The Quest of the Warrior Sheep Read online

  Honey, the male human who had spoken first, was carrying a map in a clear plastic drawstring bag. Billie-Jo took the map from the plastic bag, dropped the Baaton in and pulled the drawstring to close it. Then she hung it around Jaycey’s neck.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘That should make life a whole lot easier.’

  A delighted Wills bleated his thanks, but Jaycey scowled and tossed her head.

  ‘This is so not a handbag,’ she muttered angrily. ‘I wanted a handbag . . .’

  ‘But, Jaycey,’ explained Wills, ‘handbags are so last year. I saw it in Ida’s magazine. It’s neck bags now.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Trust me. Especially see-through plastic. You’re cutting edge.’

  ‘I am?’

  Another hot wind riffled her wool as she tried to admire her new accessory. More humans were coming on to the platform. Jaycey could tell by the looks they were giving her that they knew cutting edge when they saw it.

  ‘Cool . . .’ she said happily.

  ‘Mind the gap!’ boomed the mysterious voice of The Tube.

  Then the rumbling began again and this time it became a deafening roar. Suddenly, what looked like a giant metal worm burst from the round hole at the far end of the platform and thundered towards them.

  ‘You guys definitely want northbound?’ asked Honey as the metal worm came to a rest and the doors in its side hissed open.

  Wills nodded and led the Warriors on-board.

  Billie-Jo and Honey stepped on after them.

  ‘Awesome!’ said Billie-Jo. ‘Even our sheep back home in the States aren’t this smart!’

  7

  Eye Full

  While the Warriors hurtled beneath central London on The Tube, Tod and Gran were above ground, pedalling rather more slowly towards Boyd’s Bank.

  Gran went everywhere on her trike and though Tod rode his modern mountain bike to school, he was proud to be tricycling beside her now. The machine he was riding had belonged to his great grandad, Albert.

  The trikes were ancient, with large, heavy wheels, flaking navy-blue paint and rusty chrome handlebars. Each had a bell on the handlebar and a lidded container between the back wheels. Flying from the back of each trike was a small faded pennant with the slogan WE LOVE EPPINGHAM RARE BREEDS.

  Tod and Gran had left the farmhouse before dawn but when they arrived at Boyd’s Bank the pavement outside was already heaving with people. The crowd wasn’t happy and a nearby newspaper billboard explained why:

  BOYD’S BANK HIT BY SCAM – MILLIONS STOLEN

  Gran and Tod stood by their trikes, watching the crowd and listening to the angry shouts.

  ‘D’you think they’ve all lost their Life Savings?’ asked Gran, offering Tod a cup of tea from the flask they’d brought.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Tod. ‘The manager’s going to be very busy.’

  They ate mashed-banana sandwiches, drank the hot tea and waited. Neither noticed the two young men lurking not far from them, nor the yellow sports car parked further along the street.

  Luke was still wearing his parka and didn’t know why they were here. Neil had swapped his designer jacket for a hooded top and knew very well. Everything had started to go horribly wrong. His ‘poor old mum’ wasn’t answering his calls and he needed information from Boyd’s Bank. It was risky though, because both he and Luke worked there, and although they were officially on holiday, he didn’t want to be spotted. Hence the hoodie. He peered around furtively and suddenly saw Ida and Tod. He dug Luke hard in the ribs.

  ‘Look!’ he growled, his voice low and urgent. ‘It’s the kid from Eppingham Farm. The kid and the old fossil.’

  He watched them keenly for a moment.

  ‘I knew they were lying,’ he said. ‘All that rubbish about sheep was just to get rid of us. I bet they’ve got your phone.’

  He started pushing his way through the crowd. In all the hubbub it would be easy to confront the old woman, grab the phone from her and disappear.

  Unfortunately for Neil, Organic TV got there first. A cameraman stepped in front of him as if he wasn’t there. Then a pretty reporter started talking into the microphone she was holding.

  ‘And it’s not only the super rich whose money has so mysteriously disappeared,’ she said solemnly. ‘The anxious people waiting here for answers come from all walks of life.’ She smiled at Tod and Ida. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘Would you care to tell the viewers why you’re here?’

  Ida recognised the nice young girl who’d been talking to Tony Catchpole last night. She wasn’t wearing the cream cotton suit this morning.

  ‘Well,’ said Ida, ‘The thing is, Tod only wrote the notice for the village shop last night and now we’ll have to change it.’

  Nisha Patel looked slightly confused.

  ‘Er, what notice would that be?’

  She saw the tears welling in the old lady’s eyes.

  ‘We’re offering a reward, dear.’ Ida sniffed and steadied herself. ‘Our little flock of Rare Breed sheep disappeared yesterday. Some people think it was aliens that took them, like Tony said.’ She took a breath. The tears were finding their way down her wrinkly cheeks now. ‘But we’re not sure . . . All we know is we love them and want them back, so we were offering a reward . . .’ She gulped. ‘Only we can’t now, because there’s not a penny left in our bank account.’

  Tod put his arm around Gran’s shoulder. Nisha wanted to do the same. Neil ducked away before he got caught on camera. He tugged Luke’s sleeve and they hurried back to their car. When they reached it, he saw that Luke was blubbing.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded.

  Luke used his parka sleeve before managing to speak.

  ‘It’s so sad,’ he said. ‘Even worse than your poor old mum. I hope the toerags who stole that sheep lady’s money get caught.’

  He was surprised to find himself suddenly banged hard against the car door. Neil’s fists were clutching Luke’s collar. His face was close. Very close.

  ‘Listen, geek-o-nerd. You are one of the toerags. Right? You are in this all the way up to your spotty neck. Understand?’

  Luke found it difficult to reply. Partly because he didn’t understand; partly because he couldn’t breathe.

  Neil relaxed his hold a fraction. Luke swallowed. ‘But what about your poor old mum?’

  ‘There is no poor old mum!’

  ‘You haven’t got a mum? Then who have you been trying to phone . . . ?’

  ‘The boss!’

  ‘What boss?’

  ‘The Very Nasty Boss!’

  Luke struggled to get to grips with this new reality. Then he saw something that made him think he’d gone mad.

  ‘Neil,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Behind you . . .’

  Neil spun round, and there they were, trotting past the end of the street. Five of them. Assorted colours and sizes. Sheep. One of them had a plastic bag hanging round its neck. And in the bag was a silver-coloured mobile phone.

  Neil stared in amazement, then his own mobile began to ring.

  ‘After them!’ he shouted, slinging Luke in the direction of the disappearing sheep. ‘Get that phone!’

  He took his mobile from his pocket while Luke stumbled off through the crowd.

  Neil felt a moment of fear before answering. Was it the police? A blackmailer? Even the old fossil perhaps, demanding money for Luke’s phone, which she’d cunningly hidden on her mangy sheep? It was worse. It was the Very Nasty Boss.

  Neil panicked. The Very Nasty Boss listened briefly to him babbling on about old ladies with ancient trikes and sheep with mobile phones, then told him to shut up and finish the job. Fast.

  *

  The Warriors hadn’t intended to come above ground when they did. Even Wills had found The Tube a bit confusing and they’d got off too soon at a place called Green Park.

  ‘Green as in lush, juicy, life-giving grass?’ Oxo had asked as they rode up the moving staircase, and suddenly everyone had
remembered they needed food.

  ‘It would be wise,’ Sal had announced, ‘to eat while we can. Empty stomachs lead to empty heads.’

  And so, when Luke spotted them, they were following Oxo’s nose towards the Green Park itself.

  ‘Hey, guys,’ said Links. ‘I think we’re being followed.’

  Nobody was listening.

  ‘Smell’s getting stronger,’ said Oxo, quickening his step.

  ‘Definitely bein’ followed, man,’ warned Links, glancing around again. ‘Guy in a baggy coat. Now another dude in a hoodie.’

  But Oxo had only one thought in mind. He gave a couple of red buses a warning look and galloped across the road.

  ‘Charge! One for five and five for lunch!’

  And there before him was his reward: a large sloping field, dotted with trees. Even Wills joined in the general noisy grass ripping as the flock got down to business. He remembered too late what Links had been saying.

  ‘What was that about being followed?’ he asked.

  As he spoke, Jaycey disappeared under something fur-lined and manky.

  Having thrown his parka, Luke didn’t know what to do next. Dare he pick it up again with the sheep inside? Did sheep bite?

  ‘Grab it!’ shouted Neil from a safe distance. Luke hesitated and Neil ran forward to push him in the back, making him fall on to the writhing, bucking coat. Then Luke got an answer to his earlier query. Did sheep bite? They did. One of them was biting him now. Another was trampling his legs. A third butted him in the ribs with a head like, well, like a battering ram.

  Luke howled and rolled off the bucking parka. He heard the lining rip as the sheep scrabbled from underneath. Then he heard Neil shouting as all five sheep ran off, the phone still hanging from the black-and-white one’s neck.

  ‘You great wuss!’ screamed Neil. ‘Don’t let them get away!’

  Luke wasn’t used to running. It wasn’t what he did. His butted ribs hurt and so did his bitten bottom. He could hear Neil gasping for breath behind him but Neil kept going as if his life depended on it. Maybe it did, thought Luke. It wasn’t a nice thought. He wondered briefly about the Very Nasty Boss and ran even faster.

  ‘Keep together! Keep together!’ panted Wills.

  There was nowhere to hide. They were out of the park now. They ran across a street and through another park. They passed a huge clock on a tower, then galloped on to a bridge and across a wide river. They clattered down some stone steps and raced along the side of the river. Ahead of them was a huge wheel. They were charging with heads down now, to get through the people who were milling about. So many legs, so many babies in buggies. And still the footsteps pounded behind them.

  Some people in black sweatshirts held out their arms and tried to bar Oxo’s way. He crashed through, scattering them left and right, raced up a slope, leapt through the open doorway of a slowly moving glass cage and clattered to a halt. There was nowhere else to go. The others piled in behind him. The doors closed and the glass cage continued to move, slowly, smoothly upwards. They were being taken into the sky.

  Huddled in a trembling mass, the Warriors stared out, faces pressed to the curved glass, watching the ground moving slowly further away and the clouds getting slowly closer. Below, they could see the people in black sweatshirts. They’d picked themselves off the floor now and were standing in a group, staring up.

  Wills’ heart stopped pounding quite so hard and he stepped back a little from the glass. Above his head he saw a notice:

  WELCOME TO THE LONDON EYE.

  So this is it, he thought. Nothing to be scared of, after all.

  Then he realised that he could hear too many sets of panting, heaving lungs. He counted one, two, three, four, five . . . six . . . seven! He turned slowly. Trapped in the glass bubble, the Warriors were not alone.

  ‘Right,’ said one of the men. ‘Now get the phone.’

  8

  Methane Madness

  The startled Warriors reared round. The two humans who had chased them were standing there, inside the rising glass bubble. The one in the hoodie was grinning unpleasantly.

  ‘No escape this time, woolbags,’ he said.

  The scruffy one with the ripped parka didn’t look so happy.

  ‘The phone, Luke, get the phone,’ repeated the unpleasant one, jabbing him impatiently.

  ‘It is so not a phone,’ bleated Jaycey, tossing her head so that the plastic bag swung from side to side. ‘It’s the Baaton. The Baaa-ton . . .’

  ‘The Baaa-ton,’ intoned Sal. ‘The Baaa-ton. The Baaa-ton . . .’

  And the whole flock took up the chant, even Wills.

  ‘Baaa-ton . . . Baaa-ton . . . Baaa-ton.’

  The noise bounced around the glass bubble as the sheep backed away, forming a solid wall of fleece around Jaycey and their precious sign from the Ram of Rams.

  ‘Baaaaa-ton! Baaaaa-ton!’

  Luke glanced nervously at the clear curved sides of the pod. The weird rhythmic din from the sheep was getting louder and louder. Luke knew about sound waves – they could shatter glass. He really didn’t fancy a long drop into the River Thames. Especially with the tide out.

  ‘Shush . . .’ he heard himself saying. ‘Shush . . .’

  ‘Shush?’ Neil bawled at him incredulously. ‘They can’t shush, Luke. They’re sheep!’

  Frustration finally got the better of Neil’s cowardice. He threw himself at the flock like a rugby player joining a scrum.

  Jaycey bleated in terror and the other Warriors closed up even tighter, turning their heads inwards, forming a protective circle around her. Neil suddenly found himself face to face with four woolly rear ends. It was then that their stomachs went into overdrive. Fear and last night’s cauliflower combined to lethal, methane-gassy effect. Oxo was the first to pass wind. He couldn’t help it.

  Nor could any of the others. Neil suddenly staggered backwards, hit in the face by a noisy blast of wind from the woolly bottoms. Then came the smell, filling the pod, driving Neil inside his hoodie and Luke deep beneath his parka.

  ‘Don’t strike a match,’ gasped Luke.

  Falling into the Thames would be bad enough; being blown halfway to Brighton was something else.

  By the time they dared poke their noses out again, the pod was descending. Neil saw the crowd on the ground below, staring upwards. He saw the cluster of Eye staff in their black sweatshirts, talking on their radios. He saw two policemen arriving.

  ‘We’re gonna get nicked,’ he wailed. ‘For hijacking The Eye.’

  He made a last angry lunge at the sheep. They were facing him again now, but they shuffled quickly together, still protecting the phone, teeth bared, unblinking, defiant. Almost human. No, thought, Neil, that’s the methane turning your brain as soft as Luke’s. He shook his head and drew back again.

  ‘Just don’t lose them,’ he said to Luke. ‘It’ll be easy back in the open.’

  ‘You said it would be easy in here,’ pointed out Luke.

  ‘Stick with the woolbags,’ snapped Neil. ‘I’ll do the talking.’

  The landing platform was right outside now. The pod doors slid aside.

  ‘Out!’ barked one of the Eye staff. ‘And bring your animals with you.’

  ‘They’re nothing to do with us,’ protested Neil.

  But as he stalked out of the pod and down on to firm ground, the sheep, led by the little brown lamb, trotted at his heels like obedient pets.

  ‘They’re not mine!’ he insisted.

  The staff crowded round Neil and as they argued, the sheep, still led by Wills, slipped quietly away.

  They took a sharp left turn on to the pier next to The Eye, then increased their speed to a trot. The river boat at the end of the pier had cast its moorings and was about to move off. The sheep galloped the last few metres, then leapt one by one on to the stern of the departing vessel.

  Their arrival on-board caused a bit of a stir, though most of the passengers seemed quite happy to budge up and make room for t
hem. And there was no way the skipper was going to turn back now. He had a strict timetable.

  The boat glided away from The Eye and the Warriors relaxed. Without a word, they raised and clacked high hooves. They had foiled the baggy coat and the hoodie. The Baaton was safe. For the time being.

  ‘Is this thing going to take us all the way to the North?’ asked Sal hopefully.

  Wills didn’t think so. He had seen the boat from The Eye and realised it was their best chance of escape. He hadn’t thought beyond that.

  ‘Sshh . . .’ he whispered. ‘Listen.’

  The skipper was talking into a microphone.

  ‘Welcome on board Thames River Boat London Pride,’ he was saying, ‘heading downstream towards the Thames Barrier. Now if you look back to your left, you’ll see the famous Houses of Parliament where . . .’

  The Warriors settled down. They might as well enjoy the trip and get a bit of education too.

  *

  Meanwhile, Neil and Luke had finally persuaded the Eye staff and the police that the sheep really didn’t belong to them. Neil made Luke pay for both their tickets, and half an hour later they were free to go. But the river boat had long since disappeared around the bend, taking the sheep and the phone with it.

  The two men walked along beside the river in silence. Luke put his parka on and ripped the lining even further.

  ‘I’ve had a thought,’ said Neil abruptly.

  Luke hoped it would involve fleeing the country but it didn’t.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, supergeek, but a mobile gives out a signal all the time it’s switched on, right?’

  Luke nodded.

  ‘And it’s possible to locate that signal?’

  ‘If you’ve got the right equipment.’

  ‘Well of course you’d need the right equipment. But if you had the right equipment, how close could you get? To knowing where the phone is?

  Luke shrugged. ‘Depends on the distance between aerials. Out in the sticks, it could be miles . . .’

  ‘In a city, Luke! We’re in a city!’

  ‘Oh, right. Yeah. Um, a few metres?’