Duane, Ruth, and Maria giggled at this.
“Do you guys like games?”
Maria and Ruth nodded. Duane rubbed his hands together excitedly.
“What are you doing?” I said, crouching. “We don’t have time for this.”
Lear quirked an eyebrow. “You haven’t spent much time with kids, have you?”
“How could you tell?” I said.
He ruffled Connor’s hair. “They’re going to be a lot more likely to follow instructions if they think this is a game. They also won’t cry or scream and draw attention to themselves.”
“Okay, sure. That makes sense.” I searched his face for traces of what just happened with his mom. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said, and turned back to the kids. “All right! This is just like hide-and-go-seek, except you have to hide for a very, very long time. We’re going to put you inside one of these houses, and—”
“Phoebe,” a croaked voice said behind me.
It was Marsh. He had a Bible under his arm and his face and collar were covered in ash, like he’d been digging through the burned remains of the church.
“What are you doing out here?” I said. “Why aren’t you in the roller rink with the rest?”
Marsh wrung his hands, as if trying to warm himself against the night. “They told me if I was interested in protecting monsters like you then I could remain out here with the ants.” He tremblingly reached into his collar and brought out a cross. “But I know that God will protect me against his own creatures.”
A warm feeling washed through my chest. I didn’t mention that these ants weren’t one of God’s plagues but my half sister’s.
“Who are these children?” Marsh asked.
I explained how they came here and why they weren’t allowed inside the rink either.
“Those monsters,” Marsh said.
I would have hugged him if I thought he wouldn’t hate it.
“Got it?” Lear asked the kids.
“Got it!” they shouted.
Lear scanned the street. “Now we just have to find a house with a shelter.”
“You won’t be going in any houses,” a new voice said. “He needs to be able to watch.”
Two figures stood in the middle of the street. Officers Graham and Shelley. They had their guns drawn.
“We have to hide these kids,” I said. “The ants are coming.”
Officer Shelley clicked his tongue. “We have word from the lab that the most interesting scenario is if you and those kids remain outside. Anything else will be too safe, and the big guy might get bored.”
“What big guy?” Marsh said. “What is he talking about? Phoebe?”
I ignored him. I wanted to grab the officers’ bodies and squeeze until all of their plant juice popped out of their eyeballs. But they thought just like the military. They had their guns trained on the kids instead of me.
“Where are we supposed to go?” I asked.
“Where else?” Officer Graham said.
He nodded toward the carnival.
With all of the lights turned out, with no rides rumbling and no kids screaming, the carnival felt more like a graveyard. The air smelled of popcorn and caramel apples and funnel cakes, but for the first time in weeks, I was too nervous to eat.
We walked past the empty game booths with milk bottles and balloons and checkerboard squares. Pan-Cake had stopped panting, as if she could sense the approaching evil but was too afraid to growl. Connor pressed his face into Lear’s side.
“Everything is so wide open,” Lear said quietly. “Where will be safe?”
Strange silhouettes rose around us against the starry night: the Ferris wheel, the merry-go-round, the big top tent holding Emperor Ook’s bones . . .
“Those are the three highest points,” I said, pointing to each. “The ants will have a tougher time reaching them up there.”
“The Ferris wheel,” Lear said. “The ants won’t be able to climb it. The bars are too thin and far apart.”
“Perhaps,” Marsh said hesitantly. He hitched Ruth higher in his arms, momentarily forgetting his hatred of being touched. “But we must not place all of our eggs in one basket.”
“They’re not eggs,” Lear said. “Are you guys eggs?”
“No!” Duane shouted.
“I, em, only mean that if the ants do manage to reach the top,” Marsh said, “we shall lose them all.”
Ruth sniffled, and he patted her back.
“But I’ll have an easier time protecting them if they’re all in one space,” I said. “Like the barricade around the roller rink, we—”
A chickering cut through the desert air. Ruth and Connor whimpered.
“They’re here,” Lear said, then stared up at me. “Make a decision.”
I had a flash of my arm caught in an ant’s mandibles and not being able to reach the kids in time. “We’ll split them up.” I looked at Marsh. “I hope you’re right.”
Without another word, I scooped up Duane and Manuelito and ran them to the Ferris wheel, placing them in the top gondola. Manuelito’s lip started to quiver.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” I whispered, trying to think of what Lear would say. “You guys ever squished bugs before?”
Duane nodded hesitantly while Manuelito quickly shook his head. Right. Eugene had told me that the Navajo people considered ants sacred.
“Er, um,” I said, “I’ll just make sure they don’t come near you.”
I felt a pat on my foot. “Put me up there!” Lear called.
He was holding a basket of baseballs from one of the carnival games.
I scooped him and the baseballs up and set him inside the gondola. Duane immediately grabbed a ball.
“Phoebe,” Lear said, before I turned to go.
“Yeah?”
“Good luck.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Luck . . . Thank you.”
I tried to smile and then ran back to Marsh, who was saying a prayer over Ruth, Maria, and Connor.
“There’s no time for that,” I said.
Marsh brushed off his knees. “I was searching for guidance. The top of the merry-go-round is slanted,” he said, pointing. “You cannot put the kids up there. They will slide right off.”
My heart pounded in my throat. “Where, then?”
He went to the strength tester and hefted the sledgehammer used to strike the sensor to make a weight fly up and hit the bell at the top.
“ ‘A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed,’” he whispered to himself. Then, “Put Ruth by the bell. I will remain down here.”
The tower didn’t seem as secure as the other hiding places, but it was a sight higher than anything else around. An ant would be able to reach up and pluck a kid right off the roof of any of these booths.
Next I looked at Marsh’s arms, which had trouble hefting a big Bible, let alone swinging a sledgehammer.
“Are you sure you can keep her safe?” I said.
“God will work through me.” He stared at the ground. “And I have no regrets. Especially when it comes to you.”
I smiled at that.
I picked up Ruth and placed her on the high perch.
“Here,” I said, using my pinkie to delicately organize her trembling legs around the bell.
She sniffled, and I felt guilty leaving her all alone up there.
“I need you to take care of someone very special, okay?” I said.
She nodded, and I put Pan-Cake in her arms.
“Too bad I can’t zap Pan-Cake with gamma rays, huh?” I told Ruth. “She’d gobble up plenty of ants. Or lick them until they ran away, at least.”
Ruth gave a smirk, and Pan-Cake gave her a tiny lick on the cheek.
“Now hold on tight,” I said to the girl. “Hide-and-seek will be over before you know it.”
I scooped up Maria and Connor and ran toward the towering tent that sat on the border between the desert and the carnival. The bottom was staked
to the sand to prevent people from sneaking a free peek. But that didn’t mean ants’ mandibles wouldn’t saw right through the tent’s material. I ducked into the large entrance flaps.
“Hello, Ook,” I said.
The skeleton of the giant gorilla had always seemed bigger than life in the past. But now here he was, only a few feet taller than me.
Connor started to wail at the sight of the grinning simian skull.
“No, no, shh, it’s okay,” I said. “This is an old friend of my mom’s.” I placed Maria in Ook’s right eye socket. “He may look like a monster, but he was very gentle, like me.” I placed Connor in the left. “He just wanted someone to love, but because he was so big and hairy, he couldn’t help but scare people. He was very misunderstood.”
The two kids stared at me out of the shadows of Ook’s skull.
“He’s going to keep you safe tonight,” I said.
Maria patted the side of her socket. “Thank you, Ook.”
I pressed my finger to my lips to tell her to keep quiet, and I stepped outside of the tent. It was only then that I let my face crumple. Oh, please don’t let me end up like Ook’s skeleton tonight—my skin and muscle stripped from my bone, my eyes chewed out of their sockets.
The cloud of dust was covering the moon now. The ants were coming, like a black razor across the desert. I suddenly felt unequipped, like I was headed into battle naked. I wished Eugene was there to perch on my shoulder and tell me how the ants moved, how they thought, how to deter them from Pennybrooke. The only way I knew how to handle this was with violence.
Okay.
Stay away from their mandibles.
Don’t grab their legs.
Punch the eyes and stomp the skinny part in the back.
There came a great pop, and the carnival lights sparkled to life. The merry-go-round started to turn, filling the night with dizzying music. The officers must have turned the power back on.
“Heaven forbid you don’t see this,” I said, looking up at Daddy, who could barely contain his smile. “Just know I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for Ma. And for Beth.”
Before I was ready, the first line of the ants swept in, a wall of stabbing legs, working mandibles, and twitching antennae. When they were only a few yards away, I leapt into the air and came down with both feet onto the petioles of two ants, snapping them in half. Before the ants to either side had time to lash out, I hooked my good arm around the neck of one, swinging it up and over and crunching it onto the other. I stomped forward, left and then right, separating the abdomens of two more.
An ant lunged at me, its mandibles nearly piercing me through the stomach, but I stepped back in the nick of time, grabbed hold of its antennae, and yanked upward. They popped out of its head, and the ant scrabbled away, bumping into other ants, as senseless as an antennae-less TV. This was much easier than stomping, so as a new line rushed in, I focused on the antennae, snatching them like flower stems, sending half a dozen scrabbling.
A hill of carapaces was built up around me now, making a sort of foxhole over which I could snag antennae while keeping my legs and torso protected. Soon I found I didn’t even have to pluck out both antennae. I could just rip out one and send the ant scurrying in circles.
My lungs were on fire. My feet were bruised. My palms were burning from tearing out antennae. But I felt alive. What would Ma say if she could see me then? Her daughter, Empress Ook, standing amid a pile of monster corpses. After I rescued her, I’d describe the scene, and she could tell me what she thought herself.
I had a good thing going, a wall of ant bodies to protect me and a way to defeat the ants without having to crack through their exoskeletons. But then I heard a faint cry from across the carnival.
“Phoebe!”
I peeked over my barricade of carapaces. The Ferris wheel was alight and spinning, the gondola holding Lear and two of the boys slowly descending toward the lashing mandibles. Officer Graham was working the controls, calmly, as if he were off duty, volunteering at the carnival. The ants paid him no attention.
How was I going to get through that many ants and reach them? I needed a weapon . . . I leapt over the ant barricade and, skipping along the backs of ants, slipped into Ook’s tent and yanked the skeleton’s lengthy humerus free from the frame.
“You guys okay?” I said to the kids in Ook’s sockets. “Yes? Good.”
I burst out of the tent flap, and sprinted to the Ferris wheel.
“Sorry,” I said to Officer Graham, or what used to be him, as I smashed him with the humerus in a juicy splatter.
I tried to work the Ferris wheel’s tiny controls, but the lever snapped off in my giant fingernails. The wheel kept turning, bringing Lear and the kids closer and closer to the shrieking, salivating ants.
Bullets may ricochet off exoskeletons, but Ook’s arm bone smashed straight through their heads. KRNCH! SKLRCH! SKSH! I beat a path to the wheel and then seized the two rotating metallic circles and brought the whole thing to a screeching halt. An ant clamped onto my calf with its pincers. Another clamped onto my thigh. I screamed through the pain as I used every ounce of my strength to rotate the Ferris wheel upward. Finally Lear’s gondola came to a swinging stop at the top.
I grabbed the nearest empty gondola, plucking it off the wheel, and brought it crashing down, caving in the head of one ant and then the other, bringing cold relief to my legs.
A baseball hit me in the forehead.
“Sorry!” Duane shouted.
I worked my way back toward the tent, swinging Ook’s forearm, crunching ants, while snapping antennae with my free hand. Soon, I wasn’t thinking about the killing. I was thinking about the lives behind me.
KRNCH! I saved Lear.
SKRSH! I saved Marsh.
SPTTT! I saved Calvin.
SHLLK! BLLK! PSHT! FLLP! GRRSH! I saved Maria and Duane and Manuelito and Connor and Ruth.
I was starting to get the hang of things, even almost enjoying myself, when one of the ants reared its head and caught Ook’s humerus between its mandibles.
“Give it back!” I screamed, pulling as hard as I could.
But the ant’s jaws were as fixed as cement. I was kicking ants off me left and right, trying to get the bone back, when I heard another scream, this one from a kid.
Without letting go of the bone, I looked over my shoulder. Near the test of strength, several ants hobbled, their legs snapped by the sledgehammer. But Marsh was nowhere in sight. Officer Shelley had the hammer now and was laughing maniacally while he brought it smashing down onto the sensor, sending the weight careening upward and striking the bell, rattling Ruth, who dangled from the top of the tower by her legs, crying and just managing to cling on to Pan-Cake.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
Officer Shelley had hoisted the sledgehammer over his head for the final blow when I snatched him up and squeezed him to death, plant juice popping out of his mouth and eyeballs. I heard a yipe and my hand darted out and caught Pan-Cake just as she fell from Ruth’s hands. I readjusted the poor dangling child, setting her back on top of the bell.
“Wow, you’re really good at following instructions!” I said in a bright voice, like she hadn’t almost died. “Where’s the reverend?”
Ruth just sobbed and clung on to the bell. I handed Pan-Cake back to her, and the girl buried her face in her white fur.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to sound soothing. “The bad man is dead. He won’t try to knock you down anymore. Did you see what happened to the reverend?”
She pointed a shaky finger. Near the darts game was a circle of ants feasting on something. I ran and leapt. The weight of my feet crunched straight through two of their heads. I shook the gooey heads off my feet while snapping the antennae of the two others.
And then saw a sight I didn’t want to see: Reverend Marsh all in pieces.
Numb, I knelt and quickly dug a hole with my hand.
“Thank you for making me feel protected d
espite my mom’s wantonness,” I said, scooping sand over his body and watering it with a giant tear. “And for taking care of all the gross stuff without ever complaining. I’m sorry I don’t have more time.”
I could barely catch my breath before sprinting back to Ook’s tent.
The tent had been ripped open, the tattered material dangling from the wooden frame. There were no screams coming from inside. I killed the ants outside and then tore away what remained of the tent, shining moonlight onto the skeleton inside. An ant had scaled Ook’s ribs like a ladder. Its two pincers were working furiously inside of the skull’s eye sockets. I grabbed the ant and broke it over my knee, discarding its body.
Maria, in the right socket, held her arms out to me, lip trembling. I took her and placed her on my shoulder. The other socket was silent. I reached inside with my pointer finger and felt a small body, warm and wet.
I delicately pulled Connor out. He was alive. Barely. His stomach had been sawn open by the ant’s pincer. He was having a hard time catching his breath. His glazed-over eyes twinkled with circus lights. He tried to hold his blood inside of him, but his arms were too weak. The world wavered in my tears.
This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. Why did I become a giantess if I wasn’t able to save people? I had a chance to be bigger than myself, like Beth said. I could become a superhero, just like the ones in Lear’s comic books. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
Maria squeezed my earlobe and whispered, “Is he dying?”
“Um—” My breath caught. “No. We’re going to get him to a hospital.”
But the hospital would be abandoned, and there were hundreds of ants between it and us.
“You just keep breathing,” I told Connor. His eyes couldn’t focus on me. “You hear me? Just keep—”
My voice caught in my throat. I held the small, bleeding child and looked around, helpless. A new wave of ants were sweeping in from the desert. So far, I had killed, what, a few dozen? If that? I was beaten and exhausted. And according to the general, hundreds more were on their way. I couldn’t make myself fight to the death like Ook could. I just couldn’t.
Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower Page 21