Chapter 8

chapter eight We all agree: we've seen our friends turned to zombies, we've seen giant monsters devour those

zombies, we've seen Quint without pants—but today was the strangest day of our lives. A few blocks from Joe's, Quint stops. He pulls the bestiary from his bag and sets it on the hood of a banged-up Wakefield police cruiser. He pulls a pen from his pocket and begins writing. "Whatcha doing, buddy?" I ask. "I'm adding our first entry to the new bestiary. The Wormungulous." "But we don't have its essence. You know, proof, like Thrull said." Quint smiles slyly. "Yes, we do. Hand me the Louisville Slicer." I unsheathe the blade. Quint holds it up, turning and examining it in the moonlight. Finally, he seems satisfied. Gripping the blade in one hand and holding the bestiary with the other, Quint wipes the edge of the bat on the page. We all inch closer. A gob of almost-dried Wormungulous blood and gunk rubs off. Quint writes for a few moments, then looks up proudly. "One down, two hundred and thirty-one to go..."

THE WORMUNGULOUS DATA quint's best approximations. Length go feet. WAIT 30—35 tons, speed forty miles per hour on surface. Subterranean speed. Currently unknown. Spiky tentacles. ESSENCE MUNGULA BLOOD Armored skull. Jagged teeth indicate carnivorous diet. QUINT NOTES. Underground movement can be perceived from surface via waves of rolling broken ground KNOWN HABITATS. Circle ONE Mall PRINCIPAL ATTACK. Skull assaults, WEAKNESSES, Edged weapons, TEMPERAMENT, Ferocious, Nearing our tree house, I smile. We're home. Feels good to be home after the weirdest day ever. And what a home it is. See, I was an orphan before the Monster Apocalypse. My foster family, the Robinsons, were real jerks. But they built their kid—my foster brother—a ridic tree house. The Robinsons hightailed it as soon as the Monster Apocalypse hit—I have no idea where they are now. But that's fine: Quint and I moved into the tree

house and spent a lot of time tricking it out. It is serious. Quint places the bestiary in our reinforced snack lockbox. It's where we keep all our most valuable possessions: Twinkies, burp-contest scorecard (no one ever beats June), my spare nunchucks—all the good stuff. Quint locks it, and my friends head to bed. But I don't doze off. I worry. I spent a lifetime—well, like thirteen years; actually less, 'cause for a while I was a baby and

then a toddler and y'know—but I've spent a LONG time wanting buddies. A family. And now that I've got it—I'm scared to total extreme death of losing that family. With everything quiet, I replay the day's events in my head. One image haunts me. Not Joe's Pizza. Not the image of Wormungulous. It's the Wormungulous slamming into my friends. It's that feeling in my stomach when I thought they were gone for good. It won't go away. I can't shake it. After two hours of kicking and turning and tossing (is there anything worse than trying to go to sleep and not being able to?), I finally give up. I climb out of bed, squinting in the darkness, and shuffle out to the deck.

Hey, buddy, keep me company Rover scampers over and wiggles into the pulley basket. I flip the hydraulic lift switch, and his huge hide is hoisted up onto the deck. I fix us some cocktails—I like Pibb Xtra mixed with Dr Pepper, and Rover is a fan of Orange Crush and grass, topped with acorns. I pour some into his monster food bowl, which is actually a hollowed-out Dozer skull. Rover slurps from the eyeball socket.