The Stinky Street Stories: 2 Stinky Page 5

  ‘Cocktail franks are great,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think they’re as good as treasure.’

  ‘True, true,’ said Old McStinky. ‘Not like Eilrahc Woddehc’s treasure.’

  ‘Who’s Eilrahc Woddehc?’ asked Nerf.

  ‘He’s Charlie Cheddow backwards,’ I explained.

  ‘He owns the next farm over,’ said Old McStinky. ‘And on the other side of his farm there’s a gully. And in the gully is a cave. And in the cave there is . . . ’

  ‘TREASURE?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Great-Uncle McStinky. ‘At least, that’s what they say—I’ve never seen it myself. Eilrahc Woddehc doesn’t let anyone near his treasure cave.’

  I turned to Fren. I mean Nerf. ‘Nerf,’ I said, ‘I’ve had a brilliant idea.’

  ‘Really?’ said Nerf.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We are going to go exploring.’

  ‘For cocktail franks?’ said Nerf.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘For something even better than cocktail franks.’

  ‘What could possibly be better than cocktail franks?’ asked Nerf.

  ‘TREASURE!’ I said.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Nerf. ‘That is better than cocktail franks.’

  ‘What about your lunch?’ asked Great-Uncle McStinky.

  ‘We’ll take it with us,’ I said.

  I fetched my backpack and filled it with some of everything from the platter.

  ‘Bring back some treasure for me too,’ called Old McStinky as Nerf and I hurried out the door.

  As we walked under the Lost Sock Memorial, I noticed that Nerf had a funny look on his face.

  ‘What’s wrong, Nerf?’ I asked. ‘Do you need to be cheered up with a great big pickle?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Nerf. ‘It’s just—you smell really whiffy. Did you . . . ?’

  ‘No!’ I said. But now he mentioned it, there was a terrible smell. I looked around but I couldn’t see what could be causing it. Then I realised. ‘It’s the stinky cheese in my backpack.’

  ‘Why did you bring it?’ Nerf asked. ‘You’re not going to eat it, are you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I thought it might come in handy. It’s important to be prepared when you’re exploring.’

  We walked past the ducks, past Porkules the Wonder Pig and past the yard with the chickens dressed as penguins.

  We continued on past the cows and the horse.

  We even walked straight past the shiny red tractor without stopping to play on it. That’s how determined we were to find the treasure cave.

  On the other side of the tractor was a fence, and on the other side of the fence was Charlie Cheddow’s farm.

  ‘We need to cross this big field,’ I told Nerf, and I started to climb the fence.

  I’d just got one leg over when a flock of geese ran towards us, hissing and honking.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ I said, gulping. ‘Geese.’

  ‘Do you think they’re mad at us because we smell like pickles?’ Nerf asked.

  ‘No, I think geese are just naturally vicious and mean,’ I said as the geese snapped their beaks at us. ‘I’ve even heard of people using geese instead of guard dogs.’

  Suddenly it struck me. ‘That’s it!’

  ‘What?’ said Nerf.

  ‘Proof that we’re getting closer to the treasure cave. Charlie Cheddow is using the geese as guard dogs to scare people away.’

  ‘Yeah!’ said Nerf. ‘I bet you’re right.’

  ‘That’s why everyone calls me Brain,’ I said.

  ‘Who calls you—’

  ‘Duck!’ I said.

  Nerf ducked.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I meant goose.’

  I kicked a foot to ward off a particularly large and aggressive goose.

  ‘Here’s the problem, Nerf,’ I said. ‘Somehow, we have to get past these angry geese. We need to create a distraction.’

  Then I had a massive brainwave. ‘I know! I’ll use the stinky cheese!’

  I reached into my backpack for the stinky cheese and threw it as far as I could.

  Honking and flapping, the geese all took off after it.

  ‘Quick, Nerf,’ I said. ‘Now’s our chance.’

  We jumped over the fence.

  ‘Are geese battery-operated?’ Nerf asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘There are all these rusty old batteries around leaking toxic green stuff,’ said Nerf, pointing at the ground.

  ‘Ew,’ I said, wrinkling my nose as the smell hit me. ‘Those aren’t batteries.’

  ‘Gross!’ said Nerf. ‘These geese are disgusting! And look—it’s everywhere! We’ll never get across the field without stepping in it. We’ll have to turn back.’

  ‘But, Nerf,’ I said. ‘The TREASURE.’

  Nerf screwed up his nose. ‘I hope it’s worth it.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Tiptoe through the goose poo.’

  ‘Through the goose poo?’

  ‘Through the goose poo!’

  ‘Tiptoe through the goose poo?’

  ‘Through the goose poo with me!’

  ‘All right,’ said Nerf doubtfully as we set off across the field.

  Then he said, ‘Erk!’

  And, ‘Argh!’

  And, ‘Ack!’

  And, ‘Bleuh!’

  ‘It’s just so green and pongy!’ he complained.

  ‘Speaking of pongy,’ I said, ‘it looks as if geese don’t like stinky cheese. We’d better tiptoe faster!’

  The geese had left the cheese behind and were running towards us—and they looked meaner and angrier than ever.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Nerf. ‘Is there something else in the bag to distract them?’

  I reached behind me and rummaged in the backpack. ‘The eggs!’

  I lobbed the eggs over my shoulder and the geese immediately ran to them.

  ‘Phew!’ said Nerf. ‘It worked.’

  I glanced around to see the geese fussing around the eggs. ‘They must think they’re goose eggs,’ I said.

  Nerf laughed. ‘Won’t they be surprised when they hatch penguins!’

  ‘They weren’t really penguins, Nerf,’ I reminded him. ‘They were chickens dressed up as penguins.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ said Nerf. ‘Won’t they be surprised when they hatch chickens!’

  ‘The eggs are hard-boiled, Nerf.’

  We reached the fence at the edge of the field and climbed over.

  ‘We made it!’ I said.

  We were facing a screen of thick scrub.

  ‘This must be the gully Great-Uncle McStinky was talking about,’ I said to Nerf.

  ‘How are we going to find our way through it?’ he asked.

  ‘There!’ I said, pointing. I had spotted a narrow path leading into the bush. ‘I reckon Charlie Cheddow uses this path to get to his treasure cave.’

  We set off along the path. As it wound downhill into the bottom of the gully, the ground under our feet grew damp. Damp and . . .

  ‘Do you smell something?’ Nerf asked.

  ‘There’s no more cheese,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Nerf. ‘It’s different. More . . . swampy.’

  I wrinkled my nose. ‘You’re right. Swampy and kind of gassy. And the smell is getting stronger.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Nerf asked.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ I replied. ‘It was my feet. They said squelch.’

  I looked down: my feet were squelching through oozy, stinky, boggy mud.

  ‘It’s an oozy, stinky, boggy, smelly swamp!’ shrieked Nerf. ‘And we’re standing in it! Turn around, Brian—let’s go back!’

  ‘No, Nerf!’ I said. ‘Don’t you see? Charlie Cheddow probably put this oozy, stinky, boggy, smelly swamp here to stop people reaching the treasure cave. We have to cross it.’

  Nerf’s voice was weak. ‘I can’t make it,’ he gasped. ‘I can’t cross the swamp. The fumes are making me dizzy. You’ll have to go on
alone.’

  My head was starting to swim too, but I was still determined. ‘Don’t give up now, Nerf. We’ve come so far. Maybe we’re just hungry and that’s what’s making us dizzy.’

  I reached into my backpack, pulled out the cocktail franks and handed a couple to Nerf.

  Then, as I was moving a frank towards my mouth, I had another massive brainwave.

  ‘Nerf—put the cocktail franks up your nose!’

  We both shoved cocktail franks in our nostrils. Almost immediately my head cleared.

  ‘That was close,’ I said.

  ‘But we can’t walk through that,’ said Nerf, pointing at the oozy, stinky, boggy, smelly mud.

  And then I had another massive brainwave. (Which must have been some kind of record.) Reaching into my backpack, I pulled out a rock-like bread roll. ‘We can use these bread rolls as stepping stones!’ I said.

  ‘That’s brilliant!’ said Nerf.

  ‘It’s why I’m called Brain,’ I said.

  ‘Who calls you—’

  I threw the first bread roll into the swamp. ‘Follow me!’

  I leapt onto the bread roll, then threw another one ahead of me and jumped onto that.

  It took almost all the bread rolls in my backpack, but we made it across the swamp.

  When it was completely dry underfoot I said to Nerf, ‘I think we can take the cocktail franks out of our noses now.’

  ‘Mmmphmmphh,’ said Nerf.

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked.

  ‘Mmmphmmphh.’

  ‘Pardon?’ I said.

  ‘Sorry, I was just eating the franks.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said, munching on my own. Yum!

  But as I breathed in through my frank-free nostrils, I wondered if we’d been too hasty. ‘Hey! What’s that smell?’

  ‘Oh no—not another stinky trap!’ said Nerf.

  ‘I hope not.’ I peered into the bush ahead . . . and then I saw it. ‘Nerf, over there—is that a door leading into a rock?’

  Nerf squinted in the direction I was pointing. ‘It is!’ he said. ‘You’ve found the treasure cave, Brian.’

  We hurried towards it, pushing through the thick prickly branches—but even though we had left the swamp behind, the smell was getting worse. And we had no more cocktail franks!

  ‘It’s really whiffy,’ moaned Nerf. ‘It’s making me feel faint.’

  ‘It must be another trick to stop us reaching the treasure,’ I choked out, as we reached the wooden door blocking the entrance to the cave. ‘Try to hold your breath. You have to be strong, Nerf. I need your help.’

  Together we pushed on the door and it slowly creaked open.

  As the sun streamed in I saw the walls of the cave were lined with shelves. And the shelves were stacked with huge discs of gold.

  TREASURE!

  But such SUPER-STINKY treasure!

  We stumbled towards the golden discs, almost overpowered by the eye-watering stink.

  ‘You were . . . right, Brian,’ Nerf wheezed. ‘All that . . . stink . . . did lead to . . . the treasure.’

  ‘That’s why they call me—’ But I was too weak to finish the sentence. It took all the strength I had left to lift one of the golden discs. Next to me, Nerf was staggering under the weight of another.

  We carried them back towards the mouth of the cave, but once we had them out in the bright sunlight, the discs began to change. They were getting softer . . . squishier . . . What was wrong with them?!

  And then I realised: they were melting in the sun!

  Nerf and I dropped to our knees as a thick and stinky liquid dripped from our arms and pooled around us.

  The super-stinky treasure was super-stinky cheese. And we were sitting in a melted puddle of it.

  For a while we just sat there in silence. I found myself getting used to the stink.

  ‘I’m feeling kind of hungry,’ said Nerf. ‘Do we have any of our picnic left?’

  I opened my backpack and rummaged inside. ‘Just one bread roll. Oh, and a pickle. I only brought one because you said you couldn’t face another pickle. But I’m happy to share.’

  ‘Is there a day to celebrate cheese?’ Nerf asked as I bit the pickle in two and tore the bread roll in half.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ I said, handing him his share of the picnic.

  ‘Well, we’re super-stinky, so we’ll be ready for it,’ said Nerf. He dipped a piece of bread into the cheese. ‘You know, this cheese might be whiffy, but it’s really quite tasty. And this pickle is making me feel quite cheerful.’

  That’s what I love about Nerf: he always looks on the bright side.

  And I can always count on him when I’m in

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to the sweet-smelling people of Pan Macmillan Australia – especially Claire Craig, Alex Lloyd, Sally Devenish and Lucy Inglis – and to Evi O, Tegan Morrison and Jane Novak. Most of all, I’m grateful for the abominably odorous artistry of Jules Faber – he brings the stink!

  Also by Alex Ratt and Jules Faber

  First published 2017 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000

  Copyright © Alex Ratt 2017

  Illustrations Copyright © Jules Faber 2017

  The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available

  from the National Library of Australia

  http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  EPUB format: 9781760555153

  Design and typesetting by EviO

  The characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Love talking about books?

  Find Pan Macmillan Australia online to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.