by Jeff Strand
"Or we fall asleep and drown," said Reginald.
"No, because we'd sleep in shifts and have the awake clowns hold up the sleeping ones."
"That didn't work in the parking lot."
"We're safe now," said Jaunty. "Can't we just enjoy it?"
"The woman's head was almost completely detached from her body. I won't be able to enjoy anything for quite some time. A bag full of kazoos could fall from the sky and I'd still be haunted by all of the blood and her dead eyes."
"I see your point."
The clowns continued to stand in the pool.
"At least restroom facilities are no longer an issue," said Depravo.
Jaunty didn't know whether to scold him for being disgusting, or praise him for being practical. He decided to say nothing. Instead, he kept his attention on the huge number of spiders that were crawling toward the edge of the pool.
"I don't like that one in the corner," said Bluehead.
"The one that's dipping its legs into the water?" asked Reginald.
"That's the one."
"Let it crawl into the pool," said Jaunty. "We can all laugh at it while it drowns. Stupid spider, not understanding its own limitations. Ha!"
The spider didn't crawl into the pool. It leapt into it.
"That's right! Drown, you dork! Become a cautionary tale!"
The spider dipped below the surface, then bobbed back up. It began to swim toward them.
"Hmmm," said Jaunty.
He waited for the spider to succumb to nature's plan and go underneath the surface again. It didn't. It kept swimming toward them.
Another spider leapt into the pool. And then another.
"Nope," said Jaunty. "Nope, nope, nope! I'm not okay with this!"
Now dozens of spiders were leaping into the pool. Jaunty had one flash of optimism—unlike gremlins, they weren't multiplying when wet—but it was quickly replaced by raw terror.
Spiders were swimming toward them from all sides.
"Everybody out of the pool!" Bluehead screamed, while the other clowns screamed without using words. As Jaunty splashed through the spider-laden water, he realized that everybody was moving in a different direction. This didn't seem like the best strategy, but there was no time to coordinate their escape efforts now, so he focused on his own desire not to be killed by aqua-spiders.
There were too many of them. If he walked to the edge of the pool he'd have spiders all over his chest. He'd have to swim underwater and find a relatively spider-free spot to emerge.
He took a deep breath and dunked his head beneath the water. He opened his eyes, which immediately burned from the chlorine, and did a breaststroke toward the pool wall. There were countless spiders floating above him, but at least they didn't seem to be able to dive. Eerie spider shadows covered the bottom of the pool.
He looked around. No clear spots. He kept swimming.
Jaunty let out an underwater yelp as a spider dropped directly in front of him. The spider continued to plummet, passing harmlessly past him on its way to the bottom. Sadly, the other spiders on the surface of the pool seemed to be fine.
He'd wasted most of his lung capacity on the yelp, so Jaunty had to take a breath quickly. With his burning eyes he looked around for the spot with the fewest spiders, swum over there, and poked his head out of the water.
A spider immediately crawled on top of his head. Jaunty sucked in a deep breath then ducked his head back underwater before the spider could sink its fangs into him.
He looked around the pool. He could see three other thrashing clown bodies—none of his friends had escaped yet.
He swam back to the center, where there were the fewest spiders, and popped up so that he could ascertain where the safest spot was to climb out of the pool. They all looked pretty terrible, but if he swam straight ahead it seemed slightly less terrible than his other options. He took another deep breath.
"Help! Help!"
It was Depravo. He was in the deep end, arms flailing. Jaunty wanted to ask why he'd gone into the deep end, but the answer was probably that as an inexperienced swimmer he hadn't known which direction the deep end was in, and most likely instead of answering the question he'd simply shout "Help! Help!" again.
Bluehead was their best swimmer, and Reginald was the tallest, but Jaunty was the closest, so the task of saving Depravo from drowning fell to him.
He swam underwater until he reached Depravo. He lifted his head out of the water and brushed a spider off his chin. Then he brushed a spider off Depravo's chin.
"Grab a hold of me," he said. "Don't let go."
Depravo wrapped both of his arms around Jaunty's torso and squeezed way too tight. Not ideal, but they didn't have far to swim. Jaunty ducked back below the surface and began to swim to the other side of the pool. He probably should have told Depravo to take a deep breath first, but he'd just hope that the instruction was understood.
They both sunk to the bottom.
He wanted to inform Depravo that this wasn't working, that maybe they should settle for holding hands, but there was no way to verbally convey this message underwater. When he tried to gesture he realized that he didn't know the proper gestures for "Let me go or we'll both drown." And Depravo most likely had his eyes squeezed shut anyway.
No way was it going to end like this. If Jaunty died tonight, it was going to be from spider venom, not drowning. He tried to pry Depravo's arms from his body, but his former manager had a death grip on him. So he slammed his head backwards, hitting Depravo in the face. A cloud of blood suddenly appeared and the grip loosened.
He grabbed Depravo by the wrist and pulled him along the bottom of the pool.
They reached a shallower part and stood up, surrounded by spiders. Depravo uttered obscenity after obscenity as blood trickled from his nostrils.
Jaunty violently splashed at the water in front of him.
It was a reaction borne of sheer panic, and he was surprised to discover that it worked. The spiders were decent swimmers, but they couldn't navigate makeshift rapids. He splashed and splashed as hard as he could. The spiders couldn't reach him. Well, except the two that were already on him. He ducked under the water to get rid of them, then stood back up and resumed splashing.
Depravo stopped cursing and started splashing.
Reginald and Bluehead had already figured this out. They were on opposite sides of the pool, splashing the spiders away. This wasn't a long-term solution, since more spiders continued to leap into the pool, but it was keeping all of the clowns alive for now.
Reginald was also pushing water over the edge of the pool onto the spiders that were gathered there, which wasn't sweeping them away as if they'd been struck by a tidal wave, but was at least giving him a small area to climb out of the water.
That seemed like a smart technique. Jaunty and Depravo splashed their way to the edge, then vigorously tried to wash away the spiders that were by the side. They climbed out of the pool. There were spiders everywhere—their clown shoes were covered with them, and would have to be abandoned.
The four clowns ran for the pool exit, crushing spiders with their wet-socked feet as they went.
As they returned to the street, Jaunty felt a crushing sense of disappointment. He'd thought they were safe, but now they were carless, shoeless, and wet.
The new plan seemed to be: run.
They ran down the street, their socks squishing with each step, and webs sticking to their feet.
A long web stretched from an abandoned car to the side of a building, and Jaunty picked up his pace, since he couldn't leap over it or crawl underneath it. He ran into the web, expecting it to snap like the tape at the finish line of a race, but apparently he was nowhere near as strong as a motor vehicle.
The web did not break.
He realized to his horror that he was very much stuck.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jaunty tried to tug free. It didn't work.
He tried to twist his way out of the web, which was pr
ecisely the wrong approach and got him even more stuck.
Several spiders, alerted to the disturbance of a trapped clown twisting around in the web, crawled toward him. Jaunty wasn't going to panic quite yet. His friends would help him. They wouldn't let him get swarmed.
Reginald took one of his hands, Depravo (whose nose was still bleeding) took the other, and they both pulled. Jaunty moved forward but didn't come free of the web. Bluehead knocked the spiders off before they could reach Jaunty and kicked them away.
Jaunty wondered what would happen if they let go of him. Would he shoot backwards like a slingshot? Probably not—too slapsticky.
"I think he's coming loose," said Reginald. "Bluehead, take one of his legs."
"Which one?"
"Doesn't matter."
Bluehead grabbed his left leg. Reginald, Depravo, and Bluehead pulled with all of their might (at least Jaunty assumed it was with all of their might; he wasn't currently inhabiting their bodies), stretching the web further and further until he finally ripped free. The four clowns tumbled onto the sidewalk, acquiring more scrapes and bruises. Depravo bashed his face against the cement and sat up, covered with webs and additional blood.
"Thank you," Jaunty told them. He didn't expect Depravo and him to become best friends forever, but the fact that they'd saved each other's lives would hopefully eliminate the awkwardness of Jaunty's firing.
The clowns got up. This time they took the long way around the web.
As they gazed down the street, there were spiders everywhere. Jaunty couldn't even pretend to guess how many. Way more than a thousand. Enough that, left on their own, they would probably run out of food sources and die off, though that wouldn't happen quickly enough for it to be a feasible survival plan for the clowns.
"What about a fire hydrant?" Jaunty asked. "We open up a fire hydrant and flood the street!"
Reginald shook his head. "I don't have a huge pentagonal hydrant opening tool handy. Do you?"
"No," Jaunty admitted.
"It won't work, then. Unless you've acquired superhuman strength and can just kick one open. Have you acquired superhuman strength?"
"You don't have to be sarcastic."
"I'm never sarcastic."
"I know that none of you probably care about this right now," said Bluehead, "but I wanted to point out that our makeup has held up amazingly well for all of the spider-fighting and swimming we've been doing. You all still look like scary clowns. I'm saying this out loud so that we remember to go back to that brand later."
"Noted," said Reginald.
"Holy shit!" said Depravo, pointing at the sky. The way things were going, Jaunty assumed that he was pointing out a thousand more spiders falling from the heavens, but no, it looked very much like a helicopter off in the distance! Helicopters could transport people out of spider-ravaged towns to safety!
Reginald and Bluehead let out a simultaneous "Holy cow!" at the sight. The four clowns began to jump into the air and wave to attract the helicopter's attention, while being careful to monitor their immediate surroundings and not get attacked by spiders.
"Here! Over here!" Jaunty shouted. He knew the pilot couldn't hear him—the helicopter was far away and those things were very loud—but he shouted anyway. The other clowns joined in.
"Does anybody have a flare?" Bluehead asked. She had to know, cognitively, that nobody had a flare in their pockets, and if they did it would've been ruined from being submerged in the pool, but Jaunty didn't blame her for asking.
"Let's make a human pyramid!" said Jaunty. "Nobody can ignore a human pyramid!"
"We only have four people," said Reginald.
"So?"
"You can't make a pyramid out of four people. That's not how pyramids work."
"Depravo probably doesn't know how to make a human pyramid anyway. If we leave him out of it, we can make a three-person pyramid, easy! You, me, then Bluehead on top!"
"I know how to make a human pyramid," said Depravo, "but if I were a helicopter pilot and I saw clowns making a human pyramid in the middle of this chaos, I'd assume they were mentally ill and fly someplace else."
"I can't argue his point," said Reginald.
"Fine," said Jaunty. He almost followed that with "Whatever," but decided that would be childish, though less childish than "Whatevah!" "So what's your brilliant idea?"
"I don't have one," Reginald admitted. "I hoped somebody had a flare."
They resumed jumping and shouting. It looked to Jaunty like the helicopter was flying further away from them rather than getting closer, but he didn't want to say anything. They couldn't stand here jumping and shouting much longer—there were too many spiders around.
The helicopter was definitely not on its way to pick them up. They all seemed to realize this at once. The jumping and shouting ceased.
"Dammit," said Depravo, wiping away some blood from underneath his nose.
"Maybe we scared it off by being too high energy," said Bluehead.
"Or they just don't like clowns," said Reginald. "Many people don't. If people liked clowns, we'd still be performing family friendly shows and we wouldn't be here surrounded by bugs."
"The helicopter was too far away to see that we were clowns or to gauge our energy level," said Jaunty. "They just didn't see us, that's all. Or they did see us, but they also saw a larger group of people to save. Either way, I'm sure it was nothing personal, and we should really keep moving."
They hurried down the street, kicking spiders out of the way as they went. Jaunty thought he should be less frightened of the giant spiders by now, since he'd spent so much time around them, but that wasn't the case.
Depravo suddenly cried out and disappeared, as if he'd fallen into an open manhole.
The other clowns stopped running. Depravo had indeed fallen into an open manhole, presumably one that had been covered by webs. They must not have been as strong as the web that they just rescued Jaunty from, or maybe they weren't adhered as well to the edges of the manhole, or maybe Depravo was heavier than he looked. It was also unclear why there'd be an open manhole, unless somebody had opened it to escape from the spiders.
"Are you okay down there?" asked Jaunty, when Depravo briefly stopped screaming in pain.
"I think I broke my leg!"
So no, he was not okay. Depravo was Jaunty's least favorite member of the group by far, but he certainly wasn't going to let him perish down there, and he knew Reginald and Bluehead would agree. Without hesitation, Jaunty climbed down the ladder.
Depravo lay on the cement. His leg wasn't bent backwards in half or anything like that, so perhaps it wasn't actually broken. He'd taken out his cell phone and was using the flashlight feature to illuminate his surroundings. There were fewer spiders down here than up above, which was nice, but there were also sewer rats, which was less nice.
Bluehead climbed down the ladder.
"There are rats down here," said Jaunty.
Bluehead climbed back up the ladder.
As Reginald descended the ladder, Jaunty stomped on the four or five spiders that were crawling toward Depravo. The rats were keeping their distance, but Jaunty could see their beady glowing eyes all over.
Jaunty put his hands underneath Depravo's shoulders. "Here, I'm gonna help you up," he said. "Say a bad word if it hurts too much."
"Fuck!" said Depravo. "I really think I broke something."
"We can't just leave you down here," said Jaunty. "The rats will skeletonize you."
"I know, I know," said Depravo. Jaunty and Reginald pulled him up to a standing position. He screamed and dropped his phone, casting them into almost complete darkness.
Jaunty crouched down and felt around for the phone. His hand touched a spider, and he immediately recoiled. He'd leave the phone where it was.
"I'm trying to keep the spiders off the ladder!" Bluehead called down to them. "But there are too many of them and some are getting on the ladder and if I knock them off they'll fall down on you!"
; Jaunty thanked her for the update.
He couldn't hear the spiders, but he could definitely hear the rats, squeaking and scurrying around in their greasy fur. He wished he had the low moral character to just say, "Sorry, Depravo, gotta goooooo!" but that wasn't going to happen. Sure, he'd leave Depravo behind if it became clear that he'd been pumped too full of spider venom or rat rabies to survive, but he was going to do his best to ensure that Depravo's bloodstream remained uncontaminated.
Something crawled over his foot. He kicked it out of the way. Spiders on his feet were even worse than cold wet socks.
"Is there any way you can climb the ladder?" Jaunty asked.
"I'll try."
"I'll climb up to the top, then Bluehead can hold my legs while I reach down to help pull you up," Reginald told Depravo. "If I get swarmed by too many spiders she may have to let me go, and then I'll fall on top of you and break more of your bones, but I can't think of a better plan right now."
"Let's do it," said Depravo.
Jaunty could barely see Reginald as he climbed back up the ladder. He heard a high-pitched squeal behind him, which he assumed was a rat being attacked by a spider. The squealing and thrashing continued for several seconds. It sounded like the spider won.
"All right, take my hands," said Reginald, leaning down into the manhole.
Depravo took Reginald's hands. Then he flinched and cried out.
"Sorry!" Bluehead called down. "I had to knock a spider off the edge! I'll have to knock off more of them so brace yourself!"
Jaunty placed his hands firmly on Depravo's buttocks and pushed him up as Reginald pulled. A falling spider hit Jaunty right in the face and bounced off.
"I'm losing you!" said Reginald.
Depravo braced his injured foot against one of the ladder rungs as everybody caught their breath. Then they resumed the process, and a moment later Depravo was out of the manhole.
Jaunty began to ascend the ladder. A spider bounced off his forehead. Another spider landed on his shoulder but didn't bounce off. He let go of the ladder with his right hand to brush it off, just as a spider landed on his left hand. Jaunty released the ladder with his left hand, meaning he had zero hands on the ladder. He fell backwards.
