The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (63 page)

I can see daylight at the
far end of the tunnel, and both Ace and Homer now way ahead of me.
Luke shoots by, a trail of seaweed flying from the side of his buff
clam, as it jets past smoothly.

I kick my legs
desperately, but then even the adhesion of the respiratory tube
fails, and my ride is suddenly a dead weight.

Holding my breath, I have
to let it go, and try to swim forward on my own.

Without the clam's
propulsion, it suddenly seems like a very long way indeed. And the
enchanted clothes I'm wearing feel like ballast, dragging me down and
holding me back. I close my eyes in defeat.

I'll never make
…

…
An
arm locks around me abruptly, knocking the last of the air out of my
lungs, and I shoot forward once more.

How??
Not
– the merman…?

I feel a respiratory tube
pushed in front of my face, and take a blessed gulp of air before it
moves away. My hand is guided to grasp the back of another clamshell.
Has the mysterious merman brought reinforcements…? But as I
turn to look at my rescuer, the shock is even greater than that.

Carvery Slaughter??!

I almost cry out all of
my precious breath again, and looking irritated, he gives me another
slug of oxygen from the respiratory tube. I take one, and push it
away quickly, knowing the fate of my last steed to be my fault.

I'm
never
drinking
again…

Fortunately, Carvery's
bivalve is a speedy one, and we quickly exit the tunnel.

A few exchanges of
air-supply later, we break the surface of the sea, as the clam
arrives at its basking-beds, in the shallows of an idyllic shoreline.

I can't even look at it,
backing away from Carvery in the waist-deep water, in shock.

"The word you're
searching for is
'Thanks'
," he prompts me, pulling his
cowboy hat from his boot and straightening it out, shaking the drips
off before putting it back on.

"What?" I gasp.
"You can't stand me. Why did you save me – again?"

"Do you want the
honest answer?" he says. "For later. The only set of spare
female donor organs we seem to be able to hang onto around here is
inside you. Keeping you alive is the best way of keeping them fresh."

I take it back. I'm going
to drink and drink until my organs are pickled…

"Good, we all made
it," Crispin's voice interrupts our awkward stand-off, before I
can threaten to tear up my donor card. "We should head inland,
where we will be less exposed."

"Exposed to what?"
Luke asks. "Where are we?"

Up on the rust-coloured
sandy beach already, Ace Bumgang points.

"Look," he
says. "The Five a.m. Lounge."

We all look. On the
horizon, the unmistakeable outline of the pyramids is jutting
heavenward, like an omen of our future.

"The time-line has
been corrupted," Crispin says. "Potentially, we could
encounter anything…"

CHAPTER
SEVENTY-FIVE
:

COWBOYS AND ILEUMS

Not wanting to encounter
Hermit Squidmorphs again being the first on my personal list, I hurry
out of the bivalve basking-beds in the surf. I don't stop hurrying
until I'm a considerable distance from the shoreline.

"
That's
where we should be heading anyway," says Carvery resignedly,
wading out after me. "Got to pick up a Pumpkin, before she turns
back into fertiliser."

"
But
we don't have any spare parts," Ace replies, shaking water out
of his own Stetson, and putting it back on.

"
I
can see two sets, from where I'm standing," Carvery remarks,
looking from me to Homer and back again. "I'm sure between them,
they could manage on fifty percent each. Sarah's never going to use
half of hers anyway, and Homer only wants to look good in a thong."

"
You
are thinking very practically, Mr. Slaughter," Crispin concedes,
to my annoyance. "But it may not be necessary. Our mother keeps
many spare parts preserved in ceramic jars aboard her Great Barge, as
is traditional. If Sarah
Bellummm
can summon the powers
now within the clockwork hand, which appears to be favouring her, I'm
sure those organs could be restored to full working order."

Gosh – I don't know
if I'm capable of that. The clockwork hand still seems to be very
much under its own command. But the idea is preferable to donating my
own…

"
Good
idea," says Carvery, apparently thinking likewise. "Wouldn't
want Sarah thinking her innards were about to see any action. Whether
she's attached to them at the time or not."

It hadn't crossed my
mind, but I blush anyway.
Damn
. I wonder if it's too late to
volunteer?

"
Do
you hear that?" Luke cuts in, interrupting my thoughts of loss
of virginity by proxy. "Something's coming."

We strain our ears. I'm
sure I pick up on a distant roaring noise.

"
Sounds
like the Nine a.m. fighter jets," says Ace.

"
We
should make a move," says Crispin. "We would not want to be
sitting targets, for whatever approaches."

The thought is mutual. We
head further up the beach into the shade of the date palm trees, only
slightly startling some donkeys, who are cooling themselves out of
the sun.

"
Hooome
,"
says Homer, pointing at them.

One reaches out
obligingly, to sample the tip of his finger.

"
This
might be a good time to practise your sidesaddle indeed, Homer!"
Crispin agrees, as the donkey masticates the fingertip lethargically.
Embarrassingly, my stomach growls in empathy. "It is no harder
than riding a camel. Everyone, find a mount."

I find a docile-looking
albino donkey that regards me guilelessly from under its white
lashes, and after falling off the far side only three times, I manage
to scramble aboard, and stay upright.

Crispin is the last to
clamber astride, and the patchwork herd as a whole, even those
without riders, sets off in the direction of the pyramids. Their
conical, hairy ears have a life of their own, waggling and signalling
and rotating independently, like little radars.

I'm missing Paris
already, and its soothingly clement weather. Another dose of desert
heat is not what I needed today, even though my wet (and still
enchanted) clothes are already drying to a crisp against my sore
skin.

"
They're
circling way out over the sea," Luke reports, looking behind us,
as we proceed at a lumpy jog across the equally patchy desert. "What
are they doing so far offshore?"

"
Maybe
they've spotted a flying rickshaw," Carvery suggests.

There is the barest hint
of a shadow passing over the sun, and the fat gray donkey plodding
along to my right is suddenly gone. I can hear the echoes of its
braying on the breeze.

"
What
was that?!" I shriek, staring back at the spot where its
hoof-prints in the sand abruptly end.

The second time I feel
the rush of air, and hear a
clack-clack-clacking
sound, before
another donkey vanishes skywards.

"
You
know what you said about sitting targets, Crispin?" Ace begins,
as the donkeys, panicking, start to run.

And this time I see the
shadow clearly, spreadeagled on the sand as it approaches, and hunch
myself low over my brave little donkey's neck, as she accelerates to
a full bolt.

"
Do
not worry, Sarah
Bellummm!
"
I hear Crispin calling out to me,
my ears full of donkey-mane. "There is no methane here! The
Pterodactyls will be unable to ignite a flame!"

"
You're
not riding behind Homer!" Luke shouts back at him. "There's
enough gas emanating from his mule to light up Miami!"

As if on cue, Homer
squeals as his mount becomes airborne, tail-end first. He topples
forwards over its ears, with a rip of peacock-blue satin –
landing rather neatly across Luke's lap on the donkey behind.

"
Geddoff!"
yells Luke. "My feet are almost dragging along the ground
already…"

Ace draws up alongside
and grabs Homer by the bustle, hoisting him off Luke's overloaded and
short-legged ride, and tossing him unceremoniously onto the next
available mount.

Again – I can't
control that feeling of envy at being manhandled by Ace Bumgang. Why
is it, whenever I need rescuing, I get the psychopath with the
donor-organ-harvesting fixation?

Well, at least he's
efficient, I think – as Carvery catches up and sideswipes my
donkey hard, so that the nose-diving Pterodactyl I hadn't seen coming
misses, and ploughs into the dust with an almighty crash, right where
I would have been.

Maybe he's got a killer's
ego. Nothing is allowed to do it better than him…? I should
have paid more attention to research during the Criminology module of
Forensic Anthropology, instead of playing
Draw My Thing
online…

The stampeding donkeys
trample the fallen Pterodactyl thoroughly as we make our escape. The
roar of a Nine a.m. Lounge jet hits us instead as it cuts across our
path, banking sharply, and another Pterodactyl is gunned down out of
the sky.

"
Is
this what they mean when they say 'Everything happened at once'?"
Luke calls out.

"
Quite
literally, Mr Lukan!" Crispin replies. "All at the same
time!"

"
Everything
is
not
happening at once!" I shout
back irritably, spitting out bits of flying mane as I cling to my
donkey's neck. "I am still a virgin, you know!"

"
Glad
to hear it, Sarah
Bellummm!
"
says Crispin.

Oh, yes. I'd forgotten
about
his
ulterior motives…

"
We
should dismount," he announces. "Before the fighters begin
carpet-bombing."

"
But,"
I puff, trying to slow my juddering and panting donkey down. "We
don't even have a carpet with us at the moment…"

The jet banks again over
the beach behind, looping around for another pass.

"
That's
not what it means, Dumb-Ass," Carvery warns, jumping from the
back of his steed without stopping. "And it doesn't mean they're
about to deliver one, either."

"
Better
pray they don't have napalm yet." Ace follows suit.

From the belly of the
approaching aircraft, a thin blazing line drops silently to Earth.

"
Too
late," says Luke.

Hypnotised, I watch as
the glowing ribbon falls – and where it strikes, the dust
explodes, in incendiary plumes of yellow and gold burning death…

The trampled Pterodactyl
erupts, its carcass rising up briefly like a phoenix, before it
disintegrates and disperses throughout the fireball as black ash.

I'm dimly aware of
Crispin's hand reaching out to seize my ride's mane as he gallops
past, yanking us out of the flight-path, and over the edge of a large
gully into an incredibly muddy river…

Above us, the trail of
meltdown destruction continues until the jet peels off and doubles
back, leaving a vapour-trail across an azure sky already filling with
black smoke.

"
That
was close, Sarah
Bellummm
,"
Crispin's voice says.

I realise my teeth are
chattering, and I'm not the only one. My albino donkey, still clamped
between my terrified legs, is now a grayer shade of mud and trembling
with shock.

"
You
know what this means, don't you?" says Ace.