War with the Slugs (standard:horror, 2123 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Apr 21 2009	Views/Reads: 3121/2039	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Washington State is famous for its voracious and intimidating slugs. When civilization collapsed, overrun with slugs, here's how we managed to put a stop to it. You would have loved being a part of this adventure.

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up. Gradually, over the years, their numbers seemed to diminish, as 
people exterminated them by the thousands.  At the same time, larger 
slugs seemed to resist the poisons and began to predominate, so that by 
the time I was forty-five, the average slug was three feet long and 
weighed 85 pounds.  That was fifteen years ago.  The slugs began taking 
over houses and farms, invading warehouses and fifteen-story buildings. 
Panic spread 

The life support system of each slug was so well distributed throughout
that massive carcass, you could cut it in two -- or chop it into bits 
--and pieces would come back to life, growing into a new, live slug.  
Sometimes these mutants were crippled and vicious, but the majority of 
them seemed to be healthier for the experience.  Dissection revealed 
significant changes in the slug's metabolism and muscular make-up: a 
series of horny platelets appeared on the "foot" of some species, 
enabling them to travel as fast as 2 or 3 miles an hour.  Rudimentary 
"eyes" developed at the tip of their feelers, enabling them to sense 
danger and to find their way in bright daylight as well as they used to 
do at night. 

Their feeding habits changed.  Ten years ago, when I was fifty, I saw
some of the last wooden houses go under.  Today, a baby's crib 
resembles a steel coffin.  But with a wrecked economy, disrupted 
communications, hostile nations to the North, South, East and West, 
things went downhill pretty fast.  Even the most optimistic animal 
lover had to admit that humans were facing a last-ditch stand.  Unless 
the slugs could be driven back (notice we don't say "wiped out" any 
more) there wouldn't be much hope in a few years.  Funny, they did 
relatively little damage to the food supply, but disrupted 
transportation so badly that in some parts of the country people 
literally starved to death.  Airplanes don't fly well with hidden slugs 
in their engines. Neither do trucks or trains or cars.  Before long, 
civilization became the chaos we have all known bitterly.  Just before 
total collapse, the gas-gun was invented. 

Early in the game, restauranteurs came up with patriotic dishes to
encourage the decimation of slugs -- which, after all, are only snails 
without their shells.  Broasted slug was a favorite -- tender and 
spicy.  A lot of bars served a "slug cocktail" (ice, triple sec, 6 
medium slugs and a shot of vodka in the blender; strawberry topping).  
Once the novelty wore off, however, few people really wanted to eat the 
things. 

Nowadays, however, slugs were growing up to be formidable opponents.
Recently, one of the vigilante groups captured a monster in a rope net. 
 It weighed 238 pounds!   After it was weighed, however, the thing 
escaped by dissolving the rope.  Nobody was laughing.  When slugs were 
smaller, it was easy to stop one with a close-up gas-gun blast.  
Unfortunately, that was all you could do: within seconds nearby slugs 
would congregate to the slaughter scene and begin lapping up any scraps 
of leftover slug. 

Before I was married, I took part in the Great Yakima Slug Shoot; it
changed my life completely.  There were 143,500 of us, armed with 
gas-guns, marching shoulder to shoulder in a 40-mile wide swath across 
Eastern Washington.  Armed to conquer, sixteen thousand warriors were 
under my command.  National Guard tanks followed with flame-throwers.  
Tank trucks rolled behind them, dribbling slug-poison over the 
macerated fields.  Road graders were mobilized to scoop up the 
carcasses and convey them to the disposal trench.  Behind these came 
another army equipped with power mowers to shred any leftover slugs to 
ribbons.  It was a dangerous operation and those who fell behind 
sometimes didn't make it out alive. 

The slugs were really stupid: they made no effort to get out of the way
as we advanced.  We cut them down mercilessly.  Sherman's march through 
Georgia was a waltz through the tulips compared with this expedition.  
But the slugs won out in the end.  They simply closed in behind our 
wave of death and destruction, lapped up the residue of poison and 
anything else that was edible, lay down and died.  The next wave of 
slugs added their progenitors to their menu, and regained every inch we 
had taken.  Before long, poison-resistant slugs became the norm. 

They burrowed into the trenches and ate the burned slugs.  They found
stragglers from our shock wave and ate them.  They ate the wooden 
handles from our gas-guns, and the grease from the tank treads, and the 
tires from the trucks.  When the slugs were finished, only chaos was 
left.  I walked back to Seattle on the backs of slugs, sleeping in 
church steeples, cadging apples and pears from abandoned orchards, 
nibbling on my meager store of slug-jerky for protein. 

This year, we were a lot more successful at getting together to plan
slug-hunting operations.  Some of the factories still operating turned 
to full-time weapons production.  Non-combatant supporters of the Slug 
Disposal Corps set up tenuous supply lines to strategic nodes for the 
big stand we had to make.  The objective was to clear out a few square 
miles of slug-free territory and seal it off, impermeable to any living 
thing. With this as a start, we could begin to recapture the world by 
repeating the feat again and again, until all the slugs were 
exterminated. By now, we knew that long-nose pistols could never 
dispatch a slug, but a half-dozen ragged holes in its leathery hide 
would make it stop and stand quietly until the disposal team could take 
over. 

Years ago, some joker suggested we cram the slugs into canisters and
shoot them off into space with rockets -- an idea that must have been 
picked up from NASA back in the 20th Century.  In the end, this turned 
out to be a pretty good idea, only we didn't have enough energy to 
spare for space.  Instead, we set up a range of launch points about 
3000 feet above sea level, high in the Cascades.  They sloped gently 
downward, like  straight, long roller coasters, for more than 20 miles 
toward the Pacific Ocean.  The last couple of miles sloped gently 
upwards, so a rocket-propelled canister of slugs would fly off the end 
and land 20 miles out in the Pacific Ocean.   The huge canisters were 
as big as railroad tank cars, and could hold 80 tons of immobilized 
slugs. 

Every time our warriors "stopped" a slug, the disposal team would load
it onto a canister and truck it to a launch point.  When the canister 
was full, another truck would take its place, while the first canister 
was loaded onto the reusable rocket-powered bobsled that rode the 
"roller coaster".  In a minute or so, the canister would burst (it was 
made of recycled paper) releasing tons of fish-food to the sharks. 

For fifteen months we continued this operation night and day.  We slept
and ate in slug-proof steel barracks; and when we weren't fighting, we 
made bullets from old coat-hangers donated from all over the country.  
As fast as we decimated the slugs, more poured in from every direction. 
It was like emptying a black hole. 

One day, there seemed to be fewer slugs than usual.  We were definitely
reducing their numbers faster than they could replace them.  Before the 
fifth month ended, half the hunters and gatherers had gone home -- if 
you could call it that.  Towards October, we managed to get a couple of 
acres slug-free and began driving in  slug-proof foundations for 
rebuilding our lost civilization.  The rest is history. 

Today, most of the country has returned to near-normal.  The fish
population has increased so greatly that an unlimited world food supply 
can be guaranteed.  In three or four years, communications will be 
completely restored; the airlines will be flying again; roads will be 
open, trains will run...  The aftermath of humanity's war with the 
slugs will be a joyous heritage for a baby boom that's just 
beginnnnnnnnnning. 

Sorry 'bout that.  It's this red ant that just bit my finger.  Big son-
of-a-gun.  I never realized they can bite that hard.  Must be all of an 
inch long.  Well I'll be ..... look, here's another one ..... 

Seattle, April 18, 2009 - Gerald X. Diamond - All Rights Reserved 


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