The Trouble with Sauce (10 page)

‘What can you see?’ asked Nathaniel. They stood on Caplan Street, staring at the school they had been avoiding for the past three days. Jonty lowered his binoculars and handed them to him.

‘It’s a mess. The tents look like a cyclone’s hit them and the crops have all been uprooted. I can only see the corner of the library, but the windows could be smashed,’ Jonty said.

‘Can you see anyone?’ asked Prune.

‘They used to be so busy marching to the library and moving from class to class, but I can’t see a single student now. It’s like the school’s deserted.’

‘Just what we wanted you to think!’ A voice behind them cackled. ‘Jonty the mouse running round on his wheel, doing exactly as we calculated — again!’

They turned round to see Boris standing there. He looked so different they nearly fell backwards
down the hill. His hair was even scruffier than when he was normal. It was filthy. His eyes were wide open, his nostrils flared, his head twitched and his mouth moved, even when he wasn’t speaking. He stared straight at Jonty. The bags around his eyes suggested that he had not slept for days.

He began to pant, breathing in and out, as if he couldn’t control his excitement. ‘Something to learn!’ he said, and then howled at the top of his voice, ‘Something to learn!’ and shook his hands in the air.

‘Something to learn!’

Jonty and his friends were rocked by a hundred voices behind them. The crazed students had swarmed up the hill. They were surrounded by faces as mad as Boris’s.

The overdose had sent them into a learning frenzy. As soon as the sauce began working, they had charged for the computers in the library, fought over the keys to access sites, research and information. Everyone who couldn’t access a computer had run to the books. Page after page was absorbed as they’d flicked through, reading every word — at a page a second. Book after book, site after site, they’d charged through everything until there was nothing left.

Every book was ripped apart so they could learn how it was made. They ate pages to see what they tasted like. Then they started throwing tables to see
how hard you had to throw them before they smashed.

How strong were the chairs? Broken in minutes.

How flammable was the carpet? It was alight in seconds.

For two days, desperate for information, they prowled through the school, tearing apart every cupboard and every drawer.

‘I need more information!’ screamed Anastasia at her mobile phone after it had run out of power. ‘More information!’ She hurled it through a window.

Miranda threw her phone through a window, too. ‘Did my Nokia make the same sound as your Motorola?’ she said. ‘Which brand of phone makes the loudest sound?’ Her eyes opened wide with glee. They could conduct an experiment and learn from it. Soon they were all throwing their phones through windows to compare the sound. Anastasia quickly drew a graph of the results.

‘Its Nokia!’ she shouted, thrilled to have learnt something again.

Knowing Jonty well, Boris had calculated that he would return to school, but check it from a safe distance first. The hill on Caplan Street was the most obvious choice, so he had organised a hunting party to trap them.

*  *  *  

The mob surged around Nathaniel, Prune and Jonty and carried them back downhill to the school. As they did, hands slipped into their pockets and removed their mobile phones.

‘Time to text the parents!’ Boris announced.

Within minutes a text had been sent from their phones to their parents, saying that they couldn’t face the shame of what they had done to the school and had run away.

‘That’ll give us a few days to find out all we can about you!’ Boris laughed.

Inside the school, every window was broken and had been covered with black plastic sheeting. The corridors were dark. The lights were still on in the classrooms, but with no daylight, they had an eerie yellow glow that brought out the red in the crazed students’ eyes.

‘Into the holding cell with them!’ Boris shouted, as the prisoners were carried into what had once been the Maths room. ‘You’ll stay here until we’re ready for our experiments,’ he said.

‘Boris!’ shouted Jonty. ‘This is mad. You’re not learning a thing. Remember Croxall’s Maths in here? Remember the chalk circles — how we used to do our homework together so we could sit together?’

Jonty thought if he could remind Boris of the old days, he might begin to see sense.

Boris narrowed his eyes as if he was thinking about something from the past, something he could barely remember. Then his face twitched and a smile flicked across it. ‘You can talk to Croxall about the old times!’ he snarled and locked the door.

Mr Croxall was on the floor with his back to the wall and his knees pressed up against his chest. The few teachers left at the school when the sauce spilt had all become test subjects to help the students in their learning.

‘What happened?’ Jonty asked.

Mr Croxall opened his hands. They were covered in blisters and chalk. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead tears burst into his eyes. ‘Boris wanted to discover how long I could draw chalk circles on the floor before my hands gave out completely. It’s 6 hours 36 minutes and 12 seconds.’ He tried to wipe his tears with the back of his hand.

‘Brockman finally got me onto The List. Funny, isn’t it!’ he said.

‘No,’ said Jonty, ‘it isn’t. I’m sorry.’

‘You poor thing!’ Prune dropped to the floor and took the Maths teacher’s hand in hers. There was nothing she could do, but give him some positive energy.

‘You have to get out,’ Mr Croxall said. ‘We’re all that’s left to learn from. They are desperate to find
an alternative way of enhancing their brains, now that the sauce is finished. They’ll do anything.’

‘Get out, whatever you do!’ Mr Needham yelled. He had been fired from the science lab and was sitting on the floor with his arm around Ms Brown, trying to comfort her.

‘You’re pathetic, all of you,’ a voice croaked from the corner. ‘Typical teachers! Come across superior brains and you crumble.’

Mr Croxall nodded towards the far corner of the room. It was too dark to see what was there, so Nathaniel and Jonty walked over. Three desks had been turned on their sides to make the walls of a small den. As they got closer they could see a man wearing only his underpants. He was crouching down, with his arms clutched around his knees.

It took a moment for them to recognise him.

‘Mr Foster?’ Jonty blinked.

Mr Foster snorted and spat at him. ‘The boy who ruined everything — what a surprise!’ As he spoke he pushed his finger along the ground left to right.

‘What did they do to you?’ Nathaniel asked. Mr Foster shrugged and flicked his hand.

‘They’ve been experimenting with electrical currents to his brain, to see if it would make the sauce work even more aggressively,’ Mr Croxall said. ‘The screams were terrible.’

‘He deserves it!’ shouted Ms Brown. ‘He’s a monster. It’s all his fault!’

‘No — it’s
his
fault!’ Mr Foster jumped up and pointed at Jonty. ‘If he hadn’t thrown the sauce, my school would still be perfect and none of you would have a job!’ He sneered at the other teachers.

‘Is that what you were trying to do?’ asked Nathaniel. ‘Get rid of teachers?’

‘Look at them, Nathaniel,’ Mr Foster whispered to him as the dim light glinted in his eyes. ‘They are pathetic, all of them. All teachers are petty bullies, who hate clever people. They hate people like us, people who are truly intelligent.’

‘But you’re a teacher, Mr Foster,’ Nathaniel said gently.

‘No I’m not!’ he screamed and jumped up and down. ‘Never, never, NEVER! I’m not like Miss Pickles, not like her!’ He retreated to the corner of his cage and muttered her name over and over again.

‘You won’t get any more sense out of him,’ said Mr Croxall. ‘His brain is all but fried. From what I could make out, Miss Pickles was a teacher when he was in primary school. She sounds like a real horror, always spanking the children, pulling their hair, humiliating them, throwing objects. She had a mission to make every child in her class cry at last once a month; said it was character-building. He
developed a complete hatred for all teachers and decided the best thing would be to do away with them altogether.’

That was the reason for the pills and the tomato sauce. Mr Foster’s entire life had been dedicated to getting rid of teachers. With brilliant students who could teach themselves, there would be no need for teachers anymore.

‘I believe he wanted to get rid of every teacher in the world,’ Mr Croxall said, then added, ‘I imagine that might seem quite appealing to you, Jonty.’

It was the first time Jonty had heard him use his first name. ‘But who would we play tricks on?’ he said with a cheeky grin.

Mr Croxall smiled and nodded. ‘Well, you need to find a trick to get yourself out of here before —’

It was too late. The door flew open and Boris charged in with a team of student guards.

‘It’s time for your spot tests. Are you all ready?’ he barked.

Guards swarmed in and carried off Nathaniel and Prune, who tried to resist, but it was impossible against so many. It took six guards to grab Jonty. He punched and fought, throwing them off time and again, but eventually they pinned him to the ground, tied his hands together behind his back and dragged him away.

‘Prune, Nathaniel, don’t worry!’ he shouted down the corridor. ‘I’ll come for you.’

Prune and Nathaniel could just hear his voice as they were rushed away in the opposite direction. They hoped he was right.

‘Agggghhh!’ Prune screamed out as the electric current shot through her fingers. She made it as loud as she could every time, in the hope that someone, somewhere would hear her.

She was being testing for psychic ability and to see whether being really frightened sharpened her psychic powers. She was tied in a chair with electric wires clipped onto her fingers. Anastasia sat opposite her. She had a pile of cards, each with a different shape drawn on it. She would pick up a card and, without looking, Prune would have to work out what the shape was.

‘Next,’ Anastasia announced and chose another card.

Prune screwed her eyes up, stared at the back of the card and then into Anastasia’s eyes. ‘A star,’ she said and waited for the zap, but it didn’t come. She was right.

Miranda noted down the result on a clipboard.

‘Next!’

‘A circle — yeeeeowww!’ She was wrong; it was a square.

‘I think we have established she has no psychic ability,’ Miranda said. ‘She’s only got three out of twenty right.’

‘Do you believe in psychic powers, Prune?’ Anastasia asked.

‘Yes, they exist,’ Prune said.

Anastasia grinned at Miranda. ‘Then let’s continue. Next.’

Prune concentrated, dreading the thought that she would get the next one wrong.

Two rooms further down the corridor, Nathaniel was also tied to a chair. He had tinned tuna all over his chin and shirt. Boris was testing to see whether eating fish would improve Nathaniel’s memory. In front of him was a range of surgical instruments. Boris would identify them quickly and then move them all round. Nathaniel had to recite what each of them was in order.

‘A Cloward retractor, Ruskin Rongeurs, a body distractor.’

‘Wrong! It’s a Cloward ruler, not a retractor — more tuna!’

Mike spooned more tuna into Nathaniel’s mouth and made him eat it. He had already gone through eight tins, so his stomach was full, his mouth was sore and the smell of the fish was making him feel sick. He would never be able to look at a tuna sandwich again.

‘Come on, Nathaniel.’ Boris tapped him on the head. ‘We’re trying to establish whether fish is in fact good for the brain, but you’re really not doing very well.’

Jonty’s heart was pounding fast — dangerously fast. Henry the Octopus watched the heart monitor that was measuring Jonty’s heart rate and smiled even more.

‘Another k faster,’ he said. One of his assistants turned up the speed on the treadmill. Jonty was going at 16.7 km/h. He pushed his legs out to get a big stride, but they still had to fly round to keep up.

‘More coffee,’ Henry commanded and the assistant squeezed more coffee from the drink bottle into Jonty’s mouth. He had no choice but to swallow. For half an hour Henry had been making him run on the treadmill and drink coffee to see if caffeine would enhance performance. So far Jonty was managing to run faster with the coffee than without. Before he stumbled, the fastest speed he had reached without coffee was 16.3.

Jonty stared straight ahead, trying not think of his pounding heart and burning lungs. He glanced
at Henry the Octopus, hoping that he might see some sign of the sauce wearing off, but it seemed like he would stay crazy forever. Jonty gritted his teeth and kept his mind on Prune and Nathaniel. He dreaded what the students were doing to them.

‘Fancy going up to 17, Jonty?’ Henry said.

‘17?’ Jonty panted. ‘That’s for wimps.’ He grabbed the coffee bottle, downed as much as he could between breaths, and threw it aside. Then he slammed his own hand on the speed button. ‘Let’s see what this baby can do!’

Jonty kept this hand down until the treadmill reached 20, the maximum speed. The belt was a blur of dark grey under his feet as they flew faster and faster. The treadmill started to rock from side to side with the force of his weight pounding so hard. He moved as much as he could to make it rock even more. As the coffee hit his blood, he felt his heart rate surge. His feet went even faster as he grinned at Henry through the sweat pouring down his face. ‘How’s — this — for performance — enhancing?’ he shouted between pants.

As he breathed in, he could smell smoke. Something was burning. He grinned to himself as the students started to look worried. Smoke was pouring out from the under the treadmill. Waiting for just the right moment, he kept running hard. The treadmill burst into flames and locked — exactly as he wanted.
He used the force of his running to leap forward and push the whole treadmill over at the front. In one smooth movement, he jumped over the top, shoved Henry out of the way and ran out of the room. As he sprinted down the corridor he felt like the walls were flying past him at 100 k’s.

‘Agggghhh!’ He ran even faster as he heard Prune’s scream coming out of the old language room. He threw himself at the door, not even bothering to open it. It flew off its hinges and landed on the ground with an almighty
bang.

Anastasia and Miranda jumped at the noise as Jonty shot over to Prune, ripped off the straps that tied her to the chair and almost dragged her out of the room.

‘Nathaniel’s next door!’ she said.

Jonty charged at that door too and sent it flying. Boris whipped round. He was holding a tin of tuna. With that crazed look in his eye, Jonty must have found some sauce. Boris threw the tin of tuna at him, but he batted it out of the way.

‘Sorry,’ Jonty said.

‘For what?’

‘This!’ Jonty threw a punch that sent Boris flying across the room.

Prune quickly freed Nathaniel from the chair.

He stood up, but almost fell over. ‘I think I’m going to be sick!’ he said.

‘Later,’ Jonty commanded. ‘Now, we run!’ He grabbed their hands and bolted for the door. He could barely feel his heart, it was pounding so fast. All he knew was that he had to get his friends out of the school.

Boris staggered to his feet and stumbled after them. ‘You won’t escape. We haven’t finished our experiments!’ he shouted. He held his sore cheek as he ran. He was going to enjoy the final experiment more than ever.

As soon as they rounded the corner, Jonty saw how hard it would be to escape. Dozens of students were marching down the corridor towards them. He turned to go back the other way, only to find Boris standing with his arms folded and another mass of students behind him.

‘We’ll just crash through!’ he panted.

‘We can’t!’ Prune shrieked, but arguing was pointless. Caffeine-loaded blood was charging around his body and nothing could stop him.

‘Just follow me!’ He breathed, took one step and broke into the fastest sprint he could, running right at the students.

‘Come on!’ Prune grabbed Nathaniel’s hand and they followed him.

‘Aaagggghhh!’ Jonty let out a bloodcurdling yell as he sprinted faster and faster. The pain in his legs and the burning in his lungs were nothing. He
blocked it all out. At top speed he pushed kids aside, throwing them to the left and right.

‘He’s going to do it!’ Prune was amazed as she pulled Nathaniel through.

Jonty was like a demon. All around her Prune could see dazed and stunned students with no idea what had hit them. Nathaniel stumbled after her, one hand over his mouth. His stomach rose up and down like a stormy sea.

‘Not now,’ he said over and over to himself, determined to ignore the stench of tuna in his nose.

Jonty charged ahead, his eyes focussed on the far end of the corridor. He didn’t even see the students in front of him, they were like long grass to be brushed aside. Then suddenly he came to a shuddering halt.

The school rugby team had used their old skills and formed a tight scrum. Jonty battered against them, but simply bounced off their massive bulk. He flew up into the air, then down and landed on his back. His head rolled back and smashed on the hard floor. Prune stared in horror as her friend lay motionless on the ground. She gripped Nathaniel even tighter as the mob closed around them. Nathaniel looked at Jonty’s limp body, felt the students’ hands grab him and forgot all about being sick.