HE SAW ITS fangs first, enormous daggers dripping some sort of viscous goo. He saw its eyes then, two bulging dimpled mounds like the eyes of a fly. He saw a whirl of hairy, spidery legs flashing over the ground, propelling the beast straight at him—and a great leathery tail whipping behind, giving it extra speed.
For another long second, Rick stood in frozen disbelief. His mind simply could not comprehend what he was seeing: the grotesque face of this impossible onrushing death.
Then his athlete’s reflexes kicked in. He turned and ran.
He dashed along the floor of the chasm as fast as he could, faster than he’d ever gone over a football field. It wasn’t fast enough. When he looked behind him, the hairy, drooling spider-snake thing was clawing its way toward him at top speed, getting closer to him with every second. It would only be moments before it would overtake him, before it would have him in those dripping fangs.
He had to think—and fast. He’d seen stuff like this before, hadn’t he? Monsters like this? Sure he had. In video games! That’s why Jonathan Mars had chosen him for this mission—because he’d fought plenty of bizarre creatures like this—and beaten them, too. Of course, in video games, you had a lot of advantages. You could do things that defied the laws of physics. You could run along walls. You could double-jump in midair. Most important, you could come back to life if you got killed! None of that stuff was true here. Here, he was going to have to use his brains, outsmart this beast somehow, and he was going to have to do it in one try, because he wouldn’t get a second chance.
He had to get out of this crevasse—that was the first thing. It was his only hope of getting away. As he ran, he eyed the rim of the earth above him. He might be able to leap up there and grab the edge, climb out. He might. With a grunt, he put on an extra burst of speed. He could feel the earth shaking under his sneakers even as he ran. He could feel the wind of the spidery legs behind him. The beast was so close now, there was no room for error. If he leapt and missed—if he leapt and could not pull himself up—he’d be devoured.
The creature made a noise behind him—so close behind him, it made Rick’s whole body feel weak and hollow with terror. It was a noise of eagerness and hunger, an inhuman, squealing growl.
Fear gave Rick the extra strength he needed. Running, he jumped. He reached for the surface of the earth. He grabbed it. He saw the beast out of the corner of his eye, enormous as it charged, its hairy legs reaching for him, its great tail whipping, its dripping mouth opened wide.
Rick strained to pull himself up. He threw his legs to the side, hoping to vault out of the chasm. Something touched him, something awful, coarse, and damp—something hungry. Rick couldn’t help himself—he screamed.
And then he was up—up and over. Out of the chasm and rolling across the scarlet-orange ground and into a bed of flowers whose beautiful pinks and violets and pastel greens seemed crazily out of place.
He leapt to his feet. He looked around him. He saw the man—the sparkling man—beckoning to him wildly—shouting something—what was he saying?
“The woods! Get to the woods!”
Of course. The woods. That was what the sparkling man had been trying to tell him from the start. He had to get into the forest. He might be able to lose this creature among the trees. It was his best chance—his only chance—of getting away.
He looked back toward the chasm.
For a moment, he thought he had made a clean escape. He thought the awful thing would stay in its tunnel below the earth.
No such luck. A second later, the first of its hairy legs came questing up out of the hole, searching for purchase. The next moment, the beast arose and Rick saw the fangs, the bulging eyes, the hairy, squirmy body in the aboveground light as the thing began to climb up out of the fissure.
It was a nightmare. A nightmare. Only real.
Rick dashed for the forest.
The sparkling man had stopped waving and gesturing now. He was standing stock-still, staring at the spider-snake that had risen fully into sight. Rick was close enough to see the look on the sparkling man’s face now—a look of absolute terror. As Rick ran toward him, the sparkling man turned on his heels and dashed toward the forest. A second later, he was out of sight among the trees.
Rick hurried to join him. The blue forest loomed tall before him as he raced across the golden grass. When he looked back over his shoulder, he saw the creature make the rest of its way up out of the chasm onto the surface of the scarlet plain. He caught a glimpse of the twisting, slithering rear portion of its body, the snake-like tail snapping back and forth. The full sight of the thing turned his stomach. He wanted nothing more than to be back at home, back in his dark room, on his sofa, with his harmless games, safe. He was so, so sorry he had agreed to come here.
The beast spotted him. It began to propel itself toward him over the ground. Clawing with its legs, squirming with its tail, it was unbelievably fast. In an instant, it had closed the distance between them, and Rick could already hear it making that hungry, eager, squealing growl again as it charged after him.
Another cry of fear escaped from Rick—but the next moment, he reached the tree line and rocketed into the forest. He dodged between the green-brown trunks of the trees, beneath their aqua leaves. The trunks were close together, he noticed. That might be good. Maybe they were close enough to block the creature, or at least slow it down.
He looked back just as the beast reached the edge of the forest behind him. The thing didn’t slow at all. It simply smashed into the base of the trees full force. Rick heard a loud cracking sound. The monster had simply knocked a tree over. Rick looked up and saw the tree toppling. Its enormous blue crown was plunging down toward his head, threatening to pin him, maybe even crush him.
Rick dodged to the side—and stumbled. He fell to the ground. The tree crashed to the earth beside him, its branches whipping at his back.
But he was unhurt. He leapt to his feet again. To his horror, he saw the spidery thing push toward him, shearing away two more trees so they crashed off to the left and right, leaving only stumps standing.
Gasping for breath, beginning to lose strength, Rick stared as the beast reared up. Several of its many legs pawed the air. It roared, the white goo dripping from its fangs.
Rick started to turn, started to run—but before he could, the spider-snake made an awful noise, a disgusting, razzling cough. Some putrid fluid came spitting out of its midsection. It sailed across the forest space between them. Before Rick could even think to move, the stuff splashed over his legs and solidified, wrapping itself around him.
A web. Something like a web. A powerful white thread that extended from the creature’s underside. It tied up Rick’s legs—and linked him to the beast. With a yank, the spider-snake whipped Rick off his feet and began gathering the web up, dragging Rick across the earth toward its open mouth, its dripping fangs.
Rick let out a mindless roar of fury and fear. He struggled to get free, but it was no use. The web was unbreakable. When he twisted his body around and grabbed at it, its sticky surface stung his hands and threatened to capture them as well. The forest floor scraped against Rick’s back and shoulders as the beast reeled him in, as it reared up against the blue leaves, opening its mouth even wider to receive him.
As Rick’s brain kicked into gear again, he looked desperately for a weapon, for anything he could fight with. There was nothing. There was only one of the trees that the creature had knocked down. It lay on its side to the right of him. As the spider-snake dragged him toward its mouth, Rick reached out and grabbed one of the tree’s branches.
He got hold of a thick one. He held on to it fast. The creature pulled him. For a second, Rick was able to hold the branch and pull back, resisting, trying with all his might to wriggle free of the web.
But then the branch snapped. It came away in his hand. He was hurtling over the earth again, only yards away from the creature’s fangs.
But he was still holding the branch—the broken branch, its end sharp and jagged. He used his powerful core muscles to sit up as he was pulled along. He drove the end of the branch into the web around his legs. It punched a hole through the fiber, but the web held. Rick gritted his teeth and used the branch to stab and rip at the goo again and again.
It was no good. The web tore—it weakened—but it wouldn’t release him.
The spider-snake reared up even higher against the trees. Rick cried out as he was lifted off the ground. He dangled upside down as the beast’s hairy legs surrounded him. A smell more sickening than any he had ever smelled engulfed him like a fog and made him gag. The creature’s mouth yawned open above him, its fangs dripping down over him. The beast pulled him upward relentlessly.
Then the web broke. Rick had damaged and torn it with the branch just enough—and now the cut substance gave way to his weight.
Rick dropped through the air. He hit the ground hard, shoulder first. The jolt brought his teeth clamping together. But he didn’t let it stop him. He didn’t pause. He rolled. He jumped to his feet. The creature—startled to have lost its prey just at the moment of satisfaction—let out a shriek of frustration, its legs churning the air above Rick’s head, its slithering tail whipping the forest floor behind it.
Rick seized the moment. He kicked off the last of the sticky web—and darted away.
But he was losing strength now, losing speed, running out of wind. He stumbled as he ran, barely able to keep his feet. The beast, on the other hand, was just as eager as it had been at first. It recovered from its rage. It roared and began to crash through the trees behind him. Rick heard the trunks tearing and the branches cracking as the trees toppled down. Gasping for breath, he turned to see the untiring spider-snake coming on again, crashing, roaring, squealing.
And then, above the noise, a voice.
“Hey!”
He turned. He saw the man—the strangely sparkling, shifting, half-transparent man who had beckoned to him earlier. He saw him peeking out from behind a thick aqua tree.
The man beckoned again. He shouted, “This way! Hurry!”
Rick ran toward him.