Chapter 31

Beneath the Surface

“Isn’t it nice? A subterranean paradise! All sugar and sprinkles and sports and spice!”

 

 

“If we had more time, we’d offer a free sample of Konked by a Coconut. It’s quite scrumlishy-us, or so I’m told. I wouldn’t know personally. I don’t eat ice cream, or any physical food, for that matter. None of the true Slynderfellians do.”

“If you can’t eat it, then why do you make it?” asked Kat.

“Why, to feed the livestock.”

“What livestock?”

“Patience, little jibber-gob. Now we move away from the ice cream and to the core of our operation.”

“What’s that grid back there?” asked Levi.

“Oh, just a diagram of the farm.”

“Farm?” said Kat. “You mean factory.”

“No, no. The factory is just the processing plant.”

“Upper Dwellers?” interrupted a tentacled creature. It adjusted its glasses (though it had no eyes). “If you’ve a moment, I’d like to discuss some embarrassing inaccuracies in this text.”

“Hey! That’s my book!” exclaimed Kat. “Cryptopedia!”

“A-hoim! Leaflet 112 describes a living pliosaur in a Highland loch. Impossible. The last pliosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago.”

 

 

“LaMantia!” snapped Slynderfell. “Get back to the Inventory Storerooms!” He swung his cane at the offending worker, sending it scurrying into a darkened chamber. “Apologies. The bean counters forget their place.”

“It had my book!” said Kat. “Does that mean all our stolen stuff is down here somewhere?”

“Questions and confuddlements will be addressed at the end of the tour.”

Kat nudged Levi. “Look!” She pointed to a colossal monster chained to a nearby vat.

 

 

“Ol’ Heckbender,” snickered Slynderfell. “Our beast of burden. Hauling carts and machinery, mixing the cream, that sort of work. Can’t let him to the surface. He’d terrorize the livestock.”

“But we did see him outside!” said Kat. “He was in the woods this morning! He almost got us!”

“We let him out from time to time for walkies, though never off his leash.” Slynderfell nodded to the great iron shackles and chains clamped to Heckbender’s neck and limbs.

A thought was creeping to the front of Levi’s mind. “Is Willow down here?” he asked.

“Willow?” Slynderfell’s eye creatures tried their best to look puzzled.

“Small, spiny, looks like a shriveled coyote,” said Levi.

“Oooh, the chupacabra!” He rapped his cane against a pipe. “Sheepdog! Report!”

 

 

Levi scanned the caves until he spotted two fluorescent orbs gleaming in the shadows. “There she is! Willow, over here!”

Willow did not move.

“Wretchitty bloodsucker!” sneered Slynderfell. “Although I suppose it serves its purpose.”

Levi felt cold. “What purpose?”

 

 

“Sheepdog. Her duties include patrolling the perimeters, keeping track of wayward livestock, and assisting our shepherd.”

“Told you we couldn’t trust her,” Kat whispered.

Levi said nothing.

 

 

“Oh, cuttlepish!” said Slynderfell cheerfully. “Let’s sidle on. We’ve reached our tour’s last stop.” He gestured to a small room. “Our Bibble-Babble Room! Or what you might know as a ‘conference room.’”

Their feet made a squelching sound as they stepped into the darkened room. Something cold and slimy was covering the floor. Kat wrinkled her nose. “Ugh! What kind of conference room is this?”

No answer. They turned and saw too late that Slynderfell was still standing outside the doorway.

 

 

The trap’s bars fell down with a clang, sealing them inside the slimy chamber.

 

 

They threw themselves against the bars, pulling and clawing like caged foxes.

“Let us out!” cried Kat.

Slynderfell cackled. “So sorry, little slubbermuffins. If you’d only cooperated with our shepherd Mr. Frost. You’d be dreaming peacefully with the Boojum right now, like the other kiddies.”

 

 

Levi tried to bring his foot up to kick at the bars, but it was caught in the slimy mess. The slime made a sucking sound as he pulled free, but a moment later the ooze reached up and seized his foot again. “What is this stuff?”

 

 

“The factory’s garden,” said Slynderfell from the other side of the bars. “You can thank your own parents and neighbors for the contribution. They saturate their lawns with pesticides, weed killers, chemical fertilizer. All those nitrates seep into the ground and collect here.

“Normally we send kiddies to the Boojum for dream milking, but you are just a bit too feisty to keep around, so into the ooze you go. It’s a living garbage disposal: it’ll dissolve your skin, your innards, your bones. There’s no place for restless rabble on our farm.”

“Farm?” spat Kat as she tugged at the bars. “You bug-eyed mutant! Why do you keep talking about a stupid farm?”

Levi felt himself go numb. “The farm. It’s . . .”

“Go on,” crooned Slynderfell.

“It’s the town,” said Levi softly.

 

 

“What?” said Kat.

“That grid we saw: it was the whole town,” continued Levi. “Cowslip Grove is a farm. And the livestock . . .” He thought of Twila and couldn’t finish his sentence.

“It’s giddylish,” sneered Slynderfell as the factory workers assembled around the cage and chattered anxiously. “For millennia, humans have thought themselves the undisputed victors. The planet’s spoils ripe for the taking. Oh, but they forgot us, the Underground Dwellers, hiding just below the crust, watching the human-folk grow soft and dull.”

 

 

“You creepy Morlocks!” gasped Kat. “Humans aren’t like sheep!”

“Ah, yet they are!” chortled Slynderfell. “They guzzle our ice cream and stay soft in body and mind.”

“They’ll fight back!”

“WHO will? The Neighborhood Watch is too busy fussing over black lambs to notice us.”

“But why do you need livestock? You said you don’t eat, so—”

“True, but we are very fond of electrochemical pulses, especially the sort produced by dreams. It’s the energy that sustains us. And the dreams of children are the cherry on top!”

 

 

Slynderfell continued: “The Boojum insists there’s something especially powerful about a child’s dreams. Potent, rich, untouched by the muddle of reality and the toxins of adult worry. It’s a shame you won’t meet the Boojum. No, this is where your story ends.”

 

 

The slime tendrils wrapped around Levi’s shoulders, and he felt them pulling him down into the bubbling mess. He gagged as his lungs filled with the chemical fumes. He head Kat scream as the killer bloom dragged her from the bars.

With his last bit of strength, he wrenched his body up and slammed against the bars. His eyes scanned the chittering workers until they settled on a small, spiny shape crouched near the back of the crowd. “Willow. Please!”

 

 

“She was never your friend!” Slynderfell twittered. “She’d been instructed to lead you into the wild, where Heckbender would be waiting.”

Levi ignored this. He fixed his eyes on the fluorescent orbs. “Please . . . Willow . . .”

The tendrils found Levi’s neck, and he felt himself going down.

 

 

Suddenly there was a great commotion among the workers.

“My cane!” shrieked Slynderfell.

 

 

Willow scurried past the gawking workers to the bars of the cage with the silver sundae cane clamped between her jaws. She forced the gemstone cherry into the lock, and the bars swung open.

 

 

“Kat-hooligan! Catch!” cried Willow as she flung the cane into Kat’s free hand. Kat jammed the cane into the writhing algae, prying tendrils from her body.

Willow sank her fangs into the knot of slime surrounding Levi, ripping and snarling like a caffeinated terrier at a rat convention. Levi felt the coils falling away from his limbs.

 

 

“Gawklers! Don’t just stand there bug-oggled!”

The worker horde chattered feverishly, though none seemed willing to approach the toxic garden and its escaping victims.

“Seize them, or answer to the Boojum!”

That did it—the workers lunged forward, waving insectoid appendages and spouting alien obscenities.