by R. McGeddon
“And then when I heard we were studying minibeasts this semester, I wanted to try out something new.”
Arty stared at her, realizing that Felicia wasn’t just a lovely, genius girl who had done the odd experiment here and there; she was a serial experimenter who had left a trail of destruction behind her. He sighed. Sitting Duck was a trouble magnet. In fact, he vowed to find this trouble magnet and destroy it. Or else write a very angry letter to someone in charge, and get them to destroy it for him.
Arty wondered how he could’ve been fooled by her … if only he’d realized sooner what she was up to! At least he, Sam, and Emmie had some serious experience in world saving. Maybe if they were quick enough the spiders wouldn’t destroy the whole planet—just some of it.
* * *
Felicia Character Profile
1. Mirrorlike hair that swooshes in the breeze
2. Emergency test tubes for last-minute experiments
3. Traveling lab in her backpack, for all experimental needs
Past Crimes:
• Blew up Silver Spoon Academy trying to cure the common foot bunion
• Blew up her parents’ garage trying to isolate the gene for superintelligence … Ironic, huh?
• Blew up her kitchen when trying to create the “Elixir for Instant Cheer,” an experimental drink that contains ¼ soda, ¼ ice cream, ¼ gummy bears, and ¼ love and friendship
* * *
In the meantime, though, he didn’t really feel like asking Felicia to the dance anymore.
Arty tried to shake off his disappointment as he and Felicia steadily walked deeper into the Insectarium. As much as he might be annoyed at Felicia now, he knew they’d have to stick together to get through this. And anyway, she got him into this mess; maybe she could get him out.
A shriek shook Arty out of his reverie. “Children! Help!”
A terrifying scene appeared in the gloom. A gigantic eight-legged freak had Professor Stix pinned to the wall like a living poster. Its body was black like the night, shiny, and glistening. Its pincers clicked back and forth threateningly, and its body swelled like a balloon behind its head. Arty and Felicia recognized the bright red splotch on its abdomen instantly. There was only one spider it could be.
“Black widow!” they murmured, looking at each other in alarm. If they didn’t do something fast, Professor Stix was finished.
Arty summoned up his courage and barreled toward the giant black widow. Felicia tried to call him back, but he knew it was now or never. With all his force, he leaped onto the black widow’s giant balloon-like body and shunted the creature off to the side. It let out a shriek as its legs crumbled beneath it and it slumped against the floor.
“Take that, you toxic bugbrain,” he called. “No more web of evil from you!”
Sam was the one who usually did the cool put-downs at the moment of triumph, but he wasn’t there, so Arty had to say something to sound all cool and hero-like. I don’t think Arty did too badly, actually, but I have heard better action-hero quips.
Arty and Felicia grabbed Professor Stix and pulled him to his feet. He looked like he’d seen a ghost, or a giant six-foot spider that was about to kill him, which in fact he had. That same giant six-foot spider was also getting to its feet, though, and this time it was really mad.
“Look out!” Felicia cried. The black widow’s pincers bit down, clutching Professor Stix’s shoulder. Quickly, he squirmed out of his lab coat just as the toxic venom seared through his coat like acid.
Arty realized they didn’t have a chance to outrun the spider; it was fast and vicious and would be on them in a second. He looked around for a weapon—and found the perfect thing. Dodging the black widow, he yanked the fire extinguisher off the wall and threw it as hard as he could back to Felicia. It rolled under the black widow toward her.
Felicia pointed the fire extinguisher straight at the spider. For a moment, she hesitated—this was a giant black widow after all, a boon for science. But then she realized that having another dead scientist on her hands would look bad on her Nobel Prize application.
“Eat foam, loser!” she cried. (Again, not a bad action-hero put-down for a novice, I think.) White foam surged toward the black widow. It screeched like a banshee and fumbled backward under the force of the blast.
“Now’s our chance,” Arty yelled. “Come on!”
Together, Arty, Felicia, and Stix raced through the corridors of the Insectarium, slamming shut as many doors as possible in their path to prevent the black widow from following them.
When it seemed safe enough, they stopped to catch their breath. Professor Stix gasped and spluttered. He couldn’t understand what had happened.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “The black widow … it ballooned!”
Arty and Felicia glanced at each other. They knew exactly what had happened. Felicia happened. She began to explain that the vial of spider food might have gone a bit out of control, and while she may have started off sheepish, Arty swore he could hear a hint of pride in her voice.
“But that means—” Professor Stix began.
“What?” Arty asked.
Professor Stix ignored Arty and instead ushered him and Felicia back to the atrium where all the spider tanks had previously been. Tanks lining the walls had shattered. Glass was piled up in the middle of the room, and a giant hole in the former foyer wall opened onto the building’s front lawn. The whole place looked like a mouthful of smashed teeth.
“I gave a droplet of the food to every spider in here,” he said. “They must have all grown out of control, just like the black widow.”
“And how many spiders were in here?” Felicia asked, starting to get a little nervous.
Professor Stix looked around. “Hundreds,” he said.
Arty gulped. At this point, he should have expected it. It wasn’t just the school and Insectarium that were under threat—it was the whole of Sitting Duck. Of course.
He spoke in as firm and heroic a voice as possible. “Professor Stix,” he said, “alert the authorities. We’re going to need everyone we can get in order to fight back against the spiders.”
“And what are we going to do?” Felicia asked.
Arty peered around the room, a determined look set firmly on his face. “We’re going to save Sitting Duck … and the world!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Question: Have you ever hung upside down from a swing? Or some monkey bars? Or has your big brother ever dangled you over a pool by your ankles, taunting you until your mom and dad made him stop? Well, imagine that, but then imagine also being in a spider’s web, suspended twenty feet in the air. Not fun, am I right?
Well, imagine no more. Or rather do imagine, but imagine it happening to our heroes Sam and Emmie, because that’s exactly the situation they found themselves in. They were trapped, high up in the corner of the school gym, suspended in sticky golden silk with an angry-looking spider prowling around below them.
“Hey, ugly!” Emmie shouted. “Get outta here before I rip off your legs and use them as drumsticks!”
The golden orb weaver hissed back at her. I don’t think it understood. I mean, it’s unlikely spiders grasp the concept of playing drums—despite how awesome they’d be, what with all their legs and everything. But anyway, the spider seemed to sense that Emmie wasn’t happy and decided to make its feelings known.
Emmie struggled against the bonds and looked over to Sam. His face was as white as a cloud, and his teeth were clamped together so tightly that the veins in the side of his head were throbbing. It is fairly safe to say he wasn’t enjoying the experience of being stuck in a giant spider’s web.
“How’re you doing over there, champ?” Emmie said, grinning.
Sam glared back, eyes popping and hairs standing on end.
“That good, huh?” Emmie said. “Then I guess it’s up to me.”
Emmie racked her brains. What they needed was to get down from this sticky web
before the spider was ready for its lunch. But before that, they needed to get it out of their way, which meant that they needed a distraction.
Emmie scanned the room for inspiration. All she could see was sports equipment scattered around and the moldy gym bag filled with centuries-old clothes for when you forgot your own. Emmie shuddered—she’d once had to wear a frilly shirt that looked like it was from the 1920s.
Her eyes caught on the high windows skirting the edge of one of the walls, and quickly she formulated a plan. Windows make for good distractions, you see. Especially when they’re broken.
“Sam,” she hissed, “we need to make some noise, to get that critter out of our way. I bet if we break that window, we’ve got a chance.”
Sam looked up and nodded vaguely.
“You got a baseball with you, Sam? In your backpack?”
Sam always carried a baseball, and usually a bat. He never wanted to miss the opportunity for a quick game. Although right now, he thought there were probably more important things going on.
“I need you to smash that window,” Emmie said. “Then we’re getting out of here.”
At the thought of “getting out of here,” Sam finally snapped to it. He reached around to his backpack, which was stuck in the sticky web. He rummaged around as best he could and eventually dug out his baseball.
“And then what?” he asked. “We’re still twenty feet up in the air!”
“Leave that to me, Sam,” Emmie said, with a mischievous glint in her eye.
Sam shrugged and pulled back his arm. He threw the baseball as hard as he could, sending it flying through the air and straight through the windowpane.
The spider squealed in confusion. Just as Emmie expected, it barreled out of the gym to investigate the cause of the crash. Emmie pumped her fist with joy and began to put the rest of her plan to work.
She yanked her arm as hard as she could until it pulled free from the sticky web with a satisfying tearing noise. Then she rummaged around in her backpack and pulled out her trusty screwdriver. Many a time it had saved her—mostly when she was sneaking out of Great-Aunt Doris’s house and needed to unscrew the door from its frame.
She hacked at the golden webbing on her legs and body with the screwdriver until she had disentangled herself from all the threads. She freed Sam, and they both clung on to the remaining web as Emmie carefully unspooled a length of the silk until it became a rope long enough to scale the perilous drop.
“You ready for this?” Emmie asked.
“You bet,” said Sam. “Let’s get as far away from that thing as possible!”
Together, they counted down, “Three, two, one…” and pushed back off the web.
“Geronimo!” Emmie shouted as she and Sam sailed through the air, hanging off their silken rope. They glided like monkeys through a jungle canopy but landed like cows on an ice rink, slamming into the hard wooden floor of the gym.
“Wow,” Sam gasped, rubbing his elbow. “Let’s do it again; let’s do it again!”
Emmie stared at him dumbly.
“Oh right, yeah. Let’s not,” Sam said. “In fact, let’s get out of here before that brute comes to get us.”
“Agreed!” said Emmie.
With that, the two of them sprinted out of the school and into the yard. No one was there. It was like the whole of the school, teachers and all, had disappeared into thin air. Even the smell of Lunch Lady Susan’s twelve-day boiled turnips seemed to be missing.
“Something weird’s going on,” said Emmie.
“Weirder than a giant spider prowling the school?” asked Sam, with a quirk of his eyebrow.
“Weirder than that,” Emmie said, nodding. “Quick, Sam, let’s see if we can get in touch with Arty.”
Sam pulled out a walkie-talkie from his pack.
“Alpha-Romeo-Tortoise-Yankee,” Sam began. “This is Sierra-Alpha-Mango. Do you read me?” (He always introduced himself using the phonetic alphabet, to make sure he was heard loud and clear. Sadly, he also always got at least a couple of words in the phonetic alphabet wrong, but he still tried, bless him.)
There was static and then a faint reply from Arty. “Sierra-Alpha-Mike,” he said (because Arty always got these things right). “Under attack … town center … come quick.”
The transmission fizzled out, and Sam and Emmie looked at each other, resolved. Sitting Duck was under threat and Arty needed them.
* * *
Phonetic Alphabet
If you need to be heard over the telephone or radio or some sort of new-fangled Internet talkie-gadget, the phonetic alphabet is your friend. Just spell out letters of a word you need to say, with words of their own. Like Lima for L or X-ray for X.
But if you don’t want to use the normal phonetic alphabet, with its Sierras and Tangos and Papas and Hotels, there’s nothing stopping you from making your own. As long as you and your pals all understand it.
You can make up what you like, like I do:
• A is for Anteater or Acne or Anteaters with Acne, come quick!
• E is for Etc., Etc.
• L is for Lollipops or Limas or Lampposts
• O is for Orangutans or Olives or Ooh, hello there, I haven’t seen you in a while!
• S is for Shoot, I’m running out of ideas here.
• T is for Think of your own if you’re so clever.
* * *
“Come on,” Emmie yelled. “Let’s go!”
Sam and Emmie grabbed their bikes from the bike shed and set off into town. Pretty soon it became apparent that things were not all good in Sitting Duck. For instance, they passed Mrs. Jones of Mrs. Jones’s Phones and Loans, who was sprinting down the street, her wig flailing off the back of her head. “Run for your lives, children. The curse of Sitting Duck has struck once more!” And then came Angry Pete, who liked to sit on the corner and shout conspiracy theories at everyone in town. “I knew those spiders were against us all along!” he raged.
“What did he say? SpiderS?” Sam exclaimed, extra-emphasizing the s. “I thought there was only one?”
As soon as he said it, they came upon the sight of hundreds of spiders crawling and crushing all over the town center. Some were big; some were small. But they all had eight legs, and all were deadly.
Emmie picked up her walkie-talkie to contact Arty, but Sam stopped her.
“No time for that Emmie.” He gulped. “Or we’ll be Delta-Elephant-Alpha-Dead!”
CHAPTER NINE
Giant spiders came from all directions. Residents of Sitting Duck fled in all directions. Yet Sam was paralyzed with fear, rooted to the spot like a palm tree in the face of a tsunami. Emmie grabbed Sam by the wrist and yanked him closer to her so they wouldn’t be separated in the whirling mass of spider bodies and legs.
“Come and get us if you dare!” she yelled defiantly, which was pretty silly, really, because she didn’t have a weapon and also spiders don’t understand words. If they wanted to come and get you, they pretty much would. In fact, the spiders had finished terrorizing the Sitting Duckers—most of whom were stranded in sticky webs hanging from lampposts—and decided to do just that.
“Er, on second thought,” Emmie said, backing away.
Soon, she and Sam found themselves completely surrounded. Sam wielded the baseball bat he’d taken from his backpack, but his knees were knocking together and his hands were shaking.
A spider loomed in front of him with big hairy legs and a nasty gleam in all of its eight eyes. Sam cowered in fright, and Emmie puffed out her chest, ready for one last stand.
“CHARGE!” a voice cried. But it wasn’t Emmie, or even Sam. (Surprise!) It was good old Arty, who swept in alongside Felicia and smacked the spider with his flashlight. “C’mon,” he yelled, “follow me!”
Together, they made their way through the mass of spiders. While they searched for somewhere to hide, Arty filled them in on what was going on with Felicia, her evil experiments, and all that. Emmie seethed in fur
y.
“So you did this?” she barked at Felicia. “I knew I didn’t like the look of you.”
Felicia just pouted and turned up her nose. She still thought she’d done a pretty cool thing, even if it did cause death and destruction and all-around panic. Nothing was going to change her mind on that one.
“Hey,” said Arty, half-heartedly defending her. “It’s not all bad. At least I won’t have to wear a dress to the dance, will I, Sam?”
The prospect of Sam overcoming his fear of spiders anytime soon seemed pretty remote, so he just nodded in agreement. Emmie scowled. There had to be some way to help Sam overcome his fear. She really didn’t want to wear a dress, either, and it would be really handy if Sam’s hero powers came to the fore again, considering the almighty pickle they were in.
Quickly, before the spiders could overrun them, they scrambled up into a tree on the main square and surveyed the scene. Fires raged in one corner of Sitting Duck, and the huge Duckbill Tower that overlooked the harbor was covered in the leggy critters. Hundreds of residents poured through the streets and across the main square, desperately trying to evade the spiders.
“This is worse than the zombies!” Arty gasped. “At least they just wanted brains. These guys want to eat all of you!”
“Ah, those were the days,” Emmie sighed. “Right now I’d take some dumb zombies or CHARLES the evil robot over these guys.”
The four of them perched in the tree as the spiders rushed by. Felicia was thrilled by it all, Arty and Emmie were anxious to put things right in Sitting Duck once more, and Sam held on to the branch so tightly his knuckles turned white. Without warning, a piercing scream rang out from across the way. All four of them turned their attention to the middle of the square.
“What in the name of science—” Felicia began.
There, on his own, was Professor Stix. He was desperately clinging on to the monument in the center of the square as hundreds of spiders crowded around him, eagerly expecting a meal.
