“What’s going on?” Paul asked, staring over Tick’s shoulder at the chaos.
Tick turned to see it from this angle. The twisting body of debris contracted into a thin column, spinning faster the tighter it got. The destruction sounded like a loud swarm of bees, the small bits forming a tall, black cloud. Seconds later, the mass fell toward the ground, where it landed in a lump, a twisted structure of metal, a hideous pile with several crooked steel beams sticking out. Then everything grew quiet.
“How did that just happen?” Sofia said in a dead voice.
“Yeah,” Tick agreed. “Could this place get any freakier?” He immediately regretted the question, superstition telling him the answer was yes—just because he’d asked.
“I found the place,” Sofia said, turning from the pile of metal junk. “A perfect anagram. It’s called—”
A loud clank cut her off, followed by the horrible screech of scraping metal. On the other side of the pile, a large door slid upward, revealing a wall of darkness behind it. A shape appeared, stepping into the light. It was huge and silver and spherical, eight massive legs of jointed steel protruding from its body.
The word Metaspide was spelled across it in large, black letters.
The clicking, clacking, buzzing monster was twenty times the size of its little brothers. With clumsy, yet strangely graceful movements, it started walking toward them.
“Come on,” Sofia said, grabbing both Tick’s and Paul’s arms and dragging them after her.
Tick cried out and pulled his arm away, wincing from the cuts on his body as he sprinted after Paul and Sofia. They reached an intersection; Sofia hesitated, trying to remember which way to go.
“This way,” she said, pointing to the left.
Before they took a step, another booming clank! rang out behind them, the loudest so far, like the sound of a horrible car wreck. Tick couldn’t help himself—he turned to look. The huge, clunky spider had jumped across the large gap, clearing the bridge in one leap. It crashed and rolled, smashing into a whole row of shops, obliterating them entirely. A second later, it sprang back onto its thin legs and started after them.
“Run!” Paul yelled.
Sofia took off on the path, followed by Paul, then Tick. The crashing and banging and clanking of the pursuing metallic monster filled the air like a lightning storm. The ground shook with the booming footsteps of the giant spider, joined by the sounds of breaking glass and splintering wood. Tick knew that if it kept gaining speed and strength, they’d be smashed to bits in less than a minute.
“How far is it?” he yelled to Sofia as they turned a corner and ran up a narrow set of stone stairs. They reached a wide alleyway and kept running. The smash of shattered buildings thundered from behind as the monster forced its way after them, destroying everything in its path.
“We’re almost there!” Sofia answered.
They rounded the next corner to see Sally running straight toward them, covered in dirt, his face lit up with fear. “Dadgum world’s endin’!” he screamed. Then his eyes rose up to look over them, his mouth falling open. “How’d it get so big!”
Sofia grabbed Sally by the arm as she ran past. “Just come on!”
He stumbled until he got his feet set and joined the escape.
Tick saw it before Sofia pointed. A crooked sign indicating The Sordid Swine, swinging on a single pathetic chain. The clanging sounds of pursuit were getting closer and closer.
Paul passed Sofia, ripping the wooden door of the shop open. All four of them stumbled across the threshold and into The Sordid Swine without so much as a peek behind them, afraid that looking would somehow allow the metal monster to gain ground. Sally was last, slamming the door shut, leaving them in almost complete darkness. A shaft of pale light from a small window gave the musty room a haunted glow. The place was empty except for a crooked wooden chair in the corner.
“What now?” Sofia whispered.
Before anyone could answer, something smashed into the wall from the other side, shaking the room and sending a cascade of debris rattling down the brick walls. The group instinctively ran across the room to get as far away from the door as possible, pressing their backs against the brick wall. The giant metaspide slammed into the wall again, then again; a hinge broke, rattling to the floor. Light seeped through the broken door.
“What are we supposed to do now!” Sofia yelled.
Another crash rattled the door—half of it broke apart and tumbled to the ground. The spider was too big to fit through the hole, but a nasty-looking piece of steel came shooting in, sharp as a blade on one edge, swiping around like a cat trying to get a mouse out of its hole. It was nowhere close to them.
Yet.
“Tick,” Paul said, “sure’d be nice for you to use those nifty superhuman winking powers right about now.”
“Would you shut up—I don’t know how I did that!” Tick yelled back, sick of everyone expecting him to be the stinkin’ Wizard of Oz. He wished he hadn’t said it as soon as it came out.
“Whoa,” Paul said, looking hurt. “Sorry, dude.”
“Guess we were wrong about the anagram thing,” Sofia said.
“No, we weren’t,” Tick said, pushing aside his regret at yelling at Paul. “There has to be something. Think.”
The huge metaspide slammed into the door again, making the hole bigger. Several bricks clattered across the ground. Its blade-arm swiped a little closer, only a few feet away.
“You chirrun better get me on out dis here mess,” Sally said. “Ain’t too particular ’bout how ya’ll do it, neither.” He grimaced as the metal arm swung close enough to stir his hair as it passed.
“The only thing in here is that stupid chair,” Paul said. The rickety thing sat in the corner, looking like a sad punishment place for a naughty child.
“Well,” Tick said, “then maybe we’re supposed to do something with it.” He felt defensive, like his inability to recreate the winking trick he’d pulled off in the Thirteenth Reality made him responsible to figure out another solution.
“What can we do with a chair?” Paul retorted.
“I don’t know!” Tick snapped back. The room shook again with another ram from the spider; an alarming chunk of the entrance crumbled to the ground, the hole getting wider. A second metal arm squeezed through, two rough blades attached at the end, snapping together like alligator jaws.