by Jack Patton
“Hang in there, Max!” Roxy called. “You’re doing fine!”
“Thanks,” said Max feebly. All the spinning was making him feel dizzy.
“Not far to go now,” he said to himself. “If I can just …”
“Max!”
Suddenly Webster’s terrified voice came from above. “Something’s up here with me!”
“Uh-oh,” Max said. “Pull me up as quick as you can!”
Webster began to wind in his silk, but it was no use. Max kept spinning and bouncing off the walls. Webster was panicking.
“They’re coming, Max. I can see them,” Webster cried. “T-two of them. Worm lizards!”
Max looked down. Roxy was turning in anxious circles, watching him hang in midair. He knew that he’d never make it in time. Webster would have to make a run for it, and that meant he’d have to cut the silk rope.
Max was bug size now. That meant he could survive drops that a full-size Max never could—he hoped.
“Webster, cut the line and run!” he shouted.
“N-no!” Webster shouted. “You’ll fall!”
“You have to do it; there’s no other way,” Max cried.
Webster wouldn’t do it—there was no way he’d let Max drop. So Max would just have to do it himself.
He rummaged around in his pocket until he found what he was after: a screwdriver! Finally, all the chaos of his dad’s garage had come in handy.
He set to work breaking the sticky web, jabbing and twisting as quickly as he could. This was just like when he’d been stuck in Jet the black widow spider’s webbing, so he knew the best way to get through the spider silk. Eventually, only a tiny sliver of silk remained.
“Here goes nothing,” Max cried, slicing the rope. Suddenly, Max was hurtling through the air with a whoosh toward Roxy’s faint light.
Smack!
The impact knocked the wind out of him. His legs buckled. Roxy crowded round him, her feelers quivering nervously.
“Ouch,” Max gasped. “That one hurt.”
He clambered to his feet and looked up toward Webster. He couldn’t see a thing. “Webster, are you okay?”
“I’m sure he made it,” Roxy said. “I saw him scurry away.”
“I hope so.” Max sighed. “Can you bring your light over here?”
Roxy shuffled forward, casting her bright glow over him, and stopped. “Whoa. What is that? You’re covered in slimy goop. That’s not human blood, I hope.”
“What? No! Our blood’s red.” Max held up his hand and saw that it was coated with some kind of transparent slime. A slow, gluey drop fell from it as he stared. He glanced down and saw that his knees were coated, too. I must have landed in it, he thought.
Roxy moved in figure eights, lifting her legs up. Sticky, silvery trails stretched between them and the floor. “Ugh. What is that stuff? It’s all over the cavern.”
Before Max had a chance to wonder what it was, Roxy let out a terrified squeal.
Max turned to look at what Roxy had spotted. He looked up … and up … and up at the shadowy thing that was towering over him.
Something was emerging from the darkness, a presence more vast and strange than anything he’d ever seen before on Bug Island …
“We need to get out of here,” Max called.
“I think you’re right!” Roxy cried.
They tried to run away from the massive shadow gliding slowly toward them, but they didn’t get far. The slimy sludge underfoot was thick as molasses, and Max’s sneakers skidded and slipped. With a yell, he fell headlong into the stuff.
“Max, come on!” Roxy urged, twisting around to look back at him.
Max found himself floundering on his back. Using his hands and feet, he shoved himself backward through the slime. He had to get away from the oncoming presence.
Roxy ran back across to him to help. By the light of her body, Max finally got his first good look at the creature towering over him.
It was a gigantic snail! Its head was a thick, glistening mass that slowly swayed from side to side, and its shell was a twisting cone, set with spikes, rising high into the cavern. The sheer size of it took Max’s breath away.
“I know what that is,” he said in a whisper. “But it can’t be—it’s not possible!”
The gigantic snail oozed steadily forward, its grayish-white body looming like an oncoming ocean liner.
“It’s the largest snail that ever existed,” Max stammered to Roxy. “Campanile giganteum.”
The snail’s giant head craned down to peer at Max. A great rubbery slit of a mouth gaped at him, full of strange comblike rows of teeth. And then it smiled.
“What a polite little thing you are,” it said, in a deep booming voice that echoed through the caverns.
“Excuse me?” Max asked.
“You know my full name! I must say, it’s been a very long time since anyone addressed me by that title. A very long time, indeed.” The snail bowed its head. “Most people call me Slimer.”
“Slimer,” Max echoed. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Max.”
“And I’m Roxy,” Roxy said.
“Hmm,” Slimer said thoughtfully. He looked Max up and down. “In all the forty million years that my family has lived, I have never seen nor heard of a creature like you before. What are you?”
“I’m a human,” Max explained.
“I see. Do you find me strange, Max the Human? Your eyes are very wide.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Max said, careful not to offend the ancient snail. “It’s just that where I come from, we haven’t seen anything like you, either. Not for millions of years.”
“I haven’t, either!” Roxy jumped in.
Slimer nodded his head in a knowing way. “Bug Island is a magical place. The caves and tunnels run deep here. Many of us Old Ones live down here now, peaceful and undisturbed, content to dream through the long centuries, far away from our original homes.” He sighed. “At least, that was how it used to be. Things are changing now.”
Before Max could ask Slimer what he meant, Roxy asked a question of her own. “There have been lots of bug disappearances around here. I was wondering if you’d seen any strange bugs? Or maybe any reptiles … worm lizards, perhaps?”
“Hmm,” Slimer said in an absent-minded kind of a way. “Strange things have been happening. Flooding in some tunnels, cave-ins in others. The very lowest caverns are not safe anymore.” His head drooped and his mouth sagged. “Many of us have been pushed closer to the surface. It is hardly fair, isn’t it? We only want to be left alone.”
Max and Roxy glanced at each other. Something about Slimer’s words was making Max uneasy. There were many natural events that could cause caverns to collapse. But there were so many holes dotting the surface, Max feared there was something else going on, something not natural at all.
“My friend Glower was dragged down here earlier,” Max told Slimer. “We need to find him and the other missing bugs, but we don’t know where to start. Can you help?”
“Help?” Slimer boomed. “Of course I can help! Why, I know the tunnels down here like the back of my own shell.”
“Awesome,” Roxy said. “Never leave a bug behind!”
Max let out a sigh of relief. Finally, it seemed like the bugs’ luck was changing.
“We’ll find your friends in no time,” Slimer said, oozing toward one of the tunnel openings. “Follow me!”
Max and Roxy followed eagerly as Slimer slithered down a narrow tunnel. His enormous body almost touched the sides, but the pair of them just managed to squeeze alongside him.
Soon after, they came to a stop. After only a few hundred feet, the tunnel had come to a dead end. The three of them looked at the solid earth wall in front of them.
“Hmmm!” Slimer said. “I could have sworn …”
“Are we lost?” Max asked.
“No, no, no,” Slimer said. “Let’s just go back and try again.”
They backtracked and followed Slimer throu
gh the next tunnel entrance. Soon, they were following the tunnel down in what felt like a gentle spiral.
“Oh, no,” Slimer said again as they came to another sudden stop.
“What is it this time?” asked Max.
“See for yourself,” Roxy muttered.
Max pushed past Slimer’s flabby flank and looked out across the cavern they’d entered. A huge ravine, plunging down too deep for him to see the bottom, stretched in front of them. It completely blocked their path.
“What on earth is that doing there?” Slimer exclaimed. “The Crystal Cavern is supposed to be back the other way.”
“Back to the start and try again?” asked Roxy.
“Come on, dawdlers!” Slimer announced. He slowly turned around on the spot and slid back the way they’d come. “We’ll find the, ah … what were we looking for, again?”
“The captured bugs,” Max said in desperation. He was beginning to think Slimer had no idea where they were going.
“Yes. Of course: the captured bugs. We’ll all be nibbling leaves together by tomorrow at lunchtime; just see if we don’t!”
Two more dead ends later, Max and Roxy were boiling over with frustration. It was bad enough that Slimer moved about as fast as a bicycle with square wheels, but his absent-mindedness made it even worse.
“I thought he said he knew these tunnels like the back of his own shell!” Roxy whispered.
“You know,” Max began, “I don’t think he’s ever seen the back of his own shell.”
Roxy laughed.
Eventually, after they’d wandered around in the semidarkness some more, they came to a fork in the tunnel.
“We go left here,” Slimer announced. “I distinctly remember seeing strange-looking creatures pass this way.”
He sounded totally confident, but then again, he’d been confident about the “shallow little pool” that Roxy had nearly drowned in, and the “perfectly secure bridge” that had collapsed under Max’s weight.
“Looks abandoned to me,” Roxy said. “What do you think, Max?”
Max looked left and right. To the right was a cozy-looking tunnel whose roof and walls were securely held together with tangled tree roots. To the left was a flinty, steep passageway decked with ancient cobwebs.
“If Slimer says go left, we go left,” Max said wearily. “He’s got to be right sooner or later.”
“I hope so,” Roxy said.
They followed Slimer down an ever-widening passageway that became a massive cavern. The echo of dripping water resounded from far off in the dark. There were no exits anywhere that they could see. Max glanced up and saw the pointed, spear-like tips of large stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
“There’s no sign of Glower here,” he said. “This place is giving me the creeps.”
“Agreed,” Roxy said firmly. “Come on, Slimer. We’re going back.”
The giant snail began his slow, slow turn. Max ground his teeth in frustration. But then, in an instant, a strange vibration went from the ground, through his feet, and all the way up to his head. The air felt hot and the tunnel seemed to be shaking on all sides.
“Uh-oh.” Slimer groaned.
“What is that?” Roxy yelped.
Another vibration came, this one much stronger than the last. The next moment, Max was thrown off his feet, and the ground began to shake violently.
“Earthquake!” he cried.
“Grab on to something!” Max yelled.
The shaking got worse and worse. A loose rock smacked painfully into the back of Max’s head and bounced off across the cavern floor. More and more rocks followed, striking his back and shoulders as if it was raining pebbles.
“It’s a cave-in,” Roxy cried. She darted back and forth, desperately looking for shelter. Lumps of rock and earth slammed down around her.
The tremors grew stronger. It sounded like two stone jaws grinding together. Max and Roxy were flung around like beetles in a shaken matchbox.
Max remembered the stalactites and looked up, just in time to see a length of stone crack free. It fell toward him, fast as a javelin. He rolled out of the way just in time. The stalactite crashed down, inches away from him, and shattered into chunks.
He sprang to his feet. “That was close,” he panted.
“Take cover, everyone!” boomed Slimer, as the rain of rocks became even heavier.
“Where?” Max yelled. “There’s no way out!”
“Over here!” Slimer called. Quick as a flash he drew his head back into his cone-shaped shell, retreating farther and farther. He squeezed back so far inside that there was enough room for Max and Roxy to climb in there with him.
Max huddled up against Slimer’s clammy body as bits of stalactite pinged off the snail’s armored back.
Roxy trembled. “Are you sure we’re safe in here?”
“Perfectly safe,” Slimer assured her.
Max flinched as a heavy rock spike shattered against Slimer’s shell. He told himself he was safe. After all, Slimer had lived down in these tunnels for many years. Surviving was something he was good at.
Eventually, the falling stones slowed to a trickle and the ground stopped shaking.
“I think it’s stopped,” Roxy whispered.
Slimer pushed down with his body, lifting his shell enough for Max and Roxy to scramble out.
The cavern was transformed. Instead of the humped rock floor with occasional stalagmites, there was a mess of fallen rock, sand, and loose earth. Many of the stalactites had broken off and fallen, and now lay in sharp shards across the ground. It looked as if a crane had swung a wrecking ball through the place.
Slimer, they now saw, was half-buried in debris. He slowly emerged from his shell as if he were waking up from a long nap. “See, I told you we’d be fine.”
We were nearly killed, Max thought.
“Look!” yelled Roxy excitedly. “Over here!”
Max ran over to her, his feet crunching on the freshly fallen gravel. Roxy had found an exit—a narrow one, but an exit nonetheless. Somehow, the earth tremor had helped them find the way, when all of Slimer’s years of knowledge had failed. Max looked down at the loose rocks littering the ground nearby.
“I guess this tunnel must have been blocked off, and the tremor shook the rocks free,” he said.
“That explains why we didn’t see it before,” Roxy agreed.
“Aha! That’s definitely the right way,” said Slimer as he glided over. “That’s where those worm lizards took your bugs! I knew that opening was here somewhere.”
“We never doubted you for a second,” Max said smoothly.
Roxy just laughed.
Max climbed into the tunnel. The ceiling was low, so he had to crouch down. Roxy slid into it on her many legs with no trouble at all.
“Scoot over, you two!” called Slimer. He crammed himself against the hole. Most of his head squeezed into it, but the rest of him was just too big.
“I don’t think you’re going to fit,” Max told him.
Slimer’s eyestalks wobbled as he strained at the opening. “You can’t give up that easily! Young people these days have no backbone, that’s the trouble.”
“I’m the only one here who does have a backbone,” Max muttered. “One of you is a mollusk and the other one’s an arthropod!”
Slimer pulled his head out. “I’m going to try going in shell-first,” he said. “We’ll get there in the end, don’t worry.”
Roxy hid her eyes. “I can’t watch. Tell me when it’s over.”
Max backed away down the tunnel. The pointy tip of Slimer’s huge shell appeared. It slowly advanced on them, filling more and more of the tunnel, until—with a dramatic crunch—it got stuck.
“Hello?” came Slimer’s muffled voice. “Are you still there?”
“Yes!” Max shouted.
“I think we need a change of plan,” Slimer said.
“Right,” Max said.
“I’ll stay here and guard the cavern,” Slimer called
, “and you two go on without me.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” said Max. He grinned at Roxy.
“Good luck. I’ll guard this place with my life!”
Max and Roxy hurried down the passageway. Max felt sad to be leaving Slimer, but he knew that having him guard the entrance to the tunnel would keep him and Roxy safe.
The tunnel snaked through rock and earth, under fronds of hanging roots and around bulging masses of flint, until it came to a short, steep upward slope. Max was about to climb it when he heard a low, hissing voice uttering faint words.
Reptiles! he thought, suddenly alert. He held up his hand, signaling for Roxy to stop, and pulled himself a little way up the slope so he could peek over the edge.
Down on the other side was a bowl-like cavern, with pools of water dotting the floor. Greenish-white spots of fungus that gave off a dim and eerie light had formed on the walls. More bioluminescence, Max thought. It happened in the fungus kingdom as well as the animal.
The light was faint, but it was enough for Max to see the creatures that had spoken. He held his breath. Three snakelike beasts with tiny, clawed forelegs were huddled together next to one of the pools, drinking from it in little sips and talking to one another.
“Worm lizards,” he whispered over his shoulder to Roxy. He recognized one of them as having snatched Glower. “Three of them.”
“Can you hear what they’re saying?” she asked.
“Not from here. We need to get closer.”
“But they’ll see us coming!”
Max saw what Roxy meant. The light from her body would be visible all the way across the cavern. Nobody would mistake the millipede for a glowing fungus.
He pulled his hoodie off—it was still damp from Slimer’s slime—and draped it over Roxy. He tucked the hood down over her head and tried not to laugh at how strange she looked.
“That ought to do it,” he said. “Don’t move too quickly or it’ll fall off.”