Free Ghostbusters The Return by Sholly Fisch Page B

cactus was moving.

    It wasn't that it was floating or walking around or anything like that. It wasn't even jumping up to sing "Hello, Dolly." But it was pulsing and bulging in various places, with an organic motion that made it seem alive.

    Ray and Egon stopped walking and maintained a respectful distance of about three feet from the spectral cactus. Egon shifted his nutrona wand to one hand and took out his PKE meter with the other. He waved it slowly in front of the cactus, moving it up and down, then side to side, as he scanned the plant for supernatural energies. Not surprisingly, the readout on the meter was going through the roof.

    "Readings in the red zone?" Ray asked.

    "Infra-red," Egon said.

    "And here we are, shorthanded."

    "Apparently, Peter and Winston chose a rather inconvenient time to start moonlighting in politics."

    Ray edged a half-step closer to the pulsating cactus. Without taking his eyes off it, he asked, "Ever hear of dead plants leaving ghosts behind?"

    "Not in the last fifteen centuries or so," said Egon. He was keeping an equally close eye on the cactus. "There's the legend of the Deadly Night Shades, but that's about it."

    "Sounds right. How about urban legends about cacti?"

    "No, but I'm not really up on the literature. I've never had much patience for things that aren't real."

    "Why's it moving like that?"

    "I'm not sure. Um...does it look to you as though it's starting to move faster?"

    It was true. The pulsations were coming fast and furious now, as though it was reaching a fever pitch.

    "Shoot it!" cried Ray.

    But before they could trigger their weapons, the cactus exploded. It burst into a spray of...something...that filled the air and splattered across their bodies.

    For a split-second, the two Ghostbusters assumed it was ectoplasmic slime. Immediately, though, they both realized that it wasn't slimy, and it wasn't a single mass - the "it" was really a "they."

    And "they" were alive.

    Egon looked down at his chest in alarm. "Ghost spiders!"

    "Thousands of them!" cried Ray.

    The spiders were everywhere. On the street. On the walls. And most important, on Ray and Egon. More out of reflex than anything else, they flailed wildly, trying to swat the spiders away. But their hands simply passed harmlessly through the insubstantial bodies of the ghostly arachnids.

    "We can't blast them!" Egon realized. As long as the spiders were swarming on their bodies, zapping them would mean zapping each other - and with weapons that could blow holes through concrete, that just didn't seem like a good idea.

    "They're on the clothes! Ditch them!" Ray shouted back. He was already stripping off his gear and coveralls, carrying the bulk of his spiders with it. He stomped on the pedal of a fallen trap and tossed his coveralls into the brilliant white light that poured out of it. In a flash, Ray's spiders were gone...and his coveralls were, too.

    A moment later, Egon followed suit. Standing in their underwear, the pair snatched up their proton packs and looked around at the waves of spectral arachnids that seemed to be everywhere.

    "I wish I thought to thank my mother when she was alive," Ray muttered.

    "Thank her for what?" Egon asked.

    "For teaching me to always wear clean underwear."

    "Let's get to it." Egon gritted his teeth and took aim. "Where the hell are Peter and Winston?"

    I could get used to this, Venkman thought.

    He adjusted the silk necktie they'd given him, straightened the lapels of his new Armani suit, and struck his most mayoral pose. Lights flashed as the photographer snapped another picture.

    "Excellent," said the photographer. "Now, let's get a few of the two of you together."

    Winston joined Venkman in front of the cameras. It was funny how different Winston looked in an expensive suit; Venkman had rarely seen him in so much as a tie. He had to admit, his fellow Ghostbuster cleaned up nicely. In Venkman's opinion, at least, the two of them genuinely looked like