Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map of Trashland

  Once Upon a Slime . . .

  Chapter One: A Shaggy Plog Story

  Chapter Two: Slime Time!

  Chapter Three: Terror in the Tunnels

  Chapter Four: Behold . . . the Pie!

  Chapter Five: Life, Trashland and Everything

  Chapter Six: Fist Attack!

  Chapter Seven: Stink Out and Walk Out

  Chapter Eight: Plog in Danger

  Chapter Nine: Seconds from Splatting!

  Chapter Ten: Here to Stay!

  About the Author

  Also by Steve Cole

  Copyright

  About the Book

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

  Trashland is in trouble. Fearsome fist-creatures are on the rampage. Only four brave and slimy monsters can stop them. Are they up to the challenge? Or will the Fists flatten them and rule over all with an iron hand . . . ?

  For Tobey

  ONCE UPON A SLIME . . .

  The old rubbish dump was a long way from anywhere. It stretched out as far as the eye could see – a mucky, dusty, smelly, rusty landscape of thousands of thrown-away things.

  It had been closed for years. Abandoned. Forgotten.

  Nobody ever came here. Few people even knew it existed. So there was no one around to wonder who had built the slightly crooked house beside the rubbish dump – or to ask why they had moved away again in such a hurry. There was no one around at all.

  Apart from . . . the MONSTERS!

  There were thousands of them living here. Millions, maybe. Bright and bold and curious creatures no bigger than a finger, who did not think of the old rubbish dump as a rubbish dump at all.

  To them it was a whole wide and wonderful world of whiffy possibilities. They called it Trashland.

  These miniature monsters didn’t know where they had come from. They didn’t know what they had come from, and they certainly didn’t know why. But they knew that now they were here, they wanted to make the most of it.

  So with knowledge they found in thrown-away human books, they got busy inventing the things they needed. They built villages, towns and cities. They worked hard at monster jobs and played hard at monster hobbies.

  As the years went by, Trashland became a bustling, happy place where the little monsters lived in peace and where crime was almost unheard of.

  And then, one day . . .

  Chapter One

  A SHAGGY PLOG STORY

  Plog the monster woke up in his soggy shoebox home. Sunlight streamed through a big crack in the sewer pipe where the shoebox had washed up long ago. It looked like a lovely morning.

  Plog stretched and yawned and thought: What shall I do today? “Same as every day,” he mumbled, climbing out of bed. “I’ll watch smellyvision on my own till it’s time to go to sleep again.”

  Scratching his bottom, Plog splashed through the puddles on the floor towards the smellyvision set. He was quite big by miniature monster standards – an orange, bear-shaped animal with a rat-like snout, extra-long ears, a furry tail, tangled whiskers, stripy pyjama bottoms and a grubby brown waistcoat. They were the only clothes Plog owned. But since he never went further than the sewer pipe and no one ever came to visit, it didn’t really matter.

  “I wish I could go out and make friends and have some fun. I’m fed up with being stuck down here on my own.” Plog glanced down at his feet, and shuddered. “But if the ordinary monsters found out my terrible secret, they’d laugh and shout and call me names and drive me out of town . . .”

  Just as Plog reached the smellyvision set, his stomach rumbled noisily. ROARRRR! Blub-bub-bub-GRRRRRRR. He sighed. He couldn’t afford proper food because he didn’t have a job. Instead, he ate whatever meals he could put together from stuff he found in the broken sewer pipe – mostly rat hairs and flies’ legs in seagull-poo sauce, which tasted pretty horrid but at least stopped his tum from rumbling.

  “I’d better go out and find some breakfast,” Plog muttered, pushing open his soggy cardboard door and wading into the cold, whiffy water.

  A little way down the sewer pipe he found a squashed bit of earthworm. He didn’t really fancy that, so he pressed on. A mosquito’s wings stuck out temptingly from the scummy water, but again he splashed onwards, enjoying the feel of the sunlight that shone through the cracks in the concrete onto his hairy face.

  With a thrill he realized he was nearly at the end of the pipe. It led to the rusty foothills of the Tin Can Mountains – an area of great natural beauty with its gigantic, teetering piles of dented drink containers. Sometimes Plog came here in secret to watch the native spongy monsters go about their business. Cautiously, he peered out . . . and saw a quivering old lady monster. He recognized her wrinkled purple face and enormous bottom. “That’s Mrs Bumflop,” he murmured with a frown. “Funny, her pet ant’s not with her. She normally takes him everywhere . . .”

  “Help!” Mrs Bumflop wailed suddenly. “Oh, help! Help, help, help, help, help, help, HELP! Help, help, help. HELLLLLLLLLP!”

  Sounds like she needs help, thought Plog, gulping hard. There was no one else around to answer her cries. Did he dare step out and ask the old dear what was wrong? It was obviously important, and Plog had always wanted to do something brave and helpful – to be a true hero just like the monsters he looked up to most . . .

  His idols were called Furp, Zill and Danjo. Better known as – the Slime Squad.

  These extraordinary characters had special slimy powers and were famous all over Trashland. Very few monsters had useful slime or the skill to handle it well, so the Squad was rarely out of the news. And Plog had filled dozens of scrapbooks with pictures and write-ups of their exploits. Whenever a monster was in trouble – no matter where or when or how or why – the Slime Squad would somehow know and show up to make things better.

  “HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPP!” wailed Mrs Bumflop, her arms waving wildly in the air. “Whoever will help me?”

  “I will!” Plog whispered, his fur wet with sweat, willing himself to overcome his fear and step outside into plain sight. “I will, I will—”

  “HELP IS AT HAND, MADAM!” came a croak from on high. And the next moment, a pale yellow frog-thing – wearing oversized metal underpants and a golden crash helmet with a spinning radar dish poking out of the top – bounded up with a clatter.

  Plog’s jaw dropped so far it bounced off the bottom of the sewer pipe. “No way . . .” he breathed. “It can’t be!”

  But somehow, incredibly, it was.

  “Let fear disappear,” the frog-monster declared. “The Slime Squad is here!”

  Chapter Two

  SLIME TIME!

  “Ooooh!” squealed Mrs Bumflop who, like Plog, was staring at the half-dressed frog-monster in shock and surprise. “It’s you! I’ve seen your picture in the newspoopers!”

  The frog-thing smiled modestly. “How lovely for you.”

  “Furp LeBurp!” Plog boggled in disbelief. “The Slime Squad’s sticky-skinned, big-brained high-jumper. He’s quite often first on the scene . . .”

  “Please, Mr Furp, sir!” Mrs Bumflop was in a flap, running about with her bottom wibbling. “My ant needs saving. He climbed up that can over there and fell in. It’s full of rainwater, and he can’t swim – not without armbands, anyway!”

  “Allow me to hop into action, madam.” Suddenly Furp leaped halfway up the side of the can – and used his sensationally slimy hands and feet to stick to its sheer sides. Squelching quietly, he climbed onto the top, peered down through the drinking hole and turned behind him. “Zill!” he called. “Are you there?”

  “Oh, mega-wow!” breathed Plog, his heart beating about a billion times a second. “Zill Billie is here too! Right in front of my eyes! In the furry flesh!”

  A black-and-white she-monster bounded up to the can; her thick tail wagged, her golden leotard sparkled in the sunlight. She looked like a six-legged skunk crossed with a cool poodle. Three tufts of hair grew from her head like big sprigs of cauliflower, and her eyes were a dazzling mouldy-bean green.

  “Hey, Furp. Hey, old lady monster.” Zill put four paws on her hips. “What’s the emergency?”

  “A stuck ant,” Furp called back.

  “His name is LF, Miss Zill,” added Mrs Bumflop.

  “LF Ant? Did he come with a trunk?” Zill joked. “Don’t worry, we’ll get him out.” She opened her dainty jaws wide and coughed. Ka-THWIPP! A thick string of slime shot out from her mouth and stuck to the top of the can! Biting the end off with her teeth, she used it as a rope to climb up and join Furp.

  “Hey, LF!” she shouted, staring down into the darkness. “Lifeline on its way – grab hold!” She spat another slimy strand, like super-stretched bubblegum, and dangled it down into the depths. “It’s no good, Furp,” she said a few seconds later. “The ant is struggling in the water – he can’t grab hold of my slime-line.”

  “Sounds like he needs a helping hand, then!” boomed a deep, cheery voice as a large crimson crab-monster loomed into view on three stocky legs, his golden shorts gleaming. “Or a friendly pincer, anyway!”

  “It’s Danjo Jigg!” Plog gawped, and for a moment he thought he might faint with excitement. “The biggest,

toughest Slime Squaddie of all!”

  “Danjo, can you make a hole in the side of this can?” Furp shouted down.

  “Big enough to let out the water,” Zill added, “but small enough to stop the ant being swept away with it?”

  “Tin-can do!” Danjo replied. He opened his left pincer and a thin jet of sizzling red slime squirted out – burning a small hole at the base of the rusty can. Filthy water came pouring out.

  “There! If the ant grabs hold of your slime-line now, Zill, he’ll be fine.”

  “Come on, LF,” Zill urged the ant. “You can do it . . . YES! Attaboy!”

  “You mean, Antaboy!” joked Danjo.

  “How brilliant it must be when you’re a hero,” Plog murmured, watching from his hiding place in the sewer pipe, spellbound. “If only my slime was good for helping people. But all it does is cause trouble.”

  Plog watched as Zill hauled up the slimy rope to reveal a bedraggled ant hanging onto the end. Furp tenderly tucked the soggy insect down the back of his metal underwear. “I’ll take LF from here.” He climbed back down the side of the can. “And I don’t want to hear any jokes about ants in my pants!”

  When he reached the ground Mrs Bumflop jumped for joy and scooped up her bedraggled pet. Danjo pointed his right pincer in the air and squirted ultra-cold blue slime at the top of the can, which soon froze to make an icy slime-slide. Zill skated down it and jumped elegantly into Danjo’s arms, beaming as the old lady monster danced with her ant.

  A crowd of purple creatures was starting to gather round. Not wanting to be seen, Plog ducked back into the shadows of his old sewer pipe and splashed towards his shoebox, still smiling in amazement. “This is the happiest moment of my life,” he declared. “I can’t believe I’ve actually seen a real live Slime Squad rescue with my own eyes! Thank goodness I didn’t try to help Mrs Bumflop and make a doofus of myself . . .” Then he stopped and sighed. “If only the Slime Squad could help me. If only anyone could.”

  “Hey, you!” A prim female voice echoed around the sewer pipe behind him.

  Plog gulped. It sounded like Zill.

  “You, the big orange furball with the snout,” she went on.

  She can’t mean me, Plog thought in a daze.

  “You, the big orange furball called Plog who was watching us rescue that ant just now,” she continued.

  Slowly, shakily, Plog turned round. Furp, Zill and Danjo were standing a short way away. They were watching him closely.

  “That’s him all right.” Danjo nodded. “Those ears, that tum, that fur on his bum . . . He’s our monster.”

  “You must come with us at once, Plog,” said Furp. “Yes, at once.” He nodded gravely. “Apparently – unlikely as it might seem – you are needed to save the world!”

  Chapter Three

  TERROR IN THE TUNNELS

  “Me? Save the world?” Plog laughed nervously. “Very funny.”

  Furp looked at Danjo and Zill. “I’m afraid he doesn’t believe us.”

  “I can’t really blame him,” said Zill. “I don’t believe us!”

  “The PIE wouldn’t lie,” Danjo said mysteriously.

  “But how can I save anything?” Plog shrugged. “You’re the Slime Squad – saving stuff is your job. Like the way you rescued that ant.”

  “We were sent here to find you, Fur-boy,” said Zill. “It’s just lucky for the ant and his owner that we were passing by when we did.”

  “What you all did out there was amazing.” Plog forgot his own troubles as he relived the exciting rescue in his mind. “It was even cooler than the time you helped that woodlouse out of the squashed fizz-bottle.”

  “Oh!” Zill smiled and fluffed up her sprigs of hair. “You saw that, huh?”

  “I’ve seen all your rescues!” Plog enthused. “I’ve watched them on the smellyvision and read about them in the newspoopers. I must be your biggest fan! But what I can’t understand is how you guys always manage to show up whenever there’s trouble.”

  “We have a very wise friend who points us in the right direction,” said Furp, tapping his helmet. “The same friend who told us to bring you back to our hidden base . . .”

  “You want to take me to the Slime Squad’s HQ?” Plog gulped – how cool would that be! But then fear rushed through him. He looked down at his feet, safely hidden in the scummy water, and sighed. If he left the sewer, his awful secret would be revealed. “Sorry. I have to stay here.”

  “You don’t,” said Furp, puzzled. “There are no doors, no fences, no walls—”

  Plog held up his hairy paws. “Look, I just can’t come with you, OK?”

  “Sure you can, Fur-boy. It’s easy.” Zill winked at him. “Danjo will carry you!”

  “You betcha.” The crab-monster grinned. “My sweet slimy pincers are quite the convincers! Come on, big fella. Let’s hustle.”

  “No, please!” Plog started to struggle as Danjo took hold of his furry armpits. “You don’t understand . . .”

  But already Danjo’s powerful pincers were hauling him clear of the smelly water . . . to reveal Plog’s feet – in all their horrible glory.

  They were the largest, hairiest, ugliest feet that any of the Slime Squad had ever seen.

  Danjo gasped. Zill’s tail stood on end. The radar dish on top of Furp’s helmet stopped spinning and blew a fuse.

  Here were feet that could break mirrors. Tootsies that would turn the stomach of a concrete cockroach.

  “Put me down,” groaned Plog, his furry cheeks glowing nuclear-red with shame. “My feet have to be kept wet, or else . . .”

  Danjo gasped louder. Furp shrank into his pants and Zill reared up on her back legs as putrid, neon-yellow slime began to ooze from Plog’s feet. Faster and faster it came, dripping down into the water in fat splodges.

  “Ugh!” Zill’s long nose was twitching like it might jump off her face in protest. “That pong would knock the trunk off an elephant.”

  “It would choke an atomic racoon!” Furp agreed.

  “Not to mention a cute crimson crab-monster.” Danjo dropped Plog with a splash and staggered back, holding his nose with both pincers.

  Feeling horribly ashamed, Plog turned and ran away from the Slime Squad, down into the darkness of the sewer.

  “Wait!” called Furp. “Come back!”

  But Plog kept running. His luminous foot-slime lit the way as he splashed deeper and deeper into the darkness – until a terrifying, throaty squeal ahead made him skid to a stop. Hot, foul-smelling breath blasted into his face . . . Looking up, he found a giant snuffling, sharp-toothed monster towering over him! Its fur was wet and dark. Its whiskers were wiry and tangled, and its tail coiled and flexed like a giant pink serpent. The creature’s eyes glinted hungrily as it stared down at the furry orange snack-on-legs.

  Oh, no, thought Plog, frozen stiff with terror. A sewer rat! He had glimpsed such nightmare animals before but never up close. Even great big human giants are scared of rats – what chance do I have?

  The creature raised a terrible paw to crush him. Acting on pure instinct, Plog batted it aside with a swipe of his tail and bellowed at the animal. It squealed again, baring its chisel-like teeth – but Plog kicked up his feet and flicked smelly slime into its face and eyes. Spitting and spluttering, shaking its furry head, the rat backed away through a hole in the sewer-pipe wall and vanished from sight. Panting for breath, Plog stared at the hole for any sign of a twitching nose or a wet whisker. But nothing appeared. Slowly he realized that the hole was in the shape of a giant fist – and that there was a huge, dirty handprint on the wall beside it. What could have made that? he wondered.

  Then, suddenly, Furp, Zill and Danjo appeared from behind him. “Are you OK, Fur-boy?” Zill looked around warily. “That sounded like a rat.”

 

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