Cows in Action 12 Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The C.I.A. Files

  Prof. McMoo’s Timeline of Notable Historical Events

  Chapter One: Cows Might Fly!

  Chapter Two: Enter . . . The Vikings!

  Chapter Three: The Pillage Idiots

  Chapter Four: Trouble For Shore

  Chapter Five: Attack of the Zombie Vikings

  Chapter Six: Viking Disliking

  Chapter Seven: The Deadly Dr Gaur

  Chapter Eight: The Valley of Fear

  Chapter Nine: Trapped!

  Chapter Ten: Emoo-Gency!

  Chapter Eleven: Hard Rain

  Chapter Twelve: Splashing Out

  About the Author

  Also by Steve Cole

  Copyright

  About the Book

  A VIKING DISLIKING!

  Genius cow Professor McMoo and his trusty sidekicks, Pat and Bo, are star agents of the C.I.A. – short for Cows In Action! They travel through time, fighting evil bulls from the future and keeping history on the right track . . .

  In the year 878, England trembles under Viking ATTACK – but the deadly Danes are being snatched by SEA-MONSTERS. What does this have to do with some STOLEN zoo animals and a MAD bull scientist from the future? Only McMoo, Pat and Bo can find out!

  It’s time for action. Cows In Action.

  For Victoria Charlotte Ready

  THE C.I.A. FILES

  Cows from the present –

  Fighting in the past to protect the future . . .

  In the year 2550, after thousands of years of being eaten and milked, cows finally live as equals with humans in their own country of Luckyburger. But a group of evil war-loving bulls – the Fed-up Bull Institute – is not satisfied.

  Using time machines and deadly ter-moo-nator agents, the F.B.I. is trying to change Earth’s history. These bulls plan to enslave all humans and put savage cows in charge of the planet. Their actions threaten to plunge all cowkind into cruel and cowardly chaos . . .

  The C.I.A. was set up to stop them.

  However, the best agents come not from 2550 – but from the present. From a time in the early 21st century, when the first clever cows began to appear. A time when a brainy bull named Angus McMoo invented the first time machine, little realizing he would soon become the F.B.I.’s number one enemy . . .

  COWS OF COURAGE – TOP SECRET FILES

  PROFESSOR ANGUS MCMOO

  Security rating: Bravo Moo Zero

  Stand-out features: Large white squares on coat, outstanding horns

  Character: Scatterbrained, inventive, plucky and keen

  Likes: Hot tea, history books, gadgets

  Hates: Injustice, suffering, poor-quality tea bags

  Ambition: To invent the electric sundial

  LITTLE BO VINE

  Security rating: For your cow pies only

  Stand-out features: Luminous udder (colour varies)

  Character: Tough, cheeky, ready-for-anything rebel

  Likes: Fashion, chewing gum, self-defence classes

  Hates: Bessie Barmer – the farmer’s wife

  Ambition: To run her own martial arts club for farmyard animals

  PAT VINE

  Security rating: Licence to fill (stomach with grass)

  Stand-out features: Zigzags on coat

  Character: Brave, loyal and practical

  Likes: Solving problems, anything Professor McMoo does

  Hates: Flies not easily swished by his tail

  Ambition: To find a five-leaf clover – and to survive his dangerous missions!

  Chapter One

  COWS MIGHT FLY!

  AS THE SUN’S first stirrings warmed the skies over Farmer Barmer’s organic farm – CREEEAK! – the door of a cowshed swung noisily open.

  Pat Vine, a young, inquisitive bullock, peered out from inside. “All clear, Professor,” he whispered.

  “Mooovellous!” The booming voice was deafening in the dawn quiet. “My latest invention’s first ever test flight. Imagine that, Pat. I can’t wait!”

  Pat smiled as Professor Angus McMoo, a brilliantly brainy bull, moved out of his shed and into the thin morning light.

  “Conditions are perfect!” McMoo declared, slurping from a steaming-hot bucket of tea that fogged up his glasses. “Just enough light to see by and no wind.” A rude bottom noise erupted from inside the shed. “Well, not much wind.”

  “Sorry, Prof!” came a higher voice from the shadows. “Just a bit nervous of trying out your new contraption.”

  “Oh, Little Bo,” McMoo began, “if you’re scared we can forget the whole—”

  “SCARED? I don’t do scared!” Little Bo Vine, Pat’s big sister, stomped out of the shed – with a huge pair of feathered wings strapped to her back!

  “But what if this gadget of yours blows up? I’ll be a flying barbecue!”

  “You’ll be fine,” McMoo assured her. “The wings are powered by your heartbeat. You are the motor!”

  “The mootor, more like,” Pat suggested. “Shame the wings aren’t connected to your mouth, Bo – they’d send you into orbit!”

  Bo scowled. “Watch it!”

  “Shh, you two,” said McMoo. “This invention could be very important to the C.I.A. in their fight against the F.B.I.”

  Pat nodded solemnly. Any humans listening in – assuming a) they understood cow language, and b) they hadn’t run away screaming by now – might have thought McMoo was talking about America’s Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation having a scrap. But the truth of the matter was far stranger.

  C.I.A. here stood for Cows In Action, a crack force of time-travelling cattle commandos – and McMoo, Pat and Bo were its star agents! All three belonged to a special breed of clever cows called Emmsy-Squares, and the F.B.I. they fought was the Fed-up Bull Institute – a menacing force from the far future who wanted evil cattle to conquer the world . . .

  In the savage struggle to stop the cruel bulls, any advantage could be vital. McMoo had already invented the world’s first time machine, disguised as an ordinary cowshed. Pat supposed that creating wings for a cow was a doddle.

  “Switch on, Bo.” McMoo grinned. “A two-minute test flight, then back to the shed for a cuppa.”

  Bo blew a gum-bubble and pressed a white button on the front of her harness. Ba-dump! Ba-dump! A noise like a heartbeat started up – and the wings began to flap! “It’s working, Prof!” Slowly she rose into the air. “Woo-hoo-mooo!”

  “Concentrate, Bo,” McMoo urged her. “You should be able to control your flight just by thinking . . .”

  Bo spiralled improbably through the air, cooing and mooing.

  “Wheee!”

  “Keep the noise down,” McMoo hissed. “You don’t want to wake Bessie Barmer!”

  Pat shuddered. Farmer Barmer was nice enough, but his wife Bessie was big and smelly, and nastier than any animal around. “Bo, look out – you’re flying too near the farmhouse!”

  “Come off it, I’m miles away – OOF!” There was an almighty WHAM as Bo bumped against the wall and her udder whacked an upper window.

  Moments later, a woman’s voice bawled out: “WHAT WAS THAT? SOMEONE CHUCKING STUFF AT ME?”

  “It’s Bessie!” squealed Pat as McMoo hauled him behind a bush for cover. “Look out, Bo!”

  But it was Bessie who was looking out – or rather, glowering out – through her bedroom window. She didn’t realize Bo was actually hovering just above the roof! “If anyone’s out there, they’re going to regret it . . .” The ugly woman glared out a few seconds longer, then stomped away.

  Bo flapped back to the window and pulled a rude f
ace – just as a long lasso was tossed out from behind the bushes in the front garden! It looped round her neck, and with a sudden jerk she was yanked down to the ground.

  “Bo!” McMoo jumped out of hiding. “Quickly, Pat – she’s under attack!”

  “Get off me!” Bo yelled. There was a ripping noise and the sound of a hefty thump. Pat and McMoo raced over and jumped the bushes like champion racehorses . . .

  To find a broken net and a fuming Bo with wonky wings sitting on top of a struggling, terrified bull. He wore a black suit and sunglasses, and a small pointy hat sat crumpled on his head.

  “Try to catch me, would you?” Bo raised her hoof to give her attacker a conk-punch.

  “Wait, Bo.” McMoo pulled her away. “I recognize him.”

  “I recognize his hat,” Pat added. “He’s a Prime Moo-ver from the twenty-sixth century. One of the C.I.A.’s bosses!”

  McMoo grinned. “Holstein, isn’t it? It was you who took us into the future and asked us to join the C.I.A. all that time ago.”

  “Indeed it was,” said Holstein, dusting himself down.

  “Sorry I whumped you,” Bo apologized, “but you shouldn’t have tried to catch me. I thought you were an F.B.I. agent.” “I thought you were one!” Holstein explained. “You see—”

  “WHAT’S ALL THE NOISE?” Bessie boomed from the upstairs window. “SOMEONE UP TO MONKEY BUSINESS?”

  “Cow business, actually.” McMoo bundled Holstein, Pat and Bo into the bushes just as Bessie’s flushed red face appeared at the window again, her eyes like bloodshot spotlights searing into every corner of the garden.

  “I’ve got the best view in the house from these windows,” she bellowed. “I’ll see you, whoever you are – and I’ll sock you one!”

  As she lumbered off, Pat gave a sigh of relief.

  “Beastly woman,” Holstein grumbled. “I wish you lived far away from her in the future, where cows exist in freedom and peace.”

  “If we did, it would change history,” McMoo reminded him. “And the C.I.A. is supposed to keep history on track.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Holstein agreed. “It seems the F.B.I. is trying to commit a new time-crime, codenamed Operation Viking. They have broken into several zoos and stolen the animals – everything from an octopus to a pair of lions – and transported them into the past.”

  Bo frowned. “Why?”

  “And what’s it got to do with Vikings?” wondered Pat.

  “That’s what we want you all to find out,” said Holstein. “When I saw Bo hovering in the sky like that, I feared she was an F.B.I. agent using a stolen bird to attack you.”

  “So that’s why you roped me,” Bo realized.

  Holstein gave McMoo a sharp look. “If you’d only repaired your time-telephone instead of inventing mechanical wings, Director Yak wouldn’t have had to ask me to come here at all!”

  “Ooops!” McMoo looked sheepish. “I didn’t realize it was on the blink.”

  “Where is Yakky-babes, anyway?” asked Bo.

  “He is busy investigating a prison-break back in our own time,” Holstein informed her. “A highly dangerous F.B.I. mad scientist is on the loose.”

  “Yak will soon catch him,” said Pat confidently.

  “Let’s hope so,” said Holstein. “Meanwhile, having traced recent F.B.I. time-trails, we believe Operation Viking is taking place in the year 878 AD.”

  “878 AD?” McMoo beamed. “That’s when the Vikings were at their height. A time of looting and pillaging! Alfred the Great! Big hairy peasants!”

  “Shhh!” Pat hushed him. “You’ll have Bessie back at the window again!”

  Holstein handed McMoo a small component. “This place-date data chip will direct your Time Shed to the general area. From there, you must hunt down the enemy – and stop whatever they’re planning.” He huffed quietly. “And I do hope this is the last time I have to give a mission briefing while covered by a bush!”

  “Seems quite fitting to me,” said McMoo. “We are undercover agents, after all!”

  Pat gulped. “And now it’s time to prove it – in the past.”

  “So, come on!” Bo burst from the bushes, wings still askew, and struck a heroic pose. “It’s time for action, boys – Cows In Action!”

  Chapter Two

  ENTER . . . THE VIKINGS!

  WHILE HOLSTEIN CREPT back to his time machine in the next field, McMoo hared off to his shed, with Pat and Bo close behind. WHAM! He slammed open the doors and turned a big bronze lever. “Here we go, then!”

  At once, the shed began to rattle and shake. Gleaming computer panels swung out from behind the wooden walls, and a horseshoe-shaped bank of controls rose up from the muddy floor. Cables in the corners crackled with power, pumping energy into the mysterious systems that worked the ramshackle craft. A computer screen came down from the rafters, and a costume cupboard crammed with outfits for every place, time and occasion popped up from behind some hay bales. Pat looked around him with a familiar thrill of excitement – the dowdy cowshed had become the incredible Time Shed, ready to take them to anywhere – and anywhen – in the world.

  “Stick the kettle on, Pat, while I see where we’re going.” McMoo plugged the place-date data chip into the console. “Aha! The north Dorset coast, 2nd April, 878 AD. Not long before Alfred the Great defeated the Vikings at the Battle of Edington . . .”

  “I think I’ve heard of the Vikings.” Bo scowled. “Didn’t they used to go round wearing helmets with cow horns stuck onto them?”

  “That’s a mooth – er, myth, I mean.” McMoo yanked down on the take-off lever and the Time Shed thrummed and rattled. “No one’s ever found a horned Viking helmet.”

  “Lucky for the Vikings,” said Bo, “or else I’d punch them.”

  “That might not be wise,” McMoo warned her, checking his instruments as the shed rode the waves of time to the distant past. “Computer – let’s have the Viking file.”

  The big screen in the rafters glowed into life.

  * * *

  ++ Vikings. ++ Brave, fierce Norse warriors from Scandinavia. ++ Active from around AD 700–1100. ++ Master ship-builders. ++ Great explorers and navigators. ++ Many invaded other countries to steal treasure and conquer the local population. ++

  * * *

  Pat took a nervous sip of tea. “They don’t sound very nice, do they?”

  McMoo drained his own bucket in a single colossal gulp. “By 878 the Vikings had managed to conquer most of England. Only the kingdom of Wessex held out – thanks to King Alfred.”

  Bo yawned. “What was so good about this Alfred the Grape?”

  “Great,” Pat and the professor corrected her.

  “Sorry,” said Bo. “What was so great about this Alfred the Grape?”

  McMoo sighed. “At the time we’ll be arriving, Alfred’s been defeated by the Vikings – but he never stops fighting back. Later this year he’ll raise an army and turn the tables on the Vikings, forcing them out of his land.” McMoo’s voice began to rise with enthusiasm. “That paves the way for him to become the first king of the Anglo-Saxons, the English people. He’ll make laws fairer, he’ll be a champion of reading and writing in English, he’ll start up the first English navy and build fortified settlements so his people can protect themselves from future enemy attacks.” He looked at Bo. “Is that great enough for you?”

  “It’s all right, I suppose,” said Bo. “But could he dance? Could he groove on down to some phat beats? Huh?” She grinned. “Now, that would be great!”

  “You’re starting to grate on my nerves!” complained Pat.

  “Shh, you two,” said McMoo as, with the clinking of a hundred invisible milk bottles, the Time Shed slammed back down into existence. “We’ve arrived! Let’s see where we are.” He ran to the door and threw it open . . .

  To find a spear flying towards him!

  “Whoa!” McMoo ducked as the weapon whistled past his ear and thunked into a hay bale, then quickly slammed the door
shut again.

  Pat charged over to help the professor up, while Bo opened the door a crack and peered out suspiciously. “If someone wants a fight,” she growled, “I’m the cow to give it to them.”

  “I think it was just a wild throw,” said McMoo as he and Pat joined her by the door. “There’s no fighting going on – it’s a chase . . .”

  Pat saw that the shed had landed in a grassy field beside a hedgerow. On the other side of the hedge was a muddy track. An angry mob of rough-looking humans was surging past, waving sticks, spears and stones.

  “Down with the Danes!” someone shouted.

  “Drive them out!” bawled another.

  “Who are the Danes?” asked Pat.

  “It’s what the English call the Vikings,” McMoo murmured as the surly gang vanished round the corner. “Obviously not all Norse raids on England were successful. This lot are being repelled.” He pointed towards the sea, which was visible over a clutch of nearby grassy hills. “I’ll bet the Vikings are trying to get back to their ship – it’s probably close by.”

  “Holstein said that Vikings were key to the F.B.I. plan,” mused Pat. “Maybe the ones being chased know something about it.”

  McMoo nodded. “And if they do, we need to know it too.”

  “Then let’s change into human gear and hope we can gain on the Danes!” said Bo.

  McMoo was already racing over to the costume cupboard. “You’d better take those wings off first.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Bo as McMoo threw a rough mauve dress across to her.

  “Yuk! Is this what Vikings wore?”

  “If we pretend to be Viking raiders, we could be killed on the spot,” said McMoo, passing a green tunic and a pair of simple, scratchy breeches to Pat.

  “Best we fit in with the Anglo-Saxon locals.” He clambered into a grand blue outfit with a cloak, then handed slim silver bands to Pat and Bo. “Here – your ringblenders.”