First of all, babies would be asleep in their mother’s arms or gurgling quietly in their cots. All would be still. And then suddenly and for no apparent reason – like an invisible alarm had been sounded—
INFANT MAYHEM!
Babies would leap to their feet and immediately start peeing in pot plants!
Or drag themselves down corridors at speed, setting off all the fire extinguishers!
Hamish watched as one little baby threw a ball at a man drinking a can of lime pop. He fell backwards off his chair and poured the whole drink over face, his feet flew over his head as he tumbled over and he kicked an old man on the bottom, who in turn waved his stick in the air in anger, knocking a lady’s hat off, and, as she bent down to pick it up, the lady bopped her head on the door, which swung open and banged a man’s hand, who spun round and accidentally pressed the button to open his umbrella, which knocked a butcher clean off his bike, and as the bike kept going on its own it hit a taxi, and the taxi sounded its horn which woke the baby’s mother, but by the time she opened her eyes her son was back in his bed looking very innocent and she was none the wiser as to what had just happened.
(If you managed to read that whole sentence out loud in one go, I will give you £2.50 and a neckerchief next time I see you.)
Look! Now a nurse was running straight down the corridor in a state of complete and utter panic.
HIS ARMS WERE FLAILING!
HIS HAIR WAS WILD!
HIS TOP WAS TORN!
And on his shoulders . . . was a baby.
A crazy-looking baby, gurning wildly.
The baby’s little legs were wrapped round the nurse’s neck and it was using its tiny fists to pummel his head. The nurse screamed and ran into a sideroom – just as an old woman in a wheelchair hurtled down the hallway behind him!
‘WAAAAAH!’ the old lady yelled, waving her hands around madly.
She was out of control!
Her chair bumped and bounced from wheel to wheel. She was about a hundred years old and must have been doing forty or fifty miles an hour!
‘WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!’ she yelled again, her hands now gripping the armrests and her eyebrows rising up and down like crazed worms doing press-ups.
A sprinkle of nuts and bolts tinkled down on the hard floor behind her like cheap stardust.
KABLANG! She burst straight through a set of double doors into the outside world and all you could hear was skidding and shouts and car horns.
‘There!’ said Hamish, pointing at the screen, as a tiny girl with a baby blue spanner crawled away. ‘I saw that baby when I went with my mum to visit Mrs Quip in the hospital! She has to be involved somehow!’
Elliot pressed fast forward on the footage, trying to find the day Hamish had visited the hospital.
‘Look!’ said Elliot. ‘There you are, H!’
Hamish looked at the screen. He saw himself leaving Boffo’s room with his mum. Everything was peaceful, quiet and calm.
The second he left the hospital, however, babies poured out of rooms left, right and centre. It looked like that film, KINGDOM OF THE MONKEY MEN. Some were beating their chests, some were swinging from door handles and others were throwing magazines around.
‘It’s a baby swarm!’ yelled Venk, his eyebrows shooting up in such surprise they nearly left his head.
And then – just like that – it was calm.
‘They stopped!’ said Hamish.
The PDF watched as, on the screen, all the babies simply went back to sitting or crawling around like simpletons.
‘So, all of a sudden, the babies go mad and then they just go back to normal,’ said Alice. ‘Why?’
‘Something must be making them act this way,’ said Elliot, tapping his chin.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Buster.
‘I don’t think it can be free will,’ Elliot replied, ominously. ‘The babies aren’t acting out because they want to. Otherwise, it would happen all the time, randomly.’ He looked at his friends, very seriously. ‘This, my friends, is coordinated. Someone – or something – is orchestrating this.’
Hamish started to feel uneasy. They needed advice from a more experienced Belasko operative. One with great knowledge of children’s behaviour.
He knew just who to ask.
Sweet Child
o’ Mine
Early the next morning, Jimmy burst into Hamish’s room and started doing star jumps.
He seemed very excited and I suppose that was the only way to cope with it.
‘Wake up?’ he yelled. ‘Hamish, wake up?’
‘What is it?’ asked Hamish, blearily.
‘I’ve been published!’ he shouted. ‘My important poetry has been published!’
He held up a copy of that morning’s Frinkley Starfish.
Mr Massive was on the front cover lifting up a dumb-bell with his teeth.
‘The love of my life, Felicity Gobb, just dropped it round?’ he yelled, delighted. Felicity had a part-time job at Shop Till You Pop and got all the papers: the Starkley Post, the Frinkley Starfish. Even the Urp Burp. ‘She told me to look at page nine?’
He opened the newspaper, ready to share his moment of triumph with his little brother. But then he stopped. His face fell.
Hamish got up and read over his shoulder. Oh, no.
Frinkley*Starfish
WORST POEM EVER WRITTEN FOUND IN STARKLEY!
Stop the presses! The worst poem EVER has been found, and it was written in – you guessed it! – Starkley!
It’s by someone called Jimmy Ellerby (12) and it’s called ONCE I WAS A BABY?, which is hardly unique, because once we were all babies! We don’t want to publish the whole poem as it’s SO AWFUL! But here is the last part for you to ‘enjoy’!
But now I am my own man?
With facial hair and suntan?
And one day I’ll be older?
Like a really mouldy boulder?
Hamish checked who’d written the article. It was Horatia Snipe. Of course. He looked up at his big brother. He had gone pale and shaky. Why had Horatia Snipe done this? Why had the Frinkley Starfish published it? How did they get hold of it?
‘Why did they say I was twelve?!’ yelled Jimmy. ‘I’m fifteen!!’
It was all so . . . MEAN.
And why was Horatia Snipe being so horrible about Hamish and his family and friends in particular?
‘I’m so sorry, Jimmy,’ said Hamish. ‘I think your poems are brilliant.’
But Jimmy didn’t respond. He just quietly folded the newspaper, left it on Hamish’s bed and then walked out of the room.
Hamish wanted to go after him.
But he had somewhere he needed to be.
For years, tiny Madame Erroneous Cous Cous had travelled the four corners of the globe, bringing fine sweets and fancy candies back to her International World of Treats.
The shelves inside glistened with the startlingly colourful fruits of her adventures. The sugar danced in the air like dust.
Actually, was it sugar? Or was it Parisian Perfumed Pickle Powder, which she’d bought from a dog in a waistcoat by the Eiffel Tower?
There were Tunisian Tongue Tramplers and Hardy Hungarian Humbugs, which also worked terrifically well as moth repellents.
Every week, there was something new to try. Just this month, Madame Cous Cous had started ‘Scotland Season’, with Dundee Drizzle Balls, FIRTH OF FORTH FUDGENUGGETS and a half-sucked jellybean she’d found under a seesaw in Arbroath.
For years, everyone in Starkley had assumed that this small, cloud-haired woman was just a dedicated and enthusiastic shop owner, keen to explore the world and uncover the greatest sweets imaginable.
But that was only her cover story.
The sweets she brought back from her foreign travels were just to make people think she was doing that. In fact, she was going on secret special missions for top Earth defence agency, Belasko.
In Italy, she’d once wrestled with the Italian Prime Minister and told everybody it
was because he’d wanted the last box of Italian Candied Prawns. In fact, it was because the Prime Minister was an alien imposter attempting to take control of the country!
In Mexico, she’d brought back Mexican MIRACLE MINTS (which were so awful it was a miracle if you finished one), but not before she’d abseiled down the side of the Mexico City Hilton so she could stop the beasts of B.E.A.S.T. from having their intergalactic diamond-smuggling meeting!
She’d fought bears in Russia, slapped a spider silly in Saigon, fallen off a building in Burma and landed on a cow in Coventry.
She was Madame Cous Cous: special agent and snack enthusiast.
And, right now, she was staring at ten-year-old Hamish Ellerby and polishing her spectacles.
‘A crazy baby in a fridge?’ she said, having just watched the video from the hospital.
‘A crazy baby in a fridge,’ echoed Hamish. ‘And that’s just one story. Something is happening, Madame Cous Cous. Something is controlling the babies. And it’s getting worse. They’ve started intimidating me.’
‘You’re being intimidated by babies?’ said Madame Cous Cous. But she didn’t say this in a mocking way. She said it like she’d heard it all before. Like she’d been waiting to hear it again.
Her face darkened.
‘Babies are the perfect weapons against adults,’ she said. ‘It’s genius. If a baby goes crazy, an adult is the first person to defend it. They’ll tell you she’s just tired, or hungry, or windy. If they catch a baby stealing, they’ll say he’s not stealing, he’s playing. If a baby is sick on you, you forgive her. If a baby pees on you, you laugh. If a baby draws a map and plans a robbery, she’s not evil, she’s advanced.’
‘Or they’ve had too much sugar!’ said Venk.
‘Nothing wrong with sugar!’ said Madame Cous Cous, rapping Venk’s knuckles with her stick and then gobbling down a Peruvian Polo.
‘But babies aren’t in charge,’ said Clover. ‘Parents are.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Madame Cous Cous. ‘If a baby is up all night, so is a grown-up. And, once a grown-up is worn down and weary, they’ll do anything for a quiet life.’
She whipped out a map and placed it on the counter.
‘Look, if a baby screams on one street,’ she said, trailing her finger across the map, ‘but doesn’t scream on another, which street do you think the parent will walk down? If a baby screams on the way to the coffee shop, but not on the way to the Play Centre, where do you think the parents will take them?’
‘The Play Centre . . .’ said Elliot, horrified.
‘If it wants to be, a baby is like a screaming satnav for parents,’ said the old lady, ‘cleverly guiding them wherever they want to be!’
Maybe it was his imagination, but at that moment Hamish was sure he could hear a slow, rising baby scream from outside.
‘I need to give you a history lesson,’ said Madame Cous Cous. ‘Fetch your father’s Holonow machine.’
Of course. The Holonow. Hamish knew exactly where his dad kept the Holonow and why she needed this amazing invention.
Madame Cous Cous tapped the end of her long wooden stick. As she did so, a small phone antenna shot out of the top. She had some calls to make.
‘Also!’ she said, remembering. ‘I need some DNA that I can look at through my microscope. A saliva sample, something like that.’
Venk nodded and immediately spat in his hand. He offered it to her.
‘Not your saliva, you nitwit!’ said Alice. ‘A baby’s!’
Venk blushed with embarrassment and quickly wiped his hand on his trousers. Why did he always do the wrong thing? He’d get things right someday. He knew he would.
‘Get me Control,’ said Madame Cous Cous into her stick, holding it to her ear as she wandered away.
Hardly anyone knew, but, at the touch of a button, the old lady could turn her sweet shop into Starkley International Science Laboratory. She could analyse the baby DNA to see if there was anything odd going on.
And Hamish knew precisely where he could get some.
Outside, the PDF were excited. Just ten minutes earlier, they’d felt like whatever was happening was beyond their control and getting on top of them. Now they felt like they were taking the reins again.
And word had obviously spread that the kids were up to something.
‘Oh my GOSH,’ said Hamish, opening the door and looking out in shock.
Outside the sweet shop were . . . babies.
Dozens of them!
Babies in prams on street corners. Babies in slings outside shops. Babies sitting in small, plastic, ride-on cars. Babies in baby seats staring from slowly moving cars. A baby in a baby basket glaring from a bike.
Each and every one of them was staring straight at the PDF while their parents seemed oblivious.
Had those parents been guided here? Suddenly the screams Hamish thought he’d heard made sense.
‘They walk among us!’ said Elliot, amazed but also terrified. ‘Well, sort of crawl.’
‘It’s like they’re waiting for something,’ said Hamish. ‘A signal.’ He was right. They reminded Hamish of a camping holiday he’d been on with his parents where he’d watched a sheepdog in a field, waiting for its master to whistle. It had stood there ready, alert and tense. These were some very tense babies.
‘Buster,’ whispered Hamish out of the side of his mouth. ‘Get to my house. My dad’s Holonow is in his study drawer.’
‘I could do it,’ suggested Venk, wondering why Hamish never sent him on lone missions, but Hamish didn’t hear him.
‘The rest of you,’ said Hamish, ‘start gathering more evidence of bizarre baby behaviour. I want to make sure this case is watertight if we’re going to call in help! Alice, you come with me.’
Hamish recognised one of the bigger babies. It was Runt Sneer’s little sister, Rhubarb. She curled her lip at them. She was carrying a dull metal rattle, and slowly and threateningly beating it into the palm of her hand.
A baby in a sling stole a pen from his dad’s pocket, then scratched a moustache onto the face of the baby in the Beautiful Baby Competition poster.
Another stared at the gang from a pram on the road opposite. It sucked on its dummy, then spat it out onto the ground without taking its eyes off them.
Hamish noticed that this baby was wearing a wristwatch and remembered his school project.
‘Fact one about babies,’ he whispered. ‘You never see one with a wristwatch.’
‘Why would a baby need a watch?’ asked Clover, as Elliot gasped loudly.
‘It only needs to know the time,’ said Hamish, working it out at the same time as his friend, ‘if it has plans.’
Bonny Bouncing
Baby
Hamish stood in the doorway, wiped the nervous sweat from his forehead and put on the special face he used for meeting other people’s parents.
He called it his angel face. Pretty much every kid can do one. It’s a special expression that seems to say, ‘Oh, look at me! I’m a little angel who can do no wrong! Hello, Mummy! Hello, Daddy! Please can I have five pounds for that chocolate ice-cream chipmunk?’
Yeah, I know ALL YOUR TRICKS, you crafty little dungtickler. I hope your parents aren’t reading this book to you or THEY’LL know the truth too!
Alice tried to copy Hamish’s angel face, but it was no good. Her face was just naturally grumpy a lot of the time and it was simply something she’d had to embrace. She always looked like she knew you were thinking of stealing her sandwiches and was just waiting for you to own up. Even the fiercest teachers at their school always felt like they’d done something wrong when in the presence of Alice Shepherd.
‘Okay,’ said Hamish, aware that time was of the essence. ‘This is where he lives. Remember, we’re just dropping by because we missed him.’
Hamish rang the doorbell as Alice shifted her backpack, and a moment later Mrs Quip opened the door. She had food all over her top and a Cheerio stuck to her face, but seemed compl
etely oblivious to both things.
‘Hamish!’ she said. ‘Have you come to babysit?!’
‘Oh, hi, Mrs Quip! No, we were just passing—’
‘YOU HAVE COME TO BABYSIT!’ yelled Mrs Quip, clearly delighted, even though that is most definitely not what Hamish had said.
But Mrs Quip had already grabbed her jacket and whipped it over her shoulders like a matador, sliding both arms in at once. It was very impressive.
‘I’ll be back in fifteen minutes!’ she shouted, delighted. ‘You’ll be fine – he’s very advanced!’
Then she ran down the garden path shouting, ‘FREEEEEDOOOOM!’
Alice cast Hamish a glance. He shrugged.
They walked into the hallway.
WHOA.
There was porridge all up the walls. Every picture frame had been knocked and bumped. There were clothes everywhere and baby bibs on everything.
It was like a bomb had gone off. A BABY BOMB!
‘Uh, Hamish,’ said Alice, standing in the doorway to the living room, looking puzzled. ‘How old is Boffo?’
‘Like, a few weeks?’ said Hamish, joining her.
‘Are you sure? He’s massive!’
Hamish and Alice stood in the doorway and stared at the scene before them.
On the other side of the room, in the doorway to the kitchen, an even-more-ginormous-than-normal Boffo Quip sat, wedged into a baby bouncer. He still looked like a baby . . . just a lot bigger. I don’t know how to describe different-sized babies, so let me put it this way. If the first time Hamish had seen Boffo it was like looking at a little chihuahua, now it was as if someone had let a Great Dane loose in the house.
He was also reading the newspaper and had a coffee on the go.