The Bare Bum Gang and the Valley of Doom (2 page)

So you can see why we all wanted
revenge. We had a big debate about what
to do. Jamie and The Moan wanted to
sneak into the Dockery den and wee all
over it.

'We've got to fight wee with wee!' Jamie
demanded.

I could see how that would have been
fair, but also disgusting.

'We are a civilized gang,' I said. 'We do
not go around weeing in other gangs' dens,
even if they deserve it.'

'Well what can we do then?' said The
Moan. 'We can't let them get away with
it.'

'Science,' I replied. 'Dockery is no better
than a baboon, or a pig. He may think it's
OK to wee on people's things, but I don't.
We're going to invent something better than
wee.'

'What do you mean "better than wee"?'

'I mean something even better than wee
for making dens smell horrid.'

'Poo?' asked Jamie hopefully.

'No, not poo,' I said wearily. 'Poo is even
more disgusting than wee, and not scientific
at all. We're going to invent a stinky potion,
and attack the Dockery den with that.'

'Brilliant idea,' said Noah, who nearly always supported my
plans.

So then we spent the next week developing
the right formula. To begin with we tried
following the instructions in
George's
Marvellous Medicine
, which is an excellent
book by Roald Dahl. That meant getting
every kind of gloopy stuff from the bathroom
and kitchen and garage and mixing them
up together. The trouble with that plan
was that, even though it looked foul, it
ended up smelling quite nice. We didn't try
drinking any because then we'd either grow
enormous like in the book or, more likely,
die in agony of poison.

That was Special Mixture Number One.

Special Mixture Number Two involved us
all collecting ear wax, bogeys, sweat and
anything else not very nice that came out of
our bodies, except for wee and poo (because
we're not baboons or savages).

Special Mixture Number
Two was a failure because
even after a week
we only had about a
teaspoonful altogether.
Noah calculated that to get
enough to ruin the Dockery
den would take twelve years, by which time
we'd all be grown up and have jobs, such as
postman (or lady), window cleaner, banker,
shop assistant, astronaut, lawyer, doctor (or
lady doctor), etc., etc., etc., and we would
be too busy to use it.

Special Mixture Number Three was some
milk I'd left to go sour, mixed up with an egg
I'd left to go bad. It was in my milkshake
beaker, because it had a lid. The mixture
was coming along quite nicely when my
dad found it and drank it, thinking it was
a milkshake. He spent the rest of the day
in the toilet while Special Mixture Number
Three tried to escape out of both ends of
him at the same time.

Special Mixture Number Four was made
of Marmite mixed with water. I thought it
smelled disgusting; so did Noah, but Jennifer
and The Moan actually liked it; and Jamie,
who would have got the deciding vote, had
a blocked nose and so couldn't smell it at
all.

Special Mixture Number Five wasn't really
a special mixture at all. Jamie had the idea
of setting off a whole load of Smarties-tube
Fart Bombs (STFBs) inside the enemy den.
To begin with we all thought that was quite
a good idea, which was a surprise because
Jamie had only ever had one good idea in
all the time we'd known him. But then Noah
worked out that we'd need about a hundred
STFBs to properly stink out the den, and
the only way to set them off would be by
stamping on them actually inside the den. So
whoever did the stamping would be caught
in the stink blast, and probably stinked (or
stunk) to death.

Special Mixture Number Six was good.
There was a duck pond in the park on
the other side of the town. The water in
it was a greeny-browny-slimy-stinky mess.
Sometimes you'd see tadpoles wriggling about
in the murk, but they always died before
they became frogs because the water was so
toxic. I think the main reason it was so rank
was because the ducks used it as their toilet.
We scooped up a bucketful of the water,
making sure we got some of the dead-tadpole-and-
duck-poo muck from the bottom of the
pond. I mixed it up with a stick. Already it
smelled like a tramp's underpants.

'If we leave this to stew for a couple of
days, it'll be perfect,' I said.

I kept it in our garage. Every chance
I got I went in to check on it. Each day
the smell got a little bit worse, but I was
still dissatisfied. I never once felt like being
sick when I smelled it. It lacked something.
So, on the third day, I did a wee in the
bucket. That was all it took. The addition
of wee turned Special Mixture Number Six
into Special Mixture Number Seven.

And, OK, you might say that weeing in
the bucket was cheating, after I'd said that
weeing was for baboons and pigs, etc., etc.
However, I would argue that it was all
perfectly scientific, because we had other
things in the bucket as well, and mixing stuff
up together and seeing how it smells is how
science got invented in the first place.

Now all we needed was a Special Mixture
Number Seven delivery system. Our
combined brains came up with the idea of
filling balloons with the mixture, which we
would then hurl into the enemy den. One
advantage of this plan was that we could
use it even if Dockery and his gang were
in their den. In fact it would be even better
if they were.

So that was why we were marching
through the Valley of Doom equipped with
the lemonade bottle full of Special Mixture
Number Seven, some empty balloons and
the funnel to fill them.

Our den is at one end of the wood, and the
Dockery den is at the other. The Dockery
den isn't really a proper den at all, but a
tent, which is cheating. To reach it we could
either have gone round the wood or taken the
muddy track that runs through the trees.

After we left the den (I was the last one
out to make sure we hadn't left any sweets
or anything lying around to attract wild
animals, savage beasts, dangerous cannibals,
etc., etc.), we decided to take the forest
track, because it's more exciting and this
was a secret mission after all. The track
was probably first made by dinosaurs in
the Olden Days when the wood was first
invented, and then kept open by sabre-toothed
tigers, woolly mammoths, cavemen
and knights as time went on.

It always feels like an adventure when
you walk through the woods, even though
it's not that far from the centre of our town.
As soon as you get into the trees, the whole
outside world disappears and it's just you
and crowding branches, thick ferns, birds
and whatever else is lurking in there.

The worst part of the path is called the
Valley of Doom. The track follows a brown,
scummy stream, always buzzing with gnats
and flies. For some reason my dad always
calls the stream the Great Grey-Green
Greasy Limpopo River, so I usually do too.
One minute you're walking along quite
happily with the sunlight filtering through
the leaves, and the next minute there are
steep muddy walls on either side of you and
the trees have closed in over your head so
it's dark even in the middle of the day. The
birds stop singing in the Valley of Doom
because it's such a horrible place.

I don't suppose there really are giant bloodsucking
leeches in the Valley of Doom, but
if they were to live anywhere in the world,
then it would definitely be here.

The Valley of Doom took us right behind
the enemy camp. It meant that we could
sneak up to it without leaving the trees.

It had begun to rain when we set off. Not
pouring, but just the sort of steady drizzle
you usually get when you plan a picnic. We
were walking in single file.

Jennifer was at the front. When you're on a
mission in the army, the person at the front
is called the 'Point Man', even if they're a
girl, like Jennifer. They are probably called
'Point Man' because their job is to point at
things – for example enemies that are about
to attack you, or nasty patches of nettles
that you have to walk around. Being Point
Man is the most dangerous job, because
you're usually the first one to get blown up
(or stung by nettles).

I was next in line, then The Moan, then
Noah. Jamie was at the back. The person
at the back is always called 'Tail-End
Charlie', whatever their real name is. Tail-
End Charlie is the second most dangerous
position, because you'll get mashed up if
you're sneakily attacked from the rear –
say by enemy paratroopers, velociraptors,
cannibals, etc., etc.

The mission had been uneventful until we
reached the Valley of Doom. No casualties
so far. Well, except for when
Jamie stepped in some
kind of animal poo, and
we had a big debate
about whether it was
fox poo or badger
poo. I told them that
the difference is that
badger poo tastes of
burnt almonds, but
nobody volunteered to try it. Jamie was
always unlucky with poo, and if there was
any about, he'd be the one to step in it.

Apart from that, the patrol was going to
plan. We were excited and a little nervous.

Then we reached the Valley of Doom.
The rain got heavier, and it was so gloomy
I had to peer to see Jenny a few steps ahead
of me. Our line began to bunch together
as the Point Man and Tail-End Charlie
clustered in towards the rest of us. It was a
classic error.

'Spread out,' I said in an urgent whisper.
I knew that bunching up made us an easy
target for velociraptors, etc.

Then Jenny put up her arm. That was
the signal for 'Stop'. We had some other
signals too. An arm stretched out to the
side meant 'Look over that way'. A finger
pointing upwards meant 'Danger, air attack'
– for example from dive-bombers or eagles.
And a high-pitched girlie scream meant
'Help, I've fallen in quicksand'. Luckily we
hadn't had to use any of those yet.

'What is it, Jenny?' I whispered.

'I'm not sure,' she said. 'But I sense there's
something wrong.'

'It's quiet,' I said.

'Too quiet,' she replied.

We all knew that was bad news. But it
was too late to go back.

'The enemy den is just over there,' I said.
'Five minutes – that's all it'll take.'

Jenny nodded, and we moved on.

If only I'd listened to her.

The first we knew of the attack was when
a huge hunk of mud landed in front of Jenny,
splattering her nice clean jeans. For a second
we didn't realize what was happening. Then
more mud began to rain down around us,
and we heard a horrible, unearthly war cry
– a sound like the yelping of hyenas around
a dying wildebeest. It was the jabbering
racket that alien invaders would make just
as they destroyed the last Earth city.

Dockery and his gang.

'Get the sissies!' they screamed, and worse
things – if you can imagine them.

I looked up at the steep muddy sides of
the valley. They were like the ramparts of a
castle, a castle that completely surrounded
us.

'Where are they?' I yelled.

'They're everywhere,' wailed Noah.

You can guess what
he
was on the brink
of.

I reached for the binoculars in the case
hanging around my neck. Everything was
blurred. I fiddled with the focus, and then
I saw them. Dark shapes at the top of the
muddy slopes. I zoomed in, up to maximum
power. It was Dockery, along with the
others – William Stanton, James Furbank,
Paul Larkin, Carl Hughes. All of them were
bigger than us, plus a lot meaner.

If you had a scale of meanness, with Jesus
at 1 and Attila the Hun at 10, then the
Dockery Gang would be a 9. Maybe even
a 91/2. That's how bad they were.

They were lobbing huge clods of mud
and earth down on us.

The Moan tried to escape by running up
one of the slippery mud walls of the valley.

He got about halfway up, but then slithered
back down.

There was no way out.

I hurled my cheese sandwich up towards
the attackers, but it just flapped away like
a dying seagull and flopped uselessly down
onto the wet earth.

Jennifer rushed to my side. 'What shall
we do?'

I was the Gang Leader. I had to decide.
I looked all around. They were in front of
us and behind us. We were cut off. There
was no escape.

'I . . . I . . .'

'Quick, Ludo, you have to tell us what to
do. It's your job.'

Now they were all looking at me. Jamie,
his honest but not very bright face expecting
me to come up with a brilliant plan. The
Moan, waiting for me to mess up so he could
moan about it. Noah, my oldest and best
friend, ever faithful. Jenny, so brave and so
sporty. There had to be something . . .

'Load the bombs,' I said.

'Under combat conditions?' said The
Moan. 'But that's impossible!'

'Just do it. Remember your training.
Exactly as we planned.'

And for the next two minutes I was
incredibly proud of the Bare Bum Gang.
Despite the deadly rain of mud and earth
landing all around us, we prepared our
counter-attack.

The Moan held the balloon, Jenny held
the funnel, I poured in the Special Mixture
Number Seven, and the first stinky balloon
bomb was soon ready. The Moan passed
it to Jamie. Jamie may not have been as
brainy as Stephen Hawking, but he could
throw like a champion. He sent the balloon
bomb flying high towards a couple of the
enemy gang. It detonated above them in
the branches of a tree and sent a shower of
Special Mixture Number Seven cascading
down on them.

We all cheered.

'Keep going,' I said, and we made the
next bomb. Again Jamie sent it flying, this
time straight at Dockery. It hit him right
on his fat belly and burst, covering him in
the stinky green slime.

'One more,' I yelled, 'then we run for it.'
I began to pour Special Mixture Number
Seven into the funnel, but then disaster
struck. One of the Dockery Gang managed
a lucky shot. A mud ball landed right on
the funnel as I was pouring. The whole
thing seemed to explode, sending Special
Mixture Number Seven splashing over all of
us. It was in our hair and eyes and mouths
and everywhere. It was like falling into the
school toilet when it's been blocked for a
week. We fell back on the floor, moaning
and groaning, defenceless.

Then I heard Dockery yell, 'Charge!'
I looked up and saw them coming down
the muddy slopes towards us. This was it.
We were about to be massacred.

The Bare Bum Gang was going to be
utterly, completely, totally wiped out.