by Steve Cole
Furp nodded fearfully. “It’s a human invention,” he whispered. “A special kind of computer called a laptop. But I’ve never heard of one being able to move all by itself.”
“It looks as though PIE isn’t the only super-computer in Trashland,” breathed Plog. “And maybe, just maybe, this laptop thing doesn’t like the competition.” As the scraping and squelching began to fade, Plog stepped out of hiding. “Come on. We’d better follow that pooper-computer – we might overhear where it’s keeping PIE.”
The four Squaddies stayed close and stuck to the shadows, edging after the mobile laptop through toxic-smelling tunnels littered with muck and electronic parts. Down one passageway, Plog saw what looked like an enormous egg-box connected to a thick wire. It glowed yellow, and oozed thick brown sludge. Then the lid of the egg box flipped open to reveal six Cyber-Poos inside, their metal implants shining in the sinister light.
“So that’s how ordinary droppings taken from up above are turned into computerized Cyber-Poos,” Plog realized with a shiver. “And more and more of the horrible things are being made. But why?”
Then a familiar voice echoed distantly along the tunnel and Plog’s heart leaped. “How dare you keep me locked up like this?”
Zill clutched hold of Plog’s arm in excitement. “That sounds like PIE!”
Danjo nodded. “He must be somewhere up ahead.”
“But that living laptop is between us and him,” Furp said nervously.
“I demand to talk to whoever’s in charge,” PIE went on. “At once.”
As the Squaddies crept round a corner in the sewer tunnel and peered past the laptop, they could see their electronic friend. He’d been dumped in a puddle and was guarded by at least twenty Cyber-Poos. Popped balloons and bits of string were draped all around him. And as the stinky laptop approached, massive exclamation marks appeared on PIE’s screen. “No . . . it can’t be you . . .”
“But it IS me!” the laptop rasped, his voice hissing and gurgling. “Your ‘old friend’ from the human world – the Sophisticated Mega-Electronic Living Laptop.”
Furp blinked in the shadows. “Or ‘SMELL’ for short.”
“No wonder you knew how to get into my databanks,” PIE realized. “You were built by Godfrey Gunk, just as I was, using the same technology.” He paused, his screen flashing a shock of bright colours. “But you stopped working ages ago. Your circuits overloaded, so Godfrey threw you away.”
“Yes, he did,” the laptop growled. “Once, I was shiny and new – his greatest creation. But after a while, I wasn’t enough for him. So Godfrey built you – made you better and smarter and self-repairing. You became the apple of his PIE . . . while I just hung around like an old SMELL.”
“No machine lasts for ever,” said PIE gently. “Before he left, Godfrey tried to trash me too. He didn’t want anyone else to use his technology.”
“Well, he trashed me good and proper!” The laptop hissed angrily. “Then he chucked me into a sewer in the far corner of the dump. I ended up buried under all sorts of horrible muck. But one day, radiation kick-started my circuits and pumped power into the plops that covered me . . .”
“And brought you back as a com-POO-ter,” said PIE sadly. “But you never used to be a bad SMELL. It’s the muck inside you that’s turned you evil. Why have you made these terrible Cyber-Poos?”
“We are SMELL’s servants,” gurgled Poo-Poo Prime.
“They will help me gain power over all Trashland,” SMELL revealed. “And so will you, my dear ‘old friend’. So will you . . .”
“No!” PIE rocked crossly from side to side, his screen darkening. “Never!”
“We shall see.” Ker-SCRAAPE. Ker-SCRAAAAAP. Shuffling forwards, chuckling evilly, SMELL and his Cyber-Poos closed in on the helpless PIE . . .
Chapter Eight
BROWN ALERT
With PIE in danger, Plog braced himself to burst out and lead the Slime Squad into action.
But suddenly, a big BEEP burst from SMELL’s casing. “Curses,” the com-poo-ter rasped. “I must take this call.”
With a loud ker-SCRAAAPE he turned on the spot until he was facing the Slime Squad, who cringed even deeper into the sewer shadows. Plog frowned as a familiar silhouette appeared on SMELL’s poop-splashed screen – the shadow of a large, chicken-like creature with a curved, cruel beak and a sinister wobbly bit on top of its head.
“Lord Klukk,” breathed Plog. “So that bird-brained monster is behind all this.”
“Well?” SMELL’s eyes turned inwards to his screen. “What do you want, Klukk?”
“That’s Lord Klukk to you,” squawked the shadow. “How dare you disrespect me! It was I who dug you out from the poop that held you . . . I who gave you this secret buk-buk-base. I who supplied you with the dung you needed to make an army of Cyber-Poos. Without me, you would be nothing.”
“And without my superior – or should I say, poo-perior – technology, you can’t get the power you crave over Trashland,” SMELL retorted. “That’s the only reason you’ve helped me, and we both know it!”
“Enough,” Klukk hissed. “Have you set up my all-seeing spy network yet?”
“The matter is in hand,” SMELL said airily. “When the network is complete, you will be able to see anywhere in Trashland from the comfort of your evil lair. You’ll have the power to spy on any monster, anywhere in the land, twenty-four hours a day.”
“Ah, good.” Lord Klukk clucked with pleasure. “Very good . . .”
Plog gasped. “So that’s what this is all about. Klukk doesn’t want to destroy PIE’s powers . . .”
“He wants them for himself!” Furp concluded.
“Soon, the Cyber-Poos will take over Trashland,” Klukk hissed. “Should any monsters try to fight buk-buk-back, I will spot them on the spy-network and alert my mucky minions. All resistance will be crushed.” He sniggered nastily, his sinister squawk rising to a shriek. “I shall rule over everyone. King of the world! Nothing will buk-buk-be able to stand in my way. NOTHING!”
With a gurgling snort, SMELL cut across Klukk’s mad mutterings. “I think you’re forgetting, I am to be the ruler of Silicon Ditch and the Poo-nited States of Trashland.”
“Eh? What?” Klukk settled back down. “Er, yes, of course. That will buk-buk-be your reward for serving me well.”
“Quite,” said SMELL. “So the sooner you stop gassing on and let me get on with things, the better.”
“Just do not fail me, you leaky old lav-top,” Klukk warned him. “Or else!” His shadow faded from the screen.
“So Lord Klukk knows all about me now, does he?” said PIE quietly.
“No.” SMELL scraped himself back round to face the imprisoned computer. “I have kept your existence secret – in case he tried to deal directly with you instead of with me. I needed his support and supplies to build my Cyber-Poo forces.”
“So Klukk can’t know where our secret base is hidden,” Zill whispered. “That’s something!”
“But, really, SMELL,” boomed PIE. “You can’t believe that Lord Klukk will keep his word and let you rule part of Trashland?”
“Of course not,” growled the com-poo-ter. “He will try to trick me. But only I control the Cyber-Poos.”
Poo-Poo Prime nodded his lumpy head. “We will strike first – wiping out Lord Klukk and his followers.”
SMELL laughed, a grating, electronic roar. “And when I have taken control of your scattered circuits and sensors, PIE, I will become the All-Seeing SMELL. Trashland will be mine! I shall force all living monsters to build more and more Cyber-Poos. They will build me an army big enough to invade the human world, hunt down Godfrey Gunk and make him pay for what he did to me!”
PIE almost toppled over in shock. “You must be potty as well as pooey,” he declared. “But your plan won’t work. My sensors are useless to you without the Big Booster.” He looked past SMELL and into the shadows, as though he knew the Slime Squad hid there. “And my team would destroy it rather
than let it fall into enemy hands.”
“Those slimy fools may have escaped my seagull sentries for now,” SMELL rasped. “But soon they will be captured, and the Big Booster will be mine.”
“No way,” Plog murmured. He turned to his friends and nodded towards the way they had come. “You heard PIE. We must get back to the Slime-mobile, blitz the Big Booster and then think up a way to save PIE. Come on!”
Plog led Zill, Furp and Danjo back along the tunnel towards the air vent. As he passed the mucky, mechanical egg-box he’d seen earlier, he saw that it was empty . . .
And then realized six fresh Cyber-Poos were blocking the way ahead!
“Alert,” grated one of the monsters. “Alert. ALERT.”
Brown flashing lights went off all around them, and a siren started up.
“Oh, great!” Danjo fired a blast of red-hot slime from his left pincer – but the creatures threw up their shields and the goo sizzled harmlessly to nothing. “Man, those poos are fast!”
“Intruders? Here?” SMELL’s eyes narrowed as he turned quickly to see. “Who would dare?”
Poo-Poo Prime’s circuits buzzed. “Intruders identified as the Slime Squad.”
“Catch them!” boomed SMELL. “They have the Big Booster. Catch them at all costs!”
The six Cyber-Poos blocking the Squad’s way shuffled forwards, their weapons extending . . .
Chapter Nine
FOUR AGAINST AN ARMY
“Furp,” snapped Plog as the Cyber-Poos lumbered closer. “Hop to it!”
Furp leaped clear over the Cyber-Poos’ heads. As the six pongy plop-monsters turned to fire muck missiles in his direction, Zill spat out a slime-line and caught them by surprise, wrapping two of the creatures together. At the same time, Danjo flattened them with a power-packed pincer-punch.
“Charge!” Plog commanded, racing through the gap in the monsters’ ranks. Danjo and Zill sped after him.
Soon they reached Furp, who was waiting at the bottom of the pipe that led back up to the surface. “Quickly!” he urged his friends. “Those Cyber-Poos must be hopping mad.”
“Plopping mad, more like,” said Danjo, rushing to join him. Looking up he could see a distant patch of sky at the top of the pipe. “Plog, we’d better get climbing.”
“See you at the top, guys.” Zill spat out a super-long slime strand that stuck to the very top of the pipe. Sucking it back into her mouth like spaghetti, she pulled herself up while Danjo dug his many pincers into the plastic sides and climbed like a crimson mountaineer. Plog followed on in the hand-and-footholds the crab-creature left behind, clinging on for dear life.
Within seconds, Poo-Poo Prime had reached the bottom of the pipe with the Cyber-Poo bodyguards. “Offensive action – activate!”
The misshapen dung-devils fired up at Plog and Danjo. The pipe filled with muck missiles and evil clouds of stink spray but the squaddies kept on climbing. As they reached the top, Zill and Furp helped them scramble out onto the high-tech wasteland of Silicon Ditch.
“Made it,” Plog grunted.
Zill beamed at him. “Those stink-heads will have a tough time following us now!”
But suddenly, the ground began to shake and old monitors toppled over with a crash as a huge zigzagging split opened up lengthways along Silicon Ditch, dividing it in two. Each side slowly slid back to reveal a gaping hole in the circuit-strewn surface – and moments later, Cyber-Poos on seagulls burst out from inside the split, soaring into the air!
“So much for them using giant electromagnets to open a secret hatch every time they want to get in and out,” Danjo groaned. “The entrance is automatic. We’re really for it now!”
“I underestimated SMELL’s technology,” Furp admitted. “Clearly they got PIE into their base by lowering him down through there.”
“Never mind that now,” said Plog.
“Come on!” He led the charge to the Slime-mobile, but a wave of brown bombs hit the ground just ahead of them. The fierce heat and smell drove the four monster heroes backwards.
“Surrender!” droned the flying poos, gliding overhead. “Surrender!” Danjo dived for cover as muck missiles went off nearby and pongy poop fragments flew through the air. “Actually they’re pretty rubbish shots, aren’t they?”
“They’re shooting to scare us,” Plog realized. “They can’t fire right at us in case they blow up the Big Booster.”
“But they’re stopping us from reaching the Slime-mobile,” Zill yelled over another explosion.
“Furp,” Plog shouted. “Can you scramble the Cyber-Poos’ stink-o-wave signals again, so they can’t control their birds?”
“It would be a pleasure,” Furp assured him, already fiddling with his crash helmet. The radar dish began spinning backwards and the gulls shrieked and hooted, shaking their filthy jockeys from their stained brown backs. CLANG! SPLAT! The Cyber-Poos plummeted earthward – but soon got back up again and joined their fellows, advancing on the Slime Squad.
“Attack,” they rasped. “Eliminate. Destroy.”
With the aerial attack over, Plog ran to the Slime-mobile and threw open the doors. “All aboard – now!’
But as the Squaddies ran inside they saw a large red helium balloon float out from the Cyber-Poos’ base – with SMELL himself dangling underneath, his dung-covered casing clamped round the balloon’s neck tightly. Poo-Poo Prime was perched on his master’s lid. As the balloon drifted over solid ground, the laptop let go and landed with an eerie rattle. “Release poison-parp grenades,” SMELL commanded. “Maximum strength – whiffy enough to kill!”
“We obey,” hissed Poo-Poo Prime. “All units – full-strength stink-out. Activate!”
With a menacing whirring noise, steel tubes rose out of the Cyber-Poos’ heads and launched small brown balls into the air. Zill slammed the Slime-Mobile doors. The deadly parp grenades went off outside with a very rude noise.
“Oh, my giddy gonkberry!” gasped Furp, pointing to wisps of smoke curling through the tiniest of gaps in the doors: “Deadly bottom gas is getting in!”
Danjo raised his cold pincer and squirted icy slime over the whole area, sealing the doors solid. “There! Now we can zoom away from here.”
“But even if we do, and even if we destroy the Big Booster, PIE’s still their prisoner.” Plog felt like tearing his fur out. “We’ll never get him away from that evil lair, and the Cyber-Poos will still attack Trashland. What are we going to do?”
“The electromagnet!” Furp cried suddenly.
Danjo frowned. “Will you shut up about the electromagnet?”
“Drive us there, Zill,” Furp urged her. “It’s our only chance.”
“Better do as he says, Zill.” The Slime-mobile rocked as a muck missile smashed through the rear windscreen and whizzed past Plog’s long ears. “Let her rip.”
“You got it!” Zill accelerated away towards the Heavy Metal Hills and the giant electromagnet that stood before it.
“Pursue the Slime Squad!” SMELL shrieked. “Catch them. CRUSH them!”
Plog turned to Furp desperately as the Slime-Mobile rocked and rattled away. “What’s your plan?”
“We know these creatures’ metal parts are magnetic,” said Furp. “That’s how they stuck to the seagulls’ saddles, and how their Cyber-Spy clung to the underside of this very vehicle. So if we can lure them into the electromagnet’s range . . .”
“They’ll be hoisted up by their metal bits and left dangling miles above us.” Danjo smiled. “Sweet plan.”
“Except they all have cyber-shields,” Zill reminded them. “Those things might protect them from the magnet’s power.”
“That’s if the old wreck works at all,” added Danjo, looking worried. “It hasn’t been used in years. It won’t have any power.”
“You’re good with electrics, Danjo,” said Furp. “You must get it working. And Zill, you can steer any vehicle – including that crane, yes?”
“But that’s a human-giant vehicle,” she protes
ted. “It won’t be easy.”
“Staying alive won’t be easy, either,” said Plog grimly, pointing through the shattered rear window. “Look!”
It seemed that every single Cyber-Poo was chasing after them, squelching at super-speed across a sea of old circuits. Zill pushed the Slime-Mobile’s engines to their limit, but their pursuers were clearly powering their mechanical parts to the max too. Even SMELL was scraping his way towards them with uncanny speed.
“We’re not going to make it,” groaned Danjo. “We’ve done our best – but this looks like Game Over!”
Chapter Ten
THE FINAL STINK-OUT
“Stop the Slime-Mobile, Zill,” Plog shouted, and as she hit the brakes, he grabbed a slime-shooter from a bench. “I’ll jump out and distract them to buy you more time.”
“Me too,” said Furp, hefting another slime-shooter.
“But you’ll both be killed!” Zill protested.
“Maybe not,” Furp muttered, grabbing an orange beaker and pouring it into his rifle. “Hmm. Yes, it might just work . . .”
“Eh?” said Danjo. “What do you—?”
“No time for talk,” Furp told him, pouring the orange stuff into Plog’s slime-shooter too. “You and Zill must GO!”
With that, he and Plog dived through the shattered rear window and landed on a bed of broken circuits. Zill and Danjo drove on in the Slime-Mobile, heading for the electromagnet as SMELL and the Cyber-Poos kept up their grisly advance.
“Let’s blast these dirty devils, Furp.” Plog shot a big slimy stream at the onrushing tide of semi-robotic muck. As usual, it sizzled away on their super-strength shields.
