Mabel Jones and the Doomsday Book

by Will Mabbitt

  No one can stop the gopher’s deadly blow.

  Unless . . .

  What was that whispered Schphzzz! that zipped through the air like a purposeful wasp?

  Take another step back and look.

  There, at the door to the cabin, is a small robed figure. The kindly faced Sister Miriam, on her way home from her pilgrimage, one paw tucked inside her handbag.

  The pause in time allows us the luxury to peek inside.

  Beneath the usual sundries to be found inside a nun’s handbag—the bus tickets, cough drops, and emergency tissues—lies a metal tube, a sequence of cogs and a coiled spring.

  A clockwork construction capable of firing a small pointed object through the air at great speed.

  And look! There at the final z of the Schphzzz! it hangs. Heading for the neck of Govvel. Waiting for time to restart.

  DO NOT TOUCH IT!

  Observe the thick and sticky liquid that drips from its tip. A liquid hand-wrung from the warty-skinned venomous amphibian Herbert’s newt.

  But will this dart and its payload of painful spasming death reach Govvel before he finishes the fatal thrust that will skewer poor young Mabel Jones?

  Let us restart time and see.

  It does!

  It does!

  It does!

  The blade remains unplunged!

  Mabel Jones’s heart remains unstabbed!

  Mabel Jones is alive!

  But Govvel . . . Govvel’s eyes open wide in shock and confusion. The dagger falls to the floor. He drops to his knees. His wet lips twist through seven of the twelve main types of contorted grimaces.

  “It can’t be,” he utters, his left leg dancing uncontrollably. “It can’t be! I’m too important to die . . . I’m—”

  And, with his final sentence unfinished, he falls to the floor.

  CHAPTER 31

  The Exciting Final Chapter

  Mabel stood up and adjusted her belt.

  “Sister Miriam! You saved me!”

  Sister Miriam clicked a switch in her handbag. Beneath the toffee wrappers, leaky pens, and knitting yarn, the reloading mechanism of her concealed dart gun activated.

  She pointed the handbag at Mabel.

  “Yes, I did. A mark of respect from one adventurer to another. You did well, Mabel. Much better than I expected.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Sister Miriam smiled, and her large and bulging eyes wrinkled kindly.

  “Keep your hands well away from your cutlass, please. I like you, Mabel Jones—we ladies have to stick together—but I will kill you if I have to.”

  Mabel frowned. The rabbit looked like Sister Miriam, but her voice was different.

  She moved differently.

  And there was something familiar about her eyes . . .

  “The hedgehog!” gasped Jarvis. “The one that tried to kill Mabel. It was you!”

  Sister Miriam nodded.

  “And the beggar. The one who almost got us arrested in Otom.”

  “Yes, that was me too.”

  Carruthers gasped.

  “And when you dropped the cookie tin you meant for the Alsatian battlecruiser to hear. You wanted us to get caught!”

  Sister Miriam smiled. “Very true.”

  Speke scratched his head.

  “But that means you can only be . . . VON KLAAR!”

  Without taking her bulging eyes from Mabel, the character formerly known as Sister Miriam leaned forward and picked up the DOOMSDAY BOOK from the cabin table. Then she shook off her wimple and removed her long rabbit ears. Her bulging eyes darted around the room, and a long tongue flicked from her mouth and tasted the air.

  SHE WAS A CHAMELEON!

  Von Klaar smiled a wide reptilian smile.

  “Indeed. I have been one step behind you all along in the hunt for the DOOMSDAY BOOK. But you have brought it to me in the end. Thank you, Mabel Jones. My superiors back in Alsatia will be very grateful to get their hands on this.”

  And, with those revealing words, she backed from the cabin and locked the door.

  Mabel looked at Jarvis.

  Jarvis looked at Mabel.

  Carruthers shook his head in disbelief.

  “A woman!” he exclaimed.

  Out on the deck of the Sunbeam, Von Klaar carefully sealed the DOOMSDAY BOOK in a waterproof bag, took a deep breath and dived gracefully into the sea.

  She trod water briefly, watching as the Sunbeam drifted over the horizon.

  Then suddenly a periscope appeared. An Alsatian submarine!

  Within moments she was aboard.

  Another successful mission for the master spy Von Klaar!

  She patted the sealed bag that held the DOOMSDAY BOOK—the book that contained the power that would allow Alsatia to defeat ALBEMARLE once and for all.

  Von Klaar smiled.

  It was going to be a lovely war.

  I’m sorry to have to break it to you but that actually was The End.

  Maybe in the storybooks you normally read, a happy ending is guaranteed. Maybe in that make-believe world that’s what happens. Not here. The pages you can see after this one—there’s no story on those. They’re just blank pages and the boring bits that most books have at the end. Probably just some list of people who have insisted on being thanked.

  But this is real life, and in real life not everything always works out OK.

  Heroes fail, villains win, and sometimes a long-awaited delivery of pickled onions arrives damaged and the pickling vinegar stains your new carpet.

  So the moral of this story?

  REAL LIFE IS HARD, SO JUST GIVE UP.

  What’s that?

  You don’t accept it?

  You WON’T accept it?

  You don’t want to give up?

  Well.

  You’ve surprised me. I had you down for a pallid-hearted quitter. A craven-faced splitter. A coward, even.

  But, no, you’ve passed the test.

  A true unlikely adventurer never accepts an early ending. A true unlikely adventurer will battle to the bitter end, to the very last page. To the very last word. To the final period.

  Just in case.

  Because there are more pages to come. And, while they may be blank, or merely contain the boring bits of book that all books are supposed to have, maybe . . .

  Just maybe . . .

  The story will continue.

  So read on, you fool.

  Quickly!

  Before we miss it.

  Where were we?

  Ah yes. Aboard the Alsatian submarine.

  The commander, a large dog, turned to Von Klaar.

  “You have done it again, Von Klaar. The emperor will be very pleased indeed.”

  Von Klaar nodded. Things had gone rather well.

  Almost too well . . .

  She gulped, as though she had swallowed a tiny seed of uncertainty.

  That strange seed planted itself in her stomach, quickly budding into a little worry that almost instantly blossomed into a fully grown sense of dread.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Carefully Von Klaar opened the waterproof bag and took out the DOOMSDAY BOOK.

  She turned the cover and read the first page.

  The Peach

  by Sir Timothy Speke

  We wandered ’mongst the peach trees.

  I smothered her with kisses,

  And held her in my paws once more,

  Caressed her golden whiskers.

  Von Klaar stared in disbelief. Frantically she turned the page.

  She told me of Sir Basil Smythe,

  The husband she’d forgotten.

  I thought I’d picked a juicy fruit;

 
Alas, the peach was rotten.

  THE END

  Outside a tea shop in Crumbridge, an ancient marmoset lecturer mumbles something to a pretty student over afternoon tea. His fanciful scientific theories are lost on his young companion, who is distracted by the scone crumbs lodged in the professor’s graying whiskers.

  Next door, however, behind the inauspicious frontage of Dreary & Snores Antiquarian Books of Minor Interes something more dramatic is unfolding.

  A group of friends are waiting for a TOP-SECRET meeting to begin . . .

  Pelf stretched his legs and exhaled a toxic cloud of greeny-brown pipe smog that drifted about his head in a foul-smelling cloud.

  “Ah, fresh air! I’m glad to be free of that stuffy prison cell, snuglet.” He rubbed his hairy neck. “And free of that noose. My neck was so constricted I could hardly smoke. Tell me again how you knew to swap the book.”

  Mabel smiled.

  “It was all thanks to Omynus really. I wish I’d listened to him earlier.”

  Omynus Hussh rubbed his head against her leg and looked up at her with his saucery eyes.

  “I is very mistrusting,” he said proudly. “Being from such a wicked background of thieveryness, I knows there was something fishsome about the rabbitty lady. So I went through the otter’s pockets to switch his poetry book for the DOOMSDAY BOOK.”

  Speke slapped his thigh and laughed.

  “Well, I’ll be!”

  Mabel scratched the little loris behind the ears.

  All was silent.

  Reassuringly silent.

  The attractive chicken Springfeather looked up from his typewriter.

  “Sir Lockheed will see you now.”

  Sir Lockheed Beagle turned the ancient notebook around in his paws and smiled.

  “The DOOMSDAY BOOK. Who would’ve thought that something so unassuming could contain the secret to the destruction of a whole civilization.”

  Sir Lockheed lifted a teacup to his muzzle and took a sip. “You haven’t read it yet?”

  Carruthers stepped forward.

  “As per your instructions, it has remained unopened since its recovery.”

  Sir Lockheed nodded.

  “Excellent. As you have seen with your own eyes, the world is still on the brink of war. A fleet of Alsatian battleships has blocked the sea passage to the Near Far East.” He frowned. “Tea reserves are running low.”

  “Crumbs!” squeaked Speke. “That is serious.”

  “In addition, our network of spies informs us that Alsatian troops are gathering on their frontier.”

  He looked sternly over the top of his spectacles. “Things look bleak for ALBEMARLE but, thanks to you and your friends, Mabel Jones, we still stand a chance.”

  He sat down at his desk and tapped the DOOMSDAY BOOK.

  “Because, for all its military might, the Alsatian Empire doesn’t have this. The secret to the destruction of the hooman race.”

  He passed the book to Springfeather.

  “If you’d be so kind.”

  Springfeather opened the notebook.

  He looked at Sir Lockheed. “The first page is missing.”

  “That will be one that Sir Leopold Guppy stole from ST. HILDA’S CONVENT,” explained Mabel. “It’s been burned.”

  Springfeather nodded and turned to the next page. He began to read:

  “. . . digital equipment has malfunctioned and I write now with pen on paper, lost deep within this cursed labyrinth, hundreds of feet beneath the ground. The winding tunnels with their traps and trials have taken their toll on our party. Hipkins is dead. Polson is missing. Only I remain to record the doom that we have unleashed upon our own people. For years we’ve searched for the fabled tomb of Mosp, the god-king of ancient Egypt—guardian of the underworld and bearer of a weapon so terrifying that it could wipe his enemies from the face of the earth.

  “And then we found it.

  “We wanted that weapon, for that very same purpose—to rid the world of our enemy. But we did not understand its true nature. For its power was too great for us to control. I saw it. I saw the black fog that enveloped the globe. I saw cities crushed. Our cities, as well as the cities of our enemies.

  “And now I write this in the hope that one day it will be found and our mistake can somehow be undone. There is a way. All you need to do is . . .”

  Springfeather looked up from the book.

  “It ends there,” he said. “Those are the last words ever written by a hooman.”

  Mabel looked at Jarvis.

  “The weapon they found destroyed everyone on earth!”

  Sir Lockheed nodded.

  “Now imagine a weapon of such power in the hands of our enemies. What the Alsatian Empire might do with it.”

  The room fell silent.

  Sir Lockheed scratched behind a shaggy ear and looked at the map.

  “So where is this Egypt?” he muttered.

  Mabel walked to the map. The footure world was so different from the world she once knew. Continents had shifted and sunk, and everywhere had different names. But there were still a few clues.

  She pointed to an area marked as The Unknown.

  “I think it’s about here.”

  Carruthers stepped forward to the map.

  “The nearest settlement is the small outpost of Zinderneuf.” He smiled. “It’s under ALBEMARLE control. We have a small fort there, don’t we? Our Foreign Legion has never lost a battle!”

  Springfeather looked at Sir Lockheed, his face a picture of grim yet handsome chickenliness.

  “Sir, Fort Zinderneuf fell to the Alsatian army last week.”

  Sir Lockheed frowned. Then he looked at Mabel and his eyes twinkled.

  “Mabel. Someone must go into The Unknown and find this secret weapon before it falls into enemy hands. Will you help us in our hour of need?”

  Mabel Jones looked at Pelf.

  Then she looked at Jarvis.

  And then she looked at Omynus Hussh.

  Finally she looked at

  Sir Lockheed Beagle.

  “WE ACCEPT!”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to . . .

  Paul, my agent.

  Ross for his illustrations.

  Mandy for the text design.

  Everyone at Puffin and Viking, especially Ben, Joanna, Tig, Laura, Jacqui, Wendy, Sophie, and Hannah.

  Old friends Megan and Rich W for helping from afar.

  Ellen for listening (or pretending to listen) to my excellent ideas.

  But mostly thanks to you for taking the time to read this book to the very end.

  For the safe disposal of your teachers’ cookies, please send them to:

  The Narrator of The Unlikely Adventures of Mabel Jones

  Room 7c

  Pickled Onion Museum

  The Footure

  Q&A with the NARRATOR

  You’ve followed Mabel Jones’s unlikely adventures closely—have you ever been tempted to help Mabel when she’s in a sticky situation?

  Yes. I am often tempted to help her. Sometimes, though, I’m too tired. She seems quite capable (for a hooman).

  Where do you live when you aren’t observing unlikely adventures?

  I live in many places and in many times. I do have a holiday burrow in the Upper Jurassic period. It’s a modest hole in amongst the roots of a fallen gingko tree.

  Do you have a best friend?

  No. Sometimes I feel very alone.

  What’s your grooming regime?

  Hygiene is very important to me so I like to take a bath at least once a year. Otherwise it’s very simple. Wake, do droppings, bury droppings, lick myself clean, And then I’m ready to go. If I’m meeting someone, I might comb some shoulder fur across t
he hairless patches on my back.

  You’ve witnessed some pretty hairy moments—what’s the scariest situation you’ve ever been in?

  Being accidently stuffed in a Build-A-Bear™ workshop was quite painful. The extinction of the hooman race comes a close second.

  Have you ever actually met Mabel Jones or do you just follow her around?

  I like to watch all the major events throughout the history of the world. (Sometimes more than once.) It just so happens that Mabel Jones is present at most of the important ones.

  Which animal are you?

  Labels are for jars of pickled onions.

  Which Unlikely Pirate are you?

  On a ship, where are you most likely to be found?

  A. At the helm, making sure we steer clear of rocks and tantalizing mermaids.

  B. At the prow, glaring broodily at the sea.

  C. On my own in a dark corner.

  D. Entertaining my crewmates with stories of past adventures and the occasional romantic sonnet.

  What is your most prized treasure?

  A. Treasure? Alas, it slips through my fingers like seawater.

  B. Treasure is a means to an end, and that end is POWER.

  C. Solitude is worth more than any precious gemstone.

  D. I’m rich enough. It’s excitement I seek.

  What is your favorite phrase?

  A. “My body is a temple.”

  B. “I’ll tie ye to a carnivorous squid!”

  C. I don’t speak unless it’s totally necessary.

  D. “Ahoy, me hearties!”

  If you weren’t a pirate, you’d secretly like to . . .

  A. Own a small farm on a snowy mountainside.

  B. Silence, you mutinous dog! I’ll be a pirate until the sea runs dry.

  C. But I can’t do anything else.