“Have you lost your stuffing, kid?” Grizz barked. “You must be out of your mind!”
He was right, Lisa Marie knew. This was crazy. What had she been thinking? It didn’t make sense. She was usually so … so sensible.
“Um, maybe,” she admitted. “Let me get back to you on that one.”
Kicking and scrabbling, she pulled herself up on to Grizz’s back. His head rotated like an owl’s until it was pointing backwards. His metal jaw was curved into a wide grin. “And here I was worried I wouldn’t get a chance to personally destroy you,” he said. “Guess I needn’t have worried.”
Lisa Marie’s mind raced. Why had she jumped? There had to be a reason. She was a sensible, logical sort of girl. Jumping out of a jet on to an evil robo-bear was all very exciting, but it wasn’t her. It wasn’t something she would do. Not without good reason.
Why had she jumped? What niggling idea at the back of her brain had made her leap from the plane?
Grizz raised an arm. The metal hand began to spin, the fingers becoming twirling blades. “Say goodbye, meatbag!”
And that was when Lisa Marie saw it … sticking out of Grizz’s back and flapping wildly in the roaring wind. It was why she had jumped. It was the thing her subconscious had guessed would be waiting for her.
It was a red wire. The red wire Ursine had mentioned.
Lisa Marie grabbed it with both hands and tugged. Once. Twice. Grizz’s voice came out as a slur of nonsense words as his metal features twitched and jerked. His hand stopped spinning. His jets stopped firing.
“Whzzzzt hvvvvvk yooooooouuuoooo dnnn?” he demanded.
And then gravity caught hold of him and they both began to fall.
They were halfway to the ground when Lisa Marie heard the jet engine. Three quarters of the way when she saw the shadow pass above them.
The furry hand caught her by the ankle just five or six metres from the ground. Looking up, she saw Bearvis hanging out of the upside-down jet, his beautiful hair blowing backwards in the breeze.
The plane spun so it was facing right-way up again. Lisa Marie flopped down into the seat directly behind Bearvis.
“I got you, honey,” he told her. “Ain’t no one gonna hurt you now.”
The plane thudded against the hillside, tossing Lisa Marie and Bearvis into the air. They both screamed as they were tossed up, up, up, then continued screaming as they fell down, down, down again.
They landed with a series of oofs and ooyahs, then lay on the grass for a while, trying to figure out if they were still alive. And, if so, how many pieces they were in.
After almost a full minute of thinking about it, Lisa Marie was still unable to decide. “Did we survive?” she asked.
“I’m gonna have to get back to you on that one, little darlin’,” Bearvis told her. “The jury’s still out.”
They both sat up. They both groaned. They both clutched their heads.
“That still qualifies as a rescue, right?” Bearvis asked.
He gestured over to a smoking crater in the ground a little further up the hillside. “I mean, we’re in better shape than that guy.”
They picked their way up the hill, kicking through the debris and chunks of scorched metal. They finally found Grizz’s head wedged between two rocks, a dim red light glowing in his eye sockets.
“Careful now, honey,” Bearvis warned as Lisa Marie picked the head up. He adopted a karate stance, ready to leap into action if the robot head tried any funny business.
“I think we’re safe,” Lisa Marie said, then she screamed as the mouth snapped open and the eyes blazed.
“Think again, meatbag!” Grizz snarled. His voice sounded flat and crackled badly as he spoke. “You haven’t heard the last of me. You hear me? You haven’t heard-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-ddddddddddddd.”
The voice became a low, continuous tone, then both it and the light in Grizz’s eyes faded away completely.
“Meh. I think we have,” said Lisa Marie. She tossed the robotic skull backwards over her shoulder, dusted herself down, then turned to Bearvis. “So!” she said. “That was interesting.”
“You can say that again,” Bearvis agreed. Blue lights flashed down in the town. They could hear sirens. They were distant now but getting closer.
“Lisa Marie!” wheezed Vernon, running down the hillside behind them. “You’re OK! Where’s Grizz?”
“He’s there,” said Lisa Marie. “And there. And there’s quite a lot of him over there.”
“He’s gone?” Vernon gasped.
Lisa Marie nodded quite proudly. Not too proudly, though, because she didn’t like to boast. “What about the soldier-bears?”
“Taken care of,” said Vernon. “Drake and the guys blew most of them up. The Duds took care of the rest.”
He grinned. “Looks like we saved the world.”
“Again,” said Lisa Marie.
The girl, the boy and the bear all looked down the hill in the direction of the sirens. “I think we’re going to have quite a lot of explaining to do,” said Vernon.
Lisa Marie shrugged. “It’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“Aren’t you worried about Bearvis being taken away and dissected?”
Bearvis blinked. “Aw, man. I wasn’t worried about that, but now I am.”
Lisa Marie reached down and took Bearvis’s paw. She had stopped an army. Two armies, in fact.
She set her shoulders, raised her head, and gritted her teeth. “I’d like to see them try!”
Ursine Kodiak sat up. He tried to remember what was going on but thinking made his head hurt.
He remembered something about poop. A lot of poop. And smiling.
But mostly poop.
He could hear sirens in the distance. There was laughter too. Children, he thought. It was harsh, cruel laughter that reminded him of his own childhood, and the bullies who used to taunt him.
He felt his heart race at the very thought of them and took a moment to compose himself. He was a grown man now. The bullies were gone. He was a grown man with his own free will and no one could make him do anything he didn’t want to—
THWACK.
Ursine slapped himself across the face. There was a sound somewhere deep inside his brain like a computer powering up, and he felt the control chip briefly vibrate.
“Well, well, well,” growled a voice in Ursine’s head. “You’re just the meatbag I’ve been looking for…”
Copyright
STRIPES PUBLISHING LIMITED
An imprint of The Little Tiger Group
1 Coda Studios, 189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing Limited in 2019
Text copyright © Barry Hutchison, 2019
Illustrations copyright © Lee Cosgrove, 2019
eISBN: 978–1–78895–096–1
The right of Barry Hutchison and Lee Cosgrove to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
www.littletiger.co.uk
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