by Jeff Strand
Bluehead was amazing with her machete, turning the act of spider slaying into interpretive dance. Most of them she simply stabbed, but she also used the blade to flip some of them into the air and then halve them on the way down. Yes, she was shamelessly showing off, but they were entertainers at heart, and it was nice to see her embracing that aspect of their lives again.
Jaunty was not as graceful with his bat, but he was able to kill a substantial number of spiders with it. He almost suggested turning it into a contest to see who could end the most spider lives, then decided that adding a playful competition would be disrespectful to the memories of those who'd perished tonight.
The machete was also great for cutting down webs, and for removing the webs that collected on Depravo's wheels. They were making speedy progress and leaving countless smashed and dismembered spiders in their wake. The downside was that they knew they were slaughtering only a small percentage of the spiders that had overtaken the town—nothing they'd done so far would entitle them to a medal of honor. Being responsible for a 0.3% reduction in the spider population (Jaunty of course had no idea how many spiders were out there and what the actual percentage might be, but 0.3% sounded about right) wasn't the same as actively saving lives.
But there didn't seem to be any lives to save. Everybody they came across was dead.
Jaunty worried that he might be becoming desensitized to the sight of death. Then they found a dead guy with a spider digging out his eyeball and Jaunty was sensitized right over again.
There were a couple of close calls, including one where Depravo claimed he'd soiled his pants but was exaggerating. Overall, though, he felt like they were winning the clowns versus spiders battle, though he supposed it depended on how you calculated the clowns versus spiders exchange rate. Surely two dead clowns were not the equivalent of two dead spiders. The loss of the first two spiders they'd squashed was miniscule in the grand scheme of things, whereas the loss of Guffaw and Wagon would linger for the rest of the remaining clowns' lives.
God, he missed Guffaw and Wagon.
"God, I miss Guffaw and Wagon," he said, believing it to be a sentiment that didn't need to be kept in his own mind.
Bluehead sniffled. Then Reginald sniffled.
"I miss them too," said Bluehead, the heartbreak in her voice almost unbearable to hear.
"Why did you bring them up?" asked Reginald. "We were having a merry time having finally gained the upper hand on these creatures, and now we're obligated to think about our dead friends. There was going to be plenty of time to mourn later. I've had very few moments of joy since the spider invasion began and you've ruined one of them."
"What were the other moments of joy?" asked Jaunty.
"None of your business. They were superficial. Next time, ask before you decide to bring everybody's mood down. That's not what Guffaw and Wagon would have wanted. They'd have wanted us to be happy right now."
Bluehead nodded. "Guffaw would have wanted us to cheer and fling severed spider legs into the air."
"I don't think that's accurate," said Jaunty.
"I knew him longer."
"Fine. I messed up. I should have just thought about how I missed them instead of saying it out loud. The next time I have emotions I'll know to stuff them deep inside to fester."
"That's not what we meant and you know it," said Reginald. "Nobody said anything about any emotions festering. All I'm saying is, read the room. I miss Guffaw and Wagon so much that I've been on the verge of a primal scream of misery this entire time, but there's a time and place for everything."
"We shouldn't be fighting," said Bluehead. "We need to make up."
"Let's sing a happy clown song," said Jaunty.
"Please don't sing a fucking song," said Depravo.
They had a catalog of nearly seventeen thousand happy clown songs to choose from, but Jaunty, Reginald, and Bluehead decided to respect Depravo's wish that they not sing one, since he was injured. They continued on their spider-killing way.
"Help!" somebody shouted in the distance.
There was no need to sing! This scream for help was like music to Jaunty's ears! Somebody needed assistance! They picked up their pace, though not to the point where they stopped being cautious about their own surroundings.
"Help!" shouted somebody else from around the same place. More than one person needed help! The clowns could rescue multiple people! This was fantastic!
"Wait," said Reginald. "What if it's a trap?"
"Why would it be a trap?" asked Bluehead.
"They might be after our supplies."
"It's only been a few hours," said Bluehead. "Society hasn't had time to break down that much. We're still pre-apocalypse or mid-apocalypse. The bandits don't show up until post-apocalypse."
"Yeah, you're right," said Reginald.
As they reached the end of the block, they saw one of the people who'd called for help: a guy balanced on a narrow ledge outside the second floor window of a building. Dozens of spiders were scaling the wall toward him, and he frantically tried to kick them away. A woman was inside at the open window, swatting at spiders with a broom handle.
"I think I'm pretty good with the machine gun," said Depravo, "but I can't shoot all of those spiders without accidentally killing that dude."
The man cried out, lost his grip, and fell. He plummeted to the ground, doing a belly flop onto the sidewalk. From the solids and liquids that shot from his body upon impact, it was clear that the webs did little to cushion his fall. Spiders on the ground immediately began to swarm him.
"That wasn't us!" said Jaunty. "We didn't distract him! He didn't even see us!"
The woman let out a wail of despair.
"Don't jump!" Jaunty shouted. "You can live without him!"
The woman looked over at them, then quickly moved out of sight.
"Now what?" asked Bluehead. "Do you think she's angry?"
"I don't know," said Reginald.
"It wasn't our fault," said Jaunty. "That would've happened even if we didn't show up. We didn't shout anything or start firing a machine gun or even make eye contact with him. He shouldn't have been out on that ledge in the first place."
"Is he still alive?" asked Bluehead.
"No," said Reginald. "It's the spiders making his body jerk around like that."
"We should see if she needs help or comforting," said Jaunty.
The other clowns agreed. Jaunty and Bluehead walked toward the entrance to the building, killing spiders along the way, while Reginald wheeled Depravo behind them.
The woman burst out of the building and ran for Jaunty, arms outstretched.
His first thought was that she was running toward him to hug him. That was nice. He could use a hug himself after the grisly sight he'd just witnessed. Then he noticed that she was holding a butcher knife. He noticed the knife in time to realize he wasn't going to be hugged but not in time to avoid being stabbed.
The blade got him in the chest. He'd often wondered how he'd react if he ever got stabbed with a butcher knife, and now he knew: he'd stand there, looking confused and betrayed.
She yanked the knife out of his chest. "I'm not going to die at the hands of goddamn clowns!" she screamed.
Jaunty started to explain things to her, then decided to dodge the knife instead.
It was a really powerful downward swing. Jaunty was confident that if he hadn't stepped out of the way, she would have slashed him open from his neck to just above his right knee.
She swung again, slashing him across the chest.
"Go back to hell!" she screamed.
Jaunty tried to grab the knife out of her hand but missed. He didn't want to look down to see how badly he was bleeding. No gouts of blood were currently spurting from his midsection, so he took that as a promising sign.
"Punch her in the face!" he told Bluehead. "You're allowed to do it! You're a girl!"
The woman let out the most deranged-sounding scream Jaunty had ever heard, then stabbed at h
im again. Bluehead lunged for her—a poorly timed lunge that put her in the path of the butcher knife and got her stabbed in the upper right arm.
"Should I machine gun her?" Depravo asked.
"No!" said the other three clowns.
Bluehead punched the woman in the face. Her head shot back so violently that Jaunty thought it might pop free, though of course it didn't. She dropped the knife, which landed on a spider, slicing off its two front legs.
The woman stumbled backwards, lost her balance, and fell. Spiders scurried onto her.
Jaunty and Bluehead pulled her to her feet. She still had spiders on her. They quickly began to brush them off.
The woman punched Bluehead in the stomach, doubling her over.
Jaunty still could not bring himself to hit a female, so he continued to brush the spiders off her.
Bluehead head-butted the woman in the stomach, doubling her over as well.
Jaunty brushed a spider off her back.
Reginald shoved the wheelchair forward, bashing Depravo's legs into the woman. She fell again. Jaunty didn't really want to help her up and get stabbed again, but he also didn't want to stand around and let her die.
"Leave her alone!" a man shouted.
Jaunty and the others turned toward the sound of the voice. It was three men, strong-looking ones, holding pieces of plywood with nails in them.
"You don't think we have enough to deal with right now?" asked one of the men. "You're gonna add evil clowns to the mix?"
"We're not evil," Jaunty insisted, as the woman thrashed around with a spider on her breast.
The men walked forward, clearly relishing the opportunity to use their nail-boards. "I've always hated clowns," said the one who had thus far done all of the speaking for the trio. "All you do is cause nightmares. How many children have you traumatized, huh?"
"Zero! We're not child-traumatizing clowns! We bring joy!"
"Bullshit! Clowns bring terror!"
The woman howled in agony as spiders sunk their fangs into her tender flesh.
"Get the hell out of here!" shouted Depravo, waving his machine gun at them. "You don't know anything about clowns! These are the best people I know!"
"A clown with a machine gun," said the man. "Typical."
"No! It's not typical! It's completely abnormal! Everything about this is abnormal! These are good clowns, kind-hearted clowns, and fuck you if you think differently!"
"We just watched you murder that poor woman."
"Wrong!" said Depravo. "First of all, she's not dead yet. Second of all, there's way more to it than that. She had the same prejudices against clowns that you do, and she attacked my friends when they were trying to help her! She didn't have to be lying there with her body swelling up! That's a choice she made when she went after them with a butcher knife!"
"You pushed that other guy out of a window," said the man. "We heard him land."
"No. We would have tried to catch him if he'd fallen just a bit later."
"He would have shattered his bones against your wheelchair."
"I mean that my friends would have tried to catch him."
The man next to the one who'd been doing all the talking shook his head. "I don't trust anything I hear from clowns! They're worse than vampires! They're worse than zombies! They're worse than mummies!"
"Yeah!" said the third man. "Clowns are the devil!"
"The only good clown is a dead clown! But not a reanimated dead clown! Just a regular dead clown!"
Jaunty felt that this encounter was going poorly.
Suddenly there was a loud burst of gunfire. Several large chunks disappeared from the first man's face. He touched his index finger to a large missing section of his forehead, then dropped to the ground.
Depravo tossed his machine gun away. "I didn't mean to do that! I was trying to shoot above their heads! I was trying to scare them away! My aim was off! It was a tense situation!"
Everybody started freaking out at once, except the dead man. Reginald dropped his own machine gun, as if afraid that he might accidentally commit murder as well. Jaunty wished he hadn't done that, because the two other men were coming at them with their poking boards, and the machine gun would be a great deterrent.
Jaunty stepped forward, waving his spiky baseball bat and baring his teeth. "Stay back!" he shouted. "If a clown kills you, your entire family dies, too!"
The men exchanged a confused glance.
"That's not true," Jaunty admitted. "I was trying to be scary. Please don't spread that rumor."
The men looked at each other again, and seemed to come to the unspoken conclusion that they had to find their inner courage and dispatch the deadly clown menace. They resumed walking toward them, waving their boards. Jaunty had to reluctantly give credit where it was due: the men were outnumbered, they were facing their primal fear, and even without the machine guns the clowns had better weapons. These men were not cowards.
"We should be cooperating!" Jaunty told them as they got closer. "With those boards with nails in them, you could help us kill even more spiders! The spiders are the true villains here!"
The men were now close enough that Jaunty could see that these were rusty nails in their boards—the danger was even greater than he'd initially realized.
He swung the bat, aiming for the first man's (formerly the second man, but with the first man now dead it didn't make sense to keep thinking of them as the second and third men) board. As he swung, he questioned this decision. He might break the board in half, which would give the man two boards, which he could then slam into each side of Jaunty's head. Oh well. Too late now. He had too much momentum going to change course.
The bat struck the board.
The board did not break in half.
It slammed against the man, jabbing large rusty nails into his chest.
His eyes went wide. He looked down at the imbedded board. His mouth opened and closed a few times but no sound came out. Finally he popped the board free. A gout of blood shot out of the spot where his heart was located. He fell to the ground.
"That's...that's not even close to what I meant to happen..." said Jaunty.
Spiders swarmed the fallen man.
The new first man took a great big step backwards. "You're not gonna devour my soul, you fuckers!" he shouted.
He turned and ran. Then he slipped on a spider, fell, and landed on his board. Spiders swarmed him.
Jaunty kicked the spiders away from Reginald's machine gun, then picked up the weapon and handed it to him. "This went terribly," he said. "That doesn't mean we can't save another group of survivors. Let's not take our eyes off the prize."
"You're bleeding," Reginald told him.
Jaunty glanced down. There was indeed an alarming amount of blood on the front of his clown suit. "I'm okay. I think the butcher knife bounced off a rib."
He kicked the spiders away from Depravo's machine gun and retrieved that weapon as well. He set it on Depravo's lap. "I'm gonna suggest that you not aim at humans anymore."
Depravo cried out.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," said Jaunty. "I didn't mean to remind you of the manslaughter!"
"No! It's my leg!"
There was a spider on Depravo's left leg. Jaunty gently stabbed it with one of the spikes on his baseball bat, not hard enough to puncture Depravo's leg, then tossed it aside. "There. All better."
"It bit me!"
"Where?"
"On my leg!"
"Oh no! Bluehead, let me have your machete!"
Bluehead handed him the weapon. He used it to slice Depravo's pant leg up to his waist. As he pulled the fabric aside, he saw two definite holes in Depravo's leg. He had indeed been bitten.
"Oh, thank God," said Bluehead.
"What do you mean?" asked Jaunty. "He got bit!"
"When you asked for the machete, I thought you were going to lop his leg off to stop the venom from spreading. I'm relieved that you only cut his pants."
"It hurts so bad," said D
epravo. "Please...I don't want to become one of those things."
"Uh, that's not how it works," said Reginald.
"You're going to be okay," said Jaunty. "One spider bite isn't going to kill you. The corpses we've found were bitten hundreds of times. You have nothing to worry about."
"You'll kill me if I start to transform, right?"
"Yes. Yes, I will. But like Reginald said, that's really not what's happening here."
As they wheeled him away, Jaunty was a bit ashamed to discover that his thoughts were running more toward self-preservation than trying to locate new people to save. Maybe it wasn't possible for them to change people's perception of clowns. Maybe they should just go back to the library.
"Look!" said Reginald as they went back onto the main street. An empty jeep was parked there, engine running. "They must have heard the guy hit the cement from the second-floor, then they got out of the vehicle to investigate! Or it belongs to somebody else who just died! Either way, we've got a jeep! It's high enough off the ground that the webs won't get clogged underneath it, and if I'm wrong about that, we've got a machete and a bat to clean them out without reaching our arms underneath the vehicle! We're saved!"
The clowns ran over to the jeep, which miraculously had no spiders inside. They got Depravo into the front passenger seat (there was no room for the wheelchair, but if they were lucky they wouldn't need it again, since their next stop would be the hospital), and then Reginald and Bluehead sat in the back while Jaunty drove. They had seven-eighths of a tank of gas. Way more than enough to get out of Mount Tulip.
"I'm gonna floor the gas pedal, and we are gonna drive, drive, drive out of this flipping town!" Jaunty announced.
The other clowns cheered.
The jeep sped off toward freedom.
* * *
Tulip Cave began to rumble.
The Mother of Spiders would rest no longer. Most of her children had left the cave, except the newest ones, while she remained in the deepest, darkest section, the only chamber of the cave large enough to contain her gargantuan size, a size that grew larger with every passing year.
