The Quillan Games Read Online Free PDF Page B

target asLoor had instructed, and lifted my weapon. I was ready . . . or at least as ready as I was able to get.
    So were the spiders. They attacked by flinging themselves from the edge of the crate above. These devilish bugs couldn’t jump up, but they could definitely jump down. I briefly thought how it was incredible that these bugs could be so focused. So smart. There was definitely intelligence going on here. They were smarter than any quig I had faced so far. The thought quickly flashed through my head that all the inhabitants of Quillan might be bugs, like the cat klees of Eelong. But that gruesome thought only distracted me from my mission, which was to survive. If I was going to have to fight a race of intelligent, vicious bug people, the battle for Quillan was under way.
    They came at me, flying through the air, screaming. I batted them with my makeshift wood-plank weapon, knocking them away like, well, like bugs. These guys may have been smart, but they weren’t very strong. The first bug I hit screamed and flew back across the aisle. It smashed against a crate on the far side, and fell to the ground. It looked dead. Of course, I wasn’t going to go and check its pulse. I had a few thousand other things to deal with at the time. But seeing this gave me hope. These spiders were fragile. They had the numbers, but I had the power. The question was, would I burn out before they ran out of reinforcements?
    They flew at me from above; I swatted at them quickly. Whap! Crack! It was like high-speed batting practice. Good thing I knew how to switch-hit. It wasn’t much different from fending off Loor’s attacks when we sparred in the training camp of Mooraj. I was on fire. The dizziness was long gone. Thanks again, adrenaline. I cracked the attacking bugs as fast as they came at me, sending them crashing against the hard wooden crates.
    But the bugs weren’t done. They were leaping in ones and twos. That’s how I was able to smack them all away. I feared that once they realized my defenses were limited, they’d send more than a few at a time and I’d be in trouble.
    â€œOuch!” I felt something bite my leg. I didn’t need to look down. I knew that a spider had made it to the floor and was on my ankle. I shook it off, only to feel another stinging bite on my other ankle. I knew I couldn’t stand my ground anymore. There were too many of them. I had to get out. While still swinging away at the leaping kamikaze bugs, I started to back out of that aisle. The bugs countered. I could see them above me, gathering on top of the crates across the aisle, getting into a new position to attack. As I backed off, I could feel the bodies of the beaten spiders crack under my feet. If I weren’t so charged up, I probably would have been grossed out. But that was the least of my worries. I was losing. I had to retreat.
    With one last swing of my wooden plank, I knocked another spider into next week, then turned and ran. I rounded the corner of another aisle, hoping to see a straightaway where I could turn on the jets and sprint out of there. What I saw was the straightaway I hoped for . . . but it was filled with more spiders. At the front of the pack (do spiders come in packs?) was the fatboy. Its bright yellow eyes were trained on me. It was a showdown. No, worse. It was over. I had nothing left. The big spider reared back on its legs, like a cat ready to pounce . . . and charged. The others were right behind it, screaming and scrambling.
    I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t go forward. All I could do was climb again. I looked up and saw that the crates here were stacked just as high but were smaller in size. The top crates were about two-feet square. I got an idea that sprang from pure desperation. I jumped up and hooked my finger on topof one of the smaller crates. But rather than pull myself up . . .
    I pulled the crate down. It was heavy, but