It wasn’t obvious on first glance, but the phrase had no letters that immediately ruled it out. In a matter of seconds, she’d worked through it. The Sordid Swine was definitely an anagram for “the words inside,” letter for letter, rearranged.
She turned to face the way she’d come, ready to yell out that she’d found it, but faltered. In the distance, in the direction Tick had run, she saw something impossible. After all, they were indoors.
But there, a couple hundred yards away, countless pieces of debris swirled and flew through the air.
It looked like a tornado.
Paul heard it before he saw it. Crumpling metal, banging, clanking, a roaring wind—it all sounded like the world was coming to an end. He rounded a corner shop and saw a spinning mass of debris up ahead, mostly made up of chunks of metal and wood, some large and some small. As he watched, a long, steel beam hit the rail of an upper balcony then windmilled, smashing through a barber shop window.
“Paul!”
He turned to see Sofia just a couple of paths over, running toward him.
“Tick’s over there!” he yelled. Without waiting, he took off, crossing a cobbled path, heading for the same bridge he’d seen Tick cross a short time ago.
“Wait!” she called out, but he ignored her. He knew Tick might be caught in the middle of the weird tornado—of course, he didn’t know how he could help if that were the case, but he ran on anyway, making it halfway across the bridge before he stumbled to a stop.
Tick lay on the ground up ahead, bruised and bloody, staring up into the twister that spun right above him, railings and pipes and poles and sheets of metal flying through the air in a circle. He looked to be in the exact center of the steel storm, the buildings and walls around him ripped to shreds as they provided fuel for the impossible tornado. Nearby, several crumpled metaspides twitched and sparked; one of them had most of its body torn off and another had partially melted, two limbs and a chunk of its torso reduced to a pile of silvery goop.
“What the heck?” Paul said, just as Sofia caught up with him, almost knocking him forward.
“We’ve gotta grab him!” she said.
“I know, but how?” He turned toward her. “You got some body armor I don’t know about?”
“Look!” she said, pointing at Tick.
Their friend was crawling toward them.
Tick didn’t understand how this could be happening. Above him, solid metal objects ripped in half, dissolved, and reformed. Everything around him had gone nuts, breaking apart and spinning in the air above him, only to melt together into new shapes. The clank of stuff crashing into each other mixed with the roaring wind, sounding like freight trains were playing bumper cars.
And he’d had enough.
He crawled toward Paul and Sofia, thankful that the raging twister was several feet above him. Worried it might drop at any moment, or that one of the hundreds of pieces of debris would fly at him and skewer him, he scrambled on his hands and knees as fast as possible. When he reached what seemed to be the edge of the twister, he pushed himself to his feet and sprinted across the bridge to his friends.
“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.
“Boys!” Sofia said. Tick was shocked to see her smiling. “You’re so busy thinking, you forgot to use your brains.”
With a smirk, she darted over to the corner, ignoring the steel blade of death that sliced through the air a few inches from her shoulder. Then she sat down on the chair.
The second her bottom touched the warped wood of the seat, she disappeared.
Chapter
14
The Council on
Things That Matter
Tick felt like an idiot. Sofia was right; sometimes they thought too much.
He grabbed Paul by the shoulders and pushed him toward the chair, following right behind. “Hurry!” A blade whipped past his left shoulder, slicing his shirt.
Paul reached back and shoved Tick against the bricks. “Careful, dude. Inch along the wall.”
Sally stood next to the chair, looking confused as he glanced back and forth between the chair and Tick. Paul and Tick scooted along the wall until they reached the corner.
“Sit down, Sally!” Paul yelled. “Don’t worry, it’ll take you somewhere safe.”
Sally didn’t reply but leaned toward Tick’s ear until Tick could feel Sally’s beard scratching his cheek.
“What are you doing?” Tick asked, feeling uncomfortable. “You need to tell me something?”
“Just lookin’ at yer dadgum ear, boy.”
Before Tick could stop him, Sally reached up and rammed his pinky finger into Tick’s ear canal. Tick stumbled backward into Paul’s arms, a sharp pain exploding inside his head like an eardrum had just ruptured. The pain went away as soon as it had come, and Paul helped him back to his feet.