‘Get down!’ yelled Zack.
But the Kisser obviously couldn’t hear him above the deadly roar of the tornado.
Zack pushed himself up, grabbed the Kisser’s hand and tried to pull him down, but it was impossible. The Kisser’s body was floating in the air above him, as if he was a helium balloon that Zack had just won at the show. Then he was sucked up into the tornado—and Zack with him.
It was the wildest, craziest merry-go-round of Zack’s life. He was being spun around as if he were no heavier than a piece of confetti, rising higher and higher all the time. The air around him flashed red and silver with stinkants and needleweeds. He saw other objects too. The shell of an old bum-mobile. A bleached human skull. A gigantic stinkant. Zack held onto the Kisser as if his life depended on it which it did.
Suddenly Eleanor floated in front of his face.
With his free hand Zack grabbed her hair. Eleanor grabbed his arm.
‘We need to swim to the middle!’ yelled Eleanor. ‘To the eye of the tornado. It will be safer there. We can drop straight to the ground!’
She started kicking her legs and holding her free arm out like an aeroplane.
Zack motioned to the Kisser to do the same.
The Kisser, though clearly terrified, nodded and started flapping his arm and kicking.
The closer they got to the centre, the faster they seemed to be moving. Zack was finding it difficult to see clearly. But there was no mistaking the Smacker and the Kicker as they floated into view, holding onto each other.
The Smacker reached out and grabbed Eleanor’s hand and with the extra weight they were able to make faster progress towards the centre of the tornado.
All of a sudden the roaring stopped.
There was no sound at all.
Zack realised they were dropping down through the eye of the tornado at high speed.
The ground was coming up fast.
‘What do we do now?’ he yelled to the Smacker.
‘Hope for the best,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ said Zack.
He closed his eyes. It felt like the G-forces were sucking his face off.
Zack screamed and blacked out.
When he came to, his face was resting on something soft. Smelly and soft.
It looked like mud.
It smelt like mud.
It tasted like mud.
It was mud.
Zack lifted his head up, spat, wiped his cheek and looked around.
He was in a forest. Everything was wet and muddy. And brown. The mud, the trees—even the sky—all brown.
Like most places he’d visited in the past twenty-four hours, it stunk. But the stink was slightly different. It was more the smell of rotting wood, of decay, of dank mud.
In the distance Zack could hear voices.
He picked himself out of the mud and pushed through some densely packed trees, the ground sucking at his feet as if reluctant to let them go.
From the edge of a small clearing Zack could see four figures—each as brown as the forest. One of them waved at him.
‘Zack!’ called the Smacker. ‘Over here!’
Zack walked across to them, squelching up to his ankles in mud.
‘Welcome to the Brown Forest,’ said the Smacker.
Zack gasped.
The Brown Forest.
He remembered that Ned Smelly had mentioned the Brown Forest. He also remembered that Ned had mentioned that Stenchgantor, the Great Unwiped Bum, lived in the Brown Forest. And that was one bum Zack did not want to meet.
Stenchgantor was listed in the Bumper Book of Bums as the stinkiest bum in the world. Most bums only registered one or two points on the Rectum scale, but Stenchgantor came in at a nose-bruising 9.8 points, which made him even stinkier than the Great White Bum, although nowhere near as intelligent.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ said Zack. ‘Stenchgantor could find us!’
‘Don’t worry,’ said the Smacker. ‘He’s not anywhere around here.’
‘How do you know?’ said Zack.
‘We’d smell him,’ said the Smacker.
‘But it smells pretty bad already,’ said Zack.
‘I know,’ said the Smacker, ‘but believe me, Stenchgantor smells a lot worse.’
‘I say we catch some bums, saddle them up and have a look around,’ said the Kicker.
It was the first time Zack had heard the Kicker mention bums without threatening to kick them.
‘And how do we do that?’ said Eleanor. ‘We’ve lost everything we had in the tornado. We don’t have any bait. We don’t even have a fluffy pink toilet seat cover.’
‘I do,’ said Zack. He pulled the seat cover out of his utility belt.
‘How about this?’ he said, handing it to Eleanor.
She eyed it critically. ‘Bit worn out, but it will do,’ she said.
Zack noticed that despite the fun they’d had in the methane delirium, Eleanor was obviously still in no mood to forgive him.
‘This might be a dumb question,’ said Zack, ‘but how is a fluffy pink toilet seat cover going to help us?’
‘Bums love fluffy pink toilet seat covers,’ explained the Kisser. ‘In fact, they are powerless to resist them. Place a fluffy pink toilet seat cover out in the open and the bums will come. You can be sure of that. Then it’s just a simple matter of catching them, corking them and sitting on top.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a net as well?’ said Eleanor.
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Zack, ‘I do.’
He pulled a small net out of the belt. Zack had to admire the bumcatcher. He’d thought of everything. Zack gave the net to Eleanor.
She examined it.
‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘Not bad. Bit on the small side, but it’ll have to do I suppose.’
The Kisser took the pink fluffy toilet seat cover from Eleanor. ‘Watch this,’ he said to Zack.
He walked to the middle of the clearing, placed it on the ground, and then returned to the others who were hiding behind a large mouldy tree stump.
‘Give them a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Eleanor, you ready with the net?’
‘Ready,’ said Eleanor, crouching into a sprint position.
They didn’t have to wait long.
The first bum to arrive was a small pink one with a large pimple on its left cheek. Zack watched it fly down out of the sky and alight about a metre from the seat cover. The bum took a few cautious steps towards it and then stopped, looking around as if suspecting a trap. Then, having satisfied itself that all was in order, the bum leapt into the middle of the seat cover, wriggling with contentment in the fluffy pink fur.
‘Now!’ whispered the Kisser.
Eleanor shot out and threw the net over it. The bum didn’t even try to get away. It just seemed to nestle deeper into the seat cover. Eleanor brought it back and handed it to Zack.
‘That can be yours,’ said Eleanor. ‘It’s small and won’t have too much power.’
‘Thanks,’ said Zack, holding the wriggling and squirming bum as far away from himself as possible. When bums were frightened there was no telling what they were capable of doing.
‘Here, give him to me,’ said the Kisser.
Zack was more than happy to get rid of the bum.
As he did so, two more bums arrived. They were chunky, muscle-bound bums and immediately began fighting over the seat cover. The slightly larger one sat on it, but then the second bum picked it up and hurled it clean across the clearing, and took its place on the cover. But the first bum wasn’t about to be beaten that easily. It came running back across the clearing and kicked the other bum through the air.
‘All right!’ said the Kicker under his breath.
Zack was both amused and shocked. He’d always thought that bums fought humans—not other bums.
But the bum that had been kicked was not about to give up. It returned and they ended up grabbing each other like a pair of sumo wrestlers—the seat cover in between them.
‘Better stop them before they exhaust themselves,’ said the Kisser.
Eleanor nodded and walked quietly forward and, despite her claim that the net was too small, brought it down easily over the pair. They struggled and fought to get out of the net until the Kisser poked his finger through the hole and tickled them, which instantly seemed to calm them down.
The final two bums also appeared together—a pair of Siberian Screaming Bums. They created such an awful ear-piercing noise when captured that Zack had to stick his fingers in his ears. The Smacker had to put both of the bums over her knee and smack them for a full five minutes before they shut up.
The five bums were all assembled on the ground and corked by the Kisser, with corks from the bumcatcher’s belt.
‘Now watch closely,’ said the Smacker. ‘This is how to make what we call a bum-hopper. The average bum has enough gas to propel itself and a rider for about twenty minutes. But you don’t let it out all at once.’
‘Why not?’ said Zack.
‘You’ve seen a balloon when you blow it up and let it go without tying the end?’ she said, making a loud raspberry noise and waving her hand around in the air.
Zack grinned and nodded.
‘Well,’ said the Smacker, ‘that’s why you just let out a little at a time. Like this.’ She pulled the cork out slightly on one of the screaming bums. Only a fraction of the screaming noise escaped. ‘Just that much would be enough to send you over half a kilometre,’ she said. ‘It’s more like leapfrogging. Let a bit out, rise, fall, land, rise and so on. Stops you going too high, too fast.’
‘How do I steer?’ said Zack.
The Smacker frowned. ‘Normally we have bridles, but we haven’t got any at the moment, so we’re just going to have to pinch them. Pinch on the right and it will veer to the left to try to get away from the pain. Pinch the left cheek and you’ll go right. Two pinches on either side will make you turn even sharper. Got that? The main thing to remember, though, is not to leave the cork out for too long.’
Zack didn’t know any more about flying bums than he did about flying bum-mobiles. But it seemed straightforward enough. Pinch right to go left. Pinch left to go right. Don’t let too much gas out. What could be so hard about that?
‘All right, team,’ said the Smacker once they were all mounted on their bums. ‘We’re going to try and bum-hop our way to the coast. We don’t know how far away we are, so we may need to stop and capture new bums. Keep together, watch out for low branches, and watch out for bum bogs!’
And saying that, the Smacker reached behind, lightly tapped her cork and immediately took off through the trees.
The Kicker was next, riding one of the screamers, and Eleanor followed him on the other.
‘You next,’ said the Kisser. ‘Bum voyage!’
Zack reached around, pulled the cork out slightly and took off into the trees with a whoosh.
Before Zack knew it he was heading straight towards a very thick tree trunk. He pinched the left side of his bum-hopper’s cheek to go right, but he pinched it on the pimple by mistake.
The bum flinched and let out a rush of gas.
The bum-hopper veered right. But too far right!
He pinched the right side once more.
It veered left. But too far left!
He pinched the left side again, and accidentally pinched the pimple again.
The bum flinched and shuddered, and let out another burst of gas—this one even bigger than the first.
Zack went to jam the cork back in, but the cork was missing.
The bum-hopper was swerving left, right, up and down. It was completely out of control. Zack didn’t know whether he was heading north, south, east or west. In fact, it felt like he was travelling in all four directions at once.
Zack gave up pinching and just hung on for his life.
The bum-hopper whooshed through the trees faster and faster until he could hardly breathe and then WHAM! Zack crashed into a branch. The bum shot out from under him. Zack grabbed frantically at the branch and held on for a moment, but it was covered in slippery brown moss and he fell, straight into a big soft pool of brown mud.
Or at least he thought it was mud.
But it wasn’t.
It was bog.
A bum bog.
And Zack was in it right up to his neck.
CHAPTER SIX
STENCHGANTOR
Zack tried to swim towards the edge of the thick brown bog, but it was no use.
He could feel the bog sucking and pulling him down.
Eleanor was right, he thought. He should have taken her advice and stayed in the bum shelter. He could have been happy with his false bum. After all, it was self-wiping. And what more could anybody ask of a bum?
Zack was getting tired. The midnight bum rally, the bum-mobile crash, the Great Windy Desert, methane madness, the stink tornado, the Brown Forest and now this. They had all taken their toll. And to make things worse he hadn’t had a proper meal since the needleweeds and stinkants, not that he felt like eating anything with his churning stomach. All he wanted to do was sleep. His arms and legs were moving more and more slowly as he felt the tiredness spread through his body—his mouth sinking closer and closer to the bog as he closed his eyes and began to nod off.
But just as the bog was about to pull him under, Zack heard someone call his name.
‘Zack? Zack, are you there?’
Zack opened his eyes as wide as he could and tried to focus on the voice, which seemed to be moving through the trees towards him.
‘I’m here!’ he called.
Then, as if in a dream, Zack saw Eleanor riding towards him on her bum-hopper.
She dismounted and stood at the edge of the bog.
‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘It was an accident.’
Zack nodded.
‘You have a lot of those, don’t you?’ she said.
‘How did you know I was here?’ said Zack, ignoring her jibe.
‘I didn’t,’ said Eleanor. ‘The Kicker said you sped past him on an out-of-control bum-hopper. If it had been up to me I wouldn’t have wasted time looking for you. But the Kicker insisted.’
That was the nice thing about Eleanor, thought Zack. She didn’t leave you guessing about how she felt about you. She just came right out and told you.
‘Thanks for your honesty,’ said Zack, shrugging off the tiredness. ‘Now, can you help me get out of here?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You’re a long way out and a long way under, but if I hover over the top of you I might be able to pull you out.’
She got back on her bum-hopper and floated out over the top of the bog.
‘Give me your hand,’ she said, reaching down.
Zack strained to pull his arm free of the sucking bog and reached out to grab Eleanor’s hand. But she was too far away.
‘I can’t reach you,’ he yelled. ‘Can you come any lower?’
‘I’ll try,’ she said.
She lowered her bum-hopper as close as she could, her knees almost touching the bog.
Again she stretched out her hand.
Zack touched her fingertips, but still couldn’t get a grip.
‘Closer!’ he yelled through the gritty bog that was seeping into his mouth.
Eleanor leaned right down, her knees bent and feet tucked up. This time she grabbed Zack’s hand and started to pull.
KERSPLUDGE!
Suddenly Eleanor was in the bog beside Zack, up to her neck as well. And she wasn’t happy.
‘You idiot!’ she said.
‘It wasn’t my fault!’ said Zack.
‘You’re still an idiot!’ she said, trying to swim for the edge of the bog, but getting nowhere.
‘You’re the idiot,’ said Zack, who was sick of being blamed for everything that went wrong. ‘You can’t even keep your balance on a bum-hopper.’
Eleanor’s face contorted with rage.
‘Right, you!’ she said, throwing a
big handful of bog in Zack’s face. A bit splashed onto her bum-hopper. It took fright and shot off into the forest.
‘If that’s how you want it, then fine!’ yelled Zack and he heaved a big bogload back at Eleanor. It hit her right in the mouth.
‘You’ve had that coming for a long time,’ he said.
Eleanor’s only reply was a double-handed bog-lob, which somehow, to Zack’s surprise, managed to hit him in both ears at the same time.
He was about to retaliate but stopped when he noticed Eleanor’s face. She had her head cocked to one side, listening intently.
‘Do you hear that?’ she said.
‘What?’ said Zack.
‘That crashing,’ she said. ‘You can feel it.’
She was right. It was impossible to tell what direction it was coming from, but the bog was vibrating all around them.
Then the smell hit.
A smell like no other.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ said Zack.
‘I think I am,’ said Eleanor. ‘If he finds us here we’re dead.’
‘We’re dead anyway,’ said Zack. ‘If he doesn’t find us we’re going to drown in this stink bog.’
The pounding was getting louder.
That’s when Zack felt a rumble. Just small at first, but it was definitely a rumble. Zack felt it deep inside him. He recognised it as the sort of rumble that usually came after he’d eaten too many baked beans. But he hadn’t eaten any baked beans. Just needleweeds and stinkants.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Zack.
He knew what was coming next. He felt another rumble, even deeper this time.
‘Grab my hand!’ he said to Eleanor.
‘Why?’ said Eleanor.
‘Just do it!’ he said.
Zack felt the most extraordinary force moving through his stomach and out through his false bum. It was volcanic in its intensity. He felt like a NASA space shuttle breaking free of its launch tower and heading up into the sky.
SQUELLLLLLLLLLLLLCH!
Zack and Eleanor’s bodies left the bog.
They rocketed up through the trees.
Zack looked at Eleanor.
She was grinning from ear to ear.
‘Enjoying the ride?’ he said.
She nodded.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘For once you’ve done something right!’
The Day My Butt Went Psycho Page 8