The Quillan Games (4 page)

I wheeled to run the other way, but froze when I saw that the rest of the sea of spiders was behind me. They had split up and circled me. Smart bugs. Good for them. Bad for me. I was trapped. The only way I could go was up. I was next to a stack of wooden crates that towered a few feet over my head. I leaped straight up, grabbed the top of the crate, and pulled myself up. It's amazing what adrenaline will do. In seconds I was throwing my leg up over the top and looking back down to see the two groups of spiders converge. I was safely out of harm's way . . .

For about ten seconds. The two groups of bugs joined together and, without missing a beat, began climbing up the side of the wooden crate toward me, with the not-so-itsy-bitsy spider in the lead. I quickly rolled onto my feet and ran. I was on a whole new playing field. Looking forward, I saw that I was on top of a sea of crates that rose up on multiple levels. I couldn't run there. One wrong step and I'd fall to the floor, break my leg, and become bug chow. No, I had
to be careful. It was more about leaping from crate to crate than actually running. No sooner did I get to the end of one big crate than I'd have to climb up to another, or jump down a level. This didn't seem to bother the spiders, though. They reached the tops of the crates and swarmed forward, rolling over the terrain like a creeping shadow. They were definitely going to catch me unless I thought of something, fast.

I bounded across one crate and had to stop short, or I would have fallen down into an aisle that stretched out to either side. I looked back to see the spiders were nearly on me. Their screeching grew louder, as if they knew the end was near. Or the beginning, if you were talking about their lunch. I had no choice but to leap across the chasm between the crates. I took a few steps back, held my breath, sprinted for the end, and leaped through space.

I made it to the far side with a few feet to spare. Again, thank you, adrenaline. I soon got more good news. Bugs couldn't jump. At least they couldn't jump far enough to make it across the aisle. The bugs had to climb down one side of the wall of crates, scramble across the floor, then crawl back up on the other side of the aisle. My side. I was kind of hoping they wouldn't make it across at all, but the extra time it took for them to go down and across and up gave me the chance to get some distance from them. I jogged forward, looking for more aisles to leap across and get even farther away. I leaped across one, two, three more aisles. With each crossing my confidence grew. I was buying enough time to find my way out of this not-so-fun house. As I traveled farther away from the bugs, their squeaking and chattering grew faint. I figured I had survived yet another brush with Saint Dane's quigs without a scratch.

I was wrong.

I decided to leap across one more aisle to make sure the bugs were far enough back that I could climb down and find the exit. But when I launched myself across and landed on the crate on the far side, the top edge cracked under my weight. If I had been prepared, I probably could have landed safely. But I was getting cocky. I should have jumped farther. Oops. The surprise was what got me. The wood of the crate must have been old and rotten, because before I realized what was happening, I crashed down to the floor in a shower of splinters and dust. I must have conked my head, because I was knocked loopy. All I remember of those few moments was the dust and debris raining down on me from the fractured crate. I didn't know if I was hurt or stunned or simply confused. I remember sitting there for a while, though I'm not sure for how long. It could have been a few seconds, or more than a few minutes. What finally snapped me back to reality were the familiar sounds.

Screech. Chatter.

The bugs were back.

I was in no shape to get up and start running. I was too dizzy for that. But I still had enough sense to realize they would be on me any second. I looked around for something to defend myself with. At my back was the splintered crate. It was made from long slats of inch-thick wood. The one side had cracked open and I was able to yank off a long piece of wood. It was about four feet long and a few inches wide. More importantly, it was solid. I tested it against my knee. The rotten boards must have all been on top. This side piece was intact. It wasn't exactly a wooden stave like the one Loor had taught me to use on Zadaa, but it would have to do.

I got weakly to my feet, with my eyes looking up at the top of the crate I had just fallen from. If the bugs were coming, they'd come from there. I gripped the rough piece of wood, turned my body sideways to make a smaller target as
Loor had instructed, and lifted my weapon. I was ready . . . or at least as ready as I was able to get.

So were the spiders. They attacked by flinging themselves from the edge of the crate above. These devilish bugs couldn't jump up, but they could definitely jump down. I briefly thought how it was incredible that these bugs could be so focused. So smart. There was definitely intelligence going on here. They were smarter than any quig I had faced so far. The thought quickly flashed through my head that all the inhabitants of Quillan might be bugs, like the cat klees of Eelong. But that gruesome thought only distracted me from my mission, which was to survive. If I was going to have to fight a race of intelligent, vicious bug people, the battle for Quillan was under way.

They came at me, flying through the air, screaming. I batted them with my makeshift wood-plank weapon, knocking them away like, well, like bugs. These guys may have been smart, but they weren't very strong. The first bug I hit screamed and flew back across the aisle. It smashed against a crate on the far side, and fell to the ground. It looked dead. Of course, I wasn't going to go and check its pulse. I had a few thousand other things to deal with at the time. But seeing this gave me hope. These spiders were fragile. They had the numbers, but I had the power. The question was, would I burn out before they ran out of reinforcements?

They flew at me from above; I swatted at them quickly.
Whap! Crack!
It was like high-speed batting practice. Good thing I knew how to switch-hit. It wasn't much different from fending off Loor's attacks when we sparred in the training camp of Mooraj. I was on fire. The dizziness was long gone. Thanks again, adrenaline. I cracked the attacking bugs as fast as they came at me, sending them crashing against the hard wooden crates.

But the bugs weren't done. They were leaping in ones and twos. That's how I was able to smack them all away. I feared that once they realized my defenses were limited, they'd send more than a few at a time and I'd be in trouble.

“Ouch!” I felt something bite my leg. I didn't need to look down. I knew that a spider had made it to the floor and was on my ankle. I shook it off, only to feel another stinging bite on my other ankle. I knew I couldn't stand my ground anymore. There were too many of them. I had to get out. While still swinging away at the leaping kamikaze bugs, I started to back out of that aisle. The bugs countered. I could see them above me, gathering on top of the crates across the aisle, getting into a new position to attack. As I backed off, I could feel the bodies of the beaten spiders crack under my feet. If I weren't so charged up, I probably would have been grossed out. But that was the least of my worries. I was losing. I had to retreat.

With one last swing of my wooden plank, I knocked another spider into next week, then turned and ran. I rounded the corner of another aisle, hoping to see a straightaway where I could turn on the jets and sprint out of there. What I saw was the straightaway I hoped for . . . but it was filled with more spiders. At the front of the pack (do spiders come in packs?) was the fatboy. Its bright yellow eyes were trained on me. It was a showdown. No, worse. It was over. I had nothing left. The big spider reared back on its legs, like a cat ready to pounce . . . and charged. The others were right behind it, screaming and scrambling.

I couldn't go back. I couldn't go forward. All I could do was climb again. I looked up and saw that the crates here were stacked just as high but were smaller in size. The top crates were about two-feet square. I got an idea that sprang from pure desperation. I jumped up and hooked my finger on top
of one of the smaller crates. But rather than pull myself up . . .

I pulled the crate down. It was heavy, but I wasn't about to let that stop me. For what I wanted to do, heavy was good, and timing was everything. I pulled the crate down so hard I felt the muscles of my arms burn. But it toppled. The spiders were nearly on me. I dove out of the way. The crate came down and smashed on the cement floor . . . right on top of the fat leader. I heard it scream. It sounded almost human. But I didn't have time to be grossed out. I hoped this move would buy me the few seconds I needed to escape, so I jumped onto the broken crate and launched myself up to where it had been. I was about to continue my escape across the carton tops, when I glanced back to see something impossible: The spiders were retreating. Fast. I stopped to watch as the wave of black little demons slipped back like the receding tide. They kept chattering and screeching, but there screams sounded more scared than angry. It was like the queen bee of a hive had been destroyed, and none of the other bees had a clue what to do, so they scattered. Psych! I didn't even mean to crush the fat little monster. All I wanted was a few extra seconds to escape. But hey, I'd rather be lucky than good anytime. I sat on a crate to catch my breath, and watched the spiders disappear to who-knows-where. I didn't care. All that mattered was that they weren't after me anymore.

Once I was sure they were gone, I jumped back down to the floor. I'm not sure why I did what I did next. I guess it was out of some morbid curiosity. But I moved to pull the broken carton off the lead spider. I wanted to get my first close look at a quig. Most every time I saw a quig in the past, whether it was a bear on Denduron or a snake on Zadaa or a dog on Second Earth, I was usually running too fast to get a good look at it. But now I had the chance to see one up close. Saint Dane created these things somehow; I thought that by
taking a closer look, it might give me some clue as to how he was able to make these mutants appear at the gates to do his bidding. Or maybe I just wanted to make sure it was dead and not waiting for me to relax so it could call its buddies back. Either way, I wanted to see it.

As I began to pull away the wooden crate, I saw that one side of the container had almost completely broken off. My curiosity shifted to the box. I wanted to know what was being stored in this monster tomb of a warehouse. I yanked the side off the rest of the way to reveal . . . a stack of plates. I'm serious. Plain old white plates like you'd see in a diner or something. I picked one up to confirm that there was nothing special about it. Somebody had packed away about a dozen white boring plates. The one thing that was of any interest at all was the logo printed on the back of the plate. In simple black one-inch letters was a single word:
BLOK
. That's all.
BLOK
. A quick check showed me that all the plates had this same word printed on their backs. This meant exactly nothing to me, so I put the plate back and reached over to pull the crate off my victim.

When I heaved the crate over, I instantly realized two things. One was that this particular itsy-bitsy spider was not going to be chasing me anymore. It was definitely dead. Though as I stared at it, I wasn't sure if “dead” was the right word, because this quig was never alive. Not in the true sense, anyway. That was the second thing I learned. The weight of the carton had smashed open its body and spread it all over the floor. But it wasn't disgusting or anything. That's because the remains of old spidey weren't organic. That's right. The outside was fur covered and looked every bit like a very real, very big spider. But the insides were a different matter. My little nemesis was mechanical. Instead of blood and guts, I was looking at a pile of high-tech computer-driven machine parts.

It was a robot.

The works weren't like any kind of machinery I had ever seen. It was actually fairly simple. You'd think that with such a sophisticated piece of machinery there would be thousands of little gears and joints and rotors, but there were surprisingly few. All I saw was a squished metallic spider skeleton, along with something that looked like a computer core. I figured the technology would have to be pretty advanced to get that simple spider skeleton to run, turn, jump, bite . . . and think. That was the scariest part. They could think.

Staring at the mess of smashed metal, I realized that Quillan was a territory with technology that was so advanced, they were able to create lifelike self-powered robots. I could only hope they weren't all going to be chasing me.

I did a quick cleanup of the broken crate and the crushed robot-quig-spider. I didn't think anybody would be wandering by, but just in case, I wanted to hide any evidence that I had been there. I kicked the debris into a corner between a couple of large crates, making sure I swept up every last remnant of mechanical-gut stuff. After I was satisfied that the mess was hidden, I set out to find my way out of there. It was time to see what other surprises lay in wait for me on Quillan.

(CONTINUED)

W
hich was worse: A territory populated by spiders? Or one controlled entirely by robots? I wasn't thrilled by either option. All I knew for certain was that whatever this territory held, I wouldn't learn about it hanging around in a dusty old warehouse full of dinner plates. I needed to get out and find the Traveler from Quillan. That was key. The Traveler would have answers. That is, of course, unless the Traveler was a robot. Or a spider. Sheesh.

After cleaning up the metal spider guts, I climbed up onto a crate to take another look around at the vast space. In the distance I saw the far wall with the grid that hid the gate to the flume. I figured the exit wasn't back that way, so I turned in the opposite direction and began my search for the way out. It wasn't long before I realized I had made the right choice. I didn't find an exit right away, but I did hear something. I'm glad to report that it wasn't the chattering of more mechanical spiders. It was music. The sound was far off and faint, but it was definitely music. Music to me meant
civilization, so I kept heading toward the sound. As I drew closer to the wall that was directly opposite from the wall that hid the flume, the music grew louder. It was muffled, but I heard enough to realize it was an odd tune. I couldn't make out what the instruments were, but they sounded electronic. The music itself was a kind of upbeat, new age, happy, haunting, never ending melody that went nowhere. It was kind of creepy-strange, like no music I had ever heard before. I didn't hate it, but I didn't think I'd be downloading the MP3 file either. The music had energy, like it was setting a happy mood. Maybe I was overthinking it, but the music seemed to be almost . . . hypnotic.