Monkey and Me (14 page)

His eyes were all watery as he gazed at me. “I've got a pay-as-you-go phone. You sure you don't want to phone your mum and dad?”

It was a huge temptation. I could phone home and tell them not to worry, that I'd be back just as soon as I had found a safe place for Malcolm, wherever that might be. But then the hairy monster would have their telephone number. I bet he'd phone them back and get a reward or something for finding us.

I shook my head.

“Fair enough. So why is the monkey wearing a tea cosy? Did he use to work in a café?” He chuckled and bits of food came out of his mouth. I wasn't sure what to say because I don't think chimpanzees have worked in a café anywhere in the world.

“His head was cold,” I said.

“And what about your tea cosy? Is that something your mother knitted for you?” He cleared his gums of food, just like Malcolm. There's definitely a strong link between humans and monkeys. Except monkeys mind their own business.

“It's a beanie,” I told him, “Skimp's mum bought it for me at the market.”

“You're a strange one,” the hairy monster said.
“In all my days I've never seen such a scrawny kid running around loose with a monkey on his arm.”

He tossed a carton of orange juice at our feet and I tore off its tab and guzzled. I hadn't realised I was so thirsty. Then I quickly gave it to Malcolm, who managed to spill it all over his Number 8 shirt.

“All right,” said the monster, pulling the straps tight on his rucksack. “You can have my pitch tonight, but you'd best be gone tomorrow. I'm getting old and I need a warm place to kip. Y'understand, lad?”

I nodded because I wouldn't be there tomorrow. “I promise,” I told him.

He hauled the rucksack onto his back. “Does the monkey have a name?”

That had to be another trick question. I remembered the policeman at the house. “Don't be daft. He's a monkey. Monkeys don't have names,” I said.

“I don't see why not,” he said, staggering to his feet under the weight of the rucksack, “they're not much different from us.”

He knew! Here was someone who understood.

“Two per cent,” I happily told him.

“Oh yeah… right… well, that's a strange name for
a monkey, but then like I said, you're a strange lad.”

He wagged a finger at me. “Tomorrow. Don't forget. Be gone.”

Malcolm wagged a finger back at him.

And then the hairy monster disappeared into the shadows. It just goes to show, you can't judge people by how they look. There he was, looking quite terrifying but he'd given us something to eat and drink and his bed for the night. Mum always says we should never talk to strangers, that they might be serial killers. Every stranger is a serial killer as far as Mum is concerned.

There was no time left to think of what else might come out of the night. Some of the big lorries were starting up. Diesel fumes blew from their exhausts, blue puffs like dragon's breath.

The long haul drivers were heading out.

Once I was sure the hairy monster stranger had gone, I lifted Malcolm and headed for the corner of the fence.

Old Barry wasn't really that old, but I remember Dad telling me he was fairly useless as a security guard on the main gate at McKinley's. He hated the cold and would sit hunched up in his tiny gate house with a small telly, flask and sandwiches.

A couple of the early-start drivers were getting ready to leave, and Old Barry was opening the gates. That was good for us, because it meant he was at the far end of the yard and wouldn't have a chance of seeing me and Malcolm climb under the mesh fence in the corner – even if he
wasn't
fairly useless.

One of the drivers had already started up his lorry, probably to get the cab's heater going. He walked around its trailer checking that all the lights and everything were working, that the tyres looked all right and that the big doors at the back were still security sealed with their little tag.

And that was when I climbed up into the cab
on the opposite side with Malcolm. For a horrible moment I nearly panicked, because I'd forgotten about the extremely comfortable air-assisted seats – the most comfy you can get. They hiss when you sit on them! It seemed so loud I was sure the driver would run back, thinking one of the tyres had gone down. But he didn't. I think being so scared made the noise seem louder than it actually was. Being scared can do that.

I pulled Malcolm up into the bunk behind the driver's seat and tugged the half-curtain closed. This is where drivers keep all their stuff, and they always have the curtain closed for security so no one can look inside the cab and see if there's anything worth nicking. There was a duvet, pillows, a small telly and a couple of books. I pushed Malcolm up into the overhead bunk.

The driver would only be allowed to be behind the wheel for a few hours and then he'd stop and probably go and have a cup of tea in a motorway café. Until then we should be okay – provided Malcolm stayed quiet.

I tucked him in behind me and nuzzled his face, stroking it, signing for him to be quiet. He watched me.
Trusting me. Then he hid behind his hand again. The driver climbed back in the cab and slammed the door. The big engine started up, rumbling, waiting for him to engage the clutch and push the gear stick into first. The lorry creaked forward.

“All right then, Barry, see you on Wednesday!” he called to the fairly useless security guard.

Then the air brakes hissed and the lorry rolled into the street. I could hear the indicator light clicking then felt the heavy sway of the lorry as it swung around the corner.

I peeped through the curtain and saw the back of the man's head. The dashboard lights glowed warmly and in the distance I could see our road to freedom. The motorway.

Then as we pulled out of the haulage yard I glimpsed a blue light flashing. They had tracked us! Maybe they used dogs to follow our scent. How did they find us so quickly? Two policemen climbed out of their car near the place where the hairy monster found us. The lorry swung away, but I could see in the big wing mirrors a figure come out of the darkness and point down the side of the building where we had been.

The kind-hearted hairy monster had turned us in and we had escaped just in time. So much for trusting people no matter how they look. But they couldn't catch us now. The driver moved up a couple of gears and the cops soon disappeared from the wing mirrors.

The heater blew warm air into the cab, the driver pressed a button and classical music came out of the speakers. It was very slow and gentle, like a lullaby. I made sure I was wedged in when I snuggled down and felt Malcolm put his arm around me. This was the safest place we could be and the lorry's gentle movement began to rock me asleep.

But as I closed my eyes I was thinking of those policemen. How long would it be before they told Dad we'd been sighted? The first thing he'd say would be: “Where? McKinley's? That's where I used to work.”

Time was running out. My leg hurt and I felt sick. I couldn't let myself fall asleep. I had to stay awake long enough to think of another plan. When kids went missing the police did everything they could as quickly as they could – and when a child went missing with a monkey that had escaped from
a research laboratory they probably moved twice as quick.

What to do?

Think, Beanie, think!

I watched the dashboard's digital clock. The seconds and minutes just kept disappearing into some kind of electronic cyber hole. Time just wouldn't slow down and give me a chance to work things out. It had been two hours since we drove out the yard and now it was three in the morning. I had never been up this late, not even when we went on the Channel ferry to Disneyland in France.

I just wanted to rest and cuddle up to Malcolm. He lay there watching me. He couldn't sleep either. Did he have a memory? Could he remember what they did to him? I touched his face. Then I clenched my fist and moved it in a circle on my chest.
I'm sorry.

He pointed at me, then put one hand in the other and tugged. That meant I was his friend. He wrapped his arms around me. I could feel him trembling. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to reach through the curtain and tap the driver on his shoulder. I would tell him everything and he'd feel so sorry for
Malcolm that he would drive us exactly where we needed to go. Which was where? To tell the truth, I had given up the idea of getting to Africa. Getting this far had had been difficult enough. I would have to find an animal sanctuary and maybe the driver knew where one might be.

But of course I didn't tap him on his shoulder. That would have been incredibly irresponsible. He would have got such a fright that he might crash the lorry and then we would be in an even bigger mess.

The driver shifted gears, and when I peeped back through the curtain I saw that we were heading up a slip road for a motorway service station. Mist settled across the dark trees and the motorway lights were smothered and dull. The driver took the exit that said ‘lorries' and slowed right down, then carefully, just like Dad used to do, eased into a space. We were surrounded by blacked-out lorries, huddling in the darkness, like Malcolm and me.

When the driver switched off the engine and his lights, he climbed down and headed through the narrow channel between the parked lorries towards the motorway café's fuzzy lights and then disappeared from view.

I eased Malcolm out the bunk, got him onto my back and climbed down. The air-assisted seat sighed. It was cold outside the cab and the smell of diesel stung my throat. If anyone had figured out that we might have been in one of the lorries leaving McKinley's then we needed to find another way of escape. A change of vehicle, that's what they did in the movies.

Limping, I edged along the gaps between the lorries. Most of them had curtains drawn across the windscreen and side windows, as drivers slept in their cabs. I was struggling with my leg and Malcolm's weight. Sweat made my beanie feel like a wet cat on my head – all soggy and scratchy.

I was worried about Malcolm, he didn't seem to be that well and I was sure he needed more food. Trouble was, I only had thirty-three p in my pocket. I was keeping the apple we had left for a real emergency. I took Malcolm into the trees and untied the piece of T-shirt from my leg. The bleeding had stopped but it looked red and puffy. Anyway, the strip was enough to wrap around a thin tree and tie onto Malcolm's harness that he still wore.

He looked a bit alarmed so I spoke to him quietly.
There was just us and the weird lights in the fog, so no one would see him if he stayed quiet. Even if he squeaked a bit it should be all right because of the whooshing sound of the motorway traffic in the background.

“You stay here,” I said, but used my hands as well. “I'm going to get you some food and a paracetamol.” Though I didn't know how to say paracetamol in sign language.

I zipped him up in my fleece, and when I looked back the mist and shadows had camouflaged him completely. I felt a horrible tug inside my stomach. It was as if I was abandoning him – and he didn't know that I was coming back. He was just a small chimpanzee all on his own, tied to a tree in the fog at a motorway service station. How brave was that?

I ran.

The girl at the till had a stud in her nose, and another one in her tongue. I didn't think she was really interested in serving anyone at that time of the morning. She clicked her tongue and the metal stud tapped against her teeth. For a second I thought of Tracy and wished she was here so she could talk
more to Malcolm. I'm sure she'd be able to make him understand a lot more than I could. Tracy only had one stud, though, and this girl looked as though Dad had been at her with his DIY staple gun.

I was trying not to panic.

The girl looked at me. “I'm not allowed to sell you medicine at your age.”

She was suspicious! If I opened my mouth too wide my heart would have jumped out and lain wobbling on the checkout counter. I smiled. That kept it below throat level.

“Oh, they're not for me. They're for my dad. He just came in and got those bars of chocolate for me. There he is, the man in a leather jacket carrying his take-away coffee,” I wheezed. It was either nerves or the damp.

She bent forward and looked towards the exit of the café area, where the man was going out towards the cars.

I couldn't get the voice in my head to shut up: Don't panic! Be natural. Play it cool. That's called being nonchalant.

“I said I wanted a banana and he said that while I was here I should get him some paracetamol for
his headache. Because he'd forgotten to buy some.”

She looked at me as if to say, “Oh, yeah?”

I smiled.

She didn't. She clicked. And held up my banana. “Only one?”

“I'm not that hungry,” I said.

She sighed, holding out her hand for my money. “You're short,” she said.

“I know, but my dad says I'll grow taller when I get older.”

She stared at me like a zombie. The dark rings under her eyes weren't make-up.

“Whatever,” she said and took the banana back. “Thirty-four p for the banana, thirty-two p for the paracetamol.” She gave me one p change.

I looked at her, uncertain whether to plead for the banana.

“What?” she grunted. “You said you weren't that hungry. You can't have both.”

There's not a lot you can do with one p, so I put it in the Flying Ambulance collection box. You never know when you might need them and it does no harm to have made a donation.

And if she ever goes out in a lightning storm
with all those studs, she might be thankful as well.

My hands were shaking something terrible. I got a plastic water bottle from a dustbin and headed to the toilet to find a tap. Providing I didn't put my lips on the rim of the water bottle, I didn't think I would catch the plague or anything. Though the way I was feeling, I might have had it already – what if Sweet Dreams Sweet Factory really had been a biological warfare site? What if Mum had lied? Maybe that's how I got sick in the first place! My mind wandered as I filled the bottle in the toilet's tap below a sign that told me it was drinking water.

Back outside I got a fright. The yellow lights soaked into the fog like kitchen towel soaks up spilled orangeade. It looked horrible, like the whole world was sick. The mist swirled and shapes changed. I couldn't find him.

“Malcolm?”

I heard a small cry. He sounded frightened.

“Malcolm, I'm here, I'm here… where are you…?” I had to push through the mustard cloud. Then suddenly I saw his face peering out beneath the tea cosy. Droplets clung to his fur and the fleece,
he looked like a sugar-coated doormat.

As soon as I reached him he clung to me and we held each other. It was like he was asking me never to leave him again and I was promising I wouldn't.

It said on the packet of paracetamol that if you're under twelve you should only take half a tablet. I didn't know how old Malcolm was and I was worried that if I gave him the wrong dose I might hurt him. But he was definitely not well. I didn't even know if chimpanzees could have paracetamol. But then I remembered Peacock's Feather. She always got a really bad allergy every spring. Her nose used to run, her eyes would close, she'd get lumps all over the place. The vet was going to charge Mr Peacock more than he paid for his Sky subscription to give her injections so he went down to Superdrug and got a packet of antihistamine off the shelf, and fed her those. She was soon back to being a total lunatic.

I gave Malcolm two tablets. If he had survived one of Mum's Valium, these shouldn't hurt him.

He was wheezing and I didn't know if it was due to the fog. I untied him just as a lorry's headlights caught us. For a second I froze. Then they dimmed, the engine stopped but the sidelights were still on.
A shadow jumped down and ran into the fog behind the trailer. I only hesitated for a second because I realised the lorry driver had pulled in and ducked behind his trailer for a quick pee.

“Come on, Malcolm, that's our new ride,” I told him, grabbing his hand and walking as quickly as I could to the lorry. If the driver had only stopped for a quick pee we didn't have much time. I climbed up on the passenger side and opened the door. It was a Renault Magnum, considered by some to be a top-spec vehicle – the King of the Road, that's what Dad always called them – though I didn't have time to explain that to Malcolm.