Snuff Fiction (25 page)

‘Come on.’ I hauled Norman up. ‘Act casual. Make for the door.’ We fought our way out of the scrum in as casual a way as we could. Which was not, perhaps, quite as casual as it might have been, but time
was
ticking away.

‘I think we should forget “act casual”,’ said Norman. ‘I think we should go for “run for our lives”.’

‘I think you’re right.’

We ran for our lives.

But could we run?

Could we bugger!

We were reduced to doing a lot of leaping about, trying not to step on people’s faces. It was a bit like that ludicrous hop, skip and jump thing they do in the Olympics.

I had hoped for a clean getaway, but Norman’s fans weren’t having that. They came in hot pursuit.

‘Switch off your bloody suit,’ I shouted at him.

Norman fumbled once more in his pocket. But this isn’t easy to do when you’re hop, skip and jumping.

What happened next had an elegant, almost slow-motion quality about it. The remote control slipped from Norman’s fingers. It arced through the air. It fell towards the floor. It struck the floor and Norman’s big left platform shoe came crunching down upon it. And then there was a sort of sparkler fizzing. It came from Norman’s suit. The suit began to throb, to pulsate. It began to glow.

There was a sort of ear-splitting whine that turned every head in the place.

And what happened next wasn’t elegant.

What happened next was pure chaos.

Tomorrow belongs to those who can see it coming.

The Doveston

Allow me to set the scene, as it were.

Try to imagine that moment before the chaos kicked in.

Picture, if you will, the great hall.

Picture the duff decorations. The crudely daubed and badly stencilled walls. That vile dog-dragon thing that dangles from the chandelier. Picture the mariachi band, on high in the minstrels’ gallery. It’s the very band that once played Brentstock. Older now, of course, but still with lots of puff. And see their instruments. The trumpets and the flugelhorns, the cornets, the euphoniums, and indeed the ophicleides.

Now picture the people below them. All those beautiful people. Those rich and famous people. Those have-it-alls at the very top. Those people of the Secret Government. See how very well dressed they all are. How gorgeously attired. Some are on their feet, but most still loll about, languidly beckoning to waiters and shavenheaded dwarves.

And try if you can to picture Norman. He’s right down there in the very middle of the great hail. He’s still got his trilby on his head. Oh no, he hasn’t, no. He’s torn his trilby off his head. He’s beating at himself with it. He seems to be on fire. There’s this big corona of light all around him. There’s smoke rising up from his shoulders. And he’s flashing on and off. His suit. It’s going like a stroboscope. And there’s this awful noise now. It’s coming from the suit. It’s a high-pitched whining sound. A real teeth-clencher, an ear-drum-piercer.

All eyes are upon Norman. The lollers are scrambling to their feet, covering their ears and howling.

And now the chaos kicks in.

‘Ooooh!’ went Norman, beating at himself. ‘I’m reaching critical mass.

Now, generally speaking, your really big punch-up starts small and works its way towards a crescendo. A bit like a military campaign. Minor skirmishes, leading to the battle proper. Usually the two opposing sides get the chance to size each other up before charging headlong. That’s the way it’s done. You wouldn’t just jumble the two sides together, bung everyone into a big room and simply blow a whistle, would you?

That would be chaos.

Wouldn’t it?

Yet here, suddenly, in the great hall, were two utterly opposing sides, all jumbled up together. What sides are these, I hear you ask. One male side and one female, is the answer.

As Norman’s suit reached critical mass it discharged such a rush of power that there could be no middle ground. The force was overwhelming. The women overwhelmed with love, the men with absolute hatred. Norman was no longer Norman at all. To the women he was a God-like being. To the men, the Devil Incarnate.

Now, women always know what men are thinking and a woman will fight hard to save the man she loves. So, as the men rose up as one to slay the evil demon, the womenfolk rose up as one to save the man they loved.

And if you’ve ever seen two hundred women take on two hundred men in a no-holds-barred grand-slam tag-team main event, then you’ll know what I mean when I tell you it was brutal.

I got welted with another bloody handbag.

It was the war of the sexes. A kind of simultaneous female uprising of the kind no doubt dreamed about by Emmeline Pankhurst (1858—1928) that now legendary English suffragette leader, who in 1903 founded the militant Women’s Social and Political Union.

It was war.

But then war, what is it good for? I ask you. Absolutely nothing (Good God y’all).

The women beat upon the men and the men lashed out at the women. Norman tore his jacket off and flung it into the air. As waiters’ trays went sailing overhead and love-sick dwarves bit waiters in the nadgers, I did that thing that the handyman’s dog did. I made a bolt for the door.

I was not alone in doing this. Norman, on his hands and knees, his trousers round his ankles, caught me up.

He had his bunch of convenient keys in his hand.

‘Out,’ went Norman, ‘Out. Come on, I’ll lock the door.’

We scuttled out and slammed the front door shut upon the chaos. Norman turned the key in the lock. ‘That should keep them at bay,’ he said.

‘What’s the time? What’s the time?’

‘Damn,’ said Norman, kicking off his platform shoes and pulling up his smouldering trews. ‘My watch is in my jacket. But there can’t be much time left. A couple of minutes at most.’

‘Let’s head for the gates then. I’ll race you.’

I was on the staffing blocks and I was almost off, but Norman said, ‘Hold on.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘What is it?’

Norman peered into the darkness. ‘There’s something wrong out there,’ he said. ‘I can feel it.’

I squinted about. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I told him. ‘This is no time to be scared of the dark.’

‘It’s too quiet. Too still.’

‘It’s not back in there.’

Sounds of battle issued from within the walls of Castle Doveston. Breakings of glass and smashings of furniture. And the occasional thud as someone blundered into an invisible pillar. Although, in all the hullabaloo, you really couldn’t hear those.

‘Look,’ and Norman pointed. By the light that issued from the windows of the great hall, a rather dancing light with lots of moving silhouettes, we could see the big black lorries. They now had their tailgates down and ramps leading from their open rear ends to the ground. Norman limped on stockinged feet across to the nearest lorry.

‘We don’t have time,’ I shouted to him. ‘Come on, Norman, let’s go.

‘No, wait.’ Norman sniffed at the ramp. ‘Offal,’ he said, ‘dead meat. The lorries are empty, but whatever was in them dines upon meat.

‘Wild animals.’ I was soon at Norman’s side. ‘Set free in the grounds, just in case anyone was to escape the explosion.’

‘He didn’t miss a trick, the Doveston, did he?’

‘He never left anything to chance.’

‘Oh Gawd,’ said Norman and he pointed again. This time out into the night. I peered in the direction of his pointing and I didn’t like what I saw.

There had to be hundreds of them out there. Thousands, perhaps. Lurking where the hall’s light dimmed to night. Lurking on the edge of darkness, as it were.

Chimeras.

Fully grown? Half grown? Maybe just a quarter grown. But great big sons of birches none the less. Towering well above the eight foot mark, fanged-mouths opening and closing.

Chimeras.

Part sprout. Part basilisk. All predator.

Actually, if they ever come up with the technology again to make movies and they choose to make one out of this book, that would be great for the trailer. Imagine the bloke with the gravelly voice going, ‘They came from the night. Part sprout. Part basilisk. All predator.’

Mel Gibson could play me and perhaps Danny de Vito might be persuaded to play Norman.

‘What in the name of Meccano are those?’ Norman asked. ‘Are they triffids, or what?’

‘They’re
what
and we’re surrounded and time is running out.’

‘They’ll eat us,’ said Norman, shivering horribly. ‘I just know they will.’

‘Damn right they will. Norman, think of something.’

‘Me?
Why
me?’

‘Because you’re the one with the inventive mind. Come up with something. Get us out of here.’

‘Right,’ said Norman. ‘Right. OK. Yes. Well, all right. Let’s imagine this is a movie.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a movie and famous movie stars are playing us. You’re being played by Danny de Vito and I’m being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.’

‘Norman, we don’t have time for this.’

‘No, think. In a situation like this, what would Arnie do?’

I looked at Norman.

And Norman looked at me.

‘Arnie would drive the big truck,’ I said.

‘Into the big truck,’ cried Norman and we made a dash for the cab. We dashed pretty fast, I can tell you. But you do have to hand it to the vegetable kingdom. When it gets the chance to do what it really wants to do, which, as Uncle Jon Peru Joans had told me all those years before, is, ‘get about’, it gets up and about at the hurry-up.

The chimeras swept towards us: a big green ugly snapping sproutish horde of horrors. We were hardly inside the lorry’s cab before they were all about us, evil tendrils whipping and big teeth going snap snap snap.

We locked the doors, I can tell you.

Norman was in the driving seat. ‘Drive,’ I told him. ‘Drive.’

‘Where are the keys?’ Norman asked.

‘I don’t know. Won’t one of yours fit it?’

‘Now you’re just being silly.’

‘Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!’ I caught sight of the little dashboard clock. One of those digital jobbies. It read 23:59.
‘OH SHIT!’

Crack! went the window on my side. Snap snap snap went teeth.

‘You drive,’ yelled Norman. ‘I’ll reach down under the dash and hot—wire it.’

‘How?’

‘Do you really want me to spend time explaining to you how?’

‘No. Just do it.’

I climbed over Norman and he climbed under me. The crashing and bashing was deafening and the lorry was rocking from side to side. Then the passenger window went and we were in
really
big trouble.

Norman was frantically tinkering under the dash. I was clinging to the wheel and wondering just how you drove a big lorry when suddenly everything went a bit green. Very green indeed.

‘Aaaaagh! Get it off me!’ Norman kicked and screamed. The cab was a thrashing maelstrom of tendrils, gnashing teeth and really horrible sprouty breath. ‘Aaaaagh!’ wailed Norman. ‘It’s got me. It’s got me.

And it had got him.

I tried to beat the thing off, but I couldn’t do much with my fists. There was one of those big sunshield visor things above the windscreen. I figured that if I could rip that off, I could use it as some kind of weapon. I reached up and tried to tear it loose.

And guess what? There was a spare set of keys up there, stuck under the sun visor thing.

Just like there always was for Arnie.

‘Hold on, Norman,’ I shouted. ‘We’re on our way.

I rammed the key into the ignition. Chose a gear at random and put my foot to the floor.

And we went into reverse.

Now I’m damn sure that that never happened to Arnie.

The big lorry ploughed back into Castle Doveston, demolishing stonework and stained glass. I chose another gear. It was a good’n this time. The lorry lurched forward, bringing down further stonework and stained glass. Revealing the chaos within to the monsters without. But whatever horrors followed then, I didn’t see them.

I just kept my foot down hard and we took off at a gallop.

Now, big and mean and ugly the chimeras may have been, but they were no match for the lorry. We ripped through their ranks, mashing them under, me clinging onto the steering wheel and Norman clinging onto me.

‘The time,’ I shouted. ‘The time.’

‘I don’t think there’s any time left,’ shouted Norman. But there was.

Just a wee bit.

Just a final ten seconds.

Ten...

I whacked us up a gear and kept the throttle down.

Nine...

Inside the great hall, chimeras wreaking bloody mayhem.

Eight...

More chimeras up ahead.

Seven...

O’Shit and O’Bastard on the minstrels’ gallery bravely letting fly with their Uzis.

Six...

Splatter and splat as the big lorry mows down further chimeras.

Five...

Castle Doveston silhouetted against the full moon.

Four.

Blood and guts and gore and ghastliness.

Three...

Big lorry, engine roaring, ploughs towards the gates.

Two...

Danbury Collins awakens to find himself inside an invisible suit of armour. ‘What’s all this noise?’ he asks.

One...

Big lorry smashes through the gates of Castle Doveston.

Zero...

A very brief moment of absolute silence. Again Castle Doveston standing tall and proud and unsightly against that old full moon,

And then...

BOOOOM.

The biggest BIG AAAH-CHOO! that ever there was.

I didn’t see it.

Though I really wish I had.

They told me that the explosion was really quite spectacular.

Some Bramfielders conga-lining around the car park at the back of the Jolly Gardeners, singing in the New Year and the new millennium, thought at first it was a firework display that the Laird had generously laid on for them.

The charges had been so perfectly placed, you see, and the beauty of it was, as I later came to understand, they were not triggered by any pre-set timing mechanism. The Doveston had let fate set them off.

Allow me to explain.

It had been his obsession that the end of civilization as we knew it would occur at the stroke of midnight on the final night of the twentieth century. He said that he knew it. Had seen it. Had felt it. Whatever. And he was so absolutely certain of this, that this is how he triggered the bomb.

A simple cut-out switch linked to the detonator. As long as the electrical mains supply to Castle Doveston remained on, the bomb remained harmless. But should the power fail, the cut-out switch would trigger the bomb.

And so, of course, if the Secret Government of the World had not really engineered the Millennium Bug and sabotaged all those computer systems, the power would remain on. But if they had and the National Grid failed...

The Big Aaah-Choo!

And, at the very stroke of midnight, the computer systems went down and the National Grid failed.

From beyond the grave, he’d had his revenge.

And, love him or hate him, you had to admire him. It
was
a masterstroke.

But I was telling you about how the charges had been so perfectly placed.

Three separate charges there were. Cunningly angled. They totally atomized Castle Doveston. But through the nature of their positioning, they did something more. They sent three rolling fireballs into the sky.

Three rolling fireballs that formed for a moment the triple snake Gaia logo of the Doveston.

Pretty damn clever, eh?

But, as I said, I didn’t see it. The big lorry I was trying to drive smashed through the gates, hurtled along the road towards the village and then came to that rather tricky bend just before you reach the Jolly Gardeners.

Well, it was dark, very dark now, no street lights or anything. And I hadn’t managed to figure out how to work the headlights on the big lorry and there
was
a lot of ice on the road and we
were
going very fast.

I turned the wheel and I put my foot down hard upon the brake, but that bend
was
rather tricky at the very best of times.

‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh!’ went Norman.

‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh!’ I agreed.

I do have some recollection of the big lorry’s rear end overtaking us and all these trees appearing out of nowhere and then suddenly we were rolling over and then everything went rather dark.

We missed the Jolly Gardeners by inches, but we did hit that very picturesque-looking Tudor house opposite. The one with the carefully tended knot garden and the preservation order on it and everything.

It didn’t half make a noise, I can tell you.

I awoke to find that Norman and I were all tangled up together on the ceiling of the cab, which had now become the floor.

‘Are we dead then?’ Norman asked.

‘No,’ I told him. ‘We’re not dead. We’ve survived. We’re safe.’

Now, I don’t know why I said that. I know I shouldn’t have. I know, as we all know, that if you say that, then you leave yourself open for something really bad to happen.

You bring down upon yourself THE TRICK ENDING.

Don’t ask me why this is. Perhaps it’s a tradition, or an old charter, or something. But I
did
say it. And once I had said it, I couldn’t very well take it back.

‘What’s that funny noise?’ Norman asked. ‘That funny scratching noise?’

That funny scratching noise. Now what could that be?

Could that perhaps be one of the chimeras that had somehow managed to get aboard the big lorry and was even now making its wicked way along inside the back, before plunging into the cab to rip us limb from limb and gulp us down?

Well, it could have been, but it wasn’t.

It was just the wind in the trees.

Phew.

‘Tell me we’re safe,’ said Norman.

‘We’re safe,’ I said. ‘No, hang about. Can you smell petrol?’