I could sense a dozen guns pointed in my direction, a dry wind whistling down their barrels. Rope was tossed over my torso and then tossed again. In less than a minute, they had me bound and gagged.
“Wait!” Lear screamed, sprinting down the street. “She’s not the bad guy!” He pointed to the mob. “They are. They were going to burn her for no reason.”
“That so?” General Spillane said.
My whole being started to glow, but it didn’t last long. Lear still didn’t know what I’d done to Calvin. Before I could set Lear straight, a garbled voice came out of the general’s walkie-talkie, so loud and staticky I couldn’t understand a word. The general lifted it to his cheek. “Spillane here.”
The screaming over the walkie-talkie continued, indecipherable.
“If this is a joke I will use your tongue to plug your other end,” he said, stomping off.
I met Lear’s eyes. The people of Pennybrooke were frozen around us, waiting for the general’s next command.
“I hurt Calvin, Lear,” I said. “I flicked his forehead.”
Lear’s eyes didn’t leave mine. His forehead wrinkled up. “Did you mean to?”
Tears flooded my eyes. My chest shook. “I was just trying to stop him from screaming.”
He placed his small hand on my cheek. “I believe you, Phoebe.”
The general marched back in as quickly as he had exited. His mouth was set as tight as a sprung bear trap. He shook his head at me. “And here I am with a G. D. giantess who can’t get a toe scrape without turning on the waterworks.”
“What’s happening?” Mr. Marple said.
The general glanced around at the crowd. “We might need to evacuate the town.”
Everyone gasped.
“Why?” someone asked.
“Ants,” he muttered. “Big ones. Whole army of ’em, headed from the north.”
Everyone started to panic. I’d have leapt up myself if it weren’t for all the guns pointed at my head. In the sky, Daddy’s eyes weren’t looking at me anymore. They were fixed on a wall of dust slowly rising on the horizon.
“Now, now,” General Spillane said, calmly holding up his hands. He gestured to his soldiers. “Just so happens you have one of the best platoons from the best army on God’s gray earth right here. We dealt with these ants in ’54. We’ll keep you safe.”
My mind raced. The ants were coming from the north. . . . That meant the Buried Lab had released them. But why? Because they heard me say I wasn’t going to terrorize Pennybrooke and they grew impatient. I remembered that single monsters no longer kept Daddy entertained. The giant ants might not be all the lab released.
“Let Phoebe go!” Lear said. “She can help fight the ants.”
No, I thought. Anything but that.
The thought gave me a crawly feeling under my skin. I had an image of a silhouette in the distance, struggling in an ant’s pincers. Katie.
“Ha!” the general said. “She may have arms the size of tree trunks, but I can tell she’s never fought a day in her life. That being said”—he gave my thigh a jiggle—“she does have a lot of meat on her. I might have a better idea.”
Lear turned pale. “What are you going to do?”
General Spillane laughed. “You’re keen on this girl, aren’t you, son? I guess her size makes you rethink the old myth that no one woman can satisfy a man. But trust me, this broad’s useless. Weeps at a paper cut. Hell, she can’t even fit in a kitchen anymore. Although, I guess with a broad that size, every outfit is going to be skimpy, eh? Heh-heh.”
Lear curled his fists. “This isn’t a time for jokes!”
The general stuck his nose to Lear’s like he was one of his soldiers. “You’re right. It isn’t. I’ve got an entire town to save, and I’m not going to send some girl who blew up like a balloon and could pop just as easy out to battle.” He turned to Mr. Marple. “You say she killed a kid?”
“Hurt him bad.”
“Well, that’s a monster in my book. In times of war you don’t have time for trials. You have to be judge, jury, and executioner. Only today the executioners have six legs and pincers.” The walkie-talkie started blathering again, and the general held it to his ear. “Well, that’s excellent news. Yes, thank you. Over and out.” He clipped the walkie-talkie back to his belt and clapped Lear on the shoulder. “Good news. The ants are headed straight toward the Indian reservation. That should slow ’em up for the evening, give us time to erect a barricade.”
“Bastard!” I heard Beth cry. “Those are people!”
The general thumbed his nose. “Wasn’t someone going to restrain that girl?”
“What do we do with this thing, sir?” a soldier called, holding up Frank.
“How’s it smell?” the general asked.
The soldier knelt and gave my comforter a sniff. “Like a fishnet left out in the sun, sir!”
“I’ll make the jokes around here, Sergeant. Toss it on the truck bed. The stench alone will draw the ants.” General Spillane jabbed me in the side. “Stand up, giantess. No need to waste my boys’ muscle with those tree-trunk gams of yours.”
I pushed myself up, wavered a bit on my feet, and coughed, but then found my balance. My pinkie toe throbbed, but the general was right, it wasn’t much worse than a paper cut.
“Look at that, boys!” the general said. “She don’t even need a leash! Let’s haul out!”
They loaded me onto a rig big enough to transport a house and threw a tarp over my face. The last thing I saw was Lear, drooping like a wet flower and gazing helplessly after me. As the truck pulled away, Pan-Cake barked, while the people of Pennybrooke remained oddly quiet, having avoided one giant disaster only to be met by the swarm of another.
When the soldiers whipped off the tarp, I found myself in an airplane hangar. The ceiling had large windows that looked out over an open sky. The moon cast squares of light across my body.
“Tell me, Phoebe,” the general said, stroking his chin, “how we gonna keep you from trying to escape tonight?”
My teeth chattered, thinking about the guns. “I—I won’t—”
“Hush now, I’m thinking. You’re going to try to get away once those ants start nibbling your earlobes, and there’s no telling how many bullets it would take to stop something your size.” He paced back and forth. “Hmm. Those arms are big enough they could rip a chain mount right out of concrete, and those legs are big enough to buckle that hangar door. . . .” He stopped walking and snapped. “Driggs, Foer, figure out a way to staple her hair to the floor. No better way to make a female behave. Get some rest, giantess. And don’t go growing any more on me, hear?”
• • •
And that’s how he left me: dressed in my two-piece on the cold concrete, wrists and ankles in chains, hair stapled to the floor. The scent of the desert and the occasional shriek of a bat came through the garage door, where a guard paced, throwing his long shadow across the garage.
I could barely move my fingertips. My blood felt frozen in my veins. It wasn’t just the cold. I was in shock. The impossible thing that happened to Ma was happening to me. I was locked up with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and wait to die. My scalp hurt so bad I almost wished for a straitjacket instead.
Tears trickled down the sides of my cheeks and pooled in my ears. I couldn’t keep crying like this. I had to escape. I had to rip out my own hair.
I lifted my head, scalp stinging as I strained against the staples. I pulled so hard I saw white. The staples didn’t budge.
“Stop moving!” the guard yelled.
I let my head fall back on the concrete and continued to weep. It was only a matter of time before the ants reached the hangar. I could hear them rumbling like thunder on the horizon. I imagined their manic pincers going at my legs like chainsaws, their rolling eyes and scrabbling legs and twitching antennae wriggling higher and higher and higher on my body until . . .
In the corner of my eye I saw Frank, the comforter Creation, twitch
then bend upward like a slug. I tried to turn my head, but felt a sharp tug behind my ear from the staples. A figure freed itself from the comforter and then crawled on all fours across the hangar and slipped under my hair.
My breath quickened. I didn’t know what I was waiting for: a comforting voice or a bullet to the brain. Then, small warm hands pressed against my neck.
“Phoebe,” a voice whispered.
I nearly sobbed in relief. Beth.
“Don’t talk,” she said. “And hold still.” Snip . . . snip . . . snip . . . I felt a slice through my hair. “I only have my sewing scissors, so this is gonna take a while. . . .”
I gave a slight nod. Just so long as she freed me before the army of ants arrived.
Snip . . . snip . . . snip . . .
Beth cut and whispered, “As soon as Principal Toll heard the general say he was judge, jury, and executioner, he let me go. Guess he learned a thing or two about the military today. They find any excuse to do what they want, when they want.” Snip . . . snip . . . snip . . . “Once the soldiers tossed Frank onto the truck bed, I hid inside it.”
I wanted to sob in relief, but I didn’t want to draw the guard’s attention.
“Phoebe,” Beth whispered. “Listen to me. Once you’re free, we’re going to go help the people of Gray Rock.”
“We’re what?” I whispered.
“Quiet!” the guard at the garage door said.
Beth’s snipping fell silent.
“It was just a cough,” I said to the guard.
He grunted and continued to pace.
Beth kept cutting, speaking more softly. “You heard what the general said. He’s going to let them die. The ants will tear right through their homes and then through the Navajo people.”
My pulse pounded in my ears so loud, I could barely hear her words. When we escaped, we were going to move toward the ants? That went against every instinct I had. I’d only ever run away from Shivers.
“I can’t,” I said, barely lending breath to my moving lips.
“Who else is going to help them?” Beth said. “Not the army.”
Snip . . . snip . . . snip . . .
All of a sudden that snipping didn’t sound like my freedom. It sounded like my death.
“But . . . but . . .”
“Just pretend you’re in a movie,” Beth said.
Through the hangar ceiling I could see Daddy had returned to his La-Z-Boy and was cracking open a beer. It was eerie how on the nose Beth was.
“What do you mean?” I mouthed.
“You ever been in a theater and felt like yelling at the people on the screen? ‘Kiss her! Punch him! Don’t go in there!’ ”
I’d had lots of thoughts like that while reading Lear’s comic. Run! He isn’t your dad anymore! Get out of the house while you still can! Why was it when you’re in a real-life emergency situation, you do all the things that would make you yell at the screen?
Snip . . . snip . . . snip . . .
Because we don’t want to believe that evil exists—that there is no monster actually lurking in the shadows. We check the basement to calm our beating hearts. We want to believe that the people in our lives are good so we trust them, even if all signs say they’ve transformed into a vampire. We want to believe our moms would never lie to us, that our half sisters would never zap us with gamma rays.
Snip . . . snip . . . snip . . .
“Whatever you would yell at yourself if you were in a movie right now,” Beth said, “that’s what you should do.”
Here’s what I wanted to do: I wanted to run out into the desert and dig up Ma. I wanted to use the room of charcoal pyramids to shrink myself back to normal size. And then I wanted to return to life the way it was before. Moving from motel to motel felt like a breeze compared to the last couple weeks.
But as for what I would yell at myself if I was watching this, what I should do . . . I didn’t know. I’d spent my life on the edge of a horror story. I’d always made it out before the darkness closed in, before the Shiver descended, and then I read about the aftermath in the news. But now I was inside a horror story that I could not run away from. I couldn’t turn off the TV, couldn’t close the comic book, I wouldn’t suddenly sit up with a gasp in bed, covered in sweat, and realize the whole thing had been a bad dream. The horror story had me. There was no getting out.
Tears spilled down my cheeks. “But what if it never ends?”
Beth squeezed my earlobe. “You have to believe it might someday.”
She didn’t understand. She didn’t know what it was like to have a dad who loved blood and guts and helpless women more than anything in the world and who held the remote control that could turn off the entire universe if life wasn’t horrifying enough.
“After we save the Navajo people,” Beth said, “we’re going to help save Pennybrooke.”
My head jerked up, and I felt hairs rip out of the back of my neck. I just managed not to grunt in pain. Why would I save the people of Pennybrooke? I remembered the women leering while the men poked and jiggled me. The Pennybrooke police were useless at best and perverted at worst, Marsh was willfully ignorant of how the world really worked, Calvin was a thief, Rhoda was a psychopath, Lear put his trust in his uncle and got me in this terrible position, and Beth was trying to get me to go on a suicide mission by attacking an army of giant ants.
Snip . . . snip . . . snip . . .
“What if I told you to stop cutting right now?” I whispered. “What if I told you I had no interest in saving the Navajo people? Or anyone?”
The snipping stopped. I could feel the heat coming off Beth’s face on the back of my neck.
“Do you mean it, Phoebe?”
I sniffed as if I did.
Did I?
I had to admit that my thoughts kept turning to what I hated about the people of Pennybrooke because I was terrified. No part of me believed that I could escape a platoon of soldiers, traverse a desert without a kiddie pool of food, and then defeat an army of giant ants. Like the general said, I’d never fought a day in my life. If I believed the people of Pennybrooke were truly despicable, I wouldn’t have to feel too bad about letting them die.
Beth opened and closed the scissors hesitantly, wondering if she should continue.
Whenever Ma and I reached a new town, she always trimmed my hair. And every time, she reminded me of the same thing. “Hair is power, Phoebe. It directs the eyes of men to wherever you want them to look, sure. But it also holds memories. Anytime you want to forget something, snip off a few inches. Your head will feel light as a feather, and you’ll swear it’s far too light to just be the hair missing. That’s how”—snip—“we leave”—snip—“our worries behind.” Snip snip. “Now how about bangs? This seems like a bangs sort of town, doesn’t it?”
Beth had cut straight down to my scalp. So many memories had been in that hair. Both bad and good. The flirtatious carny. Ma’s spattered nail polish. Officer Shelley touching my clavicle. Gladys mispronouncing “Nava-Joe.” Liz’s deceptive smile. Calvin’s head striking the pavement. Daddy’s eyes fixed right on me.
But that hair also held Katie singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” It held the boy with the sling accidentally touching my hand when we were picking up textbooks. It held Beth holding up my new top and Marsh laying a trembling hand on my shoulder and Lear curling up in my arms.
“Finish cutting,” I mouthed to Beth.
“Really?”
“Yes. Before I change my mind.”
The snipping redoubled.
Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.
My head grew lighter and soon I could move my neck back and forth, releasing the muscles. The feeling terrified me.
Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.
I wasn’t ready.
Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.
I didn’t care if my head was free or not. I wouldn’t have the courage to stand.
Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.
The lighter my head
felt, the more I pushed it into the floor. I couldn’t do this.
Snip. Snip. Sssssssnip!
“That’s it,” Beth whispered.
My hair wasn’t stapled to the floor anymore. I was free. I lifted my head a few inches off the ground and gave it a little shake.
“What now?” Beth whispered, out of breath.
Now she was the one who sounded terrified.
“Come where I can see you,” I whispered.
She crawled out from under my neck, away from the guard. I turned my head, and I smooched Beth right on the lips. Well, her whole face, really. She wiped away my saliva with her sleeve.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she said, smiling. “If this were a movie, I probably would have yelled for you to do that.”
I didn’t know if it was the happy memories of Pennybrooke or the prospect of being free or the promise of raiding food from the base’s mess hall, but I suddenly felt the opposite of terrified. A feeling surged from my bone marrow straight up through my skin.
“Crawl into my hand,” I whispered.
Beth did.
I closed my hand around Beth, like she was a doll, head sticking out the top, feet sticking out the bottom. She was a lot squishier than a doll though, so I kept my grip loose.
Still lying flat, I tilted my head so I could see the window on the far end of the hangar, opposite the wall with the door and the soldier. The window was open. And why wouldn’t it be? With my hair stapled to the floor, General Spillane thought he had me under control.
“Is the guard watching?” I mouthed toward Beth.
She squirmed around in my palm so she could see the garage door. “He’s looking down the hallway.”
Maybe if I slowly pulled up on the chains, I could work them out of the concrete. Then, if I quietly pushed my body along the floor, I could make it most of the way to the window before the soldier noticed.
I turned my wrist in circles to get a good grip on the chain. The soldier in the doorway heard the clinking and whirled around.
“What are you doing?” he called across the hangar.
Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower Page 18