by Steve Cole
“Then now it’s my turn.” There was some scuffling and the heavy FWAP! of fabric slapping the ground. “There!” said Danjo. “The hanky took a spanky!” He took Zill’s paw in his pincer and ran for the icy slime-bridge. “We can’t help these poor monsters right now – it’s time to beat a neat retreat!”
Zill could hardly see a thing through the smoke. But as she climbed the slippery bridge she could hear the sound of the aeroplane approaching once more, coming closer and closer . . .
“Whoa!” she gasped as strong, bony arms snatched her up, and she was whisked into the air as if she’d jumped aboard some incredible fairground ride.
“Hang on tight,” called a familiar husky voice beside her. “It’s a long way down.”
“Countess Kiss?” Zill gulped and gripped the plane’s left wing with all six legs.
From the sound of Danjo’s hoots and yells he’d been picked up in much the same way on the other side of the plane – by Plog. “I never thought I’d say this, Countess, but . . . er, thanks.”
“You owe me one.” Settling back into the cockpit to take the joystick, the countess smiled. “And don’t you forget it.”
“The Conks are after her, Zill, just like they’re after us,” said Plog. “For now, at least – we’re on the same side. Where’s Furp?”
“Trying to get those noses’ grotty goo off PIE’s sensors,” said Danjo, dangling from his pincers. “I guess the Conks didn’t want anyone watching while they stuck the Formula Bum crowd to the ground.”
“But why would they want to do such a thing?” Plog wondered.
Countess Kiss shrugged. “Maybe they don’t like motor racing.”
“They called the Car Wreck Coast a ‘Test Zone’,” Zill recalled. “That makes it sound like some kind of experiment.”
“Well, Zill and Danjo, you’d better hang on extra-tight,” said Plog. “I want Countess Kiss to sky-write a warning to keep all monsters away from here.”
“Are you crazy?” The countess pointed down at the smoky valley. “You saw those Conks firing at us. They’re probably bringing in reinforcements.”
“We can’t let innocent monsters keep blundering into their trap,” Plog said firmly. “A quick message, and then we must find Furp.”
Zill tried to spy the two tyres that hid PIE’s sensor, but it was too smoky. “I only hope he’s all right,” she murmured.
Under Plog’s instruction, Countess Kiss steered her plane this way and that until another message appeared in the skies over the stricken valley:
She was just finishing the final R when a flurry of green sludge shot up through the air and slammed into the underside of the plane.
“Uh-oh – Conks down below!” Danjo hollered.
Zill’s eyes widened as she saw more than a dozen of the sinister pointed figures firing from the giant car-wreck clifftops. “We need to get out of here!”
The countess sent the plane swerving and climbing through the sky, trying to get clear. “I told you we were crazy to stay around here!”
Then – SQUELCH! – a humungous green snot-ball engulfed the front of the plane – including the propeller. The engine juddered and roared, but the gunged-up propeller would no longer turn . . .
And the plane began to drop out of the sky.
Plog grabbed Countess Kiss by the shoulder. “Where are the parachutes?”
The countess shook her glossy red head. “There aren’t any.”
They were diving even more steeply now. “This is so not good,” said Danjo.
“You could say that.” Zill clung onto the wing for dear life. “Or you could say – EEEEEEEEEEK!”
“Our only chance is to touch down in what’s left of the Nosepick Ocean,” Plog shouted. “Can we reach it?”
“We can try.” Countess Kiss gripped the plane’s joystick. “Hang on!”
With incredible skill, she forced the dying plane round in a circle, riding the gusting wind as best she could. The three Squaddies could only watch and hope as the plane dipped lower and lower over the rusting landscape. By now, the Nosepick Ocean was little more than a shallow pool of green slush in the bottom of a trash-filled, rocky basin.
Zill groaned. “Is there even enough liquid left to break our fall?”
“We’re about to find out,” Plog shouted as the gooey ground rushed up to meet them. “Brace yourselves!”
With a breathtaking bang and a spectacular splash, the white plane slammed into what was left of the Nosepick Ocean!
Zill and Danjo were jolted clear by the impact. They cartwheeled through the air until – CLANG! – Zill ended up in a rusty old shopping trolley and – WHUNCH! – Danjo landed headfirst in a clump of seaweed.
But they were the lucky ones. As the plane bounced and scraped across the gloopy seabed, it struck stones and boulders and rusting hunks of metal. Plog and Countess Kiss were squeezed and scrunched and tangled together in incredible knots until, finally, it screeched to a stop.
“Nice flying,” Plog mumbled, his snout squashed into the countess’s armpit. “Danjo? Zill? Are you all right?”
There was no reply.
“I was a fool to hope for the Slime Squad’s protection,” the countess moaned, pulling Plog’s tail out of her mouth. “You can’t even protect yourselves!”
“Stop moping,” said Plog crossly, “and start thinking – why are the Conks so keen to catch us?” He tugged his leg out from behind her back and tapped one of his metal boots. “Perhaps it’s because we both make some seriously bad smells – and that makes us a danger to them!”
Countess Kiss stared. “You mean, the Conks are scared of that pongy slime your feet make when they’re bared to the air?”
Plog nodded. “And I’ll bet they hate your breath of death. Giant noses must be super-sensitive to nasty niffs – perhaps that is how we can fight them!”
“Uh-oh. It looks as if we might get to test that theory.” The lippy lady pointed through the plane’s broken windscreen. “We have Conks incoming – from under the seabed!”
Plog felt his heart quicken as he saw a gang of six conk-monsters and two tissues emerge through a hidden hatch in the sludgy ground.
Within seconds they were swarming over the plane – and breaking down the door . . .
Chapter Six
NOSE-GO AREA
KWANG! The plane door was heaved off its hinges. Plog swapped a helpless look with Countess Kiss as a hairy Conk pushed his way inside.
“Now, there is no escape,” the creature croaked. “You will be taken to . . . El Conko.”
Countess Kiss raised her eyebrows. “El who?”
The sinister schnozz smiled nastily. “El Conko – king of Conks!”
“Don’t think so, sweetie.” The countess plumped up her lips. “Get ready for the biggest kiss on the nose ever . . .”
“Not yet,” hissed Plog. “You heard him: El Conko’s their leader – if we get rid of him, perhaps we’ll get his hench-noses off our backs too.”
“No talking,” snapped the Conk. He fired a bogey blast that splattered over Plog’s shoulder, knocking him clear of the countess and sticking him to the plane.
“Ow!” Plog complained. “Now, how are you going to take me anywhere?”
The Conk smiled as a large wet tissue squeezed inside and scrubbed roughly at Plog’s shoulder. In moments the gunk had melted away – but the tissue wrapped itself around him, pinning his arms to his sides as the Conk yanked him outside with the countess.
“So, there’s a way to unstick that stuff,” Plog noted. “That’s good news for those poor monsters glued to the ground in the valley.”
“Hooray,” the countess grumbled as a second stained tissue engulfed her. “How can you worry about other monsters at a time like this?”
“I worry about lots of things,” said Plog, nodding to what looked like a large plughole beside the hatch in the ground. “Such as, why have the Conks deliberately drained the Nosepick Ocean?”
His question hung in
the air as he and the countess were forced to climb down the hatch and into the Conks’ gloomy lair . . .
Just a few metres away, hidden by seaweed, Danjo had heard the stomp and squelch of footsteps approaching and woken from his daze – just in time to see Plog and Countess Kiss being pushed underground by the Conks, and the hatch door swing shut behind them.
Unsteadily, he climbed out of the undergrowth – and heard a familiar groan from an upturned shopping trolley close by. “Zill,” he hissed. “Are you OK?”
“I feel like my body’s been blown to bits and then stitched back together by blind rats with no paws,” said Zill. “Otherwise, I’m fine!”
“Plog and Lady Lip-face aren’t.” Danjo sighed. “They’ve been caught by the Conks.”
Zill shuddered. “Nasty . . . Well, we’ve already proved we can’t tackle those things alone. Let’s get back to Furp and the Slime-mobile, and see what PIE thinks.”
“He’ll have a plan,” Danjo agreed, staring at the twin tyres in the distance. “But the Slime-mobile is miles away, and those Conks we met before will be out for blood.”
“Then we’d better take the Catapult Express!” Zill scrambled out of the trolley and spat out a string of slimy strands between two large rocks, making a kind of net. Then she and Danjo backed into it, digging their feet in, stretching it as far as it would go, until . . .
BOINNG! The two Squaddies lifted their legs and were pinged across the ocean plain like stones from a slingshot. Zill’s aim was spot on – and as they came in to land beside the tyres, Danjo sprayed out a heap of soft slush beneath them to cushion their fall.
“Furp?” Zill called, scrambling up. “Funny. There’s no sign of him.”
“But there are signs that a Conk passed this way.” Danjo pointed to some green gunk on the black rubber wall, and some tracks in the ground. “It looks like Furp is a prisoner as well as Plog! What are we going to do?”
In the Conks’ lair, Plog was asking himself a similar question. He had been forced to climb down a ladder – not easy when you are caught in the grip of a hostile tissue – into a deep, dark metal chamber with a drain in the floor. Once there, the tissue tugged him through a heavy door with a watertight seal.
“It’s like something divers might use,” said Countess Kiss as her own tissue pushed her along behind him.
Plog nodded. “I suppose the Conks had all this made so they could put that plughole in place right next to their underground base.” And they chose an underground base because it’s the only place evil monsters can gather without the All-Seeing PIE spotting them, he thought privately. But how did the Conks know about PIE in the first place . . .?
Emerging from the watertight chamber, Plog saw a giant metal pipe snaking down from the rocky ceiling above. It led into a vast glass vat built into the floor. Green water sloshed about inside.
Plog turned to one of his Conk captors. “So you’ve sucked the entire ocean into there. Why? To make a swimming pool for your pet nose-rags?”
“The Attack Tissues are not pets. They are our disposable slaves, pulled out as required.” The Conk snorted. “We have drained away the sea because only the chemicals within it can dissolve our bogeys.”
“Like a solvent,” said the countess. “Those same chemicals must keep the Nosepick Ocean from turning solid.”
Plog stared down at the tissue that held him. “This thing wiped me free in the plane,” he recalled. “It must’ve been soaked in this solvent stuff.”
“Correct,” snuffled another Conk. “Now we have total control over its supply.”
“No wonder you chose to make the neighbouring coast your Test Zone,” said Plog. “That way, no one nearby could get to the ocean-water before you drained it.”
“Enough talk,” wheezed the Conk. “Move faster!”
The tissues swept Plog and the countess along at a trot. The ground was covered in crusty bogeys, and sloped upwards towards a pair of large green doors – which opened into sudden brightness.
Marvelling, Plog saw a ceiling of smashed glass stretching high overhead, held together by snot and propped up by tall pillars. “We must be under Broken Glass Beach.”
“On the other side of the ocean,” Countess Kiss agreed.
Sunlight reflected eerily through the glass in shades of bottle green and dirty brown, illuminating a grand and glittering throne room with thick cardboard walls. On a huge chair carved from driftwood and cushioned with handkerchiefs sat a big red nose-monster, the ugliest and meanest-looking Plog had yet seen.
Brown bristles poked out of his nostrils. A fancy lace cape swaddled his body.
Plog felt a tingle of fear as the Attack Tissues forced him and Countess Kiss towards the regal Conk, and the other noses fell to their hairy knees.
“I am El Conko,” said the big red nose in a voice that dripped with menace (and a little catarrh). “Rightful master of Trashland.”
“Rightful?” Plog spluttered. “What gives you the right to glue harmless monsters to the ground?”
“And to scare off all the harmful ones?” added Countess Kiss.
“I have every right.” El Conko smiled unpleasantly. “You see, I am a nose who was once part of a face; a very great and very special face – the face of Trashland’s creator, Doctor Godfrey Gunk!”
Chapter Seven
THE GREAT QUEST
“I don’t believe it,” breathed Plog, staring at the demonic schnozzle on the throne. “You can’t be part of Godfrey Gunk. His nose didn’t just come to life and hop off his face, did it!”
Countess Kiss seemed baffled. “Godfrey Gunk? Creator of Trashland?”
“That’s right.” Plog had been told the truth about Trashland’s origins by PIE, and quickly explained. “Gunk was a mad scientist. He wanted to turn rubbish dumps into mini monster safari parks. Wanted to create life. So he did loads of experiments but none of them worked.”
“The Trashland experiment was a failure,” El Conko broke in. “Even when Doctor Gunk added his own DNA to his chemical soup – skin scrapings from the side of his nose – it made no difference.”
“But Gunk didn’t know that there was radioactive stuff buried in the ground here,” Plog continued. “The missing ingredient that did what he could not – bring monsters to life.”
“And that’s how Trashland was born?” The countess’s eyes were full of wonder. “Incredible.”
“Incredible? Pah!” The angry El Conko jumped down from his throne. “Trashland was messed up from the start! Even my Conks and I were created by accident, when Doctor Gunk’s nose-scrapings mingled with radioactive toxic waste.”
“I guess this explains how you knew about PIE.” Behind the throne, Plog saw a large, near-empty box of tissues. “How about these nasty nose-rags of yours? Where did they come from?”
“Doctor Gunk was experimenting with intelligent tissues that wipe noses automatically,” said the Conk. “We have completed his work – by making them horribly hostile Attack Tissues.” He snarled and snuffled with laughter, sounds that were taken up by his followers in the grand glass chamber. “Soon we shall complete our creator’s plans for Trashland. That is our Great Quest.”
Plog frowned. “But what Gunk wanted was exactly what we have now – a tip that teems with monstery life.”
“NOT TRUE!” boomed El Conko.
“How would you know?” The countess pursed her chapped lips. “Did you ever ask him?”
“They didn’t have to,” came the voice of a familiar frog-monster. “They found his secret diary.”
“Furp!” Plog stared as his friend was swept into sight by another tissue, accompanied by two Conks who held a large scrap of paper carefully between them. “I’m so glad you’re all right. Er, you are all right, aren’t you?”
Furp looked bruised and bedraggled, his helmet at a wonky angle, the radar dish bent and spinning slowly. “I’ve been trapped inside a toxic nostril, dragged halfway across Broken Glass Beach, and taken down here through a secret en
trance – none of which was much fun.” He sighed and shook his head. “But then the Conks showed me this scrap from Gunk’s diary, thinking it would persuade me to help them in their plans. And now that I know their plans, I feel a whole lot worse.”
“Furp LeBurp will help us in our Great Quest,” El Conko declared, glaring at Plog and Countess Kiss. “And so will you two.”
“I bet I know what kind of a quest it is too,” sneered the countess. “A conk-quest!”
Plog nodded. “Just another bunch of nutty villains out to rule Trashland.”
“It’s worse than that,” said Furp gravely. “The Conks want to DESTROY Trashland – and wipe out all monster life!”
“What?” Plog whispered in shock.
“We MUST do it,” El Conko thundered. “That is what our creator wanted. He wrote down his instructions clearly!” He stamped over to the two Conks and snatched away the piece of paper. “Listen to this – My work is a failure. I will go away and never come back. But first I must destroy the whole experiment – EVERYTHING must be destroyed.”
Plog groaned. “But Gunk wrote that when he was really angry, before he knew there was any life here!”
“How dare you question the word of the Creator?” El Conko boomed. “We MUST complete the destruction he began.”
Just then, a large, square door in the cardboard wall flipped open. Half a dozen Conks lumbered in and bowed to El Conko. “O Mighty Nose,” said one, “we have been forced to call an end to the test. Monsters have stopped coming to the Car Wreck Coast Test Zone.”
“They were scared off by the warning in the sky,” another added.