My System has a Glitch

"How do I tell them," the old man said as the blood drained from his face.

In the midst of the flurry of gunfire, the explosions and the crash of trees, no one had any idea what was watching them.

At the top of the trees directly above the chaos was the loot, a bright blue box resting on the collection of green vines that crisscrossed each other like spider webs.

They're walking into a trap the old man muttered to himself. He could see them from his scope and with every step they took the more worried he became till he could take it anymore.

I can't be useless again, I've got to do something,the old man said.

William and Ingrid were about to make their move when they saw the skin get blown off a tree beside them, they panicked and turned towards the direction the bullet had come from.

They knew that this was all too sudden to be an attack. They were well hiding in a tree top no one could tell apart from the others, only someone saw them go in there would know they were there.

They looked at each other wondering if something had happened to the old man then they looked and saw the flash of his scope.

The flash came over and over again in quick succession, like flickering lights. Then William realized the old man must be trying to tell him something.

"I think he's trying to tell us something."

"Yeah but why? What could have gone wrong so quickly?"

"I've got no idea but I think I must be Morse code."

"Can you read it?" She asked and William shook his head and said,

"Not very well, no."

Willaim watch closely while he tried to remember the language as best he could.

"I can make out the letter S." he said.

*****

Nod on the other hand was out of sight; the old man couldn't spot him and neither could the people fighting over the loot.

He was hiding pretty close to the action, behind a tree, hanging on by the grooves of its bark.

He peeked out from behind the tree and saw the loot, 'it all looks so perfect,' he thought. 'like God just left it there. Now I wonder what's keeping those two love birds.'

Nod grew impatient as he waited for Ingrid and William to create the distraction.

The fighting grew more intense, bullets and shrapnel were hitting his tree, the pieces of tree's body he clung onto were breaking in his fingers.

'Damn it, what taking them so long.'

He could sense the tide of the battle changes, many of the players were starting to run out of bullets and were growing more conservative with their approach to violence.

But still the treasure laid high above them all, still untouched. Nod peeked out again , it was his brief routine reconnaissance, to get a read on all the players positions as they were more likely to move around the longer the fighting lasted.

He looked around and gathered as much information as he could but before he could return back to hiding he took one last look at the loot and noticed something strange.

He saw the network of wines that easily supported the weight of the loot stretched downwards like more weight had been placed on them.

"What's that?"

The sound of gun fire doubled for a moment urging him to go back into hiding or he might just get hit by a stray but he was too intrigued by it to hide.

'Something's happening up there.'

He saw the vines stretch down at a different point, now they were too points of depression then one dissolved and rematerialized a few inches ahead of the other.

Nod chuckled in a sort of worried and terrified way as he realized the truth of the strange scene.

'That must be it,they must be using a special tool to make themselves invisible. At this rate they'll steal it all without anyone noticing.'

"What should I do?"

Nod watched as the webbed structure shook as the invisible man got closer to the loot.

'I've got to get up there somehow, I'll have to draw their attention toward the loot.If they shoot at me I can get towards him and use the gun fire to scare him off.

******

"I don't understand," William said as he stared at the flashing scope of the old man. "What is he trying to say?"

"Still can't make out anymore?"

"No, what do we have so far?"

"Well all you deciphered so far is P. D. S. R and there is no telling how many letters were missing and what order they should go."

"We might have to regroup with the old man, see you can signal Nod to come back."

Ingrid nodded and looked for Nod as carefully as she could. She looked past the gunfire and the explosion like they weren't there at all, these sort of things were nearly commonplace to her in her previous life.

As she looked for her brother she happened to glance past the loot but something peculiar stuck out to her and she got a closer look at it.

She could see how strange the network of vine looked, it was too peculiar, too perfect, was it part of the design of the game or had a creature made it.

Nothing in the encyclopedia had hinted at such an idea but still they had all come to the realization that it was grossly unreliable when it came to details.

"Hey," William said. "I think I made out an E, I don't know, I'm not sure."

"An E! ?" Ingrid said as all the pieces seemed to fall into place in her mind. The strange appearance of the vines, the letters the old man had sent them, all of it seemed to fit into one horrific image. She turned to William and said.

"It's a spider web?"

*******

Nod was eager to make his move, but he just couldn't find the right moment but in reality he was stalling, the chaos was getting to him and his nerves were beginning to act up.

One shot of a special bullet and he was done for, that image was imprinted in his mind and as he watched the invisible player her closer and closer to the loot that all he could think about.

'It'll only take ten seconds, ten seconds to open the box, ten seconds to clean it out. I've got ten seconds at most to make my move.'

Suddenly he saw a glowing red dot, within the dark canopies of the jungle, just over the loot.

What in the world is that? It felt like he was looking at the red star from last night and all those half eaten bodies came back to him again.

Then a gust of wind blew through the trees, rustling the leaves and he saw two more red dots as a green flash rained down from the tree tops directly , like a spear in descent striking directly at the loot.

'Someone else is trying to steal it.' Nod thought but he was wrong. The spear hit and Nod watched as the invisible man materialized around it.

Instantly he recognized the man, it was the same green hair man that had helped him get out of the tunnels.

The green spear hard ran him through his belly and he was bleeding over the loot, only it wasn't a spear.

The dying man let out a violent cry and every one looked up and watched as he was lifted off his feet by what looked like a long green spike that stretched down from the tree tops.

Then a high pitch clicking noise came down from the tree tops and struck everyone who heard it with the eerie feeling of being in the midst of something unfathomably horrific.

The impaled man slowly slid down the spike and every one watched as his blood slowly stained it.

"It's a giant spider," Ingrid said.

One of the players with a machine gun opened fire on it and the spider swung its leg and tossed the impaled man away. He crashed into a bridge, slid off and fell into shallow water and Nod immediately went after him.

The spider jumped down from the tree tops and shot its eight legs into the trees around it, tearing through them and through a couple players as well.

The players were frozen by their fear, they watched as the spider attacked the trees with most players first.

It even seemed far smaller than it was only a moment ago and right before their eyes it grew ten times as large and all they could do was shoot at it with all they had but still that wasn't enough.

They were sheltered behind the branch that made it difficult for the spider to get to them with its size but still staring at its red glowing eyes and feeling the heat that escaped through its mandibles was enough to kill a man with fear.

Many of the places jumped off the tree, some had no liveline and were jumping to their death or at least a very great cost to their lifespans.

The spider spewed a hot sticky slob that covered the entire tree. It quickly hardened, trapping everyone in a steaming web.

"Oh my god," a player watching from a tree not far from it cried. "We have to go! He tells the others around him. We'll find a better loot elsewhere."

They all turned to run away but as they turned they saw William and Ingrid and she had a very stern look on her face then she said,

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

"What do you want from us?" The player cried. "Let us pass because if it's out time you want, I don't care how scared I am right now, I'll fight you to the death."

William smiled and pretended to be more malicious than he could ever be, he said, "We don't care if you live or die bozo, it's your grenades we want!"

"Our grenades!"

The spider let out a loud screech then it bit into the webs it had spewed all over the tree.

"That's a strange behavior for a spider," the old man said as he watched from a great distance through his scope.

Suddenly the webs that had been white began to turn yellow from the very point the spider had bitten into and the people trapped in it began to melt and die and in such a rapid rate it terrified every one watching. Even the tree wasn't spared, it's slowly shriveled up and died

"Shit!" The old man cried. "It sent its venom through the webs. This is more trouble than I ever imagined."

The old man looked again and he couldn't see it. In the blink of an eye the spider disappeared.