by Theo Baker
Then I laid out my supplies. As I didn’t have a sleeping bag, I used the complimentary dental T-shirt as a cover and half of my socks for pillows.
After I’d rested a bit and drank the last of McKelty’s water, I placed one of the giant boulders Miss Adolf had made me carry under McKelty’s sleeping bag, right where his bum would go. Then I went out to tell him the good news about his new tent-mate.
Our tent was one of only four still standing, including Miss Adolf’s. Everyone else had taken the Quitters’ Express minibus. It was pretty eerie out. Like a ghost town. The sun was starting to go down, a fog was moving in, and it was getting pretty cold. I went back inside and grabbed one of McKelty’s scratchy sweaters.
It took me a while to find him on the campsite. He was crouching by this hedge, holding a thin rope. He wasn’t moving at all, and he seemed to be thinking about something very hard.
“What are you doing, partner?” I said, and clapped his shoulder. After lying on his sleeping bag, drinking his water, and rummaging through his stuff, I felt pretty familiar with McKelty. But the rude jerk shushed me.
“I’m hunting,” he whispered sharply. “Did you say partner?”
“Looks like you caught a hedge.”
“It’s a trap. Why did you call me partner?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We’re bunking together. Miss Adolf’s orders. My stuff’s all moved in.”
“Looks like you helped yourself to my stuff.” He tried to touch the sweater.
“Hey, that’s mine. My dad just bought this for me. You have one like it?”
“Shut up, Hank. I’m trying to hunt. There’s a noose at the other end. As soon as a bird wanders in – bang!”
“You got dynamite over there?”
“No!” With great agitation, he ran his fingers through his perfectly groomed blond hair. “I just catch it with the rope. Understand?”
“Not really. You want to eat a bird? Sounds gross.”
“You eat chicken, don’t you? What do you think that is?”
I shrugged. “Let me hold that for a while.”
“No.” He yanked the rope away from me. “You don’t know how. My dad’s been teaching me to live off the land. There’s food all around us.”
“You’re right. I saw half a hedgehog on the road over there.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it. You have to connect with your hunter sense. Listen, feel, smell and, most of all, be quiet. I’m going to be the first kid to survive this weekend, because only I’ve got what it takes.”
I stopped talking and let McKelty play at survival hunter. After a few minutes, though, I kind of started to get what he was talking about.
If you slowed down and just observed, you could hear the birds. There was even a pattern to their chirps. They’d respond to one another, or one would fly over to a branch to peck at another bird and fight for space.
There was a lot of stuff going on out in the wild. Bugs crawling. Winds changing. Leaves rattling.
Leaves rattling!
The sound was coming from the trap. I elbowed McKelty. He’d heard it too.
He motioned me to be still. But I couldn’t! There was something moving about in our trap, and I grabbed the rope from him and gave it a yank. I had something! I guessed it was a badger from the weird barking moan it made.
I gave the rope another yank and whatever I had fell over with a thud and let out a scratchy dinosaur wail.
“We’ve got a badger!” I whispered.
We poked our heads over the hedge, and although I didn’t see anything, McKelty grabbed my shoulder and told me to run.
I ran.
When you’re in the wild and someone tells you to run with fear in his eyes, you run. Even if it’s McKelty.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
From the pages of Emily Zipzer’s field notebook…
6:21 p.m., 7th May
As a natural scientist, I must embrace the cold, hard facts of reality, no matter how ugly.
Facts: simply put, I have lost control of the situation. The customers are rioting. They are angry, violent, out for blood. Although I do not understand why, I am the source of their anger. In short, I do not like the public, and they do not like me.
I am afraid I cannot win the day with reason and rationality. The public do not hold these values in high regard. They value “feelings”. I do not understand these feelings.
What I have learned today is that the public are NOT equipped to make their own decisions. Customer after customer made the wrong ordering choice, and that means they are making the wrong life choices. Yet when I tried to correct them, each and every customer resented me for it.
I must keep this entry short. I have retreated to the high ground of the deli counter. I am surrounded. The customers try to grab my feet with their grubby hands. I try to talk reasonably to them, but my reason only angers them further.
All is lost.
Papa Pete has called the mother. She is on her way. She will restore order.
Hurry up, Mum! Please. They are coming too quickly for me to keep them at bay.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“It was Miss Adolf,” McKelty was saying. “You lassoed Miss Adolf.”
“You keep saying that, but I know in my heart it was a badger. Human beings don’t make a sound like that.”
“I saw it − I mean, her. She was on the ground, in the mud. You lassoed Miss Adolf!”
“Maybe Miss Adolf was just taking a nap? Or maybe Miss Adolf is actually a badger. Like, that’s her spirit animal.”
“There were no badgers anywhere in the picture!” McKelty shouted. “You lassoed Miss Adolf, pure and simple. You drank all my vitamin water. You are wearing my sweater. You are the worst tent partner ever.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My dad bought me this sweater.”
We were sitting around the fire-pit outside his tent. It turns out that McKelty is pretty good at starting a fire. Personally, I think he’s a pyromaniac. He kept calling it “my fire”, and his eyes showed a little extra white every time he said the words.
Just then Miss Adolf stalked past us. She was scowling and noticeably limping as she leaned on her prodding stick. Her face and most of her khaki short-suit were streaked with light-brown mud.
OK, so maybe I had lassoed Miss Adolf. But the evidence was entirely circumstantial.
I lowered my head and pretended to be busy with the fire. “We’re in this together now, McKelty,” I muttered.
“Why? You lassoed her.”
“But it was your badger trap.”
“Are you trying to blackmail me, Zitzer?”
“That’s a nasty thing to say to your partner,” I said. I picked up the rice packet and tried to read the instructions.
“Now what are you doing?”
I thought that was pretty obvious. “I thought I’d cook the rice,” I said. “See? I’m just trying to help.”
“And burn it? You’re useless. Gimme that.” He snatched the bag from me.
I tried to snatch it back, but it flew from both our hands and landed in the fire. It started burning immediately … and smelling terrible.
“Get it out!” McKelty cried.
I grabbed a long poking stick and hooked the rice out of the fire. The bag was still burning, though. It set fire to the stick. I swung it about to try and put out the flames and − accidentally − sent it on a collision course with McKelty’s face and beautiful hair. He judo-chopped the stick, sending it flying out of my hands and onto the tent. That started burning too.
Thinking fast, I tore off the jumper and used it to pat down the smoldering tent.
McKelty glared at me as he picked up the jumper. The tag sticking out of it was clearly labelled “Property of Nick McKelty”.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
McKelty had a very long, very involved and very secretive night-time grooming routine. He did a hundred jumping jacks. He flossed. He combed his hair. He applied moisturizers. He relace
d his shoes. Exactly seven times. He did a lot of things exactly seven times.
Just when I was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, McKelty and I had more in common than I’d thought, he left the tent for several minutes with his jumbo bottle of baby powder to finish “washing up”. The imagination reeled.
I covered the hole in the tent with my worst pair of underwear. It was right over where McKelty’s right knee would go when he was in his sleeping bag.
Although I was bone-tired, I couldn’t sleep. I had no blankets, no bedding, and the tent smelled like molten plastic, McKelty’s toiletries, cowpats and, once McKelty had returned, baby powder.
“I’m so hungry,” McKelty said as he got into his sleeping bag. He somehow managed to avoid lying on the boulder I’d left for him.
“Have one of my sucking stones,” I said.
“What?”
“Suck on a rock. It helps with hunger.”
I gave him a little pebble the size of my fingertip.
He examined it. “Have you sucked on this one?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve got a system. The ones in my right pocket are fresh, the ones in my left pocket have already been sucked.”
“All right, I guess.” Beneath the sound of the tent canvas flapping in the night breeze, I could hear the sucking stone knocking against his teeth. “It does help.”
“Or was it the left pocket…?”
“Ugh.” He chucked the stone at the roof of the tent and noticed my underpants hanging there, covering the patch. “Why would you use underpants?”
“Fixed the hole, didn’t I?”
“You could have used almost anything else, but you used your underpants.”
“They’re cleanish.”
“But just looking at them makes the tent smell worse.”
“You’re all riled up, McSmelty. Want me to teach you my deep breathing exercises?”
“I want to swap places with you. I can’t look at those pants one second longer.”
“Can I use your camping mat?”
“Fine. Just—” He swung his sleeping-bagged legs over mine to try to hoist himself over me and swap places. He wound up falling on my hip bone. “Owwww.”
“Shut up,” I said. “Do you hear that?”
“It’s my back breaking, you idiot.”
“No, listen.”
We listened. Some sort of creature was coming closer, rustling leaves and breaking branches while making a guttural breathing and clicking sound. For a moment, it stopped and there was silence. Then there was this low, rumbling growl that seemed to slide inside the tent and poke my heart.
“It’s right outside,” McKelty whispered, and turned off his torch.
“It’s the badger, I know it.”
“What does it want?”
“Our food.”
“We burned the rice.” McKelty buried his head in his sleeping bag. “Go away,” he muttered. “Leave us alone.”
“It’s OK. I have something…”
I pulled the cake mix from my rucksack.
“Urggg, what’s that smell?” McKelty cried.
“Special camping food,” I said. “Military-issue stuff.”
I chucked the tub of cake mix through the hole in the tent and then quickly plugged it back up with my undies and McKelty’s charred sweater. The creature outside seemed to groan thank you. Then there was the sound of paws clicking on plastic as it scampered away.
We lay without talking for a while. I listened to McKelty breathing loudly through his mouth and tried not to notice the baby powder aroma in my nostrils. Just as my eyes were finally shutting, a whistle pierced the night.
“Attention! Attention!” It was Miss Adolf. “The last minibus is leaving in ten minutes! All quitters prepare yourselves. This will be the last minibus of the night. Leave now, or face more unknowns of the dark! That is all.”
It was obvious the people in the other tents were packing it in.
“I’ll go if you go,” McKelty said in a very small voice.
“Never.”
Soon we heard the minibus rev its engine as it headed towards freedom and plenty. Then everything was quiet again. I fell asleep to the sound of McKelty whimpering. That could have been me, however. Nah, it was definitely McKelty.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A horrible groaning wail broke into my dreams and woke me in the dark night and the talcum aroma of the tent. It was the sound of sheer agony.
First thought: aliens! Second thought: some sort of mammal-sized insect is being digested alive.
“Mama, what is that?” McKelty said and sat bolt upright. He saw me, slapped himself, as he remembered where he was, and tried to act cool. “It isn’t one of the other campers. Everyone’s gone.”
“That’s not human.”
The wail came again, this time with a rumbling gurgle that I felt in my ribcage.
“Yes, it is,” McKelty said. “And it needs our help.”
The next cry came, rapid fire, followed by the most dreadful moaning. And then, weakly, trickling through the inky night, came the words “Heeeeelp meeeeeee…”
It was Miss Adolf.
“We’re coming, Miss!” McKelty shouted and dragged me into the night.
The sound was definitely coming from Miss Adolf’s giant tent. A light was on in there.
“Maybe she’s mutating?” I suggested.
“What?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe she’s mutating into her spirit animal.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” McKelty said, running across the field and creeping up to the open flap of the tent. “But there may be an animal in there, so be ready to fight it off. On three. Ready?”
“No.”
“One, two…”
“Tonobungay!” I shouted, and jumped inside the tent, hands out, ready to pounce.
A horrid wall of smell stopped me in my tracks and made me weak in the knees. I looked around.
On a table there was an iPod playing “Haunted Sounds of the Woods”. Yet the music wasn’t playing any more, and the rumbling sound was still rumbling.
I scanned the tent to the bed. There was Miss Adolf, lying on her back, her stomach shaking. Her head was rolled back and her tongue was hanging out. She started pointing at her gurgling stomach and shaking her head. No… No…
Then she rolled over, opened her mouth and threw up. I’ll say no more about it. It’s bad enough remembering it.
“Food poisoning,” she groaned. “Call … an … ambulance.”
“Right away, Miss,” McKelty said. “Where’s a phone?”
“All gone… Sent them back on the … minibus. Oooohhhaaaahgggggguurr.”
That was when I noticed my tub of cake mix on the floor next to Miss Adolf’s camp bed. It was open. Some creature, maybe the badger, had eaten at least half of it. Or maybe…
“Did you eat this?” I asked Miss Adolf.
When she caught sight of the tub, her eyes rolled back in her head. She pointed at her stomach and groaned. “Get that … away! Oooooh!”
Miss Adolf puked a second time.
McKelty pulled me to one side. Miss Adolf had rolled into a ball and was starting to shiver.
“What are we going to do?” he asked.
“AHHHHHHHH!” Miss Adolf screamed.
“I have a phone,” I said. Then my own stomach heaved as I remembered where it was. “Oh no. No. Noooooooo.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
If you are reading this, I consider you my friend. So for the sake of our friendship, I won’t tell you everything that happened over that next hour or so. I will only tell you what you need to know. But nothing more.
Nothing more.
You know already that McKelty and I crawled on our hands and knees through the cowpat minefield, poking and prodding at no less than five hundred individual pizza-sized cow deposits, looking for the stupid plastic bag that contained my mobile phone. You know that it was freezing. Yo
u know that an animal was tracking us the entire time, drawing nearer. You also know that it started raining. And you know that I puked up my orange juice.
What you don’t know is that my aim was less than stellar. Aside from my fingers, a little of the − shall we say “recoil”? − splashed my partner. And my partner promptly threw up himself, breaking seven generations of McKelty family tradition − “McKeltys don’t puke” − and I got to know him from the inside-out.
Let me skip over the next few minutes. All I will say is that we spent them letting the beautiful, cleansing rain wash over us.
I don’t know who found the phone at last, or where. It was under a rain-soaked cowpat that looked like every other rain-soaked cowpat. I’m almost certain I found it, but McKelty and I were like a creature of one flesh by then.
I had five texts from Frankie:
1. “Something weird is going on in your house. Parents are all nice.”
2. “Your parents have gone mental. Won’t let Ash or me leave. Never want to stop playing Snakes and Ladders.”
3. “Parents are kidnapping us. All doors and windows locked!”
4. “Ash has Stockholm syndrome. Thinks she’s Emily. Wearing her glasses. Petting Katherine. Calling your parents ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’.”
5. “Looks like I’m adopted too!”
I called Frankie to send help. I called Ashley. I called my parents. No one responded. It was the middle of the night. No one was coming.
Through the wind and the rain, I heard the distant call of a badger puking up on an empty stomach.
McKelty and I put our heads down and ran back through the rain. But with all the rain, and the barfing, and the hunger, and the adrenaline, and, of course, the cowpat fumes, we couldn’t find the campsite, let alone make it out of the cowpat minefield.
“We’re going round in circles!” McKelty cried. He dropped to his knees. “Try to use your phone’s map. It’s our only hope.”
Bad idea. The last time I tried to use the Satnav, I got on a slow bus heading for Essex. Like I said, I’m not good with maps.
Instead, I looked through the rain for a familiar landmark. All I saw was rain and muddy fields and the dark night.