Near Extinction

by R. A. Spratt

  ‘Where did you two come from?’ asked Fin.

  ‘I snuck on the bus when everyone fell asleep around the camp fire,’ said Loretta. ‘I didn’t like to say anything critical, this being my first week at a new school, but it did seem silly to fall asleep on the dirt outside in a desert, when there was a bus full of cushioned seats nearby. Really, the only redeeming feature of an incredibly old bus is that it was built when manufacturers still put springs in seats.’

  ‘And I got on the bus to hide from Matilda,’ said Tom. ‘She keeps trying to help guide me places. She wanted to know if I needed help going to the bathroom.’ He shuddered at the memory.

  ‘So we’ve been assaulted, kidnapped and dragged across the desert inside a dinosaur on top of a bus,’ said April. ‘And you’ve slept through the whole thing?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Loretta. ‘I’m feeling very well rested. I think it’s the vibrations of the bus. It’s so soothing. Like getting a massage.’

  ‘Can we chit-chat later and focus on rescuing ourselves now,’ said Fin.

  Something out the back window of the bus had caught April’s attention. ‘Doesn’t look like we’re going to have to do anything,’ said April. ‘Look, the cavalry is coming.’

  Joe, Fin and Loretta followed her gaze. In the distance, they could see the blue flashing lights of a police patrol car.

  Meanwhile at the front of the bus, Georgia was driving and Bruce was sitting behind her, peering out into the darkness.

  ‘Where are we going to go?’ asked Bruce. ‘We can’t drive a bus and a dinosaur across the country.’

  ‘We’ll steal a normal car at the next town,’ said Georgia.

  ‘But the next town is Currawong,’ said Bruce. ‘There’s nothing normal in Currawong.’

  ‘There’s got to be something more normal than a bright pink bus with a Tyrannosaurus rex on the roof,’ said Georgia.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ asked Bruce.

  ‘Which noise?’ asked Georgia. ‘The rattling, the shaking, the grinding? They’re all deafening. This bus is noisier than a World War One battle!’

  ‘Not the bus,’ said Bruce. ‘I can hear a wailing sound.’

  Georgia could hear it too now. And the wailing was getting louder. Georgia glanced in her wing mirror. There were blue flashing lights behind them, getting closer. ‘It’s the cops!’

  ‘Drive faster!’ urged Bruce.

  Georgia pressed the accelerator flat to the floor. The engine strained and shook, the bus increased its pace by only the tiniest fraction. The police car whizzed past them at twice their speed, zoomed up the road a few hundred metres, and then skidded sideways to a halt, lit up by the headlights of the bus.

  ‘Go straight through him,’ urged Bruce.

  ‘I can’t murder a police officer,’ said Georgia. She hit the brakes and started changing down through the gears.

  ‘I don’t want to go back to jail,’ said Bruce.

  The bus came to a lurching halt, but Georgia did not turn off the engine. ‘If we stay calm we can talk our way out of this,’ she said.

  Constable Pike had walked over and was pounding on the bus door. ‘Open up!’ he demanded.

  Georgia pulled the lever and the door hissed open.

  ‘What seems to be the problem, officer,’ she asked politely.

  ‘Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle,’ said Constable Pike.

  ‘Why?’ asked Georgia. ‘I wasn’t speeding. I know that for a fact. Because I tried speeding and this bus wasn’t up to it.’

  ‘I have concerns about the roadworthiness of your vehicle,’ said Constable Pike. ‘Step down here, please.’

  ‘No,’ said Georgia. ‘I wasn’t speeding, you can’t make me.’

  Constable Pike stepped up into the bus so that he wouldn’t have to keep yelling over the sound of the engine. ‘Ma’am, you have a giant prehistoric animal attached to the roof of your vehicle. I have reason to believe that it belongs to the Gulargambone Dinosaur Park. I can see said dinosaur in plain view . . .’

  THUD.

  Constable Pike did not get to finish his sentence because Bruce had climbed out a window on the far side, crept around and whacked him over the head with a spanner. The constable had collapsed face first into Georgia’s lap. She pushed him off into the aisle. Bruce clambered over the top of Constable Pike’s unconscious body. Georgia wrenched on the door lever.

  ‘Hit it!’ said Bruce.

  They took off ‘speeding’ again.

  Mum, Dad and Ingrid were having the most awkward road trip ever. They were driving back to Currawong from the airport.

  Once they had got out of the prison by crawling through the sewers, slipping over the border and catching a plane had not been too hard. The hard part had been getting rid of the smell. They had all had multiple showers and changed into fresh clothes, but an odour still hung over them.

  They had all been so exhausted they slept through most of the flight. And they couldn’t exactly have a conversation about international espionage on a crowded plane. Now they were in a car just the three of them, they should have had plenty to talk about but they were all strangely silent.

  This was pretty normal for Ingrid. She didn’t believe in unnecessary verbal communication. She was driving and concentrating on the road. But Dad and Mum didn’t have much to say either. Dad was sitting in the front passenger seat, feeling very anxious. He tried to soothe himself with calming thoughts about pruning but it was no use. He couldn’t ignore the fact that his estranged wife was sitting a metre behind him. Mum didn’t have anything to say either. She had spent three months in prison avoiding saying anything, despite all the latest psychological interrogation techniques being used on her. She was hardly going to crack now just because of a little awkward silence.

  They were about forty-five minutes from Currawong. Sixty if you drove at the speed limit, but Ingrid never did. The road stretched long and straight into the distance. You could see any obstacle literally miles away, so Ingrid noticed right away when up ahead, there came into view – a police car parked in the middle of the road.

  ‘Something is wrong,’ said Ingrid.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Dad.

  Mum leaned sideways and forward so she could get a better view out through the windscreen.

  ‘Is it some sort of trap?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think Constable Pike is smart enough to stage an ambush,’ said Ingrid.

  ‘But he wouldn’t have just broken down in the road,’ said Mum.

  Ingrid shrugged her shoulders. ‘Maybe not. But he is dumb enough to forget to get petrol.’

  ‘Don’t slow down,’ said Mum. ‘Drive round it.’

  They were closer now. There was no sign of Constable Pike.

  ‘No, stop!’ said Dad with authority.

  Ingrid did not like Mum. She respected her as one of the best living espionage operatives in the world, but she didn’t like her because of what she had done to Dad. When Ingrid first met Dad she had been contemptuous of him. He was a mess in every way. But over the years she had grown to regard him with affection. As a spy herself, Ingrid had met very few good and nice people. Dad might be incompetent and weak, but he was a good man. And Ingrid knew so few good people. As a result of these complicated thoughts, when Mum said ‘go’ and Dad said ‘stop’, Ingrid slowed the car.

  ‘The Constable may be hurt,’ said Dad.

  ‘He might be dead,’ said Mum. ‘Us getting out and getting killed too won’t help him.’

  Ingrid stopped the car entirely. She had wanted to be a spy since she was twelve years old. But she didn’t want to end up merciless like Mum.

  They all scanned about. There was no sign of anyone anywhere. Ingrid got out, so did Dad. Mum sighed and climbed out too.

  ‘What could have happened?’ wondered Dad.

  ‘Maybe he’s taking a leak somewhere in the scrub,’ said Mum.

  ‘A leek?’ said Dad. ‘Leeks would never grow out here. Th
ey like a moist soil.’

  ‘No, a leak as in going to the toilet, urinating,’ said Mum.

  Dad blushed. He didn’t like it when people talked about the toilet. Which was why it was particularly distressing for him having crawled through a sewer the previous day, because now he smelled like one.

  Ingrid was peering in through the windows of the patrol car. She opened the door.

  ‘The engine is still running,’ she said.

  ‘How much petrol is in the tank?’ asked Mum.

  Ingrid leaned in to read the gauge. ‘Nearly full.’

  ‘Then he can’t have left here long ago,’ said Mum.

  A voice crackled over the CB radio, ‘Pike, this is Bilgong Station, do you read me? Over?’

  Ingrid reached in, picked up the handset and said in her deepest most manly sounding voice, ‘Go ahead, Bilgong.’

  ‘A crop dusting chopper found some Currawong High kids out at the Dinosaur Park. Their school bus has been hijacked. Some of the kids appear to have been kidnapped by the hijackers.’

  ‘How many kids?’ asked Ingrid, in her Constable Pike voice.

  ‘Two boys, two girls and a dog,’ said the despatcher. ‘All from the same family, the name is Peski. Oh, and a blind kid called Tom. Do you know them?

  ‘Yes,’ said Ingrid, forgetting to sound masculine. ‘And he’s not blind, he’s vision-impaired.’

  ‘What?’ said the dispatcher.

  Ingrid just dropped the handset.

  ‘The kids have been kidnapped?!’ whimpered Dad. He had heard the conversation but he desperately didn’t want to believe it was true. It would be so wonderful if he was asleep in bed and that the entirety of the last eleven years were just a horrible nightmare. But he knew it couldn’t be a dream. His imagination was not capable of coming up with how badly he smelled at that moment.

  Mum jumped into the driver’s seat. ‘Get in. This car will go faster.’

  Ingrid slid over the bonnet and got into the passenger side. Dad clambered into the back, behind the grill that protects the driver from prisoners.

  ‘Put your seatbelt on, Harold,’ advised Mum. She punched the accelerator and the police car took off at top speed in pursuit of her children.

  The Peski kids plus Tom and Pumpkin were still hidden up the back of the bus.

  ‘Now they’ve kidnapped Constable Nitwit as well, there goes any chance we had of being rescued by him,’ said April.

  ‘We’ll have to rescue ourselves,’ said Joe.

  ‘How are we going to do that?’ asked April.

  ‘We could pull up that floor panel,’ said Fin, pointing to an access panel in the linoleum. ‘That would expose the driveshaft. It should be fairly easy to sabotage it.’

  ‘You’re suggesting we sabotage a speeding bus, while we’re on it?’ said April.

  ‘That doesn’t sound very safe,’ said Tom.

  ‘No,’ agreed Loretta. ‘But being kidnapped isn’t very safe either.’

  It was surprisingly easy for Fin to pull up the floor panel. The driveshaft was right there below them, spinning away.

  ‘B-b-but how do we sabotage a drive shaft?’ asked Joe.

  ‘In the movies they always pour sugar in the engine,’ said April.

  ‘That’s in the petrol tank,’ said Fin. ‘This is a drive shaft.’

  ‘Well what do you suggest, Einstein?’ asked April.

  ‘We could stick a spanner in it,’ said Fin.

  ‘You’re kidding! You want to stick a spanner in the works?’ said April. ‘Talk about a total cliché!’

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ said Fin.

  ‘We could stick your head in the drive shaft,’ said April. ‘You’re good at shoving it places it shouldn’t fit.’

  ‘Get back,’ said Joe.

  Fin and April looked up to see that Joe had found the window smashing tool from inside the bus. He dropped it down through the access hole. It hit the driveshaft, spun off into the dirt and disappeared into the darkness behind the bus. Luckily the bus engine was so noisy, Georgia and Bruce didn’t hear a thing.

  ‘We need something longer and thinner that we can jam right into the universal joint there,’ said Fin, pointing to the point where the drive shaft met the wheel axle.

  They all looked about. Buses don’t have many detachable parts, probably to prevent people using them to sabotage the bus. But April’s eyes lit on something. ‘Gimme your stick,’ she demanded of Tom.

  ‘What?’ asked Tom.

  April reached out and snatched the white cane Tom used to find his way about with. It was still attached to Tom’s wrist by the strap.

  ‘Hey, I need that,’ said Tom.

  ‘You don’t need to be able to find your way about,’ said April. ‘You’re being kidnapped, you don’t have any choice about where you’re going.’ She tugged the wrist strap away from Tom before he could protest further, turned around and speared the cane into the drive shaft. It was a direct hit, the cane was chewed into the u-joint. The wheels locked.

  ‘What’s going on?’ wailed Georgia as she desperately tried to keep control. But the bus veered off the road and was bumping over uneven ground.

  ‘Hit the brakes!’ yelled Bruce.

  Georgia started pumping the brakes but it was no good. The bus did not slow down.

  ‘Brace yourselves for impact!’ called Fin. Joe grabbed Loretta, wrapping his arms about her and clutched on to a seat back. April launched herself on Tom, knocking him to the ground and holding him there like a spider about to eat its prey.

  There was an enormous CRUNCH as the bus slammed into something, and a dreadful scraping sound as momentum kept carrying the dinosaur forward. It slid straight off the top of the bus.

  The Peski kids, Tom and Loretta were sprawled down the bus aisle. Pumpkin barked wildly. Fin had landed on Joe so was the first to be able to extricate himself and look out the window. Dawn was just breaking. Fin could just make out the silhouette of what the bus had hit.

  ‘We’ve crashed into the giant poo!’ cried Fin.

  Joe, April and Loretta all struggled to their feet and peered out. Fin was right. The front of the bus had smashed right in to Currawong’s famous landmark, the Giant Potato that did not actually look like a potato.

  ‘The symbolism of this moment is priceless,’ said Loretta with a satisfied smile.

  ‘You’re all under arrest!’ bellowed Constable Pike. While they were looking out of the window, the constable had regained consciousness and was now standing in the stairwell where he had collapsed. He had his gun out and he was pointing it at the Peski kids.

  ‘Why don’t you put the gun down,’ suggested Loretta kindly. ‘From the glassy look in your eye, and the irrational nature of your actions, I think you might have concussion. And by “think” I mean I’m one hundred per cent sure. I’m just trying to be calm and polite because you’ve got a gun.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ ordered Constable Pike, shaking his head and blinking like he was trying to regain focus.

  ‘Hey, you can’t speak to Loretta that way,’ said Fin.

  ‘I’ve had enough of you Peski kids,’ said Constable Pike. ‘You’re not talking your way out of this one.’

  ‘Talking our way out of what?’ asked April. ‘We haven’t done anything.’

  ‘That’s what you always . . . wah!’ said Constable Pike. As he tried step up into the aisle of the bus, he tripped over Bruce’s inert form and whacked his arm hard on the doorframe.

  BANG!

  The gun in his hand went off.

  ‘Arf!’ cried Pumpkin.

  April screamed a bloodcurdling scream.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Tom.

  ‘He shot Pumpkin!’ wailed April. There was a growing red stain on her school blouse where she clutched her little dog to her chest.

  ‘You beast!’ accused Loretta. ‘Shooting an unarmed dog.’

  Constable Pike was clutching his arm. ‘I think I’ve broken my elbow.’

  ‘Don’t try and
make excuses,’ said Loretta. ‘Shooting a moodle is police brutality.’

  April was clutching Pumpkin to her chest and wailing tears of devastation, ‘My baby! My poor baby!’

  ‘L-let me see,’ said Joe.

  April didn’t stop wailing but she did look up long enough for Joe to get a clear view of Pumpkin in her arms. The dog looked happy as ever. His tail was wagging. His eyes were bright. Although one of his ears was slightly smaller than the other.

  ‘Um,’ said Joe. ‘I think he’s going to be all right. It’s just his ear.’

  ‘My dog is deaf!’ wailed April.

  ‘It’s just the tip of his ear,’ said Joe.

  ‘My dog is deformed,’ cried April.

  ‘Not de-formed,’ corrected Tom. ‘Differently-formed.’

  ‘I’ll differently-form you,’ said April, instantly stopping her wailing as she braced herself to attack Tom.

  ‘No!’ said Constable Pike. ‘You’re the ones in the wrong here. I won’t let you bulldoze me this time. I am arresting you all. You are all going to end up locked in a juvenile detention facility. You’ve gone too far this time. You’ve hijacked a bus and wrecked two local landmarks.’

  ‘Two?’ asked Fin. ‘I thought there was only one giant poo.’

  ‘How do you explain the dinosaur on the bus as well?’ demanded Constable Pike.

  ‘Oh that,’ said Loretta. ‘We had nothing to do with that. Nothing that was our fault anyway.’

  ‘It was them,’ said Joe, pointing at Georgia and Bruce. They were just starting to regain consciousness themselves. Georgia had hit her head hard on the dashboard in the crash. And Bruce had smacked his head on one of the bus’s railings.

  ‘Huh?’ said Constable Pike.

  ‘They’ve got a big bag of stolen jewellery,’ explained Fin. ‘Arresting them will be a big achievement for you.’

  Just then the wailing sound of a police siren could be heard. It must have been moving fast because within seconds the sound grew deafeningly loud. The patrol car skidded to a halt on the muddy verge alongside the bus.

  ‘More cops,’ cried Georgia. ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’