The Cobra Clash Read online

  With special thanks to Adrian Bott

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CALL FOR HELP

  CRASH LANDING

  BUGNAPPED!

  SWAT

  TERRIBLE TURTLES

  HIDDEN ENEMY

  SURROUNDED!

  GREAT REPTILICUS

  RESCUE OPERATION

  REAL LIFE BATTLE BUGS!

  PREVIEW - BATTLE BUGS 6: THE KOMODO CONFLICT

  COPYRIGHT

  The students at Burgdale Elementary thought their library was pretty cool.

  All the computers were new, instead of the sluggish old machines some schools had. You could sit and read by the huge glass windows, or listen to an audiobook in a private cubicle. The librarians were strict, but they weren’t as harsh as some could be. All in all, it was the best place to study if you were in the mood.

  Which Max Darwin wasn’t.

  He’d spread three books out in front of him on his table, but he just couldn’t concentrate on them. Steve Bergese and Mike Crabbe sat on either side of him, writing down notes. Mike noticed Max wasn’t writing and frowned.

  When Max didn’t respond, Mike nudged him with an elbow. “Hey, Space Captain Max! You want to come back to Earth, maybe?”

  Max blinked. “Sorry. I was daydreaming.”

  “Probably thinking about bugs again,” Steve muttered without looking up. “Max has bugs on the brain. I bet centipedes crawl out of his nose when nobody’s looking.”

  Max kicked him under the table, but not too hard, because Steve was the class joker and was like that with everyone.

  Besides, he had been thinking about bugs: a very special group of bugs, in fact. But he couldn’t tell Mike or Steve about them. They’d never believe a word he said.

  “Are you boys talking over there?” A head wearing dark, round glasses bobbed up over the top of a bookcase, taking them all by surprise. It was Mrs. Marquette, the head librarian. The kids of Burgdale all called her Mrs. Meerkat, because she had a habit of popping up suddenly, in completely unexpected places.

  “No,” said Max quickly, shaking his head. Steve and Mike looked down, guiltily.

  “Hmph,” said Mrs. Marquette. She gave the boys a suspicious glare and slowly sank back down again.

  Max made a fresh effort to focus on the books in front of him. He had a big history test next period. That was why he, Steve, and Mike had met up here. They were supposed to be cramming.

  But the moment Max tried to read about armies of men shooting arrows at one another or laying siege to castles, he found himself reliving his own memories of Bug Island. Neither Steve nor Mike had ever had to command forces on the battlefield. But Max had.

  If only they knew, he thought, and closed his eyes.

  Max owned a book that was larger and older than anything in this whole library—his treasured Encyclopedia of Arthropods. As well as being a guide to everything you could ever want to know about bugs, it was a magical gateway to another world.

  Whenever Max traveled there, he shrunk down to the size of an insect and joined the bug forces in their never-ending battle against the lizards. His bug friends were like boosted versions of bugs from the real world. They were highly intelligent and able to use their real-world abilities in battle.

  Bug Island, where they lived, had once been a peaceful paradise. But when an erupting volcano created a bridge of cooled-down lava, the greedy inhabitants of nearby Reptile Island began to cross over and attack. Barton, the titan beetle commander of the Battle Bugs, often called on Max to use his big human brain to help.

  Last time Max had visited Bug Island, he’d helped the termite forces build a watchtower so the bugs could see the lizards coming. It must have done the trick, because Barton hadn’t called on him for days now. Max sighed. Maybe the battle was over and the bugs didn’t need him anymore.

  From somewhere among the bags under the table came a sudden bzzzt. And again, a longer bzzzzzzzzt.

  Max’s eyes flew open. He glanced up, just in time to see Mrs. Meerkat popping up from behind the shelves again.

  “Did someone bring a cell phone to the library?” she asked.

  Max, Mike, and Steve all looked at one another. “Not us!” each of them said.

  “I know a cell phone when I hear one.” The librarian scowled. “Just because you’ve got it set to vibrate doesn’t mean you can bring it in here!”

  “We’re just studying,” Max said honestly.

  Mrs. Meerkat grunted, as if to say I don’t believe a word of it, but she slunk back behind her desk.

  Mike shook his head. “Man. What’s her problem?”

  “Aren’t you going to check your phone?” Max asked.

  Mike shrugged. “It’s not mine. Mom would never let me bring it to school.”

  “Me neither,” said Steve. “Guess it must be yours, Max.”

  Puzzled, Max turned back to his books. His phone was in his locker. He’d never have it on him in case it went off in class. What could have made that noise? he wondered.

  Seconds later, the noise sounded again. This time it was even louder, an urgent-sounding BZZZT.

  I got it, Max thought. It’s not a cell phone. It’s something much more interesting!

  Max quickly snatched up his bag from under the table before Mrs. Meerkat could come over and start lecturing him again. He needed to get to somewhere quiet and private, fast.

  “I’m, uh, just going to find a book,” he told his friends. From inside his bag came another BZZZT.

  A grin spread over Steve’s face. “Someone really wants to talk to you, Max. You got a secret admirer?”

  “No way!” Max laughed—he knew it was something much better than an admirer.

  He turned and headed for the shady end of the library, away from the tall windows. He ducked behind the stacks and checked to make sure his buddies hadn’t followed him so they could listen in. If anyone saw what was about to happen, they wouldn’t believe their eyes.

  He reached into his backpack and took out the Encyclopedia of Arthropods. As he’d expected, the edges of the pages were glowing with a strange silvery light.

  BZZZT, went the enormous book. It sounded just like the buzz of a gigantic insect. The cover lifted slightly and the pages fluttered, as if something was struggling to get out.

  “I hear you,” Max whispered.

  He gently opened the book to the pages he’d marked and laid it flat on the floor, revealing a two-page map of Bug Island. Then he took out the old-fashioned magnifying glass that had come with the encyclopedia and held it over the map.

  With a lurch, Max was pulled off his feet. He let out a cry, and then slapped a hand over his mouth quickly. As he went tumbling into the book, shrinking down and down, he heard the shrill voice of Mrs. Meerkat demanding, “Who was that? Who made that noise? It’s you boys again, isn’t it?”

  But soon her voice was nothing but a fading echo, and Max was falling down from the sky into the great green mass of Bug Island.

  Max could never tell what sort of landing he’d have on Bug Island. Sometimes he landed lightly on leaves or blades of grass, while at other times he might plop down into the sea or even plummet into a pile of rotten plants. He braced himself for the impact, whatever it might be.

  Splat!

  Mud and water flew up as Max landed feetfirst in a boggy marsh. He sank down to his knees and then, to his relief, bobbed back up again.

  “Blurgh,” he said aloud to himself, wiping the mud out of his face. He dragged himself out of the slimy hole and up onto the wet ground. “I guess I’ve had worse landings.”

  Max looked around, wondering where on Bug Island he was. The sun was just coming up, and the gnarled trees all around him cast long shadows over the wet ground. L
ong vines hung down from the branches, and pools of water shone bright as scattered coins in the early sunlight. Here and there, strange plants and flowers sprouted from the marsh. Their blues, reds, and yellows blazed against the murky brown background of the swamp. Max recognized the gaping jaws of a Venus flytrap and shuddered. Hopefully his bug friends knew to stay well away from that plant!

  There were no bugs on the ground for him to warn, but from overhead came a constant whirr and whiz, as if airplanes were flying past. Max looked up to see an amazing stream of flying bugs hurtling by.

  Dragonflies droned above, their bodies gleaming like jewels and their bulbous heads as shiny as armored helmets. Other, even bigger bugs zoomed past, too. Max stood like a pedestrian beside a busy turnpike watching them go by: damselflies, May bugs, and huge dark bugs he’d never even seen before.

  “What’s going on?” he muttered. So many bugs all rushing the same way wasn’t normal. Something big was happening on Bug Island. Maybe Barton had called for a mass attack, or maybe the bugs were going to battle, to finish the lizards once and for all.

  “Hey! Where are you all going?” he yelled. “It’s me, Max!”

  None of the flying bugs looked his way, and not one of them even slowed down.

  Max clambered across a slushy, squishy swamp and stood gasping on a bank of moss. He jumped up and down, waving his arms and yelling, “Over here!”

  One of the dragonflies zoomed low, and for a moment Max thought it was going to stop for him. No such luck. It rocketed past, its legs brushing his head.

  “Can’t stop!” it droned. “This is an emergency. Code red! Code red!”

  The next second it vanished from sight, plunging in amongst the jungle trees with all the other flying bugs.

  “Uh-oh.” Max said. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  Without knowing where he was, he had no idea how he was supposed to help. But at least the flying bugs seemed to know where they were going—if they were heading westward, then that’s where he would have to go, too.

  Max set off at a run, following the dragonflies. His sneakers, still sodden with muddy water, squelched loudly as he ran. Every few seconds he glanced up to make sure he was still going the right way, dodging trees and fallen branches as he went. As he ducked a fat, spiky vine, he glanced up again, but this time his foot gave way beneath him in the wet ground. With nothing to grab on to but the razor-sharp shrub, he stumbled to the ground.

  “Argh,” he yelled, as he plunged into a boggy pool. Thick, oily bubbles rose and burst around him. “Gross. Can this day get any worse?”

  He wrenched himself upward, trying to pull himself out of the gooey mess. But for some reason, the more he kicked and floundered, the deeper he sank.

  “What the—” Max began. Soon he was up to his waist. Apparently this day was about to get a lot worse.

  With a jolt he realized what it was: “Quicksand!” Every time he moved he was getting more and more stuck, and sinking all the while. If he didn’t get out, he’d be sucked under forever.

  Max peered around, frantically. Luckily, there was a root protruding from the mud just ahead of him. It would only have been the size of a hair to full-sized Max, but to the bug-sized version it was thick as a rope. Leaning forward in the slurping mess of bog, he reached out until his fingertips ached. He just managed to wrap his hands around it and pulled as hard as he could. He leaned forward, using the root to pull himself to the edge of the bog once more, when the root broke free in his hands with a loud tearing noise.

  “Nooo!” Max cried. Now he really started to panic. A deep gurgle from below told him he was sinking fast. His only hope was that one of the flying bugs would hear his cries for help.

  “Stuck human being here!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Help!”

  The dragonflies just shot by, one after the other. Either they couldn’t hear him or they thought their emergency was more important.

  That’s when Max had an idea. He waved the broken root in the air toward the low-flying bugs. Swooshing with all his strength, he just managed to clip the underside of one of the fast-moving creatures.

  “Gotcha!” he cried.

  This time, the giant black shape broke formation and came hurtling down toward him. It swept past overhead, giving Max a glimpse of its airplane-sized body and splayed legs, before landing opposite him on the bank with an earthshaking thump.

  Now that he could see it clearly, Max gaped in awe. The insect had two colossal mandibles jutting from its head, like an earwig’s pincers but at least twice the size. Its two giant sets of wings were far larger than its body.

  I recognize that, Max thought. It’s a giant dobsonfly—the biggest aquatic flying insect in the world.

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” boomed the giant dobsonfly. “ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME CRASH-LAND?”

  “No!” Max explained his situation quickly, feeling the quicksand rise to his chest. “I need help getting out of here!”

  “OH, I SEE. THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST SAY SO?”

  I did try, Max thought, as the dobsonfly hovered over him.

  Max kept very still as the dobsonfly slowly closed his pincers around his body. One slip, and those sharp, curved mandibles might skewer him. But the giant insect was surprisingly gentle as he carefully hauled Max out of the bubbling, gurgling sand.

  “Thanks!” Max gasped, safe on the solid ground again. “Those things really come in handy!”

  “WELL, I’M A LIFTER AND HAULER, YOU SEE—”

  Max winced and covered his ears. “Could you maybe talk more quietly? I’m gonna go deaf!”

  “Sorry about that,” the dobsonfly said. “You’ve got to shout to be heard with all those dragonflies droning up above.”

  Max knew about that all too well.

  “I’m Dobs, the logistics bug. I transport all kinds of things across the island to help with the war effort.”

  “I’m Max,” he said. “What’s all the commotion about?”

  “They haven’t told us yet. There’s some sort of emergency in the bug camp. Wait—did you say Max? You’re General Barton’s special adviser, aren’t you? The human being!”

  “That’s me.” Max grinned.

  “Then you need to get to Barton right away. Need a lift?”

  Max clambered gratefully onto Dobs’s back and they took off in a roar of wings.

  After a short flight through the trees, they touched down in a clearing full of feverish activity. Bugs were racing back and forth all around. Fireflies blinked frantic messages to one another. Max heard fly scouts delivering their reports:

  “Nothing new.”

  “No sightings.”

  “Not even a trail to follow.”

  Max barely had a chance to get off Dobs’s back before he saw a familiar shape pushing through the hordes of busy bugs, its carapace large as an overturned boat, its mandibles like antlers. It was Barton, the titan beetle, commander of the Battle Bug forces.

  “Out of the way!” Barton ordered. The smaller bugs quickly scurried out of his path.

  Barton was always serious, but never this stern and grave. “What’s going on, General?” Max asked.

  “Max, it’s a disaster. The lizards mounted a surprise attack last night.”

  “Oh, no!” Max gasped. “Was it bad? Were many bugs hurt?”

  “It’s even worse than that,” Barton said gravely. “They captured one of our best officers. It’s Spike—he’s been bugnapped!”

  “Spike,” Max said, hardly able to believe it—the emperor scorpion was his best friend on Bug Island. “But he’s so tough! Those claws, and that sting … How could any lizard take him down?”

  “They caught us off-guard,” Barton explained, clearly miserable. “And what’s more, it was an air strike. The lizards have never tried anything of the kind before.”

  “But lizards can’t fly,” Max cried. Being able to fly had always been one of the bugs’ biggest tactical advantages. Although the lizards had allied with a group
of greedy birds once, the lizards themselves would always be stuck on the ground.

  “They used gliding lizards. They waited until the middle of the night to do it, too. Do you know how much noise a gliding lizard makes in flight?”

  “None at all?” Max guessed.

  “Exactly. They swooped in from all directions at once, so our bugs didn’t even have an escape route.”

  “Clever,” Max said sourly.

  Barton nodded. “Komodo planned this one well, I’ll give him that.”

  Max wished he could have been here on Bug Island the night before. Together, he and Spike were an unstoppable team. They never could have bugnapped the scorpion if he’d been there.

  “General, what exactly happened to him? Was he hurt?”

  “The lizards bundled Spike away before the bugs could do anything to stop them. He put up a fight, although I don’t think he was hurt.”

  Max felt a little better. However, the lizards were obviously keeping Spike alive for some reason—but why?

  “I’ve got all my best bugs on the job,” Barton said. “The lizards won’t get away with this!”

  Suddenly, right on cue, a flickering orange light high up in the trees caught Max’s eye: a firefly signal! The next moment, an old friend of his flew down, bustling through the bugs in the clearing and coming to a halt right in front of them.

  “Glower!”

  “Good to see you again, Max,” he said. The firefly was head of the underground bug resistance, tasked with picking up intelligence from across the island and making sure it got back to central command. “It’s a shame we have to meet like this, but one of our agents picked up some news on Spike.”

  “What is it?” Barton barked. “There’s no time to lose.”

  “We’ve received a personal message from Komodo,” Glower said.

  Max was shocked. The giant komodo dragon lizard was the head of the reptile forces. He never stooped to the level of actually sending messages to the bugs. This must have been serious.

  “What did he say?” Max demanded.

  “My agent remembered it word for word …” Glower began. “He said, ‘We are holding the scorpion known as Spike. He is currently unharmed, but he is being held at the volcano on Reptile Island. There is no hope of rescue. We therefore present you with a choice: Give up the fight by sundown and surrender Bug Island to us, or Spike will be thrown into the burning lava.’ ”