The Singing Ape Read online

  For Romola, champion of Lost World owls.

  Colt followed his wobbly torch beam through the rain-streaked darkness. He wore a light plastic poncho over his pyjamas. It kept most of him dry, but not his face, his arms or his legs. There was mud between his toes. He should have worn sneakers instead of his mother’s useless plastic clogs. But who wants to tie shoelaces in the middle of the night?

  Colt’s new home didn’t have a bathroom. That was the only bad thing about living in a circus. There were about a million good things. But tonight, in the dark, in the rain, he could only think of one of them – his nice warm bed, back in the caravan he shared with his mother. He wanted to get back into it as soon as possible.

  The portaloos and showers were set up behind the Big Top. Colt had to wend his way through Circus City, the temporary suburb of caravans and motorhomes that sprang up every time the Lost World Circus arrived in a new town.

  ‘Who’s that?’ someone called.

  Colt nearly jumped out of the too-small clogs. He swung his SmartTorch around. A man covered with animal tattoos stood under an awning outside one of the caravans, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Uhh, hi there, Mr Busby,’ Colt stammered. The circus foreman made him nervous. ‘It’s just me, Colt Lawless. You know – the new vet’s son?’

  The foreman flicked his used match out into the rain. It nearly hit Colt’s leg. ‘The defender of rats,’ he said sourly.

  Mr Busby was still mad at Colt for stopping him from killing a ghost rat a few weeks earlier. And for the way Colt had stopped him. No grown man likes to be picked up and spun around like a rag doll, especially in front of a Big Top-full of circus goers. And especially by a thirteen-year-old boy.

  But looks can be deceiving. Colt was stronger than he looked. A few days after the incident with Mr Busby and the ghost rat, Colt had lifted an elephant!

  He still couldn’t quite believe it.

  Colt went back a different way from the toilets. He didn’t want to meet Mr Busby again. The new route took him out past The Menagerie, the huge canvas-walled enclosure where the paying public could view Captain Noah’s famous Lost World animals. Nobody visited at night, and the door-flap wasn’t secured properly. Without really planning to – but he was new at the circus and the animals were still such a novelty – Colt parted the flap and slipped inside.

  Most of the trailers had their canvas sides rolled down to keep the wind and the rain out. But one or two remained open. Raindrops glistened on iron cage fronts. It was too dark to see in, but there was no mistaking the musty, dangerous smell of the lions, the leopards and the bears. That was how nature must have smelled back in the Animal Days, Colt thought. Back before the terrible rat flu pandemic that spread across the world and killed nearly all the animals and birds. The only ones left were in government farms, and in the famous Lost World Circus, where Colt’s mother had recently begun working as the vet.

  Colt kept his torch beam trained on the wet ground just ahead of him. Lions, leopards and bears shouldn’t be kept in cages. Seeing them imprisoned like that made him sad.

  Thump!

  Colt reeled backwards. The SmartTorch slipped from his fingers. He saw stars.

  Somebody had sneaked up in the dark and punched him in the face! Mr Busby, probably.

  Colt’s body began trembling. Waves of goosebumps ran up and down his arms and legs. There was a tingling sensation, like electricity, beneath his skin. His muscles expanded and grew taut.

  Suddenly strong enough to lift an elephant, Colt raised his fists to defend himself.

  Mr Busby, you’re in so much trouble!

  But nobody was there. Just the cold, steady rain, and a dark, rectangular shape, at about head-height, poking out from the side of the trailer next to him. Colt picked up his torch and shone it at the rectangle. It was a cage door, hanging wide open. He must have walked straight into it in the dark.

  Klutz! Colt thought.

  But why was the door open? He shone the SmartTorch into the trailer’s shadowy interior. It was the large primates’ trailer. Two orangutans were curled up in their nests of straw in one compartment. There were baboons in the cage at the far end. Real live Lost World animals! It still gave Colt a thrill to see them. But the middle compartment – the one with its door open – was empty. There was just a battered metal water bowl, a pile of straw in one corner, and a tyre swing hanging from a rope in the ceiling.

  Whatever monkey or ape occupied the middle cage had escaped!

  Colt felt the same about primates as he did about big cats and bears: they didn’t belong in cages. But it was the only way to keep them alive. Out in the wild, they wouldn’t get the regular RatVax shots that stopped them contracting the deadly virus that had wiped out all the other wild animals. Rat flu would kill them in a matter of months.

  Colt thought about getting his mother. But what could she do? She was a vet – she knew how to cure animals, not how to catch them.

  His second choice was Captain Noah, who owned the circus. But his motorhome was right down the other end of Circus City. And anyway, he’d be asleep.

  There was no time to lose.

  Colt slipped out of The Menagerie and ran back to Mr Busby’s caravan. The foreman had gone inside, but a pale light shone behind the blue-and-white checked curtains. Colt knocked on the door. He heard footsteps inside. The door creaked open. Mr Busby didn’t look pleased when he saw who it was, but Colt didn’t give him time to speak.

  ‘Some monkeys have got out!’

  ‘Which ones?’ asked Mr Busby, grabbing a coat from behind the door to put on over his singlet and shorts.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Colt said. ‘One of the cages is empty. I just walked past and noticed the door was open.’

  Mr Busby stepped outside and pulled on a pair of boots. He grabbed a rope and a chain with a collar on it.

  ‘Don’t just stand there gawking, boy!’ he snapped, as if Colt had been the one keeping them waiting. ‘Get a move on!’

  They sprinted back through Circus City towards The Menagerie. Mr Busby had a torch, too. Raindrops sliced like arrows through the twin beams of light. Colt’s heart jumped when he glimpsed a silver flash of reflected eyes looking back at him from beneath a motorhome.

  It was a ghost rat!

  Rats were the only wild animals left. They all carried the deadly rat flu virus, but the white ones were the most dangerous. One bite from a ghost rat and the escaped monkeys would be dead, whether or not their RatVax shots were up-to-date.

  But Colt needn’t have worried. Weirdly, when he and Mr Busby reached the trailer where Colt had bumped his head, the middle door was closed and padlocked. And there was something inside. Sitting on the tyre swing, squinting out at them in the torchlight, was Caruso, the circus’s famous singing gibbon.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Colt said. ‘It wasn’t here five minutes ago. The door was wide open and the cage was empty.’

  Mr Busby rattled the padlock. ‘Solid as Fort Knox,’ he said.

  He ran his torch beam back and forth along the cages. All the doors were closed and locked. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t one of the other trailers?’

  Colt shone his own light on the muddy ground. There were clog prints all over the place, where he’d turned in circles searching for his imaginary attacker, and a perfect imprint of his SmartTorch. ‘This is the right one, I’m sure.’

  ‘So how do you explain it?’ Mr Busby asked. He sounded angry.

  Colt didn’t blame him. ‘I can’t explain it. But I swear to you, Mr Busby, this cage was empty five minutes ago. That monkey wasn’t in there.’

  ‘Gibbons are apes, not monkeys,’ the foreman snapped. ‘You think this is funny? Dragging me out here in the rain in the middle of the night on a wild goose c
hase?’

  ‘It wasn’t here!’ Colt insisted. ‘I swear it.’

  ‘Because I don’t think it’s funny at all,’ Mr Busby continued as if Colt hadn’t spoken, shining his blinding torch beam directly in Colt’s eyes. ‘A word of advice, buster. Don’t you ever pull a stunt like this again.’

  Colt stood, stoop-shouldered, in the rain outside Caruso’s cage as Mr Busby went squelching off through the mud and the puddles. He felt embarrassed, humiliated, stupid. But most of all, he felt confused.

  ‘How did you do it, Caruso?’ he asked, careful not to shine his SmartTorch directly into the gibbon’s intelligent brown eyes.

  The ape stared back at him in silence. It seemed almost to be considering an answer. But it was a singing gibbon, not a talking one. Water dripped from its damp black fur as its tyre-swing swayed slowly back and forth, back and forth.

  At breakfast, Colt didn’t say anything to his mother about the disappearing and reappearing gibbon. When Kristin asked him about the big red-and-purple bruise on his forehead, he said he’d bumped into a door. He didn’t say which door, or what else had happened.

  ‘It must have been quite a whack,’ Kristin said, brushing his silver-blond hair aside for a better look. Sometimes she acted more like a doctor than a vet. ‘No headaches or blurred vision?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Colt said. He poured milk into his second bowl of cereal. ‘Don’t fuss, Mum.’

  She watched him eating. ‘At least you haven’t lost your appetite. Did I hear you making a sandwich in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Brain food,’ he said around a mouthful of cornflakes. ‘I want to make a good impression at my new school.’

  Colt and his mother had joined the circus during the school holidays. Today was the start of a new term. The circus children had lessons in a big truck that resembled a mobile library. It was fitted out like a classroom. There were posters and children’s artwork on the walls. There were shelves of books. There was a globe of the world, a holo-projector and a 3D virtual whiteboard. There were two knowledge terminals. There was a giant pet spider in a tank. (A wobbly, hand-printed sign said its name was Webber.) There were eight desks with children sitting at them.

  Standing at the front next to Colt was Captain Noah. The circus boss was filling in for their normal teacher, Mrs Greene, who had just had a baby.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Master Colt Lawless,’ Captain Noah introduced him. ‘I imagine most of you have met him by now. Colt’s mother has kindly agreed to become the circus’s new veterinarian.’

  Colt felt awkward. He was older than all the other kids. Most of them only looked about seven or eight. And he had nowhere to sit.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, and gave a little wave.

  ‘Good mor-ning, Mas-ter Law-less!’ they said in a loud, singsong chorus.

  ‘Um, where do I sit, Captain Noah?’

  ‘You’ll have to share desks with Ms Flynn for now,’ Captain Noah said, placing an extra chair next to a smiling part-Asian girl who had been frantically trying to catch Colt’s attention ever since he came in.

  Colt returned her smile. Her first name was Birdy. The Lost World Circus didn’t just have animals; there were human performers too. Birdy was part of a family trapeze act called The Flying Flynns. She and Colt were friends already. A couple of weeks ago, they’d saved the last elephant in the world from being destroyed by rat cops.

  ‘But before you sit down,’ Captain Noah said, ‘why don’t you teach us something?’

  Colt was confused. ‘You mean something about where I used to live and that?’

  ‘No. Teach us something.’

  ‘But you’re the teacher.’

  ‘Life is the greatest teacher of all,’ Captain Noah said. ‘How old are you, Master Lawless?’

  ‘Thirteen.’

  ‘When is your birthday?’

  Colt gave the date.

  Captain Noah was silent for a few seconds as he worked something out. ‘You have graced this planet for five thousand and eleven days,’ he said. ‘Surely you have learned something in all that time that the rest of us might find interesting?’

  ‘Well . . . I guess.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ Captain Noah sat on the little chair next to Birdy Flynn, leaned back and folded his arms. ‘So share it with us.’

  Colt walked slowly back to the front of the classroom. What could he tell a bunch of primary school children (and their kooky teacher) that they didn’t know already? He thought about Caruso’s disappearing act – that was interesting, but would they, like Mr Busby, think he was just making it all up?

  He could tell them about the time he had swung Mr Busby around like a rag doll, or how he’d lifted an elephant – two really interesting things – but no way would they believe those either. And anyway, Colt didn’t want them to think he was some kind of freak.

  Was he some kind of freak?

  Birdy, who had been there both times when he’d used his super strength, thought he was magic. Like a wizard or something. As if magic could really happen! Colt had made her promise not to tell anyone.

  They all sat waiting for Colt to teach them something. But he couldn’t think of anything. It was embarrassing.

  So much for all that ‘brain food’!

  In desperation, Colt picked up a laser marker and wrote two words on the virtual whiteboard.

  Nine pairs of eyes stared at what Colt had written.

  Lost World

  ‘Who knows what that means?’ he asked.

  Several hands shot up. Birdy’s was jiggling madly, but Colt ignored her and chose a little boy in the front row.

  ‘It’s the olden days,’ the boy said.

  ‘You’re dead right,’ said Colt. ‘But can anyone tell me why this circus has that name? Yes, Birdy?’

  ‘Because we’ve got lots of olden-days animals, Master Lawless.’

  Colt tried very hard not to return her mischievous smile. Almost nobody over the age of five said olden days. The little boy looked about five, but Birdy was ten. And as for calling him Master Lawless . . .

  ‘Miss Flynn is right,’ he said. ‘The animals in this circus are the last of their kind. They’re the sole survivors from a world where lions, elephants, kangaroos and about a million types of birds lived in the wild. But it no longer exists, so some people call it the Lost World.’

  Colt pressed the marker’s 3D button and the two words seemed to jump off the screen and float in the air, gently pulsating, next to his shoulder. All eight children were watching with rapt attention. It was kind of cool being a teacher.

  He asked, ‘Who can tell me what happened to the wild animals?’

  All the hands went up again. Colt chose a red-haired girl near the back.

  ‘They got rat flu and died.’

  ‘Correct.’

  Captain Noah raised his hand. ‘This is all very well and good, Master Lawless, but you are not telling us anything that we don’t already know.’

  Colt looked him in the eye. ‘But I wonder if everyone knows where rat flu came from, Captain Noah?’

  ‘Rats,’ whispered Birdy, without putting up her hand.

  ‘Rats are what spread it,’ Colt said. ‘But can anyone tell us what caused it?’

  ‘A virus?’ suggested someone.

  ‘Let’s go back further than that,’ said Colt. He pressed ‘clear’ and the words fizzled away to nothing. ‘Where did the virus come from in the first place?’

  Nobody’s hand went up. Even Captain Noah seemed puzzled. Colt clicked the 3D button and wrote in the air:

  Man

  Everyone stared at the pulsating letters. The only noise came from the little boy at the front, who was sounding out the word in a loud whisper, ‘Mmm . . . aaa . . . nnnn.’

  The red-haired girl raised her hand. ‘People don’t get rat flu.’

  ‘Not so far,’ Colt said, even though it wasn’t strictly true. (That was something he didn’t want to talk about in front of a bunch of five-to-ten-year-old
s.) ‘But people created it.’

  ‘Master Lawless!’ Captain Noah rose to his feet. ‘This is a place of learning. When I invited you up to tell us something interesting, I assumed it was going to be true.’

  ‘It is true, Captain Noah. Rat flu was made in a laboratory.’

  ‘But that’s preposterous! Why would anyone create something so . . . so . . .’ For once, the circus boss seemed lost for words.

  ‘So gross?’ suggested Birdy.

  ‘Thank you, Ms Flynn,’ Captain Noah said softly. ‘I suppose that’s one way to describe a global catastrophe.’

  He slowly sat back down. ‘Please proceed, Master Lawless.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Colt said, wishing now that he hadn’t chosen this topic. ‘They were developing a drug to make farm animals like pigs and chickens and cows grow bigger so there’d be more meat for us humans. But one of the laboratory rats they tested it on already had a virus. And something bad happened. The experimental drug and the virus in the rat morphed into a super virus that started killing everything off.’

  Colt cleared the virtual whiteboard and wrote:

  Rat flu

  ‘And that was the end of all the Lost World animals,’ he said.

  ‘Except the ones in our circus,’ said a girl with glasses.

  ‘That’s right.’ Colt glanced at Birdy, who had told him this part of the story. ‘Captain Noah had a zoo on an island, and the virus didn’t make it there because it couldn’t cross the sea,’ he said. Colt ran his eyes over the silent classroom. ‘I think everyone knows what happened after that.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked the little boy at the front.

  Colt looked at the circus boss. ‘Do you want to tell it?’

  Captain Noah shook his head. ‘You are delivering this lesson, Master Lawless.’

  But I wish I wasn’t, Colt thought. And besides, I’m not even supposed to know that stuff about the laboratory! Why did I even start talking about it?

  ‘So Captain Noah ended up with all these animals that had become extinct everywhere else,’ he continued. ‘And when Rat Vax was developed, it was safe for them to leave the island and become the Lost World Circus.’