by Laura Dower
AN ARMADA OF MINIATURE UFOs
“Heeeeelp!” I wailed and ran downstairs, all the way to the basement. On the way down, I grabbed our portable phone.
I called Ranger first, but the phone just rang. Of course he wasn’t home. The Monster Squad was at the playground for our meeting!
That meant there was a giant bug in my backyard and no one to help me.
“Get a grip, Damon,” I told myself. Was a real, live B-Monster in my yard? There was no other logical explanation.
“Damon!”
Mom?
My mother and sister were back home! I grabbed the phone and darted down the stairs to the living room. I had never been so excited to see them in my entire life, but I couldn’t let them see me this scared.
“Damon?” Mom gazed right into my pupils when she saw me. “Is everything okay, dear? Do you have a fever? You look pale.”
“Ha!” Rachel snorted. “You look freaked out.”
“No,” I groaned. “Just tired.”
“Well,” Mom said, tousling my hair. “Don’t you have studying to do? Isn’t your math test this week?”
“Yes,” I sighed. “Thanks for reminding me.”
Just talking about tests made my mouth go dry. Math tests are almost as scary as giant B-Monsters. Almost.
“Well, get to it,” Mom said, giving me a goofy thumbs-up. She and Rachel walked out.
The moment they left, I ran to the window and scanned the back field. Soon the sky would darken and it would be harder to see. Was the shadow bug still out there? Or had my eyes been playing tricks on me?
I wanted so badly to tell Mom and Rachel the truth about the shadow bug and the gnats and all about Oswald Leery, too. But the squad made a promise to keep real B-Monsters a big secret.
And I don’t break promises.
I worked on my math for a little while, but I was having trouble concentrating. I couldn’t believe that Mom wanted me to study right now. How was I supposed to do math homework with that thing in our yard?
I went over to the window to check for the big bug again. It had gotten dark, but I could see something coming toward me. It was a row of itty, bitty lights illuminating everything below it. The lights looked just like these teeny spaceships I’d read about in one of Dr. Leery’s B-Monster Galaxy magazines.
But once the lights came closer, I realized I wasn’t watching spaceships. These were bugs. Lightning bugs! There must have been a thousand! They swooped in like an armada of miniature UFOs, but they were definitely bugs.
“Moooooom!” I screamed.
“Damon?” Mom asked, rushing back into the living room. “What is the matter?”
I pointed out the window. The bugs were multiplying by the second, just like the flies and bees. Their light was so bright it lit up the whole backyard.
“Damon! Let’s go!” Mom called from the kitchen.
“Just a sec!” I called back. Then I grabbed the phone. I speed-dialed Ranger again.
Hopefully he would be home by now.
CHAPTER 3
ANOTHER BADVENTURE
This time Ranger picked up the phone. I told him everything.
After that, I called the girls. The four of us agreed to do a few things as soon as humanly possible:1. ID the B (for sure).
2. Get to Leery Castle and tell Walter and Leery everything.
3. Whomp that B-Monster and save the world. The next morning, I was revved to go. Rachel stayed home sick so I went to school alone. Excellent! But just as I stepped onto our front porch, I heard something go smoosh under my sneaker. I lifted my shoe. It looked like gum. Green gum.
But it wasn’t gum. These were green bugs: tiny praying mantids hopping all over the place. Some were dead, but most had their tiny legs folded up like they were praying for real. I could feel their little black eyes on me.
“WHY ME?” I screamed. I would have given anything for a bottle of Bug-Off right about now.
I leaped over a cluster and ran toward the street.
But even after I’d made it off the porch, I was not bug-free. Something else tickled my cheek and I swatted.
No way! Now a mini swarm of gnats chased me! And the harder I tried to shoo them away, the closer they hovered.
“Get off!” I wailed, slapping my neck and arms and neck again. I dashed for the school bus stop, bobbing and weaving like a prizefighter.
But nothing shook off these gnats!
When the kids at the bus stop saw me coming, one yelled, “What’s your problem?”
Everyone was staring. A few kids doubled over with laughter at the sight of me. One pack of kids shuffled away from me as if I had cooties.
And the truth was I did have them. I had gnatties!
Play it cool, I told myself. But when the swarm swooped in at me again, I flapped my arms like a chicken. These gnats were flying so close to my face that I could barely blink without a bug getting caught in my lashes!
I usually love being the center of attention, but this was too much.
Where’s an Invisibility Cloak when you really need one?
“Damon?”
I turned around, swatting.
“Ranger!”
Ranger made a face. “Gee, you weren’t kidding when you said you saw weird bugs everywhere. You’re covered in fleas.”
“Gnats!”
“Same difference,” Ranger said.
I raised my eyebrow. “You should have seen the praying mantids on my porch!”
“Mantids? Praying? About what?”
“There were hundreds. They looked like . . .”
I stopped mid-sentence. It dawned on me that I knew exactly what those mantids looked like. Of course! They were miniature versions of the giant bug shadow I saw in my backyard . . .
“Mega Mantis!” I yelled out. “The new B-Monster in town is Mega Mantis! That’s it!”
“Huh?” Ranger said with disbelief. “Are you serious?”
Scenes from the original B-Monster Mega Mantis flick popped into my head. “Yes! Of course! Remember the pond scene?” I asked Ranger.
“Yes! When the bugs swarmed out of nowhere?”
“And attacked that little dog and carried him up into the sky?”
“Mega turned that pooch into a chew toy!” Ranger cried.
I shuddered. “I got swarm nightmares for weeks.”
Ranger waved his hands around my head. Now I was the swarm nightmare.
“But remember what Roger Rogers says in the movie?” Ranger asked.
Rogers was one of the big heroes in Oswald Leery’s Bs. We all wanted to be as brave as Roger Rogers.
“Of course I remember!” I said.
Together, we recited his most famous line from the movie. “Don’t mess with me. And don’t mess with the mantis!”
Then, from down the street, the school bus pulled into view.
“Aha!” I cried.
I put on my best ugly face and we muscled our way to the front of the bus line. We thought for sure that the gnats would follow. But strangely, the bugs headed for the bus headlights instead.
What a lucky break. They like lights even more than me!
The driver opened the doors and Ranger and I scrambled onto the bus. We collapsed in a backseat. I thought the gnats were gone for good. Then, a half mile down the road, my gigantic gnat swarm came back! The swarm showed up just outside my bus window. It looked like the swarm of flies from my bedroom window the day before.
Some people have animal magnetism; I guess I must have bug magnetism.
“Pssst!” Ranger whispered. “Remember in Mega Mantis, how all the people get followed by swarms? But the insects don’t swarm onto the bus to City Hall?”
“Right!” I said. “They won’t enter a moving vehicle!”
“We should contact Oswald Leery,” Ranger said. “I think we’re in big bug trouble.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “We need an emergency Monster Squad meeting. Sorry I missed the last one . . .”
“That
’s okay. You’re still in the squad,” Ranger said.
I punched him in the shoulder with a smile. “Better be,” I said.
I complained a lot about my fellow Monster Squad members, but the truth was they weren’t all that dorky. Lindsey was nice. Stella was tough. Ranger was smart. We really were in this together.
Now if I could just figure out how to move from the school bus into the school building without getting swarmed, I’d be all set.
CHAPTER 4
YOU’RE GNATS!
When the bus rounded the cul-de-sac outside the school’s main doors, Ranger and I planned our mad dash inside. If we moved fast enough, we could beat the gnats.
We covered our heads with our jackets and sprinted for the doors.
It worked!
When the bugs didn’t follow us inside, I thought maybe they’d leave us alone for a while. But the very first period, in the middle of my math test, I spotted something suspicious outside the classroom window.
The swarm! There must have been a thousand gnats! There were so many I think they began to block out the sun. I wanted to jump up and shout, “Excuse me, but doesn’t anyone else see what’s going on?”
But then I remembered: Only a few of us could see them.
As soon as the class bell rang, Monster Squad gathered in the hall. We kept our voices low.
“Did you see that?” Lindsey whispered.
I nodded. “A swarm like the one we saw outside the school bus window.”
I told everyone again about the bugs in my yard and the giant shadow I’d seen the night before. I was certain the bugs meant a genuine B-Monster was lurking around and that that B-Monster was Mega Mantis.
“We need to keep track of all these details,” Stella said, as serious as ever.
“I’ll take plenty of pictures for reference,” Lindsey said, holding up her Sure Shot digital camera.
One of our fifth-grade teachers actually nicknamed Lindsey “Paparazzi,” just because she brings her camera everywhere. I think she always wears it because she wants to be like her grandpa Max. Max took pictures for B-Monster Studios back in the day.
As Lindsey snapped, my palms got sweatier. All these bugs were making me so nervous. If they kept following me, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stay on this Monster Squad mission. Meeting Mega face-to-face would give me hives.
“We need to do something!” Stella said. “This is one serious situation.”
I groaned. Stella walks around Riddle like she just drank a big cup of serious. And she acts tough like a ninja all the time, whether she’s in the karate studio or out.
I tried hard to think of something clever to say. I was about to speak, when something nipped at me. I reached for my neck.
“Yowch!” I cried. “One of the gnats bit me!” How had it gotten inside?
Ranger held his hands up. “Oh no! Bugs are making contact. We don’t have much time. I think we should head up to Leery Castle after school. Walter will help us.”
We all nodded. On the Stella serious scale, this was definitely a ten-plus.
I watched the clock all day. When the end-of-day school bell rang, my nerve was back. The bugs had disappeared after lunch. I hadn’t seen a swarm—or even a lone gnat—in three whole hours. The moment the bell rang at the end of school, I met up with the others. We raced to the public bus stop, ready for the second official Monster Squad mission.
Lindsey couldn’t resist pulling out her camera.
“Say mozzarella!” Lindsey said, snapping. I made a funny face. Why can’t that girl just say, “Say cheese!” like a normal person?
“Hey, Lindsey!” Stella yelled. “Take a photo of that!”
“Incoming!” Ranger cried. “What a cloud!”
“That’s too dark to be a cloud,” I cried, looking up. “Those are the gnats from outside the classroom!”
It looked like the swarm we’d been watching all day, only much, much wider.
“What’s the matter, Damon? Scared of a few bugs?” Stella teased.
“No! I don’t get scared, remember?” I snapped, trying to sound tuff like the word across the front of my T-shirt.
Stella laughed. “Yeah, sure you don’t get scared.” She assumed her most menacing karate stance. “I know how to handle a pack like that! Kiiiiya!”
I rolled my eyes. “First of all, the bugs are still miles away, Ninja. And second of all, you can’t karate-chop a pack of gnats, even if the cloud comes closer! I think that’s physically impossible.”
“Who says I can’t do it?” Stella snapped at me. “I can do whatever I want!”
Lindsey stepped in between us. “Guys, you can’t fight each other and expect to fight a B-Monster, too.”
“I think the cloud really is getting closer!” Ranger shouted.
Thankfully, no other people waiting for the bus could see the cloud like we could. They didn’t know it was made of bugs. They still believed the darkness was just a storm front. Maybe they thought we were doing some kind of rain dance.
Thankfully, we piled onto the bus before the cloud came any closer.
The ride seemed normal at first, except for the fact that my heart was beating like a bongo. Then, as we passed Round Ridge, the bus lurched. A warning bell went off. The driver turned off the engine.
Oh no, I thought to myself. We can’t stop. Not now.
“Attention, passengers,” the driver said. “We need to pull over for just a few moments. There’s a funny clunk in the trunk so I called dispatch for a service truck. I don’t want any of you to get stuck up on the mountain. From the looks of the sky out there, there’s bad weather coming, too, so I need to be extra careful . . .”
The other passengers began whispering and moving around. Ranger nudged me.
“A clunk in the trunk? What do you think is really going on?” he whispered.
“Maybe Mega Mantis is up ahead,” I said.
Stella glared. “SHHHHHH!”
“It can’t really be Mega,” she whispered.
“Maybe the bus is really broken,” Ranger replied.
A passenger standing next to us frowned. He peered out at the sky. “I didn’t know it was supposed to rain today,” he said.
“It’s not!” I cried. “But we think that might be a—”
“SHHHHH!” Stella slapped her hand over my mouth.
The man gave us a funny look and moved to the other side of the bus.
“Are you insane?” Stella hissed. “You can’t tell strangers about what’s really going on. You’ll cause a panic!”
“Actually, Stella,” Ranger said, “panic may be our best option. That cloud is really close to the bus now. I think we need to do something.”
“Like what?” Stella cried.
“Whatever we do, we’d better do it fast,” Ranger said.
Lindsey aimed her camera through the bus window, out at the still-darkening sky.
Flash!
She snapped a few photos and turned to me.
“Damon,” Lindsey said, frowning, “I think we may be in trouble.”
Lindsey was right. I could see the black cloud getting closer . . . and closer . . .
The gnat cloud was about to swoop down all the way. And if that happened, the bus would get swallowed whole—with us inside!
CHAPTER 5
BURN, BUGGY, BURN
“Everyone off the bus!” the driver said.
Without thinking, I dove for the door. “No!” I said. “We can’t go out there!”
“Step back, son,” the driver said.
Ranger pulled me back. “Damon,” he whispered. “Chill out. Everyone else thinks the gnat cloud is a rain cloud.”
The other passengers on the bus gave us funny looks. They all exited the bus with their umbrellas open. They thought rain was on the way.
“Psst! Let’s walk to the castle,” I whispered to the other three. “It’s not that far. Maybe the gnats won’t notice if we sneak away.”
“Well, those gnats won’t
notice,” Stella said. She pointed to the exhaust pipe on the bus. It was stuffed with thousands of dead bugs. Was that why the bus stopped and went out of service? Did the gnats know we were on the bus?
I started to walk fast down the road. The squad followed me. The castle was ten minutes away. It only took us five, running as fast as we could. Maybe we really could outsmart the bugs.
When we got to the castle’s Crabzilla gates, however, a single fly buzzed around the security box. Where one fly flies, more would follow. We didn’t have much time.
I rushed to the gate and punched the security code that we’d used last time.
SLIMO.
It didn’t work!
SLIMO.
No dice. I looked behind me. The swarm was coming toward us. They had caught up.
Lucky for me, Ranger was right there. He had already figured out what to try next.
MANTIS.
“Same castle, different monster,” Ranger quipped. Just like that, the Crabzilla claw gates opened.
“Hurry, hurry!” Stella said. “I think the giant gnat cloud is about to make landfall!”
We sprinted to the door and pounded on it.
No answer.
I tried the handle. It was unlocked. We hurried in and slammed the door shut before the bugs could follow us.
“Hello? Anyone home?” I called out. The castle seemed to be deserted.
“We can talk to Walter later,” Ranger said. “Let’s go to the video vault now!”
We headed downstairs. I hummed the Mega Mantis theme song:Indestructible
Claws and wings
Comes to town to destroy things
Mega-smart! Mega-strong!
Mega-right or Mega-wrong?
Eats you up with just one bite
Mega-Mantis! What a fright!
Stella grabbed my sleeve. “Would you pipe down, you’re hurting my ears.”
“I’m just having fun!” I said.
“Have fun later,” Stella growled. “This is serious.”
“Then seriously get some earplugs,” I said. “Or just go away. Far away.”
“Say muenster!” Lindsey cried. I turned and she snapped a picture of us.
The camera flash put a thousand dots in front of my eyes. It was like seeing the backyard fireflies all over again. Thankfully, there were no real bugs inside the castle with us—yet.
