Little Badman and the Invasion of the Killer Aunties

by Humza Arshad

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ came a voice from behind me … my mum’s voice. ‘We found him already.’

  I turned to see Umer standing opposite us, in the shadows. On either side of him were Auntie Uzma and my mum.

  ‘Umer!’ I cried. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Umer in a calm voice. ‘I’m better than ever.’

  As he stepped forward, the light from the stage fell across his face, revealing that grin: wide and wild and cruel. Umer was gone. They’d taken him.

  ‘Step away from the laptop, Wendy,’ he said. ‘I’ll take over from here.’

  ‘Umer’s told us everything,’ added my mother.

  ‘It’s over now,’ said my auntie.

  Umer took another step towards Wendy.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he said, reaching out towards the memory stick.

  They knew. They knew everything that Umer knew. They knew about the plan. The song. The memory stick. I felt sick at the realization.

  The audience began to clap. Amanda’s song had finished. The rhythmic clapping got louder and louder. Umer took another step towards us. Amanda walked through the little red door at the side of the stage. My mum and my auntie grinned. This was the end.

  ‘I’m sorry, Umer,’ I said.

  He only had time to look up from the computer for an instant before I shoved him with all my strength. He was bigger than me, but the surprise of it caught him off guard and knocked him backwards. He stumbled, crashing into my mum and auntie. It wouldn’t stop him for long, but it bought me enough time to make a grab for the memory stick.

  I tore it out of the machine and ran out on to the stage. The clapping stopped instantly. I turned to face the audience. The aliens. They all smiled at once. I will never forget how creepy that looked. The students among them were beginning to look suspicious that something wasn’t right. But they couldn’t know what we knew. They had no idea what was about to happen to them.

  When I looked back, my mum, Auntie Uzma and Umer were all walking towards me.

  ‘It’s over, Humza,’ said my mum. ‘Give Umer the memory stick and go through the door.’

  Umer held out his hand as he walked towards me. How could we fight them when Umer knew everything I did? He knew everywhere I’d run to, everywhere I’d hide. He probably knew what I was thinking before I’d even thought it. And then it hit me. There was one thing Umer didn’t know. One thing he couldn’t know. Because I’d promised never to tell anyone.

  ‘Ladies, gentlemen and alien parasites!’ I shouted, turning to the audience.

  Umer stopped briefly in his tracks, a confused look on his face.

  ‘Behold, a regular 128-gigabyte memory stick!’

  I held out the stick for them all to see. I closed my other hand around it.

  ‘Humza …’ said my mother, her eyes narrowing. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Magic,’ I said to her, and then blew hard on my closed hand.

  I whipped open my fingers to reveal that the memory stick had vanished. The whole room gasped. Umer took a step back. I guess alien slugs don’t have sleight of hand where they come from. You probably need hands for that.

  ‘How …?’ gasped Umer. ‘Where …?’

  ‘What have you done?’ cried my mother.

  ‘Where is it?’ shouted Auntie Uzma.

  ‘Maybe you should check your pockets,’ I replied.

  ‘Quickly!’ screamed my mother. ‘Search your pockets! We must find it!’

  The three of them began to tear through their pockets, looking for the missing memory stick – but it was nowhere to be found. And that’s cos it was back in Wendy’s hand, who was already plugging it into the computer.

  That brief moment of misdirection, as they searched their pockets, was all I needed to throw the memory stick back to Wendy. She’d plugged it in and hit PLAY. The beat dropped like a ton of thunder.

  ‘Humza!’ shouted Wendy, and she hurled something through the darkness. I couldn’t even see what it was, as it flipped towards me through the air, soaring over Mum and Uzma’s heads.

  I jumped up to grab it. The microphone slapped into my palm. My fingers closed round it. My dad would have been proud – it was a hell of a catch.

  Umer’s expression dropped. He could see what was happening. My mum, my auntie, every slug in the audience – they all suddenly knew. I lifted the mic to my lips, turned to face them, and …

  NOTHING.

  I couldn’t remember a word. I was blank. It was happening all over again. I had no idea how the song started.

  ‘Come on!’ shouted Wendy, but it was no good.

  I lowered the mic. Umer, or at least the slug controlling Umer, stopped moving towards me. A smile spread across his face. He began to laugh. He knew. He knew I didn’t have the lyrics. He knew I was blank.

  Behind him, my mum began to laugh. Then Auntie Uzma. Then every single slug person in the hall. They all began to laugh at once. The noise of it grew louder and louder and louder. It was the worst thing I’d ever heard.

  And then there came a boom from the back of the hall. Someone had kicked the double doors open. The laughter stopped in an instant as everyone turned to look. Though the room was dark, the lights from the corridor lit him up like a Christmas tree. He was dressed in his cricket whites. He was carrying half a dozen cricket bats under each arm. He looked me straight in the eye.

  ‘You may be lying,’ shouted my dad, ‘or you may be telling the truth. It does not matter. I believe you.’

  A smile spread across his face. And not a freaky sinister alien smile but the smile I’d known since I was a kid. The smile he wore when we stayed up late together to watch wrestling. The smile he wore when we had ice cream for dinner after Eid. The smile he wore when Pakistan won the cricket.

  ‘So where are these aliens we are fighting, huh?’ he said.

  And that was it. The fog in my mind suddenly lifted. A single word popped into my head. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I knew how to start.

  Umer saw it in my face. I saw it in his. But he was too late. Before he could take those last few steps to reach me, I had already begun. The words started to flow …

  ‘B to the A to the D to the Man,

  Ain’t gonna stand for no alien plan.

  You mess with my school

  and you mess with my fam,

  So now I’m hitting back with my lyrical jam.

  ‘Light years beyond anything that you’ve heard,

  T drops the beat, Badman freestyles the words.

  You should’ve left town, cos your plan is absurd,

  But now it’s too late – you’re about to get served.’

  The effect was immediate. All over the room, teachers, dinner ladies, audience members began to fall to their knees and retch. And right in front of me on the stage, just a couple of feet away, so did Umer. It was working! I had to keep going! Even now, I ain’t got a clue where the words were coming from. It was like I was speaking faster than I could think. All I knew was that I couldn’t stop. Not yet!

  ‘You made a mistake when you thought

  I would freeze.

  I’m stinging like a billion pencil-case bees.

  It’s one thing to mess with a man’s auntie,

  But no one gets to mess with my Umer but me.

  ‘Pushed us too far, now you’re in a tight spot.

  Wanna rule the world?

  Well you just blew your shot!

  You think you can touch me, I’m much too hot.

  You look like a bin bag filled up with snot.’

  The slugs were everywhere now, spilling on to the floor, rolling about with big, wide, panicked eyes. It was working! But I wasn’t done yet. I had to keep going until every last slug was out.

  ‘Feeding us up till we’re ready to burst?

  Your plan or your looks,

  I ain’t sure which is worse.

  Mess with my mum and you’ll leave in a hearse.

  Is he nearly
done? Nah, I got another verse.

  ‘Green space-slugs made a judgement of error,

  Messed with our school –

  now you tremble in terror.

  Thought you could beat us? We’ve already won!

  That’s right, drop the mic, yeah – Badman done.’

  Right on cue, just as my mic hit the ground, Wendy brought up the house lights. The full scale of the chaos was revealed.

  Damn …

  The song had done its job. There were giant green slugs everywhere. Big white eyeballs flashed about in panic. The adults who had been slug hosts were all still too stunned and confused to act. Most of them were still on their hands and knees, or slouched in their seats.

  But the kids were alert. This is the kind of thing kids are prepared for. You think when we’re playing battle games that it’s just for fun? You think worrying about monsters under the bed for years doesn’t equip you for fighting ’em? Trust me, it does. And it was slug-fighting time.

  And let’s not forget my dad. If ever there was a big kid who could rise to a challenge like this, it was him. I could see him at the front of the audience rallying the cricket team. As the lads ran towards him, he started dishing out the bats he was carrying. He threw the first to Jamal Jones. Jamal caught it in one hand and wheeled round to face a group of slugs heading straight towards him. Crack! He sent them flying across the room.

  ‘Six!’ cheered my dad.

  He dished out the rest of the bats, keeping two for himself, one in each hand. I saw him windmilling along, knocking slugs this way and that. He was having the time of his life.

  Now don’t get me wrong: not every kid’s built for fighting alien slugs. But every kid rose to the challenge in one way or another. Wendy began organizing the evacuation, two kids to an adult, leading them towards the main doors.

  I turned round to see if Dad had made it to Mum, but he was on the far side of the room twisting an enormous space-slug between his two fists like he was wringing a towel. He flung it on to the stage and picked up his cricket bats.

  ‘Dad!’ I shouted, but he couldn’t hear me over the din.

  Just then, something whipped over my head, missing me by millimetres as I ducked to avoid it. It was one of the glass tubes from the warehouse. It looked like they weren’t just good for doughnut feeding – now they were attacking us. I saw one tube crash into the cricket team, sending them flying like skittles. Another one was whipping around the room, sucking up slugs one at a time. They wriggled into the mouth of the pipe – squidging and stretching their fat little bodies to fit – before they vanished upwards with a slurp, sucked away into the darkness overhead. They were escaping!

  I spotted Mum, on her hands and knees beside the stage, looking pretty shell-shocked. Nearby, I watched as Umer lost his balance and stumbled into a row of empty chairs, but no one helped him. Down the hallway, Wendy was trying to lead the evacuation, but it was chaos and no one was moving fast enough. The corridor was blocked with people trying to get out. This wasn’t over yet.

  I ran towards the exit. If we couldn’t start clearing a path outside, we couldn’t help anyone. Pushing through the crowd, I found Wendy near the front, supporting Mr Turnbull. I ducked under Mr T’s free arm and took as much of his weight as I could. The exit to the playground was just twenty feet away now.

  ‘Come on, sir – we’re nearly there,’ I said, but Mr T was out of it.

  Man, I tell you, dragging an unconscious adult is harder than it looks. I glanced behind me to see how the rest of the kids were managing. Two or three of them were supporting each grown-up (four or five when it came to some of the bigger aunties). They were struggling as much as we were. This was going to take all night! The slugs were everywhere. It wouldn’t be long before they regrouped and started fighting back. We had to move faster.

  There were just a few feet left to the exit, but my legs already felt like they might give out.

  ‘Sir, you’ve got to walk!’ I cried, and, as I said it, I buckled.

  My legs went from underneath me and I stumbled forward, pulling Wendy and Mr T down. We’d have hit the ground if it hadn’t been for the giant.

  Now, I’ve seen some pretty big Pakistani guys in movies and stuff, but this was by far the biggest. He was dressed entirely in black army gear, with shoulders like minivans and a jaw like a skip. He caught Mr T in one huge fist and hoisted him on to his back.

  Before I could even pick myself up and ask who the hell he was, a blinding light exploded from the playground. What was going on? I couldn’t see a thing. I felt someone grab me, pulling me to my feet. It definitely wasn’t Wendy. Whoever had hold of me wouldn’t let go. I struggled to get free, kicking and squirming. The arms pulled me tighter. Wait … Was this a hug?

  ‘Humza! Stop! It’s me!’ said a voice, close to my ear.

  ‘Grandpa?’ I shouted.

  I grabbed him and hugged him back. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that he wasn’t alone. There were loads more of the soldier-looking guys in black, piling out of trucks and pouring into the building behind him. Every one of them looked like some kind of Pakistani GI Joe.

  ‘Who the hell are these guys?’ I asked.

  ‘Explain later,’ he said. ‘Evacuate first.’

  The soldier guys began to stream into the building to help the kids who were escorting the adults.

  ‘Wendy!’ I shouted. ‘I’m going back for the others. Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, we’ll be fine. Go,’ she said, before turning to help another of the teachers out into the night.

  I ran back into the hall, with Grandpa close behind me.

  ‘Where is Uzma?’ he yelled.

  I scanned the room. It was carnage. Fighting, running, shouting. Then I spotted her.

  ‘There!’ I said, pointing to Auntie Uzma, who was looking dazed beside the stage. ‘She ain’t one of them no more. Get her out of here. I’m going after Mum.’

  Grandpa nodded and disappeared into the chaos. And it was chaos. There were slugs squealing and squelching in every direction. There were dazed grown-ups wandering about like overfed zombies. Everywhere you turned, kids were battling glass tubes and alien monsters with whatever weapons they could lay their hands on – chairs, school bags, shoes.

  And right there, in the middle of it all, was my dad, swinging two cricket bats at once as he cleared a path towards my mum.

  ‘Dad!’ I shouted.

  ‘Hello, boy!’ he called back, a big grin on his face.

  It was amazing. He was having a good time!

  ‘Here!’ he yelled, and threw me one of the bats.

  ‘Thanks!’ I said, catching it just in time to clobber a glass tube that was racing towards Erika Yurp – who was busy pummelling a slug with one of her plimsolls.

  The tube reeled off into the darkness and vanished out of sight.

  ‘Good shot!’ shouted my dad, before walloping a fat green slug across the room and on to the far side of the stage.

  ‘You too!’ I yelled.

  ‘I told you: in your genes!’ he said, and he laughed.

  We were both grinning now. Mum was just a few feet away. We were winning.

  And that’s when the floor began to shake. Not just shake. To rumble, violently. Like an earthquake. I can tell you this now: we do not get a lot of earthquakes in Eggington. In fact, I’m pretty sure we get none. This could mean only one thing.

  ‘The ship’s taking off!’ I shouted. ‘We gotta get out of here!’

  Dad nodded, and without another word he swung his bat, clearing six slugs at once. We dived forward and grabbed hold of Mum, each taking her by an arm.

  ‘Humza? Mohammed?’ she said, raising her head to look at us. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Hey, Mum, welcome back! We’ll explain everything later. But, for now, we need to get the hell out of here.’

  She nodded and let us help her towards the exit. The mysterious army guys were doing a great job clearing the place, but even they realized something w
as wrong when the rumbling had started. They began evacuating fast. I saw Grandpa and Uzma making their way out ahead of us. I saw six soldiers staggering under the weight of Mr Offalbox as they dragged him towards the exit. As we got to the double doors, I glanced back into the hall to check for stragglers. The room looked clear. We were the last.

  And that’s when I spotted him.

  Amid the chaos, the upturned chairs and the battered slugs, Umer was lying face down. You could barely see him, he was so covered in debris. The last of the army guys was running for the exit.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted.

  ‘Get out of here, now!’ said the soldier in a strong Pakistani accent, before heading out with a dinner lady over each shoulder.

  ‘But – my friend!’ I shouted after him.

  It was no good. They were leaving.

  ‘Dad!’ I yelled. ‘Take Mum. I’ll be right behind you.’

  ‘What?’ he snapped, looking angry and scared all at once.

  ‘I’ll be OK, I promise. Go!’

  I didn’t stay to hear his protest. I let go of Mum’s arm and ran back into the hall. Getting over all the upturned chairs was hard enough but with the building shaking like this it was next to impossible. I wheeled the cricket bat around just in time to knock a feeding tube out before it tackled me. A pair of slugs leapt at me, and I sent them flying into a stack of chairs.

  Umer was only a few feet away now. But it looked like the glass tubes had found him too. A pair of them had slipped under his arms and were dragging him towards the door on the stage.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted, leaping on to an upturned chair and firing myself towards them. ‘That’s my Umer!’

  I smashed the bat into the first of the tubes with everything I had. Whatever it was made of, it was already clearly starting to give, with cracks running up and down it. When I connected, it exploded into a million pieces. The bat slammed into the second tube, and, though it didn’t shatter, it was enough to knock Umer loose.

  I fell on to him with a crash, as shards of glass rained down on us. Umer stirred and opened his eyes.

  ‘Hey, Humza,’ he said with a dazed smile.

  ‘Man, you owe me big for this,’ I said, pulling myself up. ‘Now, come on! We gotta get out of here.’