The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (18 page)

Well – I guess they
give the monitor lizards a bit of healthy competition…

"Did you have any
trouble in the tunnels?" I ask. "I lost you guys quite
early on, I think."

"Don't remember a
whole lot," Ace admits. "Just that it was really dark."

"Makes it more fun
that way," Carvery butts in, thumping each of us in the spine,
as he appears from behind.

I start at the intrusion,
bumped roughly against the railings – and Mr. Dry Senior's
leather-bound diary jolts loose from the waistband of my
loaned-from-Crispin, silk Paisley pyjamas.

"No!" I gasp.

Before I can make a
safety-grab, it slips under the wrought metalwork, tumbles downwards
– and lands with a faint slap, in the middle of a crocodile's
back.

"What have you
dropped?" Carvery wants to know, looking over the side. "Still
hiding stuff that might be interesting? Where did you steal that
from?"

"It was given to me
to look after!" I hiss through gritted teeth, echoing myself
from earlier.

"Then I think you
ought to be looking after it a bit more carefully, don't you?"
he remarks. "Hop over and pick it up."

"I'll never reach
that far!"

"We'll just hold you
by the ankles – right, Ace?" Carvery looks across at him,
and grins. "Won't be the first time today."

The crocodiles shift
menacingly in the water, and the leather-bound diary gives a
tantalising wobble.

"All right, but not
for too long this time," Ace agrees, straightening up. "I'm
gunning with all the power of runny custard this morning."

I look from one to the
other, with obvious concerns.

"I haven't dropped
you yet, have I?" Carvery teases. "Saved your life more
than once already."

"That's because he's
saving it for later," Ace adds. "You haven't had a ride in
the trunk of his car first. You wouldn't want to miss that."

My housemate,
Twat-for-Brains, would think this was all so much delightful
flirting. Probably how she spends most of her spare time in
Accident
and Emergency
, between abusive boyfriends…

"Hurry up, Sarah."
Carvery grabs the back of my waistband, and I shriek, scaring myself,
as he tilts me over the side. Ace takes hold of the scruff of my
collar at the same time, angling my head down towards the water, and
I find myself succumbing quickly to the forces of gravity. "Before
your borrowed book swims away by itself."

I look down at the spiny
scales and jaws of Death, the blood rushing in my ears and pounding
in my temples, as I'm lowered gawkily below the railings.

"It's all right,
Sarah," Carvery calls out, and gives an evil snigger. "You
can see if you're any good at Croc-Whispering, while you're down
there."

I gulp.

Keep still –
nice crocky
…

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
:

REFLEX OF THE
JEJUNUM

"
I
can't quite reach!"

My arms strain downwards,
even though I'm aware of the proximity of those crocodile jaws.
Reptilian eyes flicker my way, in typical cold-blooded apathetic
curiosity, from the others in the water.

I'm just not tall enough.

"Seriously?"
Carvery asks from the deck of the ship above me, shifting his grip
slightly on my ankle. "Stop being such a pussy. Where's your
spunk, Sarah?"

"I'm going to throw
up again, right on the back of your head this time," Ace
grumbles. His hands around my other ankle definitely have that
morning-after-booze clamminess about them, and pressing his
admittedly intimidating washboard stomach so hard on the railings is
evidently doing him no good either. "If that helps at all."

"I need something to
help me reach and grab hold of it with!" The leather-bound diary
hovers just out of my grasp, teetering on the knobbly spine of the
nearest man-eating leviathan.

"Like what?"
Carvery asks.

"Like a…"
All I can think of at the moment are the array of Forensics
instruments at University. "A… a reticulum – no,
speculum… er…"

"God, Sarah –
speak English!" Ace groans.

"Forceps?"
suggests Carvery. "I think you'll find the others are a bit less
on the
grabby
side, and more in the
openy-outy
scheme
of things."

I don't want to know how
he's so informed about those… But as I stretch my fingers in a
completely futile effort, I do have a brainwave.

"The special
clockwork hand!" I call up to them. "Pass it down to me!"

"Oh, no,"
Carvery grins. "Not that old trick."

"Well, have you got
anything else?" I challenge. "Come on, it's important. The
diary came with it. I don't think one of them has any significance
without the other!"

Carvery hesitates, and
then reaches into a pocket. The golden bejewelled clockwork hand
emerges, and flashes in the early-morning sunlight.

"Aargh," he
reacts. "Now I'm blind as well. Damn thing's glowing like a
furnace!"

Rubbing his eyes on his
sleeve first, he holds it out to me, and I extend one arm back up to
my hip, to retrieve it.

He's right. It's
dazzling. The cut gemstones set into the back and the knuckle joints
seem to be lit up by the sun. I have to turn my head aside, as I use
it to try and reach the diary.

"Watch it, Sarah,"
Ace warns. "I think you might have company coming your way."

I try to look around to
identify the danger, and there is a splish-sploshing in the water. I
see a brown scaly body roll, as another larger one crawls leisurely
across it, making stepping-stones towards me, out of the others of
its species.

Looks like somebody
thinks I'm being served up for breakfast…

The fingertips of the
metal hand just about graze the leather cover of the book.

"I need more time!"
I call out, desperately. "Can't you guys distract it?"

"Could give it a
warning shot," Carvery says grudgingly, and his free hand
appears over the side of the ship again, holding the shotgun. "But
I can't see fuck all right now, with that sun-strike I just got.
You'll have to tell me where to aim, Ace."

"Depends on what you
want to shoot," Ace remarks.

Oh, God
…
I
try another lunge for the book. The crocodile it's sitting on the
back of has drifted slightly beyond my reach. I pray for a small wave
to wash it nearer to the ship again.

"I could just fire
over his head, or in front of his snout," Carvery suggests.
"Tell me when I'm about lined up…"

I wonder how many more
stupid ways there are that I could be risking my life this morning,
other than rescuing an elderly zombie's diary off the back of a
crocodile, assisted by a hung-over breaker's yard mechanic, and a
serial psychopath who owns a suspect paving and concreting business.
Currently blinded and waving a gun around somewhere over my head,
while suspending me inverted over the side of a ship…

And what's with this
clockwork hand thing? Even in daylight, it's lit up like
Times
Square
…

It gives me an idea, and
I twist it a little, sending beams of reflected sunlight across the
water. One or two idly-onlooking crocodiles flinch.

Ha!

Now, all I need is that
next wave to bring the book closer…

"Up a bit…"
I hear Ace say to Carvery. "Whoa, wait. Something's coming…"

What??!

"What do you mean,
something?" I squeak. I scrabble to reach the diary.
Damn!
Still too far away!

"Another vessel,"
Ace reports.

A shadow seems to blot
out the sun, but the diamonds on the clockwork hand stay bright, so
that I have to squint in their glare, still hanging upside-down.

I crane my neck and try
to recognise the shape, drifting silently upriver towards us. It's
bigger than Crispin's paddle-steamer, and as the sun illuminates it
from behind, I can see it has the blood-red sails of the ship in the
painting.

"I still can't see,"
Carvery remarks. "Do you want me to shoot something, or what?"

I look around
frantically. The larger croc makes another pass over one of its
mates, in my direction. The scattered lights of the clockwork hand
have no impact on it.

"Yes, please,"
I squeal.

"
Ahhhh."
I suddenly hear the impassive zombie
monotone of Crispin's voice, as he appears on our side of the deck.
"I see Mother's barge has deigned to join us."

There is a buzz of
smaller boats also approaching, and the crocodiles start to disperse,
disturbed by the new noises and vibrations through the water.

Not the big croc though.
He's still focused on his
Sarah Bellum
kebab, hanging from the
side of the paddle-steamer. The fangs bare, ready for snapping shut
on the first pizza-delivery-girl-flavoured morsel…

"Crispin!" I
call desperately. "Help!"

I feel his cold undead
hand grasping me below the knee, and before I get any closer to
either Death or the diary, I'm pulled abruptly back up the side of
the ship.

"Nooo…"
I moan, defeated.

Not even the empty clack
of the crocodile's jaws closing on thin air below me is a relief. The
three guys deposit me back on deck, and I collapse in a miserable
heap.

"Did you get it?"
Carvery asks, still rubbing his eyes and blinking.

"No," I cry,
all the more distressed as Crispin, the only gentleman of the three,
picks me up and dusts me down reassuringly. I try not to be
distracted, and shove the sparkling family heirloom under his nose.
"Crispin, we found the clockwork hand. But there was a book with
it – and it's gone over the side, with the crocodiles, look…"

We all glance downwards.

The leather-bound diary
still sits tauntingly on the fat crocodile, drifting now even further
away from us on the current.

"We have to get it
back!" I say, but I can hear my own uncertainty. "Can't
we?"

Crispin takes the
clockwork hand and turns it over and over, as bemused by it as I am.

My heart sinks. I thought
he'd know what to do about it at once.

As we look across the
water again, a small boat orbiting the bigger ship zips by –
and a figure reaches out as it passes, snatching the diary from its
resting-place on the crocodile.

"Chavs," Ace
grunts, shading his eyes beside me. And then leans over the side, and
promptly throws up again.

"Oh,
yesss
,"
Crispin says after a moment, his voice as leaden as the inside of a
coffin. "We will most certainly get it back, Sarah
Bellummm
."

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
:

QUIM OF THE DAMNED

One of the small boats,
piloted by a weatherbeaten zombie in a loincloth and red leather
chaps – I don't ask why, just wonder what Ace Bumgang would
look like in them – transports us to the giant barge, when it
anchors alongside.

This is where it really
does get intimidating, up close – the upper deck is the size of
a football field, and I'm sure those sail masts are hundreds of feet
high. The blood-red sails attached to them must measure at least an
acre each.

The deck succumbs to
red-tinted darkness, in their shade.

"Mother's weekend
dinghy," Crispin announces, with a vague gesture around the
miles and miles of mahogany-coloured timber. "She doesn't get
about much these days, but when she does – one could say she
'pushes the boat out' so to speak."