Information about the book
1
Caruso
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 chase?'
'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.
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