Slime Squad vs. the Cyber-Poos

by Steve Cole

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map of Trashland

  Once Upon a Slime . . .

  Chapter One: Stuck on You!

  Chapter Two: Terror in Old Toilet Trench

  Chapter Three: The Power of the Poos

  Chapter Four: To Set a Trap

  Chapter Five: The Best Slayed Plans

  Chapter Six: Where’s the Lair?

  Chapter Seven: To Smell and Back

  Chapter Eight: Brown Alert

  Chapter Nine: Four Against an Army

  Chapter Ten: The Final Stink-Out

  About the Author

  Also by Steve Cole

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Plog, Furp, Zill and Danjo aren’t just monsters in a rubbish dump. They are crime-busting super-monsters, here to save their whiffy world!

  Trashland is in deep doo-doo! With their boss on the blink and their foes on the stink, can the Slime Squad fight back before it’s too late?

  For Cassie and Nathan

  ONCE UPON A SLIME . . .

  The old rubbish dump was far from anywhere. An enormous, mucky, rusty landscape of thousands of thrown-away things.

  It had been closed for years. Abandoned. Forgotten.

  And then Godfrey Gunk came along.

  Godfrey wasn’t just a mad scientist. He was a SUPER-BONKERS scientist! And he was very worried about the amount of pollution and rubbish in the world. His dream was to create marvellous mutant mini-monsters out of chemical goo – monsters who would clean up the planet by eating, drinking and generally devouring all types of trash. So Godfrey bought the old rubbish dump as the perfect testing-ground and got to work.

  Of course, he wanted to make good, friendly, peaceful monsters, so he was careful to keep the nastiest, most toxic chemicals separate from the rest. He worked for years and years . . .

  And got nowhere.

  In the end, penniless and miserable, Godfrey wrecked his lab, scattered his experiments all over the dump, and moved away, never to return.

  But what Godfrey didn’t know was that long ago, tons of radioactive sludge had been accidentally dumped here. And soon, its potent powers kick-started the monster chemistry the mad scientist had tried so hard to create!

  Life began to form. Amazing mini-monsters sprang up with incredible speed. Bold, inventive monsters, who made a wonderful, whiffy world for themselves from the rubbish around them – a world they named Trashland.

  For many years, they lived and grew in peace. But then the radiation reached a lead-lined box in the darkest corner of the rubbish dump – the place where Godfrey had chucked the most toxic, dangerous gunk of all.

  Slowly, very slowly, monsters began to grow here too.

  Different monsters.

  Evil monsters that now threaten the whole of Trashland.

  Only one force for good stands against them. A small band of slightly sticky superheroes . . .

  The Slime Squad!

  Chapter One

  STUCK ON YOU!

  KER-SPLAT!

  In an underground garage in a secret base in the wilds of a whiffy old rubbish dump, a sudden squelch echoed out . . .

  And a searing splash of green slime shot past Plog the monster’s furry head!

  Plog dived to the floor, almost squashing his long, rat-like snout on the floor as he did a head-over-heels and bounced back to his feet. KER-SPLOOSH! Another squirt of slime whizzed between his legs.

  “Whoa!” Plog cried, snatching his long, twisty tail out of the way. “Careful, Danjo – this is meant to be just a training exercise, remember?”

  “It’s only test-slime – not much of a kick!” Danjo Jigg, a crimson crab-creature, grinned from the other side of the garage. “And with the kind of baddies we go up against, training’s got to be tough.” He waved his rifle in one of his many pincers. “Besides, we’ve got to test out these new slime-shooters. I can fire hot slime and icy slime from my pincers – but these babies can spray it faster and three times as far!”

  “So I noticed,” Plog puffed, ducking another high-speed splat.

  But he knew Danjo was right about the enemies they faced as two members of the spectacular Slime Squad . . .

  Trashland, the abandoned human rubbish-dump that was now home to millions of mini-monsters, had always been a peaceful, pleasant place. But that changed when evil, mutant mega-monsters started showing their ugly faces. Born from ultra-toxic waste in the dump’s darkest corners, led by the mysterious and villainous Lord Klukk, these sinister scum-buckets craved total control over Trashland and its people.

  Plog sighed, jumping nimbly to avoid another slime-splat shooting his way. He and his friends were the only ones with enough guts, determination and sheer, slimy super-powers to thwart Klukk and his horrible hench-monsters. But the butt-ugly baddies’ plans were growing sneakier and their forces ever stronger – so the Slime Squad was training hard to stay one step ahead . . .

  Suddenly – “Argh!” Plog’s ears shot up in alarm as he slipped and an extra-hot splodge of slime burst over his nose. “OOF!”

  “Gotcha!” Danjo punched a pincer into the air. “The aim was true – now you’re wearing the goo!”

  “Hooray!” cheered a high, croaky, slightly muffled voice from close by.

  Plog wiped the sticky slime from his eyes to find a white frog-monster in round metal pants and a crash helmet apparently jumping out of mid-air. It was Furp LeBurp, hop-about hero and absolute expert on all things slimy – and in actual fact, he was only jumping from the Slime-mobile, the Squad’s invisible, all-purpose transport. “HOORAY!” he cried again with a humungous smile on his face.

  “You don’t have to look so pleased that I’ve been slime-splattered!” Plog complained.

  “Eh? Pardon?” Furp frowned absentmindedly. “Oh, no, no, no, Plog. I was cheering because I’ve just invented some fabulous new slimy ammo for the slime-shooters in the lav-lab. This will really help us in the fight against evil.”

  Plog smiled. The Slime-Mobile’s lav-lab was Furp’s favourite place – a mobile workshop that was part-toilet, part-laboratory and all smelly. “Hang on,” he said. “I don’t have to get sloshed with this stuff, do I?”

  “Nope. It’s my turn to play target,” said Danjo, tossing him the slime-shooter. He danced and shimmied across the floor on his three sturdy legs. “Bring on the slime – I’ll dodge it in time!”

  “If you don’t, my new ‘stick-you’ spray will certainly stop you dodging anything else!” Furp loaded the slime-shooter with big, purple bullets. “Aim for his feet, Plog.”

  Danjo responded by doing a handstand – or rather, a pincer-stand – and waggling his three feet in the air. “Yeah, come on, Plog! Hit them!”

  Plog grinned. “I don’t think that’s quite the test Furp had in mind,” he said – and fired at Danjo’s right pincer.

  “Hey!” Danjo shouted as a purple puddle splashed over his crusty claw. “Not fair!”

  Plog winked. “With the kind of baddies we go up against, training’s got to be tough!”

  Danjo collapsed with a crash. “My pincer’s stuck to the floor,” he complained.

  “My ‘stick-you’ super-slime works a treat!” Furp cried, jumping about the underground garage, his pants rattling. “Now whenever bad guys attack, we can stop them in their tracks.”

  “No kidding,” Danjo muttered, straining with all his strength to un-stick himself. He squirted red, steaming-hot slime from his claw at the floor, but still the purple goo wouldn’t budge.

  “Let me give you a hand,” said Plog. He crossed to join Danjo and grabbed hold of Danjo’s
pincer. With a grunt of effort he pulled the pincer free – along with a chunk of concrete floor. “Wow, this stuff really is sticky,” he realized.

  “Thanks, Plog.” Danjo smiled. “Er, you can let go of my claw now.”

  “No, I can’t.” Plog tried to pull his hand away – and almost yanked Danjo off his feet. “I’m stuck to you!”

  “Huh?” Danjo tried to pull away from Plog. Plog tried to pull away from Danjo. It looked like they were having a crazy tug of war. “Furp, what’s going on here? Get us unstuck!”

  “Oh, dear. Um . . .” Furp looked shifty. “I haven’t quite got round to finding a way to un-stick my super-slime.”

  Plog’s eyes narrowed. “You WHAT?”

  Furp blushed. “I’m sure it will wear off one day.”

  “And in the meantime, Plog and I are stuck together?” Danjo groaned. “We’re supposed to be tough superheroes. It looks like we’re holding hands!”

  “Nonsense, my dear Danjo,” Furp assured him. “Nobody would think such a thing.”

  “Er . . . Plog?” came a girlish voice from behind them. “Why are you holding hands with Danjo?”

  Furp winced. “Well, almost nobody.”

  Plog turned to find that the Squad’s fourth and final member, Zill Billie, had emerged from the tunnel that led to the group’s meeting room. You certainly couldn’t call her a nobody, he thought fondly. With her bushy black tail, six skinny legs, super-slimy spit and bags of attitude, Zill was like a cool poodle crossed with an atomic skunk – at the moment, a rather worried one.

  “We’re not holding hands,” Danjo insisted, still tugging to be free of Plog. “Our hands are just stuck together.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Zill, as if this happened every day. “Well, I hope your butts aren’t stuck to anything – because you need to shift them into the office right now.” She pulled a face. “The All-Seeing PIE just had a funny turn.”

  Furp gasped. “Our boss? A funny turn?”

  “I didn’t know computers could turn at all,” said Plog.

  “PIE is a super-computer,” Danjo reminded him. “Perfect Intelligent Electronics, remember? I bet he can do funny turns, serious turns, many happy returns . . .”

  “I mean, he just went really weird,” Zill interrupted. “I was cleaning his screen and polishing his wires. He was talking away, and then he just sort of . . . switched off.”

  “What?” Furp squealed in alarm. “PIE never switches off – that’s why he’s all-seeing. This could be serious . . .” Twittering away, he went hopping at high-speed along the tunnel to PIE’s office.

  With a quick cough, Zill spat out a long rope of sticky slime at the ceiling, gripped it with her paws and swung all the way there in a couple of seconds like a bushy-tailed Tarzan.

  “Wait for us!” yelled Danjo.

  As he ran after his teammates with Danjo, Plog found his heart was racing too. The All-Seeing PIE had brought the Slime Squad together to do good in Trashland – he was a mega-machine, created and then cast aside by Godfrey Gunk, the same human scientist who’d accidentally brought the rubbish dump to life. PIE had special sensors scattered far and wide throughout Trashland, and thanks to his ‘Intelligent Electronics’ he could use them like long-range eyes and ears. Whenever these sensors detected danger, he sent the Slime Squad off to help.

  But as Plog and Danjo burst into the vast human office through a door in the skirting-board, it seemed that PIE was the one who needed help. The computer’s large, flickering screen suddenly flared neon bright as a million exclamation marks shone from within.

  “Danger,” groaned the supercomputer. “Help! I am UNDER ATTACK!”

  Chapter Two

  TERROR IN OLD TOILET TRENCH

  “Under attack?” Plog stared at PIE. “How can he be? There’s no one in the room.”

  “ARRRGH!” PIE’s hard-drive was whirring and squeaking as though stuffed with clockwork hamsters. “Poo . . . Disappearing poo . . .”

  “He was saying the same thing before he went funny,” said Zill.

  “Sounds cool,” said Danjo. “Poos that do magic tricks? Awesome.”

  “Be serious,” said Zill. “PIE wasn’t making it up – his sensors showed that all the rat and seagull poo had vanished from some of Trashland’s smelliest cities.”

  “Danger . . .” PIE sounded delirious now. “Missing poo . . . poo . . .”

  Furp clutched his crash helmet in fear. “I’m afraid he’s gone poo-loopy. This calls for serious action!” The frog-monster started bounding about the computer’s battered keyboard in a precise pattern, leaving slimy footprints on several keys. Suddenly, with a final electronic squeal, PIE’s screen switched off completely.

  Danjo’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “You’ve killed him!”

  “Not at all,” Furp protested. “I’ve simply rebooted his system.” With a fruity chime, PIE’s workings began to whir and his screen started humming back to life. But would he be better or just like before? The Slime Squad held their breath. Plog found he was quite glad to be stuck with Danjo’s hand to hold.

  Finally, after what seemed an age, the screen became a reassuring slimy green colour. Two dots and a curly bracket appeared, shifting about to form PIE’s familiar face. “Well,” he boomed, “that wasn’t much fun, I can tell you!”

  “What happened?” asked Plog urgently.

  “I’m not sure,” rumbled the All-Seeing PIE. “I believe it was a long-range attack on my electronic mind.”

  Zill’s tail was standing so far on end it almost brushed the ceiling. “But, you’re a top-secret computer. No one knows you exist!”

  “They must have discovered one of my remote sensors,” said PIE slowly. “As you know, I am linked to each and every one. Those sensors allow me to look out over Trashland. But my mysterious attacker reversed that link and used it to look into me.” He shuddered. “I’ve switched off that sensor now, but . . . they were using it to poke about in my databanks!”

  “Why would anyone want to do that?” wondered Plog.

  “Why wouldn’t they, hmm?” PIE bristled. “I have very pretty databanks, stuffed full of the most gorgeous information.”

  Zill turned her worried bean-green eyes on Plog. “Perhaps some baddies want to take that info.”

  “But I don’t understand,” said Furp. “You and your sensors were built with human technology that we monsters barely understand . . . so how could these baddies get at you so easily?”

  “I don’t know,” PIE admitted. “But the sensor they used was hidden in Old Toilet Trench, which, as I was telling Zill, is one of the places which has become mysteriously poo-free.” He paused. “It’s as if someone has gone out and gathered up every last smelly lump of the stuff.”

  “But who?” said Zill.

  “I don’t know,” said PIE. “They must have done it extra-super-sneakily without me noticing. I’ll just take a look through the sensor I keep at the other end of Old Toilet Trench. . . OW!” PIE suddenly broke off in electronic pain, and his screen changed colour to an alarming putrid pink. “Someone’s tampering with that sensor too!”

  Plog leaned forward, almost pulling Danjo off-balance. “Who, PIE?”

  PIE began to shake as he brought the image of a deep furrow stuffed full of cracked, broken and half-buried old toilets up on his screen. For a moment, Plog glimpsed dark, shadowy shapes milling about in the pongy porcelain landscape . . .

  Then a wisp of steam escaped PIE’s casing and the picture disappeared. “ARRGH!” Exclamation marks began to fill his screen as before. “I’m under attack again! Must . . . resist . . .”

  “Where exactly is this sensor, PIE?” Plog demanded. “If we race there in the Slime-mobile . . .”

  “We can catch the attackers red-handed.” Zill flashed her biggest grin at Plog. “Good thinking, Fur-boy.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Furp twittered, studying the map that flashed up on PIE’s flickering screen. “But we must hurry.”

  “Too right.”
Danjo raised a powerful pincer – lifting Plog off the floor as he did so. “’Cause when danger looms large, the Slime Squad cry—”

  “CHARGE!” Plog shouted louder than anyone, leading the mad scramble back to the garage and into the Slime-mobile.

  Zill grabbed her crime-fighting costume – a golden leotard – pulled it on while somersaulting through the air and landed with a bump in the driver’s seat. Plog and Danjo barely had a moment to grab hold of the two chairs behind her before she started the engine and pressed two paws onto the accelerator pedal.

  “Full throttle mode!” Zill yelled, yanking down on the turbo-drive lever. The monster truck screeched away down the exit tunnel. Seconds later, a secret door opened up in the side of a human builder’s skip and they rocketed out. “I’ll take a short cut through the Concrete Catacombs and Weed Forest.”

  Furp ducked inside his lav-lab’s slimy toilet and swapped his steel pants and crash helmet for identical golden versions. But Plog and Danjo, still stuck together, found it trickier to change into their Slime Squad costumes – especially now they were being slung from side to side as Zill steered a mad, zigzag path through the traffic. Luckily, because the Slime-Mobile was invisible as well as astoundingly fast, no one else on the road even noticed.

  Finally, just as Plog managed to pull a pair of golden shorts over his head – and as Danjo hid his crusty butt beneath a similar pair – Zill slowed down a little. “Old Toilet Trench is dead ahead.”

  Plog and Danjo looked through the windscreen at the grimy mountain landscape of chipped porcelain. The pipes of giant upturned toilet pans poked out like periscopes. Rusty chains dangled from cracked cisterns like strange creepers.