Zack sat there and stared at the big green pile in front of him. The Kicker was right. Dog sick would be better than this. He picked up a forkful of the seaweed-like needleweeds and put them in his mouth. He tried to chew it but felt the urge to vomit again.
‘Excuse me, Ned,’ said Zack. ‘Which way to the bathroom?’
‘End of the corridor,’ he said.
Zack ran. He went in, shut the door and knelt down in front of the toilet bowl, but away from the smell of dinner and the stench of Ned he felt instantly better.
He looked around the bathroom. Like the rest of the house, it had been put together from the remains of bum-mobiles. There was a forty-four gallon drum which had been cut in half to form a bath, and a sheet of stainless steel attached to the bathroom wall to serve as a mirror. Beside it was a large cabinet. It looked like the cabinet that housed the bum-gun arsenal in Eleanor’s bum-mobile.
Zack pulled it open, curious to see if Ned kept the same array of weapons, but what he saw was unexpected.
There was every type of soap, perfume and BO spray you could imagine. Cakes of soap stacked high, liquid soap dispensers, roll-on deodorants, stick deodorants, spray deodorants, at least fifty different bottles of perfume, mouthwash and aftershave, as well as thirty different brands of toothpaste.
Poor Ned, thought Zack. He’d salvaged and presumably used all these products and yet he still smelt terrible. And here he was trying to look after them and all they could do in return was be rude about his food.
Zack went back to the table. The others had left. Their plates were still full of food. Zack grabbed a spoon and started to eat. He didn’t stop until he’d eaten everything on his plate. Then he ate everybody else’s servings as well.
After Zack had finished he went outside to Ned’s shed where the others were getting suited up. Ned’s shed resembled a wrecker’s warehouse—stocked with every conceivable bum-mobile spare part and accessory. Ned had obviously been collecting bum-mobile debris for a long time.
‘Hey!’ said the Kicker, pointing to a panel of the wall made from the front section of a bum-mobile and with 306-BF painted on the side. ‘Didn’t that belong to the F-team?’
‘I think you’re right,’ said the Smacker, strapping an oxygen tank onto her back, and going over to examine the panel more carefully. ‘How long ago did you find this, Ned?’
Ned looked up from the belt he was adjusting for Eleanor while she stood there pinching her nose.
‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘About four years ago. Found it in the great basin valley about an hour north of here.’
‘Four years ago!’ said the Kicker. ‘That’s when they disappeared. So that’s what happened to them. Were there any survivors?’
‘None,’ said Ned. ‘By the time I found them they were just bleached bones in the sand. The stinkants had stripped them clean.’
‘I thought you said stinkants were harmless,’ said Eleanor.
‘Mostly,’ said Ned. ‘The ones around here are. But the further you get into the desert the larger and more aggressive they become.’
Eleanor made a face and Ned went back to adjusting her tank.
‘Any stinkants come near me and I’ll kick their bums!’ growled the Kicker.
‘How can you kick an ant’s bum?’ said Eleanor. ‘Wouldn’t it be too small?’
‘No bum is too small for me to kick,’ said the Kicker.
‘Why not just step on them?’ said the Kisser.
‘Because I like kicking!’ said the Kicker. ‘Got a problem with that?’
‘No problem at all,’ said the Kisser. ‘I just sometimes wonder if kicking is the best answer to everything.’
‘What’s wrong with you?’ said the Kicker. ‘You’re talking like a bum sympathiser. And you know what I do to bum sympathisers?’
‘Yes,’ sighed the Kisser. ‘I think I can guess.’
‘Yeah?’ spluttered the Kicker, scraping the ground with his foot like a bull about to charge. ‘Well guess this!’
‘Oxygen, Kicker!’ commanded Ned.
The Kicker took the mouthpiece and took a deep breath.
‘I want you all to take oxygen at least five times an hour,’ said Ned. ‘Any more and you’ll risk running out before you’ve crossed the desert. Any less and you risk methane madness. Any questions?’
‘What about when we’re asleep?’ said Zack.
‘Nobody will be going to sleep,’ said Eleanor. ‘If you want your beauty sleep then you’d better stay here.’
Zack looked at the Smacker. She nodded.
‘Eleanor’s right, Zack,’ she said. ‘Think you can handle the pace?’
‘Sure I can,’ he lied.
The truth was that he didn’t know if he could handle the pace. He’d never done a non-stop three-day trek through a desert full of methane and flesh-eating stinkants before. But he was determined to find his bum and get to it before it did anything really insane or before the Kicker kicked it to pieces. And as much as he liked Ned, he wasn’t keen to spend a moment’s more time at his shack than he had to.
Eleanor pushed a pack into Zack’s hand.
‘Here’s your rations,’ she said. She gave packs to everybody else. ‘I’ve put in as much food and water as the packs will hold. Go easy on it because I’m not sure how long we’ll have to hold out.’
Zack pushed his breathing tank to the side and put the pack on. The supplies were heavy, but he figured it beat eating needleweeds and stinkants.
‘Ned,’ said Eleanor, patting a pile of boxes. ‘These provisions are for you. We can’t carry them so you might as well have them.’
Ned’s eyes filled with tears.
He seemed to be overwhelmed by Eleanor’s generosity.
‘Thank you,’ he said, reaching out to hug Eleanor, who took two quick steps backward. ‘Thank you all very much. I only wish you could stay longer. It’s been good having your company.’
‘We’ll call in on the way back,’ said the Smacker.
‘I’ll have a meal of needleweeds and stinkants waiting for you,’ said Ned.
The group trudged out of Ned’s shed and into the desert.
The sky seemed bluer than before, and the sand even more yellow and the heat and the wind even more intense.
They each pulled on the diving masks Ned had given them, took a deep breath of oxygen and waved goodbye to Ned.
‘Good luck!’ said Ned, standing in the doorway of his shack. ‘God knows you’re going to need it!’
‘We’re going to kick their bums!’ yelled the Kicker above the roar of the wind.
CHAPTER FIVE
METHANE MADNESS
The wind roared.
Zack trudged, sometimes sinking down to his knees in the loose sand.
He fought his way out.
He sucked on his oxygen.
He trudged.
The wind roared.
It was hard work. And not just for Zack.
After about ten minutes the Kisser called for a rest.
‘I have to go back,’ he said. ‘I left my lip-gloss behind.’
‘Can’t you pick it up on the way back?’ said Eleanor.
‘No,’ said the Kisser. ‘Without my lip-gloss I run the risk of my lips cracking, and without my lips I’m completely powerless.’
‘All right,’ said the Smacker. ‘Go back and get it. We’ll wait, but hurry up. We’ve already lost a lot of time.’
The Kisser nodded and turned back.
Eleanor and the Smacker were clearly annoyed by the interruption, but Zack was glad of the rest. He sat back on his pack and took a deep gulp of oxygen. Then he took a deep gulp of water. Then another gulp of oxygen.
‘Go steady on that,’ said the Smacker. ‘Remember what Ned said. Don’t use it all up now.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Zack. ‘It’s just that the air is so thin. I can hardly breathe.’
‘I knew we shouldn’t have let him come,’ said Eleanor. ‘He got us into this mess in the first place and all h
e’s doing now is complaining about it.’
‘Calm down,’ said the Smacker. ‘The only person who’s holding us up at the moment is the Kisser and he’s had more experience than most of us.’
Eleanor snorted.
Zack lay back on his pack, closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was anywhere else but the Great Windy Desert. He thought about swimming at his local swimming pool. With his real bum on. The water was wet. Cool. And there was lots of shade.
He was woken up by a sharp pain in his arm. He opened his eyes. The Kicker was standing there, about to kick him again.
‘Wake up!’ he said. ‘We’re moving!’
Zack got up. The Kisser was back. He was standing there applying lip-gloss with the tip of his finger, very gently and delicately, and even though he was wearing a three-piece suit he seemed to have hardly broken a sweat. Even the carnation in his lapel looked fresh.
They began marching again. Eleanor was out front, followed by the Smacker. The Kisser was in the middle. Zack was behind him but was having trouble keeping up because his stomach was aching. The pain had started soon after they’d left Ned’s place and had gradually become worse. He wondered if it had been such a great idea to eat so many needleweeds and stinkants.
Behind Zack was the Kicker who, true to his name, gave Zack a kick in his false bum every time he slowed down.
‘Cut it out will you?’ said Zack, after one particularly violent kick.
‘Keep up with everyone else,’ said the Kicker, ‘and I won’t have to kick you.’
The Kisser turned around.
‘Lay off him, Kicker,’ he said. ‘He’s just a kid.’
‘He’s still got to keep up with everybody else,’ grumbled the Kicker.
‘Let me put it this way,’ said the Kisser. ‘Kick him again and I will kiss you.’
‘If you so much as lay a lip on me I’ll kick your bum,’ growled the Kicker.
‘Oxygen, you two!’ said the Smacker.
They obediently took their oxygen as the Smacker commanded, and the group resumed trudging. With one difference. The Kicker stopped kicking Zack.
They trudged.
The wind roared.
They sucked their oxygen, drank their water, ate their anti-bum energy bars and kept trudging through the harsh flat desert, the horizon broken only by the ugly jagged clumps of needleweeds.
They trudged till the sun went down, till the moon came up, till the moon went down and the sun came up again.
There was little talk. They were too tired to talk. They only had the energy to trudge.
The sun was high in the blue sky when they came across the wreck of the bum-mobile that the Kicker had recognised as belonging to the F-team. Much of its shell was submerged in sand. The Kicker stopped and started digging. He pulled out a long white bone and studied it.
He shook his head.
‘They were a good team,’ he said. ‘Saved my life once. Pity I’m too late to return the favour.’
He lay the bone carefully back into the sand and covered it. Zack watched a single tear creep from the edge of the Kicker’s eye, run down his cheek and make a small dark circle on top of the little mound of sand.
The group resumed trudging, not wanting to stand in the one place for too long as the stinkants would cover their boots within moments.
Zack checked his oxygen supply gauge. It was low. He wondered whether he’d end up like the F-team, just a pile of bones in the sand.
They had been trekking up a sand hill for what felt like forever to Zack when he drank the last mouthful of water from his canteen. Knowing that he had no more water seemed to make him thirstier than ever. He couldn’t stand it. All he could think about was water.
‘I’d give anything for a glass of water!’ he said. ‘A big cool glass of water—big enough to swim in!’
‘I could go a pint of beer,’ said the Kicker.
‘I’d settle for the barmaid’s lips,’ said the Kisser, applying more lip-gloss. ‘Just a pair of soft red lips . . .
‘You know what I’d kill for?’ said the Smacker. ‘A massage. That’s all I want. I’m aching all over. Eleanor—what’ll you have?’
‘An ice cream,’ said Eleanor dreamily. ‘A double-header dairy queen with nuts and sprinkles and chocolate coating . . . mmm . . .’
As she said this they reached the top of the dune.
Zack couldn’t believe what he saw. None of them could.
There, spread out below them was a vast blue lake of crystal clear sparkling water. Around its edges were palm trees with big shady branches.
‘Wow,’ said Zack. ‘An oasis!’
‘That’s funny,’ said the Smacker, frowning. ‘Ned didn’t say anything about an oasis.’
‘That’s probably because he’s never made it this far before,’ said the Kicker.
‘Last one in is a rotten bum,’ said Eleanor, taking off down the hill towards the lake.
Zack threw his pack off and chased after her.
He heard the Smacker calling them back, but there was no way Zack was going back. He wanted that water.
Zack turned around and beckoned to the Smacker, Kicker and Kisser to join him. He saw the B-team shrug and start to run after them. Zack grinned, turned and kept running.
But Eleanor was unbeatable with her head start. She threw off her pack and oxygen tank and weapons as she ran and dived in fully clothed. Zack made a close second. He was followed by the Kisser and the Kicker who both hit the water at the same time, creating a massive splash.
The Smacker was last, but not least, creating the biggest splash of all.
Zack treaded water, every pore of his skin drinking in the wetness. After more than thirty-six hours in the Great Windy Desert the cool water was just what he needed.
Eleanor splashed a handful of water at him.
Zack splashed back. She laughed. It was the first time Zack had seen her laugh since he’d met her. He had to admit to himself that she looked pretty. Especially as she wasn’t frowning and calling him an idiot.
Suddenly the Kicker started yelling.
‘Look!’ he cried. ‘A bar!’
Zack looked. Sure enough, there was a small hut with a thatched roof. At the front was a friendly-looking barmaid leaning on a counter. Behind her were shelves lined with bottles.
‘And a barmaid!’ yelled the Kisser. ‘With lips!’
She waved at them.
‘And an ice cream van!’ said Eleanor.
That was funny, thought Zack. He hadn’t noticed it before, but parked right beside the tropical bar was a colourful ice cream van, playing a distorted rendition of ‘Greensleaves’.
‘A massage table!’ said the Smacker. ‘And a masseur! What are we all waiting for?’ she yelled. ‘Let’s go!’
They ran out of the water and up the beach to the bar and the ice cream van and the masseur.
Zack looked around him in wonder—all thoughts of psycho bums and bum-hunting and Great Windy Deserts completely out of his mind.
Eleanor came towards him holding two double-decker dairy queen cones. She handed him one. He took it, licked the top and then bit into the cold creamy centre. It was heaven.
The Kicker was leaning against the bar, his head back, tipping the last of his pint into his throat. He slammed the glass down on the counter beside him, burped, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
‘I’ll have another!’ he said loudly, but the barmaid was not listening to him. She was too busy giggling and flirting with the Kisser—so the Kicker reached over, grabbed the tap and filled the glass up himself.
Meanwhile the Smacker was lying on the massage table, her face a mixture of something like pleasure and pain as the muscle-bound masseur chopped and smacked and pummelled her body, paying particular attention to her meaty hands.
Zack turned to Eleanor. They raised their ice creams and ‘cheers’ed’ each other. It was all so perfect, so beautiful. Zack felt it had been worth every painful moment of the last thi
rty-six hours.
He took another bite of his ice cream. But something was wrong. It wasn’t soft and sweet like before. It was hard and gritty and tasted like . . . stinkants!
Zack looked at the cone. It was covered in stinkants. So was his hand . . . and his arm . . . his whole body was covered with stinkants. Biting and burning and eating him alive!
He looked around. The lake had disappeared. So had the bar and the ice cream van and the masseur.
They were all lying in the sand, covered in stinkants!
Everybody started screaming. They jumped up and brushed wildly at the ants. They were all doing the same mad wild dance, the ants biting and popping and stinking in equal measure.
Zack realised that none of what they had just experienced was real.
It was all madness.
Methane madness.
And judging by what they could see on the horizon, it wasn’t over yet.
The biggest, dirtiest, blackest most terrifying tornado was twisting towards them—snaking and whipping at high speed with a terrifying roar.
‘Stink tornado!’ yelled the Smacker. ‘Run!’
But no-one needed to be told to run, least of all Zack.
He was already running.
As fast as he could.
But it wasn’t easy running across the sand. It was more like wading than running.
He was wading in slow motion, still trying to brush the stinkants off his arms, his face, out of his eyes, ears and nose.
All the while the roar of the tornado was getting louder and louder behind him.
The sky was no longer blue—it was a deep purple—the air thick with sand.
‘We’re not going to make it!’ yelled the Kisser. ‘We’re doomed!’
As far as Zack could tell the Kisser was right.
There was nowhere they could run to get away from the tornado.
Zack dropped to his knees, flattened himself against the sand and prayed for the tornado to pass over him.
He felt a sharp pain in his ribs.
He looked up.
It was the Kisser, staggering around, blinded by the sand, his hands desperately clawing the air in front of him.
The Day My Butt Went Psycho Page 7