Oliver Fibbs and the Giant Boy-Munching Bugs Page 3

  Algy rummaged in the box. ‘There’s no orange make-up; will green do instead?’

  ‘They’ll have to.’

  By the time Bobby Bragg honked the hooter at the front gate, Algy had turned me into a spooky, , spiky specimen of tropical plague!

  I peeked round the curtain and saw Bragg, Hattie Hurley, Jamie Ryder, Leon Curley, Millie Dangerfield and Peaches staring at the KEEP OUT! sign hanging on the gate. Millie stepped nervously behind Peaches and grabbed her hand.

  ‘Well, here goes,’ I said to Algy.

  He didn’t reply. He was fast asleep under my desk.

  I took a deep breath, and opened the bedroom window.

  As I waved to the group of kids, the green blobs on my hands and arms sparkled in the sunlight, and I knew the ones on my face would look just as good.

  ‘Hi, everyone,’ I croaked.

  Peaches gasped, and began to laugh, but then covered it up with a fake cough.

  ‘Those look really yukky, Ollie,’ said Jamie Ryder.

  ‘You look like one of Toby Hadron’s special frogs!’ said Millie Dangerfield.

  Hattie Hurley pulled a DISGUSTED face and looked away.

  The plan seemed to be working.

  ‘I feel terrible,’ I replied, coughing and spluttering. ‘But I’m trying to be brave . . .’

  Bobby Bragg snorted. ‘You said your dad had orange boils. How come yours are green?’

  Uh-oh! Bragg had my spoof. I was in TROUBLE.

  Suddenly, I remembered the beetle in the mouldy old coffee cup I had found in the garden.

  WHAT IF . . . someone had stolen the plague jar of the Ubangi?

  ‘Can you all keep a SECRET?’ I whispered, glancing up and down the street to check no one else was around.

  ‘WHAT?’ they all shouted back.

  ‘I SAID, CAN YOU ALL KEEP A SECRET?’

  ‘YES!’ they answered.

  ‘I’ve been infected by really bad, HORRIBOBOLOUS ,’ I told them, dropping my voice again. ‘The government has told us to keep quiet about it because it’s TOP SECRET, but I know you won’t tell.’

  I heard Bragg laugh. ‘Here we go,’ he said to Hattie. ‘It’s FIB Time!’

  ‘Great!’ laughed Jamie Ryder. ‘Go for it, Ollie!’

  ‘A hundred years ago, a golden jar full of hibernating UBANGI DEVIL BUGS was discovered by an explorer inside the ancient Temple of Stikki-Ikki, in the middle of the African . He realized how it was, so he buried it in a SECRET location. But now it’s been found by the SHOW-OFF and his gang.’

  ‘What does devastation mean?’ squeaked Millie.

  ‘I don’t know, but I can spell it,’ said Hattie Hurley. ‘D-E-V-A-S-T-A-T-I-O-N.’

  I saw Peaches rummage in her sensible bag, pull out a dictionary and flick through the pages.

  ‘It means when everything gets destroyed,’ she said finally.

  ‘But that’s really bad!’ cried Millie.

  ‘The SHOW-OFF has already let a bug loose in my house,’ I said.

  The kids were silent. Even Bobby Bragg seemed to be listening carefully.

  ‘I could feel the starting to spread through my body,’ I said. ‘Green burst up where the DEVIL BUG had bitten me. I saw the SHOW-OFF watching from behind some bushes in the garden. We blasted through the window and caught him red-handed.’

  ‘You said it was a giant bug,’ said Bobby Bragg. ‘The jar must be as big as a football stadium if it’s got thousands in it.’

  ‘Well . . . the DEVIL BUGS shrink when they go into hibernation,’ I replied. ‘When they wake, they take a big gulp of air and swell up again.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Peaches.

  ‘Anyway,’ I went on, ‘the Spell Queen went on the attack with Big Words . . .’

  Millie Dangerfield shouted, ‘What are they going to do, Oliver? Are we in danger?’

  Bobby Bragg snorted with laughter. ‘You’re in danger of being as dopey and brainless as Fibbs, if you believe this rubbish.’

  ‘The SHOW-OFF has an plan, Millie,’ I went on quickly. ‘He’s going to spread HORRIBOBOLOUS everywhere. And when everyone is taking a nap . . .’

  ‘They’re not pinching my Fruity Yum-Yums,’ said Leon Curley.

  ‘The Leaders of the World are meeting right now to work out what to do,’ I went on. ‘But they don’t know yet that we’ve been infected by HORRIBOBOLOUS .’

  ‘Everyone knows you’ve been infected by the Loopy Bug,’ laughed Bobby Bragg.

  ‘POOPY PANTS!’ I yelled at him.

  The others with laughter.

  ‘Watch it, Fibbs,’ shouted Bobby.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ I explained. ‘When you’ve got HORRIBOBOLOUS , like me, you shout out random words.’

  Bobby’s lip curled, and his eyes glared at me. ‘You seem a lot better now than you were when we got here,’ he said.

  Oops, I’d forgotten to be ill. I coughed a few times. ‘I’m just being brave so that you don’t get worried.’

  ‘But we are worried about you, Fibbs,’ said Bobby.

  He whipped a camera from his pocket and, before I knew what was happening, took a photo of me.

  ‘What a shame,’ he said. ‘You were going to show the class a photo of your dad’s , but instead I’ll be showing them a photo of yours.’

  All the shouting had woken Emma and Gemma from their nap. They shambled sleepily into my room to see what was going on, T-shirts crumpled, woolly pink leg-warmers bunched round their ankles and their normally tidy ‘ballet-bun’ hair-dos hanging in thin wispy straggles over their faces.

  I had to cover my mouth to stop myself from laughing. While he was stealing the make-up box from their room, my sneaky little brother had drawn long, curly moustaches on the sleeping twins’ faces.

  (He’s definitely sneakier than the Doctor Devious in DEMON OF DARKNESS.)

  ‘Someone’s been in our room while we’ve been asleep,’ yawned Emma.

  They gasped dramatically when they saw my face and pointy hair.

  They gasped even more dramatically when they spotted their make-up box on my desk, and Algy asleep underneath it with sticky, green fingers.

  ‘You’ve been in our room while we’ve been asleep,’ coughed Gemma.

  Their complaining woke Algy, who sat up quickly, and banged his head on the underside of my desk.

  ‘You’re toast!’ said Emma, jabbing her finger at me intimidatingly.

  ‘And you’re scrambled egg on toast!’ said Gemma, leaning down and staring menacingly into Algy’s eyes.

  My little brother gazed at the twins with wide, innocent eyes. ‘Oliver made me do it!’ he protested as he scuttled from the room on his hands and knees like a mouse.

  ‘Doctor Devious!’ I shouted after him.

  Grabbing A Complete Field Guide to the Plants and Trees of the World, by Dr Henrietta Pettigrew, from my bed, I made to follow him out of the room, but my sisters stood in the doorway, blocking my escape route.

  ‘There’s no need to get your tutus in a tangle!’ I said. This just seemed to make them madder.

  As they closed in for the kill, I heard the loud honky hoot of the klaxon horn on the front gate, and Peaches calling my name.

  ‘Saved by the toot!’ I said, barging past the twins and using the big book as a shield to ward off the slaps raining down on my head. ‘By the way – nice moustaches, you two!’

  ‘What?’ they said, gasping and pointing at each other as they noticed the thick black lines curling across their cheeks.

  I dashed downstairs before they had a chance to grab me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ollie,’ said Peaches as I ran up the path. ‘I couldn’t stop Bobby coming round.’

  ‘He knows I haven’t got ,’ I replied. ‘He’s just trying to catch me out.’

  Peaches smiled. ‘Did you see Hattie Hurley’s face when she saw your ?’

  ‘Did you see Bobby’s face when I called him Poopy Pants?’ I laughed. ‘Let’s go to my SECRET HIDEAWAY. Don’t worry about gett
ing bitten by the DEVIL BUG – Algy’s got it safely shut away in a matchbox.’

  We sat on the grass behind the shed and shared some sweets while Peaches looked through my big book of plants.

  ‘Some of these plants have really silly names,’ she said. ‘“ goosefoot”, “bristly ox-tongue”, “biting stonecrop” . . .’

  ‘That last one sounds nasty,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if we can find some.’

  Our gardener, Mr Trott, keeps a ‘wildlife area’ in one corner of the garden. We searched through the thick, jungly vegetation, but the only good thing we found was a ginormous stringy brown worm with its head poking out of its wormhole home.

  As I parted the weeds to get a better look, I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my hand.

  ‘Ow!’ I cried. ‘Something just bit me.’

  WHAT IF . . . I’d found a ‘biting stonecrop’ after all?

  WHAT IF . . . it was a MAN-EATING PLANT?

  Pretty soon my hand began to go red and itchy. Real bumps – big pale ones – began to swell up among the green-painted on my skin. In no time at all, my hand was throbbing like the atomic banana in , and the blotchy rash was getting worse.

  I swallowed hard. ‘The venom must be spreading.WHAT IF . . . the poison turns me into a zombie daffodil? WHAT IF I have to live on human blood?’

  ‘It’s just a nettle sting,’ said Peaches. ‘If you rub the rash with a dock leaf, it’ll stop hurting and go away.’

  She was right – again. Soon, my hand had returned to normal, just like the atomic banana did when blasted it with neutralizing sub-solar mega-manga .

  ‘What’s in there?’ asked Peaches, pointing at our garden shed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Mr Trott keeps it locked, and only he knows where the key is.’

  ‘That’s a big padlock,’ said Peaches. ‘There must be something really special inside.’

  ‘Or something really dangerous.’

  WHAT IF . . . Mr Trott was a spy for the SECRET SERVICE and was working undercover as our gardener, growing huge man-eating plants as a new SECRET weapon?

  I jangled the padlock that held the thick steel bolt securely in place. ‘I wish I knew where the key was.’

  Just then Constanza shouted, ‘Oliver! Supper!’

  I walked Peaches to the front date then went inside. Only Constanza and Algy were sitting at the kitchen table. A huge pot of cabbage-and-cauliflower stood in the centre with a bid metal spoon poking out of the top. Not again!

  Algy was asleep with his head resting on the table next to his bowl. One nostril lay in a little pool of gloopy soup, and as he breathed he blew little snotty BUBBLES in the sticky green liquid.

  ‘I think the soup kills your brother!’ laughed Constanza.

  There was no sign of anyone else, which meant the others were napping again. This house was like the magical cave in SLEEPING KNIGHTS OF ALBION, where all the Knights of the Round Table lie asleep, waiting to wake for the final battle to save the world.

  ‘For us, I make your favourite pizza,’ said Constanza. ‘With the beans baked on top! The one your mamma hates!’

  Yum! Not having wasn’t so bad after all!

  ‘Three days since you were bitten, Oliver, and no symptoms,’ said Mum as I got ready for bed that night. ‘You can go back to school tomorrow.’

  I didn’t sleep well that night. The thought of going back without sensational to show off hung over me like the SWORD OF DOOM in DAMOCLES DISASTER.

  The next morning, when I walked into the classroom with Peaches, Bobby Bragg was standing by the notice board with a crowd of kids around him. They were all laughing and staring at something he had pinned up. Bobby’s photo of me!

  ‘Just tell them your were a joke,’ whispered Peaches.

  Luckily, before anyone could say anything, Miss Wilkins appeared and told us to sit at our tables.

  ‘It’s lovely to have you back in school, Oliver,’ she said, frowning as she studied the picture on the notice board. ‘I didn’t realize you’d had . And such green ones too!’ She smiled at me and raised one eyebrow. ‘How did you get better so quickly?’

  Everyone turned and stared at me, waiting for my answer.

  Bobby Bragg grinned.

  Peaches frowned.

  I blushed.

  The words came out before I could stop them. It was as if they were alive, and determined to escape from my body.

  ‘Miss, DABMAN’s arch-enemy, the SHOW-OFF, is behind all this,’ I blurted out. ‘He’s planning to infect the world, steal all the gold, diamonds and Fruity Yum-Yums he can while everyone’s asleep, then ask for seventeen trillion pounds to hand over the cure for !’

  ‘Now, Oliver . . .’ Miss Wilkins tried to stop me as she realized that I was off on one of my stories again.

  I carried on anyway. ‘He’s discovered worm-holes in time and space, and he’s using them to travel around the world in seconds. Luckily, there’s one at the bottom of my garden. Captain Common Sense and DABMAN dashed through the wormhole, and followed the vapour trail left by the SAS GANG’s rocket boots. Suddenly we found ourselves standing in a hot, steamy rainforest . . .’

  ‘Just then,’ I told them, ‘a DISGUSTING smell, like a cross between rotting meat and Bobby’s breath, wafted from the , and things began to move in the shadows.’

  Millie Dangerfíeld gasped. ‘What’s a Zimbesi Gobbler?’

  ‘They’re man-eating plants!’ I told her. ‘They use long tentacles to catch their prey. Then they drown it in their sloppy stomach juice, let the flesh rot and digest it slowly.’

  I saw Hattie Hurley’s hand cover her mouth.

  ‘Ollie . . .’ warned Miss Wilkins, glancing at Hattie with a worried frown.

  ‘Would we make it past the Gobblers?’ I said.

  ‘Who cares?’ shouted Bobby Bragg, obviously miffed about the bad-breath joke.

  ‘I do!’ shouted Millie Dangerfield. ‘I don’t want HORRIBOBOLOUS ! What happened, Ollie?’

  ‘When I came back through the wormhole, my had disappeared,’ I told everyone. ‘For reasons unknown to science, the electromagnetic, anti-neutronic forces inside the wormhole instantly cured the !’

  ‘Thank you for that very long explanation, Oliver,’ said Miss Wilkins with a sigh. ‘I was hoping some of the children would show the class their performances for the KIDS CAN DO TALENT SHOW, but now there’s no time.’

  Bobby sniggered quietly.

  Miss Wilkins gave me a playtime detention, like she always does when I tell one of my stories. She made me sit by myself and write out my FIB, while she made some Viking helmets out of plastic bowls and pieces of rolled-up card.

  When I’d finished, she said, ‘Oliver, I’d like you to perform your act for the talent show tomorrow.’

  ‘But, miss,’ I complained, ‘with all the hullabaloo at home, I’ve not had time to practise.’

  She nodded. ‘Very well, I’ll give you until Friday.’

  ‘Thanks, miss,’ I replied, wondering if a freak hurricane might blow the school down before then, or if Symon Cowbell might get sucked down a wormhole and end up in Outer Mongolia.

  I decided I’d better have another look at BALLOON-MODELLING FOR BEGINNERS, by Mungo the Magnificent, just in case.

  Constanza was six minutes late picking me up from school. ‘Sorry, Oliver! I forget the soup is boiling, and it go boom!’

  My teacher took her to one side, and they chatted for a couple of minutes. I’m not sure what they were talking about this time, but I heard them say ‘silly’, ‘naughty’, ‘snore’ and ‘blocked drains’.

  When we got home, the house was as silent as the haunted graveyard in TOMB OF DEATHLY SECRETS. As I wandered from room to room, I saw that ‘someone’ had been playing tricks again. Mum was snoozing in a chair in the living room, clutching a teddy bear, and sucking her thumb!

  In his office, Dad had fallen asleep at his desk designing a new skyscraper. The plans for the building were spread out in front of him, but ‘someone’ h
ad coloured them in with crayons, and drawn a big T-rex standing on the roof, holding an umbrella.

  I went searching for the culprit, and eventually found Algy asleep on the toilet, his head resting on the loo roll hanging on the wall next to him. It was obvious who was going to get the blame for these pranks: me. I couldn’t let Algy get away with it.

  In my best SUPERHERO voice, I said, ‘So we meet at last, Algernon Montgomery Templeton Tibbs . . . or should I call you ‘Dr Devious”?’

  I looked down at my sleeping brother. ‘This time,’ I grinned, ‘the prank’s on you!’

  I knew Algy had been playing a game of chess against his computer. I went into his bedroom and rearranged the chess pieces on the board so that he wasn’t winning any more.

  The hooty honk of the klaxon horn shattered the quiet. I glanced out of the window and saw Peaches waving to me from the gate. I dashed downstairs before the family woke up.

  ‘Have you been GROUNDED again for telling FIBS at school?’ she asked.

  ‘Mum and Dad don’t know yet,’ I replied. ‘They’re asleep. Constanza didn’t seem too bothered, so I don’t think she’ll tell them.’

  As we strolled down the garden, Peaches said, ‘I’ve been thinking about your padlocked shed. I’ve heard that people usually hide keys on top of doors, or under doormats.’

  ‘Pea, you’re a genius!’ I said as we found the key under a cracked plant pot right next to the door.

  I turned the key in the padlock, and slowly opened the door, just a crack. The warm smell of oil, wood, cut grass and damp earth seeped out through the gap, as if the shed had let out a long, slow burp.

  I pulled the door fully open. We stepped inside, and peered around.

  The lawnmower was parked just inside the entrance. A wheelbarrow leaned against the far wall, surrounded by all Mr Trott’s garden tools hanging from hooks. Tins of paint and pots of nails were arranged neatly on shelves along the wall to their right, and plant pots were stacked in tidy piles according to size in one corner. There wasn’t a man-eating plant in sight.