The Elephant's Trump Read online

  Without a second thought, Jack broke the glass and grabbed the gun. He pointed it at the alien, which was now twice the size it had been originally and bloated like a balloon. Jack squeezed the trigger and was delighted when the alien popped and deflated so quickly it flew off across the room like a burst balloon.

  Unfortunately the sound of bursting balloons was the one thing in the world that scared the giant elephant. He reared up, just as Ruby was extracting the earring from his ear. Somehow she just managed to hang on as the elephant trumpeted in fear and reared up again.

  Jack reviewed the situation as quickly as he could. Oscar was still lying on the floor recovering from his ordeal. Slowly, his body filled out again as air from his lungs replaced his farts. Ruby was barely hanging on to the frightened giant elephant and the alien…oh no, and the alien was getting to its feet. Deflated it might be but it clearly wasn’t defeated. Jack dropped the gun – he couldn’t use that again, not now the alien was all out of gas. He had to find another weapon. Or a tool or something. If only he could invent something that would get him out of a scrape like this. And then it hit him – maybe he had. He pulled out his super-improved dog whistle. Covering the hole marked ‘Stay’ he blew into it. Immediately the elephant responded and stood still.

  “Come on down,” said Jack.

  Ruby didn’t have to be told twice. Quickly she slid down the trunk and jumped clear. Oscar was struggling to his feet. “Got it!” shouted Ruby, holding up the glowing earring.

  “Look out, Jack,” cried Oscar, “he’s still coming!”

  Jack looked round and saw that the Burrapong was edging ever closer, dragging one of his many legs, presumably where he had been injured. Jack looked at the dog whistle in his hands. Of course! Quickly he put it to his lips again and blew ‘Left,’ The elephant moved to his left, closer to the alien. Brilliant, thought Jack, I’ve got the world’s first remote-control elephant.

  He blew the command for forward, then right, back…Quickly he manoeuvred the elephant into position. One more step and then…SIT!

  SPLAT!

  The elephant sat down exactly where Jack wanted it to, directly over the disgusting alien.

  The Burrapong disappeared into its giant bum.

  “Snivel,” Jack called. “Get into position.”

  Snivel ran around to the back to the elephant and stood ready. He realised exactly what Jack was trying to do.

  Jack raised the dog whistle to his mouth again and blew it, covering the hole marked ‘Stand.’

  Instantly the elephant stood up again, revealing the hairy back legs of the alien sticking out of its bum. The alien legs wiggled and jiggled as the Burrapong tried to work itself free.

  Snivel took a step forward and placed himself directly under the elephant’s bottom.

  “Activate Snivel Trap!” shouted Jack.

  The alien technology that was hidden inside the heart of the robot dog sprang into action, transforming the hairy four-legged (and three-eyed) creature into a snap-lidded metallic box.

  With a final effort the Burrapong managed to wriggle almost free from the elephant’s bum.

  Jack blew ‘Sit’ again and the elephant sat back down again. As soon as the alien’s feet touched the Snivel Trap it activated. There was an enormous sucking sound and the elephant briefly went cross-eyed. Oscar offered it another snack and it stepped forward, revealing the Snivel Trap all shut up.

  They’d done it. Again!

  “Oh my goodness!” a shrill voice broke the silence that had descended. Jack span round. Now what?

  It was Zana from Zoo Watch Live Update. Unseen by the children she must have come into the elephant house sometime during the chaos – and from the stunned expression on her face she had seen everything!

  “That was incredible – what was that?” she asked, her face as white as a sheet.

  “Nothing,” said Jack, unable to come up with a convincing lie on the spot. “It was absolutely nothing.”

  Picking up the Snivel Trap he headed for the door. Ruby and Oscar followed him.

  “But…but…” stammered Zana demonstrating something Jack’s mother often said, namely that TV presenters couldn’t string a sentence together without a script to read out.

  “What about the programme?” she managed to get out as the trio filed out past her.

  “Sorry,” said Jack. “My dog ran off, we need to go and find him.”

  “But you’re going to be on TV, I’m going to interview you about your favourite zoo animal. Is it elephants?”

  “I’ve gone off elephants,” said Ruby with feeling.

  Leaving the poor TV presenter with her mouth hanging open in shock, the children ran off. They needed to get the alien safely to Bob and get him to find the real zoo keeper as quickly as possible.

  As they left the zoo Ruby brought up the subject of Zana.

  “What are we going to do about her off the telly?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Jack, crossing his fingers for luck. “Who’s going to believe an airhead like that?”

  Back in the elephant house Zana was getting over her shock. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was that she had seen but she was sure she’d seen something. Something pretty unusual. Something pretty newsworthy.

  Jack was wrong about Zana. She actually wasn’t entirely an airhead. In fact once upon a time she’d been considered quite bright by her teachers at journalism college. But somewhere along the line she’d stopped using her intelligence. From getting a break on her local radio station, to making her television debut as a children’s TV channel link person, every step in her career seemed to require her to think less and less. Nevertheless, somewhere deep inside her there remained the seed of a journalist. And that long forgotten seed had finally been woken.

  Zana realised that somehow she had stumbled upon a story bigger than anything she had ever encountered. Bigger than anything any of her fellow journalism students had dreamed of back at college. And she was determined to make the most of it.

  Zana smiled. Today was going to be the start of something big.

  PARP! Zara’s nose wrinkled in disgust. The elephant had trumped again!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ruby, Oscar and Jack hurried across town back to the postbox where Bob was now based. When they arrived with the news that they had succeeded with their second mission, Bob was over the moon. Well, he sounded over the moon, but once again he remained hidden from sight.

  “Why don’t you come out to collect him?” said Ruby as Jack placed the Snivel Trap on the ground in front of the postbox.

  “No need for that. Not when you have all this technology at your disposal,” said Bob proudly. A familiar bright blue light emerged from the slit of the postbox and covered the Snivel Trap. The light did something strange, something akin to a heat haze on a summer’s day, the blueness did a sort of wibble, and then the light flashed with an intense brightness that made the children shield their eyes. When they opened them again the Snivel Trap had disappeared and Snivel was sitting there in his dog form again.

  “And now the Blower part?” asked the voice of Bob.

  Ruby produced the alien earring from her pocket. Up close they could see that it was a kind of printed circuit shaped like an earring.

  “Excellent,” said Bob as the earring floated out of Ruby’s hand and through the letter slit in the postbox. A moment later there was a faint clang.

  Oscar sighed. “Is that it? Shouldn’t we celebrate with a slap-up pizza or something?”

  “Don’t worry, Oscar, you’ll get your reward for all your hard work…when the rest of the aliens have been captured. You’ve only done half the work so far.”

  When Jack got home he found his mum ironing in the living room. She looked a bit fed up. ”What’s wrong, Mum?’

  She shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on. Zoo Watch Live Update’s been cancelled without warning. They put on some old sitcom instead tonight, one I’ve seen about a thousand times
before.”

  “So what happened at the zoo?” asked Jack, casting a nervous glance in the direction of Snivel.

  “I don’t know. There was some kind of incident. A zoo keeper got attacked but he’s OK now. But they’ve decided to finish this series at a different zoo. It’s all very mysterious.”

  “Never mind, Mum,” said Jack. “I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”

  Mum went back to her ironing. “And what about you then? How’s my little hero been today? Done anything exciting you can tell your old mum about?”

  Jack cast his mind back over the last couple of hours. Sneaking into the zoo, being chased by wolves, playing with a remote-control elephant and catching a dangerous fart-eating alien…

  “No,” he answered his mum eventually, “nothing exciting at all!”

  On the other side of town, in a trans-dimensional impossibility that existed inside a postbox, Bob was checking on his captives. Inside his long dark corridor of glass-walled cells two were now illuminated. In one lay the Squillibloat in a drug-induced sleep, in the next lay the Burrapong, in an artificial fetid atmosphere full of sulphur fumes.

  At the end of the corridor was a free-standing shelving unit with four individually lit platforms. On one of the platforms sat the necklace that had been taken from the Squillibloat by the children a few weeks back. Now Bob placed the earring on the second platform. For a brief moment it glowed with a spooky green light, which then faded just as quickly.

  Halfway, thought Bob to himself with satisfaction. Two down and two to go.

  Bob walked back along the corridor, kicking aside the piles of letters and cards which showered down on him regularly in this new location. At least it was better than rubbish. The children had done well. At this rate the mission would soon be accomplished. All four cells would be occupied and the four parts of the Blower would be safely in his hands.

  And then…everything would be running to plan and the Earth would be safe…

  For now.

  Preview

  Take a sneak peek at book 3 in the Gunk adventure!

  Before Jack had a chance to protect himself the alien had wrapped two of its spindly legs around him and pulled him into the air.

  “Did you think I could be fooled so easily? I know you’ve caught two of my…colleagues…but I’m smarter than any blithering Burrapong or stupid Squillibloat!” said the alien proudly.

  The Flartibug continued to climb into the air. Jack watched in horror as the ground fell away.

  “I am a Flartibug and I am no fool,” hissed the creature. “Now bring me my part of the Blower or I will drop you.” Jack tried to calculate how far up they were now. Twenty metres? Thirty metres? Did it really matter? He’d be dead just the same.

  This is it, thought Zana. This was the footage that would make her famous. This was going to be big. Bigger than Newsround. Bigger than News at Ten. This was going to be global.

  Just need to make sure I get the best shots. Zana remembered something one of her producers had told her when she had first worked in television. “You can say what you want on television but it only means something to the viewer when they can actually see it. Pictures are the most important bit!”

  She wriggled forward so that the remote poked out from under the pile of bin bags, to ensure the signal was clear.

  Jack swallowed hard. What was he to do? This far from the ground it was getting very windy, making it even harder to control the helicopter. Snivel was being buffeted around in the gusts of wind.

  Frantically Jack worked the remote controls, trying to prevent the chopper flying into the electricity pylon.

  The Flartibug looked at the remote control in Jack’s hands, then at the helicopter and Snivel suspended beneath it.

  “Ah, I see that you are controlling your flying pet with that thing!” it said. Then it leaned in close, grinning at him through its horrible insect mouth. Its breath stank of rotting filth. “Now,” it said, “you will use that device to crash your pet into the ground!”

  “What?” exclaimed Jack.

  “You heard me, human. Sacrifice your pet and I may choose not to drop you to your certain death.”

  “What do you mean you may choose not to drop me?” demanded Jack.

  “Well, it might be fun to watch…But make your dog’s crash spectacular enough, and I shall probably be satisfied.”

  Jack fought his rising panic. What to do?

  “Getting bored now,” said the alien.

  Jack thought desperately. If he crashed the chopper Snivel could be flattened…but if he refused to do as the Flartibug demanded it would be him plummeting towards the grounds and getting spread out across most of the park. What to do?

  “Time’s up,” clicked the alien.

  With another of its thin hairy limbs the Flartibug snatched the remote control from Jack’s hands and tossed it into the air.

  “Goodbye, doggy!” it said, laughing.

  Other Books By

  Collect all the books in the GUNK Aliens series!

  The Verruca Bazooka The Elephant’s Trump

  The Dog’s Dinner

  The Sewers Crisis

  Copyright

  First published in paperback in Great Britain by

  HarperCollins Children’s Books 2009

  HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  The HarperCollins website address is:

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  FIRST EDITION

  Copyright © HarperCollins 2009

  Illustrations by Vincent Vigla Illustrations © HarperCollins 2009

  Conditions of Sale This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Epub Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 9780007379569

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

  Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com

 

 

 
yscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share