Stampede of the Supermarket Slugs (6 page)

“You said we needed cheese puffs to distract the slugs,” Keats explained as he climbed into the shopping cart. “Well, you’re looking at one.” He pointed at himself. “I’m disguised as a giant cheese puff. Give me a push and hop on the back. We’ll catch up and lead the slugs away from the picnic. Let’s go!”

Henry shook his head. “This is a bad idea.” For once, Keats would have loved to see his cousin scratching his chin. But Henry was telling the truth.

“It’s the only way!” Keats said. “Hurry! Before the slugs get too far!”

Henry looked down the street and came to a decision. “Oh man,” he finally said. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

Shaking his head, he pushed the cart with Keats crouched inside. They peeled out of the parking lot and hit Main Street. When they
started speeding downhill, Henry jumped on the back.

“I hope this—” Henry began to say. But his foot slipped on a patch of slug slime. Then he was gone.

Henry fell off and hit the road hard.
Wham!
He reached for the cart. Too late. Thunder whizzed down Main Street. Keats was alone now. And going faster.

“I can’t stop!” Keats shouted over his shoulder to Henry.

Henry got to his feet. “I’ll get my bike and catch up!” he called. “Hold on!”

While Henry ran back toward the store, Keats turned to face forward. The stores on either side zipped by in a blur. The wind whipped past as he hurtled down the hill. The cart’s wheels rattled like they might fall off.

He bumped over a small rise. And there
up ahead, barely visible between two hills, were the slugs!

They’d stopped to chew on a few orange construction cones. Their eyestalks followed him like periscopes as he rocketed past.

Keats shot up over the next hill. The shopping cart caught air for a second, and the front wheels came down crooked. The cart jerked up onto the sidewalk. It flipped over, tossing Keats onto the grass between the street and the sidewalk. He tumbled across the pavement.

“Ugh,” Keats moaned as he came to rest in the middle of Main Street.

He lay there for a second, checking for broken bones. But nothing hurt too badly. He lifted his head and looked around. The town was quiet. No cars. No people. No slugs.

Then he felt a rumbling coming through
the ground. Keats jumped to his feet.

Thirty slugs charged over the top of the hill. Stretched in a line across the street and oozing slime everywhere, the stampede of slugs headed straight for him!

Keats’s stomach flip-flopped. His legs wanted to run, but he forced himself to stand perfectly still.

“Act like a cheese puff,” he told himself over and over. “Act like a cheese puff.”

The slugs showed no sign of slowing down. Would they just steamroll over him?

When they were about fifty yards away, Squirt’s head turned toward Keats and he did a double take. He shouted, “Splurp? Splarb?” The entire line of slugs slowed. A couple tilted
their heads at Keats, their eyes going wide. They all stared, almost like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

It was a super slug’s dream come true—a giant cheese puff!

The slugs started moving again, faster than before. Feeling like a cowboy in a Western, Keats stood his ground. He had to keep them from going to the picnic.

“Come and get me,” he whispered.

Keats let them get close. He could see the whites of their eyes. They were only forty feet away. Thirty. Twenty. Keats waited just one more second—

And then he ran.

8
SLUG SHOWDOWN

FOR THE SECOND
time that day, Keats was in a race. But this time he couldn’t trip.

He sprinted down the street past the beauty parlor and the post office. He could hear the slugs oozing along behind him. The thought of a cheese-puff dinner seemed to give them extra speed.

Keats wanted to shout for help. But no one was around to hear him. And if he did, the slugs
might decide he wasn’t actually a cheese puff. Then they’d head off toward the picnic again.

Besides, Keats figured he could keep them running around the small town until Henry arrived. He’d lived here his whole life. He knew every nook and corner. And though the slugs were fast, he was faster.

Still, with thirty giant slugs chasing him, he got distracted. Keats ran by the library and down the street toward the diner. Without thinking, he took a quick left.

And just like that, Keats found himself in the town’s one and only dead end. He was in the alley between the diner and the movie theater … and the alley ended in a brick wall.

Uh-oh.

Keats spun around. The slugs were close. With no time to backtrack, he ran up to the brick wall. Was there a door? No luck.

Keats gasped. Now he knew why they called it a dead end.

Squirt and the rest of the slugs flooded into the alley, filling it with their slimy bodies. They chittered away, excited to have trapped the world’s largest cheese puff. Their mouths opened.

“Wait!” Keats held up his hands.

At the sound of his voice, Squirt cocked his
head again. Keats could imagine him thinking,
Weird, I’ve never heard a cheese puff talk before
.

“Splurp?” Squirt said. He sounded unsure.

One of the slugs inched forward. It gave Keats a quick lick and then jerked back as if to say,
Blech!

Keats knew he must taste awful. Barbecue sauce mixed with octopus legs and clementine juice couldn’t be tasty. The slug took another lick. Again, it jerked back with a
blech!

Squirt’s eyes opened wider. He knew he had been tricked. This wasn’t a giant cheese puff!

“Splurp!” Squirt commanded. His voice sounded as furious as a slug’s can sound. “Splarb!”

The slugs crawled forward. Their mouths gaped, showing crooked rows of pointy teeth.

“I’m not a cheese puff!” Keats shouted.

Squirt didn’t seem to care anymore if Keats was a cheese puff or not. The slugs were so close now, he could smell the cheese on their cold breath.

Keats pressed his back against the brick wall. The slugs inched even nearer, getting ready to bite down—

“Hold it right there, Squirt!” Henry screeched into the alley on his bike. He had an orange vacuum-bag ball under one arm.

The slugs paused. They twisted around to look at him.

“Henry!” Keats shouted. “Holy moly, am I glad to see you!”

The slugs eyed Henry for a moment. Squirt gave a slug shrug, and they all turned back to Keats. He shuddered as their eyes fixed on him again.

“I know I said to knock off the World’s Greatest Plans,” Keats called to Henry. “But if you have one, I promise to never make fun of them again!”

Henry smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.” He unpinned the second-place medal from his shirt. “My World’s Greatest Plan is to share this medal.”

Henry threw it like a disk. It spun through the air toward Keats, who reached up and caught it. But what was he supposed to do with it?

“Don’t worry, cuz,” Henry said with a wink, just like he had during the race. “It’s in the
bag
.”

Aha! Keats returned the wink. He unhooked the pin from the medal and held it out like a little sword.

Squirt’s lips seemed to form a smile at the
silly weapon. And Keats smiled back. Because he had guessed what Henry was going to do.

“Say cheese, Squirt!” Henry said, and hurled the vacuum bag filled with cheese-puff powder over the heads of the slugs.

At the same time, Keats tossed the second-place pin like a dart. The pin hit the vacuum bag dead-on. It burst with a
pop!
, and the cheese-puff powder inside exploded all over the slugs.

For a moment everything in the alley went completely still. Then with a tiny
slurrrp
, one slug stuck out its tongue and licked the skin of a nearby slug.

Its eyes lit up.

Kablam!
The slugs burst into motion. They started tasting and then nibbling on each other.

“Splurp! Splarb! Splarb!” Squirt shouted. But the slugs didn’t listen. Their eyes went blank. They turned their teeth on each other, hungry for more cheese puffs.

Slugs gobbled up other slugs like piranhas in the Amazon. Squirt shrugged. He stopped
splarb
ing and joined in the feeding frenzy.

Keats couldn’t watch anymore. He shut his eyes.

A minute later, the alley went very quiet. Keats opened his eyes. Henry was grinning at
him. “How’d you like that World’s Greatest Plan?” he asked.

Keats looked down.

“Whoa,” he said. Just one slug remained. It was Squirt. Flopped on his back, he was too fat to turn over.

Henry crouched next to him. “Wow, that’s amazing,” he said.

“I know,” Keats agreed. “Squirt ate all the other slugs!”

“No,” Henry said, his grin getting bigger. “It’s amazing because that’s just what
you
look like after Thanksgiving dinner.”

Keats rolled his eyes. “Ha, ha,” he said. But then he laughed for real. “We did it!”

“We saved the town!” Henry clapped Keats on the back. “And we’ll still make it back to the picnic in time for the fireworks!”

The cousins found a clear plastic box with
a lid in a nearby Dumpster. They picked up Squirt. He was as slimy as always but much easier to handle now that he was so full. Into the box he went.