King of the Mole People--Rise of the Slugs Read online

  “Now, stay calm, ladies,” said Pennyworth, trying to regain his footing. “Don’t become hysteric—”

  “We’re doomed!” screeched Marco. “We’ll never get out of here!”

  “These jerks don’t realize we’ve got nothing to worry about,” Magda whispered to me. “The Moles will get us out of here.”

  “I don’t think so,” I whispered back. “I ordered them not to follow me anymore.”

  “Oog likes you too much to leave you on your own.”

  “We’re going to starve!” cried Marco.

  I offered him a piece of Juicy Fruit gum, saying it might have some fruit in it, but he batted it away. “There’s a strangely copious amount of ooze in here,” said Pennyworth. “And theses rocks almost look like … eggs.”

  “They’re just rocks, Pennyworth,” said Magda. “Like the ones in your head.”

  Magda whispered to me that she had a plan. There was a small hole on the far side. She thought the two of us should crawl through it and make some noise to see if any Moles could hear us. I was feeling pretty uneasy about the growing weirdness of the situation, but grumbled “Fine.”

  Magda told the others to wait here while we searched for a way out.

  “You guys are heroic,” said one of the Binkettes. “Underbelly is saving us!” said another.

  “What? Underbelly’s not going to save us!” said Pennyworth. “I’m going to save us!” Then his tiny feet lost their grip on the rocks and he did a leg split again.

  “Stay here and work on your gymnastics routine,” said Magda. “We’ll handle this.”

  We made our way over the oozy rocks to the hole. There was a big rock in front of it, but enough space for us to squeeze through.

  The tunnels on the other side were even more oozy. We couldn’t even stand up and were reduced to lying on our stomachs and dragging ourselves like baby turtles on a beach.

  “Hey, we can’t yell for the Moles, the others will hear,” I said.

  “Just make loud noises then,” said Magda. And we both started screeching like parrots. Then we lay there, listening to the sounds of our shrieks fading down the tunnels.

  “Y’know, we really could die down here,” said Magda.

  “No way!” I said. “There’s no way I’m dying in an underground tunnel! I gotta get out of here quick!”

  “Oh right,” she said, “you have to get home and make your innocent subjects do a bunch of yard work before tossing them aside like used gum.”

  “You still don’t believe me that weirdness is snowballing around me? Just look where we are!”

  “It’s not weird to get stuck in a cave, Underbelly. It happens to people all the time.”

  “What about those eggs?”

  “They were just rocks!” said Magda. “Quit trying to make something more out of it than it really is! You are not a ‘weirdness magnet’! There’s no such thing!”

  Before I could respond, we heard a sound. Something was moving toward us.

  “See?” said Magda. “I told you Oog wouldn’t leave you on your own.”

  But it wasn’t Oog, or any Mole.

  It was Slug People.

  There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Slugs are gross. Being repulsed by them is a normal reaction for anybody. Factor in the additional trauma of being threatened and imprisoned by giant ones, and the repulsion can easily become so great that you could find yourself barely able to breathe or speak in their presence. Certain words, however, are so important to say, that even under such debilitating circumstances, you’ll somehow dig deep and muster up the strength to say them.

  “I told you so,” I said to Magda.

  “This still doesn’t mean you’re a weirdness magnet!”

  “It totally does! People go into caves all the time! I’m the only one who runs into giant Slugs!”

  The closest Slug scrutinized us with his eye-stalks. These weren’t the first Slug People we’d met, but these ones were different. Thicker, slimier, and with angry eyebrows.

  “Talk to them!” I whispered to Magda. “You’re an ambassador!”

  “You’re King!” Magda whispered back. “King outranks ambassador—”

  “Humans?” said the closest Slug, and the rest grumbled and burped.

  “Uh, greetings,” I said. “You guys haven’t seen any Moles around here, have you?”

  “Moles?” said the Slug. “Of course not. This is Slug People domain. We don’t allow snooty Moles around here. Or humans, for that matter.” He glided closer, stalks pointed down at us. “Why aren’t you scared?”

  I hated to burst his bubble, but not only had we met Slug People before, we’d also met a bunch of other creatures that resided on different levels below the surface. It went something like this:

  And of all the ones we’d met so far, the Slugs were definitely the slimiest and grossest and most disgusting.

  “Admit it. You humans find us slimy, gross, and disgusting!” said the Slug.

  “Whaaaat?” I protested. “Not at all. You guys look great. Way nicer than that other group of Slugs we met. Sturdier. And your eye-stalks, so much less beady.”

  “You mean there’s another tribe of Slug People?” said the Slug.

  The Slugs looked at each other and burp-grumbled.

  “That might have been too much information,” whispered Magda.

  The first Slug oozed forward till it felt like he was going to ooze right over us, slime seeping from around his gelatinous body.

  “What are you even doing down here?” he asked menacingly.

  “They with me!” said a familiar voice, and we twisted our heads around to see Oog appearing—as Moles like to do—from the shadows. The Slugs all bristled and made disdainful noises.

  “He Mole King, and she Mole Human Ambassador!” said Oog.

  “Mole King?” scoffed the Slug. “How could a human be a Mole King?”

  “Don’t get too surprised,” I said. “I was only made King because of this stinker Mole named Croogy who made a deal with the other Slug tribe that if they helped him get rid of the old Mole King he’d let them take over the Mole level, because he wanted to take over the Up-world level. But he ended up betraying everybody. Luckily it all worked out, and we tossed Croogy down to the Mega Worm level with a bucket and a mop.”

  “Is that so?” said the Slug.

  “Again, dude, TMI,” whispered Magda. I guess that was one of the side effects of having so little social experience: I had a tendency not to realize when things shouldn’t be said.

  “You Slugs seem busy,” said Oog. “Oog just get these two out of your hair. Or, not hair … you know what Oog mean.”

  And Oog picked us up one under each arm and started struggling over the ooze rocks, our bodies jiggling as he slipped and lurched. The Slugs seemed too surprised to do anything. Even their burping had stopped.

  Oog carried us into a tunnel and then dropped us and started digging into a wall.

  “I thought I told you not to follow me!” I said.

  “Oog not follow,” said Oog. “Oog just passing by, hear birds screeching. Oog think: What parrots doing down here underground?”

  “How about being grateful?” Magda said to me. “He just saved us!”

  “You just lucky they not realize you were in sacred egg chamber,” said Oog.

  “See? See?” I flailed at Magda. “It doesn’t get any weirder than a chamber packed with giant Slug eggs!”

  “Make sure you not touch any. Slugs got no sense of humor about their eggs.” Oog broke through the wall, then spoke quietly. “Okay, tell other kids come through here, then you all follow Oog up this way. Oog keep out of sight.”

  The small hole Oog had dug poked into the side of the egg chamber. I called my classmates and they carefully made their way to us, Pennyworth doing splits about six more times. They all squeezed through and followed us up the tunnel Oog had just taken. We found a freshly dug hole at the top that led back to the cave with the lit arrows and the rest of our cla
ss, where a happy reunion took place.

  Everyone was bubbling as they filed up to the cave entrance and back into the light. Before I stepped through myself I felt something hit me in the shoulder. I turned and saw the PowerBar the coach had told us to bring back, and Oog smiling in the shadows.

  “Just happened to hear bird screeching, huh?” I said.

  “Yeah! Oog just happening by! Maybe Oog always just be happening by when King need help.”

  I smiled.

  I turned away, then turned back. “But what if I’m no longer your King—” I started to say, but Oog had returned to the shadows.

  I guess I was more accustomed to the sharp transition of dark caves to blinding daylight than the others. I was able to lead everyone back to the bus, where Coach Parker stood with Ed and Ted. We were all parched and begging for water.

  “Sorry, water boy, they got the last of it,” chuckled the coach. Ed and Ted belly-laughed with well-hydrated throats at our disheveled appearance and ooze-covered clothes, their own clothes drenched from having just finished a water fight.

  “How thirsty could you have got from exploring that dinky little cave?” said the coach. “Back in my day we’d climb a whole mountain and never whine about water once.”

  Magda grabbed the PowerBar I had in my hand and held it up to the coach’s face.

  “You owe Underbelly an A.”

  The coach grabbed the bar, opened it, and took a bite.

  “There’s no such thing as giving an A on a field trip.”

  Miss Chips woke up as we climbed onto the bus, roared for the coach to get the motor started, and rolled over in her seat. The Binkettes were chirping extra loud, and I heard my name a few times. They were telling the others about their ordeal after falling through to the lower cave, and how it was me that got them out.

  The bus was starting to get manic. All the pent-up anxiety from the caves was translating into volume. The coach yelled to pipe down, but nobody listened. Everyone was too pumped up about caves and possibly from dehydration, and from talking about me. I heard some backhanded compliments about how I was relaxed in the tunnels because of my similarity to worms, but I also heard one or two front-handed compliments. I even heard the word “hero.”

  “What do you know, Underbelly?” said Magda. “Looks like you’re a hero.”

  I started to sweat. I knew better than to think this was a good thing. I knew that even if it was a positive ride for a while, it would eventually blow up in my face.

  “If Underbelly is such a hero, why doesn’t he take over as head of the dance committee?” said Becky.

  The blow-up was faster than expected.

  The bus erupted in a variety of sounds: snorts of laughter, snorts of disbelief. I guess it was mostly snorts. But Becky didn’t follow up with a laugh, so the Binkettes had no choice but to take the comment as if it were real. Becky said, “All those in favor of Underbelly being the new head of the dance committee?” and everyone went along with what seemed to be the will of the most popular person in school, and yelled “Aye!”

  “I can’t be in charge of a dance!” I croaked. “When I’m in charge, terrible things happen!”

  Magda was looking at me with that knowing smile she does that I can’t stand. “You’re head of the dance committee! Ha! Good luck, ‘hero.’ I wouldn’t be caught dead at one of those things.”

  “Neither would I!” I said. “I’m on a mission to stop being the head of an unruly mob! I don’t want to be the head of another even wilder one!”

  I took a peek over the seat behind me. Binkettes were staring at me like I was a herald from a parallel universe. Ed and Ted were looking at me like they were planning on grinding my bones to make bread. Marco was yelling about ooze ruining his jacket and mussing up his hair.

  Even Becky was looking at me. As you may expect, when someone who never makes eye contact with you suddenly does, it can be very powerful.

  She was saving her ignoring for Pennyworth, who was once again making a misguided attempt to impress her. For some reason he thought she’d be interested in rocks. He was trying to show her this strange one he’d brought back from the cave. It was about a foot long. And oval.

  5

  TWO MOBS

  Backyard—Monday

  So now I was in charge of two mobs: a bunch of Moles doing landscaping, and a bunch of kids putting on a dance.

  Want to know two things I’ve never done in my life? Done landscaping or gone to a dance. I’ve also never put straws up my nose, worn a hula skirt, or rocketed to Mars. What groups would they put me in charge of next?

  I had to assume that by tomorrow everybody would be treating my appointment on the dance committee the same way they’d treat a monkey having won the presidency after too many people voted for him as a joke: they’d all just laugh and give him a banana. I doubted I’d get a banana out of it, but I’d accept the laughs if it meant I was free to climb back up my tree. With any luck I’d meet up with Principal Wiggins first thing in the morning and get the whole hilarious episode wiped from the books before I had to endure any ridicule or fruit.

  But that would have to wait. The school bus had returned to the schoolyard and released us back into the world, and I needed to get home and deal with my more pressing concern: the impending arrival of news cameras at my house on Friday. Dreadsville Manor had to be transformed in four days. Because if it wasn’t, my full weirdness and the house’s full un-sellability was going to get broadcasted to everyone in a hundred-mile radius.

  So it was with significant anxiety that I stood in front of the open grave in my backyard and watched the sun ease its way below the horizon. Then I waited some more. Then some more.

  Finally I poked my head into the grave hole, and saw Oog standing at the head of the tunnel packed with Moles holding garden equipment and keeping incredibly quiet.

  “Is sun down?” said Oog. “We can’t tell from down here.”

  I put on my crown and ordered them to start working, and the Moles began piling out of the hole with their equipment.

  I directed them to various jobs: scrubbing stones, pulling weeds, filling in holes, and fishing dead bats out of anywhere they found them. I told them to dig up a bunch of living trees and shrubs and grass near the back of the property and replant them in more visible places. I told them to hide my dad’s eel-catching equipment by the stream.

  Work didn’t move fast. Most of the Moles hadn’t spent much time aboveground, so were distracted by fascinating things like stars, or wind, or insects that had the audacity to fly instead of crawl.

  They were noisy too. They kept stepping on rakes and smacking themselves in the face, or dropping heavy objects on each other’s feet, like one of those old black-and-white movies featuring a group of inept brothers that only grown-ups found funny. “Quiet!” I kept hissing.

  Ploogoo was even more distracted than the others. He stood wearing a scarf and watching the female Mole with the forehead horn admiring the garden, even though much of it was outright dead. I guess when you live underground any vegetation looks good. I ripped up some wildflowers, pulled off his scarf (this just in: scarves don’t work on Moles), and shoved the flowers into his hands.

  “Here,” I said. “Give her these.”

  “These? Are you sure?” said Ploogoo.

  “Yes, they’re flowers, they’ll work,” I said, with more confidence than I really felt. I of course had no firsthand proof of the power of flowers, but I assumed all the flower stores I’d seen around stayed in business for a reason.

  The female Mole took the bouquet, looked at Ploogoo like this was a sick joke, and dropped it in the mud.

  Ploogoo returned to me, the lines of his brow and mouth flattened beneath the weight of yet further crushed confidence, before rising slightly as he remembered a piece of official royal business. He informed me a new tribe of Slug People had found the Slug tribe that resided below the Moles. They were a different type of Slug, “Bull Slugs,” in contrast to the “Com
mon Slugs” we already knew.

  “Nobody knows where they came from or how they became aware of the Slugs below us,” said Ploogoo.

  I cleared my throat, and Oog did as well, to show me that he’d kept quiet about our little encounter.

  “They’re bigger and slimier than the Common Slugs,” said Ploogoo, “and their burping seems more nuanced and complex—”

  “No time for that,” I interrupted, tossing him a shovel.

  We worked through the night. It was hard for me to see the progress in the limited light, so I had to rely on the Moles’ superior night vision. But really, it was just planting. How much could they mess that up?

  Turns out a lot, which I only realized when the first rays of light fell across the trees, bushes, and grass that had all been planted upside down.

  For Moles, the visually appealing parts of plants are the beautiful roots that grow from their ceilings, while the leafy parts that protrude upward are, to them, the ugly roots. This explained why they were so enamored with a garden that was filled with rootlike dead branches. And why the forehead-horn Mole had been so unimpressed by Ploogoo’s “flowers.”

  I looked around at the disaster of my yard. End of night one, and we were further behind than when we started.

  School—Tuesday

  The first thing I did upon arrival at school was go to Principal Wiggins’s office to deal with the hilarious dance committee joke. I got there with horribly perfect timing.

  My eyes were throbbing from lack of sleep. I should have been treating them gently, and not forcing them to look at things that eyes were never meant to see.

  Principal Wiggins, attempting to scold Miss Chips.

  He’d heard about the fiasco of the field trip to the caves. How she’d forgotten to bring equipment, how she’d let the kids enter the caves unsupervised, how they’d gotten lost and how they might be lost there still if one heroic child hadn’t saved them.

  I willed my frozen body to back me away, but when I moved my neck it cracked (from wearing the heavy Mole crown all night).