The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (47 page)

The view is suddenly
blocked by a frenzy of fluttering, and an evil, snub-nosed snout with
beady eyes appears over the railing. Before I can even gasp, a
needle-lined yawn lunges directly for my face…

"Fuck off,"
Carvery grunts, and with a crunchy squeak, the hungry critter
disintegrates messily under the butt of the shotgun. "She's ugly
enough already, without a vampire bat beard."

"Thank you," I
remember to say, after what seems like quite a few moments of waiting
for the shock to wear off.

"Don't mention it,"
he remarks, turning the gun around to point the muzzle outwards, over
the back of the seat. "I mean it. If you ever mention it to
anyone, I'll kill you. And Miss Fuck-Tart, your housemate."

Oh yes. Why do I keep
forgetting about her?

Idly, I wonder if she's
starting to smell, and if anyone back on the Great Barge in the Five
a.m. Lounge has noticed…

The leading Pterodactyl
opens its beak in another yammering, jabbering caw – and then
belches flame.

The blast of heat almost
cooks my tongue onto the roof of my already terror-dried mouth. In
the afterglow, frazzled bats shower from the air, trailing smoke,
like dud fireworks dropping out of the sky.

"My God, they're
armed," Luke whispers.

"And fully
operational," Crispin acknowledges. "Their teeth have
turned to flint after so many centuries undead – and they make
a spark by agitating them, which ignites the methane created by the
bats in the cave. It protects them from the blood-sucking, burns off
excess gas before it can reach critical underground levels, forms a
light-source for them to hunt by, cooks their prey, and also
de-louses them in the process. It's really quite fascinating."

A second Pterodactyl
clacks its jaws a few times, and sears the cave wall with another
billow of incendiary fumigation.

"Remind me never to
go out on the pull with him either," Luke adds.

"Maybe they fancy a
bit of fast food?" Ace suggests, as a third flame almost passes
right in front of us, covering our blanket with lumps of squeaking,
furry charcoal.

"Burger van's
closed," says Carvery, and takes a shot at the nearest
Pterodactyl, to the left.

A gaping hole appears in
one wing, and it pinwheels out of control, bouncing off the walls and
disappearing under an avalanche of peckish, bloodthirsty bats.

Meanwhile, another
flaming belch from the middle pursuer lightly singes one of our
rolled-up rugs on the back of the rickshaw, which promptly starts
crying.

"I'm pretty sure
floor coverings shouldn't soil themselves," Ace comments, and
tries to switch places with me. "Sarah, you can have the wet
patch."

I hear the sobbing
emerging more loudly as I shuffle reluctantly along the bench. I try
a conciliatory pat or two.

"There, there,"
I murmur, meaninglessly.

How do you reassure a
captive flying carpet?

Another fireball explodes
overhead. A flaming bat plummets from the roof, straight through the
hole in the middle of our blanket. Homer screams.

"Why do I smell
Crispy Chicken Balls?" asks Luke.

"It's just Homer,
saving himself the trouble of going for the full operation,"
says Ace, and crawls downward to try and beat out any remaining
flames. "Pass the wet rug, I'll see if I can damp it down."

Gratefully, I roll the
sodden carpet towards the foot of the rickshaw, which hisses as it
traverses the groaning Homer.

Carvery fires again, but
the Pterodactyls are learning, and take evasive manoeuvres.

"
Braaaiiiinnnssss
,"
Homer pleads. "
Sarah Braaaiiinnnsss
…
Goooood
…"

"I think Homer wants
to eat your brains, Sarah," Ace reports back.

"Don't see why not,"
says Carvery. "It won't exactly spoil his dinner later."

"I think my brother
means, you should use your brains, Sarah
Bellummm
,"
Crispin says, quietly. "Trust your feelings…"

Use my brains? I boggle,
momentarily. All my feelings are currently telling me, is I'm
starting to recall that I was rather violently air-sick on this
rickshaw earlier… and the similar self-control by the captive
rugs isn't helping…

"Heads up, Carvery!"
Luke shouts.

Carvery swings the
shotgun like a club, slamming an enormous bat into the wall, and to
the voracious mercy of its own kind.

"You have to watch
the bats, Sarah
Bellummm
," Crispin guides me. "They
are a hive. They work as a unit, if you observe…"

I strain my eyes into the
darkness ahead of us. There seems to be a swirling ahead, a
gyroscopic sensation in the air – a corruption of the horizon…
a tilting…

My eyes adjust to the
vortex of skin and fur awaiting us, deeper into the cave.

"Oh my God," I
breathe. "They're going to try and flip us over…"

It's a whirlpool of wings
and teeth, creating a deadly torsional slipstream. And as I stare in
horror – under the blanket, something runs straight up my leg.

"Baaa…"
I begin to scream, but it is already skittering past my chest, and to
my utter shock, clamps over my mouth.

My second thought is even
worse than
'Bat'
.

Squidmorph!

But there is no
battery-acid odour, no larval tentacle looping around my neck…
and as my mind frantically tries to reconnect with the petrified
paralysis in my limbs, I see the glinting, and recognise the scrape
of warm metal against my lips and teeth.

The clockwork hand!

I peel it away from my
face and stare at it, while Carvery drops back down onto the bench to
re-load.

"These are the last
of my cartridges," he says.

I barely hear him, my
thoughts racing.

How did I make this thing
work before? I remember getting angry – something about a
curtain tassel…

…
Yes!!

"I am a virgin!"
I shout, gripping the clockwork device in both hands, like a
.44
Magnum
.

"You're going to die
a virgin," Carvery nods sagely, still slotting in cartridges.

I let his words go over
my head, and sit up. More bravely, I try to raise myself higher, up
on my knees. I point the golden clockwork hand into the deadly
darkness ahead of us, at the danger as yet unseen by the others…

"I am a virgin!"
I yell, more deliberately. "And I am not afraid to use this!"

"God, Sarah –
get a room," Ace groans, still somewhere further down. "No,
Homer, I'm not going to look after it for you. You get your own
pockets…"

Why won't it activate?

"Come on!" I
urge. "What do you want from me?"

"Have faith, Sarah
Bellummm
," Crispin says, soothingly.

The vicious vortex of
conspiring, co-operative
Chiropterae
gets closer –
closer…

A shriek from one of the
last two Pterodactyls behind me freezes my blood, and I feel its
intake of breath at the nape of my neck, hear the clicking of its
flinty teeth as starts to summon a spark…

…
And
suddenly everything seems to slow down. We are still hurtling along
the tunnel, still surrounded by whirling bloodthirsty bats –
but my mind is now at the eye of the storm, seeing everything,
thinking clearly…

…
I
drop back on my haunches, and raise the clockwork hand high above my
head.

The fireball erupts, and
every gemstone on the clockwork hand lights up, again akin to a
disco-ball. Instead of turning into a flying rickshaw barbecue, the
flames shrink as rapidly as they exploded, sucked into the unknown
potential of the clockwork device.

Carvery shoots the
startled Pterodactyl, and it takes a direct hit to the sternum,
barrelling into its remaining wingman, sending them both crashing
into the depths of the cave.

I point the clockwork
hand in front of us, hoping now for a miracle.

"Go ahead,"
Crispin whispers. "Make my day."

"Ummm…"
I murmur.

The pinky and index
finger of the clockwork hand uncurl, and pause, as if awaiting
instructions.

It can't possibly be that
obvious…

I clear my throat. The
stones in the clockwork hand are glowing malevolently red, like
illuminated rubies. The roar of the circling bats is almost
deafening.

The rickshaw starts to
tilt and struggles to right itself, rendered lopsided by the suction
of the angular updraft.

"Fire?" I
suggest, timidly.

And then it seems that
the world explodes, as everything at the end of my arms flashes a
blinding, brilliant white…

CHAPTER
SIXTY-TWO
:

MENOPAUSE IN BLACK

The darkness after the
flash is even darker, outlined in red and green, imprinted with the
pattern of the blood vessels in my own eyeballs. The air is still
rushing past, our flying rickshaw now soaring unimpeded, as straight
as an arrow. And the clockwork hand is dull and lifeless, its power
absorbed from the Pterodactyl flames completely spent. The only new
sensation is a strange tickling, as if the air is full of downy-soft
feathers, or warm snowflakes.

There is a mechanical
whir beside me, and I recognise the sound of the
Trevor Baylis
torch being wound up, before the beam clicks on again.

"Great shot,
Fuckwit," says Carvery, grudgingly. "That was one genocide
in a million."

The torchlight bounces
back off hundreds of thousands of little white skeletons, scattered
over our blanket on the rickshaw, and hanging as if at roost from the
ceiling of the cave. Carvery holds out a hand to catch a tiny bat
skull as it drifts by. It is perfect in every detail, clean and as
dry as – well, dry as a bone.

Carvery blows on it, and
it vanishes into a powder.

Halloween snowflakes,
indeed…

We exchange a look, and
he gestures at the golden clockwork hand still gripped in my own,
with the barrel of the shotgun, still in his.

"I'm saving one
cartridge," he says. "So if you ever point that thing at
me, just remember that I'll blow your fucking head off."

"She'd probably
enjoy that," Ace Bumgang replies. "It'd be the first time
anyone's blown anything of hers."

Carvery nods wryly, and
hands me my torch back. It's still warm from his hand, and I get a
guilty thrill, recalling that Ace handled it briefly as well.

I wonder how much viable
DNA I could recover, from either of them touching it? I wish I had an
evidence bag, or a surgical swab on me…

"Not far now,"
Crispin's deep voice intones. "Remember – the clockwork
hand's power can be renewed – always."

"I think I see the
light," Luke confirms.

We stare into the
distance, the endless reams of skeletons now starting to thin out a
little. Ace clambers back up from the foot of the rickshaw for a
better view, brushing white bone dust off his distractingly muscular
arms and bare chest.

Oh – what I
wouldn't do for some of that DNA…

"You missed a bit,"
Carvery says. "Looks like you've done whizz."

Ace checks the crotch of
his Naval uniform trousers, bemused.

"Not that kind of
whizz." Carvery points at his nose. "You got a
Go-Faster
speed stripe right there."

Ace's brow unfurrows in
comprehension, and he rubs his face with the back of his arm.

"If I did snort this
stuff," he says, between wipes, "would I turn into a
vampire?"

"You could try, Mr.
Bumgang," Crispin ponders, mildly. "I am sure, after the
blast, all traces of rabies and other diseases will have been
eradicated."