—BELLE Z. BUG
The brain of a fly is vastly superior to that of a human. That is why, for example, a newborn fly can easily walk around on six legs, while a newborn human can’t even manage two. And, of course, flies can easily pick locks and enter houses quietly, even though humans do their best to keep them out.
But though the quality of a fly’s brain is phenomenal, most flies have only a very small quantity of brain in their heads. In order to be able to fly, they only get a speck of it—just enough to fit on the head of a pin.
But Belle Z. Bug, Lord of the Flies, happened to be born with a massive brain that had more analytical power than a Cray supercomputer.
Belle had grown to be the size of a beagle, and so the superior nature of her brain made her a genius of unimaginable proportions.
Much to Belle’s delight, she had discovered upon hatching that she was born with a built-in HD television receiver in her head. All she had to do to watch TV was move her antennae around just so, and she could switch channels with ease. The television pictures flashed with magnificent clarity upon all ten thousand facets in her eyes.
Thus, as she had crawled from her place of birth, her mummified fruitcake, she had learned to speak English. From various movies she had also seen how advanced human civilization was.
Just as quickly, she devised a plan to destroy it.
Within minutes of birth, she surveyed her foul empire—the Los Angeles City dump—watching the sun rise over the dump with her natural eyes while her inner eyes switched from one television station to the next.
Below her, a great army of flies was hatching, flies as far as the eye could see. She had commanded them to hatch from their hardened shells, and spurred on by her magic powers, they had hatched by the trillions. But one question remained: would they follow her?
One of them called out, “So, uh, tell us why we should serve you.”
Belle Z. Bug knew that this was a delicate moment. She had to convert these flies to evil, and her schedule required that it be done quickly.
So she settled on a scheme—one she had picked up on from the humans on television, a nefarious scheme that she learned about on a home-shopping channel.
“Listen, O my people!” Belle cried to be heard above the massive army of winged insects. “I am a fly, just like you. We are flies, and flies are hated by every creature of the field.”
Many flies buzzed in agreement at this, for it was obvious that flies were treated unfairly—slapped at or swatted by cattle and humans, eaten by other animals, cursed at and avoided.
“Why are we hated?” Belle Z. Bug demanded.
“Uh, cause we spread plagues?” one housefly hazarded. “Because we bite?” a horsefly shouted. “Could you repeat the question?” someone farther back in the crowd asked.
“We are hated,” Belle Z. Bug answered thunderously, “because, we are ugly!”
The flies that covered the land quit buzzing. Their wings drooped in despair, and some of them openly wept. It was a cruel truth. The flies knew they were ugly. But there was nothing they could do about it.
“The great creator,” Belle Z. Bug shouted, “the great Master of Field and Fen, made us ugly.”
She let her words hang over the crowd like a death sentence; the sounds of sobs, the wails of despair, rang out from everywhere.
“But I,” Belle shouted, “I have a cure for ugliness!”
When the sobs stopped, a trillion flies fell profoundly silent as they peered up at Belle, wondering what she meant.
At that moment, she stood on her back legs and held up various products garnered from the trash pile.
“Here in this hand,” she called, “I have fly-liner, to put around your eyes. A small, dark circle will make your many facets shine all that much brighter!”
The flies buzzed in excitement, but not all were convinced. “And here I have fly-shadow, to darken your faces!”
She held up a little tube of clear gel, which humans used as lip balm. “Here I have wing wax, so that your wings will sparkle like garnets in the morning sun.” Last of all, she displayed a tube of bright pink paint. “And in this fourth hand, I have carapace color, to make even the roses envy your hue!”
The flies all gaped at her in stunned silence. “Use these products,” Belle told them, “and you will be more beautiful! Use enough of my products, and you can be the most beautiful flies in the world!”
There were gasps of wonder and delight from the flies.
But not all were so sure. One fly shouted at Belle, “Are you telling me that if we use your products, other animals will like us?”
Belle didn’t hesitate to answer. “I am telling you that they will like you better. You will dazzle and delight those who once hated you. You will be invited to picnics. Those who once tried to drive you away will now crave your friendship and stare agog at your magnificent beauty! The world will learn to love flies!”
Her detractor seemed unconvinced, and to be honest, Belle didn’t believe it either. So she added, “More importantly, any fly that does not use my products will be seen for what they are—ugly.” She stood up and shouted urgently, “Think about it. How could you—how could any of you—hope to find a mate if you are uglier than your neighbor?”
This idea hit the flies like a revelation. They were in a beauty competition!
Many of them surged forward to get the makeup while a few others scouted around amid the trash, looking for some of their own. But Belle raised a hand, warning them to stop.
“Wait!” she cried. “You cannot just have fly-shadow. You must earn it!”
“How?” someone pleaded.
So Belle Z. Bug outlined her plan. Each fly had to go forth into the earth and tell two other flies about Belle’s makeup. Only when they had earned three eager converts could they have some fly-liner. When those three had each gained three converts, a fly could rise to the next level and gain free fly-shadow. As a lucky fly kept moving higher in the plan, rising up to the next tier, he or she would gain greater rewards. With mask-era, a fly could color its face. With Prime Slime, a fly could get great-tasting food that would keep its belly from getting too bloated; next on the list of rewards was Solid Gold Miracle Mold—“eat it once and you’ll never grow old!”
The promise of rewards was vast, and many of them sounded too good to be true. But at the very top, at the thirteenth level, Belle’s agents could win the ultimate prize—one that would engender envy from every fly in the land: a bright pink coat of carapace color!
The flies cheered to hear the grand news, and immediately a furious buzzing ensued as flies, eager to get in on the rewards, spread the word.
Thus, in a matter of moments, Belle converted a trillion flies to her plan, turning them from mere household pests into her mindless minions.
* * *
As her empire spread that morning, Belle Z. Bug sat in the sun watching Good Morning America.
All around Belle, flies were frantically putting on fly-shadow, gossiping, and dreaming of even greater rewards. Belle ignored them as she studied the news.
The humans of the world were all in a frazzle. A mouse had displayed phenomenal magic powers only the night before. Belle watched as Amber transformed nuclear bombs into fireworks and transmogrified a human into a worm.
“Nice bit of work, that,” Belle told the flies that swarmed around her. But she also saw how Amber had nearly died from the wizard wearies, and instinctively Belle knew that the mouse was vulnerable . . .
Meanwhile, Belle’s power was growing by the moment. She didn’t have just one familiar. She had thousands of them secreted among the swarms of flies that surrounded her. They buzzed about, flying from garbage pile to garbage pile, unaware of just how much mage dust they gathered in the process, ignorant of how much power Belle drained from them.
She sat pondering what to do as the sun climbed above the hills. Seagulls flew toward the dump with the coming of the sun, but when they saw that it was covered with flies tha
t buzzed angrily, they retreated.
Shortly after dawn, the first of the city’s dump trucks came—huge yellow trucks, piled high with delectable garbage.
The humans came roaring down the road, but as the drivers saw the vast horde of flies covering the dump to a depth of several inches, the trucks ground to a stop.
Belle spotted a human inside the cab of the truck, peering through the windshield, wondering what to do. Suddenly he began to back up.
With a clamor of wings, Belle leapt from her grungy throne and flew to the truck. She smashed through the window and leapt up onto the steering wheel, staring the garbage truck driver in the eye.
“I’ll take your garbage,” Belle said. “Leave it!”
“Uh, who are you?” the driver asked. He was a dark little Latin American. His nametag said that he was called Emilio. He spoke with a thick accent.
“I am Belle Z. Bug, Lord of the Flies!” Belle exulted. “This dump is mine. All dumps are mine! I demand tribute! I want more garbage from you—more garbage, do you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you,” Emilio said, shaking. “You want lots more garbage?”
“All of it!” Belle Z. Bug demanded. “I want all of the garbage in the world!”
“Okay,” Emilio said, “but I will have to talk to my boss!”
Belle Z. Bug whirled and shouted at her minions. “Seize this shipment! Diapers and rotten burritos go to my royal chambers. Fruit goes to the fruit flies. The rest of this junk is for our armies.”
Buzzing in delight, eager to do Belle’s will, ten billion flies rose up in a huge black cloud. They descended upon the garbage truck in a droning maelstrom. Thousands of flies attached to each piece of garbage and then strained with effort as they lifted their spoils into the air.
Emilio watched with his jaw open, gazing in dismay. When the flies were done, the demon Belle shouted, “I will expect you back shortly, with more tribute!”
“Whatever,” Emilio said. “I’ll be coming and going all day!”
He began backing his truck up, muttering under his breath. “The stuff I have to put up with on this job . . . Ay, I should get a raise!”
Belle buzzed off in triumph. Part of her plan was already in play. This first step of her master’s bid for global conquest was a success. Belle was taking over the world’s dumps. But she knew that she would face opposition.
To the commander of her horseflies, she whispered, “Go now, and bring me Amber the mouse. She must do obeisance before me!”
* * *
Emilio drove off, shaken by his experience. As soon as he got out from under the cloud of flies, he grabbed his two-way radio and called headquarters.
“Senor,” he said, “we got big problemas!”
“What kind of problemas?” his boss demanded.
“Giant mutant flies have taken over the garbage dump!”
“Again?” his boss whined. “Just what I need to hear.” He fell silent then added, “I’ll call county pest control and have them send a crop duster over with some bug spray.”
“Forget the crop duster, man,” Emilio said. “I’m telling you, you better get Governor Shortzenbeggar down here with a rocket launcher. There’s a really big fly!”
Chapter 8
MR. TOAD’S WILD RIDE
When you find that you have lost your way in life, triple your speed.
No, it won’t help you find yourself, but it makes being lost a lot more fun!
—RUFUS FLYCATCHER
“Spare me!” a fly cried. “Spare me, I beg of you!”
The fly was stuck to the tongue of Max the Toad Warrior. He held his tongue out as far as possible, offering the fly to a newt.
“Gee, thanks!” the newt cried. Then he lunged forward, grasped the fly, and gulped it down.
The morning was sunny, but the toads had found the newt in some marshy ground, shaded by small oaks. Spring was coming, and all around, tiny yellow daffodils and blue mountain orchids were beginning to rise up from the leaf mold.
The newt perched atop a spotted mushroom and gazed into the distance, allowing the toads to see their future.
“Show me our enemies and my master’s true servant,” the Toad Warrior whispered.
The golden eyes of the newt grew cloudy, as if a storm suddenly began to brew and roil within them, and then Max saw a distant scene.
A strange young mouse appeared. He had a skull for a face, it seemed, until Max looked more closely. No, it was just a walnut shell carved to look like a skull. The mouse had what might have been a thick piece of spider silk coiled around his shoulder, and he carried a strange something in his paw. It might have been a pine needle, but it was more the color of ice.
No, he decided, it is made of metal, like the monster that attacked me this morning.
What strange world have I wakened to? Max wondered. Mice have begun using tools, and monsters made of metal roam the earth.
The young mouse was sitting upon the legs of a human woman who wore a sunny dress, and nearby perched a shrew, some voles, and more mice.
The sight of so many mice made Max’s stomach grumble with hunger.
Brutus, one of his honor guards, said, “Are you sure this vision isn’t showing us our dinner?”
Max ran his tongue over his parched lips. He was a huge toad, a gargantuan toad, and his hunger couldn’t be sated by a few flies and potato bugs. He needed meat—lots of it.
“I asked to see our enemies,” Max retorted.
“Perhaps,” Caesar suggested, “our enemies will be our dinner!”
Brutus began laughing, and soon all three toads were giggling at the idea. Then the image of the mice cleared.
The newt’s eye went as dark as a thundercloud once again, then something new took form: an image of refuse, garbage—hundreds and hundreds of acres of it—all covered with flies so thick that the entire landscape was black. Flies were crawling atop the backs of flies in a mass of insect flesh several inches deep. Many of the flies were newly hatched, and so they sat in the sun, buzzing and flapping their wings, while others buzzed tentatively in the sky as they took their maiden flights; others were darting about eagerly.
The sound of droning filled the air, becoming deafening.
There, atop the pile of garbage, squatted an enormous green fly, nearly as large as Max himself. The fly stood preening her face with her front feet. Her faceted eyes were so red that they looked like glowing coals, and her iridescent green exoskeleton appeared to be as hard as armor.
The great fly stopped preening and peered down at a scrap of newspaper. It was reading words written by humans. Or perhaps it was merely looking at pictures. Max could see that on the newspaper was the image of mice—the mice he’d just seen in his vision.
Suddenly the monster fly seemed startled.
It raised its head and drew forward so that its face filled the entirety of the newt’s eye. Max was filled with a cold certainty that the monster somehow knew that he was watching.
Only a mage of great power could have known that he was spying on her.
“Come!” the monster fly whispered. The words were not spoken. Instead the sound of the fly’s voice penetrated Max’s skull, slamming through flesh and bone like a bullet.
Max grunted and lurched back half a pace, afraid that this fly would somehow emerge from the vision.
But nothing more happened.
The newt’s eye went cloudy, and then its color returned: golden flecks among a sea of deep brown. The newt began strolling away, off to look for a morning meal.
Max had never seen a fly like the one in his vision. It was huge, far larger than any insect he’d ever encountered. Nothing like it had haunted even his wildest nightmares.
“That’s our ally?” Brutus asked.
Max the Toad Warrior whirled and retraced his path. He would need to gather mage dust if he was going to confront this magical mouse. The best way to do that was to travel, keeping low to the ground.
He found the huge vehicle th
at he’d fought on the highway. A few cars filled with people had gathered nearby, and some of them were studying the wreck.
Max cast a small spell, then used his might to push the truck upright. The humans saw him then. Some screamed and fled into their vehicles. One man came up to Max and tried to stomp on him.
That was a big mistake. Max grabbed the human’s foot as it fell, then tossed the man forty feet—over a ditch and into a field.
The rest of the humans fled.
Max leapt ten feet, through the broken windshield, and waited on the dashboard for his comrades to find their own way into the massive machine.
He cast a spell upon the big rig. “Take me to my master’s flies . . .”
The truck’s engine grumbled and turned over, and in minutes it was roaring down the road, heading south.
Max hopped up onto the seat and used his rear legs to hold himself up. With a mighty effort he grabbed the steering wheel. He took great delight in turning the truck this way and that, swerving all over the road.
For four long hours, Max drove the truck unimpeded until at last he crossed the border from Oregon into California.
There, he passed a police car by the side of the road. A human inside the car spotted him, a large red toad, driving the truck.
Suddenly the small car raced out behind the truck, throwing a cloud of gravel and dust into the air. Lights on top of the car began to flash blue, red, and white. A siren sent out throbbing pulses of sound.
For long minutes the car followed, veering this way and that as the officer tried to get a better look at Max. Soon other police cars joined in, a long line of them—sixteen in all—doing a slow chase down the freeway.
The sight of it was unnerving. The sound of the sirens, their burps and stutters and wails, jarred Max’s ears.
“What do you think these humans want?” Brutus asked. “What kinds of weapons do you think they have?”
One police car roared up beside the Toad Warrior. The human driver picked up a megaphone and shouted to Max, “Pull over! We have you surrounded. Pull over now!”
Max cast a spell to let him understand human speech. He looked out the window to the police officer. The man was pale with fear. Apparently the police officer had never done battle with a magic cane toad before.
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