Stampede of the Supermarket Slugs (2 page)

THE COUSINS HOPPED
on their bikes and pedaled up and down the hills of Main Street. The library, the basketball court—all of Keats’s favorite spots sat empty. It felt like riding through a ghost town.

The supermarket had closed for the picnic, too. The front doors were locked, so Keats and Henry went around to the back of the store, where trucks made deliveries. The big
metal door slid open with a loud squeak.

Inside, the Purple Rabbit was quiet and dark. Keats shivered. He’d never been in the store when no one else was around.

Henry flicked on the lights. The ends of thirteen shopping aisles stretched out in front of them. Each had high shelves packed with cans, boxes, bags, and jars.

“How are we going to find a tiny slug in this huge place?” Keats asked.

Henry shrugged. “Mr. Cigam gave us that magic wand after our last job. Maybe we should have brought it along.”

“I left the wand at home this morning,” Keats said. “I knew you’d use it to win races at the picnic. Or for one of your nutty World’s Greatest Plans.”

“My World’s Greatest Plans are
not
nutty!” Henry protested.

Keats rolled his eyes. “What about your idea to make our own cotton candy from cotton? Or raffle off a playdate with bats? Or when—”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Henry laughed. “I promise no World’s Greatest Plans for today, all right?”

Keats groaned. “I’ve heard that before.”

“This time I mean it, I swear.” Henry drew an X across his heart with a finger. “Let’s just catch the slug and get back to the picnic.”

They decided to split up to search the store. Henry headed off to hunt through the meat department, snack aisle, and cleaning products. Meanwhile, Keats checked produce, frozen foods, and the bread aisle. But he found no sign of the slug among the bananas, ice cream, or bagels.

Keats was digging through loaves of bread when he heard a clattering sound. Henry flew
around the corner on the back of a shopping cart.

“Whoa, Thunder!” Henry said. He came to a halt and stepped off the cart.

“Thunder?” Keats asked, trying to hide his smile.

“What?” Henry grinned back. “You call your bike Roget after the thesaurus guy. Why can’t I name a shopping cart?”

Keats laughed, and then glanced at his watch. They’d already been in the store for
twenty minutes. “If we don’t hurry, we’ll miss the whole picnic. And the fireworks!” he said. “We need to be smarter about hunting the slug.…” He snapped his fingers. “I got it!”

Keats pulled Henry over to one of the checkout lanes. He ducked behind the counter and pushed aside a few grocery bags on the shelf. Behind them, he saw what he was searching for—a stack of coupon books.

“Mom brought one of these home yesterday,” Keats said, grabbing a book off the top of the pile. “A map of the store is on the back. We can use it to check—”

“ATTENTION, ALL SLUGS!”

The words made Keats jump. Henry had picked up a microphone for the sound system and was yelling into it. His voice boomed out of speakers around the store.

“Attention, all slugs!” he repeated. “Super
savings specials on slug snacks await you in aisle eight!” He took a breath. “And now I’d like to entertain you with a song—”

Keats lunged for the microphone. He clicked it off before Henry could start singing.

“Henry, this is serious,” Keats said. “Our moms will lose their jobs. We need to find that slug before—”

“No problem, cuz,” Henry said, gazing over Keats’s shoulder. “Done deal.”

“Ha,” Keats said.

Henry pointed behind Keats. “No, really. Look.”

Keats turned around. His jaw dropped. The slug was wriggling down aisle eight toward them … as if it had heard Henry.

“Holy moly,” Keats said.

In many ways, the slug looked like the ones in his dad’s vegetable garden. Its slimy body
was shiny yellow with bright orange speckles. Red eyes waved on the ends of two stalks on its head. And as it crawled along, a thick trail of gray slime oozed behind it.

But in one major way, this slug was nothing like other slugs.

“Oh man!” Henry shouted. “That thing is huge!”

The slug was the length of Keats’s arm and looked like it weighed at least twenty pounds.

“This can’t be real,” Keats said. He rubbed his eyes. But the creature was still there.

Keats tucked the store map in his back pocket as the cousins slowly approached the giant slug. Henry crouched down next to it.

“Careful!” Keats warned. “It might be dangerous!”

“Don’t be a chicken,” Henry said. “It’s just a big bug.”

“A slug’s not really a bug,” Keats couldn’t resist saying. “It’s a gastropod. Kind of a snail without a shell.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Henry said, not really listening. He grabbed the middle of the slug and picked it up.

The slug’s eyes squinted shut. With a
phlurrrrth
, slime squirted out of its skin.

“Yuck!” Henry cried. He dropped the slug. Keats jumped back as its jiggly body bounced
against the floor. The slug’s eyestalks waved in opposite directions. Then it turned around and started back down the aisle.

Henry snatched a dish towel from a display rack and wiped the slime off his hands. “Ugh,” he said with a wrinkled nose. “I feel like a giant just sneezed on me!”

“We need another way to pick it up,” Keats said. He spotted a row of extra-large glass jars on a bottom shelf. He poked airholes in the
lid of one with the pen in his jacket pocket. A few steps away, Henry found bright blue oven mitts. He put on two and tossed a pair to Keats. Then they each grabbed two spatulas with long handles.

Following the slime trail, they quickly caught up with the slug. Henry and Keats got on either side. They slid the four spatulas under the slug and lifted. It was like picking up a log of pudding.

“Easy does it,” Henry said. Carefully, they popped the slug into the jar. Keats screwed the lid on.

Henry lifted the heavy jar and looked through the glass. “I think I’ll name this little guy … Squirt.”

Keats laughed. “Okay, Squirt it is. Let’s take him out of the store. Then we can get back to the picnic!”

As they headed toward the door, Squirt started doing something strange inside the jar. He twisted and stretched his body, pressing it against the glass in different shapes.

“What’s Squirt up to?” Henry said.

Keats took the jar to get a better look. “He’s making letters with his body!”

Squirt made an
l
. Then an
h
, and more letters. He was spelling something.

Stunned, Keats said, “You know what that means?”

“Sure,” Henry answered. “Squirt isn’t a very good speller.”

“No,” Keats said. “It means that—”

Just then Squirt squinted his eyes shut again. More slime squirted out of his skin. The
jar filled up so fast that slime shot out of the airholes. Glops of it ran down the glass sides. The jar slipped from Keats’s hands, dropped to the tiled floor—

And rolled away, taking Squirt with it.

Like a hamster on a wheel, Squirt rolled his jar along the back wall of the store. He had enough speed to push through the swinging doors of the storage area.

By the time Henry and Keats caught up with him, Squirt was bumping the jar against an enormous crate.
Bang! Bang!
The crate was twice as tall as Keats and the side of it read PUFF-TASTIC CHEESE PUFF SNACKS.

“Hey, Squirt!” Henry said. “Knock it off! You’re going to give yourself a headache.”

Squirt didn’t listen. He kept ramming the crate. Just as Keats reached for him, the side of the crate came loose. It fell over with a
whomp
, crashing onto the jar. The glass shattered. Squirt squirmed out from under the heavy wood and broken glass. He was free.

“Rats,” Keats groaned. “Now we have to catch him again.”

“Uh,” Henry said. “I think we’ve got bigger problems.” He backed away from the crate. “Much bigger.”

Keats followed his gaze. Henry was staring into the dark crate. At first, all Keats could see were torn cheese-puff wrappers.

Then, looking farther back, he saw what Henry meant. The crate was packed from top to bottom with giant slugs!

3
SUPER SUCKER 8000

AS HENRY AND
Keats watched in shock, twelve more Wallenda slugs tumbled out of the box. They piled up in a slimy heap behind Squirt. Like him, these slugs were huge. But their skin was green instead of yellow. And the beady eyes on their eyestalks were black, not red.

“Unfair,” Keats whispered. “Mr. Cigam said there was just
one
slug.”

“Tell
them
that!” Henry whispered back.

At the sound of their voices, the slugs froze. Then, very slowly, all their eyestalks turned toward Henry and Keats. The black eyes squinted at them angrily.

“Uh-oh,” Henry said.

The slugs reared up, revealing their gaping mouths. Even in the dim light, Keats could see something he hadn’t noticed before.

“Squirt has fangs!” he shouted. “They all do!”

Keats’s shout was like a starting pistol. The slugs oozed forward, heading right for the cousins.

“Ahhh!” Henry and Keats cried at the same time. They stumbled backward through the storeroom doors into the canned-vegetables aisle. Keats skittered into a shelf of baked beans. The cans toppled over as he sprawled onto the floor.

Bang!
The storeroom doors flew open and the slugs burst out. Squirt was in the front, leading the pack. Their sharp teeth clicked as their mouths opened and closed. Squirt seemed more confident now that he had backup.

Henry dragged Keats to his feet and pulled him behind a display of stewed tomatoes.

“Why are the slugs so mad at us?” Keats said. He was having a tough time catching his breath.

“Well, we did lock Squirt in a jar,” said Henry. Then, scratching his chin, he added, “Don’t worry, Keats, we’ll be fine. We’ll just scare them back into that crate.”

Henry grabbed a couple of the jumbo-sized tomato cans. He stepped into the aisle and rolled them at the slugs like he was bowling. Most just jumped over the cans. The
others crawled up the shelves to avoid them.

“Don’t roll the cans!” Keats said. “
Throw
them!”

The cousins started bombing the slugs with any cans they could get their hands on. Lima beans. Peas. Carrots. Henry scored a few direct hits. But the cans just bounced off the slugs’ doughy bodies. They didn’t seem to notice.

Several slugs began catching the cans with their mouths. Their teeth tore through the metal. They sucked down what was inside. Then they whipped their heads and flung the slime-covered cans back at the cousins. Half-empty containers whizzed past the stewed-tomato display and clattered around Henry and Keats. Red, green, and yellow vegetable juice sprayed the shelves.

Keats hunched over and started zigzagging down the aisle.