Bumageddon: The Final Pongflict (15 page)

‘Eleanor?' said her bum, who was dazed and almost blue from the cold.

‘Don't worry,' said Eleanor, hugging her bum to her chest. ‘I've got you. And I'm not letting go . . . whether you like it or not!'

‘I like it . . .' said her bum, as Eleanor reached the furthermost point of her swing.

But their ordeal was not over yet.

They now had to swing back through a gauntlet of enraged bumodactyl chicks and their super-enraged bumodactyl mother.

Eleanor took a deep breath, gripped the toilet paper extra hard and let out a banshee scream that her father had taught her.

The bumodactyls were too stunned to snap at her as she swooped past.

‘Great going, Eleanor,' said her bum.

‘Thanks,' said Eleanor as she gripped the rock-face and, helped by her bum, began climbing back up to the ledge.

Z
ack hauled in the toilet paper as fast as he could.

He was looking out straight ahead of him—trying not to look down—when he saw a familiar shape flying through the air towards them.

The Great White Bum!

‘Hurry, Eleanor!' yelled Zack.

‘What do you think I'm doing?' she said. ‘I'm going as fast as I can.'

‘Look behind you,' said Zack.

Eleanor glanced over her shoulder. She knew as well as Zack that it would be disastrous for the Great White Bum to catch them out here. If he realised that Robobum was a machine, their whole plan would come unravelled in an instant.

Zack was really sweating now.

The Great White Bum was getting closer.

And to make things worse, the mother bumodactyl was heading their way to retrieve the bum that had been stolen from her.

The fossil museum of the future was looking more and more like a real possibility with every passing second.

Zack imagined his bones being excavated from the stink bog.

The bones would be labelled and put into a glass case.

Maybe they'd even be assembled and motorised and hooked up to a button on the outside of the case for snotty schoolkids to push and laugh at as his bones jiggled around.

The bumodactyl was swooping and snapping at the toilet paper. One of the perforations began to tear apart.

‘Faster!' yelled Zack, grimacing as he strained to pull Eleanor up the mountain. ‘The Great White Bum is almost here!'

Suddenly Eleanor's bum appeared . . . and then Eleanor's head.

She reached up and Zack pulled them both onto the ledge beside him, almost crying with relief.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘let's get back into Robobum while we still have time.'

They clambered up and into Robobum's teleportation beam.

The bumodactyl swooped in for a final desperate attempt to retrieve Eleanor's bum. This time Eleanor's bum joined Eleanor in a banshee scream that scared the bumodactyl rigid and sent the unfortunate creature
plummeting over the ledge and down towards the stink bog below.

But despite whatever humiliating fate was in store for it in the future, it received no sympathy from the bum-fighters, who were already teleporting back to the relative safety of Robobum.

Or so they thought.

A
s Zack rematerialised inside Robobum, he could tell something was wrong. Exactly what, however, he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Was it the fact that Ned was lying face down in a pool of blood?

Or was it the fact that the Mutant Spew Lord was sitting in a chair with a bum-gun pointed at them?

Zack thought quickly—well, as quickly as you can in the midst of a state of total confusion—and came to the conclusion that it was both of these things put together.

Something was most definitely—and most horribly— wrong. As wrong as something most definitely and most horribly wrong could possibly be.

‘Welcome back,' said the Mutant Spew Lord. ‘But I'm afraid there's been a little accident.'

‘What have you done, you putrid piece of slime?' said Eleanor, staring in shock at Ned's body.

‘Well,' said the Mutant Spew Lord, ‘there was a slight difference of opinion between myself and Ned while you were out and . . .'

‘You
shot
Ned!' said Eleanor.

‘ “Shot” is a very strong word,' said the Mutant Spew Lord.

‘But it's the
right
word,' said Eleanor.

‘I had no choice,' said the Mutant Spew Lord. ‘He was threatening the success of the mission!'

‘Ned
was
the mission!' yelled Zack, blinking back tears. ‘He
built
Robobum. He rescued us. If it wasn't for him none of us would even be here!'

‘No,' said the Mutant Spew Lord. ‘And if he'd had his way none of you would be here now. He wanted to just fly away and leave you.'

‘Ned would never do a thing like that,' said Eleanor. ‘You haven't changed at all. You're still a liar. And a lousy one. And besides, if you're so interested in our welfare, why are you pointing a gun at us?'

The Mutant Spew Lord shifted uncomfortably. ‘Because I rather suspected that you wouldn't believe my side of the story and that you might try to do something silly.'

‘Why don't we ask Robobum?' said Eleanor.

‘I'm afraid that won't be possible,' said the Mutant Spew Lord. ‘She is having a little sleep.'

‘We're under manual control?' said Zack.

‘No, you fool,' said the Mutant Spew Lord coldly. ‘You're under
my
control.'

Zack looked into the Mutant Spew Lord's eyes.
As the Kisser, the Mutant Spew Lord had switched allegiance from the bum-fighters to the bums. As the Mutant Maggot Lord he'd switched allegiance from the bums to his beloved maggots and then finally back to the bum-fighters. Now it seemed he had switched allegiance once again.

Slowly, as Zack stared into the depths of the Mutant Spew Lord's vacant eyes, he realised the truth. The Mutant Spew Lord's true allegiance was to nobody but himself. He was interested only in power.
Absolute power.
And if that came at the cost of the survival of the human race, then that was a price the Mutant Spew Lord was willing to pay. Even his apparent selflessness in sacrificing himself to the mutant maggots was a purely selfish act: part of a desperate—but calculated—strategy to transform himself yet again in his endless, insatiable quest for power. Nothing—and nobody—else mattered. Not Ned, not Eleanor, not Zack and not . . .

‘Oh no!' said Zack. ‘Where's my bum? What have you done with my bum? I swear, if you've hurt it . . .'

Suddenly there was an almighty jolt as Robobum rose into the air again.

But not under her own power.

While the bum-fighters had been discovering the truth about the Mutant Spew Lord, the Great White Bum had been busy smashing the bumodactyl against the cliff-face. Its broken body and splattered brains were being hungrily devoured by the bumodactyl chicks. And Robobum was now cradled safely in the Great White Bum's arms.

‘Sorry about that, my love,' said the Great White
Bum in a soothing voice as they took off. ‘But don't worry. Neither Stink Kong nor the bumodactyl will be giving us any further trouble. Soon we'll be at the Crack of Doom where we'll be married and leave for our honeymoon on the new Earth where we will live happily ever after.'

M
eanwhile, on board Robobum, all hell had broken loose. The sudden movement had caused the bum-fighters to lose their footing and fall to the ground in a sprawling heap. Eleanor landed first. Her bum fell on top of her. Zack landed on top of her and then his bum fell on top of them all.

‘Where did you come from?' said Zack, overjoyed to see his bum again.

‘I was hiding in the roof,' said his bum. ‘Hiding from
him
!' Zack's bum pointed at the Mutant Spew Lord, who, being more liquid than solid, hadn't been affected by the upheaval. ‘He went crazy! He killed Ned!'

‘We know,' said Zack, patting his bum.

‘Ned was getting ready to fire Robobum's nuclear wart-head at the Great White Bum,' said Zack's bum.

‘Why?' said Eleanor.

‘To protect you and Zack,' said Zack's bum. ‘He was worried that the Great White Bum was going to see you. And then the Mutant Spew Lord went crazy. He grabbed a bum-gun and shot Ned in the back. Then he tried to kill me, but I ran away and hid.'

‘That sounds more like the Kisser that I've come to know and despise,' said Eleanor grimly. ‘Just you wait. By the time I get through with you, you're going to wish you'd never reconstituted yourself. You're going to wish you'd never crawled out of the brown lake alive. In fact, you're going to wish that you'd never been born.'

‘I'm not sure that hurting me is such a good idea,' said the Mutant Spew Lord. ‘Stop and
think
about it. You're a smart girl, Eleanor. Headstrong, but smart. No matter what you do to me—or
think
you want to do to me—the Great White Bum's rise is inevitable and we have the perfect opportunity to take advantage of it.'

‘There's nothing “inevitable” about the Great White Bum's rise,' said Eleanor. ‘We can still stop him!'

‘But why would you
want
to stop him?' said the Mutant Spew Lord. ‘Don't you see? This is what was prophesied in
The Book of Bumageddon
! I am doing nothing more than helping destiny to fulfil itself.'

Eleanor spat. ‘There's no such thing as
destiny,
' she said. ‘It's not a place or a foregone conclusion. We're making it up as we go along and we can work towards a better world or a world of Bumageddon—it's our choice—
your
choice—
right now
!'

‘But that's my point exactly,' said the Mutant Spew Lord. ‘With the aid of Robobum we can rule the
world alongside the Great White Bum! That opportunity doesn't come along every day, you know. By defeating the Great White Bum now, we ultimately lose—we become nobodies with no power—but if we help the Great White Bum we win—
we win the world.
'

‘You mutated piece of mutant zombie blowfly spew,' said Eleanor, walking towards the Mutant Spew Lord with her hands outstretched. ‘Give me the gun. Your dirty doublecrossing treachery ends here.'

‘You want to talk about dirty doublecrossing treachery?' said the Mutant Spew Lord. ‘Let's start with you riding around in a robotic bum making promises of marriage that you have no intention of keeping! I would have thought that qualified as dirty doublecrossing treachery on at least two counts: pretending to be what you are not and intended breach of promise.'

Eleanor stared at the Mutant Spew Lord, her eyes cold. ‘I never said I was perfect.'

‘Neither did I,' said the Mutant Spew Lord, raising the bum-gun.

‘No, Eleanor!' said Zack. ‘Stop! He's deranged. He'll do it!'

‘Zack's right,' said the Mutant Spew Lord. ‘I will.'

But Eleanor didn't say a word. She just continued walking towards him.

Zack saw the Mutant Spew Lord's finger twitch on the trigger.

There was a blast of light and an incredible noise as three rounds of atomic bum-blasting bullets leapt from the mouth of the gun.

‘E
eergggh!' said a voice.

But it wasn't Eleanor.

It was her bum.

At the crucial moment it had leapt in front of the Mutant Spew Lord's bum-gun and was now rolling around on the ground clutching its cheeks.

Eleanor fixed the surprised Mutant Spew Lord with a look of deadly intent and tore the gun from his hand, raised it to her shoulder and pointed it at his head. Or, at least, what passed for his head.

He shielded himself weakly with his remaining arm, or, at least, what passed for his remaining arm.

‘You can mess with me all you like,' said Eleanor, ‘but nobody messes with my bum! Say your prayers, mutant—if there's a god mutated enough to hear them . . .'

‘Negative,' said Robobum, crackling back to life. ‘I have checked my data banks. There is no god
that
mutated.'

‘Thanks, Robobum,' said Zack, who had taken advantage of the commotion to reactivate Robobum.

‘Guess it's just not your lucky day,' said Eleanor to the Mutant Spew Lord as she squeezed the trigger.

Zack closed his eyes.

W
hen Zack opened his eyes, he was amazed to see that nothing had changed.

The Mutant Spew Lord was still sitting in his chair.

Eleanor was still standing in front of him with the gun.

And a glance out the window indicated that they were still speeding towards the Crack of Doom.

‘The Mutant Spew Lord is still alive,' said Robobum. ‘Status report indicates the Mutant Spew Lord's body density is a mere one per cent—in other words, he is 99 per cent flesh-free. The bullets have passed through him with little impact.'

‘Wish you'd told me that before,' said Eleanor.

‘You didn't ask,' said Robobum.

‘Okay,' said Eleanor. ‘I'm asking now. How do we get rid of this piece of bullet-proof slime?'

‘Removal of onboard slime best achieved by activation of wet and dry suction unit located in hall closet,' said Robobum.

The Mutant Spew Lord looked horrified.

‘No,' he said. ‘You wouldn't . . . not the vacuum cleaner!'

‘I'm afraid so,' said Zack, retrieving the unit from the closet. ‘You leave us no choice.'

Zack switched it on.

The high-pitched suction unit roared into life.

The Mutant Spew Lord cowered in terror and started to slide across the floor and into a crevice.

‘Quick, Zack!' yelled Eleanor. ‘He's getting away!'