Washed Up Read online

  “Well, I thought we might go over how you guys will communicate with us,” Agent Speed said, taking some sheets of paper out of his briefcase. “Obviously, you won’t be able to pick up a phone so we’ll have to be a bit smarter. We can take advantage of the fact that this is a reality TV show. There may be opportunities for you to send coded messages to us. I’ve drawn up a guide of some examples that you should be able to slip seamlessly into the show without raising any suspicions.”

  We looked at the guide.

  CODE MESSAGE

  Is it just me or does that coconut look a bit like the prime minister? Cruul is definitely here to bring about the return of the Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse.

  Is it just me or does that coconut look a bit like the queen? Cruul’s plan is almost complete.

  Is it just me or does that coconut look a bit like Taylor Swift? Our lives are in danger. Send help immediately.

  Is it just me or does that coconut look a bit like Wayne Rooney? Everything’s fine.

  The list went on like that for several pages. “It’s quite coconut-based,” observed Lexi.

  “Yes!” Agent Speed nodded enthusiastically. “I was up all night working on it.”

  “What do we do if there isn’t a coconut nearby?” asked Milo.

  Agent Speed opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. “Oh,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about that. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  Milo rolled his eyes. “Maybe we should go over something useful,” he said. “Like the Horsewomen themselves. I’ve been researching them during my downtime on the tour bus.”

  “You’ve actually found stuff on the Horsewomen?” I asked, impressed. I had tried googling them once or twice but all I had managed to find was random articles on cowgirls, centaurs and jockeys. I suspected Milo’s research techniques were a bit more sophisticated.

  “I think so,” he said. “It’s not been easy, though. It’s not like they’ve got Wikipedia pages or Facebook profiles. You have to look between the lines of history to find them but they’re definitely there. Especially whenever things went drastically wrong. And each seems to represent their own corner of misery and suffering: Death, War, Famine and Pestilence.”

  “The stuff they put on plants to keep bugs off?” I asked.

  “That’s pesticides,” said Milo. “Pestilence is a massively deadly disease, like the bubonic plague.”

  Suddenly things started sliding into place.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “Veronica was Donnie in Apocalips. She had that booming voice and dressed in black. So she was … or is … Death?”

  “Yup,” said Milo, grinning. “And the others?”

  “Well, Vicky was always the most aggressive of the four,” I said. “And she was Warren in Apocalips… Wow, she didn’t even bother trying with that name, did she? She’s War.”

  “Two for two,” said Milo.

  “Violet was Frankie,” I said. “And I never once saw Frankie eat anything. So I’m guessing Violet is Famine.”

  “Leaving Valerie as Pete, so she must be Pesticides,” said Lexi triumphantly.

  “Pestilence,” corrected Milo.

  “Whatever,” said Lexi. “The point is they’re all massive jerks.”

  “Interesting,” I said, turning back to Agent Speed. “So what is it we’re supposed to do when we get to the island? If Cruul’s up to something, he’s not going to just tell us, is he?”

  “Our theory is that the island itself holds the key,” said Agent Speed. “That’s got to be why he’s heading out there. You’re going to have to explore the place and discover its secrets.”

  “And just how are we meant to do that?” I asked. “With cameras filming our every move. You’re dropping us in with no notice and no training… I mean, isn’t there anything useful you can give us?”

  Agent Speed scratched his chin for a few seconds before slapping his forehead. “Of course!” he cried. “Why didn’t I think of this earlier?”

  He reached into his briefcase and removed what looked like a small battery. “I just got this from O’Brien, one of our engineering boffins. I was supposed to give it to Agent Banks but given the circumstances, I clean forgot. I doubt she’d mind you having it, though. They call it a Time-Out. Press this little button on the top and it’ll send out a short-range, low-power electromagnetic pulse, strong enough to temporarily disable any electronic device within a fifteen-metre radius. Its effects will only last a couple of minutes, tops, but that should be enough to help with getting past cameras or buying yourself some time to speak to each other privately.”

  Finally, something that might actually be useful. I could still see one problem, though. “How am I going to smuggle this on to the show?” I asked.

  “Easy,” said Agent Speed, taking out a roll of scarlet tape. He tore off a strip and wrapped it around the device. “This is government red tape – it retains its stick for years. Nothing will shift it.”

  He leaned over and buried the Time-Out deep in my hair. I raised my hand to touch it only to have Lexi grab my wrist.

  “Don’t you dare do that in here,” she warned. “As if it wasn’t bad enough flying into the Bermuda Triangle, you could disable this plane with the press of a button.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Agent Speed checked his watch then took out some more sheets of paper from his briefcase. “Now there’s just enough time to run through the other contestants. We’ve put together profiles on each of them.”

  “These look like cut-outs from a newspaper,” said Lexi as Speed handed us each a copy.

  “All right, fine,” grumbled Speed. “We didn’t have time for that so we just photocopied a pullout from the Daily Blowhorn.”

  “Look, Betty Black’s in it,” said Lexi.

  For almost fifty years, Betty Black has graced our television screens as pub landlady and reformed jewel thief Norma Braithwaite in the country’s most popular soap opera, Cliffhanger Road. She broke viewers’ hearts last Christmas when she finally bowed out of the show in typical Norma style, throwing herself on a grenade hidden inside a Christmas pudding to save the lives of everyone in the Kings Legs pub. Betty, 72, is ready for a new adventure on Fin Del Mundo. Let’s just hope that all those years of playing streetwise Norma come in handy for this National Treasure.

  “Mum loves that show,” said Milo. “She cried for ages when Norma died. Oh, they’ve got that vlogger guy, Bo, too.”

  “Bo?” asked Lexi. “Bo what?”

  “Just Bo,” said Milo.

  Vlogger, E-Sports mega star, entrepreneur and now … survivalist? Bo, the self-proclaimed King of the Internet, has created his own online empire. His videos, released almost hourly, average 100 million views each and his video explaining how to build a combine harvester in Minecraft has been watched over three billion times. Known for his enthusiasm and constant perkiness, the big question is, will Bo manage to remain upbeat when he realizes that there’s no Wi-Fi on the island?

  “Right, yeah, I think I’ve watched one of his videos,” I said. “He literally spent the entire time comparing apples and oranges—”

  “Ooh, Joe Bruiser’s on this as well!” interrupted Lexi.

  “Who’s Joe Bruiser?” asked Milo. “Wait … not that balding guy who’s always calling everyone a mug?”

  “That’s the one,” I said.

  “He’s only, like, one of the toughest guys in the country,” said Lexi. “And he only calls people mugs if they’re being mugs. And he’s not balding. Well, not much. What does it say about him?”

  Raised on the mean streets of East London, or “Lahndon” as he calls it, Joe Bruiser, born Joseph Bruisington, has carved out a career playing the tough guy with a heart of gold in such films as Look Who’s Cockney, Avin’ a Laff and You Silly Mug! Never shy of conflict it’ll be interesting to see how Joe gets on with some of the more difficult contestants. Will there be Barney Rubble (trouble) or will everyone be china plates (mates)? Watch and find out!
r />   “I’ve seen every film he’s ever made,” said Lexi. “Even the rubbish ones like Footie Heroes and Footie Heroes Eight.”

  Milo and I looked at each other. “What about Footie Heroes two to seven?” I asked.

  “They were all right,” she said, turning over the page. “Ooh, what a surprise, Zizi Summer is on this thing too.”

  This was the first name I didn’t recognize. I glanced at her picture – a young glossy-haired girl, pouting at the camera – then turned to Milo.

  “You must have seen her, she’s everywhere,” he said. “She’s at all the award shows and parties we go to. And she’s always in the papers.”

  “What does she do?”

  Milo shrugged. “Nothing really,” he said. “She just kind of does this.”

  “What do you mean ‘this’?” I asked.

  “Shows like this,” he said. “She’s been on everything. The Only Way is West Sussex, Celebrity Caravanning, Celebrity Board Game World Cup. And she had those shows where they just followed her about in different seasons – Summer in Spring, Summer in Summer, Summer in Autumn and … there was another one but I forget what it was called.”

  We both laughed.

  “She’s the one that thought Brussels sprouts were just mouldy potatoes,” said Lexi, glancing out of the window for a second, before quickly turning away again.

  “That’s her,” said Milo. “And she once got an airport shut down when she tried to bring her dogs on the plane with her.”

  I pictured a couple of fluffy little dogs, small enough to fit inside a handbag.

  As if reading my thoughts, Milo shook his head. “There were fifty of them,” he said. “It was for a show she was doing where celebrities ran a dog kennel. After the series finished, she wanted to treat all the dogs to a fortnight in the Seychelles.”

  “Yikes,” I said.

  We quickly flicked through the profiles on Cruul, Lexi and Milo, given that we knew everything about them already. Lastly there was a bit on the hosts Ronald and Donald, two men with the faces of a couple of twelve-year-olds and the receding hairlines of guys in their forties. Sometimes it felt like they presented every show on television. Despite this most people could never remember which one was which, even though Ronald is about a head taller with black hair and Donald has blond hair and big ears.

  One profile was noticeably absent. “Where’s mine?” I asked.

  Agent Speed looked away. “Oh, is it not in there? I thought it was. It must have been a printing error…”

  “It’s in my copy,” said Lexi.

  “It is?” said Agent Speed, looking panicked. “It’s not meant to be! Um … I mean … how odd…”

  I snatched the page from Lexi before Speed could get to it. “Why don’t you want me to read it? Oh.”

  The answer to the trivia question, who was the sixth member of Apocalips? Sam “Sammy” Miller went from hero to zero when the truth was finally revealed about the tragic circumstances at Hyde Park last year where the beloved boyband came to an untimely end. Miller, 14, had us all convinced that he had saved the world, when in fact the only person he saved was himself. Not a day goes by where we don’t wonder why a nobody like Miller was spared at the expense of five of the most talented young men this planet has ever known. So can the massive liar Sam master the skills required to survive on the island or… Ah, who cares? Hopefully he’ll get eaten by something horrible or his parachute won’t open. Sam stinks!

  I glanced up. “They don’t like me, do they?”

  Agent Speed looked apologetic. “I really wouldn’t take much notice.”

  “Yeah, who cares what that rag says,” offered Milo.

  “It’s easy for you to say,” I muttered. “You were up there onstage with the Horsewomen too but no one accuses you of being a fraud. You got a pop career out of it. I’m the one everyone slags off. What is it you said in that magazine again? You want to ‘distance’ yourself from what happened.”

  Milo looked a little taken aback at my outburst. “I didn’t want to,” he said quietly. “The band thought it best…”

  I was about to reply when something caught my eye. Where there had once been blue ocean merging seamlessly into blue sky, something else had finally come into view through the window next to Lexi. Land.

  Milo and I rushed to the other side of the plane to get a better look. Beneath us the greenest trees and plants sprawled out across a large lemon-shaped island, occasionally criss-crossed by bright blue rivers and ringed by yellow sandy beaches. As the plane began to circle, we could see the centrepiece of it all – a mountain that seemed to grasp desperately at the sky itself.

  “I didn’t think it would be so big,” I said.

  “Me neither,” said Milo.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to go off at you there. It’s just reading all those things about me—”

  “Hey, what did it mean by ‘parachute’?” interrupted Lexi.

  “Parachute?” repeated Milo, still gazing out of the window.

  “In Sam’s profile,” she went on. “It said they hoped his parachute didn’t open. What parachute?”

  The three of us turned to Agent Speed, who was smiling sheepishly.

  The door to the cockpit burst open and Agent Banks emerged, carrying three large backpacks.

  “I’m going to guess,” said Milo, “that they were talking about those things.”

  “All up to speed, Speed?” asked Agent Banks as she shoved a backpack into my hands.

  “Er … yes, boss,” said Agent Speed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I think the parachutes might have come as a surprise, though.”

  “We … don’t … really have … to jump … out of this … thing, do we?” asked Lexi.

  Agent Banks screwed up her face. “How else did you think you were getting off?”

  “By landing?” suggested Milo, pointing towards the island. “Look, there’s a whole field down there that would be perfect for an airstrip.”

  “This is TV,” she said. “Who wants to watch that? The production company were happy for us to arrange for you to get to the island, given the last-minute nature of everything. But our instructions were to drop you off. Literally.”

  “Don’t you need training before you can do a parachute jump?” I asked.

  Agent Banks nodded. “Normally.”

  Normally. Just like normally you’d be given training before going on an undercover mission. But, as Agent Banks said, we were a long way from normal.

  “Don’t worry, these are state-of-the-art parachutes,” she said. “They’re designed to open automatically. All you need to do is make sure you’re strapped in. And then jump, obviously.”

  “What about our luggage?” I asked. “You said you’d brought it.”

  “I just jettisoned it a minute ago,” she said. “The crew from the show will collect it. Now you three better get moving. Agent Speed will fit you with headcams so that the viewers can see what you see on the way down and mic packs so—”

  “They can hear our screams?” interrupted Lexi.

  I grabbed hold of my sister’s arms. “It’ll be OK,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as her. I had never really had to reassure Lexi about anything before. It felt wrong, like being asked to help Milo with his homework.

  Milo had already strapped on his backpack. Inside I didn’t feel any more enthusiastic than Lexi but I knew I had to put on a brave face or she’d never agree to do it. I slipped on mine as Agent Speed attached the headcam and mic pack. It was just Lexi to convince now. The fact that she had curled herself up in a ball was not encouraging.

  “No chance!” she said.

  I looked to Milo for help. After a few moments he held a finger in the air.

  “Lexi,” he said. “You don’t like flying, do you?”

  My sister shot him a look.

  “What I mean,” said Milo, pressing on, “is that if you don’t like flying, then it’s a strange decision not to jump. You’ve been flying f
or about eight hours. If you don’t come with us, you’ll have to stay on this plane all the way back home.”

  Lexi sat up. “But I’ll still have to fly home,” she said. “Once the show’s over.”

  “Maybe, or maybe we can convince them to send out a boat or something,” said Milo.

  “A boat?” she said. “Do you think they might?”

  “Sure,” said Milo. He looked to Agent Banks for support.

  “Um… Yes, definitely,” she said. “They could get one of those cruise ships to pick you up.”

  I could tell by the way Lexi’s eyes were flickering back and forth that she was desperate to believe it.

  “That’s right,” said Milo. “So the only way I can see for you to never be in the air again is to jump.”

  A wide-eyed Lexi turned to me then back to Milo. After a moment or two of weighing up the options, she suddenly hopped out of her seat, slung a backpack over her shoulders and strapped herself in.

  “That’s great, Lexi,” I said. “We’ll help each other… Lexi?”

  But she wasn’t listening. She was too busy opening the plane door.

  “Er… Lexi?” said Milo, but his voice was drowned out by the noise as the air whooshed in. Then Lexi was gone.

  Milo and I stared through the door open-mouthed as Lexi plummeted earthwards.

  “To be honest, I didn’t think I’d be that convincing!” shouted Milo.

  “You can be very persuasive!” I screamed back. After all, he had managed to convince me to risk my life attempting to save the world. Twice.

  We continued to watch Lexi fall. Then her parachute opened like a bright red flower.

  “Thank goodness for that.” I sighed.

  Milo looked just as relieved. “Well … shall we?”

  “You first,” I said.

  “No, no, be my guest,” said Milo.

  “Please, after you,” I said.