When I slammed the quig-spider into the crate, I rattled it, but didn’t kill it. The thing was on its back with its legs scrambling in the air. I was about to go over and step on it, when it suddenly flipped back onto its feet, and looked at me. I swear, guys, this little monster looked at me. It had intelligence. But as vicious as this little beastie looked, there was worse news.
It wasn’t alone.
I heard the scratching sound again and shot a look toward the hatch to the flume. What I saw made my stomach drop. Out came hundreds, no, thousands of the little quig monsters. They cascaded out of the hatchway and down onto the floor like a living, evil waterfall. I could hear their sharp little claws clicking against the cement floor like nails. Sharp nails.
Was I scared? What do you think? But as I watched those vicious little beasties stream out of the gate, I actually had a fleeting thought that snuck through the terror: I was in the right place. Saint Dane had brought quigs to the flume. This territory was hot. Things were going to happen. But it wasn’t more than a flash of a thought that was immediately replaced by another.
These monsters were coming for me. It was time to be someplace else.
(CONTINUED)
QUILLAN
I’m not afraid of spiders.
A lot of people are terrified of the little critters, but I never understood that. They’re bugs. They’re tiny. Even if they bite you, which is rare, it’s not all that painful. What’s to be scared of?
On Quillan, plenty. At least at the flume, anyway. These quig-charged little monsters weren’t anything like the spiders on Second Earth. They were the size of small hams and bit like angry dogs. If that weren’t bad enough, there must have been eight-freakin thousand of them, all with one thing on their evil little minds: Get Bobby Pendragon.
I was now officially afraid of spiders.
I did the first thing that any brave Traveler would do under the circumstances: I turned and ran like hell. But I had no idea where to go. I was caught in a maze of wooden crates. My only thought was to weave my way through and find the door out of that musty old tomb of a warehouse. The crates were stacked up all over the place, some towering almost to the forty-foot-high ceiling. Whatever they were storing in there, there was a lot of it. I didn’t turn around to see if the spiders were following. I didn’t need to. I could hear them. Thousands of little spider claws clattered against the cement floor as they scrambled to get me. They all gave off this odd high-pitched squeak that sounded like a juiced-up war cry. A single one of these would sound creepy. Multiplied by many thousands made the hair go up on the back of my neck. They were fast, too. It was hard to outrun them. Worse, I couldn’t break into a full-on sprint because the aisles were so narrow and windy. Every so often I’d hit an intersection and make a quick decision which way to go. Left, right, left, left. I had no idea where I was going, but it didn’t matter so long as it was away from that attacking army of bugs.
I didn’t know how long I could stay ahead of them. My fear was that I’d hit a dead end and be trapped. Quigs took different forms on each territory, but the vicious killing machines that Saint Dane created to guard the flumes all had one thing in common: They were bloodthirsty. Remember the quig-bears on Denduron? The smell of blood made them eat their own. The quig-sharks on Cloral nearly tore themselves apart to get under the rock overhang where Uncle Press and I were hiding in fear. At least I was hiding in fear. Uncle Press was pretty cool about the whole thing, if I remember. But whatever. Bottom line was, here on Quillan I didn’t want to get trapped in a dead end with these yellow-eyed fiends.
I hoped that if I got far enough away from the gate, the quigs would lose interest. A quick look over my shoulder told me I was wrong. If anything, there were more of them rolling toward me like a dark, demonic wave. I looked around to get my bearings and realized I was in the middle of a sea of crates, with no exit to be seen. Anywhere. I was getting tired, fast. and I was no closer to escape than when I started. But stopping wasn’t an option.
I made one turn and pulled up short when I saw that up ahead of me a swarm of spiders had rounded the corner and were charging right for me. These weren’t mindless bugs; the little creeps were using tactics! I saw more proof of that when I realized that they were being led by a single spider. At least I thought it was in the lead. It’s not like it was carrying a big flag and shouting “Charge!” or anything. But it was obviously bigger than the rest. It had more red in it, and its yellow eyes were bigger too. The multitude fanned out behind it as if this big fatty were the point of an arrow. This was no cute group of insects from some animated Pixar movie where the boss bug shouted out clever wisecracks. No, when this bad boy opened its mouth, it would be to rip into flesh. My flesh.
I wheeled to run the other way, but froze when I saw that the rest of the sea of spiders was behind me. They had split up and circled me. Smart bugs. Good for them. Bad for me. I was trapped. The only way I could go was up. I was next to a stack of wooden crates that towered a few feet over my head. I leaped straight up, grabbed the top of the crate, and pulled myself up. It’s amazing what adrenaline will do. In seconds I was throwing my leg up over the top and looking back down to see the two groups of spiders converge. I was safely out of harm’s way…
For about ten seconds. The two groups of bugs joined together and, without missing a beat, began climbing up the side of the wooden crate toward me, with the not-so-itsy-bitsy spider in the lead. I quickly rolled onto my feet and ran. I was on a whole new playing field. Looking forward, I saw that I was on top of a sea of crates that rose up on multiple levels. I couldn’t run there. One wrong step and I’d fall to the floor, break my leg, and to be careful. It was more about leaping from crate to crate than actually running. No sooner did I get to the end of one big crate than I’d have to climb up to another, or jump down a level. This didn’t seem to bother the spiders, though. They reached the tops of the crates and swarmed forward, rolling over the terrain like a creeping shadow. They were definitely going to catch me unless I thought of something, fast.
I bounded across one crate and had to stop short, or I would have fallen down into an aisle that stretched out to either side. I looked back to see the spiders were nearly on me. Their screeching grew louder, as if they knew the end was near. Or the beginning, if you were talking about their lunch. I had no choice but to leap across the chasm between the crates. I took a few steps back, held my breath, sprinted for the end, and leaped through space.
I made it to the far side with a few feet to spare. Again, thank you, adrenaline. I soon got more good news. Bugs couldn’t jump. At least they couldn’t jump far enough to make it across the aisle. The bugs had to climb down one side of the wall of crates, scramble across the floor, then crawl back up on the other side of the aisle. My side. I was kind of hoping they wouldn’t make it across at all, but the extra time it took for them to go down and across and up gave me the chance to get some distance from them. I jogged forward, looking for more aisles to leap across and get even farther away. I leaped across one, two, three more aisles. With each crossing my confidence grew. I was buying enough time to find my way out of this not-so-fun house. As I traveled farther away from the bugs, their squeaking and chattering grew faint. I figured I had survived yet another brush with Saint Dane’s quigs without a scratch.
I was wrong.
I decided to leap across one more aisle to make sure the bugs were far enough back that I could climb down and find the exit. But when I launched myself across and landed on the crate on the far side, the top edge cracked under my weight. If I had been prepared, I probably could have landed safely. But I was getting cocky. I should have jumped farther. Oops. The surprise was what got me. The wood of the crate must have been old and rotten, because before I realized what was happening, I crashed down to the floor in a shower of splinters and dust. I must have conked my head, because I was knocked loopy. All I remember of those few moments was the dust and debris raining down on me from the fractured crate. I didn’t know if I was hurt or stunned or simply confused. I remember sitting there for a while, though I’m not sure for how long. It could have been a few seconds, or more than a few minutes. What finally snapped me back to reality were the familiar sounds.