Unity Conquers Fear: The Tucson Three's Quest for Justice

The wind howled in my ears as I ran towards the mountain. The sun beat down on my back, making me sweat even more than I already was. Behind me, Andy and Hassan were struggling to keep up.

“Faster!” I shouted. “We need to get there before it does!”

We turned around a bend in the road and saw it. The mountain rose high over the towns of Tucson and Sierra Vista, both of which were a part of our county. I could see why nobody had been able to kill that goddamn spider. It was perched on a massive boulder, legs outstretched like it was some kind of monster from Greek mythology.

I stopped running and pulled out my phone to check my GPS. If we went the wrong way, we could end up in Nogales or Phoenix. Not that we wanted to go there anyways. That fucking thing needed to die. It took my dog last night, right after he did his business outside. This morning, all that was left were some strands of hair floating in my toilet bowl and one of his shoes by the door, too heavy for him to carry himself in his mouth. I knew what kind of shit he could do with that shoe while he was alive; I didn’t want to think about what it would be doing now if he was dead.

Andy and Hassan caught up with me and fell forward onto their knees on the ground next to me, panting hard and spewing saliva onto the dirt road behind them like a couple of dogs.

“What did you find?” Andy asked between gasps for air. He wiped off his sweaty forehead with his sleeve, smearing dirt across his face so he looked like he had just gotten into a fight with someone who had mud on their fists instead of boxing gloves.

“This way,” I said pointing at a small path on the edge of the road that led up the mountain. We jogged along it until we reached a clearing where people had left their cars parked so they could hike up further into the mountain once they got there. We continued walking until we came upon a sign that pointed in two directions: “To Phoenix” and “To Sierra Vista” with an arrow pointing right in between them at something else that said “Pima Canyon Wilderness Area” with another arrow pointing right at the base of one of the mountains.

That fucking monster must have been living somewhere inside those wilderness areas on either side of us and decided it wanted to eat everyone, then realized there were too many people here to eat all at once so it picked one town instead because God knows why anything would pick Tucson over Sierra Vista but whatever must have been its reasoning we couldn't know for sure unless we killed it first which meant going through this stupid ass sign first so that's what we did and then hiked up another couple miles among giant rocks until finally we found ourselves staring face-to-face with...