by Jeff Strand
"I agree with Depravo," said Bluehead. "Not the rude stuff he said about our speech patterns, but that we should sit here silently for a while. It'll relax us, and we can visualize being rescued. Everybody picture a helicopter swooping in and lowering a ladder to us. The color of the helicopter doesn't matter. Don't close your eyes, though—we don't want to fall asleep again."
Jaunty didn't much want to be left alone with his thoughts, which were primarily focused on spiders ripping away generous strips of his bloody flesh, but he didn't want to generate more conflict in these close quarters. So they all sat quietly. Jaunty hoped that Reginald, Bluehead, and Depravo were having better thoughts than him.
A spider crawled across the windshield and stopped right in front of him. The spider couldn't break through glass, as far as they knew, but Jaunty prayed it would leave. It was creeping him out. He couldn't see its many eyes, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they were staring right at him, letting Jaunty know that he would be its next victim.
He resisted the urge to try to brush it away through the glass.
"Anybody else hear that?" Bluehead asked.
Jaunty listened closely. Yes. Sounded like a car engine.
Getting closer.
Could they be saved?
It was unlikely that this car would have room for four more people, but maybe it was a military truck, out to collect survivors. If not...well, even if only one of them made it to safety, that person could let everybody know that there were clowns in need of rescue.
The vehicle, which had a noisy engine, was definitely getting closer. It was approaching from ahead of them.
If it was a truck, maybe the webs weren't sticking to the underside. The four of them might be able to hop into the back and speed away to freedom.
One problem Jaunty could foresee, and it could be a pretty big deal, was that the many webs stretching across the street were hiding what lay ahead. They'd driven through the webs behind them, but there were plenty of webs ahead, and a vehicle controlled by a nervous driver might not be completely focused on the possibility of a stopped car in the road.
With all of the webs on the road, Jaunty was not one hundred percent certain that the clown car was completely in the right lane.
So while he wanted to adhere to his natural optimism, he had to consider the possibility that the oncoming vehicle might plow into their car. Since they couldn't safely exit the vehicle, there wasn't much he could do except honk the horn and flash the headlights over and over.
Jaunty could see the other vehicle's headlights through the webs.
It appeared to be coming straight at them.
Then it swerved away.
Then it swerved back.
Jaunty blasted the horn. At least this vehicle couldn't box them in like the other one had in the parking lot, but a collision would be far worse.
"Don't hit us!" he shouted, while continuing to blast the horn. The oncoming vehicle would not be able to hear his voice even if he weren't honking, so it was not a productive thing to shout, and if he had the opportunity to reflect upon it later he'd feel most sheepish indeed, but right now he was less concerned about feeling silly than about this vehicle smashing into them.
The brakes squealed.
The vehicle, a pickup truck, tore through a web. It was in their lane.
Jaunty braced himself for impact.
The truck slid forward. Mere feet separated them, then inches, then a fraction of an inch, and then—
Impact.
But gentle impact. The truck tapped into the clown car with a soft thud.
For a moment, the occupants of the two vehicles just stared at each other through their windshields—or, what little remained of the truck's windshield. Jaunty felt that the past few hours had been very unpleasant for the clowns, but a quick glimpse showed that things had not been great for the man and woman in the truck, either. They appeared to be middle-aged, though the blood smeared on their faces made it difficult to say for certain. The hood of the truck was crumpled up as if it had been in a head-on collision.
The man and woman got out of the truck. This made Jaunty suddenly nervous, as if they posed a threat, even though the idea of running into a pair of married serial killers right now would be an absurd twist even by the standards of the day's events.
The man's thick beard, rugged appearance, and plaid shirt made him look like a lumberjack. Provided he wasn't a maniacal killer, this was nice to see—they could use somebody with strong chopping skills. Though as he exited the truck, Jaunty noticed that he was missing his left arm just above the elbow. The stump was wrapped in a bloody cloth.
The woman looked like a country music singer, though her hat and cleavage were covered in blood. She appeared to have all of her appendages.
They rushed over to the driver's side of the car. Jaunty rolled down his window.
"Can we get a ride with you?" the woman desperately asked. "Our windows are shattered and the spiders keep getting in whenever we drive through a web!"
Even without an arm, the lumberjack was going to take up a lot of room in the car. It was going to be extremely difficult to fit four people into the backseat. Jaunty didn't want to be a self-centered piece of garbage, but he didn't see how they could accommodate this request.
Then it occurred to him that the couple probably assumed that the clown car was mobile. They were unlikely to want to just wait out the spider-ocalypse (a term Jaunty just thought of, that he hoped he got to say out loud before somebody else thought of it) in a tiny car stuck in the middle of the road. Especially since blood was actively dripping from the cloth wrapped around the man's stump.
"Our car doesn't work," said Jaunty. "It's too clogged up with webs."
"Oh," said the woman. "That won't help, since my husband is bleeding to death."
"My tourniquet is fine," said the man.
"It's not fine. It's leaking."
The man lifted what remained of his arm. "This is a solid tourniquet. About as good as you can get with a shirt and two sticks."
"Don't wave your stump at them."
"I'm sure they've seen worse tonight."
"We have," said Jaunty.
"See?"
"I have to apologize for my husband," said the woman. "He's unfocused from the loss of blood. I can't blame him. I wouldn't be thinking straight if I lost most of my arm."
"The spiders didn't eat it, did they?" asked Jaunty. If these spiders had evolved to the point where they could bite people's arms off, he was done.
"No, no, it got crushed when we crashed the truck," said the man. "It was really awful. I had to—"
"They don't want the details," said the woman.
"Have you seen that movie where Seth Rogen is that mountain climber who gets his arm crushed by a boulder?"
"You mean James Franco."
"Right. James Franco. He's done a lot of movies with Seth Rogen, though. He had to cut his own arm off to get free. That's pretty much what happened except we had better equipment and my wife cut off my arm while I was unconscious. Did the tourniquet myself, though."
"Impressive," said Jaunty. "I feel like you should get out of the road."
The man nodded. "You're damned right we should. Anyway, not to be defeatist, but you're all probably going to die in that car if you're just sitting there waiting to be rescued. You're welcome to ride in the back of our truck. Some spiders will get in, obviously, but at least you'd be moving toward safety."
"I think that's a great idea," said Jaunty. He glanced around at the other clowns. "Any objections?"
"No," said Reginald.
"Nope," said Bluehead.
"Fuck no," said Depravo.
Jaunty waited for the other clowns to speak up, until he remembered that Guffaw and Wagon were dead. He spent two seconds being incredibly depressed, then shook it off. "We'd love to come with you," he said. "Thank you!"
The clowns got out of the car. They quickly climbed into the back of the truck, where at le
ast six spiders were waiting. They crushed them all with their feet while the man and woman got into their truck and drove off. Jaunty was surprised that the one-armed man drove instead of the two-armed woman, but he didn't want to say anything and make them think he was prejudiced against single-armed individuals.
"This is much better," said Reginald. "For the first time in a while, I don't feel like we're all going to die grisly deaths. The possibility still exists; I just don't think it's inevitable."
This was a soothing thought.
As they rode through the town, Jaunty kept hoping that the webs would become less prevalent, that maybe they'd started off in the worst spot and things would improve as they made their way out of town. But this was not the case. The web world continued. Based on his prior experience unwrapping the cocoons, Jaunty knew it was not worth letting the man bleed to death to try to save them.
They passed a few cars with cocooned people inside.
"It's nice that they're letting us ride in their truck even though we're made up like scary clowns," said Bluehead. "Most people would've screamed and sped off."
"Should we be concerned about their lack of fear?" asked Jaunty. "What if they're taking us someplace sinister?"
"The Mountain of Terror is a nationally famous haunted attraction," said Depravo. "They know you're actors."
"Oh, yeah, that makes sense," said Jaunty. "Now I feel bad for thinking they may have had evil motives."
"Don't let me stop you from feeling bad," said Depravo.
They continued to ride. Jaunty prayed that they would not encounter anybody in need of rescue. If they found an abandoned baby, he'd have to try and save it, even if it meant that the truck drove off without him.
"I feel like we're drowning in negativity," said Bluehead. "What if we all go around and say something good about spiders? Not the spiders around here, of course. I mean spiders in general. They're helpful to the environment and it's not fair to judge all of them for the sins of their brothers."
"Fuck spiders," said Depravo.
"We lost our job because of bad clowns," said Bluehead. "It's unfair to blame us for under-the-bed clowns just like it's unfair to blame all spiders for today's death count. We're likely to come out of this nightmare with an intense hatred of spiders, so why not start to try to work through it now? What else have we got to do?"
"Stay alert for spiders trying to kill us," answered Reginald.
"We can stay alert for these spiders, while acknowledging the good that other spiders bring to the world."
"Fuck spiders," said Depravo.
"Nobody asked for your opinion," Bluehead told him. "Unless you're saying that spiders are excellent lovemaking partners, and I completely disagree with that, your comments aren't in the spirit of this discussion."
"I plan to have a hatred and fear of spiders for the rest of my life," said Reginald. "I won't even call it an irrational hatred or fear. I will be perfectly okay with it. Not one day will go by where I try to rid myself of it. Twenty-four hours ago I was no fan of spiders, and now I consider them my least favorite of all living creatures, ranking below great white sharks, skunks, and manatees. I agree with Depravo: fudge spiders."
"Our future feelings about spiders aren't important," said Jaunty. "What's important is that right now we want to kill as many of them as possible."
The truck drove through a particularly large web, hopefully killing a few spiders.
The man began to shriek. In the rearview mirror, Jaunty could see that a spider was now crawling on his face.
As he flailed around in panic, Jaunty could not see the man's foot, but the sudden acceleration of the truck implied that it was pressed tightly against the gas pedal. As the truck moved faster and faster, and then took a sudden change of direction that was aimed less at the street ahead and more at a brick wall, Jaunty grew concerned.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"Look out!" Jaunty shouted. He didn't really expect the man to heed his warning while he had a giant spider covering his face, but it would've been lazy to say nothing at all.
The woman pulled the spider from her husband's face and flung it out the windshield. The unfortunate spider was then between the truck and the brick wall at the moment of impact and was splattered beyond recognition.
Jaunty, Reginald, Bluehead, and Depravo, who were not wearing seat belts because the back of the truck was not equipped with them, were all thrown forward. They were all good at engaging in slapstick pratfalls without getting injured, though they'd never practiced these skills during a high-speed collision.
They all smashed into each other. Hard.
After a few moments, Jaunty lifted his head. His neck did not appear to be shattered, which was a relief. "Is everybody okay?" he asked.
"No," said Reginald.
"No," said Bluehead.
"No," said Depravo.
None of them had their vocal cords crushed, at least. The clowns got up. There were bumps and bruises galore, but nobody seemed to have any broken bones or arterial spurting.
The man and woman up front...did not look good.
The front of the truck had been crushed like a beer can on the forehead of a drunken frat boy. The steering wheel was imbedded so deeply into the man's chest that the quality of his arm tourniquet was now irrelevant. The woman turned her head, but it wasn't to look back at the clowns, it was because a large jagged piece of metal had sliced through most of her neck. Her head flopped to the side, not quite falling off, though it would get there if left unattended. Jaunty gasped with horror, slapped his hand over his mouth, and tried not to vomit.
Bluehead and Depravo also tried, unsuccessfully.
They were now much worse off than before, when they'd been in a completely enclosed vehicle and hadn't seen a woman's head almost come off. They had no choice but to abandon the truck and hope there weren't as many spiders around here. Though just a quick glance around the area made it clear that there were plenty of spiders around.
The clowns leapt out of the back of the truck. Nobody tried to suggest that it might still be possible to save the man and woman—their mutilation was too extreme for even the most optimistic of minds to think it was reversible.
Jaunty wondered where they were. And when he saw what the brick wall was in front of, his heart didn't exactly soar, but he suddenly could look ahead to a time when he could turn his frown upside-down. He frantically pointed. "A swimming pool! We're outside of a swimming pool!"
"So?" asked Depravo. "You wanna do some laps?"
"We can all swim! We'll be safe in the water!"
The clowns exchanged glances with each other. When they'd finished exchanging those glances, they all seemed to realize that this might be their salvation. They opened the gate and hurried toward the brightly lit swimming pool area, which had nary a corpse floating in it. There were webs and spiders all over the place, but the pool itself was a kidney shaped blue chlorine-filled sanctuary!
They all removed their clown shoes, then jumped in and swam to the middle, where the water was deep but not over their heads.
"We're saved!" said Jaunty. "Spiders can't swim, so all we have to do is wait here for help to arrive."
"Are you sure spiders can't swim?" asked Bluehead.
"I've never heard of it."
"I think there are some that can walk on the water, like Jesus spiders."
"Yes," said Reginald, "but it's because they're light and their legs don't break the surface tension of the water. Big spiders like these wouldn't be able to do that."
"Okay, good," said Bluehead. "I still think I read something about swimming spiders, but it would've been a long time ago and I've read a lot of things that I misremember or purposely misinterpret."
"If spiders could swim, there'd be a bunch of them in the pool already," said Jaunty, though as he said it he wasn't sure that line of logic held up.
"They wouldn't have had a reason to go in the pool before. Now they would," said Depravo, nailing the possible logic
lapse in Jaunty's previous statement.
"I'm sure the spiders won't be able to come after us," said Jaunty. "Swimming spiders would be so scary that there's no way they'd be allowed to exist."
The clowns continued to stand in the pool. The water was starting to acquire a mild red tint from the injuries they'd acquired in the crash, though at least it wasn't a thick cloud of shark-attracting blood. Not that Jaunty thought there was a shark in the pool. That would be ridiculous.
Spider-Shark...duuunnn-dun, duuuunnn-dun...
"I can't swim," said Depravo.
"You can't?" Jaunty asked.
Depravo shook his head. "I never learned. Nobody ever made me."
"Well, fortunately we can just stand here. You don't have to tread water or anything."
"I know. I'm very happy about that. I just wanted to mention it in case it becomes necessary for us to swim to the deep end for some reason."
"Good to know," said Jaunty. "Thank you for being proactive. That's the clown way."
"Lots of spiders around the pool," said Bluehead.
"Yes, there sure are," said Jaunty. "But they can't get at us."
"Is it my imagination or are they looking at us?"
"It's your imagination. They have tiny eyes without pupils and there's no way you can tell where they're looking."
"It seems like they're gathering around the edge of the pool."
"Yes, no argument there. The spiders are definitely gathering around the edge of the pool. Can't delude ourselves into thinking that's not the case. But it doesn't matter. They can pile themselves up twenty feet high around the pool and it doesn't matter. We're safe."
"I don't feel safe," said Reginald.
"Your feelings are wrong. We're completely safe. The spiders can't touch us. We can even taunt them if we want."
"I'm not taunting the deadly spiders," said Reginald.
"I'm not saying that we should taunt them. That's how karma gets you. I'm just saying that we could taunt them, because they no longer pose a threat. The only way they can get us is if nobody comes to rescue us for so long that we can't stop ourselves from drinking pool water and get poisoned."
