Robin Hood 2 Read online

  Robert Muchamore’s ROBIN HOOD series:

  Hacking, Heists & Flaming Arrows

  Piracy, Paintballs & Zebras

  Jet Skis, Swamps & Smugglers

  Other series by Robert Muchamore:

  CHERUB

  HENDERSON’S BOYS

  ROCK WAR

  Standalone novels by Robert Muchamore:

  KILLER T

  ARCTIC ZOO

  CONTENTS

  Books by Robert Muchamore

  The Story so Far . . .

  Part I

  News Update

  1. Pint-Sized Tearaway

  2. Ninja Throwing Stars

  3. The Lunchtime Posse

  4. She Wouldn’t, Would She?

  5. Swirl Cake Stitch-Up

  6. Physics Class Hubbub

  7. Fun with Polyester Resin

  8. Sheriff on Speakerphone

  9. Greased Rat Fandango

  10. Low on Ammo

  11. Getting One Step Ahead

  12. Alpha Male Face-Off

  13. My Only Weakness Is Temptation

  Part II

  14. The Great Escape

  15. Flash Wins at Everything (Allegedly)

  16. Who Needs Helmets?

  17. Mario’s Melts Mayhem

  18. Ain’t That a Kick in the Head

  19. Boys Bashed Up

  Special Report

  20. Where Are You, Buttface?

  21. Hurl YA Guts

  22. Thrill-Seeking Personality

  Part III

  23. Dead Posh School Run

  24. Meanwhile at Designer Outlets

  25. Stuck in the Middle with You

  26. Rooftop Pressure Wash

  27. Them Same Old Questions

  28. The Great Castle Hack

  29. The Joy of Fabric Softener

  30. Fake Belly and Specs

  31. Too Much Food

  32. Crushed Nuts

  33. Soggy Dresses

  34. Up with the Cock

  Part IV

  35. Friends and Frenemies

  36. Vital Sandwich Production

  37. South End Shoot-Out

  38. Rugby Boyz Par-Tay

  39. You’re Gonna Carry That Weight

  40. Oww, Me Legs

  41. The Problem with Fingerprint Logins

  42. All in the Timing

  43. Shoot to Miss

  44. Hunting for Dummies

  45. When Mum Picks Your Clothes

  46. Not So Fresh in Here

  47. This Zebra So Yummy

  48. Shooting Rich in a Barrel

  49. Brotherly Love

  50. Unleash Thy Weapon of Doom

  51. Got Red on her Everything

  Breaking News

  52. Everyone Wants to Be Robin Hood (Except Robin Hood)

  Look out for Robin Hood: Jet Skis, Swamps & Smugglers

  Robert Muchamore

  Copyright

  THE STORY SO FAR . . .

  It is a time of strife in Sherwood Forest . . .

  Evil gangster Guy Gisborne has the declining industrial town of Locksley under his thumb, controlling everything from petty drug deals to senior police and judges.

  He works in an uneasy alliance with the Sheriff of Nottingham, Marjorie Kovacevic.

  The ambitious Sheriff likes to portray herself as a successful businesswoman and get-tough politician, who locks up criminals and cracks down on immigration. But deep in the forest, Sheriff Marjorie has an army of private guards who’ll deal brutally with anyone who gets in her way.

  But good folks are fighting back!

  For more than a decade, Will Scarlock has fought to protect the thousands of vulnerable people who live in Sherwood Forest. From a base in an abandoned outlet mall, Will and his comrades provide shelter, healthcare and food to anyone who needs it.

  And there’s a new hero in town . . .

  When Ardagh Hood dared to speak out about corruption in Locksley, Guy Gisborne had him beaten up and framed by corrupt cops.

  Nobody expected his twelve-year-old son Robin Hood to fight back, but he shot Guy Gisborne with an arrow, staged a daring robbery to raise money for Forest People and took out two Locksley police cars during a citywide riot.

  Three months later, Robin is living at the outlet mall, with his new friend Marion Maid and her eccentric family.

  But Gisborne wants revenge and there’s a £100,000 bounty on young Robin’s head . . .

  PART I

  NEWS UPDATE

  ‘Good afternoon, this is Channel Fourteen serving the Central Region. I’m Lynn Hoapili with your local headlines.

  ‘Our top story is that traffic on Route 24 is still subject to severe delays after a tyre blew out on a truck filled with zebras during this morning’s rush hour. The vehicle rolled onto its side and the rear doors flew open as it smashed into the central barrier.

  ‘Eyewitnesses described scenes of chaos as weak and filthy zebras escaped the truck and stumbled into twelve lanes of busy traffic. Several vehicles crashed as they swerved to avoid the animals. Five motorists were taken to hospital by air ambulance and, while most of the animals fled into surrounding forest, vets had to destroy one zebra that was hit by a car.

  ‘A spokesperson for the Animal Freedom Militia has claimed the zebras were being shipped to Sherwood Castle for an upcoming trophy hunt and that cramming so many animals into a small truck is a serious breach of animal welfare regulations. Sherwood Castle management has so far refused to comment.

  ‘In other news, there has been a surprise twist in the controversial trial of Ardagh Hood. Moments before his case went before a judge, Hood accepted a plea deal. In return for a three-year prison sentence, the Locksley man pled guilty to the theft of laptop computers and to resisting arrest.

  ‘Scuffles broke out when news of the guilty plea reached Ardagh’s supporters outside court, and police made several arrests. Hood’s lawyer, Tybalt Bull, said he would have liked to continue the fight to prove Ardagh’s innocence, but that his client risked a sixteen-year prison sentence if he had been found guilty after a full trial.

  ‘Those are the noon headlines. I’ll be back with our main bulletin at one o’clock.’

  1. PINT-SIZED TEARAWAY

  Sherwood Forest stretched across the land, from Lake Victoria to the swampy Eastern Delta. Twenty thousand square kilometres, inhabited by bears, snakes, gigantic crunchy-shelled bugs and a vast population of yellow birds that lived nowhere else on Earth.

  Estimates of Sherwood’s human population varied between thirty thousand and a quarter of a million, and most of them were hiding from something. Bandits, bikers, religious cults, terrorists, refugees and one twelve-year-old boy with a £100,000 bounty on his head.

  To find Robin Hood you had to travel eight kilometres north from his birth town of Locksley, take a right off the twelve-lane Route 24 expressway, then hike down a road that had mostly been reclaimed by forest until you reached the parking lots of Sherwood Designer Outlet Mall.

  It was more than a decade since the sprawling mall sold its last bargain kitchenware and discounted handbags. Now the abandoned H-shaped shopping centre housed a well-organised outlaw community, protected by trip wires, motion alarms and armed guards stationed on a precarious wooden observation tower.

  Although it was just after one on a late spring afternoon, Robin Hood had taken to his den on the upper level of an abandoned sporting-goods outlet. The den was eight by six metres, with walls made from wobbly shop partitions. He sprawled face down on a musty but comfortable mattress, buried under oversized cushions, two duvets and a Berber rug.

  Robin’s bestie, Marion Maid, had been sent upstairs to tell him lunch was ready. She only realised he was under the mound of bedding b
ecause a couple of grubby toes poked out.

  ‘Hey, pal,’ Marion said quietly, as she knelt by the bed. ‘Everyone’s about to eat.’

  ‘Don’t feel like it,’ Robin said.

  His words were clipped because he didn’t want Marion to hear that he was upset. Normally she’d have dived into the cushions or grabbed Robin’s ankle and tickled his foot. But today was different.

  ‘I’m really sorry about your dad,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t even visit him without getting busted,’ Robin complained. ‘My mum’s dead. And my big brother is living in luxury at Sherwood Castle with his new mommy.’

  ‘You’ve got me,’ Marion said. ‘And everyone here has your back.’

  Robin didn’t respond, so she tried a different tactic. Unfortunately it came out sounding grumpier than she meant it to.

  ‘What are you gonna do? Stay under that mound of covers for the rest of your life?’

  ‘I can try,’ Robin snapped back.

  ‘If you can’t face everyone, how about I bring a plate up? This afternoon we can watch a movie on Netflix. Take your mind off things.’

  ‘Internet’s down,’ Robin said. ‘And there’s nothing to do. I’m totally bored and I’m not allowed out of the mall.’

  ‘What are we supposed to do? With a hundred-thousand bounty on your head, every scumbag in Sherwood Forest will be after you.’

  Marion watched the mound of covers shift slightly. Dust billowed as the rug slid onto the floor and she smiled as Robin sat up, sweaty and shirtless. His eyes were gluey from crying and his hair was even messier than usual.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Robin asked, as he stretched and yawned.

  ‘You look adorable,’ Marion teased, as she spotted Robin’s T-shirt on the floor and flicked it towards him. ‘Like a lost puppy.’

  ‘I’m actually kinda starving,’ Robin admitted, a bit more cheerful as his head popped through the neck hole of his shirt.

  ‘You’re always starving,’ Marion said.

  ‘Growing boy,’ Robin said, slapping his belly, then creasing up his nose. ‘Why do you stink of fish?’

  ‘Went fishing with my cousin Freya,’ Marion said, as she sniffed her hoodie. ‘Must have got splattered when we were gutting them.’

  Robin looked sour as he stood up. ‘Thanks for inviting me.’

  ‘We didn’t invite you cos you can’t leave the mall without guards,’ Marion said, as Robin pulled on wrecked Vans.

  ‘I can’t hack another week sitting around here, with nothing but schoolwork and your aunt Lucy’s sudoku books,’ Robin said. ‘I need an adventure – like busting my dad out of jail.’

  Marion laughed. ‘We’re twelve, and Pelican Island is the most secure prison in the country. So ten out of ten for ambition, but a fat zero for practicality.’

  ‘So I sit around here, getting older, doing nothing?’

  ‘We get bossed around by grown-ups, do boring schoolwork and try to have fun when we can,’ Marion said. ‘That’s basically what being a kid is.’

  ‘Who wants to be an ordinary kid?’ Robin asked determinedly as he grabbed the carbon-fibre bow hooked on the wall beside his bed. ‘I’m not ordinary, I’m Robin Hood.’

  Marion cracked up laughing as she opened the den’s wobbly wooden door.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Robin asked.

  ‘You,’ Marion laughed. ‘You’re so full of it!’

  2. NINJA THROWING STARS

  Robin’s half-brother, John Hood, was at school and heard about his dad’s prison sentence when he checked his phone at the start of lunch.

  The immense sixteen-year-old was angry that Ardagh had been framed by corrupt cops. But he knew taking a three-year plea deal was better than the sixteen years his father would have risked by going to trial. Especially at Locksley Central Court, where the judges were as crooked as the cops . . .

  But the news had thrown John off-kilter. He’d forgotten to grab the books he needed for afternoon lessons from his locker and now he was rushing upstairs to fetch them before the bell went.

  Pupils weren’t supposed to go upstairs during lunch-time. Most staff just sent you back down if you got caught. But occasionally they’d dish a detention, so John stopped and listened when he heard scouring sounds at the top of the stairs.

  After a few moments, he heard voices over the scrubbing. Once he was sure it wasn’t staff, he carried on to the top and found a pair of Year Eight boys, who were getting punished by being made to spend lunchtime cleaning graffiti.

  They’d been tasked with removing a two-metre orange arrow, with Robin Hood Rules written above. Although the boys had been working all lunchtime, they’d only made half the arrow and the ROB of Robin blurry, at the expense of soggy trousers and orange streaks down the wall.

  The pair looked sheepish when they saw John Hood’s bulk come around the top of the stairs.

  ‘You’re his brother,’ one, who had curly red hair, said.

  ‘Little John,’ the other added, as he sploshed his scouring pad into a bucket. ‘That’s what they call you, right?’

  ‘Because I’m so small,’ John said, irritated by three things at once.

  First, John found it absurd that his annoying kid brother had become a hero after shooting local crook Guy Gisborne in the balls with an arrow, staging a robbery and taking out two Locksley P.D. cruisers during a riot.

  Second, John was shy and didn’t like talking to random people.

  Third, he was in a rush to grab stuff from his locker and get to his afternoon lesson in the science block on the opposite side of the school.

  ‘Robin’s a legend,’ curly said, reaching towards John for a fist bump. ‘I hope he’s safe, wherever he is.’

  ‘I’m not in contact with him,’ John said, as he unenthusiastically bumped the younger boys’ soapy fists. ‘Hopefully he’s somewhere safe . . .’

  He was drying his hand on his trousers when he rounded a corner and almost walked into Clare Gisborne and two hangers-on. The pair were big enough to intimidate every pupil of Locksley High apart from John Hood.

  ‘Little John, welly, well, well!’ Clare Gisborne said cheerfully.

  Clare was in John’s year. She was as tough as any boy. An expert martial artist, daughter of the villainous Guy Gisborne and the person John Hood least wanted to meet in an empty school hallway.

  ‘Just heading to my locker,’ John said, pointing into the distance.

  Clare copied John’s booming voice, but slurred the words to make him sound dumb. ‘Headinggg toooo mai lockahhhh.’

  Her two goons laughed as they squared up beside her.

  ‘Hear your daddy’s on his way to Pelican Island prison,’ Clare said. ‘And little Robin won’t last with that bounty on his head.’

  John took a step back and held out his hands to show he meant no threat. Clare matched him with a step forward, then pulled up her purple Locksley High polo shirt, revealing tight abs and a holster with pouches for six razor-sharp ninja throwing stars.

  ‘Like my new toys, Little John?’ Clare asked, as she raised a single eyebrow. ‘How’s your footwork?’

  She whipped a ninja star from the belt and threw it. One sharp tooth dug into the floor in the spot where John’s toes had been a quarter-second before.

  ‘You move well for a big guy,’ she said.

  John hopped again as a second ninja star spiked the linoleum. As he turned to run, Clare sprang, hooking his ankle and making him sprawl face first over the floor.

  The two goons cut around, blocking his escape route. As John rolled onto his back, Clare pulled out another ninja star, squatted down on her haunches and cracked a nasty grin.

  ‘Who’s a big boy then?’ Clare teased, as John glanced about frantically, trying to find a way out. ‘So many targets!’

  3. THE LUNCHTIME POSSE

  Marion clanked down the sports store’s dead escalator behind Robin. They found her family dining at a pair of folding tables pushed together outside their den. Mario
n’s mum Indio was placing a large baked fish on the table, reaching between her partner, Karma, and their just turned three-year-old, Finn.

  Marion’s brothers, seven-year-old Otto and nine-year-old Matt, had decided to fight over a bowl of rice, even though there were enough dishes on the table to feed fifty.

  There were also two guests. Marion’s cousin and fishing partner Freya Tuck was no surprise, but her seventeen-year-old half-brother Flash was.

  Flash was boy-band handsome, with curly blond hair, dressed in boots and filthy biker denim. He had the patch of the Brigands Motorcycle Club on his back and a studded leather belt with a hunting knife strapped to it.

  ‘Wassup, little dude?’ Flash asked, as he gave Robin a high-five.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Robin asked back.

  ‘Incident at the Brigands’ camp,’ Flash said sheepishly. ‘I’ll be staying here till my dad calms down and stops threatening to drown me in the sewage pit.’

  Marion and Flash’s dad Jake was known as Cut-Throat. He was the leader of Sherwood Forest’s most notorious biker gang and definitely not a man you wanted to get on the wrong side of.

  ‘Did you get another girl pregnant?’ Freya teased, cracking a wide grin.

  Otto and Matt started laughing wildly, making rude sex gestures with their fingers, as little Finn asked what pregnant was.

  ‘Pregnant is when you have a new baby in your tummy,’ Freya explained. ‘Like your mummy Karma does right now.’

  ‘Just when I thought my big brother couldn’t get dumber, he’s exceeded my wildest expectations,’ Marion said, swelling with fake pride.

  Flash shook his head and tutted. ‘What do you know, titch?’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ Marion said. ‘I spoke to our dad on the phone.’

  Marion enjoyed having the whole table’s attention and paused dramatically.

  ‘They had visitors from another bike gang at the Brigands’ camp,’ she explained. ‘Flash starts playing poker with them and loses all his money. But instead of quitting, he snuck into Dad’s camper and stole the Run Fund.’