The Bare Bum Gang and the Valley of Doom (5 page)

So I thought
The Unthinkable
, but before I
actually had to do
The Unthinkable
(or do
I mean
The Undoable
?), I decided to have a
little chat with the person who had brought
me to this terrible situation.

I'd noticed that Alfie always got to school
early so he could suck up to the teachers
without any of the kids noticing. That's the
kind of squirt he was. So the next day, I got
up half an hour before normal, and ran all
the way to school so I could catch him. I
hid behind the school gates, peeping out
through one of the gaps in the wood.

Alfie got dropped off in a car by his mum.
She gave him a big wet kiss on the cheek, the
kind you could hear going off like a depth
charge in a submarine film.
Whuuuuump!
it
went. Then she wiped the red lipstick stain
off with her hanky while he squirmed and
looked around in case anyone had seen.

Well, I had.

As soon as he came through the gates
I jumped out in front of him. He looked
surprised for about a second. Then he said,
quite calmly, as if we were old chums, 'Hello,
Ludo.'

That took me by surprise, which was
the opposite of what was supposed to be
happening (i.e. me taking
him
by surprise).

'Hello,' I said.

'Nice to see you.'

'Yes. Nice to see you too,' I replied.

And then I remembered what I was there
for.

'No, actually it isn't nice to see you. In
fact, seeing you is completely rubbish. I'd
rather see a giant pile of steaming monkey
poo served up on my plate for dinner.'

'Really? Then why were you waiting for
me? You must really like monkey poo for
dinner. I'll have to tell the others later.'

You had to admit, this Alfie was a cool
customer. Well, two could play at that
game. I mean, the game of being a cool
customer.

'Exactly,' I replied. 'I rest my case.'

'Exactly what?' said Alfie, looking a bit
puzzled, as well he might.

'You admit that you'd rather eat sweets
than monkey poo?'

'Yes, of course . . . Who wouldn't, except
a loony like you.'

'So then, you admit it was you who ate
our gang sweets?'

'Ah, so that's what this is all about. Look,
Ludo, why don't you just let it go? The Bare
Bum Gang doesn't want you, doesn't
need
you. We've moved on – why don't you?
Get a life. Make some new friends. Find a
new hobby. Whittle a stick. Collect some
stamps.'

'I know exactly what you did,' I said,
beginning to lose my temper. 'You made
some kind of a sneaky plan with Dockery.
You knew we were going to get ambushed,
and that's why you were right there to
rescue us. And you'd already scoffed our
sweets and hidden them in my binocular
case . . .'

I sort of dwindled into silence then,
because I didn't have any proof of what
I'd said and I could see from the smile on
Alfie's face that he knew it.

'It doesn't matter what you think,' he
said, still smiling. 'Everyone knows you're a
liar and a sweet-stealer and a useless Gang
Leader. They all like me more than you.'
And then he paused and his face suddenly
looked so sly you could have used it to show
what the word 'sly' meant to someone who
was learning how to speak English – say an
alien or a Frenchman. 'Especially Jenny,' he
continued. 'She told me how much more
she likes me than you.'

Well, that was too much for me.

'You keep your horrible slimy hands off
her, you monster,' I yelled.

And I admit, I seriously considered giving
him a jolly good thump on the side of the
head. But I didn't, because even thoughhe
was a bit taller than me, he was weakand
skinny, so it would be bullying. Anyway, it
would be descending to his level and you
shouldn't use violence to solve arguments,
unless you're arguingwith the Nazis,
and violence is the only language they
understand. Except German, of course.

So I gave him a little poke on the shoulder
instead. And when I say a little poke, I don't
really mean a gigantic big poke. I mean a
really, really little poke. Hard enough to,
say, knock a ladybird off a twig or burst a
spit bubble, but not hard enough to poke
through a piece of tissue paper. Unless you'd
just blown your nose on it, and you had a
really runny cold. So what I'm saying is I
didn't poke him very hard at all.

But the way he acted you'd have thought
I'd shot him with a high-powered rifle.
And not in the shoulder, but right in the
middle of his eye. He threw himself down
and writhed around in agony, holding his
face.

'My eye! My eye!' he screamed. 'I'm
blinded. Blinded for life.'

It was then that I heard the gasp behind
me. I spun round to see the whole of the
Bare Bum Gang there, along with a load
of other children just arriving for school.
Alfie had seen them coming, and that was
why he went into his act. It was obvious.
They must have realized what he was up
to. Mustn't they?

'That is just about the nastiest thing I've
ever seen,' said Jenny.

'Yeah, I know,' I began. 'I mean, the way
he—'

But Jenny shoved me aside as easily as
you throw the duvet off your bed in the
morning.

'Poking a kid in the eye,' said The Moan,
following close behind Jennifer, 'is the worst
thing you can do. It's not fighting fair. It's
cheating. Everyone knows that.'

'But I didn't . . . I . . . it was . . .'
But it was all too late. They crowded
around Alfie and no one was listening to
me.

'He just poked me in the eye for no
reason,' said Alfie, from the middle of the
crowd.

'Do you want me to bash him?' said
Jamie.

'No,' said Alfie. 'Just leave him. He isn't
worth it.'

'You're right,' said Jenny. 'He isn't.'

All I could see was their backs closed
against me. I was alone.

OK, I thought. That's it.

Time to do
The Unthinkable
.

Or
The Undoable
.

Or whatever it was.

'You? What do you want?'

That huge ugly head with the eyes, nose
and mouth all squished together in the
middle of his face peered out at me from
the flap at the front of the Dockery Gang
tent.

I swallowed hard and said it.

'I want to be in your gang.'

Dockery, followed by Stanton, Furbank,
Larkin and Hughes, piled out of the
tent. It hadn't looked big enough to hold
them all, but somehow they'd all
squeezed in, and now they squeezed out.

They formed a circle all around me.

'Is this some kind of a joke?' said Dockery.
'Because if it is, it isn't funny.'

'It's not a joke. I'm not in the Bare Bum
Gang any more. I want to be in your
gang.'

Now, you're probably amazed and
disgusted by this. I know I would be, if
I were you. How could I even dream of
joining the evil Dockery Gang? Weren't
they all bullies and wicked villains and
really, really naughty?

Yes.

Yes.

And yes.

But I had no gang and no friends. I was
alone and defenceless in a cruel world. I
thought that even a rubbish, nasty gang like
Dockery's was better than no gang at all.
And there was something else. I wanted to
prove to the Bare Bum Gang that I didn't
need them, that I could do perfectly well
without them, thank you very much.

Dockery smiled. It wasn't pretty. He
looked like a turnip that'd been hit with a
spade. Then he laughed. It sounded like the
screeching of a baboon with rabies. As he
laughed the rest of his gang joined in.

Then Dockery gave me a shove. One of
the others had knelt down behind me so I
tripped over him and fell on my back. The
oldest trick in the book, but I had fallen for
it. Now they all laughed so hard I thought
they were going to throw up.

'Why should we let you into our gang?'
said Dockery when he'd calmed down.

'I know where the Bare Bum Gang keep
their sweets. And I know where all the traps
are.'

I was still lying on my back. I hadn't been
able to get up because Dockery had his fat
foot on my chest.

There was a flicker of interest in Dockery's
eyes. He had good cause to fear the traps
around the Bare Bum Gang den. Many
times he'd fallen into one of the Smarties-tube
Fart Bomb traps, or a Squirty Ink
trap, or even the much-feared Dog Poo
trap.

'But I don't get it. Why do you want
to be in our gang?' he said slyly. 'You've
always been our mortal enemy.'

'I don't want to talk about it. Let's just
say I have my reasons.'

Dockery looked deep into my eyes, trying
to see if I was lying or not. Obviously he
didn't know that I never told lies. Well, not
unless I really had to, like in an emergency
– say if we were invaded by aliens and
I knew where the Prime Minister was
hiding, and I told the aliens he was in
Peru, rather than in our garden shed, or
whatever.

'How do I know this isn't some sort of
trick?'

'Because I'm here, and you've got me, and
if it was a trick you could marmalize me.'

Marmalizing was something Dockery
understood all too well. He gave a little
nod, took his foot off my chest and held
out his hand to pull me up off the ground.
But as this was still Dockery, when I'd got
halfway up he let go and I fell back in the
mud, which set off the baboon-laughing all
over again.

Then they trooped back into their tent
and I was left alone, not knowing what to
do. A few seconds later, Carl's greasy head
came poking through the tent flap.

'You coming in or not?' he said with a
smirk. Or was it a scowl? Actually it was in
between – a smowl or a scirk.

Whatever it was, I followed him into the
dark smelly interior of the Dockery den.