Attack of the Spider Bots Read online

  ZONDERKIDZ

  Attack of the Spider Bots

  Copyright © 2008 by Robert West

  Illustrations © 2008 by C.B. Canga

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

  ePub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 0-310-86104-7

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zonderkidz, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Applied for

  ISBN 978-0-310-71426-2

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  All Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Published in association with the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group, Ltd., 10152 S. Knoll Circle, Highlands Ranch, CO 80130.

  Zonderkidz is a trademark of Zondervan.

  Editor: Barbara Scott

  Cover design: Merit Alderink

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  08 09 10 11 12 5 4 3 2 1

  For Bill Myers, gifted writer and filmmaker, unselfish mentor and, best of all, friend.

  -RW

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1. The Cave of the Beast

  2. Lost World

  3. Escape from Netherworld

  4. The Forgotten Ice Palace

  5. Siege on Bot World

  6. Hide and Seek

  7. Lost in the Jungle

  8. Dragon Lady

  9. Never-Never Land

  10. The House that Time Forgot

  11. The Ghost of a Dream

  12. Meltdown in Never-Never Land

  13. The Lost Star-Fighter

  14. Alien Skyjacking

  15. Escape from Ice Planet Zero

  16. Kidnapped

  17. Tunnels in the Sky

  18. Lost Treasure

  19. Triple Trouble

  20. The Return

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  1

  The Cave of the Beast

  Becoming a teenager is like living in a sci-fi movie. You keep morphing into somebody else while emergencies are popping up all around you.

  Case in point: Beamer tripped on the rock steps leading into their secret cave network. As Ghoulie figured out later, it was because Beamer’s leg had morphed one-eighth inch longer than it had been the last time he climbed those steps. Then while Beamer was rubbing his scraped knee, Scilla picked up a faint noise. They listened until they heard a distant rumble and a repeating clank.

  They called themselves Star-Fighters — Beamer, the exile from California; Ghoulie, the African-American brain trust; and Scilla, the girl who could do anything a boy could, only better. They got the name because of the spaceship they found high up in Beamer’s tree. It didn’t seem like much at first. After all, it was only a ramshackle wooden tree house shaped like a s paceship — no graphics card, no 3-D accelerator, nothing you could shove into an Xbox. But, hey!

  You know what they say about looks being deceiving. That broken-down plywood box had already taken them to places no kid has gone before. And, in the process, they were finding a lot of strange worlds right where they lived — that being an ancient, pothole-ridden lane, only one block long, named Murphy Street. This cave labyrinth was one of those weird worlds.

  Up till now, though, they’d used the caves mostly as just a shortcut home from school. But an unexplained clank, Beamer thought, was a good reason to start some big-time exploring. After all, a rumble could be lots of things — an earthquake, rushing water, whatever. A clank, though, was something else. Nothing in nature clanked.

  So they were off. Beamer and Ghoulie were following Scilla, who was holding a lamp to light the way. She tracked the clanking and rumbling sounds up, around, and through the winding, cobweb-infested network of caves beneath Murphy Street. Luckily there weren’t that many bugs, rats, and mice in winter. As usual, Scilla led them to a dead end.

  “Scillaaaaa!” Beamer complained, remembering the time Scilla had led them into a brick wall when they were being chased by Jared and his bully goons. Now they were facing an unmovable rock wall. Actually, it was a pretty interesting wall. Symbols and pictures had been scratched or painted all over it — Native American, he guessed.

  “Hey, it’s not my fault!” Scilla protested. Putting her ear to the wall, she listened. “Don’t you hear it? The clanking sounds are coming from the other side of the wall!”

  After putting their ears to the wall, Beamer and Ghoulie had to agree that Scilla was right. “Okay, Plan B,” Ghoulie said. “The Indiana Jones maneuver.” As if the wall was one big pinball machine, they started punching and pulling every symbol and protruding rock they saw, looking for a trigger that would open a hidden door.

  Finally, when their fingers were seriously throbbing, they stopped. “There’s got to be another way in there,” Beamer said, blowing on his finger. “Let’s backtrack.”

  That’s what they did until they found a side tunnel. Careful to scratch little rocket symbols into the wall so that they could find their way back, they again struck off into the unknown. Making one turn after another, trying to head in the direction of the clanking sound, they fought through major spider colonies and piles of rubble. Suddenly they heard another sound, this one loud and shrill. Scilla stopped abruptly and shouted, “Go back!” But it was too late. The next thing they knew there was a one-eyed creature with bad breath wailing like a banshee hot on their behinds. That’s hot as in “burn-your-buns hot” and getting hotter by the second. The Star-Fighters ran down a dark tunnel as fast as their middle-school legs could go, which wasn’t all that fast since they had to run bending over like orangutans. The trouble was that the tunnel was so small they couldn’t stand up — not even Scilla. Frankly their prospects didn’t look good. In fact, you might want to see if anything is written on the rest of the pages. This could turn out to be a very short story.

  Just an hour before, on their way home from school, the threesome had decided to take their subterranean shortcut. It wasn’t all that short when you considered that they had to take a long ladder beneath the park, wind through a maze of caves, and then come back up and cut through a bizarre garden behind Parker’s Castle. That “Castle” was Murphy Street’s own little corner of Transylvania — dark towers, moat, and all. It belonged to Ms. Parker, who just happened to be the scariest person on the street.

  Shortcut or not, that passage beneath Murphy Street had saved their hides more than once. It was their emergency escape route and their hideaway from bullying gangs. This summer, the caves had been lit up like Christmas from the clouds of fireflies and the moss glowing on the walls. With the coming of winter, though, the fireflies were burrowing into their tiny winter caves, leaving only the dim, creepy glow of the moss for illumination. That might be enough if
you’re a bat, but not if you’re human.

  Luckily the lanterns still worked, if you could really call them lanterns. After all, lanterns were supposed to have a flame, right? These didn’t; instead, when you turned one on, it had a large round bulb filled with glowing liquid. The eerie part, though, was that the light was the same color as a firefly’s light. Of course, the really eerie part was that no one knew who made them or how they worked. But somebody had made enough of them to place all over the caves so that you could find one when you needed it.

  That was a good thing, since you couldn’t always count on having a flashlight when an emergency turned up — like the one they were having now.

  The bad news was that a lantern had guided them into the tunnel they were now wishing they could find a way out of. The good news? . . . They were still young, and their parents could probably get discounts on their tombstones.

  The beast was almost on them, with its hot, steamy breath making them feel like shrimp on a barbie. Suddenly the tunnel floor slipped out from beneath them.

  “Aiiiiiiiiii!” they cried as they flailed momentarily in midair. Then they fell. The next thing they knew, they were plunging through a chute — as in a water ride — and splashing into a fast-moving stream. The sound echoed all around them. They had the sense of being in a large space.

  “Help, help!” Ghoulie burbled as he splashed the water frantically. “I can’t swim!” Then he saw Scilla standing up, hands on hips, looking down at him with a smirk. He felt his knees bump against the streambed and stood, giving Scilla a sheepish, red-faced look.

  “What was that thing?” Beamer sputtered as he crawled, drenched and muttering, out of the stream.

  “I don’t know,” said Scilla, “but it could use some work on personal hygiene. I can still smell its breath.”

  “Next question,” Ghoulie said as he peered through the darkness. “Where are we?”

  A faint light grew in the distance . . . behind a range of hills.

  “Are we outside?” asked Scilla. “It can’t be night already.”

  “Worse than that. It looks like sunrise,” groaned Beamer. “It’s almost time for school.”

  A soft line of light slowly crawled across the landscape, revealing more hills and valleys, then roads and a village. There was a church with a steeple, a train station, shops — some with windmills — and a group of houses.

  “One thing’s for sure,” said Scilla. “We’re not in Middleton anymore.”

  Something didn’t seem right about the scenery. Beamer couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Again they heard the beast scream, and they whirled around to see the one-eyed monster charge across a double-arched bridge.

  “It’s . . . it’s a train!” cried Ghoulie.

  Now there was enough light to see that the eye was the headlamp for a steam locomotive. Looks about the size of our living room sofa, thought Beamer. That was when he realized what was wrong — the scenery was miniaturized!

  “Holy tamole! D’y’all mean we’re trapped in somebody’s train set?” asked Scilla.

  2

  Lost World

  “Well, for what it’s worth, it’s not your everyday train set,” said Ghoulie as he tripped over a water mill.“Ouch! There aren’t many train sets you can stroll through like a walk in a park.”

  “It’s a whole other world,” said Beamer, “built inside a cavern!”

  Beneath the bridge was a miniature mountain stream into which they had fallen. Farther away was a waterfall, which cascaded down a cliff to feed the stream. Somewhere back there was probably a wall, but the painting was so real that it looked like the range of mountains stretched for miles. The sky, too, seemed infinitely high above them, with wisps of clouds moving across — Moving! The clouds were moving! Beamer thought with a start. He couldn’t even see the projectors. The illusion was so incredible, it made him dizzy just thinking about it. Maybe they weren’t in a cavern after all!

  “Hey, do you suppose we’ve been transported to some faraway place inhabited by tiny people?” asked Beamer. “I could get used to a Gulliver lifestyle.”

  “Yes, but that’s a very tiny sunrise for a real world,” said Ghoulie, pointing to the brightening horizon.

  Beamer took a couple of steps over the rail yard and the train station. There was a fair amount of animation. Cars, trucks, and vans — old ones — moved along the streets and highways. How old? Well, definitely way before Beamer’s time.

  “They couldn’t be real, could they?” Scilla asked as she kneeled down to look at a garden of miniature flowers.

  “Oh, sure,” answered Ghoulie. “Lots of plants can be grown in miniature — azaleas, cyclamen, and rhodo-something. Um,” he added as he stretched to see past a miniature hill. “I think I see an entire pumpkin patch beyond that ridge.”

  At that moment, Beamer heard the whine of propeller-driven airplanes. He spun around to see a miniature squadron of WWII fighter planes diving toward him.

  “Hey! We come in peace,” he announced like he’d dropped in from Neptune for a chat with the president. The whine of the planes grew louder. “Now hold on there,” he gasped as he started to back up, “I’m just a kid. Only really bad guys kill women and children.” Suddenly their guns fired. He started to dive to the ground, but not before he felt pings all over his body. “Ow! Ouch! Cut that out!” he cried as he swiped at the little pellets. “I’m being strafed!” Before he knew it Beamer was giggling and jerking about, laughing out of control. All those tiny pellets were driving him crazy! “Stop . . . Stop it!” he cried frantically between bursts of laughter.

  Finally, the planes whisked past him and disappeared. Breathing heavily, Beamer’s giggling turned into a gasp. “Whoa! Tickle warfare,” he wheezed, “the world’s next weapon of mass destruction.”

  Scilla was still laughing — at him. “You were so funny,” she guffawed. “You were jerkier than the scarecrow in Wizard of Oz.”

  “Right — a barrel of laughs.” She’ll get hers, he vowed.Finally breathing easier, Beamer looked up. He didn’t think the ceiling was high enough for clouds to form naturally, but sure enough, one particularly dark cloud that was too low be a projection was moving closer.

  Seeing the cloud’s shadow on the ground, Scilla looked up just in time to get dowsed by a shower. She squealed in a pitch high enough to break every chandelier in Parker’s Castle.

  “Serves you right! Don’t melt!” Beamer yelled, feeling a sweet sense of revenge.

  Scilla muttered angrily as she wrung out her shirt sleeves.

  “Go ahead and laugh, y’all. I wanna find the joker who’s runnin’ this thing!” she spit out. “I don’t like his sense of humor.”

  “What if nobody’s running it?” asked Ghoulie with a shrug.

  “D’ya mean it could be totally automated?” asked Beamer. “That’s ridiculous! Somebody’s got to take care of all this.” He looked around the cavern. “Come to think of it, somebody’s gotta let us out of here!”

  “I wouldn’t count on a visit anytime soon,” answered Ghoulie. “I don’t know if you guys noticed while you were doing your comedy routine, but this little world has a fairly high arachnoid population.”

  Spiders! Beamer didn’t see any of the creepy little things, but there were plenty of cobwebs, and they weren’t miniaturized.

  “The animation keeps some places clear,” said Ghoulie, as he leaned down and ran his finger across the dome of an observatory. “But that’s too deep a buildup of dust for a housekeeper to ignore,” he added, showing Beamer a glob of dust thick enough to be icing on a cake.

  Scilla waved her lantern to wipe away a cloud of spider silk. Beneath it she saw a house that looked like a miniature of Parker’s Castle. “Hey, y’all!” she cried as she leaned down to look in a window. “Look what we’ve got here.”

  “What?” asked Beamer as he made his way over to her. Ghoulie was right beside him, and they dived in for a view at the same time.

  “Hey!” she cried as
she slipped down to her knees. “There’s a train set in this little house that looks like a miniature of the one we’re standing on!”

  “Does that train set also have a miniature Parker’s Castle?” Beamer asked, shaking his head.

  “This is getting too weird,” said Ghoulie with a sigh. “And don’t even think of asking if our Parker’s Castle and Murphy Street are in some giant train set.”

  “Hmmm.” Beamer scrunched his face thoughtfully as Ghoulie continued.

  “Anyway, it’s a good bet that we are under Parker’s Castle.”

  “But when you think of it,” said Scilla, “Old Lady Parker doesn’t seem the type to play with train sets.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got that right,” grunted Beamer. “So who’s the engineer?”

  Suddenly a loud blast and a woosh brought them leaping to their feet. A small rocket on a fiery tail was climbing up in front of a city skyline. It arched across the sky and disappeared. A moment later they all took a deep breath.

  “Is that city supposed to be Middleton?” Scilla asked, turning her head sideways for another look.”

  “Looks more like the Emerald City to me,” said Beamer as he climbed over a range of hills. True enough, in contrast to the quaint village near the stream, the city was ultramodern, with highways winding in and around the city like silver ribbons. “Here’s the space port!” exclaimed Beamer. Yep, there were spaceships — old-style ones with fins — sitting on their tails on little launchpads. As he watched, one pad rose from below, carrying another ship to replace the one that had just taken off.

  Beamer suddenly noticed that the artificial sun had moved all the way across the artificial sky. It was beginning to turn dark. “Hey, we gotta get out of here,” he barked. “Who knows what happens in this place after dark.”

  “But how?” asked Ghoulie.

  “Uh, what’s wrong with the way we came in?” Scilla asked before Beamer and Ghoulie could work themselves into a panic.

  “Trouble is,” said Ghoulie, the middle school brain trust. “I don’t think there’s room for both us and the train in the tunnel at the same time. We need to clock the train’s circuit to see if there’s enough time for us to scramble back up into the tunnel and down to our entry point before it comes around again.”