Prologue - The Peski Kids

This is the prologue from my book 'The Peski Kids, The Mystery of the Squashed Cockroach'. It sets up the story to come. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:43

Hello, and welcome to bedtime stories with me are ARAT. Well, welcome to series two. We're gonna embark on a new project. I am gonna start reading you. One of my books, the pesky kids, the mystery of the squashed cockroach. Now there are 26 chapters in this book, plus a prologue. So I figured out that if I do three episodes a week, releasing them on Wednesdays, Fridays and Mondays, that should take me nine weeks to get through. Um, so we'll see how we go. I know the keen listeners out there will be saying to themselves, but hang on on, she already read the prologue and the first chapter early on in bedtime stories with IRA SPRAT in one of the earlier episodes. And yes, that is true. But I figured if I was gonna read you the whole book, I needed to start from the beginning again. So bear with me today will be the prologue. Friday will be the first chapter, but by Monday, next week, it will all new material. So hang in there anyway, let's start the story. Here we go. Prologue. The line shuffled forward, Dr. Banfield had just checked in for her flight. She was hoping to get back before the children came home from school, she only needed to pass through security. Then she'd be able to sit down and relax in the lounge. As much as you can relax, surrounded by a thousand sweaty, nervous strangers, but the line was taken forever. There was a family in front of her fussing over their hand luggage. They seemed to have broken every airport security rule, liquids, scissors, bottle openers. They had everything they shouldn't in their bags. Finally, their things pass through the x-ray machine for the last time. And Dr. Banfield was able to lift her one carryon suitcase onto the conveyor. She rifled through the pockets of her old TWE jacket, digging out her spare glasses, throat, lozenges, and tissues. She dropped them into a plastic tray, then stepped through the metal detector. Security guards never wanted to pat her down or do an explosive test on her bag. She was a frumpy middle aged lady. She was harmless. They barely even noticed her. That was until now the conveyor belt jutted to a halt. Dr. Banfield looked up as a man in a cheap gray suit, stepped into the security area. He, he whispered something to the x-ray operator. Then pulled Dr. Banfield's suitcase aside. He motioned for Dr. Banfield to join him at the counter. This had never happened before she watched as the man in the cheap suit, opened his suitcase and searched through her dirty clothes in museum paperwork. What is this? Asked the man with a thick accent. He pulled something out for the bottom of her suitcase. It was a large bone. Well, that's the oar of ASTE. Sous said Dr. Banfield. It was found in Kiev. It's particularly significant because the striations on the bone appeared to be the teeth marks of a saber tooth tiger, which would be the earliest known confirmation of that species on the Asian continent. Really set the man in the suit. We'll see about that. He raised the bone and whacked it down hard on the edge of the counter. No cry, Dr. Banfield. It's a crucial fossil for understanding the evolution of mamals in Eastern Europe. The man in the a suit apparently did not like being yelled at by a frumpy middle aged lady. He looked angry now as he raised the burn again and smashed it down even harder, it shattered into a thousand fragments, but lying in the middle was something black and shiny, a small USB drive. The man in the suit, picked it up. What do we have here? I've got no idea how that got there. As a Dr. Banfield, she turned pale her eyes, GAed wide. This was going terribly wrong. You had better come with me set the man ominously. But my flight said, Dr. Banfield, I have to get home. My children are expecting me. I'm sure it will only take a few moments to clear this up, said the man with a smile. He was lying. It took Dr. Banfield's very large brain, just a millisecond to recognize this fact, another millisecond to see that two armed guards were approaching to assist him and a third millisecond to decide that her best course of action was to punch this man in his cheap gray suit in the throat with her wedding ring, Dr. Bamfield lashed out with lightning speed hit the man so hard. His brain was momentarily starved of oxygen, and he collapsed the two armed guards hesitated. Their smaller brains were struggling to assimilate the fact that a Dowdy middle aged lady had just fell their head of department. One of them beated reached for his gun, but his hand had only touched the grip. When Dr. Banfield broke both the bones in his forearm with a brutal turning kick, she then kicked him in the knee with her other foot to knock him down too. The other guard lunged for her, Dr. Banfield ducked slammed her elbow into his solar plexus, delivered an upper cut to his jaw and took off running. She vaulted over the x-ray machine and sprinted back out into the check-in lobby. It would take a few seconds from reinforcements to arrive. She had to get out of there. Unfortunately, 2:00 PM at any airport is a busy time. People were moving slowly, dragging unwieldy luggage behind them. Dr. Bamfield ran, picking up speed. As she hurdled bags bounced off passengers and dodged around trolleys until suddenly she slammed into a brick wall. At least that's what it felt like. She soon worked out from the gray polyester jacket pressed into her face that she had been crash tackled. She was hoisted to her feet. The man in the suit was holding her tightly by the upper arm who looked disheveled. Dr. Bandfield you are under arrest spat the man, but I'm just an academic. So Dr. Bandfield with bumbling innocence, a I studied dinosaur bones. Don't give me that set the man. You are a spy. The end. That's it for this. I was gonna say this week, but for this time, there'll be the next episode on Friday. Okay. So as I said, I am now reading to you from one of my books, the pesky kids, mystery of the squashed cockroach. So if you wanna read along with me, or if you wanna jump ahead and read the book, just go out and buy it. You can order it through any bookstore or anywhere you download eBooks. Okay. That's it for an hour until Friday. Goodbye.