How would the beastly BÜÜÜÜG react to a bunch of strangers?
And to its prize catch trying to escape?
IN.
IT.
CAME!
21
DAYS UNTIL ARRIVAL: NEVER MIND THAT, WE HAVE A MUCH MORE IMMEDIATE PROBLEM!
‘Run, children! Save yourselves!’ yelled Lydia. ‘I am old! I have lived my life! For too long I have been captured by this thing! Kept in a cave, behind his web of steel! Today I will fight to the death!’
Lydia had tried to escape in the past, of course, using all her monster hunting knowledge. She’d knitted ropes from vines, she’d crafted booby-traps from coconuts, she’d even written a number of inspiring poems to try and win it over . . . but the BÜÜÜÜG had avoided all her efforts (especially her poems) until she’d been forced to accept her fate.
Hamish, Alice and Kit were panicking, ready for the dreadful BÜÜÜÜG to show itself. They could hear it. They could feel it. They could sense it. But where was it?
Uni was tense and alert, his eyes like steel now, his teeth bared – he could sense a fight was in the air. He dipped his head, ready to use his tusk, but no matter how fearsome he made himself look, he could not hide his own fear.
‘BÜÜÜÜG!’ yelled Lydia, as more dust fell and brown clouds wisped around her. ‘Come get me!’
The old lady stood in the well of sunlight, brightly lit, her fists out like a boxer. The BÜÜÜÜG had to be circling in the gloom around her because its horrible noise bounced from the walls. It was like it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Hamish squinted into the darkness as he tried to catch a glimpse of this awful monster.
And then . . .
‘AHA!’ yelled Lydia. ‘BEHOLD!’ Hamish blinked. Hovering right in front of Lydia was something both Hamish and Alice recognised from her monster book. It was indeed THE BÜÜÜÜG!
The only surprise was that it was about the size of a jelly baby.
‘That’s the BÜÜÜÜG?’ said Alice, almost offended. ‘It’s like being terrorised by a coffee bean!’
‘Don’t underestimate it,’ said Kit. ‘It can spin a web in a hot second. It can shoot its poison, and it can scratch, and its strength knows no bounds. It can live up to a thousand years, because it’s a survivor, a psychopath, a cold-blooded killer! It captures and keeps it prey, until it is ready and ripe to eat! It has more power than you would ever imagine!’
Alice stared at it with a new wonder. She knew Kit was right, you must never underestimate an enemy.
And now the tiny BÜÜÜÜG was hovering directly in front of Lydia’s nose. It looked like it was preparing for something. A sting? A bite?
It began to shake.
And vibrate.
And the noise grew.
And grew.
The BVVVVVV shook the very cave to its rafters.
A coconut tree fell over! Lydia’s cups and plates rattled on her home-made shelves. A chunk of the cave fell from the ceiling, and dust POFFED into the air, right where poor Uni was standing . . .
Uni shook his head, trying to get rid of the cloud of dust so he could concentrate, but that was the very worst thing to do, because now it was right up his nostrils!
Uni sputtered and spluttered. His nostrils flared. Hamish had had enough colds and had accidentally over-peppered enough eggs to know what was about to happen!
Wait! He knew what was about to happen!
Quickly, Hamish clambered on to Uni’s back, and used both his hands to direct the unicorn’s head. Uni tried to resist, but Hamish remained strong, pointing the unicorn’s head towards the BÜÜÜÜG and—
‘BLACHOOOOFFFFF!’
The unicorn sneezed powerfully from the dust!
But this wasn’t just a sneeze.
This was a unicorn sneeze!
A great WOFF of FIRE shot from its nostrils, like a flamethrower!
The whole cave lit up. The sheer heat made everyone feel like they were blushing. Uni smiled a nervous ‘sorry!’.
And then everyone noticed the noise had stopped.
Hamish looked at the BÜÜÜÜG.
It was hanging in the air still.
But it was black.
And a small wisp of smoke twirled into the air above it.
It dropped to the floor with a PIFF and then POFF – crumbled to dust.
Thanks to Hamish, the fireball missed Lydia by millimetres and hit his target exactly!
‘Well, I wish I’d tried something like that before,’ said Lydia, gathering together a few of her things, and reaching down to pick up the old book by her bed. ‘Now let’s get out of here!’
22
DAYS UNTIL ARRIVAL:
2-AND-A-HALF!
By the time the group made it back to the ravine, Smasha was landing the Astral Plane. When Alice and Kit hadn’t been where he’d left them, he’d circled over the jungle trying to spot them with his heat-seekers.
‘A Puffox!’ yelled Lydia over the noise and wind from the engines, and pointing in panic at the monster at the wheel. ‘I’ll handle this! The best way to dispatch a Puffox is six hard tugs to the tail! Weakens their knees. After that, a couple of bops to the ribs and he’ll be Puffox putty in my hands!’
Lydia got ready to fight, but Kit leapt in front of her.
‘He’s my Familiar! Monster Patrol pairs up kids and monsters these days!’
‘Kids and monsters?’ said Lydia, her horror turning to delight. ‘So you’re telling me that all over the world, while I was stuck in a cave for decades, there were hundreds of teams of monsters and kids teaming up to battle evil?’
Kit looked sheepish.
‘Well . . . to be honest . . . it’s just me and Smasha. Ever since Grandmamma died . . . things have been a little harder.’
Lydia’s face softened as she watched the plane doors open.
‘That could do with a lick of paint, too.’
Hamish turned to Uni. He couldn’t very well take the unicorn all the way back to Starkley, but Hamish was worried about leaving Uni here. After all, he’d helped distract the other unicorns. They would not appreciate that one bit.
‘Can we make a stop on the way?’ he asked Kit. ‘I think someone deserves a treat.’
After they’d dropped Uni at Hotel Empanada – and told a delighted Brendon that this unicorn was a hero and was his new permanent companion and deserved all the cactus sugar cubes he could find – Hamish hit VIDEO CALL on the dashboard to check in on the PDF.
‘Hamish! We’ve been waiting for your call!’ said Elliot, live from Garage 5, staring into the camera in his computer.
‘We’re in the Amazon rainforest!’ said Hamish.
‘Of course you are,’ said Elliot. ‘I reckoned you would either still be in the Amazon rainforest, or at Frinkley leisure centre because it’s 2-for-1 on hotdogs today.’
In the background, Hamish could hear the Central Speaker honking away.
‘What’s happening there?’
‘What’s not happening, H?’ Buster said, leaning into view. ‘The curfew’s earlier. They’re bringing down the barriers around Starkley. We’re on Hot Alert.’
‘Why?’ said Alice.
‘Because whatever’s on that radar has sped up,’ said Clover, peering in. ‘It’s like in the last day or so, it’s realised it needs to get here quicker. Belasko ’s going nutso! This monster might be a total cycle path!’
The only thing that had changed in the last day was that Hamish and Alice had found Lydia. Could that be connected?
‘Well, we’re on our way back to Starkley,’ said Hamish, as Smasha powered the boosters and the Astral Plane shot through the sky. ‘And tell Belasko – we’re bringing Lydia!’
‘Starkley,’ said Lydia, quietly, as Hamish hung up the call. ‘I can’t believe that worked out.’
Alice turned to her.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
And so Lydia explained.
‘In 1982, Belasko built Starkley. A
town designed to be so boring that no one would ever want to investigate any further. But a town that would hide a secret,’ Lydia began.
‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘We know the secret now. You press a button in the town clock and the whole place turns into Earth’s best chance of defence against evil. Buildings turn into control rooms, that sort of thing. Hamish’s dad is actually a top agent there.’
‘Yeah,’ said Hamish. ‘We go on, like, missions together and stuff. Or we will.’
Lydia smiled, as if none of this surprised her one bit.
‘Ah, but there was another purpose behind Starkley,’ she said. ‘An even larger one. To do with the people who would live there. Belasko made sure that it was appealing to a certain type of person. They would offer them cheap houses, make sure there were good schools . . .’
‘What type of people?’ asked Hamish.
‘Useful people,’ she said. ‘Some young Belasko agents. People who might have talents in their family heritage. People who could look at the world differently. People with adventure, or brains, or fearlessness in their bloodlines. People who might rise to the occasion, whatever the occasion is.’
‘That sounds mad,’ said Hamish.
‘And yet here you all are,’ said Lydia. ‘Hiding in plain sight. You, your friends . . . people like my daughter . . .’
‘Does your . . . daughter . . . have special skills?’ said Alice, cagily. She wasn’t quite sure how to tell Lydia exactly who she was yet.
Lydia traced her finger down the stripe in Alice’s hair.
‘Some things run in the family,’ she said.
Alice looked up at the old lady with the white stripe in her hair. Lydia nodded towards Hamish.
‘It’s no coincidence that the son of a top Belasko agent might become friends with a girl like you, Alice.’
‘So you know who I am?’ she said, as Lydia took her hand.
Lydia squeezed it.
‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘Second I saw you. And you are proof the experiment worked. I’m very proud. Tell me about the friends at home I saw.’
‘Well, there’s Elliot,’ she said. ‘He was the first on screen. He’s the one who first noticed your HELP ME message in the paper.’
‘A natural codebreaker,’ she said. ‘You see, I knew They were after me.’
‘They?’ said Hamish, but he had a feeling he knew who she meant. The Superiors. The awful alien race they had come up against before. The ones that had taken his uncle to their heart and made him evil.
‘I knew I could be facing a trap, going into the jungle on my own like that. But I was blinded by ambition. I had been scared off by a monster, and if the enemy saw I could be scared, they would see a weakness. I had to show I would not back down. The night I got there I realised there was no way out. If I returned home, they would send spies to follow me, and I would lead them straight to your mother.’
‘The Superiors?’ said Alice, and Lydia nodded.
‘But if they caught me, at least I had sent the diary somewhere safe, where my clues might be discovered. It was like calling for backup. I’m looking forward to thanking Elliot.’
‘The other boy was Buster,’ said Alice. ‘He’s great with gadgets and mechanics, he set up our whole base. And then there’s Clover, she’s a master of disguise.’
‘It seems they all have special skills,’ said Lydia.
‘Well, there’s Venk, too,’ said Alice. ‘We’re still working his skills out.’
‘Did you ever find that convenient?’ asked Lydia. ‘The fact that your friends all excel at certain things?’
Alice looked confused. What was Lydia saying?
But it started to hit her. Could it really be coincidence that a gang like the PDF had found each other, completely by chance?
That they would all have been brought up in a town like Starkley?
That they were all about the same age?
‘Starkley was an investment in Earth’s future,’ said Lydia. ‘It was exciting times in what we called the Union. Belasko and Monster Patrol often worked together. Of course, as we faced greater threats, our power was weakened . . . which is why we needed to keep the future of our organisation safe and hidden in plain sight.’
Lydia opened the book she’d brought with her from the cave. It was old, creased and leather-bound. It looked like a book of spells or something.
‘This is Luciana’s book of dreams,’ she said, and Kit gasped from the cockpit. He had heard these stories from his grandmamma. But he thought her book had been lost. It had disappeared along with Lydia. ‘I have had many years to study them, as you can imagine. She believed that dreams held the secrets of our futures. I once thought that was nonsense, to be honest, but she seemed to get things right a lot.’
Kit smiled.
‘Anyway, one of Luciana’s dreams told her that our planet’s worst threat would appear in a small town. A man with great power. An apprentice of the Superiors, keen to make his name.’
‘Scarmarsh,’ said Hamish and Alice in unison.
Lydia’s eyes widened.
‘He was the second-worst villain in the universe,’ said Alice. ‘But now we reckon he’s top of the league!’
‘Luciana said that the danger would come from the sea,’ said Lydia, darkly, ‘but a boy on the cliffs would hold the secret to beating it.’
‘I told you, Alice!’ said Kit.
‘That boy would know the mind of the monster,’ said Lydia. ‘He would be the Chosen One.’
Alice looked at Hamish as his own dream flashed through his mind again. The moment of responsibility was not lost on him.
And suddenly he felt a little sick.
In many ways, he knew he was already the Chosen One. Scarmarsh was choosing him. So, while he didn’t know the mind of the monster, a monster certainly seemed to know Hamish’s mind.
He wanted to say something. He wanted desperately to be rid of this secret. But he couldn’t find the words. Not now. Not when they seemed to believe in him so much.
Lydia squeezed Alice’s hand again, as the Astral Plane banked left and began to whizz over the ocean.
‘You know that when we get back, there’s someone you’re going to have to say sorry to almost immediately,’ said Alice.
‘I know,’ said Lydia, sadly. ‘I imagine your mum is quite angry with me, disappearing like that. I suppose I was always disappearing. But it was my calling. I regret it, of course. I thought of her every day I was there. I wished I’d been around more. I wondered what her life was like. I wondered if someone like you existed. I’m so pleased you do.’
Alice smiled.
‘Now!’ said Lydia, eager to get stuck in. ‘What can you tell me about this sea monster?’
Lydia grinned. She’d been waiting forever for this.
23
DAYS UNTIL ARRIVAL: 2
The PDF was ready and waiting with a full briefing as the gang poured out of the Astral Plane and into Garage 5.
Dozens of people had rushed to see the return of this mysterious craft as they heard it tear through the clouds.
The second it touched down, Kit opened the doors and yelled, ‘I am Kit Alexander Lopez of Monster Patrol! And I return your crazy people!’
Hamish’s mum had been at the front of the crowd, wanting to make sure he was safe. She knew she had to get used to her son’s increasing role in protecting the world, but still – you don’t go running off to the Amazon rainforest willy-nilly. Madame Cous Cous had polished her glasses so she could get an extra special good look.
Belasko had requested an immediate meeting with Lydia, but she was very firm as she stepped out: she would be working with the PDF first and foremost. They were welcome to join, but after all, it was the PDF who had found the clues, travelled all that way and rescued her. Where had Belasko been? No, she wanted the PDF in charge!
Elliot had prepared a full briefing around the table. Also some squash.
The sea monster was indeed moving faster, he said,
but they had allowed for that. If it continued at this speed, the experts said it would hit Starkley at around 9 p.m., just two days from now.
Two days was nothing!
And, what’s more, it was bigger. Much bigger. They could tell by the pace that it wasn’t swimming. It was walking. Meaning it had legs. And if it had legs, that meant it could walk on land.
But even though Lydia should have been completely focused on Elliot’s intel, she was enthralled by what was on the walls.
‘Oh, my!’ she said, pushing Venk out of the way to stare at the PDF’s KNOW YOUR ENEMY! posters. ‘Monstrum horrendum!’
She moved from one poster to the other, giving each monster its proper scientific title.
‘Bestia terribilis!’ she almost yelled, pointing at a picture of a Terrible. ‘I recognise the markings! Strangely beautiful! But these were only ever a rumour . . . Unless a particular someone perfected the formula?’
‘Scarmarsh!’ said Clover. ‘They’re called Terribles. He’s quite good at this stuff.’
‘Venus exploratorem captionem,’ said Kit, staring at a picture of a Venus spytrap, his arms behind his back, absolutely fascinated.
‘Extraordinary!’ said Lydia. ‘And you have battled with these things?’
‘Yup!’ said Alice. ‘It’s pretty much what we do. That, and homework.’
‘You see?’ said Lydia. ‘Monster hunting runs in the family. Just as so many other things do. Buster, Alice tells me that you’re a technical whizz?’
‘Me?’ said Buster, shyly. ‘I used to sit in the garage with my dad. He would let me tinker with things. Let me use his spanners whenever I liked. He was pretty brilliant at that stuff.’
‘And Clover – you have quite a way with disguises?’
Clover laughed.
‘My mum used to pretend my grandad was an amazing spy, codenamed The Blender, because he could blend in to any situation. Cowboy. Camel. Marine biologist. You’d never know he was there. Until he said “hello, I’m a cowboy, camel, marine biologist”. That’s why they could never throw him a surprise party. My mum says it would usually turn out he was already in the room, disguised as a lamp! But she was just joking.’
Hamish and the Monster Patrol Page 9
