The Ministry of SUITs (33 page)

Authors: Paul Gamble

BOOK: The Ministry of SUITs

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The knee of a
Diplodocus
crashed into Blackbeard Junior's chest and sent him sailing through the air. He smacked into the ground but then was almost immediately hit by a
Tyrannosaurus
's tail as it ran past him. That sent him spinning and twirling until he was trampled by a dozen
Velociraptors
, their claws tearing his flesh. For a second it looked like he was trying to get to his feet, but a passing
Stegosaurus
knocked him over. As he fell his hook hand caught on its spiked tail. It hooked tight and Blackbeard Junior was dragged along as the
Stegosaurus
ran into the distance.

Blackbeard Junior was not the only thing to suffer from the dinosaur's trampling. The enormous cannon named
Queen Anne's Revenge
had been stamped and smashed into flat little pieces. Even if the fuse was still alight somewhere, it certainly wasn't attached to the cannon anymore.

As the dinosaurs passed where Trudy and Jack were, Grey stood up on the back of his purple
Brontosaurus
, paused for a few seconds, and then leapt off, performing a double somersault before landing neatly.

“Dinosaur surfing,” said Grey. “I imagine it'll be all the rage at the next Olympics.”

“That was the most amazing thing I've ever seen,” said Jack.

Grey raised one eyebrow. “Keep in mind that it's only your first week on the job. It will get weirder.”

Jack laughed.

“But Blackbeard Junior got away.” Trudy frowned.

Grey put a reassuring hand on Trudy's good shoulder. “Sometimes the bad guys do get away. The important thing is that we foiled his plan. Everyone is safe. The cannon is destroyed and the prisoners freed.”

“But won't he be back?” asked Trudy.

Grey shrugged. “Blackbeard Junior? Yes. Or someone like him. There'll always be some maniac planning to do something awful and spoil the world for the rest of us. But we'll be here waiting.”

“The Ministry of Strange, Unusual, and Impossible Things.”

“The Men in Suits,” agreed Jack.

“And women!” Trudy pointed out.

“Quite,” said Grey. “But now I think we ought to get you to a hospital. You appear to have a shard of bone sticking out of your shoulder. It looks painful.”

“It does look painful. About the same level of pain that I experience when you punch me in the shoulder,” agreed Jack.

Trudy looked at Jack and balled her fist. She raised herself up to punch him in the shoulder, but luckily the pain of movement caused her to pass out. Jack looked at her unconscious form. “Sometimes I wish she could be like this all the time.”

Grey carefully put his hands under Trudy's shoulders and nodded for Jack to take her feet. “We'll take her to the Ministry and get the medics to fix her up.”

Jack remembered Nurse Nufty with a leg where her arm should have been. “Grey, how about we just take her to a regular hospital instead.”

“A very sensible suggestion, Jack. A very sensible suggestion indeed.”

MINISTRY
OF
S.U.I.T.S
HANDBOOK

OBJECTS

E
ASE
OF
B
EING
T
RAMPLED
BY
D
INOSAURS

Objects generally fall into two categories. Category A is objects that can be trampled by a dinosaur. Category B is objects that
can't
be trampled by a dinosaur. There are very few objects which fall into Category B (jumbo jets, skyscrapers, etc.)

People are almost always Category A objects unless they are really very fat indeed.

EPILOGUE

TIDYING UP

Despite the fact that Northern Ireland had come close to destruction, Jack was amazed at how easy it was to tidy up the loose ends.

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

Jack and Grey had managed to get Trudy up the rope ladder and found David waiting for them. “Are we all saved?”

“Pretty much.”

“Did you capture that pirate bloke?”

“No, he got caught up on a dinosaur and was dragged away. No idea where he is now.”

“Dinosaurs?” asked David.

Jack thought that finally curiosity had gotten the better of David.

“There was a really good documentary on dinosaurs last weekend on BBC. Did you see it?”

Jack decided not to react to how calm David was about everything that happened. No matter how strange things got, David was always going to be a little stranger.

The freed children all went back to their families. Of course no one was told that they had been kidnapped as part of a plot to try and create a floating Northern Ireland. The Ministry ensured that a story was spread that it had been an illegal gold mine. Missing hands and legs were explained away as mining accidents. The story was preposterous, but it was more believable than the truth. People would believe the most ridiculous things as long as you didn't ask them to think too much about it.

Of course some people asked awkward questions about why the kidnappers had all continually talked about “pieces of eight” and why their children had been forced to learn sea shanties. But in the end they stopped asking questions. After all, the idea that there were pirates in the world wasÂ â¦ strange, unusual and, wellÂ â¦ impossible. Most of the stories the kidnapped children told were passed off as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The next day in the paper a story appeared saying that Mr. Teach, the chief executive of Chapeau Noir Enterprises, had gone missing while flying his personal jet. Jack had a feeling that Blackbeard Junior would be back. A man capable of cutting an island in two wouldn't be defeated so easily by a runaway dinosaur.
91

Trudy got her shoulder fixed at the Ulster Hospital. The doctor was a friend of Grey's and agreed to write up the operation as being due to a dog bite. Trudy's arm would be sore for months afterward, but she quite liked the scar. “Scars are your body's way of letting people know that you have interesting stories to tell,” she told Jack.

Trudy seemed to enjoy coming to school in a sling. Rumors about what had happened to her abounded. Some people said she had gotten into a fight with an Olympic medalâwinning boxer. Other people said that she had crashed a stolen car.

Jack and Trudy were summoned to the Minister's office and both awarded medals at the Ministry for foiling Blackbeard Junior's plot.

“You both deserve these,” said the Minister as he placed the gold medals around their necks. “But keep in mind the work of the Ministry is best kept mostly secret. Don't go around showing these medals to everyone.”

Jack frowned. “What's the point in having a medal if you can't boast about it?” he asked.

Grey took the medal from Jack and unwrapped it. It was just chocolate covered in tinfoil. He took a bite of the medal and handed it back to Jack.

“Really? Chocolate? Like the gold coins you get at Christmas.”

The Minister nodded. “Interestingly enough they based the idea for those coins on our medals, not the other way round.”

“Chocolate medals. That's a bit of a swizz.”

The Minister shook his head. “Not at all. They taste lovely. If you need to hide them in a hurry, you can just eat them. Makes perfect sense.”

“Do you have any medals?” Trudy asked Grey.

“In the past I got a few. Maybe a dozen or so. Hard to keep count when you just eat them.”

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

The next week at school Jack and Trudy sat together on a wall.

“The weekend seemed really quiet,” Jack observed.

“Quiet's nice sometimes,” said Trudy as she looked down at her sling.

David walked across the playground and said hello. “Hey, Jack, there's a guy in the school office looking for you.”

“Oh yeah? Who?”

“Didn't catch his name,” said David. “Big man, wore a tutu, was carrying a pair of pincers.”

Jack's face turned white.

But that's another story.â¦

MINISTRY
OF
S.U.I.T.S
HANDBOOK

CHOCOLATE MEDALS

R
ECORD
FOR
W
INNING
M
OST
M
INISTRY
M
EDALS

The bravest man in the Ministry won over thirty thousand medals. He was one of the best-ever operatives.

Unfortunately he was forced to retire as he got too fat to work in the field after eating all his medals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'd like to thank Gemma
92
and Holly,
93
the best work colleagues I've never met.

THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK.

The Friends who made

THE
MINISTRY
OF
SUITS

possible are:

JEAN FEIWEL
, Publisher

LIZ SZABLA
, Editor in Chief

RICH DEAS
, Senior Creative Director

HOLLY WEST
, Editor

DAVE BARRETT
, Executive Managing Editor

KIM WAYMER
, Production Manager

ANNA ROBERTO
, Editor

CHRISTINE BARCELLONA
, Associate Editor

EMILY SETTLE
, Administrative Assistant

ANNA POON
, Editorial Assistant

OUR BOOKS ARE FRIENDS FOR LIFE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Gamble
, author of The Ministry of SUITs, was born and brought up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He currently works in the civil service. His job only occasionally involves working with dinosaurs. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

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