The spiders come from over yonder. We din’t know how they found us, or what the wanted.
We had a network of underground tunnels. We shielded ourselves from their telepathic weapons and drones. We farmed and lived in the tunnels. Those were hard years. Many died.
The younger folks did not stand much of a chance, those that tried to fight back. We warned them, but they became infected nonetheless, prey or scouts. We had to make our escape.
Traffic was bad. I mean, it was horrible. People act like they were escaping a black hole. It gets worse every Hiding. You’d think people had got used to it. We made it to the shelter and met our new neighbors.
Bunch of nice folks, mostly. There was a guy who wanted to solve it. He set to thinking on it. There’s always one. He mentioned a lot of unsettling things would come to pass, stuff we knew about, and made all these suggestions. That Internet is full of surprises, but he wasn’t. And he went on about it, no one looking at him. Eight months went by. We never saw daylight. He escaped one night, and found his way to DC. They listened to him.
We never did. It was mostly because he wasn’t from Plaincreek. We just did not want to invest the time in someone who was just here to make a buck and move on. Gig creature, like a pseudopod from some cultural aggregate online, a lure. Not as good as us. And I guess if we had listened to him, we could have saved lives, but honestly, the man was such a bore, and he went away, so we had quiet again. The occasional jogger, but no fuss n’more.
These days, we have an agreement. The spiders get our fresh dead. They visit us, but they never attack the living. Just sometimes… the second they die, they are upon us, and we keep moving. They know. After we learned to communicate with them, we had to come to a gruesome and amiable solution. We keep running. We keep moving. We are accepting visitors.
Fifty State Banana 