by Paul Cooper
Howard spat some more. ‘I said, please tell this piglet not to throw sand in my mouth!’
‘Oops – sorry!’ said Curly.
‘Well, Howard?’ said Peregrine impatiently. ‘You didn’t answer the question!’
‘Pffff-ta-DOO!’ said Howard through another mouthful of sand.
‘Oops – sorry again!’
Howard spat more sand out, then cried, ‘I said, BEHIND YOU!’
Both Peregrine and Curly looked round, just in time for their brains to register that the tent seemed to have moved closer. Then Peregrine noticed that behind it, Pete was lying unconscious on the sand.
‘What the –’
Before he could say more, the tent shot forward and something sprang out of it – a camel!
Like all of its kind, it had big heavy hoofs. These help camels walk long distances across the sandy wastes of the desert. They’re also really good for clopping pigs on the head and knocking them out.
And that is exactly what this camel did.
CHAPTER 4:
HEADS in the Sand
When they woke up, Pete, Curly and Peregrine didn’t feel too good. For one thing, the sun was beating down on them without mercy.
But to make matters worse, they too had been buried up to their necks in the sand, right next to Howard. The four pigs’ heads were lined up like a neat row of cabbages. They all pointed out towards mile after mile of shifting sand dunes and slowly baked in the sun.
‘I wonder if this is what the horoscope meant when it said you’d “get ahead”,’ said Curly glumly.
Peregrine wasn’t glum; he was cross. ‘You could have given us a warning, Howard,’ he grumbled.
‘I believe most pigs would consider the words “Behind you!” a fair warning, Peregrine,’ said Howard tartly.
‘You haven’t even said thank you for coming to your rescue, yet again,’ complained the wing commander.
‘Yes, of course … Thank you for coming along and getting yourself buried in the sand alongside me. Otherwise I don’t know what I would have done – been buried in the sand alone?’
‘You ungrateful hog!’ spat Peregrine.
‘Big Nose!’ replied Howard.
‘Oh, trust you to revert to childish name-calling,’ said Peregrine. ‘Well, two can play at that game … Chicken Legs!’
‘Big Nose!’
‘Chicken Legs!’
‘Big Nose!’
‘Chicken Legs!
‘It’s always nice to catch up with family,’ Pete cut in, ‘but perhaps we should be thinking about our present situation?’
‘Quite so,’ agreed Peregrine. ‘And my baby brother can start by telling us who that camel was!’
Howard sighed. ‘His name is Tom – Tom Braider – and he was one of my team searching for the hidden tomb of Nokankumin.’
‘People have been looking for that for years, haven’t they?’ chipped in Curly. ‘We saw a DVD about it at school.’
‘Over the centuries many have tried and found nothing more than an empty chamber,’ said Howard. ‘But I was able to translate an ancient scroll from the Piggish Museum. It spoke of a special key that can open the tomb’s secret entrance.’
‘What sort of key?’ asked Curly.
‘A camel’s hump made of jet-black stone. That’s what Tom and I came to this second site to find … and we DID! We found Nokankumin’s legendary Hump of Doom! We were about to drive back to the main dig site when I discovered the jeep had been tampered with. Worse still, the water was all gone. I tried to radio the rest of the team at the dig site, but I couldn’t get through. That’s when I called you, Peregrine. But as soon as I’d put the radio down, something clobbered me from behind. I only found out it was Tom when he clobbered you, too.’
‘So now Tom’s got the hump?’ asked Peregrine.
‘He’s not the only one,’ said Pete. ‘I’ve got the hump about being buried up to my neck in sand.’
Suddenly, Curly piped up from the end of the row. ‘Excuse me! Can I just ask a quick question? Beetles have got six legs, haven’t they?’
‘Yes,’ said Howard.
‘OK, thanks … And spiders have got eight legs?’
‘Correct.’
‘But they haven’t got pincers or nasty-looking stingers at the end of their tails?’
‘Of course not! Why?’
‘Well …’
Curly didn’t need to say any more because that’s when the scorpion wandered into the other pigs’ line of vision.
It stopped and turned towards them. Life was pretty dull for a young scorpion out here in the desert, so a row of four gigantic pig heads like this was big news.
Four pairs of wide-open piggy eyes watched as the creature waved its deadly stinger gently in the hot air, as if to say,
‘Eeny, meeny, miney, mo,
On which big piggy’s head shall I go?’
‘Hello? Hello? Will someone please answer?’
Back at PiPs HQ, Tammy was trying to get through to the team by radio. It was her third attempt and there was still no answer.
She gave Brian a worried look. ‘It isn’t like Pete not to answer a call.’ She thought about this. ‘Well, OK … it IS exactly like Pete, but it isn’t like Curly or Peregrine. What if something’s gone wrong?’
In situations like this, Brian prided himself on staying calm and professional. ‘I’m positive nothing has gone wrong,’ he said. ‘I bet they report back in a few minutes.’
‘You do know that Peregrine has taken your plane, don’t you?’ asked Tammy.
‘WHAT?’ Brian leapt to his trotters. ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s fly over there RIGHT NOW and see what’s happening!’
He started rifling through the papers in front of the radio on Lola’s desk. ‘Where are the mission coordinates? Lola always logs the mission coordinates! We need the mission coordinates!’
‘It was Peregrine who took the emergency call,’ said Tammy. ‘He’s not very good at details, like writing things down. But don’t worry – we can work out their position from their last radio message as they reached the desert. It should get us close enough.’
As they rushed towards the door, a horrible-looking monster popped its head round the corner.
‘AAAARGH!’ screamed Brian.
‘Hmm,’ said Tammy calmly. ‘You won’t be able to eat any of the nibbles at the party with that monster mask on, Lola.’
The radio operator glumly pulled the rubber mask off and watched as the two PiPs ran towards the runway.
CHAPTER 5:
The Song of the Desert
In the desert, only one of the four buried piggies kept his cool.
This wasn’t easy with a scorpion heading his way, but ‘Keeping Calm in Moments of High Danger’ was on Captain Peter Porker’s top ten list of hobbies (just behind ‘Doing Insanely Extreme Sports’ and ahead of ‘Playing Tiddlywinks for Cash’).
He angled his head towards the wing commander next to him. ‘Peregrine! That new monocle of yours is always popping out, isn’t it? See if you can pop it out in my direction!’
‘What? Why?’ spluttered Peregrine.
The scorpion started to move slowly in their direction.
‘Just do it!’ cried Pete.
Craning his neck towards the PiPs captain, Peregrine squeezed the muscles around his right eye – squeeze, relax, squeeze, relax. The pressure built up and up until … POP! The monocle shot out like a cork from a bottle.
Knowing that he wouldn’t have another chance, Pete jerked his neck and – got it! – he caught the monocle between his teeth. Carefully, he moved it forward with his tongue until it poked straight out from his lips.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Howard, unable to see what the captain was up to.
As Pete moved his snout, a tiny dot of light tracked across the sand in front of him. It was the sun’s rays focused into a tight and powerful beam through the lens of Peregrine’s monocle.
Pete tilted his head some more
, and now the dot of light was on the scorpion’s tail. After a few seconds, a tiny plume of smoke appeared. Suddenly, the scorpion hopped up into the air, clacking its pincers wildly. This was understandable given that its bum had caught fire. It put the flames out in the sand and scurried off crossly.
‘Well played, Porker!’ boomed Peregrine. Then to Howard he added, ‘What were you saying about how silly monocles look, hmm?’
‘You haven’t changed one bit, have you, Peregrine?’ replied Howard. ‘Not from the tip of your ears down to the little curly tail on your big fat b–’
‘If you two can stop squabbling for two minutes,’ cut in Pete, ‘we’d better think about getting out of here … Any ideas?’
Nobody spoke, but they became aware of a series of grunts coming from the end of the line of heads – from Curly.
‘What are you doing, Trainee McHoglet?’ asked Peregrine.
The grunting and panting stopped. ‘Trying to escape, sir,’ said Curly. ‘When I was a piglet, my big sister buried me in the sand on the beach every year, then decorated my head with shells. Eventually I worked out a way of escaping. I just had to fill my chest with air and hold my breath when the sand was going in around me. Then later I could make room by breathing out, and then just sort of wriggle my way free. I got pretty good at it, actually!’
‘So why can’t you just do it now?’ asked Pete.
‘I’m not sure,’ murmured Curly. ‘Unless … Well, there IS one thing that’s different. When we were at the beach, my nan always used to sing, “I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside” to us. Maybe if you all sang that while I tried to get out …?’
Nobody was too keen on this idea, but they were even less keen on becoming hog roasts. The three pigs began to sing flatly while Curly went back to wriggling like the world’s plumpest pink worm.
‘It’s not working,’ he said after a while. ‘My nan’s voice was higher than that, and more … squawky.’
The three other pigs took up the song again, higher and squawkier now.
‘That’s better!’ said Curly, and he resumed wiggling his body in the sand. ‘I’ve almost got one trotter out!’
As the other pigs continued their song, they became aware of something moving in front of them. The little scorpion was back, but this time it wasn’t alone. It had brought its big brother with it.
‘Keep singing!’ cried Curly. ‘I’m almost out of here!’
The other three pigs went on with the fastest, most terrified version of ‘I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’ in the history of popular music.
The bigger scorpion was right in front of Peregrine now, its pincers almost touching him. It looked up at the giant moustache waving over its head. Something about the wing commander’s singing seemed to anger it. Its stinger hovered at the ready …
‘Don’t worry, sir!’ cried Curly, shooting his arms up in a shower of sand. With his trotters free, he could scramble out of his sandy prison. But was he too late? The big scorpion had arched its back, its stinger set to strike at Peregrine … Curly swept up the spade and thrust it between the scorpion’s stinger and Peregrine’s face. The stinger jabbed harmlessly against the red plastic.
With a quick flick of his wrist Curly used the spade to bat the scorpion back towards its little chum. Then he gripped the spade in one hand like a weapon.
‘Don’t even think about coming near these pigs,’ he snarled in his best tough-pig voice. Then he added in a voice that wasn’t quite so tough: ‘Not that you probably do a lot of thinking, what with being scorpions. But … erm … if you were thinking about it … well then, DON’T! Think about, that is … if you get my meaning … which you don’t … probably.’
‘That’s easy for you to say, kid,’ Pete commented.
The scorpions turned their pinprick eyes on the large creature before them. They quickly decided that they didn’t want to mess with anything quite so … weird. So with one last snap of the pincers, they turned and legged it away into the sand.
‘Good work, Curly!’ said Peregrine.
‘Indeed!’ said Howard. ‘Good work, everybody! It’s just a pity that one of us was out of tune. But then, you never were a very good singer, were you, brother?’
CHAPTER 6:
What’s in a Name?
The passenger seat in Tammy’s plane, the ‘Sty in the Sky’, was so full of sweetie wrappers and pizza boxes that there was no room for Brian. Instead they took the larger PiPs cargo plane, with Tammy at the wheel.
As they zoomed towards Camel Island, Brian noticed that Tammy’s backpack was even more full than usual.
‘What have you got in there?’ he asked.
‘Important desert provisions,’ Tammy said.
As they flew, they continued trying to contact the others by radio, but with no success. Soon they reached Camel Island, and not long after that they were flying low over the desert.
‘Based on their last call, we shouldn’t be too far from them,’ said Tammy. She started to fly in a standard PiPs search pattern.
‘I don’t see what chance we have of finding anything in this desert,’ sighed Brian. ‘It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of Jupiter!’
Ignoring the medic, Tammy cried, ‘I can see someone … and he’s waving at us!’
She brought the plane lower to get a better look at the large figure below. ‘That isn’t a pig,’ she said. ‘It’s a camel! I’m going to see if he knows anything about the others.’
As the plane landed on a flat patch, it created a mini-sandstorm, but the camel didn’t mind. Like all camels, he had long eyelashes to protect his eyes against flying sand. He could even close his nostrils to stop sand getting up them.
When the plane’s door opened, he arranged his face into a smile. ‘Got room for one more?’ he called in the friendliest voice he could manage.
‘OK,’ answered Tammy. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Tom,’ answered the camel. ‘Tom Braider.’
As he walked to the plane, he gripped his canvas bag tightly. The last thing he wanted to do was lose the Hump of Doom.
Curly was digging the other pigs out of the sand with his trusty spade. As he worked, he had another question for Howard. ‘What did you say Tom’s last name was, Mr Oinks-Gruntington?’
With half of his body free, Howard was able to dodge the scoopfuls of sand flying his way. ‘Braider. Why?’
Curly frowned. ‘So his name is “Tom Braider”?’
‘Yes!’ Howard said, pulling himself up and dusting off his khaki desert suit. ‘What of it? I fail to see how this helps our situation.’
‘For once I agree with my brother,’ said Peregrine. ‘There are more important things to discuss, McHoglet.’
Curly was digging out the wing commander now. ‘Well, it’s just … if you move the B over, TOM BRAIDER makes the words TOMB RAIDER. Isn’t that a bit of an odd name for an archaeologist?’
There was an awkward silence, then a series of guffaws erupted from Peregrine. ‘Oh, that is priceless! Howard, you have been fooled by a tomb raider going by the name of TOMB RAIDER!’
Peregrine was still chuckling when all of the pigs were free of their sandy prison.
‘Perhaps we ought to think about what that camel’s going to do when he reaches the dig site,’ said Pete.
‘He’ll be able to use the Hump of Doom to find the hidden tomb and rob everything,’ said Howard bleakly.
‘Not if we get there first,’ said Peregrine. ‘We can beat him there easily in the planes.’
There was just one tiny problem, which Pete soon discovered when he went over to examine the jets. ‘We’re not going anywhere in these. That camel has smashed up all the control panels.’
‘What about the radios?’ asked Howard. ‘You can call the other members of your team.’
Pete tried the radio and at first it seemed OK. After a couple of moments, the voice of the PiPs mechanic came over loud and clear.
‘Pete! Where have you been?’<
br />
Pete started explaining everything, but then Tammy spoke again.
‘Hello, Pete? Are you there? You must be, but I can’t hear you.’
Pete slammed his trotter against the broken radio in anger. They could still receive messages, but they couldn’t send any.
‘Don’t worry,’ Tammy said breezily. ‘Brian and I have flown over to the island ourselves. Nice here, innit? We’ve just picked up Howard’s camel friend, Tom.’
‘No!’ shouted Curly. ‘That rotten camel attacked us and left us to roast in the desert!’ But of course Tammy and Brian couldn’t hear him.
‘Not to worry,’ continued Tammy. ‘Tom has told us you’re all OK and you’ve flown Howard to the main dig site. So hopefully see you there. OK, byeeeeeee!’
‘No, Tammy, wait!’ shouted Pete, but it was no use. There was a CLICK! as she broke the connection.
‘So let me get this straight …’ Howard Oinks-Gruntington looked pale. ‘Your team-mates are giving the camel who stole the Hump and left us for dead a lift straight to the dig site!’
Peregrine wasn’t laughing now. He gave his younger brother a dark look. ‘How far away is this place?’ he asked.
‘Twenty miles.’
The wing commander tugged on his full-bodied moustache. ‘We’ll walk there,’ he said at last. ‘After all, that’s what this Tom character was going to do.’
Howard wasn’t convinced. ‘Camels are built for the desert. And don’t forget their humps! With that great big store of fat on their backs, they can go for days on end without water. How long can WE go without water?’
‘I never drink water!’ chipped in Curly helpfully. ‘My nan says fish wee in it.’
Peregrine was shaking his head. ‘You never had any stamina, Howard, even as a piglet.’
Howard glared at his older brother. ‘Right,’ he snarled. ‘If you can trek across the desert, I’m sure I can too.’
And with these hot words under an even hotter sun, the four pigs set off across the sea of sand.