Suddenly Governor Shortzenbeggar saw the enemy camp beneath him. There was a large boat down there—a small discarded yacht with a broken hull. It seemed to be sailing over a sea of junk. And on the deck he could see a knot of giant flies in a circle.
One large fly was speaking to the crowd.
That must be their leader, he thought. They’re taking me to their leader.
He pretended to faint, giving it his best Oscar-worthy performance. He let his eyes roll back in his head; his whole body slackened.
He still had one trick up his sleeve—or actually, tied to his belt. It was a hand grenade.
He thought, If I can just get close, maybe I can lob it under their leader.
But he knew that his plan was dangerous. These flies were superhuman fast. If he tossed a grenade, they’d just leap into the air and buzz away.
I have to come up with a better plan, he thought. Then an idea struck him. Oh, I know! I won’t throw the grenade. I’ll just pull the pin and blow myself up along with the enemy!
It was a huge sacrifice, he knew, but sometimes a job required you to do a little extra.
Behind him, an enormous explosion ripped through the sky; a fireball lit up as the Big Bug Bomb went off. Beneath the glare from its giant green mushroom cloud, the giant flies stood for a moment in shock, gazing at the approaching death cloud.
The governor’s captor buzzed down to the group and hurled Harold Shortzenbeggar to the ground. “Grovel, human!” he commanded. “The almighty Belle Z. Bug demands respect.”
A huge fly strode forward, looking gorgeous in her mascara, eye shadow, lipstick, and various other forms of makeup. Her carapace was painted hot pink, but he could see that it wasn’t her natural color.
“So,” she said, glancing toward the spreading mushroom cloud, “I suppose that we have you to thank for all of this mayhem?”
“You’re going to thank me?” the governor said. “That’s a relief! I thought you would be mad!”
Belle Z. Bug chuckled dangerously. “One human—one measly human—killed millions of my followers.”
“Billions, maybe,” Harold Shortzenbeggar said, “if I’m lucky.” Very sneakily, he put his hands on his hips and pulled the pin on his grenade.
In forty seconds, he thought, we’re all going to get blown to smithereens.
An enormous fly buzzed in and tossed Mona Ravenspell onto the deck of the boat beside him.
“I stand corrected,” Belle Z. Bug said. “Two of you caused all of this trouble!”
“Leave her out of it,” the governor said. “She’s an innocent bystander. I always like to have a pretty girl at my side when I go roaring into combat.”
He stood for a moment, clenching the grenade in his fist.
“Is that right?” the fly asked Mona.
“I just came for my money,” she explained. “It was on the plane your flies stole!”
Belle spat. “Money? I don’t care too much for money. Money can’t buy me love.”
Well, the governor thought, I’ve got about twenty seconds now before we all die in a grisly explosion. But I have to wonder: is it fair for me to kill Mona Ravenspell, too?
I mean, on the plus side, I would be killing the world’s most powerful and evil fly. But on the minus side, I’d be killing an innocent woman.
How would that look in the newspapers tomorrow? What if the paparazzi get photos? It would certainly mar my reputation.
I think I’m about down to five seconds now, and then this whole hilltop will be riddled with shrapnel . . .
Governor Shortzenbeggar hurled the grenade in a lightning-fast pitch, popping Belle Z. Bug right between the eyes. He screamed and threw himself on top of Mona Ravenspell, just to make sure she didn’t get hit by any shrapnel.
The monster fly groaned in pain, staggered a step, and then passed out on the ground. All of the superflies gasped in shock or roared in outrage. They stared at the live grenade. “Wow,” one of them said, “he just conked our boss on the head. I’m completely baffled! I mean, how does one respond to such an outrage!”
The governor looked at the grenade and thought, You’re nowhere near as blown away as you’re going to be!
Mona Ravenspell struggled, trying to get out from under the governor. “Get off me, you brazen womanizer. I’m happily married!”
The governor counted in his mind: One; two; three . . . three and a half; three and three quarters; uh, fooooooouuuuur?
There was no explosion.
Belle Z. Bug climbed up to her feet and groaned.
“A dud?” Governor Shortzenbeggar asked. “My last grenade, the only hope for the human race, and it was a dud? Probably made in China!”
Belle Z. Bug picked up the grenade and tossed it as far as she could. It bounced down into the garbage pile like a rock and just sat there.
The mushroom cloud from the Big Bug Bomb was beginning to settle, and the poison gas had finally begun to reach them. Belle Z. Bug stuck her mop in the air and blew.
Suddenly a strong wind gusted, blowing all of the poison away, back to the north.
Belle Z. Bug glared at Harold Shortzenbeggar. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you never to mess with a sorceress?!”
“She might have,” Governor Shortzenbeggar said as he climbed to his feet and dusted himself off, “at the same time that she told me the rule about always eating my broccoli. Of course, I never followed that rule, either.”
The monster fly huffed and if possible, it seemed that her green-and-hot-pink exoskeleton darkened with rage. Her antennas did a little angry dance as she tried to think of some torment worthy of his crimes. “You,” she said. “You tried to kill me! You tried to kill my people!”
“You can’t blame a guy for trying,” the governor said.
“You will pay for your audacity!” Belle roared.
Now the governor knew he was really in trouble. He thrust out his chest and demanded, “So what you going to do about it?”
Belle Z. Bug cackled insanely. “You think you’re so great—the perfect specimen of humanity. Well, I’m going to do to you what someone should have done a long, long time ago!”
“What, erect a statue?” Harold Shortzenbeggar asked.
“Hardly,” Belle Z. Bug said as her ruby eyes seemed to boil with inner fire.
Chapter 20
BEN TO MOM’S RESCUE
Often all that is needed to accomplish the impossible is for one humble creature to come up with a well-made plan.
—RUFUS FLYCATCHER
Beneath the glowering sunset, Ben and Amber raced over the waste, guided only by the sound of Governor Shortzenbeggar’s screams.
He wailed and hollered, begging for death, but the evil flies carried on their gruesome torment.
Ben and Amber climbed through the rubbish piles, scooting under broken couches, tiptoeing along a bit of water pipe, balancing on paint cans, holding their noses when they passed the smelly places.
Everything was covered by the corpses of slain flies in a hundred varieties.
At last they found the governor. He wasn’t hard to see. Belle Z. Bug had her henchmen holding him at the very peak of the rubbish pile. Ben’s mom was nearby, and a pair of giant flies held her, too!
“Keep him still!” Belle Z. Bug shouted. “Keep him still.” But the governor thrashed and fought like a madman. But it was no use. The superflies clung to him like death. “Now pour it on!”
Though the flies tortured him, Ben couldn’t see any marks on him, no gaping wounds or blood. In fact, Ben couldn’t see that the flies were hurting him at all.
Then it happened. One giant mantis fly held up an eyedropper and let some liquid fall.
There, at the side of the governor’s neck, something horrible began to grow, like a grotesque, black jack-o-lantern. Ben could see eyes popping out on it, but the mouth was strange and twisted, and all too soon it began to sprout odd protuberances—antennas and a mop.
It was the head of a giant fly!
&nb
sp; “Careful,” Belle Z. Bug told the others. “Don’t get any of the Mutagenic Miracle Grow on him—just on the limbs we’re grafting on.”
“Please, no more!” Governor Shortzenbeggar cried.
The newly grown head pivoted and looked him in the face. “Please, no more!” it mocked. Then it looked to Belle Z. Bug and said, “Will somebody do me a favor here and lop this extra head off?”
The flies all chortled.
“It worked!” Belle Z. Bug called. “We got him to grow an extra head. Now let’s try a new abdomen!”
“I want to grow another head on him,” one of the flies argued. A third shouted, “Let’s give him a wing!”
Amber stood in shock, horrified. “What are they doing?”
Ben watched for a second just to be sure. One giant fly reached up and snatched a tiny fly out of the air, then tenderly twisted off one of its appendages.
“They’re sticking fly parts on him,” Ben realized, “and then making them grow. They’re going to turn him into a giant fly! I saw that on a movie once. I hate it when that happens.”
Harold Shortzenbeggar peered at the spot where the flies had dripped the Mutagenic Miracle Grow, and now he began to scream as a third arm—a long hairy fly arm—began to sprout from his ribs.
The fly’s head whined, “Seriously, this guy is screaming right into my antenna! Can someone please remove this . . . obnoxious tumor?”
“Hey, buddy,” Harold Shortzenbeggar said. “This was my body first. If anyone is going to get his head lopped off, it’s you—even if I have to do it myself!”
“Oh, yeah,” the fly head said, “what are you whining about? You know the old saying, ‘Two heads are better than one’? Well they are! I’m smarter than you, and I’m nowhere near as ugly as you!”
Amber crouched low and whispered, “What can we do to help the governor?”
Ben thought hard but couldn’t come up with any good plans. He considered stealing the eyedropper, but that wouldn’t help much. He also thought about attacking the giant flies, but that didn’t seem wise.
He only had one weapon—his spear.
“It doesn’t matter if the rest of those giant flies live,” he told Amber. “But someone has to kill Belle Z. Bug, and I guess that someone should be me.”
He brandished his needle and wiped off the gore from the flies he’d killed earlier.
“What are you going to do?” Amber asked, her voice a fearful little squeak.
“I’m going to jump up in the air and bury my spear right between that monster’s eyes!” Ben said.
“I’m afraid,” Amber cried. “Don’t leave me.”
“I have to,” Ben said. “They’ve got my mom . . .”
Amber fought back some tears. “You really are the most courageous mouse I’ve ever known, Ben Ravenspell,” she said. She lunged forward and hugged him.
Ben turned and began scrambling up to the top of the heap, wading through a drift of dead flies. It was like trying to wade through snow; he fought his way forward a few feet and then looked back. He’d left a little trail among the dead flies.
I’m invisible to the flies, he reminded himself, but they still might see my footprints.
Amber crept along behind him. He didn’t know if she planned to help or if she just wanted to watch, but she had begun following in his path.
“No!” Governor Shortzenbeggar cried. “Not the wing! Don’t put a wing on me!”
Ben peered ahead as the poor tortured victim renewed his struggles to escape. At least his screams provided a diversion for the monsters.
“Hold still!” Belle Z. Bug shouted. “Or you’ll end up with a wing growing out of your nose!”
The torture resumed, and Ben decided to make his move. He leapt uphill in mighty bounds.
The flies were all hunched over, looking at the governor, but they had so many eyes that it was impossible to tell where they might be looking. He only hoped that the governor’s distractions would keep them from noticing the little trail of mouseprints that appeared among the dead flies.
Suddenly the governor lunged like a wild man and kicked a superfly in the pancreas. The other flies buzzed angrily and fought to control the governor.
Ben leapt up and grabbed the gunwale of the discarded yacht. There weren’t so many dead flies on the floor there. Ben raced closer to the victim and stopped just outside the circle of giant flies.
Belle Z. Bug was straight ahead, pacing nervously, enjoying the show as one of her enormous flies poured a drop of Mutagenic Miracle Grow onto a wing.
It began to sprout from the governor’s back, a huge, nasty thing that looked like it was made from wax paper. The governor had struggled so much that the flies had set it in the wrong place—instead of growing from the governor’s shoulder, the wing sprouted from his kidney.
“Wow,” a big fruit fly said, “that looks great! Let’s give him another one!”
But Belle Z. Bug had a better idea. “No, hold him down while I pull the wing off. Then we’ll grow another one!”
All of the flies laughed hysterically, and the big fruit fly jumped on the governor and held him. Belle Z. Bug crawled forward to do the evil deed.
Ben heard a little scuffling noise behind him. It was Amber. She’d crept up to him. “Now,” she whispered in his ear. “Do it now!”
Ben gripped his needle spear and studied the monster’s head. He was pretty sure where its brain was—right between those enormous faceted eyes. The light was still good, though the sun was dipping between the low hills.
Ben cautiously hopped over the deck of the ship, sneaking between two huge superflies posted as guards, and drew near Belle Z. Bug.
The giant fly had painted her body hot pink, and with her makeup on, Ben had to admit that she was truly beautiful—all except for a child’s charm bracelet around her neck. It was a silly thing, with little plastic tennis shoes and four-leaf clovers and whatnot. It didn’t go with the outfit at all.
I wonder why she wears that? Ben thought.
He was just about to leap and plunge his spear between her eyes when his mother screamed, “Ben, Amber, run for your lives!”
Ben looked up. His mother was being held by two giant flies. She stared right at him.
Oh, no! he realized. I’m invisible to the flies but not to my mom!
Belle Z. Bug whirled and glared at Ben.
“Assassins!” she shouted. Ben’s cover was blown, so he took a mighty leap, aiming his spear right between her eyes.
She lifted her mop the way an elephant lifts its trunk, and she blew . . .
A powerful wind hit Ben like a hurricane, catching him midleap. The force hurled him backward and up into the air. He went somersaulting crazily, like a tumbleweed in a hurricane.
The same wind lifted Amber up, and both of them went flying.
“Have a nice trip!” Belle Z. Bug shouted. She began to cackle.
Ben and Amber went hurtling high into the air, tumbling and spinning until Ben felt sick to his stomach.
Just like a ride at Disneyland, Ben thought as the wind carried them high over some trees and sent them hurtling miles and miles away.
Chapter 21
LADY BLACKPOOL
I do not fear death. I look forward to it with hope and anticipation, for I know that death is just a new beginning.
—LADY BLACKPOOL
The wind carried Amber and Ben for perhaps fifteen miles, until finally it gave out and they began to tumble. They dropped into some deep marsh grass that cushioned their fall then fell into a shallow pond.
Wet, sick to her stomach, and miserable, Amber slogged from the water into the shallows. Darkness was falling. All around frogs croaked. Mosquitoes hung thick in the air.
Ben climbed onto the grass behind her and whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here. There are bullfrogs in this pond, all around us!”
“So?” Amber said.
“They can eat a mouse!” Ben said. “I saw one do it on the Discovery Channel.”<
br />
“Oh, great,” Amber groused. “Isn’t there any place that a mouse can go to just get away from it all?”
The two of them hopped up into the tall marsh grass and crept through a jungle of cottontails. The mud around the base of the plants had been pounded flat, so that they could sneak along quietly. Only once did they catch sight of a frog—a big, blue-eyed devil off in the cane.
They raced away, and it didn’t give chase.
Soon the pond fell behind, and they reached the edge of an orange grove. Ben stopped at the grass line and looked up, scanning for hawks or owls.
“Hop, stop, and look!” he warned.
“Where are we going?” Amber asked.
“Back to the dump,” Ben said.
“But there’s nothing we can do there. Belle Z. Bug has broken my spell. She can see us now, and I don’t have the power to cast another.”
“My mom’s there,” Ben said. “I have to help her. I can’t just stay here and do nothing.”
“You can stay here with me,” Amber said. “We could hide out in a field and wait until I get my powers back. We could live to fight another day.”
“While those flies stick a new head on my mom?” Ben asked. “I don’t think so!”
If Amber had had the power to cast a spell and make him stay, she would have done so. She knew that fighting was pointless. Her heart was breaking.
“We have more than your mom to worry about,” Amber said. “We have a world of evil to fight. I think that we’ve lost this battle!”
Suddenly a bird flitted overhead, and at the sound of wings, both of the mice cringed, freezing in place. The bird landed in an orange tree. It was small, harmless. Amber’s heart had skipped a couple of beats, but now it slowed back to normal. A second bird shot past, and then a third. A whole flock was coming!
“We haven’t lost this battle yet!” Lady Blackpool shouted from above.
Amber whirled. A fearsome-looking red-tailed hawk dropped to the ground behind her, its beak curving down like a reaping hook. Lady Blackpool rode upon its shoulders.
In all of the excitement, Amber had forgotten she was coming!
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