Spider expert Melanie Guyer is pretty sure that this isn't the last they've seen of the eight-legged predators. Something else is coming, something connected to the eerie stashes of glowing white eggs the spiders left in places like LA's Staples Center - something very bad.

First there was the black swarm that swallowed a man whole, the suspicious seismic irregularities in India that confounded scientists, the nuclear bomb China dropped on its own territory without any explanation. Then scientist Melanie Guyer's lab received a package containing a mysterious egg sac; little did Dr. Guyer know that, almost overnight, Earth would be overwhelmed by previously dormant spiders that suddenly wanted out. Now tens of millions of people around the world are dead. Half of China is a nuclear wasteland. Mysterious flesh-eating spiders have marched through Los Angeles, Oslo, Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, and countless other cities. When they start to die off, people take a deep breath, hoping the crisis is over. But in Japan, a giant, glowing egg sac gives a shocking preview of what is to come, even as survivors in Los Angeles panic and break the quarantine zone. Out in the desert, survivalists Gordo and Shotgun are trying to invent a weapon to fight back, but it may be too late, because President Stephanie Pilgrim has been forced to enact the plan of last resort. A plan that will test the capacity of the human race to survive.