Race Night Read online

WHEElers No. 2

  Race Night

  Emma Laybourn

  Copyright 2013 Emma Laybourn

  Read the first book in the WHEElers series, Petrol Paws, free!

  For more details and lots of other free ebooks, please visit Emma Laybourn’s website at

  www.megamousebooks.com

  Licence notes

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook. If you would like to share it with your friends, please encourage them to download their own free copy. This book may be reproduced, copied or distributed for non-commercial purposes only.

  This book is dedicated to Sam and Charlie, even though they are now too old to read it.

  Race Night

  Chapter One

  Horace was in the dog-house.

  True, it was a brand new dog-house. Mr Hay had just built it in the garden.

  It had a red roof and HORACE written over the doorway. Inside it was his bean-bag with its comforting smells of toast and old sausage. Kitchen smells.

  Unfortunately, it was a long way from the kitchen. Horace was banned from the kitchen after finding a bowl of custard in the fridge.

  Mr Hay had bellowed like a blustering bull.

  “That dog cannot have the run of the house any longer!” he roared. “It’s not just the paw prints in the custard. It’s the doggy dribble on the breadboard! It’s the dog-biscuits that he steals from the cupboard! It’s the old pizza that he drags out of the bin!”

  Horace was most indignant. They were his dog-biscuits, weren’t they? He hadn’t stolen them. And Mrs Hay had thrown the pizza away.

  Licking up stray breadcrumbs was part of a dog’s job. As for the custard, he’d simply been fascinated by its wobble.

  But now he was in the dog-house, shut out from the kitchen.

  Shut out from the garage.

  Shut out from the car...

  No longer could he creep into the garage at night and sit blissfully in the driver’s seat. He was heart-broken.

  It was only a few weeks ago that Horace had first borrowed the car keys. With the help of the two hamsters and Kimi, the snake next door, he had set out in Mr Hay’s car. To his joy, he had learnt to drive!

  Once the other dogs in the neighbourhood saw Horace at the wheel, they went car-crazy. Now they were all learning to drive too. At dead of night, cars buzzed and beeped around the sleeping streets.

  Their human owners did not know the truth. Oh, they wondered at the muddy seats and moaned about the battered bumpers. They grumbled about vandals and joyriders. Some blamed their own teenagers.

  It never occurred to them that dogs could learn to drive.

  Not just dogs. Cats got in on the act as well.

  But not just any old cats...

  Right now, as Horace lay in his lonely dog-house in the dark, he could hear the throaty purr of sports cars racing up and down, as if panthers were patrolling the streets. He put his paws over his ears and moaned.

  “Drat those cats!”

  He knew who was driving: the snooty cats from the car showroom down the road. Mordle’s Modern Motors had the fastest, sleekest cars in town.

  Horace stuck his head under his beanbag, trying to shut out the glorious snarl of speeding engines. It didn’t work. He whined with jealousy.

  “Why do I have to sleep out here?” he whimpered. “Why can’t I be driving too? It’s so unjust. I learnt to drive first! It’s not fair... Ow!”

  Something had pulled his tail. Leaping to his feet, Horace whirled round indignantly.

  “It’s only us,” said Tickety, the hamster, in the doorway of the dog-house.

  “Well, Horace? Are you coming?” demanded Boo, her brother, hopping impatiently beside her.

  Horace was bewildered. “Coming where?”

  “To the Faversaver car park! That’s where it’s all happening!”

  “What’s happening?”

  “The rally!”

  “What rally?”

  “Hurry up, Horace!” “Stunt Hamsters for ever!” yelled Tickety and Boo. They scampered to the fence, dived beneath it and were gone.

  “Rally?” said Horace. Hurrying out of the dog-house, he put his front paws on the fence to peer over it.

  Headlights criss-crossed the sky above the Faversaver supermarket. All the growling engine noises came from that direction.

  “A rally!” exclaimed Horace. Desperate to see what was going on, he scrabbled up on to the wheelie bins and leapt over the fence. Then he galloped after the hamsters towards the supermarket.

  At this time of night, its car park was normally dark and deserted. But now headlights were swooping wildly round it. A dozen cars careered across the tarmac, squealing round the corners.

  A crowd of dogs stood watching. Tickety and Boo perched on the handle of a shopping trolley, cheering the drivers on.

  The drivers were all dogs. A bouncy brown mongrel pulled up nearby in a Mini Cooper and jumped out to check a tyre.

  “Is it a race?” asked Horace.

  “Just a practice,” replied the mongrel. Then she stared at him. “Hey – aren’t you– you’re...”

  “Horace,” said Horace.

  “Horace? You’re the Horace? The Legendary Horace? Oh, wow!” She began to jump up and down, ears flapping, as if she was on springs. “I’m Ragbag. I saw you drive that tractor. I’m so proud to meet you, Horace! You’re the champ!”

  “Am I?”

  “Hey, everyone!” she called out. “This is Horace – the very first driving dog! The one who showed us the way!”

  At once Horace was surrounded by eager dogs all yapping with delight and trying to lick him.

  “It was nothing, really,” he said modestly.

  “Can you give us some tips?” they yelped. “How fast can you do nought to sixty?”

  “Can you do a handbrake turn?”

  “What’s the best car you’ve ever driven?”

  “Well, I don’t really know,” Horace began. He didn’t want to tell them that the only car he’d ever driven was Mr Hay’s old banger, which did nought to sixty in about half an hour. And a tractor, which had been even slower...

  “Give us a demo!” begged Ragbag. “Here, use my car! It’s not big, but it’s nippy.”

  Before he could protest, Horace was hustled into the Mini Cooper.

  It certainly wasn’t big. Horace was a long-legged Irish Dane, and didn’t need to stretch to reach the pedals. But the controls looked quite different to those in Mr Hay’s car.

  “I don’t know if I should,” he said anxiously.

  “Of course you should! And so should we!” squeaked Boo. “We’ll be your crew.” He swung off the shopping trolley handle and landed with a thump on the back seat behind Horace.

  “Chocks away!” cried Tickety as she joined him. “Let’s go!”

  Horace put his foot down. The Mini shot off, pinning him back in his seat.

  It took him a few minutes to get used to it, but soon he was buzzing around the car park like an oversized bumble bee. Ragbag was right: it was a nippy little car.

  As the other dogs applauded, Horace puffed his chest out proudly. He really was the champ!

  Then, above the Mini’s engine, he heard another noise. If the Mini Cooper buzzed like a bee, this sounded like a hornet. A very large hornet with a bad cold and a worse temper...

  Into the car park shot a lean red sports car. It sped right across his path.

  “Get out of the way!” barked Horace indignantly.

  He recognised the car. It was a Kazlo Burlap, the fastest motor in Mr Mordle’s showroom. There was a cat leaning out of each window: and he knew those cats as well.

  White-furred Fang sat behind the wheel. With him was the tabby, Demon.

  Demon waved at him. “Hey, Horace! Nice litt
le tin can you’ve got there!” she jeered.

  “You call that driving? What a useless mutt!” scoffed Fang. “Watch us, and see how it should be done!”

  The Burlap screamed round with an immaculate handbrake turn. Then it took off across the car park in a cloud of dust and empty crisp packets that left Horace far behind.

  He stamped his foot down with determination. He had just started to chug after the Burlap when it wheeled round again and stopped. Fang stuck his head out of the window.

  “That the best you can do?” he called.

  “Give me a chance!” cried Horace. “I can go much faster than this!”

  “Give you a chance? We’ll give you more than a chance. We’ll give you a challenge!”

  “What?”

  “This time next week,” purred Fang, “we’ll have a race. Two laps of the car park. We’ll see who’s fastest then!”

  A black cat popped up from the footwell.

  “We’re the champs and you’re the chumps!” it yelled.

  Fang jumped on its head. “Shut up, Pibbles,” he snarled. “Get back down there and do the clutch.”

  The Burlap set off again like a fire-cracker.

  “Don’t dawdle, dogs!” yelled Demon, as she waved a disdainful paw at them. “Daft dogs! Doo-lally dogs! You’re all barking mad!”

  At that, the dogs did indeed go mad. With furious woofs, they began to chase the cats’ car as it revved around the car-park. The Burlap was pursued by a howling, barking, thundering mob. Pandemonium reigned...

  Until, all of a sudden, a brilliant searchlight blazed out.

  The dogs stopped in their tracks, dazzled. Horace was blinded. What was going on? What were those sirens?

  “Wahey! It’s the police!” cried Boo. At once, the cats’ car whizzed away behind the supermarket, out of sight.

  But the bewildered dogs stood still for too long. They were trapped. Police cars hemmed them in. Out of the nearest car leapt a pair of police officers and an elderly German Shepherd dog.

  “Looks like we’ve got the culprits, Sergeant Baines!” the policeman cried.

  “We have indeed, Constable!” said the policewoman. “Caught red-handed – thanks to Justine.” She bent to give the German Shepherd dog a pat.

  “Nice work, Justine!” she said. “I would never have believed a dog could drive, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. But now we know it’s true. We’ve caught those canine car thieves in the act!”

  Chapter Two