Stop Those Monsters!

by Steve Cole

  Luckily, before I could fully switch to ‘flap about like a looper pretending to be a teapot’ mode, the sound of a siren brought me back to Earth (or under it, anyway).

  It’s the police! I thought hopefully, as the screeching siren grew louder, closer. They’ve come to rescue me!

  But, no.

  It wasn’t the police.

  A massive vehicle – heavy, armoured and powerful – was thundering down the muddy track towards us, on caterpillar treads. Not like the caterpillar treads you get on tanks – these were made from real giant-sized caterpillars. Everything else seemed welded together from hunks of rusty scrap metal. A wonky silver star had been painted on the side.

  If I were watching it in a movie I’d say, “Cool design! Nice one!” But this was real life and the ramshackle juggernaut was getting closer, mounting the weird pink grass, heading straight for me, and all I could say was, “Eep!”

  “Oh, yeah.” Verity was no longer looking so happy. “This is probably another reason why everyone else ran inside.”

  “What is?”

  She glanced sideways at me. “Here comes the Monster Army . . . ”

  “Wha—?” I gulped. “Me? No! This can’t be happening . . .”

  But it was, of course. With a rusty screech, a hatch in the side of the big, bad vehicle slid open.

  A huge, powerful-looking figure squeezed out from the army vehicle with some difficulty. He was green, with four red eyes blazing in his face, two holes for a nose and a snarling mouth. Beneath his muddy brown uniform, his arms were bulging with balloon-like muscles. And he had three legs. THREE LEGS.

  Clearly he would be able to run way faster than me, and batter me to death, while barely breaking a sweat.

  The only thing about him that wasn’t truly horrifying was the little peaked cap perched on his head. I reckoned the cap made him look around 4% less scary. But even as I calculated, a gang of green monsters just like him stomped out from inside the tank-thing to join him, and none of them wore caps, so I guessed the cap meant this guy was the leader, which made him about 6% scarier than the rest.

  Which basically made him an impressive, if not entirely possible, 102% scary.

  “What do we do?” I hissed to Verity.

  But my hamster-thing acquaintance was too busy staring, whimpering and shaking her head from side to side to answer. I guess it was her turn to go into a state of shock.

  The monster in the cap took a menacing step towards me. “UGH!” he spat. “I am Captain Malevolent P Killgrotty, and YOU are the ugliest thing I ever saw. What are you?”

  “I . . . I’m a human, sir,” I said weakly.

  Killgrotty shouted.

  “But,” I said quietly, “you just asked me, so I—”

  “Don’t interrupt!”

  “I wasn’t interrupti—”

  “” Killgrotty had pulled out a weird-looking pair of goggly binoculars, and stared at me through them. “A , you say? We can’t have a loose round here. You need to be taken care of. And as for your friend here . . .”

  Terrified, I turned to Verity – as if this oversized, overfluffy rodent-monster could possibly help me.

  But incredibly, it seemed she could.

  Verity had overcome her fear. Now her fur was standing spikily on end, and her eyes were glowing green. “” she yelled – and hurled herself at Killgrotty.

  “” Killgrotty hardly had time to react before a hamster-shoe connected with his head. Seriously, it was a heck of a leap – like something out of a (colossally weird) martial arts movie. She landed, then swung round and chopped him behind the knee. Killgrotty fell over with a thump.

  His gang of greenies yanked nasty-looking pistols from their pockets. But Verity was all over them, chopping and knocking the guns from their grips, somersaulting back and forth to dodge their grabs and lunges and kicking their legs out from under them. Finally, she cartwheeled back to me in a fluffy blur.

  “Whoa!” I spluttered.

  “Come on,” Verity panted. “”

  As I sprinted away, I glanced back at Killgrotty – and saw fear, clear on that hideous face. I guessed I’d feel afraid too, if I was as big and tough as him and word got out that I’d been trounced by a hamster!

  “I knew there was something nasty going on! Now we know what we’re dealing with,” Killgrotty told his greenies. “I’ll radio HQ for orders. You lot – get after them. We’ve got to take out the human thing – at all costs!”

  I looked at Verity as we raced across the glittering grass. “If they want to take me out of here, I’m happy to let them! Thanks for what you did there, but . . . maybe I should let them catch me? Maybe they could even find what’s left of my house?”

  “They mean ‘take you out’ as in—” Verity drew a claw across her throat. “So, run faster!”

  I saw the greenies haring after us, three legs carrying each of them in a loping, lop-sided rhythm, and decided Verity’s advice was good. I pelted away, sheer terror moving my legs faster than ever before as we reached the mud-track road. There was no cover, nothing to hide behind, no side streets down which we could run. So we just kept running down that road.

  “There’s only one way for a human to get out of here,” said Verity. “We’ve got to reach my uncle.”

  “Huh?” I dragged a muddled memory from my overheating mind. “You mean, the humanology-ologist?”

  “Yes. We have to find him . . . Urk!” Verity suddenly tripped and fell flat on her face in the mud, panting wildly for breath. I stopped and rolled her over onto her back. The green glow had faded from her eyes, and her fur had stopped spiking.

  “What was I thinking?” she squeaked weakly. “I must’ve been crazy to start a fight with the Monster Army! Whatever possessed me?”

  “Whatever it was, I’m glad it did,” I said with feeling. “But, now, Killgrotty’s gonna be after you, too.”

  “S’pose . . . ” Verity shrugged. “I couldn’t let the first human I ever spotted in get zapped, could I?”

  “Surrender!” bellowed a greenie, leading his mates in the charge for our hides. “You can’t run from us!”

  “We can, too!” Verity set off again, scurrying away on all fours. I could hardly keep up with her! But we were outrunning the greenies. If we could only keep it up . . .

  The muddy track bent sharply to the right. “We’re close to the main road,” my saviour squeaked. “Maybe we can lose these losers in the traffic, huh, Bob-ob-ob?”

  We reached the main road.

  To be honest, it wasn’t as main as I’d hoped.

  “Seriously?” I wheezed. “You couldn’t lose anything in this traffic! There isn’t any traffic!”

  “I just had an idea!” Verity grinned. “That thug said we couldn’t run from them, but I bet we could from them.”

  “Brilliant!” I cried. “Do you have a car?”

  “No.”

  “Can you drive?”

  “No.”

  “Not brilliant,” I groaned.

  “It is, though,” she insisted, pointing to a rusty blue contraption rattling along the road towards us. “We can catch a bus!”

  Verity scurried out into the road – directly into the blue vehicle’s path! “Hey! Request stop!” She waved her paws, wiggled from side to side and jumped up and down. The big blue bus showed no sign of slowing down – or trying to steer around her. My only ally was about to be squished . . . !

  “Look out!” I staggered after Verity, arms flapping above my head, ready to whisk her to safety. But then, with a hissing screech of ancient-sounding brakes, the bus finally skidded to a stop.

  “Nice work, partner!” Verity beamed at me and ran up to the passenger door, knocking on the glass. “Excuse me!” she called. “This human being called Bob-ob-ob and I need to get on your bus to escape a bunch of very angry soldiers who are right behind us . . .”

  “” The bus windows exploded as panic-stricken passengers hurled themselves from their seats and out into the muddy roa
d. Then the doors opened – and a tall, thin, yellow monster in a stained grey driver’s uniform burst from inside, screaming.

  “Have the bus!” he hollered. “Please, just take it! Take it!” With that, he joined the charge of petrified passengers across the road and onto the track, heading back the way we’d come. The gang of three-legged greenies appeared from around the bend and promptly collided with the panic-stricken crowd, falling down in a dusty tangle.

  My legs felt wobbly and weak as I stared after them. “They really are scared of humans, aren’t they?”

  Verity nodded cheerfully as she climbed on board the bus. “They probably thought you were going to fire toxic waste out of your nose. Everyone knows humans can totally fire toxic waste from their noses.”

  “Huh?” I joined her on the yuck-smelling bus. “We can’t, though!”

  “Aww, c’mon, Bob-ob-ob.” She got into the driver’s seat and started studying the switches and dials around the steering wheel. “My uncle took a video through his humanoscope of this human man who made a noise like a squeelsquog and shot radioactive sludge out through his nose. It went viral on GooTube . . . ”

  “What? You mean he sneezed?”

  “Bob-ob-ob, what is this human thing called ‘sneezed’?”

  “Forget it! Please, concentrate on working this thing!” I watched, helpless and horrified as the greenies on the track tossed hapless bus-passengers aside like rag dolls and got back to their big, ugly feet. Suddenly, the bus lurched backwards with a splutter of smoke and almost threw me out through a shattered window. “Whoaaa! Careful!”

  “Sorry.” Verity pulled a lever beside the steering wheel, grinned, and rubbed her paws together. “Ah. Of course! That’s it!”

  “You’ve learned how to drive this thing?”

  “No, but I think this switch works the ticket machine.”

  “Arrrrrgh!” I clutched my head with both hands. “Killgrotty’s thugs will be here any second!”

  Verity squeaked. “Quick, Bob-ob-ob, hold them off with toxic waste nose power.”

  “I told you, HUMANS CAN’T . . . Wait a sec.” I poked my head through one of the shattered windows. Through the kicked-up dust, I saw the greenies were almost on top of us. “Stay back!” I yelled. “Or I . . . I’ll totally spray you with my toxic-waste nose!”

  At once, the greenies came to a scuffling stop, swapping uncertain looks.

  “Yeah, now you’re thinking!” I tried to wave my nose at them in a threatening manner (which wasn’t easy), wondering if I should fake a sneeze – although I guessed the greenies would be unimpressed by my lack of, er, greenies. “I’m warning you – I’m fully loaded and ready to blow . . . OHHHHH!”

  With a screech of spinning wheels, the bus pulled away, throwing up dirt into the greenies’ faces. “” Verity cried. “Eat our dust!”

  I fell back into a seat, cringing as I discovered that it was still sticky from whoever/whatever had sat in it last. “You did it, Verity! Can we go and find your uncle now, and see if he knows where my house ended up?”

  “Abso-nibblin’-lootly,” Verity agreed as the bus zoomed down the main road. “Unless we, you know, crash on the way, cos I don’t know how to steer, or brake, or understand traffic lights, or stuff.” She paused. “I remember how to give you a ticket, though. I think.”

  My heart was sinking faster than the Creature from the Black Lagoon after a heavy lunch. “How far is it to your uncle’s?”

  “Hmm, let me think . . .” To my horror, Verity closed her eyes and stroked her chin – just as we drove through a crossroads! A monster car swerved desperately to avoid us and smashed into a cart thing at the side of the road, which blew up. I watched through the side window as the driver was thrown skyhigh with his bottom on fire, smashing through the window of a nearby house – which immediately collapsed, thundering to the ground in a storm of yellow bricks. The bricks blew up, engulfed in flames, and four monsters hopped out of the flattened house, clutching their smoking body-parts.

  I watched the carnage, speechless, as Verity finally opened her eyes again and smiled at me. “I think Uncle’s place is only about eighty blonks away! As long as we don’t get lost. Hey, where are we, anyway? Whoops, don’t forget your ticket!” She pulled the lever and a slip of stained paper ground out of a slot in the dashboard. “Fear not, Bob-ob-ob, it’s free. On the house! Or on the bus, anyway . . .”

  “I wish I wasn’t on the bus,” I muttered, sitting back down, one hand clutching my stomach, the other holding onto my seat. I looked out of the back window. How long before Killgrotty’s armoured car vroomed after us?

  Or some other horror, that we didn’t even know about yet?

  Or that monster we’d just blown through a window with his bum on fire?

  All I had on my side was an oversized hamster with no road sense.

  I had a feeling this was going to be a long eighty blonks.

  I learned a few things in that bus:

  1) Monster traffic lights have thirteen colours, twelve of which are different shades of red.

  2) Verity doesn’t know what any of these signals indicate, except, “One of the red ones means slow down.”

  3) Luckily, traffic cops are few and far between around here, or we would’ve been totally busted ages ago. We smashed into six cars, two trucks, three lamp posts, and something that looked like a giant pink horse with the head of a doughnut and went “” when we ran over its tail.

  4) Monster neighbourhoods up on the top level are kind of like human neighbourhoods – houses, shops, offices, schools, parks, libraries; all that stuff, only monster-style. The parks are artificial, to stop certain monsters eating them.

  5) Verity feels very lucky to live up here because it’s quite posh. The nine lower levels of Monsterland – or, Deep Monster Territories, as they are known – get nastier, smellier, and way more dangerous the deeper down you go.

  6) Verity’s uncle lives three levels beneath this one (about 40% scarier – great!).

  I had visions of Monsterland as some kind of giant department store. “So how do we get down to your uncle’s?” I asked. “Is there, like, a big lift or something?”

  “Lift?” Verity frowned. “What is this human thing called ‘lift’, Bob-ob-ob?”

  “You know, like, an elevator. A big machine that carries you up and down.”

  “Oh. I see. ‘Lift’. Brilliant.” She looked round at me, baring her beavery teeth in a big grin. “Yes, we have something like a ‘lift’, Bob-ob-ob. We have nogglodons – big platforms on chains that go up and down, pulled by enormous red-spotted monsters known as nogglodon operators . . .”

  I pointed to the (now cracked) windscreen. “Please look at the road. Remember what happened last time—?”

  A wrinkly grey monster was suddenly spread-eagled over the windscreen, looking confused.

  “Oh, yeah! happened.” Verity hit the windscreen wipers, and the grey monster yelped as he was swept off and into a conveniently placed pile of trash cans at the side of the road. I saw him shake his fist at us as we drove out of sight.

  “Poor old monster,” I murmured.

  “Don’t worry, he’s okay. He’s not old, he’s just wrinkly. And wrinkly monsters are tough.”

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  Verity considered. “I’m pretty young, I think. Kind of like you.”

  I sighed. “So are we heading for one of these nogglodon things?”

  “Nogglodon,” said Verity, correcting the way I said it.

  “Sorry. Are we heading for one of these nogglodon things?”

  “Nogglodon.”

  “You just said it was ‘nogglodon’.”

  “No, Bob-ob-ob, I said it was nogglodon.”

  “What?”

  “Nogglodon.”

  “Then why did you say it was ‘nogglodon’ before?”

  “I didn’t, Bob-ob-ob.”

  I gritted my teeth. “My name is Bob.”

  “Bob-ob-ob.”

 
“Bob.”

  “Bob-ob-ob-nnnn.”

  “Bob-ob-ob-nnnn? Where did the ‘n’s come from?!”

  “You humans,” chuckled Verity. Swerving sharply right without braking, she smashed through a fence onto a narrow road. “I can’t help it if you say some of your words funny. Like ‘Bob-ob-ob’ and ‘nogglodon’.”

  “All right. Sorry.” I took a deep breath and sighed it out again. “Are we heading for one of these nogglodons?”

  “Nogglodons.”

  “HOWEVER YOU SAY IT!” I cried. “ARE WE HEADING FOR ONE?”

  “No.”

  “ARRRRRRRRRGH!”

  The bus cracked through a cobwebbed old barrier, and the road got narrower still. It got bumpier, too – the whole bus started to shake like a puppy having a bad dream. Verity pulled on a seatbelt. Why now? I wondered. Then a mega-pothole made me bang my head on the back of the seat. For a moment, I thought that was why everything had gone dark. But no, the lights came back on, then went out, then came back on again.

  Daylight was flashing on and off.

  “It’s almost night-time,” Verity reported. “Since there is no sun down here, only skybulbs, the skybulbs start flashing for a few minutes each night to warn monsters everywhere that it’s nearly end-of-day. Time to sleep . . . hang up the hongles . . . watch the late-night perigosto races . . .”

  “And crash into even more innocent monsters unless you find the headlamps on this thing.” I hugged myself; this crazy world was scary enough by ‘daylight’. The idea of thundering along this rutted road in pitch blackness . . .

  “Look, Verity,” I tried again, “if we’re not making for one of those platform lifts, then why aren’t we?”

  “Because it’s too obvious!” Verity tapped her snout knowingly. “Killgrotty is bound to have army trucks and soldiers and tanks and bazookoos and stuff at every nogglodon on this level. But I’ll bet he hasn’t thought to guard the disused back way down to Level Four.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” I wondered.