“Where are we?” Todrus asked, surveying the land.
“Not where we want to be,” Gibiwink answered.
The group looked around. A wall of shrubbery boxed them in. It was thirty feet high, thick with roots, thorns and tubers, and seemed to extend a very great distance. And because this greenery was so densely packed, squeezing through its undergrowth was out of the question. Luckily, a path threaded the bracken, only it didn’t seem to lead in any one direction.
“Where to?” Adelaide asked.
“The swamp lies that way,” the Stranger said, gesturing right, “but we’ll have to escape this vegetation first.”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” Lewis said. “If we follow this path, it will lead us out eventually. And once we’re in the open, we can take things from there.”
The others agreed. With Todrus walking in front of them, so his broad shoulders would widen the path, they wandered off.
It wasn’t easy. The path was pinched and narrow in places and full of turns and abrupt dead ends. Short of marking their course at every step, it was impossible to tell which way they were headed. And the ground was littered with roots and hollows that tripped them up at every turn, while an abundance of thorns tore at them relentlessly. Their Heliform patches were soon ripped to pieces. The growth, too, was so heavy in places that the sky’s grey light could barely shine through.
“Look at that!” Gibiwink cried, spying something peculiar a few feet off the path. A thousand roots had swarmed together and overwhelmed some object at their centre.
“It’s as if those shrubs were on the attack,” Todrus mused. “Of course, that’s impossible …”
“It’s creepy,” Adelaide panted. “I’ll be glad when we’ve put this obstacle behind us.”
“The Bombardier wanders in a maze,” Alfonse remarked. “He’s trapped in it for days and learns — ow!”
Adelaide had smacked him from behind.
They slogged on for another two hours. The path was endless. In fact, it seemed to narrow with each passing step. Everyone was sweating, and their knees were scraped raw. The dull grey sky was hopelessly distant. It was then, when their spirits couldn’t sink any lower, that they spied a second tangle of roots, only this time it was set upon the path itself.
A flipper, much like Gibiwink’s, projected from its middle. It was knotted with tendrils, but they recognized it still.
“How awful!” Gibiwink cried. “What happened to this frog?”
Todrus gulped. “Who knows? Let’s bury him at least.” That said, he grasped the flipper and tried to yank the body free. It was useless. Even when Gibiwink helped him, it was like trying to uproot a full-grown tree from the soil.
Everyone felt anxious. They had been walking forever, they were making no progress, and now this corpse was blocking their path. The one encouraging point, Lewis observed, was that a modest clearing stood a few yards off. Realizing his friends could do with a rest, he suggested they fix themselves a snack in this spot. Everyone thought that was a great idea.
They hurried to the clearing, sprayed some shrubs with their transformers, and sat down to a meal of goop. They tried not to think about the corpse nearby.
“This transformer’s amazing,” Gibiwink raved, savouring the food. “I wonder why Grumpel never sold it in stores. I mean, think how people’s lives would improve.”
“’Oo wou’n’t nee’ a frid’e o’ stov’,” Alfonse said with his mouth half full.
“And no one would go hungry,” Adelaide added. “Too bad he didn’t share this discovery with the world.”
“He couldn’t afford to,” Todrus observed.
“Why’s that?” Lewis asked, intrigued by this statement.
“These aren’t regular transformations,” the frog replied. “And the chemicals that trigger them must be very rare. For years Grumpel has been selling his inventions as if these chemicals would last forever, whereas now I suspect his supplies are running low. He’s a like a fancy tailor who’s used up all his silk.”
“I see …” Lewis said, his head exploding with questions. If Grumpel was running short of supplies, was that why all his factories had closed except the one in New York City? And if his chemicals were as rare as Todrus said, where had Grumpel found them to begin with? Were they somehow connected to the lock in Yellow Swamp? But why would he hide them in northern Alberta?
“Oh, my gosh!” Adelaide cried, pointing at her feet.
While she had been eating, a root had grabbed her calf. As it pinned her leg, several more sprouted up. And roots were entangling the others, as well.
“Get up everyone!” Todrus yelled. “We’re under attack!”
The group obeyed, or tried to at least. Gibiwink and the Stranger tore themselves loose, but the children had a tougher time. Lewis shoved his legs sideways, cut the roots’ pressure, and managed to twist himself free. But Adelaide needed help from the Stranger, while Alfonse was almost hopelessly trapped. His legs had been lassoed by a massive tuber, and if the frogs hadn’t rescued him, he would have been finished. Once he was free, the tuber lunged again until Gibiwink knocked it cold with his flipper.
“Now we know what happened to that frog,” Todrus gasped.
“What do you mean?” Lewis asked as the group dodged a crowd of flailing tendrils.
“These shrubs are part of one huge plant maze. The creatures inside it are forced to wander, eventually tire, and lie down to rest. At that stage —”
“The roots grab them and digest their flesh,” Lewis finished.
Adelaide shuddered. “That’s horrible!”
“And at the same time brilliant,” Todrus proclaimed. “This strategy allows the plant to hunt down moving creatures.”
“So how do we escape?” Gibiwink asked.
“When The Bombardier’s inside that maze,” Alfonse said, “he starts a fire and burns it to cinders. That’s what we should do. In fact …” He opened his manual and pointed to an entry. It was a recipe for a fire grenade — two drops of methylalienacrystallin, a pinch of alienahomygene, and a milligram tablet of carboalienaphophoril. After thirty seconds, the mixture would explode.
“I guess that’s a good idea,” Lewis said reluctantly. He was anxious to escape, but explosives made him nervous.
“It’s a great idea,” Alfonse insisted. Without further ado, he rummaged in his belt as the frogs assembled a “mixing base.” They had to wrestle several roots as they gathered a few loose shrubs together.
“Hurry!” Todrus yelled. “This plant’s growing bolder!”
“Wait a second!” Adelaide cried, examining her booklet. “It says this grenade will create a cloud of pheromones.”
“What’s a pheromone?” Gibiwink asked, whacking a tuber.
“It’s a chemical,” Todrus explained, “that animals produce —”
“Never mind!” Alfonse shouted. “We’ve got to escape!”
“But it warns,” Adelaide continued, “that these pheromones might attract certain insects.”
“Make the grenade!” Gibiwink roared, banging two large roots together.
“Get ready!” Alfonse called as he prepared the mixture. When he added the alienahomygene, the shrubs started smoking like a giant cigar.
“One, two, three …” he counted.
“Uggh! That smells terrible!” Adelaide gasped, dodging a creeper that lashed at her heels.
“Hurry!” Todrus urged Alfonse as a python-size root reared up from the soil.
“Eleven, twelve, thirteen …”
“Watch out!” the Stranger warned, saving Lewis from a tuber.
“Thanks,” Lewis said, looking into its eye. For an instant he spotted something vaguely familiar. Before he could puzzle this out, a faint buzzing intruded.
“Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three …”
“What’s that?” Adelaide asked, cocking an ear.
“Who cares? Throw the grenade!” Todrus yelled. A sprawling three-pronged sprout was out to get him.
Some seconds passed before they opened their eyes. One after another they raised a cheer: the blast had blown a gaping hole in the plant, and a plain was visible beyond the scorched vegetation.
“We’ve done it!” Alfonse whooped. “The plant’s been busted open!”
“Let’s get out of here!” Todrus cried, motioning to a charred root that was starting to jiggle.
Following his lead, the travellers hurtled past the hole and didn’t stop running until they had covered a mile, and even then they stared at the ground in suspicion. Alfonse flinched at one point — a severed root was on his back — but bit by bit they began to relax.
They fell to the ground, panting. After their trek underground and their walk through the maze, they were in desperate need of a rest. They were about to close their eyes, in fact, when again a distant buzzing reached Adelaide’s ears.
“What’s that sound?” she asked. “I heard it when the grenade was smoking.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Alfonse muttered. “Let’s get some rest.”
“It’s off-key,” she insisted, “and it’s getting closer”
Alfonse glowered. “Never mind! Everyone’s tired.”
Even as he spoke, a bulbous shape zipped by. It moved so quickly that no one caught a good look. Gibiwink, however, claimed he had spotted its eyes and said they were huge and split into sections, as if they were covered with window screening.
“Those sound like the eyes on a fly,” Todrus murmured.
“The pheromones must have attracted it,” Adelaide added.
The group exchanged looks of disgust — even the frogs, who had eaten plenty of flies in their time.
“It’s coming back,” Adelaide warned. “Can you hear its off-key buzzing?”
“Who cares?” Alfonse sneered. “All I know is that fly’s bugging me. If it comes any closer, it’s going to regret it!”
No sooner had he spoken than the insect returned. And instead of zinging by, it alighted on a nearby patch of earth and filled the air with the smell of rotting garbage. Lewis shivered slightly. It was three feet long and a foot and a half wide. Its surface bristled with a million hairs, each as black and shiny as oil, while its wings twitched with inhuman speed, striking up a string of notes, all of them off-key. Its eyes reflected the group a hundred times over.
The worst part was the creature’s clippers. They were five inches long and looked a lot like scissors.
“That’s no ordinary fly,” Gibiwink whispered. “That’s —”
“A black fly!” Adelaide broke in. “Only a thousand times bigger!”
Todrus whistled. “And its clippers mean business.”
“It’s still just a fly,” Alfonse scoffed. “I’ll teach it not to pester us!” He lifted a clod of earth. Before the group could stop him, he hit the fly head-on. With bits of soil clinging to its hairs, the fly took wing, wobbling slightly. Alfonse laughed. “Did you see that? It won’t be back in a hurry!”
“That was stupid,” Adelaide said. “It didn’t look happy.”
“When my family camped here two summers ago,” Lewis said, “it was near the end of the black fly season. For the first couple of days they almost drove us crazy.”
“Listen!” Todrus cried, motioning them to silence. As the group fell quiet, they heard an off-key whine, one that filled the sky from top to bottom, as if an orchestra were playing but its instruments weren’t tuned. At the same time a black cloud was taking shape in the distance and making its way toward the group. Within seconds it covered the sky above them.
“I … I don’t like this!” Adelaide stammered.
As the cloud hovered a hundred feet away, a single fly descended and alighted on a stone. By the earth in its hairs, they knew it was the fly from before. The group waved and signalled their apologies, but it sped off with a twist of its wings, as if to say the shoe was on the other foot. The buzzing became a thousand times louder.
“What a smell!” Gibiwink yelled, covering his nose.
“Never mind that!” Todrus screamed, thrusting Alfonse and Adelaide behind him. He would have sheltered Lewis, too, but the Stranger had grabbed him and had its tentacles upraised. “They’re about to attack! Get ready to fight!”
On its first swoop the swarm knocked the friends off their feet. In addition to the smell and clacking clippers, there was the awful racket to deal with.
Even on his back, Todrus lashed out at the flies, forcing five to veer off course and smash into their neighbours, until thirty of them wound up crashing to earth. Gibiwink clobbered two, as well, and the Stranger bagged another.
“They mean to kill us!” Todrus hollered as the swarm backed off for a moment. “Find some concoction that will chase them away!”
“There’s no recipe for bug spray!” Lewis cried. “I searched for it earlier!”
The flies swooped again. Although they didn’t quite hit anyone, they drove the group crazy with their off-key buzzing. The frogs and Stranger punched away, Adelaide and Alfonse tossed clods of earth, and Lewis continued to flip madly through his book’s index.
“There’s nothing here!” he shouted.
The third pass was worse. The frogs scored a couple of strikes but got wounded in turn. Gibiwink took a bite on the shoulder, and Todrus’s skull was repeatedly knocked. The Stranger, too, didn’t get off easy — two of its tentacles were nicked all over. One fly threatened Adelaide, but Alfonse stepped in. Leaping onto the insect’s back, he poked its eyes and hammered it all over. Abandoning Adelaide, it soared into the swarm … with Alfonse clutching it still.
“Jump!” Adelaide called to him.
“I’m too high!” he cried faintly, “and my Heliform patch is gone!”
“Alfonse!” Adelaide screamed again in a high, near-deafening tone.
Alfonse didn’t answer. He was lost in the swarm.
But it was odd. The flies were at a momentary standstill. They had been about to strike again but were suddenly dazed and twitching all over … until the last of Adelaide’s shrieks died off. Seconds later their confidence returned, and they pressed in for the kill, more aggressively than ever.
A thought struck Lewis. “Adelaide! Start singing!”
“What?”
“Start singing! They can’t stand perfect notes! That’s what rattled them when you screamed just now! Start singing quickly. Any song will do!”
A hundred flies were hounding Todrus. Gibiwink was on his back, beating back a dozen clippers. The Stranger, too, was fading fast. With a look of fear, Adelaide sang out.
It was a song by Johann Sebastian Bach — her favourite composer. Although the words were in German and the situation was desperate, Lewis thought it was beautiful. More to the point, it was very effective. As soon as the flies caught wind of the notes, their buzzing grew faint and they abandoned the group. Seeing this, Adelaide straightened herself. She repeated the song in a clear, flawless voice that cut through the swarm and its awful aroma, penetrating straight to the heavens.
The group eyed Adelaide with newfound respect — they hadn’t known she could sing with such power — but the flies themselves were only disgusted. Their one thought was to escape the awful noise. Moving as one, they raced toward the horizon, vanishing as quickly as they had appeared.
But the ordeal wasn’t over. As soon as the flies’ last echo had died, the group moved forward across the grassy plain. Lewis and Adelaide were noticeably distressed.
“Alfonse!” they called.
The plain was enormous, so the group split up. Long minutes passed as they scoured the terrain, ignoring th
e dead flies littering the landscape. The air kept ringing with shouts of “Alfonse!” and Lewis grew frantic as his friend failed to answer. Had the flies taken him prisoner? Would they hurt him in revenge for the defeat they had suffered?
“Over here!” Adelaide called from a hundred yards off. “Over here!” she repeated in a muted voice.
Charging to her side, Lewis saw that her face was frozen over. She was standing over something … no, that object was Alfonse, only his body seemed so tiny and was strangely motionless. And the earth surrounding him was soaked with blood.
Blood? No! That couldn’t be! In their manuals they would find —
“We’re too late!” Adelaide wailed. “My brother’s dead!”
CHAPTER 13
Lewis was paralyzed. Adelaide’s words had turned his legs to stone. In a trance he watched as Todrus took Alfonse’s pulse, shook his head sadly, and confirmed the heart had stopped beating. It wasn’t possible. How could this have happened to Alfonse? For sure he was pretending and would jump up soon to blurt out something about The Bombardier.
But he didn’t move a muscle. His face was pale and empty.
“He can’t be dead!” Adelaide bawled. “I always insulted him because of his size, yet he died protecting me! I’m so ashamed!”
Lewis wanted to say he was sorry, but he couldn’t blink or bend his fingers. The Stranger stared at the soil, and Gibiwink kept saying it was all his fault, that he should have done a better job of protecting Alfonse. Todrus leaned over the body and examined it closely. A flash of silver appeared in his flipper.
“What now?” the Stranger murmured. “We can’t leave him like this.”
“What do you mean?” Interrupting her sobs, Adelaide glared at the creature.
“We have to keep moving. Those flies might return. That means we either carry Alfonse, or … well … I’m sorry … we bury him here.”
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