The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (52 page)

"Yes," Justin
tells the carpet.

"Silence, when you
are addressing the General!" bellows the ginger Captain. A glacé
cherry vibrates, stuck in his moustache.

"As I thought,"
the General continues, turning the page on his clipboard, while
Lissima Domina serves the tea. "Insolence and insubordinance as
well. Do you deny the charges?"

Justin chews the carpet,
but says nothing.

"The General asked
you a question, Mr. Time!" roars the Captain, rattling the
teacups.

The spotty Lance-Corporal
stuffs the ends of his woolly scarf into his ears, and pouts.

"I…"
Justin peeps.

"SILENCE!"

"Prisoner's
non-co-operation duly noted." The General writes neatly onto his
pad. "It appears we have reached an impasse. The options for
your admonition facing us include collective forfeit, whereby the
entire barracks is punished for your misdemeanours and you are thrown
upon their mercy…"

"Hear, hear,"
bumbles the Captain, slurping some of his tea from the saucer, having
swirled it around to cool it down.

"Or you are handed
over to General Lissima Domina for detention at sea and automatic
loss of all flying privileges, for an indefinite period until your
behaviour can be seen to be fully reformed…"

The carpet barely muffles
a gulp. Back in her seat, General Domina merely smiles coyly at the
mention of her name.

"…Unless our
patron, Mr. Crispin Dry, has alternative suggestions of merit?"

A hopeful eyebrow is
raised from the cut pile underfoot.

But Crispin's expression
is as gray and stony as it has ever been. Even my heart sinks on
Justin's behalf.

"I have complete
faith in the military justice system, Sunny-Jim," Crispin
replies, curtly. "Although I suspect that a woman's touch is
often more effective than wire-wool and soap."

Where have I recently
seen wire-wool and soap? I look down at my back-to-front field
hospital scrubs, unable to place them already in my memory…

But the sight of the
little silver sugar-tongs in my hand triggers something…

The coded diary! In
Carvery's pocket!

Now – if only I can
recall which pocket he has it in… because I'm sure there's
also probably still something in one of the pockets that I wouldn't
want to be poking at with anything metallic…

"Give me the
wire-wool and soap!" Justin's voice rises from the floor.
"Mercy!"

"How dare you
address superiors with suggestions for your method of torture!"
The Captain is puce. "Lance-Corporal Pikey, I order you to throw
your beaker of weak lemonade over the prisoner at once!"

The still-sulky Layabout
Pikey picks up his brimming plastic cup, and tosses it across the
desk, where it rebounds off the back of Justin's ear with a
satisfying bonk and a splosh.

"Now what am I going
to dunk my pink wafers in, Uncle?" Pikey demands under his
breath.

"I tend to agree
with Mr. Dry," General Sunny-Jim muses, poring over his notes.
"So if you will wait a moment while we thrash out the finer
details… I'm sorry. Detail the finer thrashings."

And he beckons to Crispin
Dry and General Lissima to peruse his clipboard.

Now, I'm thinking,
sidling closer to Carvery. Now, now,
now
…

"Don't you have some
information to negotiate with, Justin?" Ace mutters
meaningfully.

"Mmph?" says
the fluff on the carpet.

"Yeah," Carvery
grunts, winking at Ace. "Something to do with the Six a.m.
Lounge withholding their chemical capabilities, wasn't it? Or was it
the Nine a.m. Lounge withholding their brewery capabilities? I'm sure
one of them might offer you asylum."

"That is what he is
afraid of, Mr. Slaughter!" Corporal Punishment agrees. "The
asylum is generally agreed to be worse than the confining to the
solitary, with the wire-wool and the soap!"

Now… now…
now or never!

"Sarah…"
a warning voice interrupts my thoughts. "You are going to need
considerably bigger forceps than those, if you are going where I
think you're going with them."

I drop the little silver
sugar-tongs with a gulp, and kick them swiftly under the desk.

"What forceps?"
I ask.

Damn it all, already!

Carvery's amber gaze is
as deadly as usual.

"One cartridge,
remember?" He taps the stock of Mrs. Frittata's shotgun.

"Permission to
speak!" Justin shouts into the carpet.

"Silence!" The
glacé cherry is fired abruptly from the Captain's whiskers,
whereupon it sticks neatly to Corporal Punishment's khaki lapel.

But Justin leaps upright,
and lunges for the shotgun.

…
And
I swear Carvery just grins and hands it to him…

"Say hello to my
widdle friend!" shouts Justin.

"Hello, Widdle,"
obliges Lance-Corporal Pikey, through a mouthful of pink wafer.

Carvery and Ace both look
at me automatically, and to the floor beneath my feet.

"Not even a puddle
big enough to paddle in," Ace remarks. "She must be
sobering up."

"I will be leaving
now!" says Justin, waving the shotgun and backing towards the
door. "And you will not be following me!"

There is a series of
mechanical clicks, as both Generals, Captain Mainlining and
Lance-Corporal Pikey all draw their weapons from beneath the desk.
The Captain's bayonet neatly impales an iced cinnamon roll, as he
levels it above the tea service.

The skewered pastry oozes
sugar syrup menacingly onto the French polish.

"That might be
inadvisable, Mr. Time," says Crispin, straightening up. "As
you can see, it appears you have only brought one cartridge to a
bunfight."

Justin lets out a yell,
and raises his weapon, trying to pick a target as he jerks it back
and forth.

"Fuck's sake."
Carvery reaches into his pockets and fumbles around. "Where is
it… here, hold this…"

…
And
he drops the little leather-bound diary right into my astonished
hand.

"Dude," Ace
says. "I'm sure I read somewhere that you shouldn't Taser an
armed man."

"It's not for him."
Carvery finds his Taser. "He's just stepped off the carpet onto
the floorboards. We need a bigger widdle puddle…"

"Corporal
Punishment!" I gasp, and throw the tiny book. "The
pictograms – catch!"

The Taser contacts stab
into my throat, like the bite of a soulless vampire…

…
Every
muscle in my body spasms, and the last cocktail I drank leaves via
the emergency exit.

The gemstones in the
clockwork hand clamped around my wrist immediately light up, and
everything else slows down…

I see Justin looking down
at the puddle seeping under his feet, and losing his footing on the
polished floor… I see Ace diving in to give him a rugby-tackle
followed by a wedgie, and Luke reaching out to grab the shotgun
barrels and point them harmlessly towards the ceiling as he disarms
the rickshaw pilot…

…
And
Corporal Punishment's long-fingered ebony-black hand closes in
mid-air around the little diary, which he opens curiously…

I am still on my feet –
how?

The stones on the
clockwork hand glitter like disco-lights, and with a flash of
pins-and-needles I feel the Taser charge rushing down my arm towards
it, followed by a blissful numbness. But it still won't let go,
hugging my carpals like a bulletproof jacket.

"Guys," I say,
feeling light-headed as I watch Ace and the shrieking Justin
wrestling on the floor. "Why are you playing in my wee-wee?"

The door to the
Airstream
bursts open, and a figure is outlined against the daylight to be
greeted by the impromptu floorshow.

"
Gooood
,"
the newcomer approves.

"That's more like
it, Homer," Luke greets him. "You look like a great big
weight has been lifted off your lap…"

"Ah, it appears I
now have a sister," says Crispin, as Homer steps inside, over
Justin's kicking legs.

"An ugly sister,"
Lance-Corporal Pikey notes.

"…I told you
it didn't seem right swinging around on a dead white fella,"
Luke adds.

"It did upstage the
dead white fella
part," Carvery muses.

"Really, Mr. Dry,"
Captain Mainlining remarks, lowering his rifle and retrieving the
sticky bun from his bayonet. "A woman shouldn't be running
around the camp like that. Put some clean clothes on him, somebody."

"What?" I ask
vaguely, my head still up in the clouds. I look down at myself. "It's
only pee…"

Lance-Corporal Pikey
reluctantly parts with his woolly scarf and mittens, which Homer
accepts graciously.

"I find this plan of
action to be satisfactory," Crispin announces, checking the
clipboard again. "Do you, General Lissima?"

"Quite satisfactory,
Mr. Dry." She re-holsters her firearm.

"I don't know what's
bothering you, man," Luke tells Justin, as he returns the
shotgun to Carvery with the final cartridge still intact, and picks
up his cup of three-sugared tea once more. "Your wife seems like
a perfectly reasonable lady. I told you she couldn't be worse than
mine."

Homer is managing to
fashion a sarong out of the woolly scarf, and has put the mittens
proudly onto his knobbly gray feet.

In the meantime, I notice
Corporal Punishment turning the pages of the little replica of Mr.
Dry Senior's diary, his lips moving silently as he reads…

…
YES!
He understands it!!

"Mr. Time,"
General Sunny-Jim announces, standing up along with the others. "You
will accompany General Lissima Domina to the docks, to begin your
detention immediately."

"Never!" cries
the mutinous rickshaw pilot, as Ace jerks him to his feet, holding
him by the elbows to face the officers.

There is a whip-crack,
and a giant, familiar-looking, sucker-covered tentacle lashes out
across the desk and coils around the gibbering Justin Time's neck.

"He's the same
whenever we have to go home," Cutthroat Liss smiles, while
giving her husband an intimate squeeze.

Luke's teacup drops onto
the floor, and his eyes pop.

"Hey, Justin,"
says Ace. "If it's any consolation, I know what you're going
through. I think I've had her sister."

CHAPTER
SIXTY-SEVEN
:

APOPHYSIS NOW

"
Hah!"
General Cutthroat Liss smiles, baring some extremely pointed teeth,
while she bounces Justin Time up and down by the neck, like a yo-yo
on the end of her alien tentacle appendage. "Where is your New
York pet
Playbunny Boy
now, Justin? She too busy twirling
her tassels to come to your rescue?"

"
Hooooome?
"
Homer pricks up his
post-operatively trans-gender ears behind his yashmak of striped
woolly scarf.

"
Her
name is Cynthia, and she is not a Boy!" spits Justin, turning
rapidly purple. "Of that I am almost certain! Fifty-fifty!"

"
Perhaps
we should go and visit her in the Ten a.m. Lounge now, hmmm?"
Cutthroat suggests. "See if we can determine her qualifications
once and for all?"

"
We
are heading for the Ten a.m. Lounge," Crispin joins in. "Can
we impose on you for a military escort through the Friendly Fire
zone, General Domina?"

"
Of
course, Mr. Dry." Cutthroat Liss grins even more broadly. "You
are always welcome on my little skiff."