The Dead Boys by Royce Buckingham

flashlight and shined it ahead—nothing but darkness as far as he could see. At least there were no trees or double-crossing kids. A wave of relief washed over him and for a moment he relaxed, at least until he pointed the light down.
    In the bright beam, he could see the ground moving. Teddy gasped—it was an undulating carpet of bugs, all waving oversized pincers and upturned tails.
    Scorpions!
    He swung the flashlight in a full circle around him, scanning the heaving swarm of poisonous creatures. There were thousands of them, and he’d run directly into their midst. He took a tentative step back, and his heel made a loud crunch. Scorpions skittered away in every direction.
    No more than a bee sting , he told himself, trying to stay calm. But what would a thousand stings do to me?
    The scorpions were now scuttling across his tennis shoes as the throng closed in again around his motionless feet. At first, Teddy tried to delicately tiptoe into the open spaces between the horrible little creatures. But they kept crawling toward him, flooding the desert floor and filling every gap. So Teddy began to trot again, crunching with every step, high-stepping like a football player running through tires at practice.
    His legs pistoned up and down, feet smashing scorpions into bits of shell and white jelly with every step, but they never touched the ground long enough for his tormentors to climb aboard. It was exhausting—he was already tired from fleeing the boys, and he knew he couldn’t stop or the scorpions would swarm over him in an instant.
    But because he tried to keep the flashlight pointed straight ahead to see where he was going, he couldn’t look down, and when the ground suddenly dropped away, he toppled into a hole.

CHAPTER 22
    The flashlight flew from his hand, its beam waving uselessly in random directions as Teddy plummeted for anxious seconds. It was just long enough to wonder if he was falling to his death, but then he hit the ground. Hard.
    Teddy rolled over, groaning in agony. His left knee was throbbing—he’d twisted it in an awkward direction when he landed—but he desperately crawled for the flashlight, which had landed a few feet away. The horror of losing the light was stronger than the pain.
    Luckily, he didn’t feel anything crawl over his bare hand as he reached along the ground. And when he grabbed the light and shined it around, he was relieved to see that he’d fallen clear of the scorpions.
    Teddy got to his feet, favoring his knee, and looked around to see where he’d landed. He found himself in a trench that was about five feet wide, with walls that rose straight up on either side of him—ten tall feet of dirt, rocks, and sinewy tree roots.
    There was no way he could reach the top, and he didn’t dare grab hold of the roots to climb—he certainly didn’t trust them. But it didn’t matter—a scorpion dropped over the edge of the trench, falling at his feet, and he suddenly didn’t want to go up anyway.
    As if on cue, dozens more scorpions began to pour into the trench after the first one, dropping to the ground behind Teddy. The path was clear the other way, so he turned around and limped away as fast as he could in that direction.
    Even slowed by his injured leg, he outdistanced the scorpions. But if he paused to rest, even for a second, they quickly began to gather behind him again. So he continued along the trench with the unpleasant feeling that the creeping little things were herding him onward.
    As Teddy limped along, he began to notice a squishing sound with each footfall. Looking down, he saw that a trickle of brownish sludge was now running along the ground, and the air started to smell foul, like an outhouse.
    This is a sewer trench , he realized. He started to feel nauseated and picked up the pace, hoping to find a way out of the trench.
    Just then, Teddy began to hear a banging sound, and he came to a wooden ladder