His bones did not break, but the seat belt snapped.
The fly ripped him from the cab of the dump truck and carried him high into the air.
“Aaaaagh!” the governor wailed. “I’m a gonner!”
Chapter 18
SUPERFLIES
When the odds are overwhelming, the wise man retreats, neither in haste nor fear,
but calmly and with all of the resolute fierceness of a warrior marching into combat.
—TSUN TZU
As Benjamin Ravenspell lunged, skewering a fly, he whirled and saw the governor’s legs lifting into the air.
Ben’s mom dropped the missile launcher, looking for another weapon. All that she had were the flyswatters. “I’m gonna need a bigger swatter!” she cried.
Trillions of flies blackened the sky; Ben knew they couldn’t fight them all. “Do something!” he shouted to Amber.
A huge shadow appeared just outside the passenger window. A bluebottle fly as big as a hippo roared in anger and ripped the passenger door from the car. Ben’s mom screamed in terror and grabbed for a fallen machine gun.
The fly lunged quicker than a blink and snatched Ben’s mom from the truck.
“Help!” she cried as the enormous fly lifted her into the air.
“Do something!” Ben shouted to Amber. More giant flies buzzed into view, surrounding the truck. They hovered in the air, peering through every smashed window, glaring into the cab. “Amber?”
“I did something!” Amber said. “Let’s get out of here!”
Ben froze in fear. He’d imagined that the only reason that one of the giant flies hadn’t eaten him was because he was sitting still or because he was so small. Now he realized that there was some kind of spell protecting him.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I made us invisible—” Amber said, “at least to flies. I just sort of wished that . . . they wouldn’t notice us!”
It was a small spell, Ben realized.
One superfly shouted, “Hey, everybody! Stop buzzing! I think I hear something in there.”
As one, the giant flies all landed, and little flies dropped too, covering the truck. The sound of buzzing faded to a distant hum. The flies looked into the truck, their enormous multifaceted eyes searching every corner. One big fly stuck out his mop and began licking the hood of the truck, as if tasting it, trying to get their scent.
The only sound was the blaring of the radio.
Ben’s heart pounded as the giant flies investigated the truck. He was afraid that they might have super-hearing and might hear his heart beating.
He was even more afraid for his mother. The giant flies had taken her, and he didn’t know where. It was up to him to save her. They’d taken the governor, too, but Ben didn’t care about that so much, even though he did like the movies the governor had starred in.
“I hear something,” a giant sand fly whispered. “There’s something in there. Something small . . .”
“It’s just the radio,” a buffalo-sized horsefly said.
A vast whitefly climbed into the back window. “I hear it, too!”
Ben stopped breathing, wishing that his heart would stop beating. Suddenly he heard a whining sound up above, and a pair of cruise missiles came shooting overhead. They landed a hundred yards away and sent off a pair of small fireballs casting a red glare. The explosion lifted the truck off the ground and left it rocking.
But it wasn’t the explosion that did the damage. Instead, a huge green gas cloud erupted where the missile had landed.
“Flee!” shouted a fly, and the superflies roared into the air, wings pounding, seeking to escape.
Dead and dying flies began to drop onto the truck, pinging down like volcanic ash. All around, Ben could hear the dying flies whimpering and bemoaning their fate.
Thank heaven for pesticides,
Ben thought.
From now on, I’m always going to keep a bottle of Raid handy.
More cruise missiles whined overhead, twenty or thirty of them, and began exploding in a wide spread. Ben suddenly remembered the huge bomb in the back of the truck. “We’d better get out of here,” he shouted to Amber, “before our bomb blows!”
Amber leapt out the door on the passenger’s side. Ben followed. It was a long drop, but his fall was cushioned by dead flies.
He looked down at the hundreds of varieties—the beautiful green-and-gold body of a long-legged fly, the frightening yellow-and-black stripes on a hoverfly, the humped back of a robber fly. There were so many colors and types, he was in awe, and many of them were surprisingly beautiful. He wasn’t sure if it was because they were wearing makeup or if he had just never noticed how pretty flies could be before.
Amber took a few hops. She picked up her front paws and stared at them in disgust. “I’m never going to want to groom again!” she said.
Ben felt the same. “Where to?” he asked.
“I think they took your mom that way!” Amber said, pointing off toward his left. “But if you want, we could just sneak out of here. That would be the safest thing to do.”
She gave him an odd sidelong look. Her brown eyes were glazed from weariness.
Does she really think that I’d leave my mom?
he wondered.
Of course not.
Yet he knew that Amber felt like he was abandoning her, and he wondered if the mouse was testing him, trying to see how true he could be.
“We can’t just sneak off and do nothing,” Ben reasoned. “We have to rescue my mom and Governor Shortzenbeggar.”
“Well, all right,” Amber said wearily. She sounded sick, as if she might faint. But she turned and led the way.
So the pair of mice raced along the road, deeper into enemy territory. The skies were a pitch black. It seemed that no matter how many flies were killed, more took their place.
* * *
Amber felt done in. Casting just one little spell had cost her dearly. She felt the wizard wearies coming on strong. Her tail felt as heavy as if it were made of lead, and her stomach was churning—sure signs that she’d overdone it.
She didn’t want to disappoint Ben, but she knew that she couldn’t cast another spell today. To do so might kill her.
She wondered if she could do that—cast a spell while knowing that she would sacrifice her life by doing so.
I could do it for Ben if I had to,
she told herself.
That would show him!
Maybe he’s the kind who could leave me in a pinch, but he’ll see that I’m not that kind of person.
She didn’t want to go deeper into fly territory. She felt so sick and terrified that she could barely keep from fainting.
Yet she managed to put one paw in front of the other, time after time, to keep on going.
An enormous explosion suddenly lifted Amber into the air, and the force of the blast tossed her forward. She glanced back behind her and saw an enormous fireball roaring up into the sky where the truck had been. A toxic cloud was shooting up like a mushroom, dark green in color. Amber gazed into the cloud and for an instant saw the image of a grinning skull. The Big Bug Bomb had exploded.
Ben raced up beside Amber. “Cover your nose!” he cried. “It’s not safe to breathe that stuff.”
So the two huddled together side by side, closed their eyes, and waited for the gas cloud to disperse.
“Oh, my gosh,” flies began to cry all around. “They’re using Diazinon! It’s the end of the world!”
The flies buzzed in anger and fear, and it seemed that the heavens were falling as millions and millions plummeted from the sky.
Is it too much to hope,
Amber wondered,
that one of these gas bombs or missiles killed Belle Z. Bug?
Yes, it did seem like too much to hope. Belle Z. Bug was a wizard, and a powerful one. It was going to take more than a little poison to get rid of her.
Amber opened her eyes just a bit. Dead flies littered the ground to a depth of a good six inches, and they were still raining down. Amber and Ben had to scurry in order to keep from getting buried. In some places, huge drifts of dead flies were building like snow in a blizzard.
But there was one sign of hope. The darkness in the skies had lessened, and now Amber could see the falling sun on the horizon, like a huge bloody eye.
Chapter 19
MANKIND’S LAST HOPE
A cousin of mine once fell into a pail of milk with some friends. His friends swam about for a time
but soon gave up and let themselves drown.
My cousin, however, kept kicking and fighting until after a few hours the cream on top of the pail began to turn to butter, and he was able to sit on it, regain his strength, and finally hop out.
From him I learned this lesson: never cease to struggle. Though your hope may be depleted and even desperation can no longer sway you, never cease to struggle.
—RUFUS FLYCATCHER
Governor Harold Shortzenbeggar struggled valiantly as the superfly bore him over the junkyard. He grabbed one of his captor’s arms and broke it, then bashed its eye with his fist, breaking a dozen facets. It felt like bashing his hand through some weird cardboard box coated with rubber.
“Hah,” the fly said, mocking his efforts. “I can still see you, loser!”
The fly socked the governor in the eye for good measure, and for a moment all that the governor could see were stars.
He heard cruise missiles whining below, and there were dozens of concussions as they dropped their payloads. Noxious gas rose up in clouds, but the giant superfly weaved between them, avoiding the danger zones.
“Oh, what a bad day I’m having!” the governor mourned.
It wasn’t easy to be a governor, but someone had to do it.
Why not me?
he told himself.
Why not the best man on earth?
Yet today, he wished that he had just stuck to making movies. Being a movie star was so much easier.
No,
he remembered.
No it wasn’t. There were those idiot directors making me repeat my lines over and over again, and those greedy movie studios always trying to steal my money, and the fans always begging for autographs.
I’d rather be here any day, fighting giant flies! Yes, this is the good life!
The fly had reached the top of the landfill and came in low, like a helicopter gunship cruising above a jungle.
Suddenly Governor Shortzenbeggar saw the enemy camp beneath him. There was a large boat down there—a small discarded yacht with a broken hull. It seemed to be sailing over a sea of junk. And on the deck he could see a knot of giant flies in a circle.
One large fly was speaking to the crowd.
That must be their leader,
he thought.
They’re taking me to their leader.
He pretended to faint, giving it his best Oscar-worthy performance. He let his eyes roll back in his head; his whole body slackened.
He still had one trick up his sleeve—or actually, tied to his belt. It was a hand grenade.
He thought,
If I can just get close, maybe I can lob it under their leader.
But he knew that his plan was dangerous. These flies were superhuman fast. If he tossed a grenade, they’d just leap into the air and buzz away.
I have to come up with a better plan,
he thought. Then an idea struck him.
Oh, I know! I won’t
throw
the grenade. I’ll just pull the pin and blow myself up along with the enemy!
It was a huge sacrifice, he knew, but sometimes a job required you to do a little extra.
Behind him, an enormous explosion ripped through the sky; a fireball lit up as the Big Bug Bomb went off. Beneath the glare from its giant green mushroom cloud, the giant flies stood for a moment in shock, gazing at the approaching death cloud.
The governor’s captor buzzed down to the group and hurled Harold Shortzenbeggar to the ground. “Grovel, human!” he commanded. “The almighty Belle Z. Bug demands respect.”
A huge fly strode forward, looking gorgeous in her mascara, eye shadow, lipstick, and various other forms of makeup. Her carapace was painted hot pink, but he could see that it wasn’t her natural color.
“So,” she said, glancing toward the spreading mushroom cloud, “I suppose that we have
you
to thank for all of this mayhem?”
“You’re going to thank me?” the governor said. “That’s a relief! I thought you would be mad!”
Belle Z. Bug chuckled dangerously. “One human—one measly human—killed millions of my followers.”
“Billions, maybe,” Harold Shortzenbeggar said, “if I’m lucky.” Very sneakily, he put his hands on his hips and pulled the pin on his grenade.
In forty seconds,
he thought,
we’re all going to get blown to smithereens.
An enormous fly buzzed in and tossed Mona Ravenspell onto the deck of the boat beside him.
“I stand corrected,” Belle Z. Bug said. “
Two
of you caused all of this trouble!”
“Leave her out of it,” the governor said. “She’s an innocent bystander. I always like to have a pretty girl at my side when I go roaring into combat.”
He stood for a moment, clenching the grenade in his fist.
“Is that right?” the fly asked Mona.
“I just came for my money,” she explained. “It was on the plane your flies stole!”
Belle spat. “Money? I don’t care too much for money. Money can’t buy me love.”
Well,
the governor thought,
I’ve got about twenty seconds now before we all die in a grisly explosion. But I have to wonder: is it fair for me to kill Mona Ravenspell, too?
I mean, on the plus side, I would be killing the world’s most powerful and evil fly. But on the minus side, I’d be killing an innocent woman.
How would that look in the newspapers tomorrow? What if the paparazzi get photos? It would certainly mar my reputation.
I think I’m about down to five seconds now, and then this whole hilltop will be riddled with shrapnel . . .
Governor Shortzenbeggar hurled the grenade in a lightning-fast pitch, popping Belle Z. Bug right between the eyes. He screamed and threw himself on top of Mona Ravenspell, just to make sure she didn’t get hit by any shrapnel.
The monster fly groaned in pain, staggered a step, and then passed out on the ground. All of the superflies gasped in shock or roared in outrage. They stared at the live grenade. “Wow,” one of them said, “he just conked our boss on the head. I’m completely baffled! I mean, how does one respond to such an outrage!”
The governor looked at the grenade and thought,
You’re nowhere near as blown away as you’re going to be!
Mona Ravenspell struggled, trying to get out from under the governor. “Get off me, you brazen womanizer. I’m happily married!”
The governor counted in his mind:
One; two; three . . . three and a half; three and three quarters; uh, fooooooouuuuur?
There was no explosion.
Belle Z. Bug climbed up to her feet and groaned.
“A dud?” Governor Shortzenbeggar asked. “My last grenade, the only hope for the human race, and it was a dud? Probably made in China!”
Belle Z. Bug picked up the grenade and tossed it as far as she could. It bounced down into the garbage pile like a rock and just sat there.
The mushroom cloud from the Big Bug Bomb was beginning to settle, and the poison gas had finally begun to reach them. Belle Z. Bug stuck her mop in the air and blew.
Suddenly a strong wind gusted, blowing all of the poison away, back to the north.
Belle Z. Bug glared at Harold Shortzenbeggar. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you never to mess with a sorceress?!”
“She might have,” Governor Shortzenbeggar said as he climbed to his feet and dusted himself off, “at the same time that she told me the rule about always eating my broccoli. Of course, I never followed that rule, either.”
The monster fly huffed and if possible, it seemed that her green-and-hot-pink exoskeleton darkened with rage. Her antennas did a little angry dance as she tried to think of some torment worthy of his crimes. “You,” she said. “You tried to kill me! You tried to kill my people!”
“You can’t blame a guy for trying,” the governor said.
“You will pay for your audacity!” Belle roared.
Now the governor knew he was really in trouble. He thrust out his chest and demanded, “So what you going to do about it?”
Belle Z. Bug cackled insanely. “You think you’re so great—the perfect specimen of humanity. Well, I’m going to do to you what someone should have done a long, long time ago!”
“What, erect a statue?” Harold Shortzenbeggar asked.
“Hardly,” Belle Z. Bug said as her ruby eyes seemed to boil with inner fire.