Slime Squad Vs the Alligator Army

by Steve Cole

  “Sssays the bear-rat with sssomeone else’s shorts on his head!” The Duke of Snap smiled. “Yes, Plog, I know all your sssecrets – and those of your sssilly SSSquad mates.”

  “Wait a minute,” Furp muttered. “Duke of Snap . . . D-O-S!”

  Zill felt a shiver down her tail. “You think he’s the one who left the note?”

  “There’s no doubt,” said Plog grimly. “Check out his pet!”

  Danjo’s jaw dropped – and those of the other Squaddies weren’t far behind it – as the same scary gator-wolf which had fought them last night came scuttling out of the bank vault with a black box in its teeth. “Groarrrrr,” it snarled, and dropped the box at the Duke’s feet.

  “Thank you, SSSabre,” said Snap. “Good boy.”

  “All right, Snap,” said Plog. “We know you’ve been inside Lord Klukk’s secret lair. Why did you leave us that weird thank-you note?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know!” Snap sniggered, and so did Sabre.

  “What were you doing in Klukk’s old place?” Zill demanded.

  “I live in the Badlands too.” Snap swished his cape. “Klukk was one of my neighbours. And when I heard he’d left Trashland, I helped myself to all the sssinister sssubstances and dastardly devices he’d left behind.” He picked up the black box and smiled. “Now all his sssecrets are my sssecrets.”

  “How about you share the secret of what you’re up to in that vault?” said Plog. “Whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

  “You’re quite right.” Snap flicked open the cover of the black box to reveal a big red button, and giggled with glee. “I’m going to blow it up!”

  The Duke hit the button. Sabre and the gators all dived to the floor . . .

  BWAMM! The explosion rocked the rank bank to its foundations and a ferocious fireball burst from inside the vault. Plog knew he was staring death in the face. But suddenly the floor – weakened by the blast – split open beneath him.

  “WAAAAH!” Plog and the other Squaddies fell through the crack and plunged into nothingness . . .

  Chapter Three

  END OF THE SLIME!

  Desperately, Zill coughed out a slimy safety net to stop her friends falling. It just managed to hold their weight as the flames scorched overhead.

  “Well spat, Zill,” said Furp, and Plog and Danjo nodded gratefully.

  “This gator crime caper doesn’t make sense,” said Zill. “Why would Snap and his gang break into a rank-bank vault just to blow it to bits?”

  “We have to find out.” Plog waited till the flames had died down, then climbed stealthily up the side of the crevice. “I don’t know who this Duke of Snap thinks he is, but—Oomph!”

  As Plog stuck his head out of hiding, a gator appeared and squirted yellow goo into his face! Eyes stinging, Plog fell back down into the net, knocking his friends over.

  Danjo looked up angrily – and another gator squirted purple goo into his face!

  “Hey!” Zill tried to scramble up the muddy wall as Plog had done – and walked straight into a faceful of grey slime fired from yet another gator. As Furp hopped up to help her, a green spurt of goo caught him in the kisser – “Urgh!”

  Danjo wiped his eyes. “What is this stuff?”

  “I don’t know.” Plog shook the gunk from his face. “But now they’ve made me really mad!”

  Using Zill’s slimy net like a trampoline, he sprang up out of the crack and landed on two of the gators, squashing their stomachs with the soles of his iron boots. Then he whacked the other two with the backs of his furry paws, sending them flying across the ruined room.

  Plog saw that the whole place was sooty and smoking, and that big bundles of banknotes had been burned to ashes. Three more gators came scuttling towards him – but then Danjo bounced out of the crack in the floor and squirted icy slime in their path. They slipped over and landed on their scaly bottoms.

  “Quickly!” Plog reached down into the crevice to help Zill get out, while Furp hopped up beside him. “We can’t let some goop in our eyes stop us from getting these goons!”

  “It won’t.” Zill was fuming with rage. “That stuff they sprayed on me has stained my lovely leotard. I’ll have those gators’ guts for garters!”

  “Hold off the Slime Squad, my gators!” rasped the Duke of Snap, who’d ducked back inside the vault. “I have found what we came here for – now we must take it away . . .”

  Snap’s gator brigade took up defensive positions around the smoky room. Then they pulled pistols from their shorts and opened fire. BANG! PEE-YOWWW!

  “Ooof!” A sharp spike bounced off Furp’s crash helmet. “They’re firing teeth at us!”

  “Those things sting!” cried Danjo, caught up in a hail of tooth-bullets. He quickly whisked up more slimy ice to use as a shield, and his fellow Squaddies sheltered behind it as fangs pinged off in all directions.

  “Zill,” said Plog, “I think it’s time these gators felt some whiplash.”

  “Understood!” Zill stuck her head up over the shield and spat out a long slime-line. Then she cracked it like a sticky whip against the gators’ knuckles. The reptiles hissed and howled as the pistols dropped from their stinging paws.

  “Now! Attack!” Plog broke cover to rush the remaining reptiles, his furry fists swinging. “Squad – Snap’s our real target. We’ve got to get to the vault!”

  Furp hopped through the air into the ranks of the enemy, braining gators with his big metal pants. Danjo fired hot slime into scaly faces, and Zill kicked out in a fury of furry paws. Sabre the gator-wolf growled and hissed – but Plog pulled off one boot and was soon sloshing the beast with more of his stinky foot-slime. The monster ran back whimpering to its master in the vault.

  “Don’t worry, SSSabre – our work is done.” The Duke of Snap sounded jubilant. “The heli-gator is coming!”

  Plog turned anxiously to his team-mates. “Heli-gator?”

  The next moment, the rusting roof above the vault exploded and a fierce wind whipped through the rank bank. Shielding his eyes, Plog stared up in amazement. A huge green helicopter was hovering overhead – shaped like an enormous alligator!

  “Lower the winch,” Snap snarled. “Fight on, my gators – we only need a little more time!”

  “Well, you’re not going to get it,” cried Plog. As his friends kept fighting the remaining reptiles, he strode towards the Duke. The caped creep was standing in a deep crater, on top of something buried in the soil – something off-white that gleamed like ivory. “I don’t know what you’ve found down there, but it stinks – I can smell it over the whiff of my foot-slime!”

  “Can you?” Snap just laughed, his cloak billowing in the gale whipped up by the heli-gator’s rotor blades. “Or perhaps your foot-ssslime has ssstopped sssmelling. Perhaps your foot-ssslime has SSSTOPPED ALTOGETHER!”

  Plog looked down at his foot – and saw that it was clean and dry. “My slime!” he gasped. “Where’s it gone?”

  “Don’t worry, Plog,” Danjo shouted, running over. “I’ve got slime to spare. Enough to share!” He aimed his hot pincer at Snap – but only a tiny dribble came out. “Huh?” He tried again with his cold pincer – but again, nothing happened. “I don’t get it!”

  “And ssso I won’t get it!” chuckled Snap. A giant grappling hook attached to a thick rope had swung down from the heli-gator, and now the masked villain fixed it to the big white thing in the ground. “What a pity – for you!”

  Suddenly Plog saw that Sabre was ready to spring. “Look out, Danjo!”

  Danjo automatically raised his pincers to fire – but again, nothing came out. The ferocious beast leaped towards the two Squaddies and knocked them right out of the shattered vault. Plog shoved his remaining boot into the monster’s mouth, trying to jam its jaws.

  But even as he struggled, he heard Zill cry out in alarm. Turning, he saw her standing in a corner, surrounded by armed gators. She was trying to spit out a slime-line and swing away – but couldn’t cough up a single s
trand. “What’s wrong with me?” she wailed. “I’ve lost my slimy powers!”

  “So have we!” shouted Danjo, grabbing Plog’s other discarded boot and pushing that into Sabre’s mouth as well.

  “I’m in trouble too!” Furp yelled. He’d been climbing a wall to escape a group of gators, but now he was slipping back down again. His foes were firing teeth up at him, the molar missiles bouncing off his big round pants. “Owwww! Help!”

  “We can hardly help ourselves!” Danjo groaned – but then Snap whistled and Sabre broke off his attack, trotting back to his master with both Plog’s boots for trophies.

  Covered in slobber and panting for breath, Plog glared at the Duke. “What have you done to us, Snap?”

  “Sssimple!” The Duke showed off his fangs in a crafty grin. “I knew there was a chance you might sssurvive the traps I left for you at the castle. But SSSabre was the deadliest trap of all. Each of you attacked him last night – kindly giving him a sssample of your ssslime as you did so. He returned to me with those sssamples and I ssstudied them closely . . .” He chuckled. “Then, using equipment ssstolen from Klukk’s lab, I devised a ssspecial anti-ssslime ssserum – which my hench-gators have sssquirted in your faces!”

  “So that’s what hit us,” Plog muttered.

  “And now you are powerless to prevent my rise to glory!” Snap struck a dashing pose beside the grappling hook, one claw on his hip, the other wielding his cane. “Come, my gators! The SSSlime SSSquad is defeated – and another part of the grand design is ours!”

  “The grand design?” Furp twittered. “Bless my bonkberries!”

  The heli-gator was rising into the air – lifting as it did so a colossal animal bone!

  The Duke was perched on top of it, swishing his cape. Sabre stood by his side, with Plog’s mangled iron boots still in his mouth. All the other gators jumped aboard the dangling bone, jeering at the Squaddies.

  Zill spat and spat, but couldn’t flick out even a drop of slime. “They’re getting away!”

  Plog nodded helplessly as the heli-gator and its sinister cargo departed. “And without our powers, we can’t do a thing to stop them!”

  Chapter Four

  POWERLESS!

  The four Squaddies trooped miserably up the steps to the ground floor of the ruined rank bank.

  “I’ve never felt so helpless,” groaned Danjo. “It looks like this is the end of the Slime Squad.”

  “The Squad, you mean.” Zill sniffed. “We haven’t got any slime now, remember?”

  “We can’t just give up,” Plog argued, looking down at his bare feet. “The people of Trashland need us to protect them!”

  “No, they don’t,” said Zill. “They need superheroes – which we aren’t! Not any longer!”

  The rank-bank manager was waiting with a crowd of onlookers and monsters from the press. As Plog led the Squaddies outside, cameras flashed and newspooper reporters surged forward.

  “We saw the alligator-men’s amazing helicopter,” burbled a one-eyed blue monster. “Why didn’t you stop them?”

  Plog shrugged miserably. “We tried, but . . .”

  “Did they take lots of money?” asked another.

  “Dear me, no!” cried Furp. “It, er, all burned to ashes.”

  The rank-bank manager fainted. More camera flashes went off.

  “We’ll beat the gators next time,” Plog told the crowds. But the sadness and disappointment on so many monstery faces was too much for him to bear, and he quickly led his team into the Slime-mobile.

  Furp hopped straight into the lav-lab – a toilet-cum-laboratory in the back of the vehicle, chock full of useful gizmos and multi-grade goo. “No wonder Snap thanked us.” He sighed. “We gave him the secrets of our slime on a plate!”

  “Or on an alligator-wolf thing, anyway,” Plog agreed.

  “He completely tricked us,” groaned Danjo.

  Furp nodded absent-mindedly, gathering beakers and Bunsen burners. “Well, we should change out of our costumes.”

  “You’re right!” Zill wriggled out of her dirty golden leotard and threw it on the floor. “We don’t deserve to wear them now.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Furp. “When Snap squirted his anti-slime over us, he stained our costumes, right? So if I can take samples of the stuff and reverse its chemistry . . .”

  “You could make anti-anti-slime!” A hopeful smile spread slowly over Plog’s face. “Do you really think you can do it?”

  “I hope so.” Furp scraped green goo off his crash helmet. “Though it may take a while.”

  Plog nodded moodily. “We’d better hope that whatever Snap is up to, he takes his time about it . . .”

  But over the days that followed, the Duke of Snap proved that he was in no mood to hang about. The heli-gator was sighted all over Trashland. And while Furp worked on a cure for the anti-slime, all Plog, Zill and Danjo could do was sit and wait. PIE kept them up to date with the latest news reports on Snap’s activities.

  On day one the reptiles started an avalanche in the Tin Can Mountains to unearth another bone.

  On day two Snap spread panic through the Paint Tin Plateau, overturning half-empty tubs to get at a small bone in the multi-coloured mud beneath.

  And on day three he spoiled hundreds of holidays at the Gulf of Grease when Sabre and the gator-men drank the water dry – to reveal yet another mysterious bone, half buried in the gooey, sandy bed.

  “This is driving me crazy!” Plog cried, slumped on a cardboard sofa. “I hate just sitting around while those grotty gators do what they like.”

  “Me too.” Danjo picked up a slightly rusty rifle. “Even our slime-shooters are useless – because we don’t have any slime to put in them!”

  “I know.” Zill wiped a tear from her eye with her tail. “We never imagined we’d ever stop being slimy, did we?”

  “I used to dream of having sludge-free tootsies,” Plog admitted. “But you guys showed me what I could do with my goo . . .”

  “Hey, I do the rhymes” – Danjo sighed – “while Snap does the crimes.” He got up, crossed to the Slime-mobile and banged on the door. “Oi! Furp! Any closer to finding a cure?”

  “Getting there,” called Furp.

  “That’s what you said yesterday,” Zill called back.

  “Whoops!” There was a loud BANG! from inside the Slime-mobile, and Furp started coughing. “Er, I’m sort of getting there, anyway. Bit of a detour . . .”

  Danjo buried his face in his pincers. “Terrific.”

  “You may have lost your slimy powers,” PIE boomed behind them, “but you still have your minds. I suggest you use them.”

  “You’re right,” said Plog. “We need to ask ourselves why the Duke of Snap took away our powers.”

  “Easy,” said Zill. “So we can’t stop his ‘rise to glory’. He told us that himself.”

  “Yes, but what did he mean by it?” Plog scratched his head. “Why is he tearing Trashland apart just to dig up these old bones . . .?”

  Danjo shrugged. “Maybe he has a big dog who’s really hungry?”

  “We’ve already met his pet,” Zill reminded him. “What are those giant bones anyway? Any idea, PIE?”

  “I’ve got a lovely idea,” PIE answered. “We should go on a picnic with some worms.”

  “Er . . . yes,” said Plog, “but have you got any idea about Snap’s old bones?”

  “Oh.” PIE’s screen blushed red. “They appear to be animal bones. But as for which animal . . . I am checking my memory banks for matches.”

  Zill looked at him suspiciously. “You mean you don’t know.”

  “PLASTIC BAGS!” yelled PIE, so loudly that the roof rattled and the Squaddies jumped in the air.

  “What is it, PIE?” asked Plog, his heart thumping.

  “Do you need us to do some shopping?” Danjo wondered.

  “I’ve just seen it. A bone . . . Barely visible beneath the grimy white layers of the Plastic Bag Forest . . .” PIE’s
screen was cluttered with exclamation marks. “But yes, definitely a bone!”

  Plog gasped. “If it’s buried there, then sooner or later Snap will come and pinch it.”

  “And probably trash the whole area,” added Danjo.

  “But,” said Zill, “if we can take the bone before he does, it might spoil this grand design of his.”

  Plog nodded excitedly. “And that’ll buy Furp more time to find the cure for Snap’s anti-slime.”

  “Best of all,” said Danjo, “we won’t need our slime to get hold of it – just a bit of brute force to dig it up, and the Slime-mobile to haul it back to our base!”

  “There! Not so useless after all, are you?” said PIE.

  “But we’d better get shifting,” said Plog grimly. “The Duke of Snap could be coming for that bone at any moment!”

  Chapter Five

  BAGS OF DANGER

  The Squaddies ran over to the Slime-mobile and bundled inside. The air was thick with smelly smoke and bright yellow bubbles.

  Zill wiped the fogged-up windscreen with her tail. “I’ll have to drive with the windows open!”

  Plog peered through the smoke. “Where’s Furp?”

  “Here!” The frog-monster was wearing a gas mask and mixing murky liquids in the lav-lab’s toilet. “What’s going on?”

  “PIE’s found a bone,” said Danjo. “We’re going to dig it up before the Duke of Snap gets his claws on it.”

  “But I’m at a vital stage of my research!” Furp complained. “I’ve discovered that Snap’s anti-slime came in four different colours because each was a different formula – specially made to affect each one of us.”