Mummy Madness (9 page)

Terror Thomas sat bolt upright in bed.
His hair was as wild as his temper. Who on earth was ringing him at 2 a.m.? He
fumbled for the light switch and his good eye blinked in the light. He put his
mobile to his ear. ‘Yes?' he barked. ‘This had better be
good.'

He listened intently. His
second-in-command was jabbering about the fire alarm going off and the police
arriving. ‘It's not a fire. It's intruders, sir,' he said.
‘We think they've taken out the security team. They've smashed a
load of priceless Ming vases and it seems likely that they've made off with
one of the Egyptian mummies.'

Terror Thomas didn't need any more
information. He'd spent fifteen years at the sharp end of the army, on duty in
the desert. It had been a career full of action, fighting, suspense
and thrills. He'd lost his eye along the way and
now his days were spent watching teenagers from the corner of his good eye or
glaring at small children to make sure they didn't steal sweets from the
museum shop. His life was dull, dull and dull. And here he was, plunged into a
real
emergency. He put the phone on speaker so he could get dressed
while he listened to the pandemonium. His pyjama trousers were off and one leg was
in his pants before he realized both his feet were rammed into one hole.
‘Curses, curses,' he said, having a second go.
Having one eye can
sometimes be a real bummer.

‘And what's happening
now,' he yelled, buttoning his shirt.

‘Ambulances have just turned
up,' yelled his assistant above the noise of a helicopter. ‘And the bomb
squad. This is big, sir. Code red. Please hurry.'

Thomas looked in the bedroom mirror.
Code red! How awesome!
He'd got dressed in less than a minute so
looked a bit of a mess. But it was the early hours of the morning – looking good was
a luxury he didn't have time for. He reached for his wallet and tucked it into
his back pocket. ‘Just got to put my eye in,' he shouted to the
man on the other end of the phone.
‘And I'll be right with you.'

Terror Thomas's fingers swished in
the water, feeling for his glass eye. His thumb and forefinger settled on
Spud's pickled onion and he shook the water away before ramming it into his
eye socket.

The man on the other end of the phone
nearly jumped out of his skin. He had never heard a yell quite as loud or quite as
long.

It took a while for the police to
understand what Sophie and Ollie were on about. The little boy was so excited that
everything came out in one long sentence. ‘The professor is a mummy and he got
taken away by a baddie and Lara, our pet Spy Dog, well, she's retired now so
isn't actually a spy, but she is a dog, tried to save everyone and we really
need our real mummy …'

‘Yes, yes,' soothed the lady
police officer. She was trained to remain calm and the children were obviously in
shock. Sophie and Ollie were wrapped in foil blankets and led down the stairs, Ollie
complaining that he felt like a roast chicken.

Star had made a good recovery and was
doubly determined to recapture the evil
Mr Big. Lara and the pups ran ahead, looking out for Ben. Lara led, head and tail
down, taking the slippery floor at full speed. She careered through the main door
and out into the night air. A paramedic was standing at the entrance, scratching his
head. ‘Where's my ambulance gone?' he said. ‘And my bandaged
patient?'

Lara was in Spy Dog mode, fitting the
clues together in her head
. Stolen ambulance. Man in bandages. I need to find
that vehicle.
She assessed the situation. There were people milling about,
but nobody seemed to be in charge. Lara remembered her training.
Then I must
take charge
, she thought, taking a deep breath and puffing out her
chest.

She watched as Sophie and Ollie were led
to a police car. A policewoman opened the back door and ushered them in.
An
opportunity
, thought the dog as the officer walked away. Lara and the pups
jumped aboard. The retired Spy Dog took Sophie's phone and logged on to the
Internet. There was a minute of silence except for some serious tapping of paw on
screen. ‘Gotcha,' woofed Lara, holding the map out to the puppies.
‘That dot is the
professor's
phone. The one implanted in his hand. His titchology thing.'

 

 

‘So we need to follow that
dot,' yapped Star.

‘Before Mr Big discovers that the
mummy isn't really a mummy,' added Spud. ‘And the
prof … you know …' he woofed, running his paw across his
throat.

‘Before the professor loses his
head,' agreed
Lara.
‘We've no time to lose.' Sophie looked a little unsure as Lara
jumped into the passenger seat of the police car. The dog patted the driver's
seat with her paw. ‘Come on, lady,' she whined.
We haven't got
all day. Your brother has been kidnapped by an evil baddie. And you've got
hands, so you have to do the steering
.

Ollie threw off his foil wrapper and
started jumping up and down in the back seat. ‘Cool!' he shouted.
‘Lara wants you to steer the car.'

Star tugged at Sophie's trouser
leg. ‘Come on, come on,' she snarled. ‘Get yourself into the
driver's seat.'

‘This is ridiculous,' said
Sophie as she clambered into the front and plonked herself down. The little girl
looked sternly at Lara. ‘I'm ten,' she said frostily. ‘And I
don't know how to drive.'

‘But we do,' woofed Spud and
Star from down below. ‘We'll do the pedals. You do the steering. Ma will
navigate. We're following the dot.'

‘That's the plan,'
woofed the family pet. ‘Pups, give me some revs and away we go. The car is an
automatic so we only have two pedals.'

Sophie looked down at her feet.

‘“Stop” – that's
me,' waved Star.

‘And guess who's in charge
of “Go”?' grinned
Spud, sitting his heavy bottom on the pedal and revving
the police car.

Lara slammed the lever into
‘Drive' mode and pressed a button to release the handbrake. The police
car bumped onward and Star fell on to the brake, screeching the car to an emergency
stop. Everyone lurched forward. ‘Strap yourself in, Ollie,' warned
Sophie. ‘This could get hairy.'

Spud revved the accelerator pedal again
and Star shifted off the brake. ‘Not too fast, pups,' warned Lara from
the passenger seat. ‘Sophie has got to get the hang of steering.'

A policeman noticed his car kangarooing
along the road and started running. He caught up with the driver's window and
peered in at a girl driver wrapped in foil. He knocked loudly and they heard a
muffled voice: ‘Stop, thief!'

Sophie knew that if she stopped
she'd have to spend an hour explaining the situation. And, if they wanted the
professor's head to remain attached to his shoulders, that was an hour they
didn't have. ‘This could be life or death. Hit it, Spud,' she
said, and the puppy slammed his weighty bottom on to the accelerator. Sophie
smiled weakly at the policeman as his
car accelerated away.

 

Terror Thomas was in the thick of
it.

He'd thrown himself around his
bedroom while the vinegar had seeped into his eye socket. Try as he might, he
couldn't get the pickle out, but the pain had subsided and he knew there was
no time to lose.

So he'd pulled up at the museum
with one
good eye and one with a pickled
onion rammed into the socket. He looked in the rear-view mirror, his veggie eye
puffy and red. The head of security had arrived in the nick of time. It was chaotic.
His good eye had blinked in amazement as he watched a man and a boy load a bandaged
body into the back of an ambulance before driving off. And his pickled onion eye had
watered with astonishment as a couple of kids and three dogs had taken off in a
stolen police car.

Terror Thomas was ex-army. He knew he
needed to keep a clear head and think things through. The police were busy sealing
off the area. There were six fire engines and a bomb-squad van. Emergency service
staff were hurrying to and fro, but nobody seemed to know what was going on.
Everything was just a little odd. But the oddest things of all were a stolen
ambulance and police car.

He weighed things up in his mind.
I
can stay and join in with the chaos. Or …
He let the handbrake off and
revved his engine in pursuit of Sophie's police car.

Mr Big had used his ambulance siren to
clear what traffic there was. He and Ben had made good progress. ‘If it was a
road-sweeping lorry, I'd call it a “clean getaway”. But it's
an ambulance so I'll call it a “clinical getaway”,' he
smirked.

Ben didn't laugh.

‘It was a great idea, lad,'
smiled Mr Big. ‘Stealing the whole mummy. I'll extract the ruby from its
head and maybe sell the mummy to a dealer. Might make some extra cash. You, young
man, have the makings of an excellent criminal mind.'

The ambulance reached the outskirts of
London and Mr Big calmed the siren. He pulled up outside a warehouse and yanked the
handbrake on. ‘I need your help to drag the mummy inside,' he said,
holding Ben by the scuff of his neck. ‘No funny biz, OK? Or I'll track
down
your dogs and all three of them
will get it.'

Ben gulped. He wasn't sure what
‘it' was, but it didn't sound remotely funny. The boy followed the
baddie to the back of the ambulance and the doors were yanked open. The mummified
professor lay on a stretcher. ‘Let's get this old boy inside,'
snarled the man.

Ben was picturing the professor's
reaction to the ‘old boy' comment as he helped march the stretcher into
the deserted warehouse. Mr Big had clearly been here before. He carried the front of
the stretcher, Ben following. ‘In here,' said Mr Big, pushing open a
door with his foot.

Ben was relieved to slide the professor
on to a kitchen table. ‘He's quite a weight, this mummy,' said the
boy, shaking his arms and hands to ease the pain.

‘That'll be the weight of
the Nile Ruby,' grinned the baddie. ‘It's the biggest and
therefore the heaviest gem in the entire world.' He reached over and slid open
a drawer. He pulled out a kitchen knife and held it up to the light. Ben and the
mummy gulped as the blade shone in the light. ‘And soon,' laughed Mr
Big, ‘that ruby will be mine!'

 

 

Sophie was struggling to see out of the
windscreen. Luckily the little girl was only in charge of steering. Lara was sitting
in the passenger seat, her neck strained, barking instructions to the pups and
indicating left or right with her paws. The Spy Pups couldn't see anything.
They were at Sophie's feet. Spud was the acceleration and Star the brake.

To the citizens of London who were going
about their night-time business, this was anything but a high-speed chase. Lara was
barking very careful instructions and the police car was cruising slowly through the
streets, occasionally juddering to a halt. Sophie's knuckles were as white as
her face and the pups could hear her squeaking in alarm. ‘A corner,' she
said. ‘What do I do?'

I wish I could speak
, thought
Lara.
This is one
of those moments
when I could offer a calm and relaxed perspective.
‘Just turn the
wheel and the car will follow,' I'd say. ‘That's right. Feed
the steering wheel through your hands …'

Sophie panicked and turned the car too
sharply.
There goes a wing mirror
, noted Lara. ‘Straight bit, Spud,
hit the pedal.'

The police car accelerated. Sophie
screamed. ‘I don't like this,' she wailed. ‘I'm too
young to drive. And especially to die.'

Nobody's going to die
,
thought Lara.
At least not if we can find Ben and the professor in time.
She jabbed a paw at a few buttons and the map refreshed.
They've pulled up
at a warehouse three miles north of here.

‘Star,' she barked,
‘take a break. Spud … hit it!'

Ben had done the best wrapping he
could, but there were some loose ends. The bandage around the professor's head
was beginning to come loose and he was pretty sure that if you looked closely enough
one of the professor's ears was poking through.

‘Hang on a second, Big,'
said Ben bravely. ‘There's no need for knives.'

Mr Big was
thinking things through. Ben's brain was working equally rapidly. He knew Lara
would be able to track the professor's mobile device and would know his
whereabouts. He needed to stall for time. ‘You want the Nile Ruby,
right?'

The criminal nodded, a strange sound of
satisfaction and desperation vibrating in his throat. ‘It's in that
mummy's head. So I figure that the quickest way of getting at it is simply to
remove the head. Let's face it, it's not something that I haven't
done before,' he purred.

Ben felt for the HAPI crystals in his
pocket. He couldn't see that there was anything amusing in this situation, but
it was his only chance. ‘But this mummy is three thousand years old,' he
argued. ‘You can't just slice its head off!'

‘Wanna bet?' smiled Mr Big,
taking a step towards the body.

Professor Cortex had had enough. He was
trussed very tightly and couldn't talk. But he could hear. ‘That's
it,' he mumbled. ‘I'm calling the police.' He couldn't
move his joints, but managed to rock himself into an upright position.

Mr Big dropped the knife as the mummy
sat up. Ben took the bag of HAPI crystals in his
fingers and sprinkled them on to the floor. He ground
his shoe into them and a strange smell wafted through the room.

Sophie had done remarkably well. If it
was an official driving test, she would have failed on ‘failing to stop at a
zebra crossing' (twice), ‘failing to stop at a red light' (twice),
‘losing both wing mirrors', ‘mounting the kerb' (several
times), ‘going the wrong way down a one-way street' and ‘failing
to look in the rear-view mirror'. So, as her stolen police car juddered to a
stop next to the ambulance, she failed to notice Terror Thomas pulling up twenty
metres behind. He switched off his lights and watched as a big dog, two puppies and
a girl and boy entered a deserted warehouse.

Lara's priority was always the
welfare of the children. It had been drilled into her:
Rule number one, look
after the children. Keep them from harm. There are no other rules
. So
she'd left Sophie and Ollie in the safety of the warehouse.
Stay
, she
ordered, putting her paw up to show she was serious.
You guys do not move from
this room until I come and get you.

Lara and the
puppies left the room. All were in Spy Dog mode, primed and ready for action. There
was light coming from under the kitchen door and a huge commotion from within. The
pups perched on Lara's shoulders and she stood tall, peering through the
kitchen window.

Lara had seen active service on missions
around the world. She'd battled with evil villains and had adventures that
made her fur stand on end. But she'd never seen anything quite like this.

‘It's alive!'
stammered the criminal as Professor Cortex sat up and waved his arms around.

‘Get these bandages off me,
Benjamin,' he yelled, although to Mr Big it sounded like the muffled sound of
a mummy's curse.

Ben took advantage of the
criminal's shock and ran to the professor. He started at the top of his body,
unwinding the bandages, revealing a bald head and then a very purple face.
‘Thank goodness for that,' spat the professor. ‘Crikey, it was hot
in there, Benjamin.' The professor seemed more angry than scared. He jabbed a
bandaged hand at his bald head. ‘There is no Nile Ruby in here,' he
yelled at Mr Big. ‘Just
the
world's finest scientific brain. And it does
not
want to be removed
from its head.'

‘It's him,' sniggered
Mr Big. ‘The mad professor,' he said, cupping his hand to his mouth to
stifle an even bigger laugh.

‘Yes,' huffed the professor.
‘It most certainly is me,' he chuckled. ‘And, quite frankly, sir,
the last thing I want is you … you know,' he sniggered,
‘removing my head.'

 

 

The HAPI gas was working its magic.
‘But I'm going to kill you,' giggled Mr Big, reaching for a bigger
knife.

Ben had already sunk to his knees.
‘He thought you were a mummy,' he wheezed, pointing at the world's
most evil criminal. ‘He's going to kill you,' laughed the boy, his
eyes streaming. ‘By hacking your head off.'

‘I
am,' howled Mr Big, gripping the handle of the knife. ‘Both of
you …' he laughed, one hand clutching his side. ‘Starting with the
old chap.'

Lara wasn't sure what to do.
Sophie and Ollie were safe, at least for the time being. She continued to peer
through the window and watched Ben fall to his knees, disabled with laughter.
Think, Lara, think.

Just then Terror Thomas came careering
down the passageway. He saw the dogs peering through the window. He burst through
the kitchen door just as Mr Big was staggering towards the bandaged Professor
Cortex. Everyone stopped. Heads turned to see who had come in. Terror Thomas sniffed
the air. ‘What's that strange smell?' he smiled.

‘Look at his eye,' howled
Professor Cortex. ‘He's got a pickled eye! He's gone and inserted
one of Spud's pickled onions …'

Mr Big was laughing so hard it hurt.
There was a clink as his knife hit the floor. Ben took his chance and manoeuvred the
professor off the table.

‘He's got a pickled onion
for an eye,' howled
Mr Big.
‘And who's Spud? That's the funniest name I've ever
heard.'

‘It's not funny
actually,' chuckled Terror Thomas, the HAPI gas working its way into his
bloodstream. He pointed to his eye. ‘It's actually very painful,'
he howled. ‘And …' he laughed, his sides beginning to ache,
‘… it's stuck.'

Ben and the professor's eyes were
streaming with tears. Ben pointed at Mr Big's trousers. ‘There's a
wet patch,' he yelped, his body aching with laughter. ‘He's let
out a bit of wee.' Ben was bent double with laughter. ‘The world's
most evil criminal has wet his pants.'

Mr Big looked down at his trousers, his
eyes gaping, his mouth sucking in air. ‘I have,' he howled, pointing at
the wet patch. ‘And it's going to be even funnier when I murder you
both.' His hand yanked at the cutlery drawer and he fumbled for the first
thing he could find. ‘With a fork!' he bellowed, brandishing his new
weapon.

Ben and the men crawled on the floor for
a few moments, wracked with laughter at the thought of killing someone with a fork.
Ben watched as Mr Big and Terror Thomas clambered upright, tears streaming. Thomas
threw a punch. Mr Big ducked and Thomas spun
round, falling to the floor. Mr Big was helpless with
laughter (‘… 
a pickled onion
 …') as Thomas rose to
his feet once more. The evil baddie ran at Thomas with a cross between a
blood-curdling scream and a yelp for help. He'd completely lost control of his
bladder. He staggered across the room, fork outstretched. Terror Thomas ducked, but
there was contact and the fork sank into his pickled onion eye.