Ben’s mom hurtled away quickly down below, disappearing through a haze of flies, while Amber seemed to float.
She screamed and kicked and reached out, trying to grab something. Then she recalled how she’d seen a sugar glider fly at the pet shop. The sugar glider was shaped a lot like a mouse. She’d seen it spread its arms and legs then use baggy folds of skin to soar between tree limbs.
Amber tried the pose, and found that as she spread out, her fall slowed even more. She lifted her nose, arched her back, and splayed out her arms, legs, and tail.
Serena the butterfly shouted, “Don’t worry, I can help!” Serena spread out her wings, letting the air catch and lift them.
Amber slowed even further.
She remembered seeing an ant fall from a dizzying height in a tree a few days earlier. Amber had watched it walk away afterward, apparently unharmed.
Maybe I can do that, she thought. I’m small, and my tail has a lot of drag on the air. With Serena holding on, I just might make it.
Amber had often used her tail to sort of hold on to things or to balance on the end of tables when she was getting ready to jump. Now she found that her tail could also act as a tiny parachute.
She floated through the bottom of the cloud of flies and saw the ground far below. She was in California now, a land filled with rocky desert and covered in mesquite and cactuses. Off to the east, an endless blue ocean lay flat and inviting.
Amber only hoped that she would land somewhere soft, like the top of a Joshua tree, or maybe in a nice mountain pool.
Quietly, Amber was riding the wind on her way down when suddenly she saw a little red dot below. The dot rapidly expanded. It was Ben’s dad’s parachute opening.
A blue dot blossomed next to it and rapidly filled Amber’s vision. Mona’s parachute had deployed, too, and now Amber was falling straight toward it.
In seconds she landed on it—splat—as if it were a mushy trampoline. Amber sat clinging to it, her tiny claws hooked into the fabric, too frightened to move.
Serena let go of Amber’s tail and crawled up next to her face. “Boy, I’m sure glad I have wings right now,” the butterfly said. “I’d hate to be you!”
The wind was rushing through Amber’s ears, but gradually she became aware of Ben’s mother shouting and crying. “Ben? Ben, where are you?”
“Here!” Ben answered. He landed next to Amber atop the parachute with a small thump.
“Ben?” his mother asked.
“I’m up here, Mom!” he shouted.
Mona must have heard him then, because she yelled, “I see you above me! Benjamin Ravenspell, you get down here this instant!”
Ben looked at Amber as if asking for any ideas. He was clinging to the parachute for all he was worth.
Amber considered how to get down. She was terrified, frozen by fear. But through the fabric of the parachute, she dimly spied the ropes that held Mona to the chute.
“Maybe we can climb down!” Amber cried to Ben.
“No!” Ben shouted. “We’re safer on top of the parachute. If we’re in Mom’s pocket when she touches down, she might squash us!”
An instant later, there was a plop nearby. Lady Blackpool pounded down. Amber felt as if it were raining mice.
Amber’s little paws were hooked into the parachute fabric right next to Ben’s. She looked at him, smiling.
“Whee!” Serena cried. “Is this as fun as the rides at Disneyland?”
Ben just shook his head in wonder.
Moments later, Ben’s mom touched down on a brush-covered hill out in the desert. She landed safely, and the parachute just floated to the ground, where the mice scurried off into the grass and Serena flapped about overhead.
Everyone had landed safely, but Butch began to wail in pain or grief.
“Dad, what’s wrong?” Ben called.
There was a moment of silence as Butch Ravenspell swiped tears from his eyes, sniffed, and peered down at Ben. “Our money,” he said. “We left it all on the plane!” He sank to his knees, wracked by despair.
Amber looked up into the heavens. She could see the flies, a huge cloud of them, carrying the jet off toward the south.
Oh, no, she thought. I had two million dollars on that plane—enough to buy freedom for millions and millions of mice.
She wasn’t sure how hard it might be to get more money, but she could tell from the expression on Mr. Ravenspell’s face that it wasn’t easy. She might never get a million dollars again.
Ben’s mom studied the flies’ movements. Her green eyes took on a deadly gleam—the kind that a person gets just before going into battle.
“They might have our money for now,” Mona said. “But I’m going to take it back!”
Amber considered how many mice she might be able to free and shouted, “Me too!”
Chapter 12
THE GORGEOUS GRUB CLUB
The bad habits and rotten attitudes that we learn from our parents usually stay with us for life.
That is why we must work so hard to instill them in our young.
—BELLE Z. BUG
At noon that day, all seemed right with the world to Belle Z. Bug. Her minions were scattered across the dump before her; flies covered the land as far as the eye could see, a black mass of seething bodies.
Belle reached up and stroked her magic charm bracelet, making sure that it still touched her skin. Youth gave her beauty, and beauty made her persuasive. So long as the charm bracelet remained touching her skin, she felt secure.
“I’d like to introduce a new program,” Belle shouted to the flies, “a special new plan designed just for our darling little maggots. It’s called the Gorgeous Grub Club, and it’s open to every maggot more than an hour old . . .”
A strange droning filled the air, a sound louder than the buzz of flies. Belle stopped her speech and watched over a line of trees to the north, seeing something large buzzing toward them.
At first she thought it was a giant fly like her, and Belle’s hearts skipped a beat.
She had not realized how lonely she felt, being a monster and the only one of her kind. Sure, she had fly-shadow and mask-era to make her beautiful, the most gorgeous fly on earth. She had her lipstick on, and she had set the hair on her back with a stylish new perm.
But who was it all for? Without a male fly to impress, all of her beauty was wasted. Its only purpose was to rouse the envy of other flies.
But in the next instant, she saw that it wasn’t a fly. It was a small, yellow airplane. It came buzzing toward the dump, and Belle Z. Bug got a sick feeling in the bottom of her abdomen.
Belle had been expecting a plane. Her vast magical powers had let her see that Amber was flying on a silver jet. But this wasn’t the plane that she had been waiting for.
“Uh-oh,” a nearby green bottle fly said, “this can’t be good!”
With ten thousand eyes, it isn’t hard to look about. Belle could see every direction at once, except for a little blind spot in her rear. In a glance, Belle realized that a strange silence had fallen over the landfill. The huge dump trucks that had been lining up all morning had stopped coming.
“It’s an attack!” Belle screamed in warning. “Everyone, take to the skies. Pull that plane’s wings off!”
The plane roared toward them. Just as the enormous mass of flies leapt into the air, a cloud of noxious gray gas suddenly poured from the back of the plane.
Two miles away, at the edge of L.A.’s enormous landfill, flies that had taken to the air met the cloud and immediately began to plummet, dropping like flies.
Death is coming, Belle realized. Death is coming for us all.
Her flies were helpless against a well-armed crop duster.
But Belle had her magic and a fierce will.
She smiled up at the plane.
So, she thought, the humans want to make a fight of it! That’s admirable of them. And a fight they shall have!
She felt deep down inside herself for the source of her pow
er. She was weak. She’d cast several spells only moments before in her struggle to capture Amber’s plane. She felt drained, but Belle had power still.
She only needed a little.
She cast a spell, a slight wish. With a thought, the poison tanks on the crop duster exploded inward, releasing their noxious gases into the cockpit. The fumes filled the interior of the plane, fogging the windows.
Seconds later, the pilot kicked open the door and leapt out, clutching at his throat and coughing.
He was so close to the ground that his parachute didn’t have time to open. Instead, he hit the ground with a heavy thud.
A mass of Belle’s minions roared into the sky to take vengeance on the man.
Meanwhile, some of the fumes from the crop duster had begun drifting close.
Belle felt the vile chemicals clogging the pores of her skin. She twitched, a fly’s equivalent of a cough, and tried to breathe. It was a struggle. The poison irritated her sorely, made her ten thousand eyes burn. But she would live through it.
Belle ground her mandibles in outrage. Humans—the worthless scum!
She raised her voice so that it carried across her innumerable throng. “Okay, folks,” she said with a cheery smile, “new program, starting now! I’m going to give each of you a little magic power.
“When you buzz into a human’s ears and whisper my name, Belle Z. Bug, you’ll have the power to make them do something naughty! I want each of you to go out now and start taking a little vengeance! Any fly that gets fifty human converts by sundown will get our newest shade of hot pink carapace color!”
Amid shrieks of delight, the flies lifted into the air in a vast and indomitable cloud.
* * *
Governor Harold Shortzenbeggar was the greatest man alive. The fact that he won the Mr. Galaxy Pageant was proof that no man on earth was his equal physically.
But his greatness did not end there. Not only was he the strongest and best-looking man of his time, but he had also spent his time studying and had become the most fabulous actor ever.
Even being a governor wasn’t hard for him. He found that people wanted to be led as much as grasshoppers wanted to be herded, but he was up to the challenge.
Governor Shortzenbeggar took the task to heart, and after only a few weeks, he’d quickly become the most dedicated and efficient leader the world had ever known.
Only in legend could men be found that rivaled Governor Shortzenbeggar—men with names like Hercules, Atlas, and Attila the Hun.
Now, he stood outside the L.A. landfill with a pair of high-powered binoculars, peering at the rising cloud of flies. He’d seen the death of the fearless pilot that had led the air-strike against the dump.
He shook his head in dismay. “I hate to see men dropping like flies,” Harold said to the crowd of worried dump truck drivers at his back. “It should be flies dropping like flies!” he explained in his thick Swiss accent.
The danger here was very apparent. California has a fly problem. In a state where so much fruit is grown, a number of exotic fly species have taken hold. Sometimes, when the weather is right, it leads to vast fly hatchings. Normally these are just various fruit flies that hatch—particularly white flies, which eat tomatoes, strawberries, and other vegetables.
The governors of California have tried to keep this quiet for generations. After all, if people realized that the state has such a nasty fly problem, the tourists might stop coming.
So the state kept a small squadron of crop duster planes working at all times, spraying the vineyards and orange groves.
The War of the Flies was a constant one, a battle that mankind could not afford to lose.
Governor Shortzenbeggar didn’t like to keep secrets from his loyal supporters. He would have preferred to be honest. The fly problem wasn’t such a bad thing. It wasn’t like the things that were constantly going on off the coast of Florida, with the great white sharks gobbling down tourists like popcorn, and giant squids sinking boats, and the pirates, and . . . well, all that other stuff.
Harold couldn’t see how Florida’s governor could sleep at night, what with his secrets.
Still, from time to time, a special group of flies hatched. It was called a “bloom” of flies.
This time, a mutant fly led the swarm—a real nasty one—most likely with telepathic powers. The governor had been forced to battle monsters like it before.
Fighting it would take more than a man. It would take a superman.
Resolutely, the governor turned and began to stalk away. He couldn’t allow his dump truck drivers to go back into the hot zone, not so long as the monster fly was a threat.
One truck driver shouted at his back, “Hey, where are you going? You can’t just leave these flies in control!”
The governor came to a halt. Without turning, he said to the crowd, “I’ll be back!”
Chapter 13
THE UNLUCKIEST CHAPTER EVER
When building hotels, the builders will often skip building the thirteenth floor, going from floor number twelve straight to floor number fourteen. The reason for that is a concern that the thirteenth floor will be unlucky. I decided to skip this chapter for the same reason.
I was going to tell you how the flies began to take over the world. I was going to tell you how they buzzed into downtown Los Angeles and whispered into people’s ears to do naughty things. Like, for example, when moms parked at grocery stores, they began to take up two parking stalls, while complete strangers began pointing at one another just for fun. Barbers gave Mohawks to businessmen. People in restaurants began eating with their mouths open and then wiping their greasy hands on the tablecloths.
But then I realized that if I told you all of the nasty things that happened, there might be tenderhearted children reading this, and they’d get bad dreams. So I’m not going to tell you. Just use your imagination. If there was anything bad that could happen, it did!
—THE AUTHOR, DAVID FARLAND
Chapter 14
LOST IN THE WILDERNESS
It is not wise
To listen to flies
—COB
Fortunately, Ben Ravenspell’s dad had stashed a few thousand dollars in his pockets as “folding money.”
“We can use it to hire a taxi,” he said when he broke free from his parachute.
The only problem was that they had bailed from the airplane out in the wilderness somewhere in a desert full of mesquite bushes taller than Ben’s dad’s head and yucca plants with broad spikes for leaves.
The small group gazed down from the hilltop where they’d landed.
“If we only had a cell phone,” Butch said. But Amber’s little cell phone was lost.
“What do we do?” Ben asked. He felt weak and very vulnerable here in the desert. It was only April, so it wasn’t very hot. In fact, it was rather pleasant. But Ben couldn’t see any sign of a lake or stream for miles. He worried he might die of thirst.
“Maybe we should just wait here for help,” Ben’s mom suggested. “I’ll bet that our pilot sent some sort of distress call.”
“That bozo?” Butch asked. “I don’t think so. I didn’t hear him calling for help.”
Ben knew his dad was right. The pilot had access to a two-way speaker system in the cockpit. They’d been able to hear everything he said, and he hadn’t called for help.
“Boy, what lousy luck I’m having,” Butch said. He squatted on the ground, head drooping.
“Cheer up, hon,” Mona said. “Look at the bright side: we made four million dollars this morning!”
“Yeah, but we lost it all before noon,” Butch said. “And I think we’re all going to die!”
“Perhaps we should start walking,” Lady Blackpool suggested. “I have found that one cannot go too far without running into a human road of some sort. Besides, it will be good for Ben and Amber. They need to collect mage dust. I suppose I’ll need it, too.”
“Okay,” Ben’s mom said. She picked up the mice and shrew and stuck
them in the big pockets of her blouse. “I think we should go west from here. When we were falling, I thought I saw a freeway in that direction. I’m sure that I saw some orange groves.”
“West it is, then,” Butch said, glancing up at the sky. The sun was almost directly overhead. “Uh, which way do you think is west?”
“This way,” Mona said, pointing to a path through the brush.
“Are you sure you want to carry us?” Ben asked. “I don’t want to weigh you down.” As soon as he spoke, he realized how dumb he must sound. Altogether, two mice and a shrew couldn’t weigh more than four ounces.
“I think I can manage,” Mona said.
Ben and Amber were thrust into one pocket, and Lady Blackpool had gone into the other. Serena the butterfly chose to fly on her own, dipping from flower to flower as she traveled.
“Wow, your mom sure is great!” Amber whispered to Ben as they walked. “I mean, she’s carrying us.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, and he felt kind of weird inside. A couple of weeks ago, he hadn’t realized how cool his mom could be. He’d seen her dirty house and her lazy habits. But now here she was, marching through the wilderness, leading them toward the lair of an evil fly, and she had a strange look in her eyes—a cold intensity that Ben had never seen before.
“Mom, you’re different,” Ben said. “What happened to you?”
He looked up. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see much more than the inside of his mom’s nose.
Her voice came out sounding kind of sad. “Two weeks ago, when I woke up and you were gone, I realized that I could have been a better mother, Ben. So I decided to try to be the kind of mom that I knew I should have been.”
Ben thought for a moment and then admitted, “I think you’re a great mom.”
That brought a soft smile to her face.
For long hours they marched through the desert, over rough rocks and through tall brush. There were lots of cactuses among the mesquite—little barrel cactuses with bright red flowers and prickly pears with their strange leaf buds.
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