The Bare Bum Gang and the Holy Grail (11 page)

‘Yuck!’ moaned The Moan. ‘That’s disgusting!’

‘Do you think maybe Zoltan is a lady dog?’ said Noah.

‘She must be. We’ll have to call her Zoltana from now on,’ said Jenny.

Rude Word and Zoltana did some more kissing, but the guard was getting closer, and I didn’t think being kissed by Rude Word would stop
him
from grabbing us. I could hear him shouting, see the spittle flying from his angry mouth.

‘Pull!’ I yelled, and they did.

With a huge sucking noise I was free.

‘Come on, guys,’ I shouted, and we dashed for the fence. Each of us dived through
the
gap. I looked back and Rude Word was trundling along behind us, casting sorry looks over his shoulder at Zoltana, who also looked sad about losing her new boyfriend.

Once Rudy scrambled through, we all ran away a safe distance from the fence. The Group 9 guard stood there shaking his fist at us.

‘And don’t you dare come back,’ he screamed, ‘or you’ll be sorry!’

The Bare Bum Gang responded by blowing raspberries, calling him names, etc., etc., until I told them to stop, as he was only doing his job, which involved him being mean to children.

And then, exhausted, we went home, agreeing to meet up the next morning at the hospital.

Chapter Fifteen

THE RETURN OF THE GRAIL

WE ALL GATHERED
round King Arthur’s bed. He was in a room with two other patients, both of them old men, both of them asleep. Or possibly dead.

King Arthur looked a lot better than he had the last time we’d seen him. He was wearing yellow pyjamas. His beard and hair had been washed, and he looked properly regal, which means like a king, only posher. He didn’t smell of wee at all.

‘Who the heck are you lot?’ he barked when he saw us.

Actually, what he first said was more like ‘
Fwap mwap wmap fwap
’, but then he reached into a glass on his bedside cabinet, grabbed a set of shiny new false teeth and shoved them in his mouth. Then he could talk properly.

‘We’re the Bare Bum Gang,’ I answered. He looked a bit perplexed at that, which was understandable. ‘We helped you when you fainted.’

‘I didn’t faint. I was just having a little rest.’ Then he added suspiciously, ‘Are you the lot that were throwing stones at me?’

‘No, that was the
baddies
. We’re the
goodies
. You asked us to get the Holy Grail from the tower block where you were staying.’

‘The Holy Grail? What the heck are you talking about?’

‘The treasure. The special thing – you told us all about it. We’ve got it here.’

I held up the pretty decorated box with the photo album inside it.

His face lit up as if someone was shining
a
torch on it. ‘My treasure?’ he said, almost deliriously. ‘You’ve really got it? Give, give . . .’

I passed him the box. He opened it carefully, looked inside, and took out the album. Then he looked inside again. He turned the box upside down and shook it.

‘Where is it?’ he asked, half puzzled, half annoyed.

‘It’s there,’ I said, pointing to the book. ‘Your pictures . . . you as a baby . . . your life . . .’

‘But my money? My treasure, where’s that?’

‘Oh. The money jar. We’re sorry, but . . . well, we couldn’t get it.’

I didn’t want to tell him the whole story. It was too depressing.

But just then, I sensed that someone else had come into the room.

‘’Ere,’ said a rough and very familiar voice.

It was Dockery.

What on earth could he be doing here?

He shoved his way between the rest of the Bare Bum Gang to reach the bed. He was holding out a glass jar. A glass jar full of pennies. ‘Me and the boys . . . well, we had a little think.’ Dockery was sort of talking to the air between me and King Arthur, not looking at either of us. ‘Felt a bit rubbish. Thought we’d . . . well, anyway, here.’

He put the jar down on the bed. King Arthur’s bony hands went straight to it, stroking and caressing it like a cat.

‘And we added a couple of quid extra,’ Dockery continued. ‘Buy some flowers or something.’

‘Thank you, thank you,’ murmured King Arthur.

‘Better take these too,’ Dockery said, now looking at me. He placed my U-boat Captain’s binoculars on the cabinet.

Then he put his big face close to mine. ‘If you ever tell a living soul about this, you’re history, get it?’

I nodded, and Dockery barged out.

Me, Noah, Jenny, Jamie and The Moan all looked at each other, not even knowing what kind of expressions to put on our faces.

‘We should probably go now as well,’ said Noah in the end.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen enough weird things for one day.’

We all said goodbye to the king, and left the room.

‘That wasn’t quite what I expected,’ said The Moan, as we walked down the hospital corridor.

‘No,’ I said.

‘He didn’t care about the photographs at all,’ said Jenny, sadly.

‘No.’

‘Bit of a waste of time, really,’ said Jamie.

Then I realized I’d left the binoculars behind me in the room.

‘Back in a sec,’ I said.

One of the old guys in King Arthur’s room had woken up, and he smiled at me when I came in. My binoculars were still next to the box on the cabinet by the bed. I expected to find King Arthur still stroking his money, but the jar, forgotten, was on the cabinet too.

The old king had the photo album open at the first page, with the picture of him as a little baby in a giant pram. His eyes sparkled and his cheeks were wet with tears.

His lips were moving, but I could hardly make out what he was saying.

‘Avalon,’ it might have been. ‘Oh, Avalon.’

I ran back to join the others. They were outside the hospital by the time I caught up with them.

‘What now?’ said The Moan, scuffing his shoes on the ground, in a disgruntled way.

‘Something fun, I hope,’ said Jamie.

‘I’d prefer it if it didn’t involve stinky tunnels and getting chased by mental dogs,’ Noah chipped in.

The Bare Bum Gang certainly needed cheering up. Then I remembered something, and checked my watch.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I do think we’ve earned some fun and some excitement. And I know just the thing. Follow me.’

I led them all across town, refusing to answer their questions about where we were going.

It was only when the grim outline of Corbin Tower began to loom over us that they guessed.

‘It’s today, isn’t it?’ said Jenny.

‘It certainly is.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Jamie asked.

‘BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM,’ said The Moan, right in his face.

‘Oh yeah!’

A big crowd had already begun to gather, at a safe distance, to watch the demolition of Corbin Tower. There were quite a lot of children from our school, plus plenty of grown-ups. There were two police officers to make sure everyone stayed where they should. There was one adult I didn’t quite recognize, at first, because he wasn’t wearing his uniform. And then he winked, and I realised it was the nasty guard, not nasty any more because he wasn’t on duty, and he was only horrible to children when someone paid him to be.

The Bare Bum Gang huddled together
to
watch, and while we were waiting, I told them about what I’d seen in King Arthur’s hospital room.

‘So it was all worth it, in the end,’ said Noah, smiling.

‘We did a good thing,’ said Jenny, ‘and that’s what counts.’

Jamie burped in agreement.

And it was quite funny, because the very moment he burped at least six huge explosions went off around the base of the tower, and it was exactly as if his burp had detonated them. The explosions brought down the building with a massive crash and a great plume of dust and smoke, and I thought then, and I think now, that a really big explosion is definitely the best way to end any adventure.

The Art of Tracking

When you’re on an adventure or a quest, such as the one we were on to find King Arthur’s treasure, it is vitally important to be able to identify any tracks you come across. Imagine if you were on the trail of what you thought was a harmless bunny, vole or wimpy kid, and it turned out to be a jaguar, yeti or samurai warrior? You’d be in very serious trouble, and probably dead.

When you are following animal tracks you should pay attention to various things. Obviously, there is the actual paw print itself. See if it has big claws coming out of the ends of the toes. If it has, you should probably
RUN AWAY
. You should also note the length of the stride (i.e. how far it is between each step). This will tell you roughly how big the animal is. If the length of the stride is quite teeny-tiny, say two centimetres, it is probably a vole and
you
are quite safe. If it is medium, say ten centimetres, it is probably a hedgehog, hare or squirrel, although it might also be a badger. You will still probably not be in too much danger, unless it is one of the notorious killer badgers, in which case
RUN AWAY
. If the stride is long, say a metre or more, it is probably a black panther, and you could
RUN AWAY
if you want, but it’s probably already too late to save yourself, so you should just hope the end comes quickly.

On the following pages you will see eight different tracks. You have to try to guess what they are. The answers are at the end. I have included the Latin name for each killer beast to make the whole thing even more educational.

If you score
7–8
, it means you are an expert tracker, and could easily live in the wilderness forever, eating wild deer you killed with a bow-and-arrow you made yourself.

If you score
5–6
, you are an okay tracker. You could probably survive for a week in the wild eating rabbits, voles, berries etc., etc.

If you score
3–4
, you are not a very good tracker. You might be able to survive for a day by eating worms and grass.

If you score less than 3, you should never go anywhere near the wild because you will definitely be the one that gets eaten, probably by savage badgers, stoats wolverines, etc.

Of course you can cheat, but that would mean two things. 1) You’re a rotten stinking cheater and 2) you’ll probably get eaten by a yeti.