— and then, slowly, he began to feel kind of bad. Alexander still wasn’t moving. Max’s stomach clenched, thinking he’d ordered the actual killing of an actual goat-boy, but just then Alexander hopped up. He crossed his arms and made a series of nasty gestures to both Good Guys and Bad.
“I quit,” he snarled, and walked off.
Max had to think about these latest developments. He hadn’t liked getting hit by a rock — his stomach still ached from the rock Judith had thrown — but then again, when his team had used rocks on Alexander, it had caused him to surrender. Now the Bad Guys only had three soldiers left, which would make victory for Max’s team more likely. So now it made perfect sense. He was wrong to ban rocks, or even animals. The key was to use any or all weapons at one’s disposal, but to just make sure you won when you used them. Max was sure that with Douglas’s arm on their side, the Good Guys would prevail. And even if he did want to change the rules, and restrict the use of certain ammunition, he would have to find a way to make the Bad Guys listen. They hadn’t responded to the white flag, so Max concluded that the only way to end all this would be first, to win, and to win in such a way that incapacitated the enemy so thoroughly that he would have the chance to tell them — if he decided to tell them at all — not to throw rocks and animals next time. Simple enough.
With this plan in mind, he formulated a strategy. They would retreat up to the hill behind them, and then unleash an all-out attack from above.
On Max’s cue, they all abandoned their bunker and ran into the woods, and then climbed the hill.
The animal-artillery continued to land all around them, hitting the ground with thumps and squeals before hobbling off. There was so much squealing and grunting that when Douglas disappeared down a hole, letting out a quick shriek as he did so, none of Max’s team members realized what had happened. Max and Carol and Katherine had taken shelter behind a large rock near the hole when they finally heard him.
“Hello?” Douglas called out.
“What happened?” Max asked.
“I think I fell down a hole,” Douglas said.
Carol snapped his fingers. “I knew it! I was going to guess either that he fell down a hole or that he’d become invisible.”
No one had any idea how to get him out. He was about twenty feet down.
Meanwhile, the animal-artillery fire was getting closer. Max knew that they needed to climb higher, to get out of range. He also knew that when they got high enough to mount a counterattack, they had to so thoroughly stun the enemy that his team would have enough time to save Douglas from the hole.
From deep in the earth, Douglas cleared his throat. “Oh, also, I think there’s some kind of plant eating my left leg. So the sooner you can get me out, the better.”
Max was standing above the hole, trying to figure out how they could get him out, when he was hit in the neck by something. Was it a rock? It felt like a rock. He looked down, and found that it was a snake, wrapped around a rock. The snake, noting that Max was the closest bitable thing, bit Max.
“Ah!” Max yelled.
Katherine looked at Max as if he’d just done something very impolite.
“Shhh,” she said. “You’ll hurt his feelings.”
The snake slithered off, dejected.
“That wasn’t nice,” Katherine said. “It’s not like it was a poison bite or anything.”
Max was suddenly very worried. “Poison?”
“Wait a minute, maybe it was poison,” she said, placing her chin in her hand. “I guess we’ll know in a few more seconds. She stared at Max, examining his eyes and mouth. Finally satisfied, she smiled.
“Not poison. You’d have been dead by now. Good job getting bitten by the right kind of snake.”
Thunk! Another rock, another actual rock, hit Max in the stomach, in the same spot as before. This time he wasn’t sure who had thrown it, but it made him angrier than he’d ever been.
“Get up the hill!” Max commanded.
He and Carol and Katherine limped and crawled to the top of the hill, taking shelter behind a large boulder covered in the red-embroidery-looking moss he’d seen on his way to the fire the first night.
Max collapsed against the rock. His leg was going