Free In The Falling Light by John L. Campbell

bounced over a curb.
    “…Ow! Shit! Okay Steve, head up this way. I
thought I saw lights from a squad car. Brian, it looks like they’ve
already moved through this area, so we’re heading east, into a more
residential area. We’re going to try to find someone in command,
though around here it seems -“
    A massive black shape with too many legs
leaped from behind an abandoned bus, slamming head on into the news
vehicle, starring the glass. There was a crunching of metal and the
view tipped upside down as the car flipped over. The camera was
still pointing forward, showing blood on the windshield, the driver
slumped over with his head and neck flopped at an obscene angle.
The view jerked as the camera was struck, rolling to show a
cockeyed shot of a shattered window, then a man started screaming
off screen, a bloody hand appeared, clawing for a grip as it was
dragged away, and a moment later the video was lost to a blue
screen.
    Connecticut 12 cut back to its studio.
Brian, the anchor, looked pale and mumbled something about
technical difficulties.
    Joanna looked at another screen, this one
with the words RECORDED EARLIER scrolling across the bottom. A news
chopper was sweeping low over I-95 outside Groton, above six lanes
of divided highway packed with refugee traffic. A tide of black
shapes spilled over the southernmost guardrail and poured across
the slow-moving lanes. None of the cars were moving fast enough for
dramatic wrecks, but collisions quickly piled up, and it all came
to a halt. Helpless.
    The larvae were the size of footballs.
    The nymphs were as big as picnic tables.
    Adults were the same size as the cars they
ran at, struck and flipped over. All were hard-shelled and black,
eight-legged with barbed claws. Some of the smaller ones were
crushed by low speed crashes, but after being hit the larger ones
simply flipped from their backs to their legs and attacked the
cars, claws reaching through open windows, pincers ripping open car
doors to get at the occupants. Hunting for blood meals.
    “Lt. Jeffries,” Joanna called, not looking
away from the screen, “temperature reading?”
    A man behind her responded at once. “The
complex is reading a constant forty-one degrees, Colonel.”
    “Complex status?” This question was directed
to the man standing beside her, a major with dark good looks and an
impeccable uniform.
    “We’re on complete lockdown, Colonel.”
    “The lab?”
    “On lockdown as well.”
    “Keep an eye on the temperature, Spencer. I
don’t want it above forty-two.” It was an order she had repeated
several times already, but the major affirmed it as if it was the
first time, and Joanna looked around at the people in the bunker’s
command center. Most wore sweaters or jackets, and most wore
gloves, except for those working keyboards, who had to stop and
shake their hands every so often to keep the blood moving. Breath
puffed in the air like little white ghosts, but no one complained
about the cold. They had all been briefed on what happened at
anything warmer than forty-five degrees.
    Major Peck moved off to check on an officer,
and Joanna took a seat at an unused workstation, her iPad in her
lap. She ran her fingertips over the leather cover, tracing the
letters stamped into it, smiling; Bishop, Joanna C. Lt. Col.
U.S. Army. Olivia had given it to her last year, a gift to
celebrate her promotion to light colonel. Olivia, her tough-minded
sister who had survived both a divorce and breast cancer. She would
have made an outstanding officer. Joanna wondered if Delaware was
far enough away to keep her sister safe. And for how long?
    She opened the iPad and brought up the
facility app, tapping in a top-clearance passcode, then tapping her
way through several menus until she brought up real-time
schematics. The first was a satellite shot of the exterior. E-11
was a mostly underground complex at the edge of the Groton Boat
Yards, having once been part of the naval facility but now taken
over by