Rampage!

by Wills, Julia; Hartas, Leo ;

  But, first things first.

  Like the small matter of making sure he actually arrived to see her. After all, knowing him, he’d probably already be thinking of just how quickly he could get that impossibly handsome face of his back to his Underworld fans. She stood, framed by the hut window, her eyes dark as thunderclouds.

  Which would have been one of those splendidly dramatic moments, had the scrying bowl not chosen that precise second to let out the most disgusting rumbling belch. The sort of belch a podgy hippo might produce, with a belly full of water, should it attempt a graceful riverbank roll, and, rudely snapped out of her reverie, Medea scuttled over to the bowl again.

  ‘What the ––?’ she spluttered, gasping as she saw Alex and Aries, decorated like a peddler’s mule, being dragged out of the building through the very same door that Jason had stepped out of only a few minutes ago. Except that the boy and the ram were leaving backwards, squealing, in a flurry of hands, feet and hooves, escorted by several gruff policemen.

  Medea stared in astonishment.

  Surely those turnips had learned their lesson the first time? So, why were they back again? To help Jason? Aries? Help Jason? The thought was absolutely ludicrous and yet there he was, as big and bald and mad-looking as ever, and, moreover, clearly loaded down with godly gifts for the quest, whilst the boy was struggling to hold on to Athena’s enormous shield.

  No, of course it wasn’t for Jason, she chided herself. Rolling her eyes at her own silliness, she realised that plainly when the Underworld had discovered that she was in the Amazon – where their beloved Rose had been heading to find her father – they’d decided to come back and make sure their little pal was safe.

  Well, how sickening.

  But, perhaps, how perfect, too.

  Because even though Alex might be as annoying as a mosquito, he was also smart and, coupled with the ram’s blundering determination, that meant Jason would have the help he needed to actually be able to find her out here.

  Just so long as he had a real reason to look.

  She closed her eyes and found her mind returning again to that strange-looking key. Then, knowing exactly what to do, she raced across the hut, flung back the lid of her trunk and, slipping on the gold bangle, twirled around the room, congratulating herself on her own terrible cleverness.

  Meanwhile, outside the window the little bunch of blue budgies continued to trill merrily, flapping their wings in the sun and tottering along the branch as though everything in the jungle was lovely.

  Which, I’m afraid, is budgies all over for you.

  JAILHOUSE SHOCK

  Someone who most certainly wasn’t trilling at that moment, or indeed bouncing along a branch for that matter, was Madam Rosita de Bonita.

  Sopranos’ voices, you see, are as delicate as porcelain and just as easily shattered by shock,24 meaning that when Aries had turned Madam’s aria into an aaargh-ia, he’d strained her voice horribly, warping her scales to wails, her trills to shrills and turning her Top-C turvy. Worse, with a leading lady moaning from her chaise longue with her singing voice sounding like a spaniel trying to yodel, the opera company had been forced to cancel its show.

  And Alex and Aries had been arrested.

  How unpleasant.

  Now, unlike the city’s opera house, which is as pink and giddy as a beautifully iced cake, the yard of the South Manaus Police Station is a miserable place. Open to the sky, it consists of a scrubby patch of ground bordered on three sides by the blank whitewashed walls of the police station itself and on the fourth by a pair of tall gates, railed with iron struts and ending in sharp tips, that lead out on to the street and city beyond. Or at least they do when they’re not chained and heavily padlocked, shut firm to imprison a boy and a giant ram. This is because cells, as you might have guessed, aren’t built to accommodate oversized rams (or indeed ram-sized ones) and having seen the calming effect that Alex had on Aries, the police had decided to keep both of them outdoors.

  ‘I suppose you’re blaming me for all this,’ sighed Aries, scuffling up a cloud of dust made silvery by the moonlight.

  ‘No,’ replied Alex patiently. ‘I’m trying to get us out of here. Do stand still!’

  Clambering up on to Aries’ back, he steadied himself against the gates and stood up gingerly. Then, balancing like a stunt rider, he stretched up and closed his sweat-slicked fingers high around two bars of the gate.

  And in case you’re wondering, yes, one of their many gifts – say, the lightning bolt to zap the gates, or the cocktail stirrer to pick the padlock – might well have been useful at this point. Unfortunately, however, the Chief of Police, Inspector Gonzales – a rather gruff little man with a bristly moustache like a toilet brush – had seized everything and locked it safely away in his office.

  ‘It’s no good!’ announced Aries. ‘I can tell by the tone of your voice that you’re cross with me.’

  ‘Well,’ admitted Alex, twitching his nose as a drop of sweat rolled down it, ‘I suppose it might have helped if you’d ignored your stomach.’ Lifting up his right foot, he braced it against the gate, took a deep breath and swung up his other leg. ‘You know …’ he grunted, grasping the bars more tightly, ‘just … till … we left the … building.’

  ‘I see,’ muttered Aries. ‘I notice you’re not blaming Jason.’ Aries stepped back to look up at him, frowning. ‘Even though he’s the one who made us creep around the opera house in the first place and didn’t help us when the police arrived.’

  Alex grimaced as the metal bit into his fingers. Steeling himself, he tried lifting one hand higher. But it was hopeless. The bars were sharp-edged and his hands were clammy, useless for holding on. Now, wholly losing his grip, his hands slid painfully down the bars.

  ‘Aries!’ he yelped, landing in a heap on the dusty ground. Frustrated, he kicked the gates hard, making the metal rattle wildly. ‘Aren’t things bad enough?’

  ‘That’s what I was just say––’

  ‘No, you weren’t!’ snapped Alex, wiping his brow. It was hot and sticky, itchy with grit. ‘And I don’t want to hear it!’

  ‘But if he’d owned up to knowing us ––’

  Alex threw his hands in the air.

  ‘Then what? He’d be stuck in here too, wouldn’t he? Locked up like us! We can’t all make fools of ourselves, Aries, get caught and bundled into prison, you know. Some of us have to manage to stay out of trouble for five minutes to lead the quest.’

  Aries’ eyes widened in shock and Alex caught his breath, wishing that he could snatch the words straight back again. For a moment he simply stared at Aries, almost willing the ram to furiously stick out his lower lip and start the old argument they always had whenever they talked about Jason.

  But he didn’t.

  Instead, Aries’ face crumpled with hurt and he turned silently away, trudging over to the other side of the compound to slump down, his big bottom turned towards Alex.

  Alex stood up and leaned against the gate, pushing his face against the warm bars. He glared at the narrow road beyond, littered with wooden trolleys piled with rotting fruit, and felt his heart grow heavier than Achilles’s sword. In the distance he could hear the blare of the city – people laughing, music playing, the blast of horns from the sort of metal chariots they’d seen in London – and felt dismally glad that the other boys from the Underworld – the ones who hung round the zoo, teasing that he was more Ancient Geek than Ancient Greek for bothering with a load of smelly old monsters – couldn’t see him now. Or his father, who’d doubtless still be bragging to the market traders in the agora about his clever, questing son who’d been chosen to help Jason. Biting his lip, he craned his neck, trying to see a little further down the street, wishing that Jason would hurry up and find them. Come back and show them how to escape. Show them how to stay calm when everything was going wrong.

  Like now.

  The thought sent fresh panic spiralling through his chest. They should be on their way to Rose by now. T
hey should be heading into the jungle. If only they hadn’t made such a spectacle of themselves in the opera house, Alex felt sure that they would have been.

  ‘Alex?’ Aries’ voice was small now, little more than a whisper.

  Turning, Alex looked over at the ram lying in a pool of moonlight and, seeing his sad, flattened ears, felt his heart tighten. He walked over and sat down beside him as Aries looked up, his muzzled scrunched up with worry.

  ‘What is it?’

  Aries paused for a moment. ‘Supposing Jason doesn’t come back?’

  Alex laid his arm across Aries’ neck. Usually a remark like that would annoy him but now he felt too exhausted to argue.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he shrugged. ‘He’ll be here soon.’

  Yet even so, as Aries slumped back down again, Alex found himself wishing that the ram hadn’t chosen that particular moment, what with their being trapped in a strange, unfriendly place, hot, hungry and sickeningly worried about Rose, to suggest that they’d been abandoned too. Somewhere across town, a bell rang seven times and, feeling a sudden chill, Alex drew his knees tightly up beneath his chin.

  Of course Jason would come back for them.

  Alex just hoped he wouldn’t take too long about it.

  24 Exactly the sort of shock suffered by turning round to discover a giant ram behind you puckering up for a big sloppy kiss. Just ask any shepherd.

  LOVE AND ROAMIN’ ANTS

  Oh dear.

  I’m not really sure how to start this next chapter, what with everything being so dreadful already. In fact, maybe it’d be better if you just put this book down and switched on the television instead.

  What’s that?

  You still want to know?

  All right, then. But don’t say I didn’t warn you and do try to remember that even though they killed the messengers in ancient times when they brought bad news, it is absolutely not the same for storytellers.

  You see, as Alex and Aries huddled together, hot and miserable in the dust, Jason was relaxing on a bar stool.

  That’s right.

  Relaxing.

  Oh, he’d heard those seven bells ringing too, but now, taking another sip of his mango fruit cocktail, they’d only made him wonder why Estella, the beautiful woman he’d met in the opera house that afternoon, was a little late for their date. Around him, the bar began throbbing with hot samba music played by four men wearing shiny green blazers and big grins in the corner. Jason smiled broadly too, tapping his toe in time with the beat and toasting his reflection in the mirrored wall behind the bar, lined with shelves of bottles.

  Manaus, he decided, was definitely his sort of city.

  He chuckled, amused by the memory of what had been a freezing shock that morning when Athena had demanded he return to Earth to sort out Medea. That alone would have been enough to send anyone’s spirits diving like a sea turtle sucked into the whirlpool of Charybdis’s maw, long before the goddess had breezily added that he’d be travelling with Zoo Boy and Baldy.

  Of course, that was the one drawback of being such a celebrated Greek hero: the fact that your reputation was only as good as your last quest. Like a shield, fame needed buffing to a fresh gleam whenever you were called upon to help, meaning that when the Goddess of Wisdom and War told you to do something, you did it. Whether or not you wanted to do what she’d asked. Which, frankly, he did not.

  Which was why he was so delighted that now he wouldn’t have to bother.

  That’s right.

  You heard me.

  Surprised?

  Perhaps that’s because like everybody in the Underworld (apart from Aries, of course) you thought that that he’d be bristling with impatience at the promise of a new quest? After the flamboyant way he’d bid the goddesses goodbye and raced on ahead, you thought he was desperate to swash and buckle through the jungle? Twitching to slap that statue of Nemesis into Medea’s icy little hand and dispatch the sorceress straight to Tartarus?

  Well, I’m afraid not. Because the last time he’d seen his ex-wife, she’d been glowering at him from behind the helm of a chariot drawn across the sky by snorting dragons. Looking down as she’d risen into the clouds, she’d flung furious curses at him for betraying her, screeching like a tormented seagull as their palace at Iolkos burned to the ground behind him. Which, however you look at it, is hardly your ‘pop-round-and-see-me-next-time-you’re-in-town’ sort of toodle-pip, is it?

  In fact, it was the fear of her scorching hatred that had persuaded Jason to take every single gift the goddesses had brought him that morning. Supernatural, bizarre or downright pointless, he’d been more than willing to accept every one of them and pile them on to Aries’ back. He remembered the baffled look on Alex’s face, clearly puzzled as to why they’d need to carry quite so much, and worried, no doubt, about overloading that ridiculous blimp of mutton. He smirked. Now he wouldn’t need a single thing: no thunderbolt, no arrows, no singing lyre. Not since Estella had told him that the police would keep Aries and Alex locked up for days on end, leaving him plenty of time for some fun before returning to the Underworld.

  (Without them.)

  There, I’ve said it.

  Please note that I did try to break it to you gently. I mean, don’t you think putting it in brackets made it a little less shocking? You don’t? Well, I’m sorry.

  Unlike Jason, who wasn’t remotely sorry about any of it. No, he was already planning the story he’d tell the Underworld and imagining the delighted look on Aphrodite’s face when he stumbled, scratched and bruised, into her birthday party. With his clothes torn and his hair stylishly messy, he’d make a great entrance, breathlessly explaining to her and all of her guests how Alex and Aries had deserted him, running away at the last minute, leaving him to face the sorceress alone. The goddesses would gasp, find him a seat, a drink, a plate of peacock steak, a clump of grapes, as they listened in horror, pale-faced and tut-tutting, appalled at how their hero had been betrayed. Whilst he would simply shake his head in anguish, frustrated that he’d been unable to hand the statue of Nemesis to Medea, because those two had scarpered with it.

  Now, chuckling quietly to himself, he tapped the key to the Underworld, tucked safely in his back pocket, and turned to watch the couples step out onto the dance floor. Shimmying and sashaying to the rising music, their laughter mingled with the frenzied trumpets as his mind continued to run on, delighted that he would finally be rid of Aries. Even though no one ever listened to the raging ruminant’s version of events – thank the gods – he’d still be glad to be rid of his endless bleating. Then, for a moment he thought about Alex. Perhaps it was a pity about him, though. Feeling a small twinge of remorse, he recalled the stories he’d heard about the boy. If they were true, then Alex did seem truly bold for his years, because even Jason had to admit that leading a flock of sheep across a strange city to defeat the sorceress was pretty impressive for a boy who usually spent his days wiping the snouts of drippy old monsters. Maybe there was even something quaintly daring about his search for some silly little Earth girl? He shrugged. Not that any of that mattered now. Besides, Jason reflected, wasn’t it Alex’s own fault that he’d never be going home again? After all, choosing Aries for a best friend hardly made him one of history’s winners.

  And anyway, he certainly wasn’t about to spoil his evening worrying about those two. Not when he’d just spotted Estella stepping in though the door. He waved to her as she picked her way through the dancers to join him. She was dressed in a red top and white trousers, with a red flower tucked into her long dark hair, and he smiled, noticing that she was even prettier than he remembered.

  Of course, what he should have noticed was the rather large ant that had just fallen from the hem of her trouser leg, turned and scuttled after her, weaving behind her red-sandaled foot as she strode across the flashing dance floor. Or the one that now plopped down behind it, or the next …

  Three … four … five …

  Eight … nine … ten …
<
br />   Thirteen … fourteen … fifteen …

  all snapping their huge chompers25 in a funky ant-conga across the floor.

  And in case you’re thinking, don’t be so silly, ants are far too diddly-widdly to notice, let me tell you that these were Amazon army ants. Unlike the tiddlers you see in the park, you know, ant-sized ants no bigger than these were magnificent specimens, big enough to blot out whole words, like this Such gi-ants were rarely seen anywhere but the rainforest floor and never ever in city bars unless, say, some sorceress had been using an old gold bangle recently.

  But of course Jason didn’t see them because he was far too busy beaming as Estella leaped up on to the bar stool beside him and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  ‘You like to samba?’ she chirruped.

  Jason shrugged uncertainly.

  ‘Come on!’ She nodded towards the dance floor and pulled him to his feet. ‘I teach you!’

  Taking his right hand, she led him out between the swaying couples and wrapped her arms around his neck. Then, wiggling her hips, she began stepping forwards and backwards. Jason laughed, copying her steps. The dance was fast and intricate. The trumpets jangled in his ears.

  Which was when he felt something drop down the back of his neck.

  He flinched and carried on dancing as a second tickle, this one beneath his right ear, began to annoy him. He batted it away quickly, feeling something stick to his fingers. Looking down, he was disgusted to see a gooey, leggy mess on his palm and wiped it quickly on his jeans before smiling brightly and taking Estella’s hand. Spinning her under his raised arm, he hardly noticed the squirmy feel of her fingers at first.

  At least not until the first needle-sharp jab of pain on his wrist.

  And the next.