S.T.I.N.K.B.O.M.B.

by Rob Stevens

  When Archie reached the kidnappers they were bundling their victim into the back seat of a BMW parked fifty yards from the gallery.

  ‘Let him go!’ he shouted, grabbing the hooded youth’s arm and pulling him off his captive’s legs.

  The figure turned and squared up to Archie, who intuitively dropped to a crouch and jabbed his right fist into his opponent’s stomach, doubling him over. Immediately Archie swung his leg in a horizontal arc along the ground, sweeping the kidnapper’s feet from under him and knocking him flat on to his back.

  Watching from a distance, Barney’s mouth fell open. ‘Where did he learn to kick butt like that?’

  Leaping over his prostrate adversary, Archie threw himself at the other kidnapper from behind, clinging to his black leather coat like a wildcat attacking an antelope. The man’s shoulders felt eerily wiry under Archie’s grip. Ignoring the boy grappling with him he concentrated on bundling the bearded man into the BMW before closing and locking the door. Only then did he stand upright, lifting Archie’s feet a metre off the ground. With a small but powerful flick of his shoulders he swung Archie off his back, grabbing one wrist and one ankle as the boy tumbled towards the pavement.

  Barney watched in horror as the tall skinny figure swung his friend back and forth a couple of times before effortlessly tossing him away as if he were no heavier than a sack of rubbish. Archie’s arms and legs flailed helplessly as he sailed into the air before coming down hard on the pavement about twenty feet away, grunting loudly as the impact punched the wind out of his lungs.

  ‘Hey!’ Barney yelled, rushing to help Archie to his feet.

  The tall skinny man strode towards Barney with a jerky gait, as if he was walking on stilts. By now the youth in the hoody had recovered from Archie’s attack and he too approached the boys, walking with a teenage hip-hop limp.

  Archie and Barney stood shoulder to shoulder, considering the double trouble closing in on them.

  ‘I don’t like the look of the tall guy,’ muttered Barney. ‘His head’s way too small and his legs have got too many joints.’

  ‘And he’s freakishly strong,’ added Archie. ‘Not to mention creepily wiry.’

  As Archie spoke the teenager’s hood slipped back, revealing a wide, flat head that appeared to be covered in rotting scales. His bulbous eyes stared unblinking from either side of his skull while his fat-lipped mouth opened rhythmically into a perfect circle.

  ‘As for him,’ said Archie, his pulse racing out of control, ‘there’s definitely something fishy about that guy.’

  The two muggers stalked towards the boys.

  Archie raised his hands in readiness, while bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. ‘Come on then, Fishface.’

  ‘Yeah, come on then, Stickman,’ goaded Barney, but with much less conviction.

  Nobody moved for a moment then suddenly the fish-like boy rushed Archie, throwing a barrage of punches.

  Archie responded without thinking, springing backwards to keep some distance from his attacker. His arms were no more than a blur as he reacted to the flurry of punches coming at him, frantically thrashing his hands in front of his face. Only when there was a lull in his attacker’s advance did Archie realise that he hadn’t been struck once.

  Driven by sudden confidence, Archie rallied with an onslaught of his own. As if his arms were being controlled by some unseen ninja he threw three, four, five stiff, straight blows that connected with his opponent’s body, driving him backwards across the pavement. When the fishy kid attempted his own counter-attack, Archie stood his ground, allowing the mugger to come within striking range before retaliating. Planting his left foot, he leaned back then fired out his right leg like a piston that drove into his enemy’s solar plexus, leaving him curled up on the ground, gasping for breath.

  ‘Where did that come from?’ Barney asked, his eyes bulging with amazement.

  ‘I’ve no idea!’ Archie laughed, staring at his own hands as if he’d never seen them before. ‘I just relaxed, I suppose. Let my instincts guide me – just like my dad told me to do.’ To underline his newfound expertise, Archie unleashed another flurry of punches to warn off the wiry guy, finishing with a spectacular jumping back-kick. When he landed he looked up to see that his enemy was no longer lurking. Thinking he had scared the stickman away he turned, laughing and panting, to enjoy Barney’s reaction, then a tide of utter terror engulfed him.

  The stickman had Barney by the throat, holding him at arm’s length three feet off the ground in a frightening display of his strength. Barney’s face was deep purple and his eyes were swollen. A strangled choking noise escaped sporadically from his gaping mouth. His feet were kicking wildly but Archie could tell his friend’s fight was fading.

  Emitting the sort of scream you might expect from someone being dunked in a bath of boiling water, Archie sprinted across the pavement and launched himself at Barney’s attacker.

  ‘Haaaiii-yyaaahh!’

  Driving one knee upward to propel himself as high as possible, he leaned back so that his body and legs made one straight horizontal line. Like a human torpedo, Archie speared through the air. His aim couldn’t have been sweeter and his feet hit his opponent’s upper torso with immense force.

  ‘Oooff!’ He felt as if he’d just launched himself against a brick wall. His joints crumpled, his knees buckled up to his chin and he fell stunned to the floor. Only when Archie lay groaning at his feet did the strange mugger acknowledge his presence, turning his head briefly and stooping to get a close look at him.

  Staring up from the ground, Archie caught his first glimpse of the face hidden beneath the peaked cap and turned-up collar – and what he saw chilled his bones to their marrow.

  The man’s head was covered in glossy orange skin and horribly deformed, as if it had been squashed and stretched into an elongated egg shape. What looked at first glance like a dollop of frogspawn on either side of his enemy’s head Archie quickly realised were two clusters of tiny eyeballs, each one staring menacingly at him. Protruding from the creature’s cuff was a segmented orange arm that was no thicker than a broom handle and covered in thorny white hairs. At its extremity the limb split into two pointed digits that were wrapped around Barney’s neck with lethal force.

  ‘Wh-what are you?’ Archie stammered.

  Two hooked fangs protruded from the end of the strange man’s bullet-shaped snout and clashed together like pincers. ‘Your worst nightmare,’ he growled.

  ‘I’ve had worse nightmares than this,’ Archie bluffed. Trying to reverse along the pavement on his bottom he quickly considered his options. His only hope was to distract his enemy from his goal. ‘The other night I dreamed I’d turned up naked for French. Now that was scary.’

  The stickman appeared confused for a moment as he pondered Archie’s dream and, just for a moment, relaxed his grip on Barney’s throat. As Archie had hoped, this allowed the blood to flow freely to his friend’s brain once again.

  Suddenly Barney sprang to life, slipping the rucksack off his shoulder. It was surprisingly hefty due to the supplies he’d loaded for the journey and he swung it round at arm’s length, bringing it crashing against the skinny man’s head. The blow made little impression on the powerful mugger – apart from knocking his cap off – while the contents of the bag, which had been left unzipped, exploded into the air before raining down on the pavement in a junk-food shower.

  The stickman stared at Barney, two hairy antennae standing upright on his smooth skull and twitching eagerly in the air.

  ‘Hey, Baldy!’ called Archie, jumping to his feet and waving his hands in the air. ‘Don’t waste your time on him. Come and get me.’

  Instantly the odd-looking man released his grip on Barney, who dropped to the ground like a bag of cement, and turned to face Archie.

  ‘Yikes,’ muttered Archie, glancing left and right. ‘I was only trying to distract you – I didn’t expect you to take me seriously.’

  Archie backed away as the strange c
reature strode towards him, his mandibles thrashing together hungrily. Then a peculiar expression crept over the man’s face, and he dropped to his knees. Ripping open a packet of Maltesers that had fallen from Barney’s bag, he tilted his head back and poured in the chocolate balls, munching and swallowing the whole lot in a second. Frantically the mutant crawled a few yards on all fours before tearing open and devouring a Bounty and a Mars bar in quick succession.

  Archie watched with bemusement as the freakish stranger scrabbled about on the ground, scavenging for sweets with the desperate hunger of a stray dog. Freed from the paralysing stranglehold, Barney had regained consciousness and clambered to his feet.

  ‘Hey, Buster,’ he called defiantly. ‘Keep your weird feeler-type hands off my sweets.’

  Only as the villain turned and scurried away to retrieve a far-flung chocolate bar did the perfect plan of action formulate in Archie’s mind. In a flash he communicated its essence to Barney.

  ‘Run for it!’ he yelled.

  Fifteen seconds later Archie was a hundred yards down the street, pumping his legs and punching the air. Behind him he could hear the wail of approaching sirens but it was too late for the Polizei to help. As he rounded a ninety-degree corner into a side street he glanced back up Glashuttenstrasse to check that Barney had followed his lead safely.

  The good news was that the stickman was still on all fours shovelling sweets into his mandibles and Barney was just a few yards behind Archie. The bad news was that the boy with the fish face had recovered from Archie’s karate kick and was now a few yards behind Barney. And closing in fast.

  ‘Hurry!’ Archie hollered. ‘He’s right behind you!’

  Archie slowed down just enough to allow Barney to catch up with him before speeding up again. Not daring to check their tail, the boys pelted to the end of the side street and took a right. Immediately Archie grabbed Barney’s sweatshirt and pulled him behind a parked car.

  For what seemed like an hour the two boys crouched behind the vehicle as their breathing subsided, their backs pressed against its metallic grey flank. At last Archie turned and raised his head slowly until his eyeline was just above the car’s bonnet.

  ‘I think we lost him,’ he whispered tentatively. ‘Whatever he was.’

  ‘Copy that,’ replied Barney, squinting over the car. ‘It looks like the mice have slipped through the, er, net … We’re the mice, by the way.’

  ‘Yeah, I gathered that,’ Archie replied, keeping his eyes trained on the street corner. His head was spinning as he tried to come to terms with the weird characters he’d just fought. ‘I don’t know what we’ve got ourselves into but those guys were freaks,’ he panted. ‘The tall one looked like some sort of insect or something.’

  ‘I know,’ Barney added. ‘And that guy chasing us was a real fish out of water.’

  ‘Very good,’ chuckled Archie.

  ‘It’s sort of espionage humour,’ explained Barney. ‘Spies always crack a joke when they’ve outsmarted a bad guy.’

  ‘Really?’ Archie asked sceptically. ‘When you say spies, I take it you mean …’

  ‘James Bond,’ Barney admitted sheepishly, adding, ‘and Alex Rider does it sometimes.’

  ‘Oh well, in that case …’ Archie thought for a moment. ‘We may have given him the slip but I bet there’s plenty more fish in the sea.’ As he spoke an unpleasant salty aroma wafted into his nostrils.

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Barney sniggered. ‘Shouldn’t he be in school anyway?’

  ‘Mind you,’ Archie smirked, ‘when I’d finished with him he was battered.’

  ‘Maybe he was fighting you just for the hake of it,’ said a timid, slurpy voice behind them.

  Archie and Barney froze for a moment before exchanging expressions of silent surprise. As one they slowly turned round, their hearts drumming hard in their chests.

  ‘Whoa!’ Archie exclaimed, understanding the source of the odd smell he’d detected. Barney grabbed his sleeve and squeezed his arm.

  Standing just a yard away from them, his bulbous eyes trained on the corner of the street and his mouth making a circular hole in his scaly head, was the fishy-looking creature.

  ‘I don’t think he’s coming,’ he whispered. ‘I think we’ve given him the slip.’

  ‘Right,’ said Archie uncertainly. ‘Just as a matter of interest … who are you running away from?’

  The boy took his eyes off the street and looked at Archie. ‘Anybody,’ he said with a dismissive shrug.

  ‘Anybody?’ Archie repeated.

  ‘Whoever,’ the fishy kid suggested vaguely. ‘I don’t really know, to be honest. I only legged it because you screamed, “Run for it.” It seemed like a sensible thing to do at the time – especially with that weird gangly guy on the scene. I didn’t like the look of him at all.’

  ‘You were with him,’ said Barney.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The weird gangly guy.’

  ‘There was a weird gangly guy?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Archie pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. ‘We were running away from both of you.’

  ‘Really?’ The strange boy sounded genuinely hurt. ‘Why would you run away from me?’

  ‘Er, because you attacked me?’ Archie countered.

  ‘You started it. I might have a terrible memory but I remember that clearly. You grabbed my arm and when I turned round you knocked me to the ground.’

  ‘That is true,’ Archie admitted guiltily. ‘Sorry – but I only did it because I thought you were going to attack me.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Barney harshly. ‘Maybe it had something to do with the fact that you were bundling an innocent man into the back of a car?’

  The boy looked horrified. ‘What man?’

  ‘The dude you and the weird gangly man dragged out of the gallery,’ said Barney.

  ‘What gallery? And who’s the weird gangly man?’

  Archie could see that the more questions he and Barney fired at the scaly-skinned kid the more confused and distressed he became. There was more to him than met the eye, Archie was sure. So he suggested going to a cafe to get something to eat. A short distance away they found an Italian restaurant where they sat at a table in the corner and ordered three pizzas.

  ‘We haven’t been properly introduced,’ smiled Archie. ‘I’m Archie and this is Barney.’

  Barney raised a hand but didn’t look up from his Four Cheese Pizza with extra cheese.

  ‘Hi.’ The fishy boy nodded from deep inside his hood, which he had flipped over his head as he’d entered the building.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Archie probed gently.

  ‘They call me Finn.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘I dunno. Everyone.’

  ‘Why did you come to Hamburg?’

  ‘I don’t remember, exactly.’ Finn sighed and hung his head. ‘There’s this kind of professor, or whatever, who lives somewhere … else. He sends us all over the place.’

  Archie gave Finn an encouraging smile. ‘And why did he send you here?’

  ‘I’m not exactly sure. I get so confused, you see. Collect something, I think.’

  ‘Something or someone?’

  ‘Can’t remember,’ Finn said angrily. ‘I can’t remember much at all since …’

  Archie noticed that Finn was struggling to cut his food but the cutlery was slipping in his stubby, scaly fingers. He saw with a shock that Finn’s hands were covered in scalloped flaps of skin, some of which hung loose in clumps.

  ‘I can’t be bothered eating this with a knife and fork,’ Archie announced, tearing off a chunk of his pizza and taking a bite. ‘It’s much more fun to rip it up.’

  Frowning, Barney looked up from his plate. ‘Hey, you’re the one who’s always telling me not to eat with my fing— Ouch! Why are you kicking me?’

  Archie ignored his friend’s protests and smiled at Finn, who nodded gratefully and tore
a piece off his pizza.

  ‘Do you remember what happened to you?’ Archie ventured at last.

  ‘Not really,’ Finn said bitterly. ‘I was one of his experiments. He mixed me up with a fish – you know, genetically.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Archie, appalled.

  ‘Part of his evil master plan, I suppose. Now I’m a really strong swimmer and I can breathe underwater – but I’ve literally got the memory of a goldfish.’

  Archie said nothing and concentrated on not looking too shocked. He ignored Barney, who was silently mouthing, ‘He’s one of Doom’s mutants!’

  ‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ Finn added, licking stringy mozzarella off his fingers. ‘I’ve got a memory like a goldfish too.’

  ‘How long is your memory?’ Archie enquired. ‘Minutes? Seconds?’

  ‘Depends,’ said Finn, pausing to suck milkshake through a straw. ‘I forget most things instantly – people, events, places. Sometimes I sense I’ve been somewhere before but the details will be hazy. Occasionally someone will say something and a whole load of memories come back to me but generally it’s a case of “out of sight, out of mind”.’

  ‘So life’s full of surprises?’ Archie smiled grimly.

  ‘I still get a shock every morning,’ Finn said sadly. ‘I go to the mirror in the bathroom and I see this hideous face for the first time.’

  ‘What’s this evil scientist called?’ Archie probed.

  ‘Which evil scientist?’ Finn said blankly.

  ‘If we can’t find him we’ll be doomed,’ Archie commented, choosing his words carefully.

  ‘Doctor Doom!’ Finn announced. ‘He’s a professor experimenting on animals and people to research his evil plan to take over the world or something. He genetically crossed me with a fish. Now I’m a good swimmer but my memory’s really short.’

  Archie raised his eyebrows as if hearing Finn’s revelation for the first time.

  ‘Does Doctor Doom have any more genetic experiments in the pipeline?’ Barney asked. ‘Is the guy you nabbed from the gallery going to be crossed with a frog or something?’