Slime Squad vs. the Killer Socks

by Steve Cole

  Zill nodded. “And my designer outfit feels very tight all of a sudden.”

  “Mine too,” said Furp. “I think I’ll take it off.” He tugged at his hat – but it refused to shift. “OW! It’s cutting into my forehead.”

  “This top is squeezing me like a sausage,” Zill complained, trying to wriggle out of it. “I can’t get it off!”

  “My shirt is shrinking!” Danjo stared in horror as the fabric crumpled and cut into his body. “Argh . . . I can hardly breathe, it’s so tight.”

  “Me neither,” Furp gasped for air as his jumper crushed against his ribs. “It’s almost as though our clothes are attacking us!”

  “And the Sudz has made them so tough we can’t tear them off,” Zill groaned, struggling helplessly on her back. “If they shrink much more they’ll squash us to death!”

  With a screech of invisible brakes and the smell of burning rubber, Plog brought the Slime-mobile to an emergency stop beside the hole in the wall of the Sudz Building. “Conk-Whopper’s got a lot of explaining to do,” he told Jurley as they jumped out of the Squad car.

  But suddenly, the giant stripy sock they’d met before burst out through the jagged hole in the wall. “BOO!” he rasped, and spat a white blanket at Jurley. It covered her completely and she toppled over.

  “It’s bound to be poisonous,” Plog shouted. “Get it off!” He rushed over to free her – but then Red Sock slithered out of the building and let rip with a blast of flame. Plog gasped as he felt horrendous heat on his back – then smiled as it quickly faded. “Your fire can’t hurt me while I’m wearing this jacket. It’s been washed in fabric toughener – the perfect defence!”

  “The perfect weapon, more like,” Red Sock said smokily, blasting Jurley’s blanket with a flaming breath. “That is, once we’ve heated them up . . .”

  “Eh?” Plog felt his jacket growing tighter around his ribs. Red Sock breathed out another two fire blasts – one warmed Plog’s front, the other scorched his metal boots. Straightaway, his trousers shrank and squeezed themselves around his furry legs. His waistband crunched into his tummy. And Jurley was trapped inside her ever-tightening blanket. Only her head was free, and she stared down in horror as the white fabric pinned her arms to her side and forced her ankles together so she could barely move.

  “What’s happening?” she shouted.

  “The same thing that will happen to anyone who wears clothes washed in New-formula Sudz,” Red Sock rasped. “And now you must meet our master . . .”

  Plog tried to wriggle away, but Stripy grabbed him in his rough woolly jaws. He saw Red Sock pick up Jurley, then he was swept away by the vicious sock-monster and dragged helplessly into the heart of the building . . .

  PTUH! Plog found himself spat out into a very warm room. He landed next to a big tumble dryer – and his heart sank when he saw that his fellow Squaddies had been trussed up by their new togs too.

  “Fur-boy!” Zill gasped.

  Danjo sighed. “We were kind of hoping you might rescue us.”

  “Sorry, guys,” said Plog as Red Sock spat out Jurley.

  “What’s she doing all trussed up like that?” said Furp, baffled. “Have her socks turned against her?”

  “They’re not my socks,” Jurley protested. “They’re Conk-Whopper’s!”

  But the next moment, Tartan slithered inside and spat Conk-Whopper out onto the floor! He gasped and groaned as his shrunken robes squashed his body in some very painful places.

  Plog’s eyes widened. “Conk-Whopper? But we thought you were in charge!”

  Furp tried again. “Have your socks turned against you?”

  “They’re not my socks,” spluttered Conk-Whopper feebly. “They came crashing out of the sewing room downstairs when I was on my way back from the mail room. The red one breathed fire on me and my clothes started shrinking. Lucky I’m not wearing underpants!”

  Zill cringed. “Too much information.”

  “Yeah, never mind your pants,” said Danjo. “How come all our clothes have suddenly shrunk?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” came a rasping voice as another nasty sock snuck into the room. It was Spotty, still soggy with melted slime-ice and trailing slime-lines behind him.

  With some difficulty Conk-Whopper rolled over to rest beside Plog. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “These fiendish socks may have got me, but they didn’t get my assistant Onzo. He’ll fetch help and get us out of this scrape, you mark my words.”

  “You are wrong, Conk-Whopper,” hissed Spotty. “Onzo did not get away . . .”

  “Onzo is right here!” The little blue-skinned monster marched into the room, his clothes still fitting perfectly. “You’ve bossed me around for years, Conk-Whopper, and I’m sick of it! From now on, Lord Klukk and I will boss you around. You and every other fool in Goo York City.”

  “It’s him,” Zill realized with horror. “Onzo is the Lord of the Socks!”

  Chapter Eight

  STATE OF SOCK

  “Onzo?” Conk-Whopper looked as though someone had just whopped his conk with a wet fish.

  “No wonder the socks jumped away through the roof when he told them to leave,” Plog recalled. “They were used to following his orders.”

  “So now you know – I’m cleverer than all of you!” Onzo smiled smugly. “It was I who set up Lord Klukk’s secret evil lair next to the sewing room . . . I who built an underground entrance to the sewers for sneaky comings and goings . . . I who gave Klukk all Conk-Whopper’s material so he could create his sinister sock servants . . . I who arranged the fabric factory robberies to replace that material so we could make the giveaway clothing . . . I who—”

  “— is boring us to death,” yawned Plog.

  “Oh, Onzo.” Conk-Whopper shook his head sadly. “I thought you were just working late to impress your boss.”

  “He was!” came a gruff squawk from somewhere inside Tartan. “I am Onzo’s buk-buk-boss!” Suddenly, the grubby sock coughed up a big lump in her throat – a widescreen smellyvision set that the sock-monster caught in her jaws, displaying the screen to her captive audience.

  Plog saw the familiar chickeny silhouette of Trashland’s foulest fowl and groaned. “Lord Klukk!”

  “You’re always hiding away,” Zill complained. “You never show yourself.”

  “And you never learn either,” said Danjo. “Whatever you’re planning we’re going to be banning.”

  “Not this time,” snarled Klukk. “Not now you are prisoners of your own clothes!”

  “I suppose you’ve made Onzo add something awful to New-formula Sudz,” said Furp, scrunched up on his side. “Something that responds to heat, hmm?”

  “Correct!” Klukk agreed.

  “The clothes are full of pinch-and-pucker particles!” Onzo revealed. “That’s my name for them!”

  “It’s rubbish,” said Plog.

  “I filled the Churn-a-Rama pool with pinch-and-pucker particles,” said Onzo. “So they mixed with the washing powder.”

  Conk-Whopper groaned. “So when the giveaway clothes were washed in Sudz they didn’t just absorb my fabric toughener – they absorbed these shrinking particles too!”

  “I suppose one burst of heat – like a spin in the jumbo dryer – switches on the particles,” said Furp. “Further heat sets them off and causes clothing to shrink!”

  Danjo scowled at Onzo. “So it was you who turned up the temperature in this building.”

  Onzo nodded. “We had to test the pinch-and-pucker particles to be certain they worked.”

  “And now we shall give away deadly clothes to everyone in Goo York,” Lord Klukk bragged. “Sudz designer gear will quickly buk-buk-become an overnight sensation. Everyone will buk-buk-be wearing them and washing their clothes in Sudz. And when everyone is suited and buk-buk-booted in pinch-and-pucker particles – the socks shall strike!”

  Zill shook her head, baffled. “What good to you is a city full of monsters being strangled by pants and blouses?�
��

  Klukk cackled from the screen. “Goo York is the richest city in Trashland. With most of its population helpless my killer socks will roam the streets, stealing everything of value and crushing anyone who tries to stop them.” He puffed up his spiky feathers. “They are the perfect robbers! Their super-elastic buk-buk-bodies will let them swallow tons of buk-buk-booty and carry it buk-buk-back to me. I’ll have enough loot to buk-buk-build a thousand more socks and invade all of Trashland . . .”

  “But Goo York will be mine,” Onzo reminded him. “Once the city has been plundered, I will step in with the miracle cure for the shrunken clothes.” He pulled a test tube from his pocket and waved it around. “I call it ‘anti-shrink’ – made with puff-and-plumpen particles!”

  “That’s a worse name than the other one,” Plog complained. But his nose twitched at the sweet smell of the antidote. It reminded him of something . . .

  “When I single-handedly save Goo York, I shall become a famous hero,” Onzo said dreamily. “The grateful public will beg me to be their ruler . . .” He stuck out his tongue at Conk-Whopper. “Not bad for a poor assistant from a soap-powder factory, eh?”

  “Oh, Onzo,” sighed Conk-Whopper.

  “Oh, help!” wailed Jurley.

  “Oh, hang on a minute,” said Zill. “This plan is pants. The particles need strong heat to work, right? Well, you can’t warm up a whole city to get everyone at the same time, can you?”

  “Yes!” Klukk roared with glee. “With Mr Conk-Whopper’s mega-enormous tumble dryer!”

  “Of course.” Furp looked helplessly at his friends. “That’s why the dryer has such massive energy banks. It will generate incredible heat and pump it out through those pipes in the roof. The city will get hotter and hotter . . .”

  “And my fashion-trap will spring shut!” Klukk broke out into evil laughter. “Face it, you slimy fools – at last, I, Lord Klukk, have won!”

  Zill, Furp and Danjo hung their heads sadly.

  But Plog perked up. Onzo was standing just in front of him, with the tube of anti-shrink poking from his pocket. I know why I recognize that sickly sweet smell, he thought. It’s the same smell that’s coming from my boots! “Tell me, Onzo,” he said. “How did you make that anti-shrink?”

  “It was Lord Klukk who came up with it,” said Onzo, bowing quickly to the shadow on the screen. “I believe the main ingredient is some special slime scraped from an old shoebox he found in the Soggy Sewers . . .”

  “Shut up, Onzo,” Klukk snapped.

  Plog’s heart thumped harder as his thoughts started to race. Klukk knows my slime is incredible stuff, and he knows I once lived in the Soggy Sewers. He must’ve used MY slime to make the anti-shrink!

  “And that means my boot water might do a similar job,” Plog muttered. Desperately he tried to catch Zill’s eye. At first she frowned. Then she saw Plog nod towards the test tube.

  “I get you,” Zill said. Quietly she spat out a slime-line and snagged the little tube in Onzo’s pocket. With a flick of her head, she yanked it free – and as it smashed on the floor, she flopped on top of it . . .

  “Yes!” she yelled as Conk-Whopper’s clothes loosened up around her. “I can move!” She sprang up into the air and karate-kicked Onzo in the chest.

  “Erk!” Onzo warbled, as Zill’s power-packed paws propelled him into Tartan at speed. The big sock went down – and so did the smellyvision set clamped in her jaws. Klukk squawked angrily as the screen slammed down on the floor.

  Stripy and Spotty swung round to face Zill and lunged forward. But Zill spat another slime-line at the ceiling and pulled herself out of reach, just in time to dodge a jet of flame from Red Sock.

  “Stop the poodle-skunk!” raged Klukk.

  “You’ll have to stop the rest of us too,” Plog bellowed. He kicked off one of his boots and it splashed water all over his jacket and trousers.

  But nothing happened!

  “We shall stop you with ease,” hissed Spotty as Stripy, Red and Tartan reared up over the helpless Plog, ready to smack down and squash him into the floor. “Farewell, fool – for ever!”

  Chapter Nine

  THE PLAN AND THE PERIL

  “Come on,” Plog muttered, staring helplessly as the boot water spread over his clothes. “You’ve got to work!”

  The socks stretched and stiffened, ready for the killer blow . . .

  Then, finally – “Yes! My outfit’s loosening too!” – Plog rolled aside as the socks came crashing down, and Tartan and Stripy knocked each other flying.

  “Nice work, Fur-boy!” Zill pulled off his other boot and splashed the special water inside over Furp. Spotty tried to knock the boot from her paws with a loose thread but the sock-monster was just too slow.

  “No!” Klukk screeched. “This is impossible!”

  “Not at all!” Furp beamed as the slimy anti-shrink worked its magic on his extra-tight outfit. “You can do such a lot with good quality slime – and Plog’s is the best in the business!” As his clothes finally loosened, Furp leaped over a fire blast from Red Sock, grabbed the boot from Zill and emptied the last of the super-water over Danjo.

  “Yahoo for the shoe!” Danjo hollered as his own clothes started to unshrink. He jumped aside as Tartan opened her mouth to devour him – then grabbed the dazed Onzo and hurled him down her woolly windpipe instead.

  “Stop them, you fools!” Klukk raged as Tartan tried to vomit Onzo back out again.

  Plog grabbed Jurley, Danjo picked up Conk-Whopper and everyone charged for the exit. As the Squaddies piled outside, Zill slammed the door shut.

  “Furp,” said Plog. “If we lure those socks away, can you sneak back inside and destroy Klukk’s dryer of doom?”

  Furp nodded. “I think so. But it’ll take time.”

  “I can’t move much,” said Conk-Whopper, “but I’ll help all I can.”

  “Me too,” offered Jurley.

  “Great.” Plog turned to Danjo and Zill. “We have to make the socks chase us away from here.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard.” Danjo flinched as the door was nearly thumped off its hinges. “Sounds like they’re in a chasing mood!”

  Zill helped Furp hide Conk-Whopper and Jurley further down the corridor. Then she galloped back to Plog and Danjo just as the dryer-room door crashed open and a seething bunch of killer socks surged out from inside.

  “Run!” roared Plog.

  The three Squaddies piled away down the corridor. Red Sock was first after them, belching fire, stretching and shuffling his elasticated body. Stripy was right behind him, Lord Klukk’s smellyvision clutched in his mouth so the chicken-thing could watch all the action. Tartan towered above Spotty, who lashed out with loose threads as they raced along – like a woolly lion-tamer cracking a whip.

  Furp helped Jurley and Conk-Whopper stagger back into the dryer room – but as they came inside, a sharp shard of concrete bounced off his crash helmet. “Ow!”

  “You won’t spoil our plans!” It was Onzo, waving a spring-loaded catapult. “I’ll stop you!”

  “Onzo!” Conk-Whopper looked shocked. “You know very well that catapults are against company rules.”

  “Sadly I don’t think he’s bothered.” Furp dragged Jurley and Conk-Whopper down behind an upturned table as more crude concrete missiles shot around them. “We don’t have time for this,” he muttered. “The socks may return at any moment. If we haven’t demolished that dryer by then, it’s goodbye, Goo York.” He shook his froggy head helplessly. “And if Klukk has his way, it’ll be ta-ta to Trashland too!”

  “Whoa!” yelled Zill, swinging round the corner on a slime-line to escape another plume of Red Sock’s flame. “These knitted nightmares are too fast to outrun.”

  “And too strong to fight,” Danjo added.

  Plog recognized the entrance to the Churn-a-Rama room. “In here,” he said. “I have an idea that might slow down the socks a little . . .”

  He led his friends inside, pausing at the top of the stairc
ase that led down to the big, circular pool where fresh Sudz was made. “Quick, Zill – spit out a slime-line across the doorway. Make it low.”

  “Like a tripwire!” said Danjo keenly. “Cool!”

  Zill spat out a thin strand of green slime as requested. “How can you trip up a sock?”

  Plog gulped as the sounds of boinging and shuffling grew louder. “We’re about to find out!”

  The door crashed open and the killer socks pushed inside. Sure enough, Red Sock caught himself on the tripwire and overbalanced. The other socks stumbled over him. Danjo, Zill and Plog pushed the struggling socks down the steps with all their might. SPLOOSH! SPLASH! SPLUSH! The evil knitwear fell into the vat of bubbling water. Stripy barely managed to keep the smellyvision set foam-free.

  “You socky chumps!” Klukk squawked furiously. “How dare you fall for such a simple trap!”

  “Quickly, Danjo,” Plog cried from the balcony. “Ice up the water. Trap those things inside!”

  “The pleasure is mine, and so is the slime!” Danjo sprayed plumes of icy slush down into the pool, swiftly freezing the water solid. But it was no use. The sock-monsters swung their bodies from side to side, cracking open the ice.

  Tartan ploughed a path through the half-frozen pool and tore straight through the metal sides of the Sudz vat! Spotty whisked out a thread at Plog – it missed, but sliced clean through the staircase banister.

  “Oh, no,” Plog groaned. “My plan’s backfired. The fabric toughener in the Sudz has made them even stronger.”

  Zill’s tail shot up in the air as the socks surged towards them again. “Run!”

  Chapter Ten

  IT’S A SOCK-OUT