."

  "Seek revenge?" we exclaimed in fear, but saw her weak, tired smile and understood she was joking, and laughed nervously in relief.

  Our smiles, however nervous, somewhat diffused the tense atmosphere, and we, occupying all available space in the cramped room, decided to wait patiently.

  They didn't know that, according to the program I had loaded, just twenty hours after the terrible feast we had arranged for the spiders, those two drones that had carried the poisoned bait seasoned with the gas bomb on their platforms had already begun their task. They inspected every room and, using their manipulators, collected the dead spiders onto their platforms, transporting them to the furnace in the treatment station room.

  All that remained for us to do after leaving our forced confinement was to start the furnace, into which the drones threw the spider corpses with their manipulators, and for us to simply seal the doors shut, which Clyde later welded tightly with an autogen torch.