Chapter 3

Chapter Three It's like the King Wretch looks through my eyeballs, beyond, and straight into my brain—like he's gazing deep into my soul. My vision clouds. Everything begins to go black. My body is loose. Wobbly. It's strange, but—I think I'm falling asleep. On my feet. Everything is becoming very— SCREECH! Squealing tires snap me out of my strange waking slumber. I manage to turn and see—

Step away from the dork. The King Wretch glances at my friends and our BoomKart weaponry, then his head swings back to me. There's something in his chilling eyes and dripping fangs that resembles a sly smile. I see—I know—this monster has zero fear of me or my buds. But he leaves anyway. The King Wretch gives me a final look—a once-over—and then shoots into the sky with a burst of beating wings. His tail snaps the pavement as he rockets away, winging, curving, and slicing into the distance.

The soda bubbles in my brain are fading away and my head is feeling halfway normal again. I drop to my buddy. "Rover, you okay?" Rover shakes his head like he's knocking the cobwebs loose, then gets to his feet. He looks okay, although there's an anger on his face that I've never seen—like he wouldn't mind seeing that King Wretch again. Like he wouldn't mind a bit of revenge. Suddenly, June gasps. She's frantically ripping open Rover's saddlebag. "The radio!" she exclaims. "It's busted up!" June's face has gone pale and she looks like she's about to vomit, but Quint and Dirk save the moment. "I promise to repair it, June," Quint says. "Like the geek said," Dirk adds, "we'll fix it. No question." June nods and breathes a shaky sigh of relief. "Okay...." I stare into the distance. I watch the King Wretch fading, getting small, and finally disappearing behind the crumbling Wakefield skyline.

With any luck, that's the last we'll be seeing of that beast. Dudes. I think that's enough adventuring and enough. almost dying for one day. Let's get back to the town square, huh? So things are different now. A lot different. And not just different since before the Monster Apocalypse. I mean different since the last time you saw us. In the past month, things have changed A TON.

Here's a quick recap for those, like myself, with crummy memories. Six months ago, there was a Monster Apocalypse. Doors opened above the Earth, and suddenly monsters and beings from a different dimension were propelled into our world— along with the horrible zombie plague. It looked a bit like this... A bunch of these monsters took up residence at our local slice shop, Joe's Pizza. And they weren't evil—they were terrifying-at-first-but-totallyfriendly- in-the-end monsters.

However, one of the monsters was actually pure evil. His name was Thrull, and he worshipped the diabolical ultra-villain .e...c. the Ancient, Destructor of Worlds. Thrull was trying to bring .e...c. to Earth so that .e...c. could devour and destroy our planet. Me, my human buddies, and the Joe's Pizza monster crew teamed up to defeat Thrull and .e...c.. But .e...c. may try to return. See, he's