Slime Squad vs. the Killer Socks Read online

  “I LOVE Goo York,” said the she-monster dreamily. “It’s full of fab clothes! All the top monster fashion designers live there. In fact, I haven’t driven this fast since the Goo York January sales!”

  Plog pointed through the windscreen. “That must be the place. Look!”

  The scene ahead was lit yellow in the Slime-mobile’s headlights. There was the Cotton-Picking Thread Store – flames flickering from its roof and the front windows broken.

  And Plog’s heart quickened at the sight of a massive lumpy thing just outside. It was S-shaped, looking for all the world like a giant caterpillar made of thick red wool and caked with dust.

  Zill stamped on the brakes. “What in the world is that?”

  Plog swallowed hard. “This may sound crazy . . . but I think he’s some kind of giant sock-monster!”

  Chapter Three

  SOCKS RUN AMOK

  The Squaddies stared at the bright red sock-monster. The ‘toe’ end was his tail, while his mouth was the hole you would push your foot into.

  “He’s so big – like a human sock,” Furp observed as the thing shuffled inside the store with surprising speed. “Is that what you saw in the fabric factory, Plog?”

  “I think so,” said Plog. “And now it looks like he’s stealing some thread to go with all that material. Come on!”

  He threw open the Slime-mobile doors, and he and his friends charged up to the shattered shop window. The stupendous sock was sat inside, sucking down long strings of cotton like multi-coloured spaghetti. Suddenly, he swung round to face them. His black eyes narrowed – and an almighty blast of flame belched out from his woolly throat!

  “He’s a killer sock!” Plog yelled. “DOWN!”

  The Squaddies threw themselves to the pavement as the fireball blazed over their heads.

  Then Danjo jumped up and hurled himself at the hideous sock-beast. He banged and bashed with his pincers but it was like beating a cushion; his blows had no effect.

  Plog ran to join him, but the sock swung his head and butted the monster hard in the chest. “Akk!” He was thrown through the air and smashed hard against the wall.

  “Fur-boy!” cried Zill, scrambling into the shop with Furp. “You all right?”

  Plog nodded in a daze. “Help Danjo – but be careful!”

  Furp joined the attack on the sock, putting his helmet on his slimy fist like a boxing glove, clobbering the sack of stitches for all he was worth. “Nothing seems to hurt him!”

  Zill spat out a slime-line and used it like a lasso, roping the red sock round the middle. But with a snap of his thick neck, he jerked Zill off all six of her feet. “Whoaaa!” She smashed into his lumpy bulk, but managed to hang on, riding him like a human cowboy might ride a runaway bull. The sinister sock reared up and slithered straight towards Plog . . .

  “Get out of his way, Fur-boy!” Zill shouted, still clinging onto the sock’s back with Furp and Danjo. “We can’t control him . . .”

  Plog tried weakly to rise – then felt two hands close on his furry shoulders, heaving him out of the way just as the sock smashed clear through the shop front in a hail of bricks and broken glass.

  Plog looked up at his unexpected rescuer and got a shock. “Jurley?”

  The slim blue monster smiled. “If you can rescue me, I can rescue you back!”

  “Thanks,” said Plog. “But your factories are way out in Whiffsville – what are you doing here?”

  Before Jurley could reply, the bucking sock came crashing back inside again, shaking himself furiously. While Zill and Danjo clung on, Furp was shaken free and hurled against the wall. Plog ran over to help him up – and found an even bigger sock slithering out from a smoky back room. He was sticky and stripy, and he was chomping down a dozen reels of coloured cotton.

  “Oh, no!” Danjo wailed. “There are two of those things!”

  “Get away, Jurley,” Zill shouted at the factory owner. “It’s too dangerous in here!”

  Jurley turned and fled as, with a very rude noise, Stripy raised his ‘tail’ and fired a sheet of wet, green material at Plog and Furp. They jumped aside and it slapped against the wall, sizzling and steaming.

  “Great gonk-stoppers!” Furp cried. “That fabric is covered in poisonous goo. If it had hit us, we would be dead by now.”

  “Dead!” rasped Red Sock, shaking Zill and Danjo off at last. He stooped and blasted more flames in their direction – the two Squaddies barely hid behind a counter in time.

  Stripy turned to Red. “Leave them,” he hissed. “We have taken enough thread. There is much more to do.”

  Red nodded, and with a tangling smash of breaking glass, the killer socks burst through the shop window and into the smoky street outside.

  “Come on,” said Plog, following them. “We can’t let them get away . . .”

  “But how do we stop them?” said Danjo.

  “You cannot,” said Stripy. He pointed his head north and stretched himself out to a near-impossible length – then with a gigantic BOING! he pinged away like an elastic band, vanishing over rows of houses into the distance.

  “So that’s how that sock seemed to vanish at the factory,” Furp murmured. “Elastic power!”

  “Look,” Jurley gasped from behind a dustbin. “The red one is stretching too.”

  “Making himself into a sock-rocket!” Plog grabbed hold of Red Sock’s stretchy side. “We can’t let him get away as well!”

  Furp grabbed the sock’s tail. Danjo and Zill jumped onto his woolly back. Even Jurley bravely ran forward and held onto the sock’s neck.

  “Don’t let go,” cried Furp. “He can’t stretch properly with all of us hanging on.”

  “I may not be able to fly,” the sock rumbled, “but I can still travel at speed . . .” And suddenly, the frustrated sock zoomed away down the street, moving like a caterpillar but a thousand times faster, dragging Jurley and the Slime Squad along for the ride.

  “Yiiiiiiikes!” Plog felt the wind whipping at his ears and the sock slipping through his fingers as the wriggling beast threw him this way and that. Zill lost her paw-hold completely and fell through the air, just managing to snag the sock’s neck with a slime-line. As Red Sock accelerated still faster she trailed along behind him like a six-legged, bushy-tailed kite.

  “Can’t . . . hold on,” Jurley panted.

  “You must,” Plog urged her. “A fall at this speed might kill you.”

  “What about crashing into a wall?” yelled Danjo, pointing ahead with a pincer.

  Plog gulped. The sock had swung round a corner and was haring up an alleyway towards a large brick building. “Stop!” yelled Zill. “You crazy sock!”

  “It’s no good,” Furp yelled. “We’re going to hit!”

  “Furp!” Plog shouted as the wall rushed up to meet them. “Grab Jurley and jump out of here. Zill – let go of your slime-line! And, Danjo, make a slime-shield – NOW!”

  Furp sprang away with Jurley just in time, skidding across the street on his metal pants. Zill dropped the slime-strand and landed nimbly on a parked van nearby. And Danjo just managed to protect Plog and himself with an umbrella of frozen slime as – KA-THWOOM! – the killer sock charged straight through the wall!

  Plog shut his eyes as the brickwork broke apart around him in a storm of stone. He and Danjo were knocked to the floor where the icy shield shattered.

  In a daze he saw that they’d smashed through the side of an enormous warehouse full of clothes and boxes. There was an open skylight in the roof – and below it stood not only Stripy, but an even shabbier sock made from stained tartan fabric. Both were rootling about in crates of material. Completely unharmed, Red shuffled over to join them.

  Plog watched the socks gravely. “Stripy and his pals must have come here to steal more fabric – and since Red couldn’t drop in through the roof, he broke in the hard way.”

  “Look at that manky tartan sock,” said Danjo. “Where’d he come from?”

  “What d’you mean, ‘
he’?” Tartan retorted crossly. “I’m a girl!” She abandoned the crate and sped towards Plog and Danjo.

  Suddenly it was as though the smell of sweaty feet had been turned up to eleven!

  “Can’t . . . breathe,” gasped Danjo. “Too . . . stinky . . .”

  His nose and throat burning, Plog stared in horror as the reeking tartan sock-monster loomed over them . . .

  Chapter Four

  ENTER . . . CONK-WHOPPER

  Furp, Zill and Jurley came running inside to help fight off the socks. But within moments, the terrible smell had sent them gasping to the ground as well.

  Through watering eyes, Plog saw Red and Stripy approaching too. “How d’you fight a bad smell?” he muttered. “With an even worse smell!” He kicked off his heavy boots just as Red Sock slithered up. The evil woollen warrior hissed fire at Plog’s revolting tootsies, but that was good – because the faster his feet dried out, the faster his special brand of toxic slime would start to flow from his toes and then . . .

  Sure enough, his soles were soon sticky with stupefying yellow sludge. A terrible whiff filled the air, and though the socks had no noses that Plog could see, they still slithered backwards, waving about in alarm.

  Danjo clutched his nose. “Good stinking thinking, Plog.”

  Zill nodded weakly. “What sock in the world would want to go near feet like yours?”

  The three socks were still snarling and snapping even as they backed away – but then an extraordinary figure burst into the warehouse through an inside door. He was large, pink and tubby, with a scarlet afro, green robes and a shiny silver sandal on his single ten-toed foot. A gaggle of small blue assistants in lab coats flocked behind him. “What’s all this, eh?” the bizarre monster boomed. “Entrance to the Sudz Building is by invitation only!”

  “That’s Calvin Conk-Whopper,” said Jurley, astounded, “the creator of Sudz washing powder. We use it at my factories to wash our fabrics.”

  Danjo’s eyestalks waggled in surprise. “We wash our costumes in Sudz too,” he revealed. “Ultra-strong cleaning action with the great smell of old lettuce. Mmmm!”

  “Stay back,” Plog warned the new arrivals. “You have killer socks in your building.”

  “Killer socks? Pah!” Conk-Whopper shouted. “More like spies in disguise from a rival washing powder company, trying to pinch my secrets – right, Onzo?”

  Onzo, tallest of the small blue assistants and with a brighter white lab coat than the others, nodded keenly. “Right, Mr Conk-Whopper.”

  Plog shook his head. “I don’t think you quite understand—”

  “Get your noses out of my giveaway designer clothes,” Conk-Whopper bellowed at the killer socks.

  Onzo nodded. “Go on, get out of here!”

  To Plog’s amazement, the socks quickly pointed themselves at the skylight, stretched their elasticated bodies long and tight, and then – BOING! – off they zoomed like giant smelly rockets, out of the window in the roof and into the early morning sky. Three distant splashes sounded in the distance.

  “At least now we know what PIE detected,” said Furp. “Super-elastic sock-monsters whizzing away to wherever they came from.”

  “From those splashes, they must’ve landed in the River Mudson,” Zill realized. “Now, stick those boots on again, Fur-boy, before my nose falls off!”

  “Wait!” Conk-Whopper cried, turning towards his unexpected visitors and the hole in his factory wall. “What is this I see before me? Can it be . . . the Slime Squad?” He hopped over to greet them, his hands pressed together, eyes wide. “Oh, dear dear. What a state!”

  “Sorry about your wall, Mr Conk-Whopper,” said Plog, pulling on his battered boots. “It’s sort of our fault, because—”

  “Forget the wall,” said Conk-Whopper. “Walls can be rebuilt. It’s your costumes I’m worried about. Look at them! You’re supposed to be glamorous superheroes and here are your outfits, all filthy and scorched and rumpled. It won’t do, will it, my workforce?”

  Onzo and the other blue workers tutted and shook heads and crossed things out on their clipboards.

  “Never mind our clothes,” said Plog. “We’re more worried about those giant killer socks who were just here.”

  Conk-Whopper chortled. “You’re not seriously saying that those socks were dangerous?”

  “They’ve stolen tons of fabric and burned down my factories, Mr Conk-Whopper,” said Jurley sadly. “You should watch out. They might try to destroy your place too.”

  “What?” Conk-Whopper went white, then turned to Onzo. “Check that the Great Sudz Giveaway outfits have not been damaged!”

  Onzo and a swarm of blue figures rushed away to obey.

  Zill was intrigued. “Sudz giveaway outfits?”

  “Wow!” Jurley had crossed over to a box and was pulling out cool tops and trousers. “These are amazing. They look familiar . . .”

  Conk-Whopper smiled. “You’ve probably seen models wearing them on the catwalks of Goo York,” he said grandly. “These clothes were designed by top fashion houses like Verscratchy, Poochi and Blurgerfelt.”

  “Cool,” said Zill. “But giving away designer clothes must cost a fortune.”

  “It does,” Conk-Whopper agreed. “But it’s fabulous publicity for the launch of New-formula Sudz Megawash – the only washing powder with built-in fabric toughener.”

  Furp cocked his head. “Don’t you mean softener?”

  “I do not!” Conk-Whopper beamed, slapping an arm round Furp’s shoulders. “My fabric toughener makes your clothes far, far stronger. They will never tear or fade or wear out. And New-formula Sudz will work on anything – even metal!”

  “Perhaps that’s what the socks were after here,” said Plog. “As Jurley says, they’ve stolen masses of material. If they wash it in New-formula Sudz they’ll make the fabric tougher . . .”

  “And create a whole army of killer socks,” said Furp gravely. “An army that will never wear out!”

  “The clothes seem fine, Mr Conk-Whopper,” called Onzo, scampering back to report. “Nothing’s been taken.”

  “We’d better search this whole factory,” Danjo declared. “Just in case there are any other socks here looking for the secret Sudz formula.”

  “I’ll help,” said Jurley.

  Plog shook his head. “You should go back home. You’ve been up all night, you must be worn out. Let us handle this.”

  “But . . . I’d really love to look around the Sudz factory,” Jurley persisted.

  “Sorry,” said Conk-Whopper. “But I cannot let just anyone inside my factory. The secrets of Sudz are worth a fortune.” He smiled. “I’m sure you understand?”

  “Oh. Er, yes. Of course.” Jurley shrugged and waved at the Squaddies. “Well, bye, everyone. Take care, won’t you? I’ve got a feeling you’ll be seeing those socks again very soon . . .”

  As she turned and walked away, Plog felt a shiver squirm sock-like along his spine. I’ve got that feeling too, he thought. But whatever those woolly monsters are up to, the Slime Squad will stop them.

  He gulped.

  I hope!

  Chapter Five

  SOCK HUNT

  “Now then, my dear Slime Squad,” Calvin Conk-Whopper began. “If you are going to come up against these sock-things again, you will need better protection – such as fire-proof, tear-proof clothing.”

  “He’s got a point,” Zill admitted.

  “Poison-proof and smell-proof would be good too,” Danjo added.

  “Wear some of my giveaway designer clothes,” Conk-Whopper insisted. “Pre-washed in New-formula Sudz, they will help shield you from danger.”

  “Let’s test them out,” Plog suggested as Conk-Whopper passed him a cool jacket. It looked and felt completely normal – but he couldn’t tear a single stitch, no matter how hard he tried. “Danjo, give it a squirt.”

  Danjo squirted hot slime at the jacket, but it simply splashed sizzling to the floor. “Wow – that’s tough.”
r />   Zill crossed to a crate and picked out a six-legged trouser suit and strappy top to wear over her grubby leotard. But first she bit savagely at the material. “Cool,” she cooed. “Not even a tooth mark.”

  “Fighting crime and looking fine,” said Danjo happily, slipping on a checked shirt and three-legged trousers. “I love it!”

  Furp started to pull a jumper on over his crash helmet. “You really have something for everyone, Mr Conk-Whopper.”

  “I’m determined to get the whole of Goo York talking about new formula Sudz,” said Conk-Whopper. “Now, I’ll give you a guided tour . . .”

  “Let’s start on the roof,” Plog suggested. “The socks used the skylight to get in and out. They might have left a clue up there.”

  “Right you are.” Still followed by Onzo and a gaggle of assistants, Conk-Whopper hopped over to a large lift built into the far wall.

  Feeling a bit self-conscious in his smart new clothes, Plog led the Squad over to join him.

  The lift lurched into life, taking the group upwards. Conk-Whopper smiled as it clanked to a halt in the cool dawn air. “First stop as requested – the roof!”

  Plog marvelled at the incredible view. From here you could see right across Goo York City. The skyline bristled with big, boxy skyscrapers. Crowds were already forming in the sandy streets below. Thousands of monsters live here, thought Plog. And any of them could be the killer socks’ next victim . . .