The Day My Butt Went Psycho Read online

  Maurice, a larger bum standing beside him, nodded.

  ‘Very nice, Prince,’ he said in a deep voice. ‘Very, very nice indeed.’

  The rest of the bums elbowed one another and sniggered.

  The bum called Prince jumped up onto Zack’s chest.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure, bumcatcher?’

  The smell of the Prince’s breath almost knocked Zack out, despite the clothespeg on his nose.

  ‘I’m not a bumcatcher,’ said Zack.

  ‘Do you take me for a fool?’ said the Prince.

  ‘No,’ said Zack.

  ‘Then why do you insult me?’ said the Prince.

  ‘Insult you?’ said Zack. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re wearing a bumcatcher’s utility belt,’ said the Prince reaching forward, unclipping the belt and dangling it in front of Zack’s face. ‘I assume you’re not delivering pizzas.’

  The other bums slapped their thighs and winked at one another in appreciation of their leader’s joke.

  ‘That’s not my belt,’ said Zack.

  ‘Look,’ said the Prince, ‘I’d like to believe you. I really would, wouldn’t I, Maurice?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Maurice. ‘He would. He really would. He really and truly . . .’

  ‘That will do, Maurice,’ said the Prince.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Maurice.

  ‘As I was saying,’ said the Prince, ‘I would like to believe you, but it’s more than my job’s worth, you see. As leader of Bum Intelligence it’s my job to capture and interrogate any humans engaged in anti-bum activities. Now put yourself in my shoes. A human wearing a bumcatcher’s utility belt enters the room and tells us that he’s not a bumcatcher. What would you do?’

  ‘Let him go?’ suggested Zack.

  ‘No,’ said the Prince. ‘I hoped you might be a little more clever than that. I would interrogate him. Find out who he’s working for and how many more of them there are. I’d probably even have to torture him, unless he wanted to save time and tell me the truth straight up.’

  As the Prince spoke, the gang of bums closed in even more tightly around Zack.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ said Zack, ‘I’m not a bumcatcher and I don’t work for anyone.’

  But the Prince ignored him.

  ‘Maurice?’ he said.

  Maurice stepped forward, snapping his feet to attention.

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Match, please,’ said the Prince.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ said Maurice producing a box of matches. He opened the box and passed a match to the Prince.

  ‘Know what this is?’ said the Prince, waving it in front of Zack’s face.

  The gang of bums all took a few steps back.

  ‘Yes,’ said Zack, beginning to tremble. ‘A match.’

  ‘Good,’ said the Prince. ‘At last we’re getting somewhere. Now tell me, who are you working for?’

  ‘Nobody,’ said Zack. ‘You’re making a mistake. I’m not working for anybody. I’m a civilian.’

  The Prince nodded.

  For a moment Zack thought it was because he’d understood.

  But then the Prince gestured to Maurice to come closer.

  Maurice stepped forward with the matchbox held out in his hand.

  ‘I was hoping to avoid this,’ said the Prince in a low voice. ‘But unless you answer my questions truthfully you leave me no choice.’

  ‘I am telling you the truth,’ said Zack, feeling the sweat form on the back of his neck. The Prince was clearly psycho, he thought. Perhaps even more psycho than his own bum.

  The Prince sighed and struck the match against the box. It flared.

  The bums all leaned forward as close as they dared, not wanting to miss a single moment of the action.

  Zack knew what was coming.

  Bums and matches were a bad combination.

  He tried to get away but Maurice put his foot on his chest.

  Zack was trapped.

  The Prince took a deep breath, brought the match in front of his mouth and held out his finger.

  ‘Maurice—pull my finger,’ he said.

  Zack closed his eyes.

  Suddenly he heard a splash.

  ‘Stop right there!’ said a voice. ‘Move away from him and face the wall. That goes for all of you.’

  Zack looked up.

  There, standing at the end of the drain he’d slid through, was a girl wearing army camouflage pants and a green singlet. Her hair was a tangled mess. She looked like she’d been living rough. She was heavily armed: a bum-gun on each hip, a knife strapped to one of her black combat boots and a huge bumblaster hanging off her shoulder. She was holding onto it with both hands, standing absolutely still, with the air of somebody who expected to be obeyed. She was scowling, looking directly at the Prince, who hadn’t moved.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ she said, jumping down from the lip of the pipe and landing cat-like on the metal grate without losing either her balance or her poise.

  The bums all scuttled to the edge of the drain. All except for the Prince and Maurice.

  ‘Dear me,’ said the Prince. ‘Such rudeness. Have you ever heard the like, Maurice?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Maurice gravely, ‘I don’t believe I have.’

  ‘You, my dear,’ said the Prince, turning to the girl, ‘need to learn some manners.’

  ‘And you need to move to that wall,’ she said, taking a menacing step towards him, ‘or I will shoot.’

  ‘I will do as you ask,’ said the Prince. ‘But first you must say “please”.’

  The only response from the girl was a volley of gun fire. Drawing-pins shot out of her gun and embedded themselves in a straight line along the table-top, stopping only a few centimetres from Zack’s leg.

  Maurice screamed.

  ‘I used drawing-pins that time,’ said the girl. ‘Next time it will be staples.’

  ‘Okay, all right,’ said the Prince. ‘Temper, temper!’

  Zack reached up and snatched the utility belt from the Prince’s hand.

  The Prince glanced at the girl, looking slightly worried.

  ‘We weren’t going to hurt him,’ he said, looking back at Zack. ‘Honestly. We were just having a bit of fun weren’t we, Maurice?’

  Suddenly the air was full of staples. The girl sprayed the metal grate in front of the Prince and Maurice. They shielded themselves as best they could with their little froggy arms, but many of the staples rebounded and stuck into them.

  They responded by jumping around as if they were standing on a hotplate.

  ‘Hey!’ said the Prince. ‘That hurts!’

  ‘Just shut up and move,’ said the girl. ‘I won’t tell you again. Next time it will be nails. Rusty ones.’

  Something about her tone, combined with the threat of rusty nails, was serious enough to get through to the Prince and Maurice. They ran to join the other bums at the far side of the drain.

  The girl walked towards Zack, staring angrily into his eyes. Zack was sweating. She was almost more frightening than the bums.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ said the girl.

  ‘No,’ said Zack. ‘You came just in time.’

  ‘I heard the cluster bum,’ she said. ‘I figured they must have been after somebody. What the hell were you doing out after a bum-siren had been sounded anyway?’

  ‘Bum-siren?’ said Zack. ‘I didn’t hear a bum-siren.’

  ‘You must be deaf as well as dumb,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Zack was beginning to think the Prince was right. This girl was rude.

  ‘Anyone who walks around the streets in the middle of a bum curfew, unarmed, is asking for trouble,’ she said. ‘And then I have to waste my time saving them.’

  ‘I wasn’t unarmed,’ said Zack, showing her the utility belt. ‘I was wearing this.’

  ‘That’s a cute little toy,’ the girl said, smiling. ‘Did you get it for Christmas?’
<
br />   ‘No,’ said Zack. ‘A bumcatcher gave it to me.’

  The girl sighed.

  ‘Bloody street cleaners,’ she said. ‘They should leave it to the professionals.’

  ‘He is a professional,’ said Zack.

  ‘If God had meant us to catch bums,’ she said, patting her bumblaster, ‘she wouldn’t have given us these to kill them with.’

  ‘So you’re a . . .’

  ‘Bum-fighter,’ she said.

  ‘What’s your name?’ said Zack.

  ‘Eleanor.’

  ‘I’m Zack,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  She ignored it.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said. ‘It stinks.’

  She waved her gun towards the pipe she’d jumped down from.

  ‘Can you get up there?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Zack.

  ‘Let’s go then,’ she said. She turned, ran towards the wall, and in one graceful move, jumped and landed back up on the ledge of the drain.

  Zack went as far back as he could and began to run.

  He jumped, reached up for the lip of the drain and missed. He put his hands on the ledge and tried to pull himself up. He got his head and shoulders into the pipe, but it was hard to get a good grip on the slippery concrete.

  Eleanor knelt down and grabbed Zack’s pyjama top.

  With one mighty heave she swung him up over the drain lip and into the pipe. She did it with such force that Zack went sliding along the pipe through the darkness and shot out the other end, where he’d originally come in.

  Eleanor was right behind him.

  ‘Come on,’ she said as they emerged, blinking, into the light. ‘My bum-mobile is hidden in a park not far from here.’

  ‘You’ve got a bum-mobile?’ said Zack. ‘What sort?’

  ‘A 370-TZ.’

  ‘With retractable wings?’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Handles all terrain. Even goes underwater.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Zack. He looked at the girl. She couldn’t have been much older than him and yet she already had her own bum-mobile.

  The girl took one of her bum-guns from her holster and handed it to him.

  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘you’d better take this.’

  Zack looked at the gun and felt his pulse quickening. It was a 4502-LL. The LL stood for Laxative Launcher. State of the art. It could fire up to five capsules of pure laxative per second.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter— are you scared?’

  ‘No,’ said Zack quickly. Up until now he had only read about guns like this. He’d never dreamed he’d ever actually get to hold one.

  He held the gun up to his eye, put his finger on the trigger and took aim through the telescopic viewfinder.

  Suddenly the gun jolted backwards in his hands and a volley of capsules poured out of its neck.

  ‘You idiot!’ said Eleanor. ‘Are you trying to get us killed?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘You’ll have to be more careful than that if you want to stay alive,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. And keep your head down. I can’t see any bums, but that doesn’t mean they’re not around.’

  Zack nodded, his face burning with embarrassment. He knew he was no bum-fighter, but it was too late to back out now.

  Crouching low, Zack followed the girl through the long grass by the side of the creek. Soon they reached the edge of a large park.

  Eleanor pointed to a weeping willow on the other side. Its thick branches drooped all the way to the ground.

  ‘That’s where the bum-mobile is hidden,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Zack nodded.

  They were about halfway across the park when they heard a weird high-pitched squealing noise above them.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Zack.

  ‘Get down!’ said Eleanor, pushing him roughly to the ground.

  A bum whizzed over their heads and splattered onto the ground a few metres in front of them.

  ‘Kamikaze bums!’ said Eleanor, pointing to a large dead tree behind them—its branches lined with hundreds of bums, each wearing a red band. ‘We’re going to have to make a run for it.’

  She sprinted off across the park towards the bum-mobile. Zack ran after her. The bums whizzed and whined overhead, exploding all around them.

  Finally they made it to the willow tree.

  Eleanor parted the curtain of branches to reveal the bum-mobile.

  Zack’s eyes bulged. The 370-TZ was an amazing machine. It resembled an armoured tank, except it was as if the top half had been removed and replaced with two large perspex domes.

  Also, unlike a tank, it had a long yellow nose out the front of it tapering to a very sharp point. The letters ‘BH-007’ were written along the side in red. But the thing that really caught Zack’s eye were the three rocket thrusters mounted at the rear. This would make the bum-mobile capable of flying at least twice the speed of wind—easily enough to hunt down or, if necessary, escape from the biggest and meanest of bums.

  Zack was so amazed at the sight of the bum-mobile that he forgot about the bum-gun in his hand. Suddenly another volley of capsules sprayed out of the neck and into the trunk of the tree.

  For a moment nothing happened, and then Zack saw the most incredible thing he had ever seen. Every single leaf fell off the tree, leaving just a skeleton of branches and the bum-mobile completely exposed. Zack blinked and shook his head. They were powerful laxatives, that was for sure.

  ‘You idiot!’ yelled Eleanor. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’

  ‘It was an accident,’ said Zack, but he was drowned out by the sound of a bum slamming into the side of the bum-mobile and exploding.

  ‘Cover me!’ said Eleanor, leaping onto the top of the bum-mobile. She knelt down, grabbed hold of the entry hatch and pulled it open.

  But a bum was heading straight for her.

  Zack heard it, spun around, took aim and fired.

  It was a direct hit.

  The bum released a volcanic geyser of brown liquid and then blew apart completely, covering both Zack and Eleanor with something very similar in consistency to chocolate mousse except much, much stinkier.

  ‘I did it!’ Zack said to Eleanor, jumping up and down. ‘I did it!’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Eleanor lowering herself down into the hatch. ‘But what are you going to do about that?’

  She pointed behind Zack and then disappeared into the bum-mobile.

  Zack looked around.

  What he saw made his stomach drop.

  An enormous boulder was rolling down the hill towards them.

  Only this was no ordinary boulder.

  It was a bum-boulder.

  Hundreds of bums clustered together. Hurtling across the grass. Crushing saplings like matchsticks.

  Zack stared at it.

  The bum-boulder was less than fifty metres away.

  ‘Well don’t just stand there, you idiot,’ yelled Eleanor, poking her head back up through the hatch. ‘Jump in!’

  Zack took one last look at the boulder, turned and with an almost superhuman effort, jumped straight into the bum-mobile, pulling the hatch shut behind him.

  Eleanor was in the front dome of the bum-mobile, strapping herself into one of the pilot seats.

  ‘Hold on,’ she yelled. ‘Firing bum-thrusters.’

  But before Zack had a chance to grab hold of anything the bum-mobile roared into life. Suddenly he was staggering backwards as they shot up into the sky.

  Zack hit the back wall of the bum-mobile and fell sideways, his face pressed against the perspex dome. He saw the bum-boulder smash into the willow tree and burst apart, sending the bums flying into the air. They quickly regrouped and began chasing the bum-mobile.

  ‘They’re after us!’ Zack yelled.

  The bum-mobile suddenly dived.

  This time Zack went flying forwards
and fell heavily on the controls in the front dome, landing with his face pressed hard against the windscreen.

  ‘You idiot!’ screamed Eleanor. ‘Why aren’t you strapped in?’

  ‘I didn’t have time!’ he said.

  But Eleanor wasn’t listening.

  She was too busy concentrating on the huge mass of bums speeding towards them. There must have been at least five hundred of them. A big angry wasp-like cloud of bums.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ she said. ‘Hold on, we’re going to have to corkscrew.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Zack.

  Eleanor pulled down hard on her steering wheel. The bum-mobile started looping in a series of smaller and smaller circles.

  Zack had been feeling sick already, but this was the last straw.

  He threw up. In a corkscrew pattern. All over the controls, the windscreen and the floor.

  Eleanor was frantically trying to wipe a clean space on the windscreen to see through when Zack slipped and fell on top of her.

  Eleanor’s head hit the left side of the bum-mobile with a thump and she slumped in her chair, completely knocked out.

  With nobody at the controls, the bum-mobile flipped upside down and Zack fell backwards and landed against the hatch with such force that it sprang open.

  As Zack fell he grabbed the edge of the hatch and held on for his life.

  Zack’s heart was pounding as he took stock of his predicament.

  He was hanging from an upside-down, out-of-control bum-mobile with a posse of angry bums hot on his tail. Within moments they were at his feet, and at the head of the pack were two bums that he recognised only too well.

  ‘Greetings, my dear boy,’ said the first bum. ‘What a great pleasure to see you again. Don’t you agree, Maurice?’

  ‘Oh yes, your highness,’ said Maurice smiling dourly. ‘It is indeed a great, great pleasure.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE B-TEAM

  The Prince and Maurice might have been glad to see Zack, but he certainly wasn’t glad to see them.

  As the Prince buzzed around him, Zack tried to kick his ugly little face, but he was too fast. All Zack succeeded in doing was kicking off the Prince’s paper crown.

  ‘Dear me.’ the Prince said to Maurice. ‘That’s not a very nice greeting. And after all we’ve done for him.’