by Steve Cole
Plog groaned. “So it’s not just one cure you need to find – it’s four!”
“How long will that take?” asked Danjo, as Zill started the engine.
“Perhaps five hours,” said Furp. “Or perhaps five months!”
“Well, I’m going to get to this bone in the Plastic Bag Forest in five seconds,” Zill growled. “Hang on!”
She floored the accelerator and the Slime-mobile sped off, faster than a bolt of lightning.
“Whoa!” Without his heavy boots to anchor him, Plog tumbled backwards onto the floor. Danjo clung onto his seat while Furp jammed his bottles and beakers inside his pants and wedged himself in the toilet bowl.
Then, suddenly, Zill slammed on the Slime-mobile’s brakes. This time Plog found himself catapulted to the front of the vehicle, and conked his head on the windscreen. “Ow!”
“Don’t complain, Fur-boy.” Zill helped him up. “We’ve arrived!”
Rubbing the bruise on his head, Plog opened the door and gazed out. The forest was a strange, desolate place. Strips of grubby plastic hung like flags from a thousand sticks and grass-stalks. They billowed eerily as the breeze brushed against them.
Danjo pushed his way out behind Plog. “Where’s this bone, then?”
“Shouldn’t be far away.” Zill jumped down with a computer print-out from PIE.
“Apparently it’s near a big yellow shopping bag. Let’s get looking.”
“Good luck,” called Furp, staying put in the lav-lab, while Zill led Plog and Danjo on the bone hunt.
“It should be somewhere around here,” she murmured. “Past those broken coat hangers . . .”
“I see yellow!” bellowed Danjo, pointing a pincer ahead.
Sure enough, Plog could see a big bright bag waving in the wind. He ran towards it . . .
And fell over something, landing right on his snout. “Ouch!”
“That’s it!” Zill’s tail shot straight up in the air. “The big bone – you just tripped over it!”
“Talk about stumbling on a great discovery,” said Plog, getting back up. He could see now – there was something large, white and smooth sticking out of the dirt. “That looks like one end of the bone. Big, isn’t it?”
“Big or not, that bone’s coming home!” Danjo flexed his largest pincers and used them to shovel through the thick mud.
Zill joined him, digging furiously with four paws. “I hate to think what the Duke of Snap is doing with all these bones.”
“They’re full of calcium and stuff for healthy teeth,” said Plog, grunting with effort as he helped clear the soil. “Perhaps Snap and his gators are eating the things themselves!”
The Squaddies worked solidly for an hour or more, digging and burrowing while the carriers kept up their ghostly rustle.
“This thing’s longer than I expected,” Zill admitted. “Wider too.”
Plog nodded and shook sweat from his fur. “Let’s see if we’ve loosened it at all.”
Zill and Danjo lent him a paw and a pincer. Together, they heaved and tugged and pulled and yanked and wiggled and woggled and strained and struggled – but they couldn’t budge the colossal bone.
“It’s no good,” Plog panted. “We’ll never shift it like this. What we need is heavy machinery. Something like—”
“A helicopter with a big winch and grappling hook,” gabbled Zill.
“Yeah, that’d do it,” Danjo agreed.
“It wasn’t a suggestion.” Zill was staring up into the sky. “It was an observation. Look!”
Over the rustling of the carrier bags, Plog suddenly realized he could hear the drone of motors and rotors. A dark green shape had swung into sight high above them. “The Duke of Snap’s heli-gator!” he groaned.
Danjo banged a pincer crossly on the bone. “We weren’t quick enough!”
“The bone’s still stuck fast,” Plog reminded them. “Snap’s gators will have a job to take it.”
But suddenly two sleek, dark missiles blasted out of the heli-gator and came streaking towards them.
“Uh-oh!” Danjo whipped out a pincer and tried to create an icy slime shield – but of course, no slime came out. “Sorry. Old habits die hard.”
“But we’ll die easy if those things hit us!” cried Zill. “What’s Snap doing? He’ll blow up his bone!”
“He must be trying to dig it loose the quick way,” said Plog, pushing his friends into the trench they’d dug around the giant bone. “Come on, take cover!”
The missiles whooshed into the ground beside them. KER-WHOOOM! The explosions hurled mud up to the sky. Flimsy scraps of plastic filled the air like confetti. Plog didn’t think the ground would ever stop rumbling.
“That was too close,” said Danjo. “A few more shots like that and he’ll have blown his bone loose all right – and us to pieces!”
The heli-gator dropped down lower, its rotors whipping up the plastic bags into a frenzy of fluttering.
“I’ll try to draw Snap’s fire away from you by running over to the Slime-mobile,” said Plog. “You head into the Plastic Bag Forest and find some cover. I’ll grab the slime-shooters, then come and join you.”
“But we’ve got no slime to put in those things,” Danjo reminded him.
“Furp must have something in the lav-lab,” said Plog. “Now, good luck – and keep your heads down.”
“Will do,” Zill whispered, and Danjo nodded. “You be careful, Fur-boy.”
With a brave smile, Plog jumped out of the smoky trench and sprinted for the invisible Slime-mobile. He pushed through blades of grass and leaped over rubbish in his way. The heli-gator’s engines changed pitch as it suddenly sped up to follow him – and the sinister whoosh of another missile soon followed.
Plog looked over his shoulder to see Zill and Danjo running off into the flimsy forest – and the deadly projectile zooming towards him at frightening speed . . .
Chapter Six
A TASTE OF TROUBLE
Plog quickened his pace, pushing himself to the limit. He scrambled up onto a grassy hillock as – KA-KRAMMM! – the missile exploded behind him, blasting him high into the air. Plog tumbled helplessly towards where he knew the invisible Slime-mobile was parked . . .
But just before he could crash into the side, Furp opened the door – and Plog crashed into him instead. Both monsters tumbled inside.
“Plog!” Furp groaned. “I was just coming to find you.”
“Lucky for me you did,” Plog panted. “Snap can’t see the Slime-mobile – outside or in. With any luck he’ll think that last explosion got me.”
“Snap’s here?” said Furp anxiously. “I heard the blasts, but I didn’t know what was happening. Where are Zill and Danjo?”
“I think they’re safe for now,” said Plog. “Snap is trying to dig out the bone by firing missiles close beside it. I came here to grab the slime-shooters – it’s the only way we can fight back.”
“Perhaps not.” Furp scrambled up. “Plog, I was coming to tell you – I think I’ve almost completed your cure!”
Plog’s ears shot up in the air. “You have?”
“Here!” Furp grabbed a smoking, foaming beaker that smelled like a woodlouse farting on a dead hedgehog. “Gulp it down.”
Plog eyed the beaker nervously. “You said it wasn’t finished.”
“Oh yes.” As another explosion went off outside, Furp put a pinch of yellow powder into the beaker. The smell grew worse – as if a raccoon had done a wee on the woodlouse before it farted on the dead hedgehog. “There we go!”
Deciding he’d better swallow the drink before Furp could make it smell any worse, Plog held his nose and glugged it down.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then Plog’s brain seemed to flip like an electric pancake and his throat felt like burning bats were flapping up and down it. His eyes bulged, his head spun, his teeth rattled and his fur did a Mexican wave from his toes to his dribbling nose.
“Whoa!” he gasped, pointing at the
beaker. “That . . . that stuff . . .”
“Good, was it?” Furp smiled knowingly. “Well, that should be enough to cure you. Unless I’m totally wrong, in which case it’ll just give you the runs.”
Plog stared at him. “What?”
Furp almost overbalanced as another loud explosion rocked the Slime-mobile. “I’ll have the runs myself if this keeps up. Do your feet feel any different, Plog?” he asked hopefully. “Can you feel them sliming up?”
“No,” Plog admitted. “I can’t.”
“Oh . . . I could’ve sworn that formula would restore your slime!” Furp sighed. “Perhaps I should just throw away the cures I’m making for the rest of us . . .”
“Don’t give up. You’ll find the answer, Furp.” Plog gulped as the noisiest explosion yet shook the vehicle. “Now, I must get back to Danjo and Zill with fully-loaded slime-shooters.”
“Fill them with the lav-lab’s toilet water,” Furp suggested. “It’s not been flushed for two days.”
“Better than nothing.” Plog grabbed the shooters and filled them with the whiffy water. More and more explosions were going off outside. “Sounds like Snap is blasting the whole Plastic Bag Forest to ashes. But now we can at least try to fight back.”
“Shall I come with you?” asked Furp.
“No, keep working on the cures,” Plog told him. “We must get our powers back!” With one slime-shooter in his hands and two more tucked under his arms, he took a deep breath – and then pushed open the door and ran back into the noise and smoke outside.
The heli-gator was swooping in circles like a batty bird of prey, firing missile after missile. The carrier bags were half buried in sticky mud thrown up by the blasts. Through a curtain of dust, Plog saw that the explosions had excavated a huge trench all around the bone – which was even broader and longer than he had been expecting. Most of it was covered in mud, but it looked as though the missiles had accidentally blown a couple of holes in it.
At last the heli-gator stopped firing. The smoke from the blasts hid Plog as he crept closer. He saw a door open in the side of the heli-gator – then a dozen gators slid down the winch line to attach the grappling hook to the huge hunk of ivory.
“Oi! Gators!” Plog yelled. “Before you pick up that bone – I’ve got a bone to pick with you!” As the reptiles looked over, he opened fire with a slime-shooter – showering them with stinky water.
“Way to go, Fur-boy!” yelled Zill; she and Danjo galloped out from some muddy bags nearby. “But save some for us, OK?”
“No problem!” Plog tossed over his friends’ shooters.
“Under attack!” wailed a soggy gator. His gruesome gang pulled out pistols and shot teeth in all directions. Zill and Danjo returned fire with the revolting liquid.
Still half hidden by the smoke, Plog raced round in a large circle, firing short bursts, trying to make it seem as though the bone was surrounded by many mighty monsters.
He saw Zill and Danjo sneaking up on the gators, ready for close-range combat – but then an unexpected missile came rocketing down in front of them. BOOOOM!
“No!” yelled Plog. His friends were hurled backwards by the blast – and lay still.
“Ssso – you ssstill ssstruggle on, eh?” boomed the Duke of Snap over the heli-gator’s loudspeakers. “What does it take to make you heroic fools give up?”
“More than you’ve got!” Plog bellowed back. Then he gulped at the sound of six more missiles flying through the air. As they tore into the ground close by, booming and banging and filling the forest with fire and smoke, Plog squeezed under the huge muddy bone for protection until the bombardment stopped. “Please let Zill and Danjo be OK,” he muttered fervently. “Please!”
“Enemies zapped,” one gator announced at last. “Bone-snatch can continue. Grappling hook in position.”
“Then let’s get back to base with our prize,” the Duke said happily. “At last the operation can begin!”
Operation? Plog wondered.
Then the giant bone started to rise into the air! Plog knew that if he was spotted, he’d be blasted instantly – so he dropped his slime-shooter, grabbed hold of one of the two holes drilled through the hard white bone, and clung on. Soon he was dangling above the ground. With a rush of relief, he saw Zill and Danjo stirring on the battleground. But by the time he was sure they were OK, the heli-gator and its prize had risen high, high into the air.
A fall from this height would kill me, Plog realized, fighting to keep his handholds as Snap and his army rocketed away. Wherever the Duke’s base might be – it looks like I’m going there too – with no friends, no slime . . . and no hope!
Chapter Seven
INTO THE UNDERZONE
“Plog!” Danjo struggled up from the blasted ground and pulled Zill to her feet. “Plog, come back!” he called. But already, their dangling friend was barely visible. “I don’t believe it – Snap’s got him!”
“If only we’d managed to dodge those stupid missiles,” groaned Zill, “we might have been able to save him.”
Just then, Furp came bounding out of the Slime-mobile in a state of great excitement. “Danjo! Zill! Stop whatever you’re doing and—” He bounced to a puzzled halt. “Whatever are you doing?”
“We’re watching Plog get carried away to who knows where,” said Zill miserably, pointing after the disappearing heli-gator. “He was holding onto that giant bone when Snap took it away.”
Furp stared in horror. “Oh no! He’ll get himself killed!”
“We have to go after him,” cried Danjo.
“I’ll drive us,” said Zill. “PIE can track Plog for us, right? He’s all-seeing . . .”
“But even he can’t peep into the Murky Badlands, where the Duke of Snap has his base. Poor Plog will be completely lost.” Furp started hopping up and down in alarm, and there was a clunk of glass objects from his metal pants. “What can we do? Even if that cure I gave him works and his slime returns, he won’t stand a chance . . .”
“Chill and be still,” said Danjo, grabbing Furp in mid-air. “What do you mean, cure? And what’s all that noise in your pants?”
“Pants?” Furp looked down and squeaked. “Great gonkberries! I almost forgot to say – I think I’ve found the cure for our lack of sliminess—”
“You have?” Zill thrust her snout into Furp’s face. “Then, give! Give!”
“Yeah!” Danjo lunged for Furp’s round metal pants. “Splash out the potion – get our slime in motion!”
“Wait!” Furp back-flipped out of his friends’ reach – and the commotion in his pants grew louder. “Oh no! Now I’ve muddled up the order.” He reached inside and extracted three identical bottles, each filled with a pale-green liquid. “Now, whose was whose?”
“Does it matter?” Zill asked impatiently.
“Of course it matters!” Furp cried. “It’s like I said before – your slime is different from Danjo’s slime, and mine is different again. So we each need a cure with a slightly different formula.”
Zill groaned. “And you didn’t think to stick labels on those bottles?”
“I wasn’t expecting to get so shaken up,” said Furp sheepishly.
“Well, with Plog in danger we can’t afford to waste time,” Danjo declared. “Our slimy powers are the only thing that might save him – so dish that splish!”
With a sigh, Furp studied the bottles closely. “This one is probably Zill’s . . . And this one’s a paler green, which could mean it’s mine . . . or Danjo’s . . . Or maybe this one is Zill’s, and mine is the one with the—”
“Make up your mind!” Zill yelled.
Furp thrust one bottle into her paw and another into Danjo’s pincer. “There. I think that’s right.”
“Let’s find out,” Zill murmured.
The three friends glugged down the gloop in a couple of gulps.
“Yuck!” spluttered Zill. “That tasted like a bug’s bottom.”
Danjo licked his lips. “Mine tasted like ch
ip fat. Not bad!”
“And mine tasted like . . .” Furp clutched his throat. “Grlghph!”
“What does ‘grlghph’ taste like?” Danjo wondered. “I’ve never had it—Yeeoww!”
The crimson crab-monster suddenly gasped and clutched his belly. “My guts . . . they feel like they’re on fire!”
“Everything’s spinning . . .” Zill’s tail drooped and her legs buckled beneath her. “What’s happening?”
Furp hopped in the air – and landed on his head. CLUNK! “I don’t know,” he groaned. “I don’t understand . . .”
“Seems clear to me.” Danjo slumped to the ground. “You picked the wrong potions, Furp. They aren’t curing us – they’re killing us!”
Already far away from his stricken friends, Plog was clinging onto the muddy old bone for dear life. Slowly, every muscle straining, he hauled himself up inside one of the two holes in the narrow end of the thick white slab and held on tight. His bare feet, hanging down in the freezing air, soon grew numb, and after an hour or more he had lost all feeling in his furry fingers too.
Thick swirling fog signalled the borders of the Badlands. The heli-gator ploughed into it. We must be getting close to Snap’s lair, thought Plog with a shudder. Even if I can get out of this scrape – how will I ever find my way back home?
Soon Plog glimpsed a sprawling wooden palace, half submerged in swampland and thick black mud. The heli-gator began to dip lower and lower, towards the mouth of a waterlogged sewer tunnel. Carefully it lowered the jumbo bone into the filthy water. Plog grimaced as the thick gloop covered his body up to the waist.
“Hear me, my gators,” Snap’s voice boomed from the speakers of his flying machine. “At last we hold the final part of my grand design . . . Place it in position while I park the heli-gator. I shall meet you in the Underzone – where the operation shall sssoon begin!”