Channel Blue (23 page)

‘Coming?’ she asked.

Perry, his body aching with every motion, followed her out into the evening.

While most of the guests were gathered at the opposite end of the spacious lawn, a group of Little Greenies watched curiously as Perry and Amanda emerged through the broken window. The strains of another earnest international hit could be heard over the clinking of glasses and party chatter.

‘Can you run?’ Amanda asked Perry. He reluctantly nodded. He actually wasn’t sure what would happen when he started moving quickly – whether his body would stay in one piece or collapse into parts. ‘I think the closest wall is this way,’ Amanda said, pointing to a large stand of oaks and pines next to the winding driveway.

‘What about a car?’ Perry asked, unconsciously leaning towards the driveway.

Amanda shook her head. ‘Del has a small army, they’ll be watching the limos. Our best bet is getting to the street.’

The hiss of walkie-talkies and urgent voices emerged from the house behind them. ‘Now,’ Amanda said. She kicked off her high heels and sprinted towards the trees. Perry did his best to follow, grimacing and holding one badly bruised arm close to his body as he ran.

Once they reached the trees, Perry staggered to a stop, bent over and put his hands on his knees, gasping for air. ‘Jesus, I feel like shit.’ His eyes adjusted to the darkness. Standing alert in her bare feet among the pine needles, her skin glowing in the moonlight, Amanda resembled some mythological goddess of the forest – all she needed was a garland in her hair and some fairy sidekicks. She watched a group of thugs in dinner jackets assemble in front of the broken window, pointing towards the woods and talking into their walkies.

‘We have to keep going,’ she said, tugging at Perry’s arm. He reluctantly pulled himself up to standing and ran after her as she bounded like a gazelle through the trees. By contrast, he felt like a rusty old tank flattening a path through the scrub brush. They’d run another fifty yards before she stopped suddenly and cocked her head at an angle. ‘What’s that?’

Perry paused and heard the distant sound of excited barking.

‘Dogs,’ he said. ‘Can you believe that? What a cliché. Del Waddle has storm troopers
and
guard dogs.’

Amanda wasn’t amused. In fact, Perry saw a look he’d never seen on her face before. It was so unique to her self-assured features that it took him a moment to identify it. It was fear. Pure abject fear.

‘Dogs?’ she said in a faint, faraway voice. ‘I didn’t know he had dogs.’

‘What’s the big deal? Just work ’em over with some of your alien kung fu, and they’ll be yipping all the way back to the kennel.’

Amanda shuddered and shook her head emphatically. ‘I don’t know anything about dogs. We don’t have the genes for it.’

‘The genes?’

‘You all have pets, it’s part of your over-identification with animals. We don’t. No one’s had any pets for hundreds of years. They’re a huge waste of time and resources—’ The fierce barking grew louder. Amanda swallowed. ‘If I’d known he had dogs, I would’ve gone to the limos.’

‘I thought you said we wouldn’t make it.’

‘Of course, we would have made it. I just thought a chase scene would be more interesting than getting into a car and driving away.’ Perry blinked at her, dumbstruck. ‘We have to do
something
to keep people watching! This talking
blah, blah, blah
—’ Amanda moved one hand back and forth between them. ‘—is not interesting to
anyone
.’

‘Well,’ Perry said, ‘getting torn apart by guard dogs might change that.’ Even in the moonlight, he could see Amanda turn pale. They could now hear the panting of large carnivores racing towards them through the underbrush.

CHANNEL 22

WHAT EARTH STANDS FOR

Amanda was visibly shaking. She clung to Perry in a way that, despite the direness of the situation, he thought he could get used to.

‘What are we going to do?’ she said in a high voice that was nearly unrecognisable.

Perry had no idea, but for the first time since he walked into the control room of Galaxy Entertainment, he felt unafraid. Maybe it was Amanda’s fear that had pushed him in the opposite direction. Maybe surviving so much head trauma in the last couple days had made him stupider. Whatever the reason, he found himself unusually calm as he listened to Del Waddle’s approaching guard dogs.

‘We can’t outrun them,’ he said. ‘Look for a tree to climb.’

They looked around, but none of the trees had branches they could reach. Perry could now see dark forms approaching under the trees. ‘German Shepherds,’ he said. He’d researched attack dogs when he was hired to rewrite a B-movie entitled
Kickin’
It Doggy Style
, which concerned an inner-city hip-hop artist who used a pack of dogs to get revenge on a drug gang.

‘What are we going to do?’ Amanda repeated hysterically, tugging at his jacket.

Four large German Shepherds broke into the clearing, growling ferociously and bounding towards them, the moonlight glinting off their jagged teeth. Amanda whimpered.

‘Stand behind me,’ Perry said. She scrambled around him, cowering. He planted his feet and held his right hand straight out, palm outstretched.

‘
Sitz!
’ he commanded in a gruff German accent. ‘
Bleib!
’ The dogs froze in their tracks as if someone had yanked them on invisible leashes. After a moment of brief uncertainty, they sat. They studied Perry, panted and cocked their heads.

Amanda stood up from behind him. ‘What just happened?’

Perry slowly lowered his hand. ‘They sometimes train them in German. I just told them to sit and stay.’

Amanda smoothed her dress with one hand. ‘Well,’ she said, suddenly very matter-of-fact. ‘We’d better keep going.’

Perry wasn’t sure, but he thought this might be the closest Amanda Mundo had ever come to being embarrassed.

‘After you,’ he said. They continued running through the woods, leaving the dogs in a perfect stay behind them.

Minutes later, they came to the wrought-iron fence that encircled Del Waddle’s estate. Perry had forgotten how tall it was, and he certainly hadn’t remembered the sharp iron spearheads that lined the top. Even if he’d been perfectly healthy, he would have had trouble scaling it. In his present condition, with a torso that felt like a giant bruise and an arm that hung from his shoulder like an overcooked noodle, climbing it would be impossible.

He was about to tell Amanda this when he saw her leap halfway up, shimmy effortlessly to the top and, with a perfectly timed forward handspring, vault over the spearheads, landing perfectly on the other side. In the words of so many annoying gymnastics announcers, she’d stuck it.

‘I can’t climb,’ Perry said. Amanda frowned at him through the bars. ‘I’m too beat up.’

She looked both ways along the fence. ‘There has to be another way through,’ she said, then took off, trotting along the fence towards the gate they’d driven through. Perry turned in the same direction, shadowing her.

They’d walked twenty feet when he heard what sounded like lawnmowers. ‘They’re here,’ he whispered to Amanda. They turned and followed the fence in the opposite direction, scrambling urgently through the brush. When Perry slipped around a tree next to the fence, he came face to face with the muzzle of a gun.

Del Waddle stood unsteadily, like a man in pain. He pressed the barrel of a large handgun firmly into Perry’s forehead.

‘Amanda, run!’ Perry yelled. Before Amanda could react, Del aimed the gun through the steel posts at her, freezing her in her tracks.

‘Don’t move, you witch... or whatever you are,’ the billionaire barked. Two security men drove up on an all-terrain vehicle. In the moonlight, Perry could make out a bumper-sticker:
THIS
VEHICLE
POWERED
100%
BY
THE
SUN
. One security guard shined a bright light into Perry’s face. Squinting past it, Perry could barely make out Del Waddle cocking the gun aimed at Amanda.

‘Well, Perry. Looks like you just got some company in that car crash off Mulholland,’ Del said. The handgun went off with a loud pop and Perry yelped. He charged Del but there was suddenly nothing to charge – Del had collapsed to the ground.

‘He’s shot!’ one of the guards yelled.

Perry looked over at Amanda, who remained standing on the other side of the fence, completely unfazed. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked. She nodded.

The two guards ran to Del, who lay moaning up against a tree. Perry climbed onto the idling solar-powered ATV and, pulling on one of the handles, drove away.

In moments, he had blazed a trail through the brush to the driveway. He turned onto the pavement and soon found himself at the front gate, which opened automatically. He accelerated through it. Amanda waited on the other side, standing nonchalantly as if she were waiting for the bus. She climbed on behind him and they took off, speeding past dark Beverly Hills mansions to the lights of Sunset Boulevard.

‘What happened?’ Perry shouted back to Amanda. ‘He shot you!’

‘When the bullet hit my shield, it must have ricocheted back into him.’

‘Your shield?’

‘Yeah,’ Amanda said. ‘Before my Earth assignment I produced this small planet near Rigel. It had a really weak atmosphere and there were constant meteorite showers. Every-one working there had shield chips implanted in their necks.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘A shield is a force field designed to repel any object that comes at you faster than a hundred miles an hour.’ Amanda said this as if she were a little put out having to explain it. ‘I meant to have the chip removed when I moved here, but I keep forgetting. Take a left on Sunset.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Back to the station.’

Perry backed off the ATV’s throttle. ‘Is that such a good idea, considering they just tried to kill me?’

‘We have to find out if we still have a show. And the truth is, they could kill you any time, if they wanted to.’ Though Perry found this far from comforting, he turned left on Sunset Boulevard and sped past the bright lights of the Strip. Passers-by stopped and stared at the ATV driven by a bloody-faced man in an expensive suit.

They took Coldwater Canyon over the Hollywood Hills and pulled into a gas station across Ventura Boulevard from Galaxy Entertainment. The concrete building appeared suitably dark and foreboding. Amanda dismounted the ATV.

‘I’ll find out what I can,’ she said. ‘Lock yourself in the restroom and don’t open the door until I call you.’

‘I thought you said they could kill me at any time.’

‘They can, but why make it easier for them?’

Perry smiled tightly. ‘Good luck.’

Amanda nodded and stepped into the street. She turned back and said, ‘You might want to wash your face while you’re in there’, before jaywalking barefoot across the boulevard, her flowing white dress flickering in the headlights. Cars honked their horns, but were unable to disrupt her sure and steady pace.

Perry watched until she was safely across and headed to the restrooms. He found the men’s room locked and was about to go to the office for the key when the door opened and what appeared to be a dwarf in a black fedora exited the lavatory, pausing to hold the door open for him.

‘Thank you,’ Perry said.

‘No problem,’ the dwarf said. ‘I hope you die in there.’ Perry froze in his tracks. The dwarf peered up at him. Nick Pythagorus glared from beneath the hat’s brim.

‘Gotten a clue lately?’ Nick asked. Perry could only gape at the boy executive. ‘Jesus, you fucking POFs are so dense. Do I have to spell it out to you?’ Nick sighed with great annoyance. ‘OK, listen to me, you idiot writer. We made you. Your precious planet that you love so much, that you’re dying to protect, is nothing more than a lousy amusement park. And everyone on it is nothing more than—’ A helicopter suddenly hovered overhead, drowning out Nick’s words.

‘What?’ Perry said.

‘All of you!’ Nick yelled. ‘You’re literally just a bunch of—’ The roar grew louder. The wind from the helicopter’s main rotor knocked Nick into Perry, and the boy grabbed onto one of Perry’s pockets for balance. Perry looked up. The helicopter now seemed to be just a few feet overhead – he felt like his eardrums might explode. When he looked back down, Nick was gone. He spun round, but there was no trace of him. The helicopter rose back up into the air and flew away.

After a moment of feeling completely creeped out, Perry entered the restroom. He turned on the light and yelped in terror: a bloody, disfigured face stared back at him. It took him a moment to realise that it was his reflection. No wonder Amanda had suggested he wash. He turned the handle of the rusty hot water faucet and waited until the trickle of water was warm before gently splashing it onto his face.

He was drying his hands with a paper towel when he heard a car pull up outside the door.

‘Open up!’ It was Amanda’s voice. Perry threw away the towel and stepped out of the restroom.

Amanda sat in the driver’s seat of a Galaxy Entertainment service van. ‘Get in,’ she said. Perry couldn’t help noticing that her manner was oddly gruff.

‘What did you find out?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said, annoyance lacing her voice. ‘They wouldn’t even let me past the lobby. I knew where the keys to the van pool were, so I picked this up.’

‘What do we do?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Bunt. What do
you
want to do?’

‘Go home and get some sleep.’

Amanda shrugged. ‘Then get in.’ Perry climbed into the passenger side. While fastening his seat belt, he noticed that Amanda’s feet were still shoeless.

‘Nick Pythagorus paid me another visit,’ he said.

Amanda didn’t seem surprised by this. ‘Yeah?’

‘He told me that the Earth was just an amusement park.’

Amanda shook her head. ‘He’s lost his mind. It happens a lot to young executives. They have no experience with failure so the first time they lose, they completely self-destruct.’

‘Then an odd thing happened.’