by Justin D'Ath
They puttered slowly along the weedy drive. The liquidambars formed a colourful red and yellow canopy overhead. Their trunks were buried in head-high tangles of blackberries. In places, the prickly vines came halfway across the drive. Trailing branches from the trees scraped along the Appaloosa’s roof.
‘It’s like driving through a jungle,’ Birdy whispered.
‘Only more scary,’ said Colt, thinking about Ranga and his companion. And of the possibility that they had guns.
But I can deal with them, he thought, flexing his rock-hard biceps. ‘Birdy, could you get me a couple of bananas from that picnic basket next to you?’
As she poked two bananas between the seats, Birdy gave him an inquiring look – a look that said, What about your mother?
Colt’s mother didn’t know he had superpowers.
Didn’t know he needed to eat huge quantities of food to fuel his short bursts of superhuman strength.
Didn’t know that her two passengers were Superclown and Clowngirl, whose amazing feats and daring rescues had the whole country talking (and a lot of other countries, too).
‘Thanks,’ he said, peeling a banana.
Kristin steered the four-wheel drive around a snarl of blackberry vines wrapped around a fallen branch. ‘I’m amazed you can think about food at a time like this.’
‘I’m a growing boy,’ he said with his mouth full.
It was true. Over the summer, he had shot up nearly three centimetres. At the rate he was going, he would soon outgrow his mother.
‘Was Dad tall?’
Kristin didn’t answer. She never talked about Colt’s father. And right now there were other things they needed to think about.
A little grey van had just appeared at the far end of the drive. It came driving towards them.
‘OMG!’ gasped Birdy.
Kristin slammed on the brakes. ‘Put your heads down,’ she ordered.
Twisting round in her seat to see behind them, she began reversing flat out along the narrow, tree-lined driveway towards the road. Birdy had ducked out of sight at Kristin’s command, but Colt remained sitting upright. What was the point of hiding? He watched the van come racing after them. His mother’s foot was flat to the floor, their engine was roaring, but reverse isn’t a very fast gear. The van soon caught up. It came so close that the two vehicles – one going backwards, one going forwards – were almost touching. The man in the dark hoodie was driving. Ranga, in the passenger seat, opened his window and thrust his hand out.
‘Mum!’ cried Colt. ‘He’s got a gun!’
Kristin slammed on the brakes. Her quick reaction took the other driver by surprise. The van slammed into them.
CRUNCH!
There was a period of stunned silence as everyone except Birdy, who was still hiding, stared at each other across the short distance separating the two facing windscreens.
The silence was broken by a hissing sound. A cloud of white steam rose slowly from the van’s crumpled radiator.
Its doors swung open. Both hijackers jumped out. Hoodie surveyed the damage to the van, then shook his head and swore. Ranga marched round to Kristin’s window. He banged on the glass with his pistol.
‘Get out!’ he snarled.
Kristin did as she was told. You don’t argue with someone holding a gun. Colt wondered if he should get out, too. He quickly finished his second banana while listening to Ranga and his mother talk.
‘You should have minded your own business, lady!’
‘Those birds are my business. I work for the circus.’
‘Well, I hope they pay you danger money,’ Ranga said, ‘because you’ve just brought a whole heap of trouble on you and your kids.’
‘Leave the children out of this,’ Kristin said. ‘Just tell me what you’ve done to the truck driver.’
Ranga smiled thinly. ‘He’s keeping his little birdies company.’
A sudden burst of tinkly music came from behind Colt, where another little Birdy was hiding between the seats. Still pointing the pistol at Colt’s mother, Ranga reached into the four-wheel drive with his free hand and clicked his fingers.
‘Give me that.’
Birdy sat up and passed him her ringing iPhone. He dropped it on the ground and stomped on it. The music abruptly stopped. ‘Give me your phone, too,’ he said to Colt’s mother.
She unbuckled her wrist-phone and Ranga shoved it into his pocket.
‘Do you have one?’ he asked Colt.
Colt shook his head. He’d lost his phone a couple of weeks ago – had it taken, actually, by a nasty woman called Officer Katt. Or Superintendent Katt, as she was supposed to be known since her big promotion. Colt had read all about in the VN. But she’d always be Officer Katt to him.
Ranga turned his attention back to Kristin. ‘Does anyone know where you are?’
She nodded. ‘The police. They’ll be here at any moment.’
The red-headed hijacker gritted his teeth. ‘How does it look?’ he asked the other man.
Hoodie was down on his hands and knees, peering under the van. ‘Totally cactus.’
‘Plan B then,’ said Ranga. He waved his pistol at Colt. ‘Out you get, sonny.’
Colt opened his door and stepped out. Birdy started to get out, too, but Ranga shook his head at her. ‘You stay where you are, doll.’
He marched Colt and his mother around the back of the Appaloosa and ordered Kristin to open its big rear door. The luggage space was crammed with boxes, computers, veterinary equipment and several small cages with baby animals in them.
‘Take everything out,’ Ranga ordered.
He made them pile all their gear in the prickly blackberries at the edge of the drive. Then he marched Colt and his mother back to the van, where Hoodie was unloading twelve white shoeboxes with air-holes poked in their lids. Colt glimpsed a dark eye peering out through one of the holes, then a flash of iridescent red feathers. Birdy’s hunch was right – Ranga and Hoodie were stealing the regent firebirds.
‘Get in,’ Ranga commanded.
So this is their Plan B, Colt thought. The hijackers were going to lock him and his mother in the back of their wrecked van, then drive off in the Appaloosa with the stolen firebirds.
‘What about Birdy?’ he asked.
Kristin turned to Ranga. ‘The little girl. She’s still in my car.’
‘She stays there,’ Ranga said. ‘She’s our insurance policy. Tell the police they had better not come after us.’
He slammed the van’s rear door, locking them inside.
‘It’s my fault,’ Kristin whispered, as she and Colt crouched uncomfortably in the back of the van. There were no seats. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything about the police.’
Colt felt guilty, too. ‘I laughed when she said that thing about hostages.’
They had no forward view from the van’s cramped rear compartment. Colt pressed his face to one of the dusty side windows and watched the hijackers hurry back and forth as they transferred the twelve shoeboxes to his mother’s car. It was frustrating. His body felt like a ticking time bomb, but there was nothing he (or Superclown) could do without endangering Birdy’s life. Not yet, anyway.
They heard doors slamming and the electric hum of the Appaloosa’s bintalyte-powered engine fading into the distance. Then there was silence.
But not for long.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Colt said, crawling past his mother to the van’s rear door.
‘It’s locked,’ she said.
Colt sat down facing the door, drew his knees up under his chin, then gave it a double-footed Superclown kick.
WHUMP!
The heavy metal door went spinning away like a giant frisbee, ricocheting off trees and mulching a wide, zigzag avenue through the blackberries.
‘Now it isn’t,’ Colt said.
Colt’s mother climbed out after him. On her face was a confused expression. She brushed her fingertips across one of the broken hinges, then studied the trail of destruction l
eft by the flying door (which had finished up wrapped around a tree about forty metres away). She seemed lost for words.
‘That was . . . ‘
‘Unbelievably cool?’ Colt suggested.
She shook her head. ‘I think I would have just said . . . unbelievable.’
‘It’s my new sneakers’ – he raised one off the ground and waggled it – ‘they’ve got special gel in their soles that acts kind of like springs.’
‘I wondered why they were so expensive,’ Kristin said drily.
As Colt looked back along the jungly, tree-lined driveway towards the road, there was no sign of the Appaloosa – Birdy’s kidnappers had got away. ‘I’ll go and see if the police are coming.’
Kristin nodded. She still seemed a little dazed. ‘All right. You do that, darling. And I’ll go and see if I can find Mr Greene.’
As soon as she set off up the drive, Colt took off in the other direction. He hoped she wouldn’t glance over her shoulder, because no amount of special gel could account for how fast he was running.
His mother’s word – unbelievable – was the only way to describe it.
Colt came flying out onto the road so fast that he nearly collided with an old blue station wagon. It swerved to avoid him, went skidding along the gravel shoulder for about fifty metres, and finally came to a standstill in a huge cloud of dust.
Whoops! thought Colt.
He slowed to a more sensible speed, then trotted after the station wagon to apologise to the driver.
And also to ask a favour.
It reversed back and met him halfway. The driver’s window rolled down. ‘Are you okay?’ asked a friendly-looking man wearing glasses.
Colt had expected him to be angry, not friendly – and certainly not smiling. ‘Yeah. I’m sorry for scaring you back there, but it’s a bit of an emergency.’
The smile disappeared. ‘Has there been an accident?’
‘Not an accident,’ Colt said, scanning the road in both directions. ‘Hey, did you pass a white four-wheel drive?’
‘I saw one about twenty minutes ago.’
‘I mean in the last couple of minutes,’ Colt said. ‘With two guys in it – shifty kind of guys? One had red hair.’
The man shook his head.
That meant Birdy’s kidnappers must have gone the other way – the same way the friendly stranger had been going when Colt nearly ran into him. Colt studied his car – it looked even older up close, and one of its doors was painted green.
‘Is this thing fast?’ he asked doubtfully.
It had been drummed into Colt since he was four years old. Never accept rides from strangers. His mother said it, his teachers said it. They even said it on kids HV shows. Colt knew it was good advice – for other kids. But the rules were different for superheroes. It was the person giving the ride who had to be careful.
The stranger said his name was James. He told Colt to do up his seatbelt. Then they were off.
The old blue station wagon was fast.
‘So what’s the emergency?’ James asked.
Colt told him what had happened, leaving out the superhero bits. As he talked, their speed seemed to increase. But it was difficult to know how fast they were going because the old-fashioned analogue speedometer didn’t work.
‘How old is this car?’
‘Exactly twice your age, Colt.’ James winked. ‘But she’s got a few years left in her yet.’
Colt wondered if he had made a mistake getting a ride with this guy. How did he know Colt’s age? But right now, Birdy’s situation was more desperate than his.
‘Can you go any faster?’
‘No need to,’ said James. He pointed ahead. ‘There they are.’
They had just come over the crest of a hill – the same hill where Colt’s mother had made a U-turn earlier – and about halfway along the straight stretch of road ahead was a tiny white speck, inching its way towards the horizon.
Much closer, and coming in the opposite direction, was a police car with its blue and red lights flashing. It must have been responding to Kristin’s triple zero call.
‘Nice timing,’ James said.
He reached for a lever on the left-hand side of the steering column – probably to flash his lights at the police and make them stop.
‘Don’t!’ cried Colt. ‘That Ranga guy said not to tell the police!’
‘Colt, we have to tell the police.’
‘No! They might hurt Birdy if they see a cop car chasing them!’
James’s fingers were poised on the flasher switch. The oncoming police car was getting close. ‘Who’s going to rescue her, then?’
‘I will,’ Colt said.
‘And how do you propose to do that?’ asked James.
‘Have you heard of Superclown?’
‘Everyone’s heard of Superclown.’
‘I’m him.’
The police car shot past in a whirlwind of sirens and flashing lights. James removed his fingers from the flasher switch. ‘I thought they unmasked him,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t he a kid from that school where the circus panther got loose?’
‘That was Zac Watson.’ Colt grinned. ‘He covered for me. We switched identities so I wouldn’t get found out.’
James was silent for a moment. ‘Well, that explains a lot of things,’ he said, more to himself than to his thirteen-year-old passenger.
Colt looked at him in surprise. He had expected a different reaction. He’d thought he would have to prove he was Superclown by showing off his superhero strength. ‘Do you actually believe me?’ he asked.
James nodded. Then he said something creepy: ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on you for some time.’
‘Do you work for DoRFE?’ Colt asked suspiciously.
The Department of Rat Flu Eradication had its eye on the Lost World Circus. Its officers, known as rat cops, were always snooping around and giving Colt a hard time. (Colt gave them a hard time, too – especially one called Officer Katt.)
‘I most certainly don’t work for DoRFE!’ James said. He chuckled. ‘You might say I’m the opposite of a rat cop.’
Colt felt himself relax a little. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s a bit sensitive, actually. Do you mind if I keep it secret for now?’
‘I told you a secret.’
‘That’s true,’ said James. ‘And I feel very honoured, Colt – or should I call you Superclown?’
‘Colt is better – I’m not in my clown gear.’
‘And you don’t need to be in your costume to access your superpowers?’
‘Of course not.’ Colt rolled his eyes. ‘It’s just a disguise. Aren’t you going to tell me your secret?’
‘Let’s focus on the job at hand,’ said James, evading the question. They had made up a lot of ground on the Appaloosa since passing the police car. It was only a few hundred metres ahead. ‘Any ideas on how to rescue your girlfriend?’
Colt’s face grew hot. ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’
‘Sorry, my mistake,’ James said. ‘But how are we going to rescue her?’
Colt had no idea. But why should he answer James’s questions if James wasn’t answering his? ‘Just follow them,’ he instructed. ‘But don’t get too close.’
James allowed the station wagon to drop back a bit. ‘I’m guessing she’s Clowngirl?’
There was no way to answer that question (or not answer it!) without James learning the truth.
‘That’s supposed to be a secret, too,’ Colt said tiredly.
‘My lips are sealed.’
‘Birdy hasn’t actually got superpowers.’
‘I didn’t think so,’ James said. He seemed to know everything.
‘Why were you following me?’ Colt asked.
‘Following you?’
Colt nodded. ‘You said you were keeping an eye on me. And today I saw your car twice – once going the other way, and then when you came back and nearly ran over me.’
‘If I remember correctly,�
�� James said, ‘it was you who nearly ran into me.’
‘Whatever.’ Colt shrugged. ‘I’ve seen you before though, haven’t I? There was another time when you stopped and nearly gave me ride.’
‘Guilty as charged.’
‘Why?’
‘Colt, do you mind if we don’t go into it now? I’m not really at liberty to tell you.’
‘Is your other name Bond?’
James laughed.
‘I wish it was.’ Colt sighed. ‘A secret agent would know how to rescue Birdy.’
‘Well, I’m very sorry to disappoint you,’ James said. He pointed at a tiny RyNoPhone plugged into a comdoc on the dashboard. ‘You know, it’s still not too late to involve the police.’
‘No police,’ Colt said firmly. ‘I don’t want her to get hurt.’
They both stared at the Appaloosa. It felt weird seeing his mother’s car being driven by strangers – not just strangers but kidnappers. Poor Birdy!
‘Where do you think they’re going?’ James asked.
Colt yawned. Suddenly he felt really tired. ‘Bintalu,’ he said, fighting to keep his eyes open.
‘That’s way out in the middle of the ocean.’
‘Then I guess they’ll need a boat.’
‘Or an aeroplane,’ James said thoughtfully.
Colt’s head rocked forward. He jerked it back up.
‘Are you okay?’ asked James. ‘You’re white as a ghost.’
‘I need something to eat.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t have anything. There’s a bottle of water near your feet, if that’s any help?’
Colt reached for it and had a long drink. He hadn’t realised how thirsty he was. But plain water wasn’t going to help him stay awake. He needed sugar. Calories. Food.
‘I’m think I’m going to pass out,’ he said.
James slowed the car. ‘Are you ill?’
‘It’s just my superpowers. I always get really tired after I use them,’ explained Colt. ‘Unless I eat something.’
‘Do you want to tip your seat back and have a little snooze?’ asked James.
Colt shook his head. He had to stay awake. For Birdy’s sake. ‘If I go to sleep,’ he said weakly, ‘I might not wake up for hours.’
‘Can you hang on for fifteen minutes?’ James asked. ‘There’s a town coming up.’
