Goldwhiskers Read Free Page A

‘Tank’ Wilson, a pair of sixth-formers who lived to torment younger and weaker kids like himself. And now he’d left them far, far behind.
    A whole week without sharks! Oz settled back into his seat with a smile. It was almost too good to be true.

CHAPTER THREE
DAY ONE – MONDAY 0600 HOURS
    â€˜I never want to see another herring as long as I live,’ snarled Roquefort Dupont, poking his long, ugly snout over the edge of the wharf and heaving himself up on to its weather-beaten planks. In one of his filthy paws, the supreme leader of Washington DC’s rat underworld – and recently elected Big Cheese of the Global Rodent Roundtable – clutched a makeshift lead. He yanked on it, dragging a scrawny, bedraggled mouse up on to the dock beside him. ‘Don’t you agree, Fumble?’
    The mouse nodded listlessly. He looked miserable, and he reeked of fish. They both reeked of fish. They’d had nothing but herring to eat since a freak storm had blown them off course and the balloonon which they’d been travelling had crash-landed in the North Sea.
    Dupont’s Parisian cousin, Brie de Sorbonne, leaped nimbly up beside them. ‘
Moi aussi
,’ she said with a delicate shudder. ‘
Au revoir
to herring!’ She looked back in distaste at the Norwegian fishing trawler anchored behind them, then glanced at a gleaming white cruise ship docked several wharves away. ‘Such a pity we weren’t picked up by one of zose,’ she added ruefully. ‘Now, zat’s ze way to travel.’
    â€˜After that storm, we were lucky we got picked up at all,’ grunted a broad-shouldered rat who was clambering on to the dock beside her. It was Stilton Piccadilly, head of London’s rat forces. Behind him, the other members of the Global Rodent Roundtable hauled themselves up the rope that tethered the fishing boat to the wharf in Oslo’s harbour. The rats huddled together in the chill predawn air, their stomachs sending up a loud chorus of hungry rumbles.
    Piccadilly was right. Without the
Dagmar Elisabeth
and her captain’s sharp eyes, the entire GRR would be at the bottom of the sea right now instead of standing on a dock in Norway. Luckily for them, the trawler’s skipper had spotted their bright balloonafloat on the water and angled closer for a better look. He’d quickly recognized it as the replica of the Pilgrim ship
Mayflower
that had escaped from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City. The fiasco had made headlines worldwide. Grappling the balloon up on to the deck, the captain had stored it away in the ship’s hold, intending to post it back to its owner as soon as he reached port. The rats, hidden in the balloon’s deflated folds, had been stored along with it. They’d remained trapped aboard the
Dagmar Elisabeth
for weeks as the ship poked its way through Norway’s fjords and inlets, slowly filling her cargo bays with herring.
    Brie caught sight of her reflection in the window of a nearby warehouse and shrieked. Her companions whirled round, fangs bared and claws at the ready.
    â€˜What! Where?’ snarled Dupont, primed for a fight.
    Brie covered her eyes with her paws and pointed wordlessly at the window with her tail. The other rats gasped as they, too, spotted themselves.
    â€˜I’m a walking skeleton!’ cried Dupont, aghast. He poked his prominent ribs in dismay.
    â€˜Skin
und
bones,
ja
,’ agreed Muenster Alexanderplatz.The big black rat from Berlin, better known as Muenster the Monster, plucked sadly at his own gaunt hide.
    It was true. The rats were an exceedingly skinny lot, thanks to the trawler’s all-herring-and-nothing-but-herring diet.
    Gorgonzola, the senior rodent in the group, stepped forward. His belly, though still ample, no longer scraped the ground as he walked. ‘Food,’ demanded the Italian rat, ‘
pronto
. Then home. For me,
Roma
!’
    Everyone stared