The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis (25 page)

Read The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis Online

Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

BOOK: The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis
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Swish wiped the blood from her face. Her crimson hair was drooping with sweat even on this cold night. ‘As long as our ammo lasts,’ she said, ‘and until they bring in them riot shields.’
‘All right,’ said Knocker. ‘When all the animals are free and we’re ready, I’ll shoot out this light.’ He waved a hand at the electric bulb above his head. ‘And you stampede down this street and we’ll go through the slaughterhouse, okay?’
A roar came from the lane. Swish and Knocker looked. A fresh rank
of SBG men was advancing. Now they had their riot shields and their heads were helmeted in shiny black; there were truncheons in their hands.
‘Fire,’ screamed Swish. ‘Keep firing.’ She jerked her head at Knocker. ‘Found yer ’orse yet?’
‘Yes,’ said Knocker, and he left her to get back to the others, but now it wasn’t so easy.
While Knocker had been talking Stonks had succeeded in opening the back of the last lorry and dozens of cows had burst out to join their weight to the sheep, pigs and horses already charging in every direction, eager to find a path, any path, that would lead them from this high bedlam and stink of slaughter.
Knocker had to fight for every inch of his way across the yard, kicking, pushing and shoving. It was a terrible struggle. He had never felt so powerless, never had he been so frightened for his life. He stumbled, half fell, seized a handful of fleece and pulled himself to his feet, swayed and nearly fell again. At last, almost riding on a massive ewe, he got back to his friends and found them sheltering by the side of one of the lorries, fighting now to keep themselves from being trampled to pieces on the ground.
The noise was terrifying. The pigs grunted and butted the sheep out of their way, brutally, their hot eyes burning, thick saliva drooling from their mouths. The sheep were brainless with fear; they bashed their heads against anything that got in their way; they clambered over one another, flailing the air with their feet and bleating like imbeciles. The horses neighed and reared like wild stallions and the cows, most dangerous of all, lowered their horns and pranced sideways as desperate as fighting bulls doomed to die in the arena. The Borribles were surrounded by a seething, rolling torrent of flesh and noise; for anyone who went down under those sharp hooves it would be a painful death, a dreadful maiming.
Knocker could see that Sam was sheltering close to the lorry; Sydney sat astride him with Chalotte behind her. The horse was quivering with fear and both girls were trying to soothe the animal with their hands. Knocker pointed to the electric light at the corner of the yard and yelled out his plan, his voice feeble in all that din.
‘I’ll shoot the light out; that’s the signal for Swish and us. Round up
as many animals as you can and head them for the double doors. The Conkers will go down the side street at the same time and we’ll meet round the front. Keep up close and we’ll all crash through and make for the streets. Chalk Farm is the place to go for.’
Chalotte, high on the horse, loaded her catapult. She winked at Knocker, her spirit up with the joy of the fight, and hardly bothering to look at her target, such an excellent shot was she, the girl from Whitechapel released a stone, firing from the hip, and with an explosion of gas and a crash of glass the light on the corner was extinguished.
As soon as this sign was given the Conkers retreated and divided into two groups, forcing their way back into the yard. When they thought they had gone far enough the two groups turned on a shout from Swish and moved towards each other, joining hands to form a long line which enclosed scores of animals. Then they began to shout and to scream, to kick and to walk forward, driving a huge and dangerous herd before them.
The ranks of the SBG, advancing down the narrow lane, were encouraged by the sudden retreat of the Conkers and pressed on quickly, brandishing their truncheons, confident of victory. But so rapid had the Conkers’ manoeuvre been that before the policemen could reach the corner where the lane entered the yard they were faced by a solid wall of flesh and bone running amok in their direction. At long last the poor beasts of the slaughterhouse had been shown a way out of the dreadful place where they had been imprisoned and tormented beyond despair. With loud squeals and bellowings they charged, fast on the hoof, driven on by the Conkers who ran behind them still shouting, ‘Blancmange! Blancmange!’ at the tops of their voices.
The front line of the SBG riot force was not composed of supermen. When those officers of law and order realized that a multitude of animals was bearing down on them, unstoppable and enraged, led by angry, mad-eyed cows with sickle horns upon their heads and followed by forty punk Borribles shooting stones, they turned and ran.
Unfortunately the policemen in the ranks behind could not see what was happening. They were convinced that the first advance had been a sign of victory. ‘We’ve got ’em,’ they bawled, and stormed down the lane, swinging their truncheons, banging their shields in celebration.
The two bodies of men, one going, one coming, met head on, and
what with the darkness, the plastic visors and the general uproar, blows were struck and great oaths were sworn. There was no time for understanding; neither fire nor bullets would stop these animals, not for a second. Urged on by the Conkers they needed ho urging; they needed only this way out.
Down went the second rank of constables under the rushing feet of their escaping comrades. It was a rout. To the rescue dashed a third rank, only to fall across the struggling men already on the ground. And, before they could rise, they were kicked and trampled into the cobbles by the studded boots of the first rank, who were stopping for no one, friend or foe. But even these men lost their footing as they attempted to leap the arms and legs in their path, and over the whole shifting heap of humanity poured the stampede, as irresistible as lava and as murderous as an avalanche. Nothing now lay between the animals and the front of the abattoir or the entrance to Baynes Street. Out of the narrow neck of the lane they thundered, demons on a jaunt from hell.
Standing in front of the slaughterhouse were more policemen, at least twenty or so, grouped round the cars and vans which they had carelessly parked half on and half off the pavements. Here too were Sussworth and Hanks, directing what they thought was to be the final round-up of the Borrible gang they had been pursuing for months.
The inspector and the sergeant were pleased. They had witnessed three ranks of crack SBG troops hastening out of sight on the heels of a band of punk Borribles. There could be no doubt of the outcome. The punks had only got near the slaughterhouse in the first place because they had known the password, but now, whatever happened, there would be no escape. There were reserves of policemen waiting in Royal College Street, and others advancing along the towpath from both directions. Sussworth clapped his gloved hands and looked at his men. ‘We’ll soon have their ears,’ he chanted. ‘We’ll soon have their ears.’
At this moment he and Hanks and the men standing with them heard a sound that they had never heard before: the sound of more than a hundred animals on the run. That was not all; there came too the shouts of men yelling in pain as they were knocked to the ground and trodden on by sharp heavy hooves. Then, round the corner, bursting into Sussworth’s amazed vision and leaning at a racing angle, swept a
horde of pig and sheep and horse and cow, their eyes and horns glinting with evil. The inspector’s bowels turned to water; the stampede had aimed itself straight at him.
Sussworth was small and agile and Sussworth never wasted time. With not even a second’s reflection he pushed past his sergeant and, scrambling like a squirrel, he climbed on to his car roof, hoisting himself away from danger.
Hanks too, for all his bulk, was no slowcoach either when it came to protecting his body from the possibility of injury. He could not climb like the inspector but he tore open the car door and threw himself across the rear seat, covering his head with his arms, his flesh quaking with terror. As for the rest of the policemen, they were not cowards but how could they reason with a stampede? How could they arrest it or even beat it over the head with a truncheon? With admirable common sense they ran, most of them, for the safety of the wider streets.
Sussworth danced on the roof of his car punching the air with rage, his moustache contracting in on itself as if in pain. He could not believe his eyes. There was the cream of the Metropolitan Police turning tail before a pack of animals.
‘Come back here!’ he screamed. ‘Come back here! Arrest those runaways! Send for reinforcements!’ Just then the advancing tidal wave reached Sussworth’s car and swirled round it on every side, rocking it violently, butting the panels, kicking the paintwork.
‘Help me, you men,’ roared the inspector, but no one heard him above the clamour and he swayed perilously on top of the car, eventually falling to his hands and knees in order to avoid being thrown to the ground where he would have met his death under the flying hooves. Still the car pitched and bobbed like a tin can at sea. Sussworth’s hands scraped at the painted surface, searching for something to grasp. There was nothing. Gradually he slid towards the edge. He raised his narrow twisted face in fear, looking into the heavens for help but all he got in his eye was a sooty drop of water. It was trying to rain again.
 
As soon as Chalotte had smashed the light at the corner of the lane she kicked her heels into Sam’s flanks and both she and Sydney urged the
horse in the direction of the large entrance at the rear of the abattoir. Sam resisted these urgings to begin with, alarmed at the prospect of entering such a house of blood, but Sydney leant forward on the horse’s neck and spoke words of reassurance to him, and trusting his Borrible friends more than anyone else in the world, he at last advanced with a firm step. On each side of the horse ran the rest of the Adventurers in two wide arcs, whooping and yelling and waving their arms, frightening a huge mob of animals forward, forcing them to pass between the big double doors, squeezing them in.
Once all the animals were crowded inside the slaughterhouse Knocker pulled the huge doors together and shot the bolts. With this done he sprang up on to a butcher’s chopping block and with his hands on his hips he surveyed the confusion around him. Never had he witnessed anything like it; it was a madman’s fantasy, a bright painting of a nightmare.
The slaughterhouse was thronged with the living and the dead, pressed closely together. From the high hooks of an overhead conveyor hung the skinned and crimson cadavers of cows and pigs, sheep and horses, still steaming with the evaporating warmth of their life’s blood; each corpse only a stunted vestige of what it had once been, no head, no feet, no entrails and no skin—catsmeat.
On the same conveyer, hanging by their feet and secured by their own handcuffs, side by side with the dreadful corpses, were the three members of the SBG who had taken refuge just inside the entrance when Swish’s Conkers had first charged down the lane at the side of the building. Thinking themselves safe they had been surprised for a second time and taken from the rear when Treld and her band had rushed in through the front doors of the slaughterhouse. Sheer weight of numbers had borne the policemen down and they had been jumped on, stunned, and then trussed like turkeys and hoisted aloft.
Now they twisted round and round, their faces red and their stomachs sick, at the mercy of this sudden rash of animals; animals who were out of their wits at being crushed together in this place with its stench of intestines, its promise of death. As the stampede surged past them the policemen’s bodies were battered with bone and struck with horn. Their faces and tunics were glistening with streaks of gob and
slavers of snot erupting from the mouths and nostrils of the panic-stricken beasts.
Knocker looked away, searching for Treld. At last he saw her and the rest of her band. The Conkers had taken up positions high in the crisscrossing of the iron girders of the roof space, and there they hung, shouting and waving. Treld herself, as soon as she saw Knocker, dropped on to a catwalk and slid down a ventilation pipe, landing expertly on a girder only a few yards from where Knocker stood. She looked at him and, over the chaos that separated them, she grinned a grin of absolute triumph. ‘It’s good here,’ she shouted above the uproar. Knocker stared. Treld was covered in dirt and grease. Her fine punk clothes were in shreds and it was impossible to see what colour her hair had been; all its spikes were drooping down by the side of her head. The paint too had gone from her face, replaced by grime, and there was a deep cut on her cheek, but her eyes glowed with the fire of life, and her whole body looked charged with power. She shook herself and her bangles and badges jangled.
‘Where are the butcher men?’ shouted Knocker.
Treld jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘When we come in they ran into them big fridges over there. All we had to do was lock the doors behind them … bleedin’ cowards. Still I suppose the sight of twenty punk birds running straight for ’em didn’t ’zactly fill ’em with confidence. They’ll be catching cold about now.’ She laughed at her own joke.
Knocker looked down. He could see that Chalotte and Sydney were still astride Sam but were having difficulty keeping him calm. As for the other Adventurers, they had just managed, like Knocker himself, to find positions off the ground and were clinging to girders, chains and hooks, fearful of falling into the mayhem below. Not one square inch of the abattoir floor was visible. The cows were lunging at the horses, making them rear; the pigs were snapping at the sheep; and the sheep in their turn were wheeling in tight circles or trying to climb walls.

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