The Bare Bum Gang and the Valley of Doom by Anthony McGowan Read Free Book Online Page B

It makes the story much
more exciting. Well, I'd definitely lost my
powers. And, if I was being honest, I'd have
to admit that I'd gone off and sulked.
    But now I was back, and my powers were
back, and I was ready to rock!
    Perhaps the most important part of any
plan is good preparation. Lots of perfectly
good plans in the history of the world went
wrong because of bad preparation, such
as the Charge of the Light Brigade in the
Crimean War. It also works the other way
round (or vice-versa), such as when England
won the World Cup in 1966. Well, I wanted
my plan to be like winning the World Cup,
and not like getting all blown to pieces in
the Charge of the Light Brigade.
    When preparing a good plan you need to
have everything arranged in steps. The first
step was writing those two cunning letters.
    The second step was getting some fresh
batteries for my walkie-talkies, which I'd been
meaning to do for ages anyway. They each
needed two AA batteries, four altogether. I
dug around in my toy cupboard and got out
all my old toys that used batteries, including
three robots, a remote-controlled digger, a
scary clown that laughed at you in a way
that gave you nightmares, and a toy train
that made embarrassing chuff-chuff noises.
    Not a single one worked.
    So then I moved on to the rest of the
house. I found two batteries in my dad's
electric toothbrush, which my mum got
him because she said his teeth were looking
green. Then I extracted (which means took
out) two more from my sister Ivy's electronic
potty.
    According to the instructions, the potty
was supposed to say 'Well done' and 'Good
girl' and 'That's a big one' when you did a
wee or a poo in it. But my sister's didn't
work properly, and it shouted at you in
Chinese, saying things like 'HONG CHOW
PONG YU', which frightened her so much
that she didn't go to the potty for a whole
week, and had to go to hospital to get her
poo extracted (which means – oh, I already
explained that) by a doctor with a special
kind of spoon, called a poo spoon. So taking
the batteries out of it was probably the
best thing you could do, and not stealing
at all.
    The third step was to check on the supplies
of Special Mixture Number Seven. There
was still some left in the bucket in the garage,
but not quite enough, so I filled it up with
more wee. Technically this made it Special
Mixture Number Eight.
    The fourth step was Noah's responsibility.
He went secretly round to see everyone in
the Bare Bum Gang – except of course evil
Alfie – and told them the plan. No, not the
whole plan, just the part they needed to
know, which was where and when they had
to meet up, and what to bring with them.
    The rest was down to me, my raw courage,
and the stupidity of my mortal enemies.

Chapter Seventeen
THE TREE
    I'd been up in the tree for half an hour.
Half an hour is actually quite a long
time to spend in a tree, even if you find a
comfortable perch. Usually, when you go
up into a tree, it is to get something, such
as a ball that is stuck there, or perhaps
your trousers, which have been thrown
into the tree by a big bully, like Dockery.
You don't normally hang around. Hanging
around in trees is what you do if you're a
monkey or a squirrel, or some other tree
creature.
    The tree I was in was exactly the same
old oak tree I'd mentioned in the letters to
Alfie and Dockery, in the deepest, darkest
part of the Valley of Doom, not far at all
from where we'd been ambushed. It was
quite an easy tree to climb, because it had
lots of branches near the ground. But I had
to go fairly high up to make sure I wouldn't
be seen (or heard or smelled, in case I let
out a little tummy squeak).
    Normally I don't like being high up
in anything. It's not the heights I'm afraid
of, so much as falling from them and
smashing my head in. But I was on a
mission, and missions are no places for
scaredy cats.
    So I gritted my teeth and climbed about
as high up in the tree as a medium sized
giraffe could reach. Giraffes can reach
even further