The Ministry of SUITs (2 page)

The top of David's head was home to a scraggly shock of dirty-blond hair that unfortunately made him resemble a rather badly constructed scarecrow.
4

“Hey,” said Jack as he sat down beside his friend.

“P.E. today,” said David.

“You remembered your kit?”

“I will never forget my kit.”

Both David and Jack shuddered at the thought of forgetting their kit. Something truly horrible happened to the children who forgot their kit. Something neither Jack nor David wanted to think about.

*   *   *

There was a loud screech of brakes and the bus jerked to a stop. Everyone on board rocked forward in their seats. On a normal bus this would have thrown the passengers into chaos with people shouting, screaming, and hurling abuse at each other. This, however, was a school bus, and it was already quite chaotic with a fair amount of general abuse being hurled back and forth. Therefore the sudden stop had actually stunned the bus into silence.

Of course, the silence lasted only for a second before chattering broke out again.

“So, did you watch any TV last night?” asked David.

“The bus has just suddenly ground to a halt and you want to ask me what I saw on TV last night?”

David nodded. “Yes.”

“Aren't you the least bit curious as to what's going on?”

David thought about this. “Not really. I mean, if it's important, someone will let us know. Right?”

Jack sighed and looked around the bus. Paper planes were being thrown, mobile phones were pinging, and geeks were being tormented by popular kids. Jack wished he could have gone back to his conversation with David, but his natural curiosity forced him to stand up.

Jack's mother had always said that curiosity killed the cat. Jack would then normally point out that a feeling couldn't possibly kill a cat. Jack's mother then normally said Jack thought too much about things, that he had to know everything and that he might very well be obsessive-compulsive. Jack thought about this, decided he needed to know what obsessive-compulsive meant, and looked it up in the dictionary. As far as he understood, an obsessive-compulsive was someone who worried about things all the time. From that moment on, Jack spent a good part of every day worrying that he might be an obsessive-compulsive.

“I can't just sit here and not know,” said Jack. “I'm going to see why the bus stopped.”

“It might be dangerous,” said David.

“I'd rather be in danger than not know.” Jack stood up. “Are you coming with me?”

“Might as well. Danger is always the most fun.”
5

At the front of the bus the driver had already opened the door and got out. A line of halted traffic blocked their progress.

“You kids had better get back on the bus,” said the driver.

“We will get back on the bus … just not yet.” Jack always obeyed adults … eventually.

Jack walked along the line of cars. He was on his tiptoes, straining his neck trying to see what was happening. He'd been expecting an accident, but when he got to the front of the queue it was something rather different. David was shocked by what he saw and started hyperventilating. He briefly fumbled in his pocket for his inhaler before he remembered that he wasn't actually asthmatic.

There was a large bear on all fours in the center of the road. It was enormous, almost the size of a horse, and had a shaggy black coat. It roared and its open mouth looked like a cave with ivory-white stalactites for teeth. Drool fell from its maw in a most unbecoming way.
6

Looking at the bear's razor-sharp teeth, Jack suddenly became aware of how tasty his arms and legs might look. For a brief moment he had a stunning psychological insight into what it must feel like to be a Gummy Bear.
7

“What is a bear doing in the middle of the city?” Jack whispered.

“That isn't the right question to be asking,” said David. “The question you should be asking is: Can we get away without being eaten?”

“All right, don't panic. We'll just move toward one of the cars and they'll let us inside. We'll be safe.”

The bear reared up onto its hind legs and let out a roar that made the hair on the back of Jack's neck stand up. After the roar, David and Jack heard a chorus of clicks as the doors of the surrounding cars locked.

“All right,” said Jack nervously, “now that all the cowards in the cars have locked their doors we're going to need another plan.”

He looked around. The people in the cars had stopped looking at the bear and had started looking at the two boys. At first Jack was confused. He thought that they should have been watching a bear. Frightening as the bear was, it was an interesting and unique thing to look at.

Then he realized.

A grizzly bear was a frightening and unique thing to look at. However, an even more frightening and unique thing to look at was two twelve-year-olds who were just about to be eaten alive by a grizzly bear.

“I say we try and make a run for it,” said David.

“Remember that documentary we saw about bears on BBC 2?” asked Jack. “They can run at about thirty miles an hour. Do you think you can outrun him?”

David shook his head very slightly. “I wasn't planning on outrunning him. I was just planning on outrunning you.”

“Oh,” said Jack. Then he realized what his friend meant. “Oh great, and then I get eaten.”

“If you're lucky, he won't eat all of you. He looks quite well fed. He might just chew on one of your arms for a while.”

“Hopefully the right one,” said Jack. “I just got this watch for my birthday and Mum would kill me if I lost it.”

“How about we both run in different directions and hope that confuses him,” David suggested. “On three.”

“Okay,” Jack agreed. He didn't have a better plan.

David started counting. “One, two…”

Suddenly Jack noticed movement behind the bear. “Wait a minute.”

There was a man lying on the ground behind the bear. He was dressed in a black pin-striped suit and had an umbrella lying beside him. His chest was rising and falling, although only very slightly. That meant he wasn't dead yet, but if they left him, Jack had no doubt he would be. The man had already been attacked by the bear and his clothes were torn and covered in bloodstains.

“There's a person lying behind the bear.”

“Good,” said David. “Hopefully he'll eat him instead of us.”

“We have to help him.”

David let out a little groan. “Jack, do you have to be a hero? You do this all the time. Remember the time you tried to defend that little kid from the gang of bullies?”

“We saved him, didn't we?”

“Well, yes, but we ended up being thrown into the trash bins. Jack, you're my best friend. But you aren't a hero!”

“I know I'm not a hero, David; I don't do my own laundry.”

The bear roared and took two lumbering steps toward the boys. Jack looked around to see if there was anything he could use to defend himself. Ideally a tranquilizer gun.

The road was deserted. Everyone had fled into the local stores or was safely locked inside their cars. It should be noted that the people inside their cars were not quite as safe as they thought they were. Bears have been observed in the wild smashing windows to get to food inside cars. Essentially the people in the cars looked to the bear a little bit like the way baked beans in a tin look to humans.

There was a building site to Jack's right. The builders had abandoned all their tools and clambered up the scaffolding, from where they safely watched the unfolding drama. A large nail gun was lying on the ground where a builder had dropped it.

Jack looked at the other side of the road. There was a small French-style café with a few tables and rickety chairs outside.

He took a deep breath and a feeling of certainty came over him.

“Right, David, I've got a plan. The minute I move you start running in the opposite direction.” Without any further hesitation, Jack sprang into action.

MINISTRY
OF
S.U.I.T.S
HANDBOOK

BADLY CONSTRUCTED SCARECROWS

J
OB
P
ROSPECTS

Secretly all scarecrows wish to improve their construction slightly and get a better job as a store mannequin. The work is similar (standing about all day), the hours are similar (again … all day), but there are two important differences between the job of scarecrow and store mannequin. Firstly, a store mannequin gets to work indoors, which is a huge benefit in our uncertain climate. Secondly, store mannequins get to wear all sorts of delightful new clothes whereas scarecrows end up with a variety of hand-me-downs that are inevitably full of holes and patches. Shabby though they may be, scarecrows still have a sense of self-esteem.

 

3

THE CHAIR OF DESTINY

 

Jack leapt forward and David took off running in the opposite direction. Out of the corner of his eye Jack saw David running. Many of their school friends had discussed what David's body had been built for. It certainly wasn't running. Watching him run was a bit like watching an episode of
You've Been Framed
. You knew something was going to go wrong, you just weren't sure of exactly when. Predictably enough, David fell over in a heap of flailing arms and legs.

Now Jack's plan had to work; otherwise they would both end up as a bear's breakfast.
8

The builders who were watching from the safety of some scaffolding had expected Jack to leap into the back of their tool van and grab something from there. Maybe a sledgehammer to smack the bear with. Maybe he would go for the dropped nail gun to try and shoot the bear.

But Jack didn't go for the tool van. Instead, Jack leapt toward the café. One of the builders wondered if maybe he just wanted a croissant.

Jack did not want a croissant.
9

The bear let out a final roar and moved toward him like an enormous, foul-smelling, furry carpet. Jack grabbed one of the rather rickety wooden chairs that was sitting outside the café.

The bear took a swipe at Jack with one enormous paw, its claws glistening with blood. Jack swayed backward. The claw swished the air past Jack's face. A drop of bear sweat landed on the tip of Jack's nose.

The builders watching from the safety of their scaffold cheered, but Jack didn't feel elated. He knew that he had avoided death, but if his next move didn't work, then he would be in serious trouble.

Jack raised the rickety chair and yelled, “Yah!” He'd seen it in a circus once. A man had kept a lion at bay with a chair. Jack thought the same might hold true for bears.

“Unless that bear really, really wants to have a sit-down, that young boy is going to die,” muttered one of the builders unhelpfully.

The bear had pulled its massive paw back to take another swing at Jack, but suddenly its eyes focused on the four legs of the chair. There seemed to be a look of fear on the bear's face.

The people in the cars were surprised. The builders on the scaffold were stunned. But Jack was probably the most shocked of all. A large part of him had expected the bear to smash the chair with one enormous paw. Instead the bear seemed strangely unnerved by the chair.

“Yah!” shouted Jack as he poked the bear in the midriff with his chair. “Scram. Or I'll … I'll chair you, I suppose.”
10

The bear gingerly lowered itself down onto four paws. It sniffed the chair cautiously and took two steps backward. For a moment Jack and the bear locked eyes, then the bear turned away and bounded off down the street.

Jack put the chair down.

Then he sat on it.

“That,” he said, “was unexpected.”

David came over and stood in front of Jack.

“I fell over,” said David.

“I saw that,” said Jack. “I scared off a bear using a chair.”

“Everyone saw that,” said David.

All the people who had locked themselves in their cars were opening the doors now. One of them started clapping and before long Jack was the recipient of a hardy round of applause.

“Oh yes, clap now. A few minutes ago you were perfectly happy to lock your doors and let us get eaten!” shouted David.

The people looked slightly sheepish and the clapping petered out. They wandered back to their cars and switched on radios to try and drown out the sounds of the shame they had echoing in their ears.

“Let's see if he's okay,” said Jack, indicating the man in the pin-striped suit who had been attacked by the bear.

The man was conscious now and was sitting up. There was a large gash on his right temple where the bear must have hit him. His suit was ripped and covered in blood, but most of the wounds seemed relatively shallow.

“Are you all right?” asked Jack, helping him up.

“Mmmm. Can you count my limbs for me?” asked the man.

David did the necessary mathematics and answered the man. “Four limbs in all.”

The man looked down at himself. “Four limbs. Good. Two of the arm variety and a corresponding number of the leg variety—and they seem to be in the correct sockets.
11
All present and correct. In which case, the answer to your question is yes. Yes—I am okay.”

“You were attacked by a bear,” said David helpfully.

“Yes, I noticed that too,” said the man with more than a hint of sarcasm. “I was tracking the bear. Unfortunately he seems to have escaped.”

“You're a bear hunter?”

“A bear hunter?” laughed the man as he picked up his umbrella. “Good gracious, no. And if I was, I wouldn't make a very good one, would I? No—I work for…”

The man paused. “Well, let's not talk about who I work for at the moment. Now, what are your names?”