Revenge of the Beetle Queen Page 10

  He looked back at Furniture Forest. It was a death trap of rotting wood; he didn’t want to be anywhere near it if it caught fire. He looked through the Emporium’s back door. He needed to get out, to the safety of the street, but to do that he’d have to run through the burning building. He’d have to be quick: The back kitchen was catching fire.

  Bertolt darted forward, covering his face with his arms. The heat pushed against his skin. He remembered a fireman coming into the school and telling them that the most dangerous thing about fires was not the flames, but the smoke. The toxic smoke that could make you pass out in minutes.

  He looked up. There was a mushroom cloud of dark, menacing smoke growing against the ceiling. He pulled his sweater up to cover his mouth, and dashed forward past the burning bathroom, into the kitchenette, and through the archway into the ruined shop.

  He came to an abrupt halt.

  Standing in the doorway of the shop was a giant mountain of a man, a scrawny skeletal figure clutching his arm.

  “IT’S THE BOY!” Pickering shrieked.

  “GET HIM!” Humphrey roared.

  Bertolt stumbled backward, spinning around and running back through the burning kitchen. His eyes spewed tears, making him blind, but he knew where the doorway was. He shot out into the backyard, beetles clinging to every part of him.

  “Newton!” he called out, and the flickering firefly swooped down. “Get the Base Camp fireflies. Light the way to safety for any survivors.”

  Using Bertolt as a safety raft, the beetles climbed up, gathering on his back and shoulders. Those that were able to fly took off and joined the fireflies to aid the rescue of their brothers and sisters. Bertolt fell to his knees and crawled as fast as he could under the foldaway table.

  “Where is he?” he heard Humphrey shout.

  Bertolt’s heart was beating faster than the wings of a hummingbird. He flicked a switch, setting the Grandfather Clock booby trap, and scrambled into the labyrinth of Furniture Forest.

  “There!” Pickering screamed. “He went under that table.”

  Bertolt came to the Grand Archway of bicycles and looked right, down Dung Ball Avenue. He didn’t want to lead Pickering and Humphrey to Base Camp. There was a crashing noise behind him, and a howl of pain as Pickering became a victim of the grandfather clock’s pendulum. Bertolt imagined it swinging down with force and smashing into Pickering’s head, and felt a moment of satisfaction.

  “Argh! Humphrey! The boy hit me in the face with a sword! I’m bleeding!”

  Bertolt looked down; beetles were collecting in puddles around his shins and hands. “Climb on,” he whispered. “We have to get out of here.” He turned his back on Dung Ball Avenue and headed into Tok-Tokkie Tunnel. Moving as quickly as he could, he scrambled to the Oyster, a safety pod he and Virginia had built in case of emergency. The pod was made of two bathtubs, one upside-down on top of the other, joined at the back by a giant hinge, and four springs he’d pulled out of an old pinball machine to make lifting the top bathtub easy. Bertolt raised it.

  “Right, all of you, get in here,” he whispered to the beetles, “until I can come back and get you.”

  The beetles flew, tumbled, and dropped into the empty bathtub.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Bertolt closed the Oyster and scrambled back to the Grand Archway.

  “Get out of my way,” Humphrey was shouting at his wailing cousin. “I’ll squash that little gnat!” Bertolt heard a clatter as Humphrey ripped the foldaway table away from the forest, tossing it behind him.

  “Newton,” Bertolt called up to the firefly, who was dancing up above Furniture Forest, “I need a halo. We need the ogre to see me.”

  Humphrey was on all fours, trying to squeeze between the two wardrobes that leaned against each other like sleeping tramps.

  Newton and a chain of his brothers, who were up above Furniture Forest looking for any surviving beetles, swooped down and formed a ring above Bertolt’s head.

  “I see you!” Humphrey shouted with menacing glee.

  “Oh no! Please don’t get me!” Bertolt cried, hoping Humphrey would take the bait. “Help me! Somebody!” And he twisted left, scrambling through a rarely used tunnel, which quickly narrowed. He’d waited for ages to test his booby traps, and he knew the perfect one for Humphrey.

  The tunnel was a dead end, a heavy oak dresser barring the way. Bertolt opened one of the cupboard doors in the dresser and wriggled through a small round hole that he’d cut out of its back. On the other side of the dresser, framing the hole, a toilet seat was screwed into the wood. Bertolt smiled to himself; Humphrey would never be able to fit through that hole.

  “I’m coming to get you!” Humphrey called out, grunting and straining as he crawled toward the dresser. “I’ll teach you to set fire to my house.”

  “Please don’t!” Bertolt cried as he doubled back through chair legs to a spy hole. He watched as the angry Humphrey huffed and puffed his way past on all fours, then silently slid a sheet of chipboard across the tunnel, slotting it between two bookcases on the opposite side, and pushing a heavy marble fireplace to lean against the chipboard. Humphrey was trapped.

  Feeling braver, Bertolt scurried back to the toilet seat, poking his head through it. “You’re trapped, you nasty great bully!” he said to Humphrey.

  “You’re not the boy!” Humphrey snorted, like an angry bull, and tried to back out of the tunnel. His feet kicked against the chipboard, but it was no use. He couldn’t get out the way he’d come in.

  “What have you done, you little rat?”

  “You’re caught in my Bog Seat booby trap,” Bertolt called out proudly. “And it serves you right for setting fire to the beetles.”

  “I didn’t set fire to any beetles!” Humphrey shouted. “Why would I set fire to what’s left of my home?”

  Bertolt blinked. A cold tide of fear washed over him. If it hadn’t been Humphrey and Pickering who started the fire, then it must have been … “Lucretia Cutter,” he said aloud.

  “Let me out!” Humphrey shouted.

  “Actually, I can’t. Sorry,” Bertolt called back. “I’m not strong enough on my own.”

  “What?” Humphrey thrashed about, kicking and butting his shoulders against his furniture cage until he realized he was well and truly trapped.

  Bertolt poked his head back through the hole in the back of the dresser. “Sorry!” he said, grinning.

  Humphrey’s nostrils flared. “Why, you little pipsqueak!” he roared, thrusting his head into the dresser, gnashing his teeth like a rabid dog, trying to bite Bertolt. “I didn’t get out of prison just to be trapped by a ridiculous-looking chipmunk wearing a bow tie!” His face poked out of the back of the dresser, framed by the toilet seat.

  Bertolt darted forward and grabbed the rim of the toilet seat, turning it ninety degrees.

  Humphrey tried to pull his head back out of the hole, but couldn’t. He was utterly stuck.

  “Right, back in a bit,” Bertolt said, with a little wave, and as fast as he could, he headed back toward the Grand Archway.

  He heard Pickering before he saw him.

  “My antiques! No! Oh no!”

  Where Furniture Forest brushed up against the Emporium, Bertolt saw that flames had caught the rotting tables and chairs. Pickering, almost encircled by flames, was leaping around beating them out with an old rug.

  “Hey!” Bertolt called. “Pickering!”

  Pickering turned around, a crazy look in his eyes. Bertolt ducked back into Furniture Forest, running as fast as he could to the tunnel off Dung Ball Avenue containing the Tangle Tunnel trap. He wriggled into it on his belly, leaving his feet sticking out.

  “Newton,” he hissed, “show him my feet.”

  A moment later he heard a shriek of delight from Pickering. “I see you! You little punk!”

  Bertolt pulled his legs into a squatting position. Reaching up above his head in the darkness, he found the ladder and pulled himself up silently. He held his br
eath as he watched Pickering below, writhing on his belly like an angry snake, moving into the pitch-black Tangle Tunnel.

  “I’m going to catch you, you little thief, and when I do, I’m going to … urgh! What’s this? It’s sticky. Ugh. What? Get it off! Ouch! Arghh! Oh, help! Humphrey!”

  Bertolt pressed his eyes closed and imagined all the strips of flypaper that were stapled to the floor and dangling down into the darkness distracting Pickering from the wire snares on the floor of the tunnel.

  “Let go of my leg! Humphrey? Is that you? Ouch!” There was a series of curses and mutterings as Pickering wriggled around, getting more tangled in a web of black string, wire snares, and the sticky paper that butchers used to trap flies.

  “Can you hear me, boy?” he called out. “You must think you’re ever so clever, but you’d better hope I never get out of here, because if I do, I’m going to find you and let my cousin bake you into a pie and EAT YOU!” He laughed, a horrible, chilling gurgle. “WITH CRANBERRY SAUCE!”

  Bertolt silently clambered up the ladder and out onto the bed frame that reared up in the middle of the yard. The sycamore tree was on fire, and the fringes of the forest were burning. He felt a bolt of panic as he saw how fast the furniture was catching fire. The flames were creeping along the wall, blocking any escape.

  Nelson Parade loomed out of the darkness, the silhouette of the Emporium backlit by a strange orange glow.

  “Good lord!” Uncle Max slammed his foot on the brake, and the Renault 4 threw them all forward as it screeched to a stop. He leapt out of the car.

  Darkus lifted Baxter down from his shoulder and put him on the backseat with the other beetles. “Stay in the car,” he said.

  Baxter refused to be put down, gripping onto Darkus’s hand with his strong claws.

  “Baxter, it’s too dangerous.” As he spoke, Darkus realized that he was saying the same words to Baxter that his father had said to him, and he stopped struggling with the beetle. Baxter had every right to want to save his family.

  The rhinoceros beetle marched determinedly up Darkus’s arm to his shoulder and stood alert, looking forward as Darkus got out of the car to stand beside his uncle and Virginia, staring at the burning building.

  “Bertolt!” Virginia screamed. Before Darkus or Uncle Max could stop her, she darted into the ruin of the Emporium.

  “NO!” Uncle Max was after her in a flash. “Virginia, get back here!”

  Darkus’s feet felt like concrete. He was rooted to the spot. Where had the fire come from? Where were the beetles?

  “Darkus!” he heard Virginia shout. “Furniture Forest is catching fire! Bertolt’s in there!”

  And then he was running, too, leaping over the rubble and wreckage in the Emporium. The heat radiating out of the manhole cover was overpowering, the hairs of his wool sweater melting and singeing from the power of it, and he knew in every fiber of his being that any beetle down in the sewer was dead.

  He grabbed Baxter off his shoulder and held him in his cupped hands, close to his chest. Tears spilled out of his eyes as he coughed and choked on the smoke. A tsunami of emotion crashed against his rib cage, and he stumbled. Before he hit the ground a strong hand grabbed the back of his sweater, lifted him to his feet, and yanked him out of the back of the building.

  “You okay? Darkus?” Uncle Max hugged him to his chest.

  Darkus nodded, pushing the image of Beetle Mountain as a towering inferno out of his head.

  Uncle Max was looking about him in a panic. “Foolish girl, she’s disappeared into that mess!” He pointed past the sycamore tree to a gaping hole in the furniture where the foldaway table had once stood. “It’s a death trap.”

  Darkus saw that the sycamore tree was on fire and flames had embraced the fringes of the forest. He put Baxter back on his shoulder and grabbed Uncle Max’s sleeve.

  “Call the fire brigade. I’ll get Virginia over the wall and into our yard.” Not waiting for a response, he dived into the forest and found the tunnels thick with smoke. He scurried down Dung Ball Avenue, pulling his sweater up over his mouth.

  “Virginia!” he called out.

  “Darkus. Over here.”

  Darkus followed Virginia’s voice. She was standing in Base Camp. It was empty, but she was pointing at the wall. Two of the booby trap alarms were jangling, the Bog Seat and the Tangle Tunnel. Virginia looked at him and he nodded.

  “I’ll take the Bog Seat. You check the Tangle Tunnel.”

  “Wait!” Virginia grabbed two tea towels that were folded neatly on Bertolt’s workbench. She thrust them into the bucket of water they used for washing up. “Tie this over your mouth.”

  Darkus gratefully received the damp cloth, and the two of them ran out of Base Camp, securing the towels over their mouths.

  He ducked and scrambled to the edge of the Bog Seat trap and peeped around the corner. To his astonishment he saw Humphrey’s head poking through a toilet seat, looking like a mounted and stuffed pig’s head. Darkus doubled back and met Virginia beside the Tangle Tunnel.

  “Pickering’s caught in there!” Virginia mumbled through her cloth.

  Darkus pointed over his shoulder. “Humphrey’s in that one.”

  “But where’s Bertolt?” Her dark eyes darted about in panic.

  The heat of the fire was increasing and the smoke was getting thicker. They needed to get to safety.

  “Safety!” Darkus shouted. “The Oyster!”

  Virginia’s eyes widened and she nodded, already running and sliding down the passageway that led to the safety pod. Darkus was hot on her heels. They burst out of the opening in front of the two bathtubs, and Virginia grabbed a corner and tried to push it up.

  “It won’t budge.”

  Darkus was by her side in a second and pulling, but the upturned bath wouldn’t open. They struggled for a minute, and then Darkus let go.

  “He’s locked it from the inside,” he said, banging on the bathtub bottom, lifting his tea towel and shouting, “BERTOLT! IT’S US!”

  There was a clunking sound and the top bathtub sprang open to reveal Bertolt, sitting in the bottom bathtub surrounded by a hundred beetles.

  “You knucklehead!” Virginia threw her arms around Bertolt’s face, knocking off his glasses. “I thought you were dead!” She squeezed his head hard as tears ran down her cheeks.

  Darkus wondered if she would have thrown her arms around him like that if it had been him in the bathtub.

  “LET GO!” Bertolt gave a muffled cry. “You’re suffocating me.”

  Virginia smiled and stepped backward. “You’re alive!”

  “The beetles …” Darkus found he was unable to speak.

  “I tried, Darkus, I really tried.” Bertolt pressed his lips together, trying not to cry. “But Humphrey and Pickering chased me, and the fire was so hot, and these were all the beetles I managed to save.” He looked down at the insects around him in the tub. “Some of them are hurt.”

  Darkus closed his eyes. He felt like a part of him was burning, too; all those wonderful, clever beetles gone. He slumped forward, gripping the edge of the bathtub.

  “This is not the time or the place to talk about this,” Virginia said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “The smoke is getting thicker. We need to get out of here.”

  Darkus leaned in and gently sank his hands into the bathtub. “Climb up, little friends,” he whispered. Virginia walked around to the other side of Bertolt and did the same.

  Bertolt carefully clambered out of the tub, still with beetles on his shoulders and head.

  “We need to get to the ladder and over the wall into your uncle Max’s,” Virginia said.

  “The flames are all along the wall,” Bertolt said. “The ladder will be on fire.”

  “Grab the washing-up bucket—we’ll put out the flames,” Virginia said to Darkus.

  Darkus didn’t wait—he sprinted into Base Camp, picked up the bucket, and ran back. He stepped onto a chair, climbing up onto the melting tarpaulin skin o
f the forest. “We’ll go up and over,” he said. “That way we can see where the fires are and avoid the smoke.”

  “What about Humphrey and Pickering?” Bertolt said, following Virginia up onto the chair. “We can’t let them die.”

  “Uncle Max has called the fire brigade. They’ll be here any minute,” Darkus replied.

  “But the smoke?” Bertolt said.

  “Their heads are close to the ground,” Darkus replied. “Smoke rises. They’ll live.”

  “They wouldn’t care if we got roasted,” Virginia said, unconcerned, offering Bertolt a hand up.

  As they clambered across the roof of Furniture Forest, the welcome yowl of approaching fire engines gave them strength. Darkus hurled the bucket of water over the singed ladder, and one by one they made it safely over the wall.

  The three children watched from Uncle Max’s kitchen window as the firemen trained their hoses on Furniture Forest. They used sticks with metal hooks to pull apart the burning-hot furniture, putting out the many small fires they encountered as they searched for the trapped men. Darkus saw the relief on Bertolt’s face as Humphrey and Pickering were freed from their traps, thoroughly soaked and a bit singed but fully alive and as angry as pestered hornets. Humphrey was charging around shouting at firemen, while Pickering was frantically trying to save items from the charred mountain of burnt junk that had once been their Furniture Forest. A strip of flypaper was stuck to the side of his head, his straggly hair matted around it. A sheet of newspaper had gotten stuck to it, too, and was flapping in the wind. He looked ridiculous, but no one felt like laughing.

  Several escaping beetles—stragglers, hurt and confused—made it to the window ledge. Baxter, Marvin, and Newton welcomed them in, but there were only a few, and then no more came.

  Darkus made the injured beetles a makeshift hospital in a roasting tin with oakwood mulch on the bottom, a pile of fruit, and a couple of teacups at one end. The other beetles made their way into dark corners of the room to rest.