Benworden (11 page)

Sean quickly grabbed hold of Bungles by the wrist with one hand and sprayed his finger with the bottle he had in the other. He then closed the lid on Bungles' box and the foul odour dispersed as quickly as it had arrived. The air was filled with
the smell of citrus.

Gerry and the twins had stopped retching and Gerry said, “To be honest, I'm really not sure what I'd prefer. An explosive may have been a better option than that!”

The twins were in total agreement.

Bungles stuck the finger he had pulled from the slime to his nose and said, “Cool. Lemon.” And laughter broke out around the room for a second time.

Roo said to Sean, “What are you going to do with this stuff, mate?”

Sean replied, “I'm glad you asked.”

He then looked over at Brian and said, “You're up, mate.”

Brian reached into his bag again and pulled out a plastic target and stuck it to the wall. He went back to the bag and pulled out a paintball gun and loaded it with what seemed to be paintballs. Brian aimed the gun at the target and looked back over his shoulder and said to Sean, “Ready, mate.”

Sean replied, “Thanks Brian.” He started explaining his creation. “The paintball that Brian is about to fire isn't your normal run-of-the-mill paintball at all. It's filled with the substance that you have in the containers in front of you, but there's one difference: we've made these ones odourless for your convenience.”

There were quite a few sighs of relief at that statement, especially from the twins who were still feeling a little nauseated by the mere thought of the smell that had filled the air earlier. Sean paused for a second as if to capture the essence of that moment for posterity and then said, “Ok, Brian,” and Brian immediately opened fire on the target. On impact the
paintballs left an imprint that looked exactly like bird poo.

Sean then said, “As you can see from this example the substance is indistinguishable from bird droppings. This gun is modified to shoot with very little sound from a distance of one thousand feet with pin-point accuracy which leaves the shooter undetectable.”

With pride Sean held the paintball up to us, rested between his thumb and index finger, and said, “The best thing about this little beauty is that once you're hit with it, it takes two days for the odour to disappear, unless of course you have a neutraliser like the liquid that's contained in those spray bottles on the table.”

And with a touch of sarcasm and a huge grin on his face he said, “Oh, yes. I forgot to mention that I'm the inventor of the neutraliser and the bottles in this room are the only ones of their kind. So it seems that if the bullies were to accidently get some of this bird poo on them, then they'd have to wait two days before anyone would want to go near them. That'd be a shame, wouldn't it?”

The room buzzed with laughter and gossip about how the gun could be used in the future. We could all visualise Wally and his gang getting a dose of the paintballs and trying to get the smell off their skin, hair and clothes.

We had just begun to congratulate the boys on their efforts when Sean said, “Thanks, but that was just the fun part for me. What I have in my pocket is what I think will stop the bullying once and for all. Brian came up with the idea and Harry, Bonnie and I put the concept together.”

Sean pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and asked us to accompany him to the monitor room. He asked Harry to take
over and Harry took the pen and removed the base of it and pulled a small adaptor cord from his pocket. He put the smaller plug into the end of the pen and the larger plug at the other end into the computer. We were absolutely amazed when we saw the information on the pen being relayed to our big screen. It was a replay of the events that had taken place in the meeting over the past hour. Everyone laughed when they saw me up there with the beads of sweat on my forehead and the fear in my eyes when I was about to open the box for the first time. They stopped laughing though when they saw themselves diving under the table when Bungles put his finger in the slime. The twins and Gerry watched themselves retching when he removed it again.

What amazed me more than anything was the versatility of the camera and how it focused on different images around the room. I was so stunned by its technology that I had trouble stringing a sentence together and I said, “How the? What the? Where...?”

Harry looked at me like a genius would a simpleton and said, “Elementary, dear Dylan, elementary. This little thing is a 24 megapixel video recorder with an automatic inbuilt zoom and microphone and has adaptors for any DVD, iPod or digital TV you can find.”

The meeting had been very productive and when it eventually came to an end we had more than enough plausible ideas with which to hang Wally and his crew out to dry. All that remained was for Gerry and me to develop a plan on the best way to put those ideas into action.

13

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T
he big day for action arrived and Peter “Tap Out” Lew was walking up the path towards the school when he spotted Bungles and Roo.

As he drew closer to them he could hear Roo saying to Bungles, “Go on, mate, take your best shot. Let's see what you've got.”

Bungles said, “All right then, here goes.”

Bungles pretended to hit Roo as hard as he could in the midriff but Roo stood there without flinching and said, “I told you I've been working on my abs. What do you think?”

“Incredible!” replied Bungles, an astonished look on his face.

Peter was keen to get a piece of the action and walked up to Roo with a snarly look on his face and said, “Let me have a go, fool.”

Roo replied in a quivering voice, “No way! You're going to hurt me.”

Peter put a patronising grin on his face and said, “Hey, come on. I won't hit you that hard, and it's only fair I get a shot too.”

Roo was looking very sheepish at this stage and replied, “Do you promise you won't hurt me?”

Peter shrugged his shoulders, showed Roo the palms of his hands and said, “Of course not, mate. I wouldn't do that to
you. Now tighten up those abs of yours and you won't feel a thing.”

Roo frowned and replied, “Are you sure this won't hurt?”

Peter was now growing impatient and snapped back, “Just do it!”

Roo stood rigidly upright with his eyes shut. Peter gave out one of his stupid piercing screams and then let rip with the hardest punch he could. His fist thundered into Roo's gut and made a sickening thud.

“Ah! Oh! Ah!” Peter cried as he dropped to his knees while grasping his fist with his other hand.

Roo stood there looking down at Peter and said, “You're right, mate. I didn't feel a thing. Thanks for being gentle with me.” Roo walked off with his arm straddling Bungles' shoulder and said, “Well, I guess my abs are better than I thought they were.”

Bungles smiled at his good mate and replied, “Very impressed, old mate, very impressed indeed.”

They quickly rounded the corner of the school building and Roo lifted his shirt revealing a solid metal plate which was designed to look like a midriff. He removed it and placed it in his bag and then looked at Bungles with a grin.

“Well, that worked a treat. Did you get all the action?”

Bungles pulled the pen out of his top pocket and waved it gently in the air.

“Yes mate, it's all here.”

Bungles was so excited he forgot to watch where he was going and almost went head over heels after getting one of his
feet caught behind the other one. Roo grabbed him by the arm before he completely went over and said, “Good, mate, but maybe you might consider me taking the camera for now.”

“No worries,” replied Bungles as he handed it over.

Peter went to the First Aid room and was later sent for x-rays where they found he had a fracture in one of his knuckles. He was way too embarrassed to tell anyone the truth about how it happened and he didn't return to school for a few days.

The lunch bell rang and it was Brian and Sean's turn to spring into action. The boys headed straight to the shelter shed where two paint guns and camouflage sheets were hidden on the roof. Brian cupped his hands and boosted Sean up to grab them and then they headed off toward the football ground. At the same time Carla and Bonnie had collected four boxes filled with pigeons that they had rented for $50 off one of the other students and had stashed under a bush on the opposite of the oval to Brian and Sean.

We all knew Wally and his boys (except for one) would be at the ground having a smoke so it was the perfect place for Brian and Sean to set their trap. The boys crawled like combat troops to their positions on high ground where they couldn't be seen lying under the cover of their camouflage sheets.

Brian whispered to Sean, “Are you ready, mate?”

Sean leant forward with his eye focused down the barrel of the gun and replied, “Ready as I'll ever be.”

Brian clumsily reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out his mobile phone and then texted a message to Carla which simply said, “Go.”

He then immediately lay back down to take aim.

Within seconds Carla and Bonnie had set the pigeons on their way across the ground and toward the gang. As they flew directly over Wally and his mates, the boys opened fire with the paint guns and in a very short time each of the bullies had been hit by a paintball carrying its putrid substance.

Wally and his crew had no idea it was anything but the pigeons that had bombarded them. They were sent home from school that day due to the stench coming from their hair and clothing which was making quite a few of the other students physically ill.

We thought the gang may have learnt a lesson from all of this but they came back to school even worse than before. Soon some of the younger students were again handing over their lunch money or walking around holding back the tears due to the thumping they had taken at the hands of these thugs. Enough was enough. The final stage of our plan needed to be put into action.

During one recess, Carla approached the gang armed with the camera pen inside her top blazer pocket and gave Wally one of those smiles that a young man can't resist. She said, “Hi guys. How are you going?”

Wally was keen on any girl who gave him a smile or for that matter even talked to him, so he replied, “Hello gorgeous. I'm good. How are you doing?”

He panned his eyes over his crew and gave them a smile and winked. They all grinned back in a sleazy way and began saying things like: “Go Scar,” “Smooth”, and “You're the man.”

With the boys urging him on, Wally puffed out his chest like a rooster in a henhouse and said, “So what's up, sweet lips?”

Carla hung her head a little and then brought her eyes up to
meet his. She had a sad expression on her face when she said, “I just needed to talk to someone and you look like the type of guy that would understand what someone like me is going through.”

At this point you could almost see his brain ticking over by his expression. Not only was a girl talking to him but she was vulnerable as well. Wally grinned and nudged Andrew Humphries a couple of times as if to say: “I've got this one in the bag.” He put on a face that was supposed to show concern, but it looked more like a goldfish blowing bubbles, and he replied in a voice that resembled someone talking to a baby. “Is someone giving you a hard time? Do you want us to take care of it?”

Even though he was creeping her out Carla gave him another starry-eyed look and said, “No. It's ok. It's just Mr Gowdy. He's picking on me a lot lately and although you guys seem to be able to deal with almost every situation this one is way out of your league.”

The trap had been set for the rat to put his head in it and Carla had the perfect bait – Wally's pride.

All of a sudden the smirk left his face and he said, “Whoah! Hold up there. What do you mean out of our league?”

His head flew from one side to the other to eyeball the other guys and then back to Carla. She felt his steely eyes piercing hers and a chill ran down her spine. Carla could now understand the fear and intimidation that Sean and Brian felt during their ordeal and her fear soon turned to anger. Brian had become like a younger brother to her.

Carla knew she had to pull her emotions into line for the club's plan to work and she just listened when Wally said, “Out
of our league! Do you think Gowdy is out of our league boys? Fists, what do you think?”

Andrew replied, “No way. Not that old fart!”

Wally looked at Paul. “What about you, Cutter? What do you think?”

Paul shook his head and said, “No way man. He's a stupid idiot!”

Wally was grinning again and he said to Chris, “What do you think, Pistols? Do we have a problem?”

Chris was standing next to Peter and they were both chuckling. Chris replied, “I had a pet pig that was smarter and cleaner than Gowdy. What do you reckon, Tap Out?”