The Trap. Michael Grant

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СКАЧАТЬ but their torsos were discreetly covered by black-on-white spotted fur.

      They looked a little like dalmatian puppies. Except not cute. The Lepercons didn’t make you want to say “Aaaw”; they made you want to say “Aaah!” Largely because they had leprous, disfigured faces that reminded Mack of wadded-up gym socks with downturned doll mouths.

      They appeared to have started life with the usual number of fingers and toes and noses, but the bare flesh visible beyond the fur was all eaten at, chewed up, and missing things that ought to be there.

      “Did he say leprechauns?” Jarrah asked.

      “Lepercons, you stupid—” Nine Iron squinted. He growled. “Who are you, anyway?”

      “Jarrah Major,” she answered. “Pleased to… Well, maybe not.”

      There looked to be about a dozen of the Lepercons packed into the suitcase like sardines. Diseased, unhealthy sardines.

      They unpacked themselves very quickly.

      And Nine Iron laughed again as he unzipped a second plaid suitcase.

      Lepercons leaped from both suitcases.

      They leaped, and paused there for a moment on the carousel to unzip an outer pocket on each suitcase. From which they extracted bundles of sharp implements like knitting needles, handed them around, and then, armed, they launched themselves at Mack, Jarrah and Stefan.

      

      

ack did the smart thing, the thing anyone would do when attacked by a dozen knitting-needle-wielding, diseased minipeople who looked like dalmatian puppies with mismatched fingers and deformed legs.

      He yelled, “Yaa-ah-aaah!” And ran.

      The Lepercons were quick. At least, the ones who still had both feet were. Some were chasing him on stumps. Or on one stump and one regular foot. Or on one whole leg and a partial leg.

      These were slower.

      Mack felt a needle jab the back of his left calf. It didn’t penetrate his jeans, but it hurt and he yelled, “Hey, cut it out!”

      Because normally that works.

      A second jab caught him in the right butt cheek.

      Mack spotted a small woman hauling a large wheeled suitcase. He snatched the bag, yelled, “Sorry!” then executed a running pivot and flung the suitcase at the charging Lepercons.

      Three of them went down like bowling pins and let out howls of outrage.

      “Agara! Agara! Agara!” Which is probably the traditional Lepercon howl of outrage.

      But the others leaped clear of the bag and were all over Mack in a heartbeat.

      Knitting needles jabbed at jeans and T-shirt without much effect, but one caught him in the palm of his left hand, and that drew blood.

      A particularly persistent Lepercon climbed on to Mack’s shoulders from behind. He felt the tip of the needle enter his ear. He jerked away, but the needle jabbed, jabbed, jabbed again.

      “Hey! That hurts!”

      Mack reached around, grabbed a handful of spotted fur, and yanked the creature up over his head. He held him by one leg and swung the little monster like a club, beating at the others.

      Thumpf!

      Mack nailed one of the Lepercons pretty well, but then the leg he was holding came off – just detached. He stared stupidly at it. There was no blood, no hanging arteries or gore.

      In fact, the detached end of the leg looked like a piece of well-aged blue cheese. Possibly Stilton.

      Although it may have been Gorgonzola.

      Mack wanted to throw up. It wasn’t a good thing to see. Or smell. And if it was blue cheese… No. No, it couldn’t be! He hated blue cheese. Worse yet: he had a deep and awful terror of blue cheese.

      “Jasnafar’s been legged!” one of the Lepercons screeched.

      “Avenge Jasnafar!”

      “Agara! Agara!” the now one-legged Jasnafar cried. He hopped on his remaining leg, oozing gooey blue cheeselike product from his stump, and stabbed busily at Mack’s foot.

      “Get off me, get off me!” Mack cried. “Noooo, nooooo! Get it off me! Nooooo, it’s Roquefort!”

      Jarrah and Stefan were both busy with their own Lepercon problems. Mack caught a flash of Jarrah tossing a Lepercon so hard it went spinning across the floor and smacked into a Chinese boy, who kicked it away with a reflexive soccer kick.

      Stefan had one of the Lepercons in his teeth. He chomped down hard and spat out a Lepercon hand. Stefan also had a knitting needle either stuck into his head or his hair – hopefully his hair – and was too busy to run to Mack’s rescue.

      “You fools!” Nine Iron cried. “Go for the boy! The boy!”

      The old man had to sit down after that and inhale more oxygen from the tube. He sat on the carousel and was swept slowly away, wedged in between a large black garment bag and a grey duffel bag.

      Mack punched one of the Lepercons. Right in the face.

      Pumpf!

      Blue cheese product shot from the creature’s nose, mouth and ears.

      Mack felt a sharp pain. The knitting needle just sat there, sticking out of his neck. “Hey!” he yelled.

      He snatched the needle out and stared at the single drop of his own blood.

      Now Mack was mad as well as terrified. “OK, that’s enough!”

      In one fluid movement he jammed the needle into the nearest Lepercon. It went easily all the way through. Goo squeezed out around the puncture.

      Mack kicked, punched and generally flailed away like a panicky kid in the midst of a phobia meltdown – although it was all very Mortal Kombat in his head. But flailing didn’t help much, and now more of the Lepercons were heeding Nine Iron’s fading, wheezing shouts and leaving Jarrah and Stefan in order to come after Mack. They were all over him. The sheer weight of them made him stagger.

      But worse was the morbid terror of the goo oozing from the Lepercons’ many wounds.

      Mack suffered from twenty-one known phobias – unreasonable fears. We don’t have time to list them all, but they ran the gamut from fear of puppets to a fear of fear itself, which is called phobophobia.

      The thing with phobias is that they aren’t reasonable fears, such as a fear of clowns or brussels sprouts or reality shows. Phobias are at a whole different level. The phobia panic builds and builds until pretty soon a person just loses it altogether.

      And СКАЧАТЬ