by Jeff Strand
"Help me!" Wagon screamed.
Jaunty grabbed a spider out of Wagon's hair and flung it away. Another spider took its place. Jaunty flung that one away as well.
"Stand up!" he told Wagon.
Instead of standing up, Wagon pitched forward, landing face-first on the ground. Several spiders immediately scurried onto him.
Reginald, Bluehead, and Depravo ran over there. The clowns worked together, trying to brush the spiders off of Wagon while keeping new ones from crawling on him. It wasn't easy. There were spiders all over the ground now, with others still falling from the tree. Wagon, understandably, was doing a lot of screaming, though it was muffled since his face was pressed against the ground.
Jaunty and Depravo picked Wagon up—Jaunty grabbing his feet, Depravo grabbing his arms—and carried him to the road. Before they could reach the car, Depravo shouted, "Fuck!" and let go. Wagon's head smashed against the pavement. The web didn't seem to cushion the landing.
Depravo brushed off the spider that had crawled from Wagon's body onto his. Spiders on the ground were already moving toward the dropped clown, so Depravo and Jaunty hurriedly picked him up again. Wagon's head lolled backwards, but not before Jaunty saw the trickle of blood running down his temple, clearly visible against his white greasepaint. He was no longer screaming.
More and more spiders ran onto the road, as if the spider rainfall had spurred a call to action. Was every tree completely full of them? Or had Wagon just had the terrible luck to choose a really awful place to grab a branch?
One crawled up the back of Jaunty's leg. He winced and shook his leg, trying to dislodge it. It didn't fall off. Another spider crawled on his other leg. He alternated shaking his legs, wishing he had a better way to get them off. This ranked in the top five instances of his life in which he wished he had access to a fire hose.
Bluehead and Reginald were having the same problem. Too many spiders at once.
"Frick!" shouted Depravo, apparently so stressed out that he used an alternative to profanity instead of cursing.
Jaunty could feel Wagon's legs slipping out of his grasp. There were worse things that could happen, such as the top half of his body slipping out of Depravo's grasp again, but Jaunty wanted to avoid any further harm to his friend.
"I'm losing him...I'm losing him..." said Depravo, contorting his body around as if there were multiple spiders crawling on it that he very much wanted to remove. "Lower him! Lower him!"
Before Jaunty could lower him, Depravo let go again, and Wagon bashed onto the road. Depravo clawed at his own back. Reginald hurried over to him and smacked his back a few times, and Jaunty saw three spiders drop to the ground.
Wagon was already getting swarmed again.
He was foaming at the mouth.
Jaunty and Reginald picked Wagon up, but he had spiders crawling on him and those needed to be dealt with before they got him back into the car. They both seemed to realize at the same time that "shake Wagon really hard," though an ugly option, was the best choice.
They violently shook their unconscious clown friend. Some of the spiders dropped onto the ground. Others did not.
"It's not working!" said Depravo.
"Shake harder!" said Jaunty.
They shook Wagon even harder. Jaunty wished he could brace Wagon's head so that it didn't jiggle around so much in the process, but he only had two hands. Another couple of spiders dropped off. Jaunty only saw one more climbing on his chest. He couldn't brush it off without setting Wagon back down on the spider-covered pavement.
"Let's get him in the car," said Jaunty. "We'll worry about getting the spiders off him later."
They walked the rest of the way to the automobile. Reginald opened the back passenger-side door for them. As they struggled to get Wagon inside, Jaunty noticed that there were spiders dangling from his back. They lay him on the seat, which may or may not have crushed the spiders underneath him.
Wagon's eyes popped open. He opened his mouth and froth poured out instead of words or screams.
A pair of spider legs emerged from underneath him.
Bluehead cried out. Jaunty glanced back to see her frantically brushing a spider off the back of her leg.
Jaunty pushed down on Wagon's chest, hoping to crush the spider that was beneath him. Its legs kept moving, though it seemed to be stuck.
They had to get the door closed or spiders would just keep crawling inside the car. Wagon's feet were in the way, so Jaunty shoved them inside, and then slammed the door.
This didn't come close to solving the problem. Wagon was now taking up the entire back seat. Either somebody had to sit on him or ride in the trunk with Guffaw's dead body. Neither of those were acceptable options.
"Everybody else in the front!" said Jaunty. "I'll kill the spiders in the back."
Bluehead, Reginald, and Depravo got into the front seats. Bluehead sat in the driver's seat, while Reginald sat on Depravo's lap. This was unquestionably not the lap-sitting arrangement that Depravo would prefer, but they wouldn't be crammed up front for long. Jaunty opened the door and awkwardly climbed into the back seat. He lifted Wagon into a sitting position, then bent him over.
There were three spiders on his back. Two of them were crushed and dead. The third was locked onto the back of his neck. Jaunty grabbed it and squashed it in his fist.
Were there any other spiders back here?
Jaunty quickly looked around. He didn't see any.
No, wait, there was one on the floor. He stomped it.
There didn't seem to be any others. One benefit to having the spiders be this huge was that they couldn't hide as easily.
"Wagon, talk to me," he said.
Nothing spewed out of Wagon's mouth this time, but his eyes were vacant.
"Please, Wagon! We need you! Don't die on me, okay?"
"I'll..." Wagon gasped.
"You'll...?"
"...try not to die."
"Good. Great. That's all I can ask. Thank you." Jaunty tapped the back of Bluehead's seat. "Let's get out of here."
"We never solved our first problem," Bluehead said. "We still have to clean out underneath the car."
Jaunty had an intense desire to use foul language, but retained his self-control and uttered a family-friendly variant instead.
"There are millions of spiders out there," he said, feeling guilty about the exaggeration. "We have to wait for them to clear out."
Wagon began to foam at the mouth again, as if to remind Jaunty that there was a ticking clock on his lifespan. If they sat here and waited for the spiders to go away, he'd die before they got him to a hospital.
"I'll do it," said Wagon, barely audible.
"Do what?"
"Get the spider webs out from under the car."
"Why would you even say that?" asked Jaunty. "You're the person least equipped to do it."
"Somebody has to do it, or I'm going to die. And since I'm already covered in spider bites, it might as well be me." It took Wagon quite a while to finish this sentence, but Jaunty didn't want to express impatience with somebody who might not speak many more sentences.
"No," said Jaunty. "That's ridiculous."
"More ridiculous than one of you also getting swarmed? I refuse to just sit here and die, and I refuse to let any of you get killed on my behalf, so it needs to be me."
"You can barely move!"
"All I need to do is flop my arms around."
"No."
Wagon reached for the door handle. Jaunty grabbed his arm to stop him. Wagon leaned down and bit Jaunty's hand. Jaunty let go, and then wondered in horror if Wagon's saliva contained spider venom, then wondered if it made him a bad person that he was worried about the venom, then decided that it was a completely reasonable thing to worry about, and then realized that Wagon had opened the door and was trying to get out of the car.
Spiders were already crawling inside.
Jaunty supposed he couldn't blame Wagon for having gone insane—he too would probably
be making poor decisions if he was dying from countless spider bites—but this was really inconvenient.
Wagon toppled out of the car, striking the pavement. Jaunty scooted across the seat toward the open door. He felt like he should say "Noooooo!" but was too shocked to speak. Bluehead said it for him.
Spiders were already crawling all over Wagon.
He twisted himself around so that his legs were underneath the car, apparently trying to clear out the webs that had gathered under there. He gazed up at Jaunty as if suddenly realizing that he'd doomed himself.
"Close the door!" Wagon shouted.
"But you—!"
"I'm sacrificing myself, dummy! Close the effing door!"
Jaunty closed the door and choked back a sob. The clowns just sat there, not sure what to do next. It seemed very wrong not to help their friend, but what were they supposed to do?
A few moments later, Jaunty looked out the window. Wagon was completely covered with spiders and no longer moving.
"I hate to be cold-hearted," said Jaunty, "but if he gave his life for us, we should probably drive away before the spiders make more webs."
"But we'll run over him," said Bluehead.
Jaunty considered that. "I think he'd be okay with that."
Bluehead started the engine. The car rolled over Wagon as if going over a very crunchy speed bump. Jaunty wished he'd thought to have everybody make enough noise to muffle that sound.
Wagon had done it, though. The car was temporarily drivable again.
They drove down the street, everybody lost in their own haunted thoughts.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mayor Lester Fawn didn't have to practice his serious and concerned facial expressions—he'd never felt more serious or concerned.
"I want every single person in Mount Tulip brought to safety," he told the room of advisers. "Every single one. I don't care what kind of economic damage it wreaks upon our town. Close the haunted house. I know tourists have been looking forward to going through the haunted house all year, and I know that the financial impact will be devastating, but prosperity is not worth the loss of even one precious human life. Is that understood?"
"They evacuated and closed the haunted house as soon as the spiders got inside," said a man in a dark blue suit. "There were casualties, including the owner, but I assure you, the Mountain of Terror is not open for business right now."
"Good. Like I said, it's terrible for our community. Lots of lost income. Lots of disappointed people. Residents will be going bankrupt over this, believe me. But that's all irrelevant when you compare it to the precious nature of human life."
"I agree, sir."
"What about the military? Are they here yet?"
"They're on the way."
"If they have to drop a bomb on this town to eradicate the spider menace once and for all, you should know that I'm going to sign off on it. I hope it doesn't come to that. But wiping one small town completely off the map is worth the sacrifice if it prevents a worldwide giant spider infestation."
"They're unlikely to nuke the town, sir."
"I didn't say nuke," said Mayor Fawn. "That would create its own set of problems. I saw one of the spider victims about five minutes before I got here, and it's an image I won't ever erase from my mind, but it doesn't compare to radiation poisoning. Fingernails falling out. I meant a smaller bomb."
"Atomic bomb?"
"No, smaller."
"I'm not an expert on bomb sizes, sir," admitted the man in the dark blue suit. Mayor Fawn knew he should know the guy's name, considering how closely they worked together, and it would be incredibly awkward if he had to ask. He kept trying to catch a glimpse of his badge but couldn't quite make it happen.
"Me either," said Mayor Fawn. "The military won't ask for my recommendation anyway, so I guess it's irrelevant. What else are we doing to keep this from becoming apocalyptic?"
"We have lots of flamethrowers currently in use. The problem is that the spiders don't die right away, so you end up with burning spiders running around, which is an issue."
"Jesus Christ, they're impervious to fire?"
"No, no, it just takes a minute. But it's a very frightening minute."
"What about pesticides?"
"That's one of our top priorities. Unfortunately, it's not like crop duster planes are loaded up with Raid and ready to go. They're working as quickly as they can."
"Well, tell them to work faster."
"Yes, sir."
"Actually, no, don't. They might overlook an important detail. We won't want that. Let them work at their own pace. How is the evacuation going?"
"As far as we know, it's mostly complete. Presumably there are people who purposely didn't leave or are trapped in their homes, so attempts are underway to find and rescue them."
Mayor Fawn nodded. "Very good, very good. This is a pretty positive update, all things considered. Does anybody know where the hell the spiders came from?"
"Yes, sir. A cave. The entrance was blown open by the new property owner, and a massive number of spiders came out. If they'd said something sooner, we could have blocked the entrance again, but they were killed by the spiders."
"The entrance is sealed now, right?"
"Yes, sir. But we think the spiders had all emerged by then."
"That's disappointing. Would've been nice to know that we stopped some of them."
"I agree, sir."
"How did the spiders get in the cave?"
"Unknown, sir. There's a theory that over a hundred years ago a small island was populated by oversized arachnids, and that a ship that stopped there was overrun by the creatures, which were then transported to the United States, where they made their way into an underground cave system to reproduce into vast numbers. But it's just a theory."
"Sounds credible. Keep up the good work."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
None of the clowns spoke as they continued driving down the web-covered street. It was impossible for them to maintain upbeat attitudes when two of their number had died horrible deaths. Poor Guffaw. Poor Wagon. Who was next?
Jaunty forced himself to stop thinking that way. Nobody was next. Everybody else was going to survive this experience. From this moment forward, no more dead clowns!
He had to keep driving through webs that stretched from one side of the road to the other. This led to giant spiders crawling over the front hood and windshield of the car. They didn't try to clear off the entire automobile each time they got the webs off the tires, so there were now at least a dozen spiders on the vehicle.
Jaunty had almost suggested that everybody share their fondest memory of Wagon, then decided against the idea.
They cleared the webs away from the tires and quickly got back inside. The car drove about ten more feet and then stopped.
"Fudge," said Jaunty and Reginald, at the exact same time. Under other circumstances they would've joked about this synchronicity, but in their current predicament it didn't seem appropriate.
They'd have to clean the underside of the car again. This was an unappealing task, since it was what caused Wagon's death. If they lost somebody every time they cleared the webs out from underneath the vehicle, they'd be down to a Final Clown before they knew it.
"Are there any volunteers?" asked Jaunty.
There were no volunteers.
"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it," said Reginald. "And I've learned a lot recently. Sacrifice is a noble thing, but you have to weigh the return on investment."
"Right," said Bluehead. "Wagon died for us, and all he did was get us an extra couple of blocks further. Now we're in the exact same predicament. I love you all dearly, but if I die today I want it to be to save humanity or something, not just to get you guys a little closer to the edge of town."
"I completely understand," said Jaunty. "If we drew straws again and I lost, I'd be pretty upset about being sentenced to death. So I guess our plan is to just hang out in the car and wait
to be rescued, right?"
"That sounds reasonable," said Reginald.
"I wish we'd thought of that before Wagon died. We could've waited just as easily in the haunted house parking lot. This new plan makes his death even more senseless."
Everybody spent a few moments being sad.
"What happens when we start to go stir crazy?" asked Bluehead.
"We'll worry about that when it happens," said Jaunty.
"I'm just saying, we're sitting in a car coping with intense grief and everything around us is covered by spider webs. Sanity is going to start slipping. We should work out a plan of action before we start gnawing on each other."
"I thought you said you were forty-eight hours away from thinking about cannibalism."
"Well, some time has passed since then."
"Not forty-eight hours."
"I didn't mean that we'd start gnawing on each other for food. That's what makes it even more insane—we'd be gnawing with no purpose."
"I assure you, my teeth will stay covered by my lips," said Reginald.
"Seriously, you people are mentally ill," said Depravo. "Who the hell has conversations like this? When you hear yourselves talking, do you think that normal sentences are coming out of your mouth? Is it just that you don't have human interactions outside of your own little group?"
"It's probably that last one," said Jaunty.
"I'd like everybody to shut up for a while, or I'm going to be the one going insane," said Depravo. "I'm scared and my makeup itches and I can't listen to you guys anymore."
"You're a guest in our car," said Jaunty. "We could ask you to leave."
"Ask away! A few more minutes stuck in here and I'll be ready to feed myself to the spiders! You guys are like listening to the worst karaoke imaginable, which is all karaoke!"
"No more talk of feeding ourselves to spiders," said Reginald. "Depravo is rude but he's right. We should all stop talking for a while, if only to preserve oxygen."
"We can just crack the windows if we need oxygen," said Jaunty. "The spiders are too big to get through a small crack. That's what makes them so scary."
"I know that. I was trying to accommodate our guest."
