Zits from Python Pit (Monster Juice, Band 6) - Softcover

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Prologue I

Let me tell you about He Who Would Save Us . . .

It was said that he would come. But when it happened, it wasn't a man in a huge silver plane as I always thought it would be. No, it was a boy who rode on the backs of crocodiles. It was a boy who saved my poor old friends and brought peace once again to The House of Eternal Rest.

The boy's golden hair was nearly black with mud as he dog-paddled with an unthinkable energy up the White Nile. His journey had started weeks before, deep in the base of a mysterious pyramid, thousands of miles north from where he now swam.

He didn't come alone. Following him along the shore was a tired but determined group of monsters, children, and one adult. All of these people-each one his friend-desperately wanted to stop him, for they didn't realize he had great work to do, a great mission to fulfill.

He Who Would Save Us ignored his friends as they struggled to keep up with him along the riverbank. He gasped and wheezed as he pushed against the current, ignoring their incessant meddling.

"Chris!" yelled the pale man in the suit who led the group on the shore. "You have to stop!"

Behind the pale man in the suit, whom I would come to know as Director Z, the monsters nodded in agreement as they ran. There were seven monsters in all: a waterlogged zombie, a werewolf, a vampire, a Bigfoot, a banshee, a swamp creature, and a small cat-faced lizard creature who I was told came from the moon. Four children, the same age as He Who Would Save Us, struggled to keep up. All of them pleaded for the boy to return to the shore.

"I have to go," the boy yelled between strokes. "I have to go south."

He Who Would Save Us was crazed, his eyes wide open, his mouth crooked but determined. He swam like no human should ever be able to swim, using the strength given to him by his power stone-the same power stone that called him to my people.

As he swam, a crocodile slunk into the water.

Seeing the reptiles, the scaly green swamp creature, who went by the name of Gil, jumped into the churning brown water.

SNAP!

Powerful crocodile jaws nearly crushed the skull of the swamp creature.

Let him go! I wanted to scream, but I couldn't let him or his friends know that I was watching.

"You've been in the water for at least thirty miles," Gil said to our young savior. "Time to get out before you get some kind of weird river rot."

"Gil!" Director Z yelled from the shore. His black suit coat was wrinkled from running, but there wasn't a drop of sweat. "Bring him up here at once. We have to figure out what to do with him. He's gone mad."

"Yes, Boss," said Gil. "I'm happy to get out of here!" He burst out of the water with the boy before the crocodile could charge again.

"Nooooo!" He Who Would Save Us screeched. "Must go south! Now! Let me go!"

The gang of monsters surrounded him at the riverbank and pulled him up the shore.

He Who Would Save Us struggled to push the monsters away. But they were young and strong, unlike the demented residents of The House of Eternal Rest.

"I have to do this," he said, frothing at the mouth like a hungry hyena. "Let me do this. It's already been long enough."

But they held him down.

The children, out of breath, finally reached the monsters.

"Guys, slow down!" the boy called Shane said. "We can barely keep up."

"Yeah, well, we almost lost him," said the werewolf, who was called Pietro. He Who Would Save Us tried to run again, but the large, woolly Bigfoot named Roy held him down tightly.

"LEEEET ME GOOOOOO!" he yelled.

"Shhhhhh!" scolded Director Z. "You're making the crocodiles hungry."

"That crocodile looked hungry already," said the athletic boy, Gordon. He flexed his biceps and pee