The Bare Bum Gang and the Holy Grail (6 page)

The next ten minutes was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life – and remember, I’ve got a baby sister, so I know all about misery.

Sweat began to run down my face and into my eyes, making them sting. Everything
ached
– my hands, my knees, my back and my head, every time I bashed it on the roof.

Obviously, The Moan was the first to moan.

‘This is rotten,’ he said. ‘I want to go home.’

‘My knees hurt,’ said Jenny. ‘And I think there’s a hole in my tights.’

‘You should have worn trousers then, like a normal person,’ said The Moan.

‘No arguing,’ I said. ‘If we fight amongst ourselves, the enemy will pick us off one by one.’

That did the trick. There was no more arguing, and everyone kept on crawling forwards. It was hard work, but each time I looked up, the light in front was a tiny bit bigger.

I noticed that every few metres there’d be a sort of side tunnel, smaller than the main sewer. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I heard scuffling, rustling
noises
coming from them, along with a nasty, musty smell.

Then, suddenly, Noah stopped. I bumped into him, and Jenny bumped into me.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘I heard something.’

‘What?’

‘Squeaking.’

‘You mean like a rusty gate?’ I said hopefully.

‘No. Not like a gate. Like a . . . like a rat.’

Now, I knew that, in normal circumstances, rats are not very dangerous. However, these were not normal circumstances. These were special circumstances. And in certain special circumstances rats are extremely deadly dangerous. One of those special circumstances is if you corner them. Being cornered changes a rat from a nice peaceful (if dirty and annoying) little fellow into one of the most vicious and lethal beasts in the universe, comparable to a jaguar, T. rex, or
saltwater
crocodile (which is the scariest sort of crocodile, especially if you’re at the seaside).

If you corner them (the rats, I mean, not the crocodiles, although that is also not to be recommended) they leap straight for your neck and rip your throat out, leading to blood spurting everywhere and a horrible death, as bad as, or maybe even worse than, death by burning, drowning, electrocution, being eaten by jaguars, etc., etc.

The other situation in which rats become evil, deadly homicidal maniacs is when you enter what is known as their ‘home territory’.

And everyone knows that the home territory of the rat is the sewer.

‘Did he say rats?’

That was Jenny, still scrunched up behind me. Now I had turned into a sort of sandwich, with Noah in front and Jenny behind. And there’s nothing a rat prefers to eat more than a sandwich, whether it’s cheese, ham or boy.

‘I don’t like rats,’ she added unnecessarily.

With my hand shaking just a little bit, I shone the torch ahead.

And there, gleaming back, were two points of evil yellow light.

Noah screamed.

I screamed.

Jenny screamed.

The Moan screamed.

Jamie burped.

Then things got really bad.

More yellow dots.

Equals more eyes.

Equals more rats.

Equals more screaming.

It was now that I had to call on all my qualities as a Leader, i.e., dauntless courage, extreme genius and grace under pressure.

‘Rude Word,’ I yelled. ‘Din-dins.’

I heard a wet snuffling sound from behind, and my fat dog came squeezing up.

‘Din-dins’, you see, means dinner in doggie
language
, and it was the only call Rude Word ever responded to. I took his ugly mug in my hands and made my speech.

‘Listen, Rudy,’ I said, staring deeply into his poo-coloured eyes. ‘I know you let yourself
down
badly when you hid from that big nasty dog Zoltan earlier on, but now’s your chance to make up for it. Many heroes have been cowardy custards for a while, such as Achilles when he sulked in his tent, but then he lost his temper and marmalized millions of Trojans. And that’s what you have to do, except with rodents instead of Trojans. You see, ahead of us there lies an army of killer rats. If we go forwards, they’ll tear out our throats and drink our blood, like a horde of zombies and vampire bats—’

‘Oooooooooo,’ groaned Jennifer.

‘And if we turn our backs on them and run away, they’ll probably gnaw through our bums and then eat us from the inside out, until all that’s left is a load of skellingtons, with fat rats in the middle of them lying around licking their lips, rubbing their swollen tummies, burping, etc., etc.’

‘Oooooooooo,’ groaned everyone.

‘So, Rudy,’ I continued, ‘it’s all down to you. Understand?’

All through this speech, Rude Word had been looking at me carefully, expecting me to produce his bowl with his dog meat in it. Now he gave a sort of whining yawn that went like this: ‘Yyyaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwpppp.’

That meant he was ready.

It was now or never.

I pointed down the tunnel at the yellow rats’ eyes, and I repeated, ‘Din-dins.’

Rudy looked down the tunnel, then back at me, then down the tunnel again. Then, finally, it sank in.

In his time Rude Word had eaten many things – lumps of our car, lots of furniture, Weetabix, snotty hankies, dead pigeons, small trees, Pot Noodles, cat poo and one pet python (or boa constrictor). Now he was about to add something else to his menu. Without another sound, he shot off along the sewer like an iron ball along the barrel of the cannon on a pirate ship.

The rats didn’t know what hit them. One second the eyes were there, glinting evilly.
The
next second they went out, as if there’d been a power cut, and all we could hear were terrified squeaks.

I shone the torch down the tunnel. Rude Word was gnashing and snapping and chomping and yomping.

‘Quick, everyone,’ I shouted, ‘let’s move before they regroup and attack us from the flanks or up the rear. And tuck your trousers inside your socks so the little monsters can’t run up your trouser legs and destroy your undercarriage.’

The gang didn’t need to be told twice. We zipped along the rest of the tunnel double quick, following in the wake of the doggie tornado that was Rude Word.

In a couple of minutes we were out, blinking in the sunlight.

I didn’t look back down the tunnel. If I had . . . well, I might have seen something interesting. And unpleasant. Very unpleasant.

Chapter Eight

THE WASTELAND

WELL, IT LOOKED
like sunlight when we first emerged blinking into it. In fact it was still miserable and grey, but it dazzled us after the darkness of the sewer.

We crouched down behind a pile of bricks that had once been a wall.

‘Well done, gang,’ I said. ‘Did we all make it?’

I did a quick register to make sure. I didn’t want to leave anyone behind in the sewer to be eaten alive by rats.

‘Noah?’

‘Here.’

‘Moan.’

‘Here.’

‘Jenny?’

‘Here, of course. Where else would I be?’

‘Rude Word?’

‘Woof.’

‘Jamie?’

‘GROOOUUURRRPPPPP.’

‘Please, Jamie, no burping. It might give away our position, plus it’s disgusting.’

‘Sorry.’

‘And you haven’t said if you’re here yet.’

‘What? Oh, here.’

‘Thank you. Now, gather round, everyone,
and
we’ll plan the next stage.’

They all squatted in a half-circle round me. Their faces were full of excitement and fear. This was definitely the scariest adventure we’d ever had.

‘Well then?’ said Jenny.

‘Well then what?’

‘Well then, what next?’

‘Oh, yes. Er, we need to reconnoitre the situation.’

‘Eh?’ said Jamie.

‘It means we have to have a look around.’

I got out my U-boat Captain’s binoculars, and peeped over the broken wall. After a few seconds trying to get the focus right, I could see all around the perimeter to the gate where the Group 9 guy was on guard with his hellhound. Ahead of us there was about five hundred metres of open ground. Beyond that the tower block loomed huge and grim. Between us there were a couple of bulldozers and a dumper truck, left idle
for
the weekend, plus some other piles of bricks, some wheelbarrows, some planks, and all the other cool stuff you find on building sites.

I checked back to the Group 9 hut. As I watched I saw the guard come out, with Zoltan on a lead. He began to walk away from us, around the inside of the fence.

‘A bit of good luck,’ I whispered to the others. ‘The guard is doing his rounds. Looks like he’s going to go all the way round the fence. In a couple of minutes the tower will be in between him and us, so we can make it without being seen.’

‘What about sniffing,’ said Noah.

‘Sniffing is rude,’ I replied. ‘If you’ve got a runny nose you should wipe it on a hanky or a leaf or your sleeve.’

‘No, I didn’t mean
my
sniffing, I meant Zoltan.’

‘Well, obviously dogs can’t use hankies . . . Oh, you mean he’ll sniff us out? Well, the tower should block off most of our smells.
But
we should make sure we don’t do any farts. It’s well known that a dog can smell a boy’s fart from fifty miles away.’

‘What about a girl’s?’ said Jennifer, with a funny look on her face.

‘What? Oh, I don’t think girls do them,’ I said.

The Moan laughed. ‘Course they do – she does them all the time.’

Jennifer hit him in the ribs.

‘Well, you do,’ he said very quietly, rubbing his side.

‘Maybe she does and maybe she doesn’t,’ I said, ‘but if she does, it probably smells of flowers, so Zoltan won’t recognize it. He’ll just think,
Oh, what a nice smell. A lovely patch of roses must have come into bloom
. Something like that. But, you know, in doggie language, so it would be more like,
Woof woof, growl woof, snuffle woof
, but meaning what I said.’

Jennifer gave me a little smile when I’d finished. I was being nice to her because we were on a kind of olden-days adventure,
and
we were sort of knights, so you have to do something called ‘being chivalrous’, which is all about looking after girls (whether or not they really need it) and saying their farts smell of flowers (whether or not they do).

All this time I was watching the guard and his dog like a hawk. A hawk with high-powered binoculars. Zoltan was the sort of dog that did a wee on every bush to show that he owned the place. So that’s how they went.

Walk.

Wee.

Walk.

Wee.

It wasn’t long before they’d gone walking and weeing behind the tower. This was our chance. We were out of sight.

‘See that dumper truck?’ I whispered. They nodded. ‘We sprint for that. Ready? Go!’

We jumped over the wall and raced like rabbits for the truck. Jenny got there first, of
course
. She’s so fast she’d probably have got there first if she’d done it in cartwheels.

Jamie made it next, then The Moan, then me, with Rude Word right on my heels, and Noah at the back. I was gasping when I reached the dumper truck.

‘Halfway there,’ I said, and was about to begin another encouraging speech, when Jenny interrupted: