The Spider Siege by Jack Patton

Author:Jack Patton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2015-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

They sat in darkness for what felt like hours, listening to the rumble of falling stones and the patter of falling rain. Max ground his teeth. I have to warn Barton, he thought. The attack’s coming tomorrow and they don’t even know!

It was a long time before the storm finally cleared. “I think we can get going now,” Max said. He gave the rocks a push, but they didn’t budge. “Uh, Spike … I think this is a job for you.”

“Coming through!” Spike yelled happily. His great pincers swung forward like bucket cranes. He grasped a rock in each one and heaved. As they gave way, sunlight streamed in through the hole he’d made.

Feeling much better, Max scraped some of the smaller stones away until he was able to pull himself out. His clothes were filthy. When his mom saw, she’d have a fit.

The valley was calm now. Pools of rainwater glittered in the sunlight. The air smelled of freshly dug earth and moist rocks.

Max looked down the pass, thinking about the reptile army that would soon come swarming through. Then he noticed something strange. The cliff walls had only crumbled away near the bottom. Why hadn’t they given way higher up?

He looked up and found his answer. The roots of trees, along with a tangled array of vines and creepers, had grown over the upper part of the cliffs long ago. They lay like a greenish-brown net, keeping the cliffs from giving way any further.

“See that?” he told Spike. “All that green stuff saved our lives. If that hadn’t been there, we’d have been buried alive!”

“Don’t wanna think about it.” Spike shuddered. “Let’s get back to camp.”

To Max’s dismay, they found the bug camp half collapsed. One of the wall sections was completely gone, along with its bombardier-beetle tower. Legs waved feebly as bugs were dug out of the wreckage.

“Did the reptiles do this?” Max asked a nearby fire ant, who was lugging a leaf five times her size.

“No!” the ant said. “This is storm damage!”

Max and Spike exchanged looks. “Phew. Thought they’d attacked early,” the scorpion said.

Barton appeared on the battlements, with Buzz hovering alongside. “Max! Good to see you’re safe. I was about to send a search party.” Buzz zoomed down to give Max a lift to the top of the encircling wall.

Max quickly told Barton and Buzz all about the hidden mountain pass and the sneaky chameleon spies. “The lizards are planning an attack tomorrow at noon,” he finished.

Barton summoned a fire ant officer. “I want all bugs working double time to rebuild the fortress,” he ordered. “Max, I want you to join me, Buzz, Spike, and Webster in the war room.”

Barton’s “war room” turned out to be the inside of a hollow log. Some helpful wasps had built a model of Bug Island out of chewed paper pulp. Barton pointed to it with his antennae as he spoke.

“Buzz, take your hornet squadron for a flyby of the mountain pass. I want regular air patrols, understood?”

“Roger that, sir.

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