The Worm King (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

A Drive in the Country

A
shotgun boomed and a side window shattered.

Arrrrrrrrgh! yelled Jerry, punching his foot
to the floor. He’d laid four rectangles of cast iron plate across the driver’s
dash, leg area and lower windscreen, leaving only small holes to operate the pedals
and gearstick, maneuver the wheel and see ahead. The plates were loosely attached
with two-inch bolts and the blast knocked one plate back into his arm, but it
wasn’t a hard hit, and the other bolts held, so he was able to haul the wheel around
and managed to avoid the tow-truck the aborigines had parked across the middle
of the road. The old Bedford bus leaned precariously, tyres squealing, until it
seemed that surely,
surely,
it must tip over . . . 

‘Go! Go! Go!’ screamed Āmiria.

‘Holy fuck!’ shouted the Hat, while Peanuts
barked madly.

Torch beams from the road leapt around the
inside and the wind whistled cold and savage between the seats. The shotgun
exploded again: more glass broke. A gasp of pain sounded somewhere near the rear
then all of a sudden the bus was upright, engine gunning like a rocket.

They were through.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Roofies

T
he cook was an overweight, effeminate, slobbery thing who looked on
nervously while Bob slapped the carcass down on the bench, rolling it off his
shoulder with a well practised flip.

‘Bob’ll be waiting in the kitchen with you,’
explained Dick. He put his arm around the cook’s shoulder and led him to the
corner, near the storeroom door. The Hyatt’s kitchen was state-of-the-art but
virtually no staff had turned up. ‘Listen,’ he said confidentially, getting
down near cook’s ear, ‘Bob’s a bloke who does odd-jobs around the station, but
between you and me, I think he’s mad as a meat axe, and just not long ago
someone poked one of his eyes clean out, so he’s angry as all buggery too.’ He lowered
his voice further. ‘And look at the mess it’s made; I mean, yuck! Wouldn’t you
be a bit pissed too? Didn’t do a very good job of bandaging it up himself
either, did he?’ Dick leant back and spoke up. ‘So can you please, please
ensure that you make this
just
the way he wants? He’s a bit fussy when
it comes to his cooking.’

‘Angry?’ mumbled the cook, watching Bob
anxiously.

‘Well, no. He was already angry before. Now
he’s just plain . . . gee, I’m not sure what you’d call
it?’ Bob stroked the decapitated kangaroo and gazed at the cook through a
single, squinty, bloodshot eye.

The tube flickered in the hall which irritated
Dick as he listened at the door of room 237. He could make out Astrid’s voice;
the second was deeper and less distinct. The concierge had said the man was a
town councilor from Griffith, demanding to see hotel management. Dick initially
assumed it must be the dwarf’s fat Arab friend, and left them on ice, but after
the incident with Bob and their renewed demands to see management, he’d decided
to check first hand.

No, it wasn’t the fat Arab either. Dick felt
tricked. He felt outmaneuvered, while not knowing exactly how. It was a nagging
feeling that A didn’t quite equal B didn’t equal C as it should. He knew what lay
behind it all: a lack of discipline. The twins were running loose around the
hotel with Sheng, that mongrel dwarf was still outside somewhere . . . a
travesty. He had to hear what they’re saying. Dick pressed his ear a smidge firmer
against the door but it didn’t help. If he crammed the twins in here as well,
this is where the dwarf will come, if perchance he returns.

‘Mr Snow!’

He pulled back from the door; a hotel porter
rushed towards him from the far end of the hall. Dick held up a flat palm,
glaring at the fool. The quiet voices in 237 stopped.

‘They’re asking for you urgently out in the
courtyard Sir!’ He was a furtive and sneaky man with an unpleasantly high nasal
voice. Dick had seen him talking with Bob on more than one occasion. But the
porter was excited; something had definitely cropped up.

When they’d travelled a safe distance down
the hall he asked, ‘What is it?’

‘Daylight Sir. They think the sun’s coming
through.’

And daylight it did prove to be. High in the
north-west and about where the sun ort to lie, was a pathetically dull microscopic
glow. A gaggle of guests were marveling at it, although not for long before the
cold and gritty air forced them into the adjoining cafe where they launched
into celebratory champagne and canapés.

Dick found their optimism and merriment annoyingly
premature. A smiling, elderly Indian businessman strolled over. He sported a
turban and waved a smoked salmon canapé. ‘I say, it is good news is it not?’ He
attempted to drive most of the heaped canapé into his mouth at once. After a
couple of chews and a swallow, he poked the remainder in. ‘So what do we do now,
my good fellow?’ His head waggled like one of those dogs that sit in the back
window of a cheap car, and a sticky glob of cream cheese clung to his
moustache. ‘When is it the time to get back in?’ Dick gathered the “it” was
regarding some investment market.

He gripped the Indian’s shoulder, somewhat firmer
than the fellow expected, going by his expression. ‘The bell’s tolling again;
it’s time, now!’ he whispered. The muscles in the man’s arm tightened in
surprise and the head stopped waggling, but Dick only squeezed harder and spoke
again, nearer, and quieter: ‘Rise! Rise, you filthy creature of the night; dawn’s
coming and you must feast, quickly now. Quickly!’

Dick released the shoulder and departed
without another word. He discretely left his drink untouched, because you never
could tell what ends up in your glass these days.

The Hyatt building manager’s office was
pokey, yet functional. Four certificates for “Outstanding Staffer of the Month”
decorated the wall behind the desk, arranged in a carefully proportioned
rectangle. A printer and fax machine filled most of the available space to the left
of the desk and the cane rubbish bin next to the coat stand by door was empty. An
odd place to keep your bin, thought Dick, because you’d have to get up, or toss
the rubbish from the other side of the desk, in which case you’d have to be
good shot. The building manager was clearly made of more complex stuff than the
cook.

‘Look,’ said Dick, sensing a distinct lack
of enthusiasm for his proposal, ‘they need to test these in a constant signal,
from twenty-two hundred for at least two hours.’ He held up his useless mobile
phone. ‘The power’s got to be completely off, right through this zone, so there
are no surges in the readings.’

‘I’m not sure if I completely follow . . . ’

‘The thing is, it’s just basic calafragalistics,
and I’m sure we could sit down and nut it all through if you want: we’ll need a
couple of decent calculators and a protractor. You can probably crunch it down
with slide rule, if that’s all you’ve got, but it won’t make it any easier.’ Dick
shrugged.

The building manager glanced around his immaculately
tidy desk; not a protractor in sight. ‘But the Prime Minister, and the cabinet,
they’ll still be here? Shouldn’t we delay the test until after they leave?’

‘No, that’s why we want to do it then. We’re
hoping to be able to inform the PM while she’s here. Give her the word that we’ve
hooked up with the UK. It’d be a real coup for the hotel.’ Dick nodded
knowingly.
This is your chance, bigshot.
‘Real coup,’ he repeated.
And
now the final nail.
‘With the sun coming back a little, we wanted to make it
a celebration dinner too. Even for the staff here, in the hotel. It’d be good
for everyone.’

‘Alright then,’ agreed the building manager,
reluctantly.

Dick could barely suppress his glee.

Too
much
glee, that was the problem: far
too much. This would fix that. Dick inspected the empty bottle of Hypnodorm. Bob
had stolen twenty-seven bottles from three pharmacies and one unfortunate aged-care
home. Lower on the label was typed “30 tablets each containing 1mg flunitrazepam.”
Flunitrazepam is a Schedule 8 drug in Australia, so was required to be kept in
a steel drug cabinet. This normally made it easy to locate once you were on the
premises, and with a largish sledgehammer and ample time, not terribly
difficult to access. Flunitrazepam? What the hell were the marketing people
thinking? Dick far preferred the quainter label most other countries used for
this particular generic concoction: “Rohypnol: your date-rapists elixir of
choice.” Roofies! No wonder “flunties” never caught on here. It’s too late now
anyway. He tossed the bottle on the table along with the other empties and it
skidded to a stop next to the porcelain bowl and pestle they’d used to crush up
the tablets. Way too late.

He had a dinner to organize and speech to
prepare. The menu was settled, more or less. The centerpiece will be prime-aged
loin fillet of kangaroo: the venison of the Australian forests; soaked in a
garlic, ginger and roofie marinade with a tawny port and roofie gravy. For the
non-meat eaters: barramundi (unfortunately thawed from frozen) accompanied by a
lime & coconut roofie sauce. For the vegetarians, some kind of fucking
salad—he didn’t really know—made from pumpkins. Those nutbags will eat
anything. With a double-roofie dressing, of course.

Bob also obtained thirty-two 10ml bottles of
Ketamine Hydrochloride from a veterinary clinic. While an excellent and
extremely powerful animal tranquilliser, Dick was initially inclined to discard
the ketamine because it tended to have a pronounced sour taste. Then he thought:
rhubarb crumble! The sourness of the ketamine would marry perfectly with the
tartness of the rhubarb and sweetness of the sugar. It’d be a perfect
compliment; almost a living, breathing dish. Like a cobra, coiled in your bowl.
Pretty to look at, and you might even lean down and get away with a quick
sniff, but if you dare touch it with that spoon, oh
boy
, are you in
trouble!

Dessert wasn’t likely to be commonplace for
a while, so he intended to make sure the other guests and security and hotel
staff were offered a bowl too.

After all, it was the least he could do.

Dick prided himself on always having two
speeches prepared, so as to judge the mood of the audience and react accordingly.
Tonight’s speech will be just the happy news. Firstly, there’d be a good
lashing with the best of the hotels cellar. It was a celebration!

There would be nothing in his speech about
water shortages and people getting sick. Nothing whatsoever on vitamin D, which
everyone gets from sunlight unless you eat enormous amounts of catfish or
margarine, so he’ll skirt right around the link between vitamin D and the
pineal gland, and the pituitary gland, and therefore the level of proteins and
fatty acids and that whole bit. Especially the links between light deficiency
and depression, lack of energy, carbohydrate cravings and panic attacks. He certainly
won’t go near the fact that photosynthesis had effectively ceased and things
like the Calvin cycle and reverse-Krebs cycle have globally ground to a halt.

The rain, that’s another topic he was keen
to avoid. Mulloolaloo had warned him to expect it to contain carbonic acid,
nitric acid, hydrated sulphur dioxide and hydrochloric acid, depending on which
way the wind blew.

‘Why the fuck,’ he ort to be screaming at
the audience, foam flying from his lips, ‘why the fuck do you think no one’s
staying outside!?’

Then by rights he should make Bob stand up. ‘This
is what a few years of zero natural light does to a man. Goulburn Super-Max!’
he’d rage. Then Bob would tear a live bunny apart with his teeth; slowly, so they
could all hear it screech because that’s what Bob enjoyed doing. For an extra
fifty he does a nanny goat.

No, it turned out to be a fractionally
droning speech, and he watched them suddenly, near the end, get very sleepy. All
concept of time appeared to be gone. He’d told several protracted, pithy anecdotes
on how the Aussie spirit was persevering under incredibly adverse conditions,
drawn from human-interest stories he’d covered over the years. They were so
calm it became infectious, and even Dick himself felt a pleasant, drifting
sensation during a particularly droll question from the floor. Had he ventured
down the other route, and they’d just sat through forty-five minutes of Bob’s
Goat, relaxed they would
not
have been.

During the decaffeinated coffee and hot chocolate,
a hotel official spoke briefly in the ear of the under-secretary, who had a
quiet word with the Prime Minister. She nodded and listened, then stood and
clinked her glass, which was unnecessary because everyone was already watching.
She explained the power outage.

‘Before everyone adjourns, on behalf of the
cabinet, and myself, I’d like to thank you very much Dick, for your excellent
update and positive view forward.’ He raised his hand and smiled in
appreciation at the round of applause while she stifled a yawn. ‘We look
forward to hearing how the UK hookup unfolds in a few hours.’ She yawned again.

Now, she was just a woman in a room. A
decidedly unattractive, late-middle aged woman. Dick and Bob had gone from room
to room to room. It’s a party! Hey, isn’t anyone awake? They were important
faces but all met the same dark end.

After a couple of practice runs, they’d gone
to see
Her
, after all,
Hers
was to be the main party of the
evening. He wanted it to run smoothly, for all concerned. Only his good self,
Bob and
Her
.

Dick sat on the leather chair beside the bed
after placing his lantern on the small side table attached to the head of the
bed. Bob plonked himself directly on the bed, ne’er one to care much about
protocol.

He took two cigars from the inside pocket of
his tweed jacket, then held one out. ‘Cuban, Prime Minister?’ She didn’t reply.
‘They’re rather good?’

Still no reply. Bob draped a loop of thick
rope over her head and pulled it down around her neck.

‘It’s a Hoyo De Monterry double corona.’ He
puffed gently to get it started after lighting a small twist of paper with a
disposable Bic. ‘I suppose you’d say they have floral, creamy overtones; sweet,
yet still spicy, with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg.’ Bob slid the noose tight,
pushing on the knot with one hand and pulling on the rope-end with the other
until her neck, where it bit in, seemed a fraction of its normal diameter.

‘Woody notes and a definite earthiness. Yes,
they’re all there all right.’ Dick mulled, taking in a healthy draw then
swirling it seductively with his tongue before slowly exhaling. Her face had
gone quite blue, and eyes bulged but rolled right back, so only the whites were
showing.