Strange Tails

Potbelly’s snoring echoed about the cave, even as the first light of dawn switched on. Squirrel noted the sun switched on rather than rose, just as the evening switched off rather than set. He’d have to ask about that.

Michel may have been snoring, there was some sort of snuffling coming from somewhere, but he was tucked inside his shell so it was hard to tell. The tinkle of Chagrin Falls kept tinkling. The only other sound to be heard was that of Cedric, who muttered plans to himself and stalked about the cave as if looking for something—as he had done throughout Squirrel’s broken sleep. The only word Squirrel could make out clearly was Coralane. He’d have to ask about that, too.

If the light wasn’t going to get any lighter Squirrel decided it was officially time for breakfast. He felt thirsty but knew better than to lap anything from the stream.

The spiders had left some provisions, and Squirrel rummaged through them looking for something sugar-coated, but all he turned up was a bag of woody blobs and something that looked suspiciously like a vegetable. He dropped it in disgust.

Then he remembered their conversation from last night:

“We only have synthesized veggies,” the spider explained. “Much more convenient than what you can grow yourself. I know they say stick with the all-natural ingredients—the sugar, the chocolate, the candies—but it’s so hard with our busy lifestyle. Who has time to make traditional confectionery meals when you can throw a few replicated vegetables into your bag? I love how sexy they sound: cabbage; spinach; brussel sprouts. Exotically alien. They don’t melt, and no mess. Of course, at the weekends, when we have time, we do rustle up a few high-sucrose meals—just to keep, you know, regular.”

Squirrel pleaded. “But can’t I go back to the forest to get some candy? I don’t mind keeping it all-natural.”

“Too dangerous. You might be seen. And ugh, you can’t eat it raw, what are you some kind of cave spider? How do you know it’s not poisonous? Sugary food must be boiled at three hundred degrees until all the flavors are drained out and it’s a monochrome slop. Every schoolspid knows that from their Web Ec classes.”

Squirrel kicked the bag labeled Insta-Dins. It plopped out of sight—or at least it would do, if it knew what’s good for it.

“The entire planet is vegan,” said Cedric, appearing from a shadowy corner, aware now he was not the only one awake.

“We’re on Vega?”

“No. There’s nothing to hunt. No fauna but the spiders, even the dairy products grow wild. Personally, I could murder a cheeseburger.”

In that single comment Squirrel rediscovered his awe of Cedric. “McDonalds no longer exists,” he lamented. “Double quarter-pounder. Chocolate shake. All gone. Extinct. Like they were never with us.”

“Does their evil know no bounds?”

Squirrel nodded. “No Wendy’s too. No Burger King. We found a KFC once, and the fryers were still on, but you don’t want to know what we found lurking in there.”

“Tyrants.”

“No, chicken mostly.”

Potbelly yawned herself awake. Having Cedric to himself, Squirrel wished she’d remained asleep a little longer. The pitter-patter of unkempt claws disappointed him further.

“Now I know what they mean by dog’s breath,” she said. “And I’m aching, too. What did you do to me last night?”

Squirrel laughed. “I haven’t seen you gambol about like that since you caught your tail in the cart return at Heinen’s.”

“Gambol about?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember being carried here, I remember entering the cave, I remember … not much else. I’m thirsty, give me a sec—“

“No!”

“What?”

“I’ll explain later. There’s a jug of water and a bag of … well, there’s a jug of water.”

Cedric watched their interaction with interest, and like everything else Cedric did it had a whiff of cunning about it. Squirrel wondered what Cedric looked like when he was actually being cunning.

“So what are we doing here?” asked Potbelly.

“Waiting for the spiders’ mani-pedi.”

“Manny who?”

“Long story, but good question. Cedric, what are we actually doing here?”

Cedric cast an eye about the cave, as if looking for something. “We are leaving,” he said, distractedly. “And shortly.”

“Sounds delightful. Where?”

“I shall explain later.”

“Sounds great. Put it on a postcard and mail it back to Chagrin Falls. We’re not going anywhere until we know why.”

He nodded for them to join him in a nearby alcove. Subtle shades of tan, bronze, and copper illuminated its smooth dense wall.

“We will free the Nevermore army,” Cedric whispered, conspiratorially. “They are at the Glitterband, the closest thing to a penitentiary on this planet. The spiders believe it is the only place they could be held. Prisoners of war were never on the invasion agenda, at least not cognizant ones. The webocracy, as we call them, will not want them killed, the spiders as a species are not given to genocide. Not a patch on the humans, anyway. We’re hoping they’re just torturing them for information.”

“I’m sure they’ll be grateful to get away with a little light torturing,” said Potbelly, her sarcasm having yawned itself awake too.

“The alternative is worse: namely, to be zombified immediately, and hence useless to us. So yes, keep your paws crossed for torturing. I’d wager the webocracy knows we are here to destroy the zombification machine.”

“The zombification machine? Is that what keeps the humans stupid?”

“More stupid, yes.” Cedric surveyed the alcove, lowering his voice, encouraging them to huddle in. “Their collars are the receivers. We could remove them but it has the unfortunate side-effect of decapitation. The zombification machine is the transmitter—that is what we must destroy. The spiders tell me there is a single entity that controls it. Destroy that, and the humans are free.”

“Can’t we just jam it?” asked Squirrel. “Remotely, you know, while we remain here, cowering in the cave?”

“Impossible. We must get to its source: Sequin Mountain. The zombification machine works the same as the interference beam that brought down your ship, the one that confused the Angrothal, but it has global scope, and like our bio-comms it can reorganize cerebral function, though shutting them down rather than stimulating them. Something that powerful must be destroyed. It could be used against us too, if the spiders cotton on to the possibility.”

“OK, so we find the zombification machine and we take out its triple-As. What happens then?”

“That’s all I can say.”

“Hmm. Or do you mean that’s all you want to say?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Oh.”

Squirrel turned to Potbelly. “OK, I’m out. Sounds like a whole bunch of not eating chocolate to me.”

“So I’m guessing,” replied Potbelly, but to Cedric. “When this machine is kaput, after that, we all go run behind a candy tree and hope for the best? Untold numbers of humans, with access to guns, and however many spiders, with access to being big and hairy. Doesn’t sound like party fun time.”

Cedric shrugged.

“It’ll be a bloodbath,” prompted Potbelly.

Cedric shrugged again. “Can’t be helped,” he said.

“Do you even like the species you’re rescuing?”

Cedric’s eyes flashed more red than green. “I … admire them, and I … no, to be honest, not very much.”

“So why bother then?”

He made a face. “We just seem to be wired that way.”

Potbelly had no answer for that.

Cedric continued. “Despite the spiders’ annoying tendencies, they are a far more pleasant species to be around. They never stare mindlessly at the grocery clerk who’s stuck packing their shopping bags, they only use like as a simile, and their culture has no concept of the term Reality Show.”

“They did enslave an entire species.”

“There is that.”

At the entrance to the cave a small bell tinkled; from somewhere distant, the spiders were returning. Cedric had previously mentioned this device to the new arrivals, and with some admiration. They had a network of webs spanning the entire planet, and any one strand had a known route with a known purpose—and not a single one with a spider dawdling in the overtaking lane. In this case, he noted, the route was a secret one, known only to a select group.

Wandering to the entrance of the cave Potbelly looked out across the vale, but as yet she could see no movement. The bell tinkled again.

“If the humans are so awful then why don’t we simply quit and go home?” asked Squirrel.

“The mission.”

“See, to me that’s just a Goth band from the Eighties.”

At first Cedric did not answer. He climbed to a shelf above Squirrel’s head, scrabbling up the rough surface of the wall, leaving behind scrape marks that the Goddess, whomever she was, would probably have preferred to see buffed out.

Cedric surveyed them both. Something in that gesture reminded Squirrel of Coralane, sitting atop the shoulder of Snodberry, and not just because he was looking down with those same mesmeric eyes. Cedric seemed to loosen up.

“I was a scout,” he announced, before peering off poignantly into the distance. Potbelly and Squirrel peered off too. Were the spiders coming? Cedric coughed and they looked back.

“I was a scout,” he repeated, this time staring at his audience to ensure their attention. “That is, a scout from Nevermore. I was the first, much like Coralane, though she, of course, came from the Silence. Back then the Silence had its original name: the Command.”

“The Command was the humans’ leading military research unit, but Nevermore lost contact with it some days prior. Before the Command went dark, the humans had agreed a mission: I was to rendezvous with their scout, a creature like me, a mink by the name of Boris. Our destination: New York City.”

Cedric took two steps to his left and settled on the widest part of the ledge, all the while keeping an eye fixed on his audience. Potbelly tried to stifle an unwelcome yawn. Squirrel wanted to scratch, resisted, but that only made his other bits itch.

“New York City was far from each of our facilities, of course.” Cedric peered around the cave again, and in response it turned three different shades of olive. “It was chosen because another Command scout, a seagull named Tourmaline, informed us there were surviving humans wandering the area. Boris was to make his way by land, I was to fly. Our one major success at Nevermore had been to bring down a small alien tender craft. It proved invaluable in teaching us their aeronautics.”

“We had a ride on it,” said Squirrel. “No cup holders.”

“Drafty. Wasn’t impressed,” agreed Potbelly.

Cedric eyed them coolly. “Boris and I were to find these humans and hitch a ride on a passing spaceship, much the same way Michel improvised, though our species has the advantage of being more easily disguised as human adornment. Potbelly, since you ask, perhaps being a mink explains my occasional ambivalence towards them.”

On hearing his name a moment before, Michel’s head popped out, and he licked a fleshy tongue around his beak. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked.

“Brown things,” said Squirrel. “And something once covered in mud.”

“Sounds lovely.” He poked out four limbs in skydiver formation. “Grubs up,” he added, and set off to scavenge.

“Animal,” mumbled Squirrel.

Ding-ding-ding went the bell, three times this time, a signal that meant the spiders were close-by. When the dinging subsided the only sounds left were the endless tinkling of Chagrin Falls and the snuffling of a tortoise trying to negotiate a soggy carrot. Cedric cleared his throat, having first peered about the cave.

“Boris, as I said, was my rendezvous-ee, but he did not arrive. I had a transmitter-locator yet it blipped not a blip. Unable to find him I ventured on alone, courtesy of a young lady wandering around Times Square, of all places, and in plain view too. She was under the impression the day was some sort of human holiday—New Year’s Eve. She thought I was a cat. How this human survived so long was anybody’s guess.” His eyes narrowed once more. “Boris’s fate, on the other hand … well, that I was not to discover until much later.”

“Coo-ee!” said a huge and hairy spider as it filled the entrance to the cave, fangs nipping together as it spoke. “How are all my ickle furry friends?”

“Ready to smash the system and rain chaos down upon this planet,” declared Cedric. “We must leave immediately. We have less time than I thought.”

“Steady tiger. Yes, we’re polished, primped, and ready to be smashing too, however, I am quite flustered. The tree traffic was murder downtown. I need to tinker with my perm.” The spider turned to Squirrel and Potbelly. “I do recommend the facial by the way, takes years off you. Not that I’m saying you need it. But, well, you do.”

The spider then peered at Cedric, still up on his shelf, and recognized a customary position.

“Are you telling your friends how brave you were? He was you know. Stood out like a sore thumb on a snake when he got here, good job it was one of our lot working shift else he’d have been in the Glitterband in two shakes of his sweet little tale. Leading the resistance in no time, he was. Shame what happened, really.”

“Ooh I remember that,” said a second spider, emerging through the entrance sporting a rather fetching blue rinse. “Terrible, all our brave soldiers going down with Cedric in the ship. Dying on a far-flung planet, not a decent mortician for light years. What they must have looked like, Goddess only knows.”

Hmm, they hummed collectively, followed by a ruminative pause.

“I was hoping to avoid the whole death on a far-flung planet too,” concurred Squirrel. “So, with that in mind, should I just stay here and look after the carrot?”

“Every creature must stand up and be counted,” warned Cedric.

“But I just found a seat.”

“And we must leave, very soon.”

“Chill Ceds,” said the spider.

“Did you mention a spaceship crashed on Earth?” asked Potbelly. “Whereabouts?”

“Oh I don’t know, that blue thing all looks the same to me. Ceds knows, don’t you Ceds?”

Ceds tapped his claws impatiently. “Ohio,” he said, finally. “Close to the Command. The spider resistance was much larger then and our fighters commandeered a ship. We were rounding up forces, human and non-human, ready to defend Earth; but we failed. We were blasted out the sky by the Spangles.”

“The Spangles?”

“An elite guard,” said the second spider. “Fearsome warriors.”

“They have tattoos,” said the first. “And not nice ones either.”

“And you call them the Spangles?”

“Their uniform has a sparkly tiara,” explained the third spider, who had entered a few moments before and was adjusting its eyelashes in a mirror. “My cousin’s in them.”

“The one that’s twice removed but you still can’t get rid of him? I heard he killed someone in leg-to-leg combat.”

“That’s true, but he’s so good with the step kids.”

“Oh that’s nice.”

“It wasn’t the Spangles,” interrupted Potbelly.

“Who wasn’t dear?”

“It wasn’t the Spangles who blasted your spaceship out of the sky. It was another spider. Her name was Tina.”

“Oh, poor girl, no wonder, with a name like that. She wasn’t with the Twirlettes was she? Nasty bunch. Into leather. You can always tell when someone’s into leather.”

“Tina was an Earth spider, acting on behalf of Coralane. They were after your technology, the means to zombify humans. They wanted to get into their brains and learn how to create more sentient animals. They didn’t care about saving humans, in fact they were happy to be rid of them. Coralane was their leader. Maybe she’s out there now, trying to pick up where she left off.”

“She sounds a right bitch,” said the spider, before glancing at Potbelly. “No offence.”

“Not the Spangles makes sense,” said Cedric, while realizing maybe his sentence didn’t. He seemed to warm to the discussion. “I was lasered down to the Command before the crash, to rally the scientists. There I met Michel and he took me to Coralane.”

Again he looked into the middle-distance. All eyes followed, except Squirrel’s, who was never quite sure which part of the distance was the middle.

“Fortunately I did not give away my true identity. I knew something was wrong the moment I spied Coralane with those red-and-green beads around her neck. I fled the place. I knew they were not beads, they were trophies—trophies from Boris. I had to warn Nevermore, warn them of what happened. Luckily I was able to find my tender craft near New York. Eventually I returned here, to Ponyata, aboard one of our Nevermore scientists, so all was not lost.”

Cedric looked up to the roof of the cave. All eyes followed his. “But then you know that, don’t you, Coralane.”

Only the quiet tinkle of Chagrin Falls replied.

“I said, Coralane, I know you are here. Reveal yourself.”

Cedric’s audience gasped, Potbelly and Squirrel scurried about, bumping into each other, only to end up where they first started. Squirrel carried on scurrying, unaware Potbelly had stopped.

“Who’s Coralane?” gasped one of the spiders.

“An evil old bird,” answered Potbelly. “She’s here? Cedric? Really?”

“Last night I found a feather.”

“But where’s the rest of her?”

“We must ride immediately. She may have heard the plans Michel and I discussed. In fact, I am convinced of it.”

“Ride, he says. Like we’re trolley buses,” one of the spiders tutted. “Coralane or no, I might punch your ticket young pup. Service animals only.”

“Did I mention you ladies look adorable today?” he replied. The smile that followed seemed less cunning to Potbelly now more … she couldn’t quite place it.

“Why, thank you dear. Two of us are male but we’ll let that pass. OK, hop on.”

“So about those defenseless vegetables,” piped up Squirrel, who had finally finished scurrying about but was still edging away from the gathering group.

“You’re right,” said Michel, prepping himself to be launched onto a spider’s back. “You stay. This mission requires bravery and strength. It might not be your sort of thing.”

Squirrel nodded, attempting a smile, but again looking more like he had cramp. “I see what you’re doing, crusty bonce.” He jabbed a claw at Michel. “Trouble is, having spent many years in the noble field of cowardice I am immune to your pitiful powers of reverse psychology.”

“Actually, Squirrel, I think Michel may be right.” Potbelly said this while walking over to Michel. She planted herself down next to him.

“You think he’s right?” replied Squirrel. “Is that happening again?”

Michel’s face mooned at Potbelly’s, leading her to edge away. Maybe he still held a candle for her she realized, or at least had one secreted about his person that could be mounted on his shell at short notice. She rejoined Squirrel instead.

“You should stay and guard the carrot. We’ll save the day. Well, hopefully more than the day, be a bit temporary otherwise, but you stay here, fill up on chocolate trees. When it’s all done, we’ll come back and get you.”

“You will?”

“Sure. Assuming we’re not all killed, of course. In that case you’ll have to find your own way home.” She shook her head, adding a note of regret to her hushed tone. “That is, if you ever want to see those Twinkies again.”

“Twinkies?”

“Yes. I just thought, if the battle takes us to Earth and we can’t return here, you know, to collect you, then we’ll keep a few Twinkies on ice, for when you make it back on your own.”

“On my own?”

“Or, if we fail, because, you know, we needed that one extra squirrel but he was here guarding the vegetables, and because of that, we all died.” Potbelly paused to consider the consequence. “I’m sure candied fruit will turn out to be just fine. Until the other spiders kill you of course. Or,” she looked up, “Coralane does. In fact, you’ll probably never even get to miss a Twinkie.”

Squirrel considered this for a moment. “You see,” he said, finally turning back to Michel. “That’s how you reverse psychology a coward. Appeal to their inner selfish asshole. You got me Potbelly, I’m in.”

“Good man.”

“But if I die without a Twinkie in my hand, I’m taking you with me.”

“Deal.”

“Very pleased for you,” growled Cedric, waiting impatiently atop his spider. “Are we ready to save the human race or do we have any more confectionery-related pep talks?”

“Hop on,” said a spider. “He does get snippy when he’s kept hanging around.”

“I can see that,” replied Squirrel, leaping up easily. “The only thing sugar-coated around here are the trees.”

“A little help?” requested Potbelly, pawing at the leg of the same spider.

“Seconded,” called Michel, whose preparation had thus far been ignored. While they waited for assistance he turned confidentially to Potbelly. “I fear, Ms. Potbelly,” he said, adopting a Southern antebellum accent for reasons unknown. “Our tenderness together must wait until this ghastly deed is done.”

“Yes,” she said, hiding her relief. “I see many ghastly deeds ahead.”

Michel winked confidentially, and in a moment his pointed head, or as he preferred to think of it, his rugged aquiline brow, accelerated from her view upon the wiry leg of a spider. Potbelly followed, and in a bristly, spidery blur they were out the cave, off and running.

Tinkle, tinkle, went the cave.

From a high and tastefully-illuminated corner, a pair of red-and-green eyes blinked out from the gloom. They were followed, shortly after, by another pair, jet black.