The Extincts Read online

  “You’ll never catch it,” I said. “Never!”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Diamond bit into her lollipop with a splintering crunch. “I already have. We threw some fried chicken into the pool house. The Wyrm went in after it. We’ve locked it in, safe and sound. I’ll deal with it in the morning. This evening I have other plans. I am going to pay a little visit to Wormestall Farm. I have the strangest feeling that I’m going to like it there. Something tells me that there’s some serious catching and bagging and stuffing to be done.”

  * * *

  There was no way out. As soon as Diamond had gone, I tried both doors—the one that led into the house and the big garage door—but neither of them budged. The skylight was too high to reach.

  “Oh well,” I said more cheerfully than I felt. “We’ll just have to play the Million Game.”

  Once I had explained the only rule—keep counting, at a steady pace, until something happens—Prudence started straightaway. I started, too, but I couldn’t concentrate; I kept losing count. I’d drawn the curtain again so we didn’t have to look at Saint George and the dragon, but it didn’t really work: the shadowy shapes behind the plastic sheet were somehow bigger and spookier than the real thing. I didn’t want to upset Prudence by wondering it out loud, but I couldn’t get the question out of my head: What, exactly, was inside Saint George’s suit of armor?

  It’s just a dummy, I told myself. Like Mum’s mermaid. Or rags and newspaper, like that guy Dad made for Bonfire Night when I was six.

  At that moment there was a sudden loud thud, just above my head. Something had crash-landed on the roof.

  Prudence gave a small, scared squeak. “What’s that?”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I think I know.”

  There was a scraping sound as the skylight opened. I held my breath, hoping I was right. Something dangled through the gap. First a foot. Then a leg. Then a boy.

  Lo dropped neatly through the skylight, landing on the horse’s neck.

  “Funny place to park a horse,” he said, patting it.

  “It’s Saint George,” I told him. “And that’s the dragon. Except Diamond’s after a better one. She’s got Mortifer!”

  “We have to rescue him!” said Prudence. “Quickly!”

  Lo shook his head. “He’s safer where he is. The town’s in an uproar over that little girl. There are search parties out looking for the Wyrm. They want it dead.”

  “So does Diamond!” I pointed out.

  “She won’t do anything tonight,” said Prudence. “She’s going to Wormestall, remember? She hasn’t given up on finding a proper dragon. We have to warn Mrs. Lind.”

  “If I stand on the horse,” said Lo, “and you stand on my shoulders, do you think you could get through that skylight?”

  We managed it, somehow. I couldn’t leave Sir Crispin behind, so once Prudence was safely on the garage roof, I handed him up to her. Then it was my turn. It was like practicing circus acrobatics. The ground seemed a long way away and I wobbled a lot, but I made it. Lo sprang up after me, in a sort of flying leap.

  “How long,” he asked Prudence, “until they realize you’re gone?”

  “Sometimes, when they shut me up, they forget about me for ages,” she said. “It’s usually Mump who comes, in the end. But George hit him over the head.”

  “I had to,” I said. “He was about to shoot Mortifer.”

  “Saint George saves the day!” Lo grinned. “Good man! I’ll go on ahead. You two follow. Stick together,” he warned. “And be careful. Do you see that?”

  From the Stuffing Room roof, nearly at the top of High Holly Hill, you could see all the way down into the town. In Market Square we could see a crowd of people beneath the town clock.

  “Don’t they look tiny!” I said. “What are they doing?”

  They seemed to be forming a line, like kids on a school trip. As we watched, the line began to move, past the library and the discount shop and the Chinese restaurant, and through the SupaSava parking lot. It was coming our way, growing longer as it came. And it seemed to be on fire.

  “They’ve lit torches.” Lo’s face was grim. “All the better for burning the Wyrm. And they’re armed. Spades, forks, carving knives—you name it, they’ve got it. They’re hunting blood. Can’t you hear them?”

  “Kill the Wyrm! Kill the Wyrm! Death to the Wyrm! Kill … Death … Kill…”

  We could all hear it now. I shivered.

  “You can smell it,” said Lo. “All the anger and fear and hate. That mob is much more dangerous than any dragon or basilisk. It must be centuries since the people of Squermington rose up like this. The world changes, but people don’t. It never ends well.”

  * * *

  Getting down from the roof wasn’t too bad. There was a helpful tree and some trash cans to shorten the drop. Prudence went down the wall like a spider, landing without a sound.

  “Shh!” She put her finger to her lips as I clattered down beside her, and then she flipped open the top of a wheeled garbage can. “Get in!”

  “Are you joking? What for? It stinks.”

  “Just get in! Diamond’s coming!”

  I stopped arguing and dived headfirst into the bin, curling myself into a ball as Prudence slammed the lid down on top of me and everything went dark. There was something soft at the bottom. Soft and very, very smelly. My ears and nose filled up with rotting stuff. I thought of the squishy things floating in Diamond’s jars of formaldehyde and my stomach heaved. I began to feel panicky; nobody wants to be shut up in a trash can with their own vomit. I would have kicked the lid open and wriggled out into the fresh air, but just then I heard Diamond’s voice, too close for comfort.

  “Such a fuss,” she was saying, “over a little bump on the head! Do stop groaning, Mr. Mump—it’s getting on my nerves. We’ll take the van. We’ll need it to bring the animals here. I’ve already put the sacks in the back. And plenty of rope and metal chains. I’m sure you can stop bleeding if you try. Knot this scarf around your forehead—like that. It will stop the blood from running into your eyes.” Through the mush in my ears, I heard her laugh. “You and Mr. Mintzer make a fine pair of pirates. Why are those people making so much noise?” she added. “They’re giving me a headache. What are they shouting about?”

  “They’re hunting the Wyrm,” explained Mintzer’s voice. “It stole a child. They’re going after it.”

  “Well, they can’t have it,” said Diamond. “It’s mine. They can thank me when I’ve stuffed it. Perhaps we’ll put it on display, in a nice glass case. There’ll be a plaque with my name on it: “‘Diamond Pye, Winner of the Golden Brain Spoon. Taxidermist of the Year, Stuffer Supreme, and Savior of Squermington.’ How about that?”

  “Very pretty,” approved Mintzer. “And no more than you deserve.”

  “I am the best,” Diamond agreed. “And soon people will know it.”

  Footsteps crunched on gravel. Doors slammed. It was a tight fit in my bin, but I managed to wriggle the right way up. I used the top of my head to open the lid a little bit. I could see Diamond in the driver’s seat of the van, licking her lollipop, with Mintzer beside her. I turned my head and met Prudence’s eyes, looking out of the bin next to mine.

  In the house, the telephone was ringing.

  “Nnnghh?” said Mump. “Nnnghh! Nnnghh nnnghh nnnghh.”

  “Hurry up, Mr. Mump!” ordered Diamond, her long nails drumming on the steering wheel. “Where are the keys? We haven’t got all day! We want to get to the farm before it’s too dark to see anything!”

  Prudence and I ducked down, lowering our lids, as Mump shambled into view. Dark blood was oozing out from under his bandana and he seemed to be in a bit of a daze. Then we heard the front door slam and he shambled back. The van’s engine growled to life. Gravel sprayed as the van jerked forward and through the gates.

  Prudence’s lid flipped open and she scrambled out of her bin.

  “Quick—we don’t have long. You reek of ca
t food,” she added.

  “So do you.” I clambered out of the rubbish, raining little bits of potato peel. There was a damp tea bag sticking to my cheek. “Where’s Lo?”

  We looked, but he wasn’t in any of the bins. He wasn’t anywhere.

  “He was there on the roof. Then he wasn’t.” Prudence frowned. “How did he get down?”

  “Lo can look after himself,” I told her. “Listen to the crowd!”

  “To the woods! To the woods! Death to the Wyrm. Kill! Kill! Kill the Wyrm!”

  The mob was pushing past the Pyes’ gate, taking up the whole road as it twisted up the hill toward Wyvern Chase Woods, chanting in rhythm to the beat of a drum.

  “Come on,” I said to Prudence. “Let’s join them. Nobody will notice us in among that bunch. It’s the safest place to be. We’ll stick with them for a bit, then head off the other way to my house. We’ll get to Wormestall faster on bikes. There’s one you can borrow. It’s a bit girly.…”

  “That’s okay,” said Prudence. “I’m a girl. Or did you forget?”

  To be honest, I had.

  FOURTEEN

  WE SQUEEZED OUR way right into the middle of the crowd, bodies pressing all around us, the heat from the torches stinging our cheeks. “Death to the Wyrm! Death to the Wyrm!” The drumbeat was like a heartbeat: it got under your skin and made your blood pulse. We even did a bit of shouting to make it look as if we belonged.

  There were people there I knew: Mum’s hairdresser; the kind lady at the dentist’s office who gave me stickers when I was little; Harry’s ex-boyfriend Danny, who delivers pizzas on a scooter; Mr. Mukherjee from The Star of India. They were nice people, people I liked, but it was as if they had all turned into zombies, their eyes and mouths black holes of hate. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if they got all the way through Wyvern Chase Woods and turned right—toward Wormestall Farm. They were hungry for a kill. If they found Grissel, nothing would stop them from finishing what Saint George had started more than a thousand years ago. They wouldn’t care that she wasn’t the Squermington Wyrm. They would chop her into pieces anyway. Something had to be done. But first, something had to be done about Diamond.

  I grabbed Prudence’s arm. There was Diamond!

  The blare of the van’s horn had gotten mixed up with all the other sounds, but now I saw the van itself, a little way ahead of us, trapped in the crush of marchers. Diamond could honk her horn all she liked; there was nothing she could do. As the van crawled along at walking pace, someone jumped up onto the hood.

  “Death to the Wyrm!” he shouted, louder than all the rest. I recognized him from the newspaper. It was Spike Hardman, little Lily Lamprey’s neighbor.

  “Kill the Wyrm!” the crowd roared back.

  “Now!” I hissed in Prudence’s ear, pulling her down a side street. We stayed pressed up against a wall until the tail end of the mob had passed us.

  “Come on,” I said. “This way.”

  Squermington was like a ghost town, the streets deserted. Everybody was off on the Great Wyrm Hunt. When we got to my house, we could see the TV through the front window. Frank was still on the sofa, watching something about penguins. Then the light snapped on and Mum moved forward to draw the curtains. I ducked out of sight.

  “In the back,” I whispered to Prudence. “The bikes are in the shed.”

  We lost quite a lot of time because we had to pump up the tires on the Princess PrettyPants bike. To make as little noise as possible, we carried both bikes across the garden and out the back gate. Nobody saw. Nobody heard.

  Now all we had to do was get to Wormestall before the Wyrm Hunters. And before Diamond Pye.

  * * *

  By the time we reached the farm, we were both red in the face and panting. We had cycled through the darkening streets as if all the Hounds of Hades were snapping at our back wheels. I would rather have had the Hounds of Hades than Diamond. Compared with her, they were probably quite cuddly.

  Big Nigel wasn’t in his field. I hoped that meant that Lo had come back and hidden him somewhere safe. There was just a rabbit, nibbling grass in the twilight. I stared at it. Its tail was tinged with green.

  “The stone rabbit! Look—it’s been depetrified!”

  At the sound of my voice, the rabbit sat up, ears quivering, then flicked its green tail and bounded away. We never saw where it went.

  We’d both heard the sound we had been dreading: the growl of an engine not far behind us.

  * * *

  In the kitchen, the now-familiar smell of boiled leaves and cat litter hung in the air. Mrs. Lind was sitting at the table, dipping a paintbrush into a steaming bowl of green sludge. In front of her, on a sheet of old newspaper, was a stone cat. It had one leg pointing up in the air and a surprised expression on its face.

  “Excellent news,” said Mrs. Lind. “The ointment’s working at last! Did you see the rabbit?”

  I nodded. “But don’t depetrify anything else. Not yet.” The cat was safer staying stone while Diamond was around. “Prudence’s stepmother’s on her way. She’ll be here any minute!”

  “Lo told me.” Mrs. Lind put down her paintbrush. “He took Big Nigel up to the barn, out of sight, and shut Tail-Biter up in one of the bedrooms. Then he disappeared. I don’t know where he’s gone.”

  “What about Dido?” asked Prudence. We all looked at the dodo, dozing in her dog bed. “We should hide her.”

  Mrs. Lind shook her head. “She won’t budge. One of those eggs is pipping. Whatever’s inside is tapping on the shell, getting ready to hatch. Dido won’t leave it.”

  “There isn’t time, anyway,” I said. “Listen.”

  Diamond had arrived.

  * * *

  She didn’t bother with the doorbell. She just walked right in, Mump and Mintzer at her heels. When she saw Prudence and me, she frowned. Then she saw Dido.

  “Fancy that!” she said, her mouth curling into a crocodile smile. “A real live dodo!”

  “I’d let her be, if I were you,” warned Mrs. Lind, as Dido hissed and clicked her beak. “She can be snappy.”

  “Not when she’s stuffed,” promised Diamond.

  “You can’t stuff Dido,” Mrs. Lind said firmly. “She is the last of her kind.”

  “All the more reason to stuff her,” said Diamond. “Then she’ll last forever. I’ll also have that.” She pointed at Mingus, curled up on Mrs. Lind’s hat. “And what’s this?” Diving under the table, she fished the Ping Feng piglet out of its box. “A living freak,” she breathed, unwrapping it from its blanket and holding it up in the air. The piglet squealed and wriggled. “Two heads and not a stitch, not a seam anywhere: perfect! Nobody will believe it; they will think it is my own creation. I shall win the Golden Brain Spoon again and again and again!”

  “No!” cried Prudence. “Leave it alone!”

  Diamond just laughed. “Sorry!” she said. “Finders, stuffers! Mr. Mump! Where’s the sack?”

  “Unnghh?” said Mump. He was bending over the stove, sniffing the Depetrifaction Ointment. “Mmmnghh,” he said. “Jam.” He dipped a finger into the green slime and popped it in his mouth. “Jam.”

  “Oh dear,” said Mrs. Lind. “You probably didn’t want to do that.”

  “We’re not here to eat jam, Mr. Mump!” snapped Diamond. “Mr. Mintzer! Bag that pig thing!”

  “Right away, Mrs. Pye.” Mintzer took the squirming piglet by the scruff of one of its necks and dropped it into a sack.

  “And that dodo!” ordered Diamond. “Keep an eye on the old lady and those pesky brats. I’m going to have a look around. They’re hiding something more from us, I’m sure of it.”

  Her silver heels click-clacked on the flagstones, out of the kitchen and across the hall to the door.

  Mintzer was grinning at Dido.

  “Here, pretty birdie,” he crooned, opening up another sack. “Come and be stuffed.”

  Maybe it was the sack she didn’t like the look of. Maybe it was Mintzer’s lila
c-spotted bow tie. Maybe she just didn’t like being called birdie. Anyway, before Mintzer could throw himself on her, Dido threw herself at him. There was a flurry of feathers and squawking and not-very-nice language, then Mintzer’s foot lashed out. Dido flew through the air, in the way that dodos shouldn’t, landing with a flump in the sink. Mrs. Lind scooped her up, tucking her under one arm.

  “That’s no way to treat a very rare bird,” she told Mintzer fiercely.

  “The bird started it,” he sneered. “Hand it over, old woman.”

  I felt a rush of anger fizz through me, like an electric current. I planted myself between Mintzer and Mrs. Lind.

  “Leave her alone!”

  Mintzer breathed on his hook, polishing it with his hanky. “Mr. Mump!” he called. “Get rid of this irritating brat! I don’t care what you do with it.”

  “NNNNNGGGGHHHH!” said Mump.

  We all turned and looked at him in surprise. He had suddenly folded up, clutching his stomach.

  “Nnghh!” he groaned again. “Nnnghh! Bad jam! Nnnghh! Bathroom!”

  “Upstairs,” I told him. “Turn right. Second left.”

  Still holding his stomach, Mump staggered out of the kitchen. We could hear his footsteps reach the top of the stairs and stumble down the corridor. Then we heard the door slam as he shut himself in the bathroom.

  I dodged as Mintzer sliced the air with his hook.

  “Give me the bird,” he snarled. “Or I’ll poke your eyeballs out!”

  At that moment the slashing hook caught Mrs. Lind’s hat, knocking the brim. Several walnuts and a kiwifruit landed on the floor and went rolling into corners. Mingus, who had been comfortably asleep, woke up and found someone had been messing with his fruit.

  Chittering with rage, he made a leap for the top of the dresser, where he deployed his secret weapon. He pointed his bottom at Mintzer and PSSSSSHT! We were all choking and spluttering in a cloud of something that made Depetrifaction Ointment smell like a bunch of roses.