The Great Brain Robbery (15 page)

BOOK: The Great Brain Robbery
4.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

You’d probably expect a children’s home to be full of fun things for kids: brightly-coloured paintings, toy chests, playrooms. But there was no such joy at
Marvella’s
Elves
. Everything about the place was hard and grey. The sombre walls and long, bleak corridors reminded Frankie of a prison, not a home. Even the air seemed leaded with gloom. He saw that the
walls were dotted with stern-looking notices:
‘DO NOT RUN’, ‘DO NOT TALK’, ‘DO NOT BE LATE
’. He gulped: even Mrs Pinkerton wasn’t
that
strict. Neet pointed to a map of the building that was pinned to the wall nearby. Frankie studied the plans. Deep down in the basement, a couple of levels underground, was a series of long thin
rooms marked
‘DORMITORIES’.
Neet heaved a trembling sigh. ‘I think that’s where we’ll find him.’

As they crept silently down the stairs, Frankie felt as if a cold hand had gripped his heart and was squeezing it tighter and tighter. This place, he thought, had not heard a single laugh, not a
single giggle or titter for a very long time. He found it hard to believe that there were actually children living within those walls. In fact, Frankie hardly expected to find anyone at all in
those stern, silent surroundings. It was like one of those planets that scientists talk about on the telly – planets that are ‘hostile to life’. This whole place felt like it was
‘hostile to life’ and it made Frankie’s skin creep.

‘Shhh!’ Neet whispered suddenly as they approached the bottom of the stairs. There was a door ahead of them with a small sign outside:
‘WARDEN’
. Frankie crept
closer and carefully peeked through the window. He saw an immensely round lady in a grey smock wedged into an armchair and snoring like a cement mixer. They were safe – for now. The two
friends slipped quickly past in their silent sneakers and stole down the corridor towards the dormitories.

The dormitories were long and cold with rows of bunks stacked with sleeping children. Frankie and Neet crept quickly through them, taking care not to make a sound. But they needn’t have
worried – nothing could have woken those sleepers. Indeed, Frankie had never seen anyone sleep like those children slept. There was no snoring or tossing and turning. The pale faces that
poked above the thin grey blankets were as motionless as waxworks and their limbs were so tired, so heavy, it was as if their bodies had been nailed to the beds.

‘Wait,’ whispered Neet, stopping dead in her tracks. She pointed to a small, huddled shape on a lower bunk. A tuft of ginger hair sprouted above the blanket. Frankie’s heart
turned a somersault of joy.

‘Wes!’ Neet whispered, running to the bedside and shaking the sleeping boy’s shoulder. ‘We’re here, wake up!’

The bundle jolted in surprise and a pale hand scrabbled around on the floor for a pair of glasses. The glasses were pushed on to a freckly nose and a pair of magnified brown eyes blinked
anxiously. It was Wes.

As soon as Wes recognised them his face broke into an enormous smile.

‘You made it!’ he whispered. ‘I knew you would!’

The friends hugged silently. Frankie could feel that Wes was very thin around the ribs.

‘So you solved my riddle!’ Wes whispered.

‘We did,’ smiled Frankie, noticing the dark circles around his friend’s eyes, ‘but it wasn’t exactly easy to crack! Make it a bit easier next time, will
you?’

‘Yeah,’ smiled Neet, nudging him, ‘we don’t all have your brains, you know!’

‘Sorry,’ Wes whispered. ‘But the warden checks all our letters to make sure we don’t say anything about what goes on here.’ Frankie thought he felt the room
temperature drop.

‘What does go on here?’ he asked. The colour drained from Wesley’s cheeks.

‘It’s Dr Gore,’ he whispered, ‘he’s back.’

‘We know,’ Neet nodded.

‘I’ll show you,’ said Wes, ‘then we need to put a stop to it all.’

Neet and Frankie followed Wes through the maze-like corridors of the building. Wes scurried ahead, glancing about him like a nervous squirrel.

‘You have to remember,’ he whispered, ‘that no one cares about the kids here. Most of us don’t have parents. No one knows where we are, and no one misses us.’ Wes
led them across a steel walkway to a separate part of the building. Frankie strained his ears. He could hear the distant whirring and clanking of heavy machinery. It grew louder and louder, like
the sound of an approaching train.

‘Keep quiet and stay low,’ said Wes. ‘You mustn’t be seen.’

‘Isn’t everyone in bed?’ said Frankie. Wes gave a small, grim smile.

‘No,’ he replied, shaking his head, ‘it never stops.’

They reached a large metal door plastered with scary-looking warning signs. Frankie and Neet got down on their hands and knees as Wes pushed the door open a crack.

What Frankie then saw chilled him to the centre of his bones.

 

As soon as the door opened, Frankie’s eardrums were pounded by a deafening hammering and screeching. The children squeezed through the gap and crawled out on to a narrow
steel ledge with an iron-mesh floor that cut into their knees and the palms of their hands. Frankie took off his moonglasses and peered down through the railings. They were high up over an enormous
hangar-like space that was large enough for an aeroplane to park in. It was packed to the rafters with a giant tangle of machinery. Long conveyor belts whizzed up, down and around, transporting
hundreds of multicoloured packages. Giant brass pipes and drums puffed and belched out clouds of steam. Cranes as tall as giraffes hoisted heavy boxes into large steel containers. And amongst all
this unstoppable machine-power, hundreds of small, pink fingers were working away, sealing packaging, packing boxes and pulling levers.

‘It’s a factory!’ whispered Neet. ‘A toy factory!’

‘Right,’ said Wes. ‘This is where Marvella’s toys are made.’

Marvella’s toy factory was nothing like the magical workshops you see on the front of Christmas cards. There was no jolly Santa and no merry little helpers. Instead, Marvella’s
factory was staffed by row upon row of exhausted-looking children, many younger than Frankie himself. The children’s hands and arms moved so precisely and mechanically you could almost
believe that they were part of the machines. In fact, they seemed as lifeless as the animatronic elves Frankie had seen in the grotto. As the machines whirred and throbbed, the children moved in
synch, staring straight ahead of them with eyes like blown lightbulbs. Frankie shrank back in alarm. The lanes between the children’s workbenches were patrolled by wardens with swivelling
eyes, each of whom carried a mean-looking rod that would snap down on tired little fingers the moment they paused for rest.

‘Good grief,’ Frankie whispered, lost for words.

Frankie’s gaze travelled to the edge of the factory. All along the walls were what looked like enormous spinning hamster wheels. At first Frankie couldn’t work out what he was
seeing. Or maybe he just couldn’t believe it. Each wheel was powered by a child running round and round as fast as they could go, sweat pouring down their foreheads.

‘What on earth are those?’ whispered Frankie.

‘Those are the Wheels,’ Wes replied. ‘They power the machinery. Dr Gore invented them.’

‘No kidding,’ said Neet, grimly remembering Dr Gore’s days as a classroom pet. ‘I guess it is some kind of revenge.’

Frankie shook his head in dismay. The whole scene reminded him of some books he had read about the lives of children many, many years ago, long before Alphonsine was born. Back in those days
children used to be sent down mines and would spend all day in the dark, on their hands and knees, scratching out lumps of coal. Or they would be made to work in factories like this one, stitching,
stamping or weaving until the joints in their fingers ached and their brains turned to slop. Frankie didn’t think that such a thing could be allowed to happen any more. But Dr Gore was
capable of anything.

Neet saw that one production line was packaging Mechanimal schoolbags like the one she had picked out for Frankie.

‘Look!’ she whispered. ‘Mechanimal schoolbags! That’s where we found your note, Wes.’ Wes nodded.

‘I must have sent hundreds of them,’ he said. ‘We’ve all been trying to get messages to the outside, but nobody responded until now. I guess everyone was too excited by
their new toys to notice. It’s so lucky you recognised my writing, Neet, because . . . because if you hadn’t . . .’ Wesley’s voice tailed off and his eyes darkened
momentarily as if a shadow had passed behind them,

‘OK, Wes,’ said Frankie. ‘We need to get you out of here.’ Wes looked worried.

‘I can’t go by myself,’ he whispered anxiously. ‘What about everybody else? We can’t leave them here!’

‘We’ll come back for them, Wes, don’t you worry,’ said Neet, putting her arm around his thin shoulders. ‘But we can only take one person with us tonight.
There’s not enough room for more.’

Frankie nodded in agreement. ‘And you’re the only one who can stop Dr Gore.’

As they clambered back on to the roof, Frankie and Neet told Wes everything. They told him about the Mechanimals and Crispin Whittle’s workshop and
Project
Wishlist
. By the time they had finished, Wes looked as white as a goose.

‘So what you’re saying is . . .’ he gulped, ‘Dr Gore has already won. He’s turned everyone into zombies.’

‘It’s not over yet,’ Frankie replied. ‘We can find a way to reverse the process. I’m sure we can. But we need your help, Wes. You’re the only one who knows
about computers and digital stuff.’ Wes couldn’t suppress a proud smile. Yes indeed, he knew a lot about computers and digital stuff. He listened carefully as Frankie told him about the
mind-sweepers and the computer laboratory at Marvella’s headquarters where they turned children’s brains into billboards.

‘OK,’ said Wes, ‘I think we can do it.’

Inky clouds had blotted out the moon and stars. The friends climbed on to the flying-machine and prepared themselves for take-off. Wes hopped into the remaining saddle and put his feet in the
stirrups. But even with Wes’s extra pedal-power, with no one to push them they would have to work extra hard to lift themselves up off the edge of the roof and over the wire-topped walls.
Frankie touched his ankle. The blood had dried, but he didn’t fancy taking any risks. On the count of three Frankie pumped his legs round and round as fast as he could while Neet held a
steady course. As they sped towards the edge of the roof the wings began to move up and down and up and down. Then, as if the machine were as light as a feather, it lifted gracefully off the
ground.

‘We’re getting better at this!’ cried Neet.

But at that moment, Frankie suddenly felt his feet jam and the machine jerk. Somebody had grabbed on to the back. Frankie glanced down and saw a pair of round blue eyes blinking up at him in
terror. It was Timmy.

 

BOOK: The Great Brain Robbery
4.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Darkest Lie by Gena Showalter
Before Sunrise by Diana Palmer
El imperio de los lobos by Jean-Christophe Grangé
Short Circuits by Dorien Grey
The Holiday Nanny by Lois Richer
Writing the Novel by Lawrence Block, Block
Preacher by William W. Johnstone
Young Bess by Margaret Irwin