“What the hell?” Zach shouted, grabbing me and the chipmunks. “Run!”
Mac was hot-footing it right on Zelda’s heels.
Mae Blockinschlokinberg did have a secret. A horrible secret.
Mae Blockinschlokinberg wasn’t dead. Or not in any conventional way.
A dank wind blew through the forest as the body of Mae Blockinschlokinberg morphed into slugs. Thousands of slugs. Thousands of hissing, spitting, glowing red-eyed, deadly slugs who had one mission…
To kill us.
The Queen might have the final say after all.
Chapter Seventeen
“Magic. Use magic,” Zelda yelled as we got to the tree line. “Pop them.”
Zelda and Zach shot fireball after fireball as the slugs advanced moving faster than I’d ever seen a slug move. Mae Blockinschlokinberg was the freaking Hydra of slugs. All the magical blood she’d ingested was paying off and making our chances of survival look slim. For every slug popped, ten more took their place. There had to be at least three thousand now.
“Trees,” I shouted, waving my hands in the air frantically. “Uproot. Step on the slugs.”
The giant oaks and pines heeded my command. The sound of the massive trees running toward the slugs rivaled an earthquake combined with a tornado and a tsunami. The chipmunks were terrified. With a clap of my hands, I poofed them to Fabio’s house. While they were violent, they weren’t killers. Vegetarians didn’t like death.
“I can’t hold them back,” Zelda hissed. “They're going to invade Assjacket.”
“Stay behind us,” Fat Bastard bellowed. “If them slugs spit, let us take it. We’ll send it back and poison them slimy sacks of shit.”
“Too many and they’re immune to their own poison,” Zach yelled, continuing to pop slugs with fireballs. “Also, this is a bad fucking plan we have going here. They're multiplying. We have to find another way to get rid of them.”
“Agreed,” I said as I watched the trees stomp as many advancing slugs as they could.
“Should we make a run for it?” Zelda asked, still zapping away. “At least we can warn people.”
“We can't let them reach town,” Mac said, squatting down and connecting with the earth. “I’m going to try to open a crater. Willow, tell the trees to back off.”
“The slugs are everywhere,” Zach said. “Not sure that’s going to work.”
“What we’re doing now isn’t working,” Zelda pointed out. “May as well try something else.”
“Trees,” I called out. “Back away. Return to your home.”
Leaves and pine needles rustled and fell to the ground covering the slugs and slowing their advance. Thousands of the little bastards began to eat the leaves.
“Look at that,” Zelda said. “Make it happen again, Willow. The leaves are confusing the slugs. They think it’s dinner time.”
She was right, and I knew exactly how to make a tree shed some leaves. “What was wrong with the tree’s car?” I yelled.
The trees paused their retreat and leaned toward me.
“It wooden go!” I told them.
They shook with laughter and their falling leaves covered more of the venomous slugs.
It wasn’t destroying them, but it had slowed them down. “How does a tree get on the internet?”
The trees jiggled with excited anticipation.
“They log on,” I shouted.
Again, they rocked with laughter.
Again, their leaves fell.
Again, the slugs slowed.
“Another,” Zach said.
“On it,” I told him. “How did the elm tree know the fig tree wasn’t looking for anything serious? It asked for no twigs attached.”
It was spring, but it looked like a fall day as massive amounts of leaves floated through the air and landed the ground.
“Should I sing?” I asked, not knowing what else to do. Eating would only distract them for so long, and we still didn’t know how to destroy them.
“Not sure thousands of humping slugs is a good thing,” Zelda said, shaking her head. “But since I don’t have a better idea, go for it. My magic is making it worse.”
“As is mine,” Zach agreed, snapping his fingers and producing earplugs for all. “Put these in unless you think all of us getting horny is a good plan.”
“Not a good plan,” Mac said, grabbing a set from Zach and shoving them in his ears. “I like you, but not that much.”
“Incoming,” Fat Bastard announced at the top of his kitty lungs.
“What the hell?” Zelda grunted as we all got knocked to the ground by a vicious wall of wind.
“Today is going seriously shitty,” I muttered, crawling over to Zach and holding onto him, so I didn’t blow away.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you completely.”
Even though we were probably going to die shortly, I smiled from ear to ear. “Do you love yourself?”
“I do—at least I think I do,” he said as the wind grew stronger and his smile grew wider. “I love that we were able to save Zorro. I love that I have a family. I’m proud to have avenged those who died at the hand of Henrietta Smith even though it seems to have ended in a deadly slug infestation. I finally believe that I deserve Fabio and Zelda. I believe I deserve you because I’m a good guy. I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy the way you make me happy.”
“That's adorable, Brother, but the rest of your lives might only be about five minutes if we don't come up with a new plan,” Zelda yelled over the roar of the wind.
“I don’t care,” I said, hugging Zach hard. “I love you and no matter how much time we have together, it’s perfect. I will love you in this life and in the Next Adventure.”
“Would someone like to tell me what in the Goddess’s gauchos is going on here?” a gorgeous woman demanded as she appeared in a blast of shimmering light.
“Oh fuckballs,” Zelda muttered under her breath. “I didn’t think this day could get worse.”
“Apparently, it can,” Mac added.
Even though it was dark and cloudy, the woman’s radiance was almost blinding. I had to shield my eyes from the glare.
She was stunning in an otherworldly way and seemed somewhat off
