General from S III: Spanthopper enters.
Scientist: “Sir!”
General: “How is the research coming?”
Scientist: “Your idea was brilliant. With the addition of the termite DNA, they can now burrow through two feet of reinforced concrete!”
General: “What have you made their enclosures of then?”
Scientist: “Sixty centimeters of reinforced concrete.”
General: “Something about this seems a bit off, but carry on.”
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Oh yes, oh yes, it's that time of year again! For those of you just joining us, ever since the wild response to Spants by the half-dozen people that read it, your humble author has made it a Halloween tradition to follow up the original campy humor with even more hackneyed, cliched and generally atrocious sequels.
For the previous installments:
http://fromacj7.blogspot.com/2011/11/spants.html
http://fromacj7.blogspot.com/2012/10/sproach.html
http://fromacj7.blogspot.com/2013/10/spants-iii-spanthopper.html
This year's installment is brought to you by a decent beer and a crappy scotch.
Seriously, it's bottled Ginger piss.
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Spants IV: Spermite
Logging Camp
Hippies: "Save the trees! Save the trees!"
Foreman: "Look, Constable, I'm not trying to cause you trouble here, but the tree spiking is starting to endanger my men."
Constable: "Tree spiking? Geez, even Greenpeace doesn't do that crap anymore."
Hippies: "No More Warming! No More Warming!"
Constable: "Have you tried pointing out to them that there's been no Global Warming for 19 years now?"
Foreman: "Do you really think it would work?"
Top Secret Government Lab
Klaxon blares. Soldier runs down hallway, turns and fires before being dragged off camera by Large Mysterious Unseen Entity.
Soldier: "AAAAAAHHHH!!!"
Completely unrealistic amount of blood sprays from off-camera.
Computerized voice: "There are now 5 minutes until failsafe detonation."
Scientist: "We only have 5 minutes before this place blows! Oh, if we'd only checked our unit conversion chart! I feel like NASA!"
General: "Don't worry! I have a helicopter!"
Scientist: "As Chief Scientist, I demand you save me, even at the cost of abandoning my entire team of underlings!"
General: "I have waves of expendable soldiers to put between it and us. We just have to get to the chopper!"
Logging Camp the following day
Constable: "Look, I know those protesters have done all sorts of crazy things to your equipment before, but it doesn't make much sense that they would chop trees down to prevent you from chopping trees down. Plus, I'm not sure how it would be possible for them to pull this off."
Foreman: "Look, they're a bunch of hippies: I never expect them to make sense. All I know is that last night there were trees here, and this morning, nothing but piles of sawdust."
Constable: "Look, I'll come here tonight to help you patrol. But you get to try to get the mayor to sign off on the overtime."
Logging camp (nighttime)
Constable: "I hope you appreciate this. I'm supposed to be having dinner with Court Recorder."
Foreman: "To discuss the future of your completely Platonic friendship?"
Constable: "I assume so, yes."
Foreman: "You are just about dense, aren't you?"
Constable: "Why the hell did I agree to this? There is nobody out here. I'm going home, now."
Foreman: "You can't. You are contractually obligated for an entire shift. Plus, I think I heard something over there."
Spermite crashes out of tree line. Foreman and Constable turn and fire to no avail.
Foreman: "To the Jeep! To the Jeep!"
Suddenly, a helicopter appears with General, Scientist and a squad of soldiers. In the gory-yet-completely-predictable battle that follows, the helicopter is destroyed and Foreman is killed along with the soldiers and pilots.
Interior of Jeep as it races down trail
Constable: "So let me get this straight, you crossed a spider, an ant, and a termite, then made it grow to 20 feet long, and now it's loose in the forest around my township?"
Scientist: "That's about the size of it, yes."
Constable: "Guess it's time to go to my cabin."
General: “It’s a 20-foot-tall insect that drilled through two-foot thick walls and killed a platoon of soldiers escaping. And you think your cabin walls can save us?”
Constable: “Not the cabin walls, what’s on the cabin walls.”
Constable’s cabin
Constable (holding up a Milkor MGL): “Is this big enough?”
Scientist: “How can you have these at home?”
Constable: “It’s not just my home. It’s also the official offices of the Podunk Township Constabulary and Justice of the Peace. I filed a 1033. Don’t you read the news? If a law enforcement department says it’s for the war on terror, DHS’ll give away anything!”
General: “These are bigger guns than my men have!”
Constable: “Well, maybe your men should have used the words ‘Sovereign Gun-Trafficking Tea Party Militia Extremists’ in their budget request like I did.”
General: “Do you actually have those around here?”
Constable: “Well, the barber hasn't taken down his 'Ron Paul 2012' window sign.”
Scientist: “This is such a waste of government resources.”
Constable: “Oh, bite me. How much did the 20-foot bug trying to eat us cost?”
General: “Doesn’t matter. That 40mm grenade launcher may be cool and all, but it’s not going to be enough. Ever since Small-Town Sheriff killed one of our Boss bugs with a LAW rocket, we’ve armored them to withstand a TOW missile.”
Constable: “See, now, why would you go and do that?”
Scientist: “Well, the plan was to surgically implant a small remote control failsafe explosive in the spermite’s brain before we tested it.”
Constable: “Let me guess, it's not there.”
Scientist: “Well, we kinda forgot that making it resistant to a TOW missile might make it difficult to find a drill bit that could bore a hole in it.”
Constable to General: “Where do you find these people?”
General: "Well, the pizza boxes worked so well for the TSA..."
Constable: "I think I might know where we could get a bigger drill bit..."
Machine shop at logging site
Outside, Hippie camp is getting destroyed by Spermite.
Constable: "Okay, so scratch the high-velocity drill bit idea."
Scientist: "I didn't think it would work."
Constable: "Oy! Say something helpful or shut up."
Screams echo from Hippie camp.
Constable: "That is really making it hard to think."
General: "Don't worry. I'm pretty sure the screaming's almost all over."
Scientist: "The fact is, we have to come up with some way of getting an explosive inside the creature."
Bloody hippie corpse crashes through window and slides to a stop between Constable and General. They look down, then up at each other.
Cliff top
Spermite approaches propped-up dead hippie.
Spermite: "ROOOOOOAAARR!!!!!"
Spermite bites Hippie's body in half, the lower portion falling to the ground.
General: "Dammit, Scientist! I told you we should have crammed it down his throat instead!"
Constable runs forward and hurriedly digs through the guts until he finds the bomb, slinging Bruce-Campbell-amounts of gore in the process.
Constable waving bomb overhead: "Here, Big Fella! Here you go!"
Spermite: “ROOOOOOAAARR!!!!!”
Constable runs toward spermite, then in one fluid motion baseball-slides under the creature, tosses the bomb into the air, turns into a roll as the spermite swallows the explosives, and dives off the cliff into the river below chased by the completely predictable fireball rolling across the ground as the spermite explodes.
Survivors gathered around crater
Court Recorder: "I think you got it."
Constable: "I'm just glad you decided to take a walk by the river bank tonight."
Scientist: "Well, now what do we do?"
Constable putting arm around Court Recorder: "Do what you want. I'm going home."
Constable and Recorder walk off toward town.
General: "You can't just leave!"
Constable over shoulder: "Oh, piss off--I have dinner plans.
Recorder and Constable walk off as the sun rises. General turns to walk dejectedly away. Scientist turns, then bends down to swab goop from a bush before following.
Coming soon: Spants V: Spants at Sea.
