Читать книгу The Great Meerkat Adventure - Charles Norton - Страница 6

The wood was not a wood after all, just a clump of trees alongside a big flat, hard piece of ground, with lots of white lines on it. Mervin was not too happy with us; he expected to be in a very big wood, a very safe wood, not a clump of small trees. We left those trees behind and crossed the flat hard stuff, found a place for the night, just like a cave, and all climbed in.

Mervin and the other strong ones pushed a boulder across the entrance; it went very dark inside, but felt very safe indeed.

“What is that smell, Mother? It is awful, it smells like fish.”

“Settle down and get some sleep, you will need all your energy tomorrow!”

All 30 of us settled down after pushing light square stones aside to make room for us to spread out and lay down. It took time to fall asleep, our fur was dirty and there was slime in this cave like I’d never known. The slime stuck to our fur and made us smell bad, but we all fell asleep and things did not seem so bad.

Suddenly, at first light, there was a bang, a bump, and everybody woke up. The whole cave shook and seemed to be moving along.

“What’s happening?” someone called out.

“Be very quiet,” said Mervin. “There is a human in front of the cave and he’s on fire.”

I could see out now and we were racing along, too fast to jump out, and smoke was starting to get to me. There were human words on the square stones all around us; words like COD and HADDOCK.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Don’t know, be quiet,” was Mother’s reply.

“If it stops, when it stops, be ready to jump out and run, everybody,” said a frightened Mervin.

The cave rumbled on and fast down a hill, fast into a human place, then under an arch. There was another word we could see; DOCK.

“What is that, Mother?” I asked.

“Short for doctor, I think. Be quiet.”

“I could do with a doctor. I smell awful, never smelt so bad in my life.”

The cave slowed at last and turned into a lane with big buildings on both sides.

“Get ready,” said Mervin. The human got out and walked away. The cave was still at last, and very quiet.

“Push hard lads, get it open.”

With the cave open we all jumped out. Some slid and fell over, the slime was everywhere. There were lots of noisy humans inside the long building as we settled down among more boxes, and looked around this strange place. The young ones were hungry, everybody was thirsty, and everybody looked to Mervin, our leader, to provide these things.

“Sit tight right here, under cover, where it looks safe enough. You two, go forward; you two, go back, that way, and look for food and water.”

Four hungry meerkats set off to find food for 30, as the rest of us settled down to wait their return. They returned with flat, colourful boxes and a big smile.

“Smells nice, but what is it?” Mervin asked.

“It says PIZZA on the box, and over at the place where they are made, some get thrown out on the ground at the back of the building. I guess they don’t want them all.”

“We found these bottles and filled them from the water taps on the side of the building, so we have plenty of food and water.”

Loaded up, we moved on to a safer place to sit and eat the free feast they had found so easily. It did not take very long; we soon found a pile of plastic, some boxes, old rope and things to climb under. There we broke the pizza into small pieces and shared it out, and started our feast. I had some marked ‘Margret and Rita’, washed down with gulps of fresh clean water. I was starting to like this ‘freedom’, which Mervin had talked about for so long, and the fuller I became the more I liked it. Someone had a cheese pizza that they could not manage to eat, so Mike and I forced that down too, until our normally flat tummies were round and full.

It was time to sleep now. Fat and full we settled down, with Mervin and Marcos looking out to keep us all safe.