Board Stiff (Xanth) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Of coursh I’m a Czallenge! I am shpending my year of Shervice thwarting other petitioners. Try to get by me and I’ll shlime you with a shleazeball.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Ease pushed forward, leading with the board.
    The zombie lifted one stringy arm. Its discolored fingers held what looked like a huge sludge of snot. It lofted the ball toward Ease.
    Kandy smashed the ball with her face. SQUISH! Instead of flying cleanly into the sky the way a fair-minded ball would, it flattened and clung to the board. She had to peer through its greasy green goo. Yuck!
    “Yeah,” the zombie answered belatedly. Zombies were not notably quick minded; they had rotten brains.
    Ease backed off as the zombie readied another sleazeball, knowing when caution was the better part of valor. He wiped the board off on the turf. That was a relief.
    So how could they handle this disgusting opponent? Kandy looked around; she could do that without actually moving her eyes, because they were flat like a picture, gazing directly at whatever was in sight. She saw an eggplant growing to the side, with a number of fresh eggs. Could this be a way?
    “I see an eggplant,” Ease murmured. “I wonder.”
    Exactly.
    He went to the eggplant. The eggs were oddly labeled with words like SPLORE, PLAIN, and CITED. What did it mean?
    Kandy focused. These were likely to be puns, because the eggplant itself was a pun. What kind of an egg was a Splore? A Plain?
    Ease groaned. “Egg Splore,” he said. “Eggs Plain. Egg Cited. More punnishment.”
    Kandy groaned too, but it wasn’t even a board squeak. Next question: how could pun eggs stop a zombie?
    “I’m just going to throw them,” Ease decided.
    Well, why not? Kandy did not have a better idea at the moment.
    Ease picked the Splore Egg and hurled it at the zombie. It struck a ragged shoulder and splatted messily. Immediately the zombie started looking around, checking everything nearby.
    He was exploring, of course. His mangled pronunciation wasn’t good enough to distinguish between spellings. But he still wasn’t out of the way.
    Ease tossed another egg, the Cited. It struck the zombie, who suddenly began dancing around, excited. But he still wasn’t off the path.
    Ease threw the Plain egg. It caught the zombie on the head. “I need to eggsplain ssomething,” he said. “You can’t egg me on off the path.”
    “Maybe I just haven’t yet found the right egg,” Ease said. He took one labeled Xactly and threw it.
    “Eggzactly,” the zombie said. “You’ll never find the right egg. Not until you’re eggzausted.”
    This wasn’t working. It occurred to Kandy that the eggs were a distraction—an eggstraction?--placed there to confuse the issue. There had to be something else.
    She looked around. There was a kind of garden with pretty flowers, but on closer eggsamination—stop that!--they turned out to be small flowery cars. They were arranged in maplike outlines the shape of nations. What were they?
    Then her board really did warp. In-car-nations! Another eggregious pun. She had to stop this before she eggsploded.
    Beyond the flower cars was a beehive. It looked to be in poor condition. So were the bees. They looked as if they would fall apart at any moment.
    Then she caught on. They were Zom Bees! If anything should mess up a zombie, it should be bees of its own type. That had to bee the key.
    All they needed to do was get the bees to attack the zombie. How could they arrange that?
    “Zom Bees,” Ease said, picking up her thought. “That’s easy.” He walked to the hive and swing the board. It struck so hard that the hive sailed through the air like a lead balloon and smacked into the zombie. He had, per his talent, found the easy way.
    The bees were annoyed. In fact they were furious. They swarmed over the zombie and started stinging him.
    His reaction was curious. Instead of exclaiming in pain, he burst into wild laughter. He rolled on the ground, laughing uncontrollably.
    Kandy realized that