by Andrew Cope
‘What can I get you?’ smiled the man, his voice anything but welcoming.
Ollie had suddenly lost his appetite and he knew that he should find Mum and Dad.
‘Err … I don’t have any money,’ the little boy stammered, edging further away.
‘That’s OK,’ the spindly man continued, ‘the nuggets are free.’ He then held out a white polystyrene carton with one hand, before dolloping a dozen nuggets into it with his other. He handed them over with a withering look at the small boy in front of him, and suddenly snapped.
‘I’m not in the soup business any more!’ spat the man formerly known as Ken Soop. ‘My life’s work is gone, no doubt lying in pieces in some top-secret government laboratory! I’m finished, THANKS TO YOU AND YOUR INTERFERING PETS!’
Ollie turned to run, and bumped straight into the large dog with the scary eyes. Mr Campbell placed a large paw on Ollie’s shoulder and growled menacingly.
‘Let’s see how Maximus Cortex likes losing something – or someone – important to him!’ Ken Nuggets laughed, but he wasn’t smiling.
BANG!
The starting-pistol fired and Dad sprinted off like a tortoise. The crowd cheered as the competitors rounded the bend. Spud, Star, Lara, Sophie, Ben and Mum all shouted words of encouragement. Dad was doing OK and even overtook one of the ladies carrying her flip-flops in one hand and holding her skirt in the other. The race was neck-and-neck as the runners entered the final straight. Mr Cook was now up to second place and was gaining on first. The pups were just starting to believe Dad could actually win when … he veered off the track sharply and carried on running in completely the wrong direction. Instead of racing for the finish, he ran right off the grass track, and appeared to be heading for the food stalls.
‘What’s wrong? Where’s Dad going?’ gasped Sophie, craning her head round to see.
‘Maybe he’s hungry,’ suggested Ben half-heartedly.
‘Something’s wrong,’ barked Lara, her spy-sense starting to tingle.
‘Where’s Ollie?’ asked Mum, the panic starting to rise in her voice.
‘There he is!’ barked Star, racing after Mr Cook, who had already spotted Ollie struggling in the distance with the enormous guard dog.
Ollie was the smallest of the Cook family but also the bravest. He stamped on top of Mr Campbell’s paw and the Great Dane let out a yowl, allowing the boy to squirm free of his grip.
‘Grab him, you fool!’ shouted Ken Nuggets, having decided a change of name would help him go unrecognized.
Ollie was also top of the ‘lightning-fast’ category. He raced in the direction of Mr Cook, who was closing the gap rapidly. Mr Campbell hopped around on three paws, evidently in great pain.
Ken Nuggets realized he’d missed his chance. The boy had escaped. He banged his fists in frustration on the serving hatch, leaving a small pile of breadcrumbs.
‘It wasn’t the boy I wanted anyway,’ he snarled. ‘It was those dratted dogs!’
Leaping into the driver’s seat, he slammed his foot on the accelerator and the van lurched forward.
18. Playing Ketchup
While Lara’s legs no longer moved quite as fast as Spud’s and Star’s, her mind was still super speedy. The rest of the Cook family sprinted in the direction of Ollie, where all the excitement appeared to be taking place. Instead, GM451 used her years of experience and made her way directly to the park gate … Where all the action is likely to be heading …
Sure enough, the battered van roared across the grass, thick plumes of choking diesel smoke billowing out of its exhaust. Mr Cook was the first to reach Ollie. The two of them gave each other a relieved hug. Ollie grinned.
‘Crumbs, Dad – that was quick!’
Dad brushed off the breadcrumbs on Ollie’s shoulder.
‘Crumbs, indeed. I think our friend Mr Soop has developed a taste for chicken nuggets.’ Star and Ben were the next to arrive, followed by Sophie and Spud. The two pups looked at each other knowingly. He’s back …
Mrs Cook was the last to join the group.
‘Come on,’ she said, jangling the car keys, ‘he needs stopping once and for all.’ Everyone looked at her, slightly shocked. Mum was usually so sensible. ‘He’s cost Dad a gold medal!’
‘To the Cook-mobile,’ instructed Dad, racing off towards their old estate car.
‘Cool,’ said Ben, not quite able to believe it.
Lara dug her claws into the bark of the oak tree and grimaced, her paws scrabbling to reach the higher branches. Dogs were not meant to climb trees … Or chimneys! But then again, I’m no ordinary dog. The clapped-out van was rapidly approaching, and Lara knew that she was only going to get one shot at this. What’s new?
Ken Nuggets gripped the steering wheel and gritted his teeth. He might have failed this time, but he intended to be back. Those dogs needed to be taught a lesson. Mr Dewitt snored.
Lara curled her paws around the underside of the branch and pulled herself along, edging further across the exit to the park. Phew, made it – just in time!
Nuggets looked in his rear-view mirror and could see a car was hot on their tail. Not for long.
Swerving round the corner, he slammed on the brakes, screeching to a halt in the middle of the gateway to the park. Reaching down with an orange, spindly finger, Nuggets flicked a switch on the dashboard. The van spluttered and shook. A wave of grey sludge slopped out of the exhaust pipe and sprayed the road near the exit. Nuggets waited for a moment, just to check that the contents had been completely emptied, before restarting the engine and roaring off down the road. He failed to register the sound of four paws dropping softly on to the roof of the van.
Mum was in the driving seat, a look of steely determination set on her face. The children held on to their seatbelts, as the car swung round the corner, straight into the pile of thick sludge. Before Mrs Cook could do anything to react, the car slowed to a standstill. Mum tried to reverse, but the gloop stuck to the wheels like chewing gum; they were going nowhere.
The family piled out of all five doors of the car to see the van disappearing up the road, a trail of smoke behind it.
‘Is that Lara?’ asked Sophie with surprise.
Squinting into the distance, they could just make out the black and white patches plastered to the roof. Spud and Star looked at each other with concern.
‘I’ll phone Professor Cortex,’ said Dad.
Lara was hanging on for dear life, her ears firmly flattened to the side of her head and the wind whistling through her bullet hole. Now that she’d got herself into this precarious position, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do next. She assessed the situation and two ideas came to mind. First she took off her collar and checked the Bluetooth connections.
Excellent, she yowled, remotely pairing her collar with the van’s satnav. It was difficult in such a high wind, but she managed to change the destination of Nugget’s satnav.
‘At the next exit, turn left,’ she heard from below. And then there’s the old ice-cream van’s loudspeaker, she thought. That might come in handy too …
Spud lifted up a paw and sniffed the gloop.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ he woofed.
Star nodded in agreement.
‘Bogeys … chicken-flavoured.’
Everyone was out of the car, except Mum. Dad was behind the left rear wheel, pushing hard. Sophie and Ben were copying, on the right. Star and Spud were prancing around, up to their middles in bogey bog, barking wildly.
‘Now!’ yelled Dad.
Mum’s foot hit the accelerator and the wheels spun, showering Dad in grey goo …
Ken Nuggets had slowed down from driving much too fast to merely too fast. He’d checked his mirrors and they seemed to be in the clear; no one was following.
‘Looks like I’m the winner again!’ he purred. ‘The family has been given a nasty scare. Next time I’ll finish the job.’
Nuggets had been careful to pre-programme the satnav with the coordinates of hi
s next secret hiding place. He loved mimicking the lady’s voice. ‘At the next roundabout, take the third exit,’ Lara heard him say.
Meanwhile, the Spy Dog was wrestling with the microphone wire linked to the speaker on the top of the van. She smiled a doggie smile as she heard Ken Nuggets arguing with the satnav.
‘Are you sure?’ he bellowed. ‘Next left takes us into the town. Are you certain that’s the quickest route?’ As usual, he wanted to do it his way.
Lara spied the police station ahead. ‘In one hundred metres, you have reached your destination,’ soothed the female satnav.
Nuggets raged again. ‘I don’t think so, lady,’ he yelled.
The van approached the police station. ‘Destination reached,’ announced the satnav.
The device was thrown from the window and Lara nearly fell off the roof as Nuggets realized his mistake and floored the accelerator. The engine thundered in complaint and black smoke belched out of the back of the van. Lara put the microphone to her lips and barked her loudest bark. Her normal bark carried a long way. Her magnified microphone bark was enough to wake up the whole town.
A burly policeman ran out of the station, rubbed his eyes in disbelief and jumped in his car in hot pursuit. He knew Lara. She was the reason the police station had been reduced from fifteen officers to one. In fact, a runaway food van was the first crime he’d seen in months!
Lara knew it was only a matter of time. My priority has to be a safe landing, she thought as the roads whizzed by. The van was slow and the siren was getting closer. I know that Nuggets, or Soop, will be panicking. She saw the crossroads approaching and noticed the red light was showing. The police car was gaining. I doubt we’re going to stop, she thought.
A lorry was approaching from the right. RED TOMMY’S KETCHUP it said on the side.
The lorry driver glanced at the green traffic light and continued. Ken Nuggets glanced at the red traffic light and continued.
Lara’s eyes grew wide as she realized what was about to happen. She threw herself off the roof of the van in the nick of time, landing on a grass verge and tumbling over several times. There was pain in her left shoulder and her right paw was limp.
But I’m breathing!
She lay there panting, waiting for the collision.
19. The Price of Sunshine
Kenneth swerved, but by then it was too late. The van ploughed into the side of the tomato-sauce lorry, piercing the trailer and flooding the carriageway with thick red ketchup. Ken found himself upside-down, floundering among a saucy sea of tomato. The driver of the tanker adjusted his cap and climbed down from the safety of his cab.
Ken Nuggets scrambled out of the van window.
He was in shock.
‘I’m dying,’ he said. ‘Look at me, covered in blood.’
Lara had righted herself, although she still didn’t feel quite ‘right’. She really was covered in blood. She limped towards the stricken baddie and sniffed. I’d get cleaned up, mate, before Spud arrives. He loves tomato sauce.
The police officer stepped forward and looked Nuggets in the eye.
‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘We’ve heard all about your escapades. Brickfield’s most wanted. First soup, then nuggets, eh? Well, it’s porridge for you from now on. You’ll be going to prison for a very long time.’
As the baddies were led away, the policeman turned to Lara. He carefully undid his badge and placed it in the palm of his hand.
‘I think this should be yours,’ he smiled gratefully. ‘Without you, Brickfield wouldn’t be the safe and happy place it is.’
Lara’s chest swelled with pride as the officer attached his sergeant’s badge to her collar. Now that’s what I call a really ‘smart’ tag, beamed Lara.
The Cook household was contented that evening for the first time in days. Professor Cortex had been with them for most of the afternoon. Spud and Star dozed somewhere in Ollie’s room, snuggled among the piles of clothes and toys. A couple of feathers lay on top of the cupboard, a silent reminder of recent adventures. Spud twitched, dreaming of nuggets and soup.
The children and the professor were in the lounge. For once, the television was off and they were discussing the mission. Ben’s laptop was open so that Lara could contribute, tapping the letters with a pencil. Other than a few bald patches, she had recovered well from being baked (‘half-baked’ as Dad kept saying) and falling off a burger van.
Sophie was explaining it to Ollie one more time.
‘Soop was actually very clever. If you think about it, the ability to create clouds is genius.’
‘Oh completely,’ agreed Professor Cortex. ‘And so simple! He’d realized that chicken sneezes contain a special enzyme, Omega 34, that coagulates with trace elements of atmospheric neon to create longevity of precipitation …’
Sophie decided to butt in.
‘What that actually means, Ollie, is that there is a special ingredient in chicken snot that, if you spray it into the air, makes black clouds.’
‘Quite,’ nodded the scientist. ‘Rather well put, young lady.’
‘So he needed thousands of chickens. And when the chickens couldn’t sneeze any more they became soup,’ added Ben.
‘And he added “down thyme” to the soup to make it addictive,’ reminded Cortex. ‘So he had the ultimate evil plot. A complete cycle. He created bad weather that made people sad. Sad people always reach for chicken soup. Once they tasted it, they wanted more … and so on and so on.’
‘What about his sidekick, Mr Dewitt?’ asked Ollie.
‘My very old head teacher,’ said Maximus Cortex, shaking his head sadly. ‘Not evil. Just misguided. Soop needed somebody who knew about chickens. He didn’t have any friends or anyone he could trust, so he tracked down Mr Dewitt and sort of roped the old man in. I guess the old head teacher just wanted to “Dewitt” his way one more time. He’s back in the old folks’ home. A different one. A caring care home. And he likes it because they give him egg-and-cress sandwiches. Every day.’
‘Why didn’t Soop use his big brain to do good?’ asked Ollie innocently.
‘That, Master Oliver, is the billion-dollar question,’ sighed Professor Cortex.
‘The multi-biLLION $ question,’ tapped Lara. They waited while she pecked at the keyboard with the pencil held tightly in her mouth. ‘Found SooP’s laptop. SEEMs he had bigga Plan?’
‘Yeeees,’ nodded the professor, puffing out his cheeks. ‘This, kids, is the bit you don’t know. As GM451 says, we discovered Soop’s laptop and found elaborate plans that go way beyond Brickfield. We were just an experiment! The first phase of his mission for global domination. Once he had proved his system worked, he was going to create black clouds over the whole of the country.’
‘Permanent doom and gloom?’ asked Sophie, creasing her brow.
‘And then the world!’ cooed the professor, eyes like globes.
Lara started tapping and all eyes went back to the laptop. ‘HE was going to sell Sunny Days.’
‘GM451 is absolutely correct. His big plan wasn’t soup at all. Once the country was under a black cloud, he was going to reveal himself as the master “weather changer”. He figured we’d be so desperate for sunny days that we’d pay for them.’
‘1 BILLion per sunny day’ typed Lara on the laptop.
‘Genius,’ gasped Ben. ‘I mean, evil. But genius,’ he said, correcting himself before he sounded too impressed. ‘And where is Soop now?’
‘Somewhere where we needn’t worry about him,’ smiled the professor. ‘A good lesson for you all. Crime doesn’t pay. Thanks to Lara, the sun is shining once more.’
Lara nodded. Baddies always get their just desserts. She didn’t need chicken soup to feel good. I have my family. She licked at one of her bald patches, another souvenir of a mission accomplished.
The high-security prison was in complete darkness as the clocks struck midnight. Overhead, a large black cloud began to rain, gently at first, before starting to pour. There was another
storm brewing …
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