Slime Squad vs. the Supernatural Squid

by Steve Cole

  Zill whispered to Plog: “He’s a looper!”

  “But there’s something weird going on here,” Plog hissed back. “I’ll bet my mask that Lord Klukk and his evil monsters are behind it. And if they are, it’s not only the junkjacks who are in danger – it’s the whole of Trashland!”

  Chapter Three

  SOMETHING IN THE WATER

  “Well, no point moaning on,” said Dolofin gruffly. “Us has got our packing up to do.”

  Zill frowned at the soft-glowing junkjack. “Packing up?”

  “Arr. Since that supernatural squid chases us away whenever us tries to gather our precious seaweed, and the rest of the sea-life keeps attacking our ships, us be starving and scared the whole time . . .” Dolofin sniffed and wiped a tear from his eye. “Most junkjacks have already cleared off to the Nosepick Ocean, far to the north. Us was the last lot to stay here. But now . . .”

  “Dolofin, this is your home,” said Plog. “You can’t let anyone bully you into moving away – not even mysterious phantoms.”

  Danjo clenched his pincers. “Especially when the Slime Squad are here to make a mystery history.” He looked around at his friends. “Right, guys?”

  “Right,” Zill agreed. “But how can we go poking around deep under the sea? Look what happened when we had a quick paddle – we were almost nibbled to death!”

  But Furp just grinned. “Plog, Danjo – you remember that massive, top-secret gadget I made you load on board the Slime-mobile? Kindly unload it again.” He clapped his slimy hands in excitement. “My creation is ready to be revealed!”

  Plog and Danjo duly squeezed aboard the Slime-mobile – which wasn’t easy because the secret invention took up a massive amount of space. With some difficulty, some scraped invisible paintwork, and a few “oooh”s and “ahhh”s from the gathered junkjacks, they staggered off the Slime-mobile and dropped the huge bundle – wrapped up in an even huger blanket – lengthways onto the sand. Furp hopped over, grabbed one end of the blanket – and yanked it away . . . to reveal a large, dented metal canister. “Ta-daaaa!”

  Dolofin stared at him. “What be that, then?”

  “It’s a big can,” said Zill, unimpressed. “With dents in.”

  Furp shook his head. “No, no, no, my dear Zill – my invention is simply in stealth mode at the moment.” He pressed a tiny hidden button on the side, and a huge, pointed nose-cone with a glass windscreen slid out from one end. A large, rusty compartment shot out from the other. Graceful fins popped out and locked into place – one on each side and another on the roof. Finally, a pair of powerful jets poked out from the gadget’s rear.

  “Presenting the most sensational, slime-propelled sub-sea super-craft in the world,” Furp declared. “I call it the Slime Sub . . . and with it, no undersea adventure is beyond our reach!” He patted it fondly, and one of the fins fell off with a clatter. “Oops! Some of the slime-glue hasn’t quite set yet.” Danjo frowned. “You seriously want us to go looking underwater for giant nasty ghost-squid in this thing?” “Of course,” cried Furp. “Once I’ve added Power-Slime Plus to the fuel tank it’ll go like the clappers! And I’m fairly sure the glue is waterproof . . .”

  Zill groaned. Danjo shook his head. But Plog just smiled. “There you go, Dolofin – next to this bucket of bolts, a ghostly squid isn’t so scary, right?”

  Dolofin did not smile back . . .

  Within the hour, Danjo had fixed the fin and Furp had finished his safety checks. The Slime Squad got into their diving gear, good to go.

  Furp turned to the gently glowing Dolofin. “If you and your junkjacks could kindly shove us into the Septic Sea once we’re inside, that would be a big help.”

  “Arrr,” said Dolofin doubtfully. “Well, I don’t expect none of us will ever see you again, as you will surely sink to the bottom of the ocean and die – but it was nice knowing you.”

  “Don’t say goodbye just yet.” Plog climbed a wonky ladder onto the roof and lifted the entry hatch. “We’ll be back.”

  He studied the inside of the sub. From corner to corner it was stuffed with machines and flashing lights. Wires hung down from the ceiling like thick cobwebs. It would be a snug fit for four of them.

  Zill, the Squad’s top driver, was already squeezed up in the front, getting to grips with the controls. Plog climbed down and sat behind her in the weapons zone – he had been put in charge of the submarine’s built-in slime-shooters, ready to give any bad guys a serious squirt if they tried to attack. Danjo shimmied down beside him and took his place beside a porthole, ready to act as lookout. Finally, Furp squeezed in at the back close to the Slime Sub’s engines. He held a spanner in one hand and a screwdriver in the other, ready to tinker with the jets if they started playing up.

  “Everyone ready?” asked Furp, and his friends nodded. “Right, then – let’s move out!” He banged noisily on the ceiling. The Slime Sub lurched and rocked as Dolofin and his luminous junkjacks hefted it up and hurled it into the sea. KER-SPLASH!

  Zill hit the starter button. With a strange squealing, rumbling noise, the whole sub began to shake. “Engines firing,” she reported. “We’re off!”

  Plog felt his tummy tingle as they descended into dark water, ready to face the unknown.

  Long minutes passed as the sub chugged onwards. Zill switched on the headlights, but the water was so thick with pollution and goo it was hard to see much. A giant human boot loomed up like a sinister shadow. A torn carrier bag floated past like some weird sea-creature.

  “How do the junkjacks ever find seaweed in this muck?” Danjo wondered.

  “They have luminous bodies to light their way,” Furp explained.

  “Maybe their light attracts the supernatural squid too,” said Zill nervously. “In which case, our headlights might do the same . . .”

  BAMMMM!

  Something large and hard smashed into the Slime Sub, sending it into a spin. Zill was thrown from her seat as the controls spat sparks and the headlights switched off. Danjo lost his balance and crashed to the floor. Plog was sent flying backwards into Furp, squashing him against the back wall.

  Danjo sat up and smothered the burning controls with a squirt of slime-ice. “What did we hit?” he shouted.

  “I can’t see.” Zill grabbed the blackened wheel, swinging the sub from side to side. “Furp, can you fix the headlights?”

  The frog-monster crawled out from under Plog and fiddled with some wires poking up from the damaged control panel. A single headlight flickered into feeble life . . .

  And suddenly the Squaddies could see a huge eye glaring in at them, bloodshot and yellow with a big black centre. The rubbery skin around it was blotchy and pale.

  Plog’s jaw dropped and his ears shot up in the air as he stared in horror. “IT’S THE SUPERNATURAL SQUID!”

  The Squaddies watched in alarm as the colossal squid’s single eye narrowed. With a twitch of rubbery flesh it flicked out fat, trailing tentacles towards the Slime Sub.

  “That thing’s going to get us!” Zill cried.

  “It’ll get something else first.” Plog jabbed a furry finger on the slime-squirter’s fire button. “A slimy surprise!”

  SLOOSH! Stinging slime sprayed out from the little ship’s cannons. The creature retreated into the gloom, but its powerful tentacles closed around the Slime Sub and started to squeeze.

  Danjo’s crimson shell turned pale with fright. “It’ll squash us like an old can.”

  Plog opened fire again with the slime-squirters, but the tentacles didn’t budge. “I don’t know even know if I’m hitting it!”

  Furp yanked down a tangle of wires from the ceiling. “Slime-Power Plus is designed to boost any power source. Perhaps it can boost our remaining headlight so you can see what you’re shooting . . .”

  He poured his special slimy mixture over the wires that linked the headlight to the sub’s batteries. VIMMM! The dim light suddenly became brighter than the sun. And in the sudden flare of whiteness, Plog saw the monster�
�s cruel, hooked beak opening wide in front of them, ready to crunch down on the cockpit of the little craft . . .

  Chapter Four

  DEEP-SEA DREAD

  The Squaddies screamed as the massive mouth widened to swallow the sub. But then suddenly – PLOOP!

  The giant squid disappeared.

  “What happened?” breathed Danjo. “That thing had us where it wanted us. Then it just vanished like . . . like . . .”

  “Like a ghost,” said Zill, her eyes wide and fearful. “It really IS a supernatural squid!”

  “And here come its scary servants,” said Danjo grimly, pointing a pincer at a hundred little orange shapes glittering in the headlight’s glare. “Goopfish alert!”

  Plog was almost knocked off his feet as the fish slammed into the Slime Sub and a terrible scraping sound started up. “Looks like they’re in a rotten mood again – they’re trying to chew their way inside!”

  “I’ll try to get us back to the surface.” Zill struggled with the controls as the goopfish swarmed about the sub, smothering the light. Tiny dents started showing in the side walls. Then sponges squelched against the windscreen alongside big white jellyfish whipping their tendrils, trying to crack the glass. Desperately, Plog fired the slime-squirters. SLOOSH! The furious creatures fell away, sizzling and steaming.

  But then the battered sub rocked even more fiercely than before, as further thick tentacles snaked past the portholes. Danjo groaned. “The squid is back!”

  Furp gulped. “It must have reappeared behind us – and now it’s grabbed hold!”

  Plog fired the slime-squirters wildly. A massive dent appeared in the ceiling as the squid lashed out angrily. “We’ve got to break its grip.”

  “No good,” Zill shouted, as more goopfish swarmed over the sub, trying to tear it apart. “We don’t have enough power to pull free.”

  “I’ll use the last of my Slime-Power Plus to top up the fuel tank!” Furp wrestled with the engine’s inspection hatch cover. “Help me get this thing off, Danjo!”

  Danjo quickly wrenched away the cover with his powerful pincers, allowing Furp to pour the last drops from his bottle into a greasy hole in the metalwork. “There might just be enough left to give us an energy boo—oooooooooooost!”

  With a whopping WHOOSH! the very last drips of the Slime-Power Plus did their job – stoking the engines with raw, super-charged slime. The sudden power-rush sent the sub shooting up through the water like an atomic salmon fired from a deep-sea catapult. As they finally broke the surface of the Septic Sea and went flying up into the air, Plog was thrown against a porthole. He glimpsed a squashy, bloated body being dragged along behind them – the squid was still hanging on . . .

  But then the sub crashed back down into the water with a jolt. The engines finally spluttered to a halt. Silence rang in the Squaddies’ ears as they sat there for several seconds, stunned by their narrow escape.

  Then Plog threw open the hatch in the sub’s roof, climbed out and looked wildly around in the warm sunlight.

  The Septic Sea was calm and still. The savage, super-enormous squid had disappeared.

  Zill climbed out and stood beside him. “Vanished again,” she murmured.

  Danjo poked his head through the hatch, wide-eyed. “Just like a ghost.”

  “A ghost that can turn peaceful fish into ravenous monsters,” Furp added thoughtfully, balancing on Danjo’s back.

  “There was nothing ghostly about that squid’s grip on the sub,” Plog reminded him, pointing to the deep dents in the Slime Sub’s roof.

  Then all four Squaddies jumped as a group of goopfish popped their heads out of the water. But the little creatures only smiled before swimming calmly on their way.

  “The fish seem back to normal again now,” Plog observed. “Perhaps they only turn nasty when the squid’s around.”

  “Ghostly mind control?” Danjo looked worried. “I wonder why that squid decided to let us go?”

  “Perhaps this was just a warning,” said Furp. “A show of squiddy strength.” He sighed. “In any case, we’d better get back to Pongo Beach and try to repair the Slime Sub.”

  Zill’s tail drooped. “And tell the junkjacks that we’re as helpless as they are . . .”

  The damaged Slime Sub limped back to shore. As Pongo Beach came into sight, Plog saw a gang of junkjacks were busy packing away their camp as Dolofin barked out instructions. Crates, chests and even some of the sardine-tin boats were being loaded onto wagons made from driftwood and cotton reels.

  As the sub washed up on the beach, Dolofin slithered to join them. “So!” he said, surveying the ship’s battle-scars. “I be thinking you found that ghostly squid us warned you about, eh, Nog?”

  “That’s Plog,” said Plog. “But you’re right, we certainly did.”

  “And it nearly squished us,” Zill added.

  “Arrr.” The old junkjack gave a long, bubbling sigh through his pointed snout. “Well, thanks for trying to help. But now you know there be nothing anyone can do. Us’ll be off soon . . .” He turned and slid away across the shore.

  Furp watched him go sadly. “I think it’s time we called into the All-Seeing PIE and told him all we know.”

  Plog sighed. “That’ll be a short call!”

  While Danjo got busy beating out the dents in the sub, Zill, Plog and Furp talked to PIE in the Slime-mobile. Furp plugged his special crash helmet into one of the monster truck’s control panels and an image of the peerlessly powerful computer appeared on a screen.

  “Ah, there you are,” PIE boomed. “My sensors saw you go into the Septic Sea but there was a lot of interference. Did you run up against any supernatural squid?”

  “I’ll say.” Plog quickly filled him in on what had happened.

  Several exclamation-marks appeared on PIE’s screen. “A most mysterious business,” he concluded. “Although I don’t know if Lord Klukk is behind it or not. He wants to conquer Trashland, but squid are watery creatures – surely even supernatural ones can’t float out to invade towns and cities?”

  “I hope not,” said Zill with a shudder.

  “Well, I will keep my sensors peeled for any sign of the squid beyond the Septic Sea,” said PIE. “In the meantime, we must find out the truth behind these squid. You must capture one.”

  The fur-knots on the back of Zill’s neck shivered. “That won’t be easy.”

  “Since when did the Slime Squad do easy?” PIE boomed tetchily. “Now, fix the Slime Sub and get on with it!”

  With PIE’s instructions ringing in their ears, the Slime Squad got busy. Furp designed some new slimy defences for the sub, and Zill and Plog built them from his plans while Danjo worked hard to strengthen the sub’s metal shell.

  The junkjacks, meanwhile, finished packing their possessions.

  As the sun started to sink in the sky, Plog and Zill looked down at the long, rusty bazooka-like weapon they’d constructed.

  “Ready for a test, Fur-boy?” Zill winked and aimed the bazooka at the Cast-Iron Cliffs. BLAMM! A bolt of green goo struck them with a sizzling explosion and a cloud of green smoke, blasting a shallow crater in the stretch of metal.

  “Woo-hoo!” cheered Danjo from the water’s edge. “That should give our ghostly pal something to chew on!”

  “What if it just disappears again?” Plog wondered.

  “That’s where this slime-net comes in!” cried Furp. He bounced out of the Slime-mobile with a huge net knitted together from Zill’s slime lines. “If the squid does its vanishing act when we open fire, it will soon come back to get us, right? And when it does . . .” He hurled the net through the air and it spread out like a gigantic holey blanket over the whiffy sand.

  “We catch it in this!”

  “But we’ll be inside the sub,” said Plog. “Won’t we get a bit wet trying to throw that outside?”

  Furp shook his head. “We can load it into the bazooka and fire it at the touch of a button – once Danjo’s mounted it on the roof.”


  “Shouldn’t take long,” Danjo assured him. He leaned on the Slime Sub, which was looking slick and shiny even in the gathering gloom. “I’ve already fitted it with ultra-hard, dent-proof slime-shields for extra protection. Next time we run into that ghost-squid, we’ll be ready.”

  Plog was about to agree – when suddenly he saw long, twitching tentacles curl out from the shallow water beside the sub. “Look out, Danjo,” he shouted. “Ready or not – SQUID ALERT!”

  Chapter Five

  TENTACLES OF TERROR

  Even as Danjo turned, two of the tentacles gripped hold of the Slime Sub and dragged it away into the forbidding water.

  “Get off!” Danjo bellowed. “I spent all day working on that!” He fired hot and cold slime at the bloated, billowing beast as it rose from the shallows – but then another twisting tendril grabbed him around the waist. “Let go!” he groaned, struggling wildly as he was lifted high into the air.

  “Danjo!” cried Zill, spitting out a slime-line with a flick of her head.

  “Catch hold!”

  Danjo reached out, but the squid yanked him away and the line fell short.

  Plog grabbed the bazooka and splashed into the water. But the ghostly creature was already sinking back into the sea.

  “Be careful!” called Zill. “You might hit Danjo!”

  BLAMM! Plog fired at the spot where he’d last seen the squid – but a horde of goopfish bit at his legs and a sea cucumber struck him on the nose. He dropped the bazooka and fell back onto the beach, kicking off the crazed fish. “Zill, Furp – get the net.”

  “What be going on?” Dolofin slithered up and peered into the gloom – then gasped. “Great salty sea-cakes. That be yon Danjo!”