Sewer Mayhem

by Annie Appleton

  I dragged Gus with me. In the rush the two rings he had around his tail slipped off.

  ‘Wait! My rings!’ he said, slowing down to grab them, losing the one on his arm in the process.

  I gave him an almighty push. ‘There’s no time!’

  Just as we ducked into a side-pipe, the water pressure behind the blob got too much and with a loud reverberating bang, the tunnel roof burst, forced open by the water that was now finding its own way, not only up to the surface, but also down the sewer.

  It rained bricks, gravel and sand. The force of the water started moving the blob along, breaking it up into several large pieces, freeing the Bambini from their involuntary prison. They couldn’t celebrate their freedom for long, though, as the large amount of water that had been stuck behind the blob, now rushed down the sewer tunnel, gathering speed, dragging everything in its path with it.

  As the water rushed past the side-pipe it almost sucked us out. With all our might we managed to hold on to a piece of metal sticking out of the pipe wall. The pearl necklace that Gus wore broke and one by one the pearls disappeared down the sewer.

  ‘Nooo…’ Gus yelled.

  The suction of the water was immense and for a moment I thought I couldn’t hold on any longer. My life was over. Now I would never make it back to my beloved Milbury Hill.

  Broken down pieces of the blob, the Three Bambini, Gus’ treasure, gravel, sand and bricks swept past us down the sewer. Everything gone in an instant.

  After what seemed like ages, things slowly quietened down. The water stopped rushing past and an eerie silence came over the sewer. My muscles ached and I could hardly keep myself upright on my trembling legs.

  ‘What happened?’ Gus said, looking about him in a daze. ‘Was that an earthquake?’

  I didn’t answer him, but pushed him up the side-pipe. I wanted to get away from the sewer as soon as possible, before more water came rushing down.

  Vinnie, Leo, Daisy and the Rat Squad were waiting for us at the hole in the wall, relieved to see we were okay.

  ‘What happened down there?’ Vinnie said, looking at our soaked fur and trembling limbs.

  ‘The sewer exploded,’ I said, sagging down on to the floor. ‘It’s all ruined, but at least the Three Bambini are on their way back to Pocklington.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The beeping of both Abe’s and Dave’s pagers pierced the air, ringing out above the sound of the visitors in the pub still celebrating the win.

  ‘Was that your pager?’ Jacob said to Abe, who just finished his pint.

  ‘Could be.’ Abe took the pager out of his pocket. Colour drained from his face as he read the message.

  ‘Possible explosion on Woolaston Road,’ he said. ‘All units respond.’

  ‘What?!’ Dave fumbled to get his own pager, read what it said, then ran off without a word.

  ‘I’d better go as well,’ Abe said, and followed Dave to the door.

  Jacob’s heart raced. What was the matter now?

  ‘I want to know what happened,’ Emily said, grabbing her bag from the table. ‘Let’s go and have a look.’

  ‘Yes,’ Peggy said.

  ‘We can’t do that.’ Jacob stopped them. ‘We don’t want to be in the way.’

  Peggy glared at him. ‘I have a shop on Woolaston Road. I want to know what happened.’ She pushed him aside and walked to the door with Emily.

  Jacob sighed. Peggy was right of course. He followed them out and together they made their way down Milbury Road.

  It wasn’t long before they reached the large crowd that had gathered on the junction of Milbury and Woolaston Roads. Most of them had hankies pressed against their faces, but all of them were craning their necks to see what was going on further up Woolaston Road.

  ‘Ugh,’ Emily said. ‘Is that sewage I smell?’ She wrinkled her nose at the strong odour that wafted towards them.

  ‘It is,’ Peggy said, pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket. ‘And it’s a hundred times worse than it has ever been. I’m going to kill Dave.’

  Jacob made his way through the mass of people that had congregated at the junction. Their remarks floated through the air. ‘Look at that… Can you believe it?… This is disgusting…’ He tried to see over their heads, but wasn’t tall enough.

  He reached the front of the crowd, then stared, mouth open at the huge hole that had appeared in front of Posh Nosh Delicatessen. Two large cracks ran from it, one up Woolaston Road, all the way past Baxter’s Hardware, and one down towards the junction, stopping halfway in front of the car park. What on earth had happened here?

  ‘There was an earthquake,’ Mrs Jefferson said to Mrs Potts standing next to her. ‘I felt it myself. Everything shook and then there was a loud bang.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t an earthquake,’ Mrs Potts said. ‘If it was I would have felt it down Chimney Street and I didn’t.’

  Ambrose Pickering nodded his head at them. ‘Mrs Potts is right. It looks more like something happened down the sewer. Perhaps an explosion of sorts.’

  They all stared at the hole in the road again, breathing through their hankies.

  ‘Well, whatever happened, it looks like the shit has hit the fan,’ young Johnny Baxter said, sniggering at his own joke.

  Mrs Potts clipped him about the ears. ‘Language, young man! We don’t say that sort of things here.’

  ‘At least no one was hurt,’ Ambrose said.

  Someone tapped Jacob on the shoulder and he jumped. He turned around to find Emily about to whisper something in his ear.

  ‘I think I’ve found a way to get a bit closer,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’

  They made their way out of the crowd. Peggy joined them. Walking back up Milbury Road, Emily pushed through some of the shrubs that lined the car park. ‘Through here.’

  Once in between the parked cars, they made their way to the entrance on Woolaston Road. From there Emily crept up to the Curling Iron hair salon careful not to get noticed by Dave and Abe, who stood on the pavement surveying the situation with some uniformed policemen. She peered around the corner of the Curling Iron; Jacob and Peggy following her lead.

  The view from up here gave them a much better perspective of the damage to the road. Jacob stared down at the huge hole that had opened up in the middle of Woolaston Road. The manhole that Gareth had let down a camera into only a week ago was gone. There was sand and gravel everywhere and bricks lay strewn across the road.

  ‘Did a building collapse?’ Emily said, pointing at the bricks.

  Jacob looked down the street. ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘Then where do the bricks come from?’

  ‘No idea.’ Jacob followed the large cracks with his eyes. At places they were five feet wide. It seemed that they followed the path of the sewers below, almost as if something had been pushed up through the sand and gravel, breaking through the asphalt on Woolaston Road. But what could have had so much force?

  Something clicked in his mind. What was it again that his geologist friend Kurt Svenson had once told him? Water is one of the most destructive forces on earth. Could it really be that water did this?

  He watched the chaos in front of him and realised that water and pieces of soaked toilet paper, ran in little rivulets down the slight slope of Woolaston Road, where it puddled on the corner with Milbury Road.

  ‘That’s not water, is it?’ Emily said, pointing as more toilet paper floated past.

  Jacob shook his head. ‘No, it’s not. It raw sewage.’

  ‘What?’ Peggy said. ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘It was pushed up from below, but don’t ask me how.’ He waved his arm. ‘Seeing the amount of destruction, the force must have been such that the sewage spurted out of the ground like a geyser.’

  ‘But that would mean…’ Emily said and the three of them looked at the shop windows on either side of the street. Jacob’s heart sank. Everything was splashed by raw sewage, caking the windows in bits of toilet paper an
d excrement.

  ‘Is that poo stuck to the windows of my shop?’ Peggy said, wide-eyed as she stared at Posh Nosh across the street.

  Jacob nodded. ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’

  Tears welled up into Peggy’s eyes. ‘But that is horrible.’

  ‘We can clean it all up,’ Emily said, putting an arm around her aunt’s shoulders. ‘We’re all going to help.’

  ‘Look,’ Jacob said, pointing at a circular piece of steel, lying a few feet away from them. ‘Isn’t that a manhole cover?’

  They stared at it.

  ‘It is,’ Emily said. She walked over to it and kicked it with her foot. ‘It must have travelled about sixty feet from where it used to be in the middle of the road.’

  ‘How did it get here?’ Peggy said.

  ‘More importantly, it’s lying in between some turds.’ Jacob pulled Emily’s arm, to avoid her stepping in excrement. He suddenly felt dirty. Just being here, so close to the site of the explosion, contaminated them all with raw sewage. He shivered.

  Dave had spotted them and came walking up. ‘This is quite a to-do, isn’t it?’

  Peggy glared at her brother. ‘What happened, Dave? Did the sewer turn itself inside out?’ She waved her arm in the direction of Posh Nosh. ‘Have you seen what it did to my shop?’

  ‘Umm… I have.’ Dave glanced across the street, then scratched his chin. ‘We don’t know yet what happened, but it does seem like the sewer exploded.’

  ‘How?’ Jacob said.

  A meticulously dressed man joined them from across the car park. It was Spencer, who now seemed back to his old bristling self.

  ‘Can anyone tell me what happened here?’ he said, glaring from Dave to Jacob, pressing a handkerchief to his face. ‘What is this mess and when is it going to be cleaned?’ He poked Dave in the chest with a finger. ‘This is your doing, isn’t it? You want to sabotage my street party, because you don’t want to give out a permit for it.’

  Dave stared at Spencer, his mouth open. ‘What? That’s just ridiculous.’

  ‘Is it, Dave?’ Peggy said. She started thumping him in the chest with her fists. ‘I told you weeks ago something was wrong with the sewers and you didn’t believe me. Now look what happened! Why don’t you ever listen to me!’

  Dave glared at her and grabbed her by the wrists. ‘There’s more going on here then just some sewer smell,’ he said. ‘This is not my fault.’

  ‘You should have done more from the beginning.’

  ‘I have. We had a camera down there.’

  Jacob tuned out the bickering of his two friends. His eye had fallen on something far more interesting. A tiny glittering little object lying on the pavement not three feet away.

  He bent over it for a closer look. It was a diamond ring. Where did it come from? Had someone lost it perhaps? He kneeled down and studied the ring up close. Excrement caked the silver of the ring. He took a hanky out of his pocket and picked it up. If it was covered in poo then it was likely it had been in the sewer. Interesting.

  Jacob got up and looked about him. There, another object blinked at him in the sunlight. He walked towards it. It was a bracelet. Gold this time. He picked it up and looked at it from all sides. Definitely covered in faecal matter.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Emily said, staring at him.

  ‘That’s the second piece of jewellery I’ve found,’ Jacob said and opened his hanky to show her. ‘It looks like it was in the sewer and pushed to the surface when the whole thing exploded.’

  Emily wrinkled her nose at it. ‘Is that poo?’

  ‘Never mind about that,’ Jacob said. ‘The real question here is, how did the jewellery get down there?’

  ‘Maybe people dropped these things down the toilet by accident?’

  ‘Perhaps they did, but look.’ Jacob’s keen eye had spotted another piece of jewellery and he picked it up. It was an earring set with a ruby stone. ‘There is quite a lot of it. I don’t think the people of Milbury are that clumsy.’

  ‘No, you’re right.’ Emily spotted another ring and picked it up. ‘There must be more to it than that.’

  Dave joined them. ‘I’m glad you two aren’t acting as insane as Spencer and Peggy,’ he said, watching them walk off.

  ‘Well, we’re collecting poo encrusted jewellery,’ Emily said with a smile. ‘Some people would find that rather insane.’

  Dave stared at her. ‘The things you two find to do…’

  They ignored him and kept searching for more jewellery. Dave watched, shaking his head.

  ‘This can’t be a coincidence,’ Jacob said as he picked up another piece of jewellery. ‘A jeweller’s was robbed a week ago and now we find all sorts of trinkets lying around. Could this have anything to do with the break-in at Field’s?’

  ‘Do you mean to say that this is the loot from that heist?’ Dave said. ‘But how did it end up in the sewer?’

  Jacob shrugged. ‘No idea. It’s another mystery.’

  The police had now actively set to work to push the crowd back and establish a roadblock, but as Jacob and Emily were with Dave, they let them be. All three of them were now searching for jewellery.

  Looking up from the ground, Jacob noticed that the firefighters were preparing to hose down the street.

  ‘Wait a minute, Dave,’ he said. ‘What if there are pieces of jewellery everywhere. They should wait with hosing down the street until all of it is picked up.’

  ‘Do you really think there is that much more?’ Dave said.

  Jacob held up his hanky. ‘We’ve got seven pieces already. We need to gather them all, before the onlookers find out and start a stampede.’

  ‘You’re right. I’ll have a talk with Abe,’ Dave said. He walked off. Jacob and Emily kept searching, their noses to the ground.

  It wasn’t long before Dave returned. ‘Abe’s instructing some of the uniformed cops to start looking for the jewellery.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘He also said to leave the rest to them and move out of the area, as they’re not sure yet how safe it is here. So far we’ve been lucky that no one is hurt, but we don’t want anyone tumbling down that hole.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Jacob handed his hanky to a uniformed policeman that had joined them.

  As they made their way to the roadblock, a yellow maintenance van arrived. Gareth pulled up in front of the Curling Iron, grinning at them.

  ‘What on earth did you do to my sewer?’ he said as he climbed out of the van. ‘Didn’t I give you enough attention before with the camera?’

  ‘We have a bit of a problem here,’ Dave said.

  Gareth scratched his head and looked down the hole in the road. ‘No kidding.’ He winked at Jacob. ‘It’s nothing we can’t handle, though, but it might take some time to put right.’

  Jacob, Emily and Dave followed him to the front of the Curling Iron, where he wiped some white gooey stuff off the shop window. He put it to his nose and sniffed. ‘Hmmm… interesting.’

  ‘What is it,’ Dave said.

  Gareth held out his fingers for Dave to smell.

  ‘Fish and chips,’ Dave said. ‘Could that stuff be part of the mysterious fat blob we found before?’

  ‘Yes, it might very well be,’ Gareth said. ‘That doesn’t explain what happened here, though.’ He opened the back doors of his van. ‘I’m going to do some investigating. Make sure none of these buildings are going to collapse in on us.’

  ‘Is that a possibility?’ Emily said, her eyes wide as she looked up at the gable of the Curling Iron.

  ‘Nah, probably not, but we have to make sure.’

  ‘We’d better get out of here,’ Jacob said as Gareth started unpacking the van. Another maintenance van drove up and they stepped aside to make way.

  Some loud voices caught Jacob’s attention. He looked up to see a bit of a commotion at the junction of Woolaston and Milbury Roads. A woman was shouting at a man. People were already gathering around for a better look.

  ‘Collee
n is attacking someone,’ Jacob said recognising the woman. He started running, Emily and Dave hot on his heels.

  * * *

  What the…?! Ricky stared at the chaos in front of him. Coming around the corner of Woolaston Road, he’d hoped to keep a quiet eye on the manhole until it was time for his expedition into the sewers. Instead, there were people everywhere, herded about by policemen and roadblocks to stop the traffic. Three large fire engines had pulled up at the junction with Milbury Road, blue lights flashing. A policeman and the fire chief were discussing what to do, while the firefighters had started rolling out some hoses. Despite the presence of the firefighters, there didn’t seem to be a fire.

  Ricky pulled his hood over his head and joined the crowd. He pushed his way forward, until he was at the barrier. That’s when he saw the giant hole in the road in the same spot where that blasted manhole used to be. He stared at it, mouth open. A sudden coldness hit him at his core. What had happened here? Where was the manhole? And where was his loot?! He’d only been away for a couple of hours!

  To his dismay Ricky saw that the sewer guy was back. He stood staring down into the hole, shaking his head, while some of his crew were inspecting the large cracks that ran from the hole, up and down the road.

  The woman next to him was talking to her neighbour. Explosion in the sewer… excrement everywhere… nothing’s left… no one’s allowed to go near it… this will take a few weeks to fix…

  His heart sank. Weeks? What was he to do? He’d already been waiting forever to get his loot back.

  Ricky watched as the sewer guy slowly started to descend a ladder that he’d placed in the crack. He had a breathing apparatus on his back and his crew members were shining torches down into the gap. Perhaps there had been a gas leak and they now needed to repair it. Had that been the cause of the explosion?

  But whatever had caused this disaster, the chance of him getting his loot back was small now. Ricky knew that. Even if he managed to make his way down the sewer, it would be impossible to search it in the state it was in. He sighed. He was completely powerless. There was nothing he could do.