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was sealed off.  Now it’s just a home for spiders.” she says, standing and slinging her zipped up backpack over her shoulder. 
     
    Great.  Dirt, dust and spider bites.  A trifecta of infection causing ingredients.  I’m also bare foot.  I don’t want to feel the squash of spiders under my feet.  “Okay, you can carry me.”
     
    He chuckles.  “Not a fan of spiders?”
     
    “Spiders are fine.  As long as they maintain their distance.  A hundred yards or so is usually sufficient.”  He chuckles again.
     
    We’ve started walking through the room.  Brielle is right.  This is where old machinery goes to die.  Some of the things in here I’ve only seen in text books because they don’t make them anymore.  Is that really an iron lung over in the corner?
     
    Brielle and the doctor pick their way through the broken metal and plastic and we find ourselves in front of yet another hidden door.  How long did Brielle study the plans of this hospital?  It’s insane that she knows all of this.
     
    When she gets this door open, Brielle pulls a small flashlight out of a front pocket of her bag.  She shines it through the doorway and the light is reflected back to us from a myriad of silk spider webs sparkling with their first exposure to anything besides complete darkness.   I swear I hear a million spiders running for cover.  Better than banding together to attack us I guess.  “Well, this is going to suck titties,” Brielle says.
     
    “Look at you, master of speaking the obvious,” I gripe. 
     
    She offers me the flashlight.  “Care to go first Miss About-To-Have-a-Spider-Shoved-Up-Her-Ass?”  I respond with a glare, which she responds to with a smirk.
     
    “Why don’t I set you down and clear the way for us,” the doctor says, starting towards a desk chair with two wheels missing.  Does he really expect me to put my bare ass on that?  It has at least an inch of dust on it.
     
    “I got this,” Brielle says, saving me from the chair.  She takes yet another thing out of her bag.  It’s like she’s a Goth Mary Poppins.  Now she has a can of something in her hand.
     
    “What’s that?” I ask.
     
    “Compressed air.”  She points it towards the spider webs and presses down on the top of the can.  A blast of air clears a bunch of the webs out of the way.  She sprays again and then again.  When enough of the webbing is down so my dangling hair won’t get tangled with it, the doctor follows Brielle into the tunnel.
     
    “Close the door behind you,” she instructs, continuing to squirt her compressed air.  I sure hope she has a whole tunnel’s worth of the stuff.  I would hate to get halfway through and then have to use our hands to clear it. 
     
    The doctor turns around and I reach for the door handle, pulling it closed.  I take deep breaths and try to lessen the sudden panic I feel caused by both the complete darkness, since Brielle’s light isn’t reaching us back here, and my claustrophobia.
     
    “Just concentrate on breathing normally,” the doctor says in his deep, soothing voice.  Sure, easy for him to say.  “Not a fan of small spaces?”
     
    “Only if they’re surrounded by fresh air and light.”
     
    “Why don’t you find more to gripe about,” Brielle says as her voice echoes in front of us.  “It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when you do.”
     
    I hate her.  “Where are we going now?”
     
    “Once we’re in the other building, we’re going to head for the nearest exit to the parking garage where my car is.” 
     
    It takes about five minutes and three thousand spider webs to find the other side of the tunnel.  My breathing is so hard and fast now you’d think I was having mind blowing sex.  Brielle does her thing slowly with the lock as I hyperventilate.  I want to push her aside and kick the door down just to get out of here half a second faster.
     
    As soon as the door pushes open, I scramble out of the