The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (64 page)

"
What?"
asks Carvery.

"
Everyone
in the Six a.m. Lounge is now off their tits on Guinness ambulance
fuel." Ace waggles his hand, as if holding a pint glass. "Drunk
rickshaw pilots galore, and goat curry on the menu."

"
Justin
Time must have leaked," Carvery muses. "I would, if I was
married to that trigger-happy ho. Everywhere."

Homer is looking down at
his ruined prom dress and crying like it's the end of the world. Luke
is undoing his bow-tie and cuffs, evidently feeling that the time to
be in formal attire is well and truly over.

I remember what Crispin's
cousin Sandy said to me, about the Nine a.m. Lounge…

'
They
look forward to
the day they believe that the taxmen and regulators will flatten our
haven of peaceful business
…'

What if they can't wait
any more and have decided to hurry things up, now that they have the
fuel as well as the the firepower?

I look down at the
glowing clockwork hand, clamped around my wrist. Full of rabid zombie
nun spell.

Probably not much use
against napalm.

"
Crispin,"
I say, seriously. "I don't think this is just fun and games
anymore."

He looks solemn.

"
I
believe you are right, Sarah
Bellummm
,"
he says, heaving a sigh. "There has not been a full-scale
conflict between the Lounges in my lifetime. But the signs are hard
to ignore."

"
You
think?" I reply, trying to rein in my distress. "The
occupants of a gun-toting war-zone get the recipe for unlimited fuel
and napalm, and you're considering that they might just sit happily
in their jungle with ambulances that work and functional oil-lamps
that don't smell of Guinness?"

"
Not
to mention that you've now got a megalomaniac undead elderly relative
with a fort full of piss-drunk military on his hands," Ace chips
in. "They could declare war on just about anywhere – and
not even remember doing it by tomorrow morning."

Crispin stands up, and
his darkened face is unreadable against the sun and the backdrop of
burning napalm.

"
This
is why not all business competition is healthy!" he roars, and
my donkey jumps, its nerves in almost as bad a state as my underwear.
"Without regulating, people just run about doing as they please,
manufacturing anything they like! Recreational alcohol that contains
no recreation! Junk food items that are all junk! I will not have
it!"

And he stamps off
upriver, like a toddler who has had his last balloon burst on his
birthday.

"
Monopoly,"
Luke repeats under his breath.

"
Maybe
you shouldn't have said that about his Grandpappy, Ace," Carvery
remarks.

"
What?"
Ace turns his palms skywards. "He
is
old,
and
undead."

"
Hooome
,"
says Homer, pointing after his brother sadly.

Crispin is already a
grumpy black silhouette, against the distant pyramids.

"
Yes,
let's go," I agree, and move to help the bedraggled Homer to his
feet. "We'll go and find some of your mother's nice clothes for
you to change into."

Homer has to be helped
onto the back of my surviving donkey, too distressed to walk, and I
coax it along the river bank gently, while he whimpers, with not one
mention of anything being
Goood
.

Ace, Carvery and Luke
trail behind.

"
I'm
getting a really weird sense of
déjà-vu
,"
says Luke, thoughtfully. "Aren't you?"

"
Nah,"
Ace grunts. "You mistake me for a wise man, Luke."

"
The
only
déjà-vu
I'm getting is one about
a big alien sucker tentacle," says Carvery, and I glance back to
see him taking out his Taser and squinting at it. "I think this
might be out of charge…"

"
Still
got one cartridge, though," Ace points out, indicating the
shotgun strapped to Carvery's back.

"
Yeah,
saving that, though," Carvery reminds him, loud enough to remind
me at the same time. "In case those donor organs up ahead try to
run away."

I scowl at him. Before I
can turn around again, behind them I spot the distant dot of a jet
fighter as it drops from its stacking loop in the skies above the
sea, and dips for another approach up our muddy gully…

"
Like
now?" I reply, as the advancing engine roar meets our ears.

The others turn to look,
and swear.

"
Fuck,"
says Carvery. "Everybody down!"

Homer gives an indignant
squeal, as I push him off the donkey back into the water.

Still on my feet, I
wrench angrily at the stubborn clockwork hand, but it won't budge
from my arm.

"
Do
something!" I shout at it. "Anything!"

"
Get
down, Fuckwit!" Carvery is shouting at me in turn.

This time, there is no
line of liquid fire as the aircraft bears down upon us. Worried, I
turn and look to where Crispin is trudging onwards, up ahead.

Maybe
he's
the
target…

"
Crispin!"
I yell in warning.

But he ignores me –
or can't hear me…

The stupid clockwork hand
just glows in a radioactive fashion, but does nothing.

"
Even
if you can only do zombie nuns!" I beg of it. "Do
something! Blow something up! Change something! Stop acting like
costume jewellery!"

A metallic twang slices
through the air, and there is a scream behind me.

I look upwards just in
time to see the jet soaring away, carrying off our taxi-driver Luke –
on the end of a long, barbed steel cable.

CHAPTER
SEVENTY-SIX
:

FRANKENMINKY

"
Luke!"
I scream, but the jet vanishes all too quickly over the blue horizon.

Desperately, I look ahead
– Crispin is barely a speck in the distance, against the
pyramids. And he looks like a bad-tempered speck too…

"What would they
want with Luke?" Ace asks, as he and Carvery pick themselves off
the riverbed, catching up with us to help the now hysterical Homer
back out of the mud, and onto the donkey once more. "The dude's
harmless. I've seen more evil bones in a bagel."

"Maybe they still
think he's a treasure-thief," Carvery speculates. "They
don't take too kindly to that sort hanging around near their ancient
tombs."

"They don't seem to
be taking too kindly to anyone much at the moment," I remark,
looking up at the top of the gully.

Outlined against the
smoke-filled sky, faces are appearing, peeking down at us over the
edge. Gray faces, attached to lanky gray bodies in little more than
loincloths. Five becomes ten, and ten rapidly becomes twenty…

"I don't suppose you
fancy giving them a bit more of the old
Moulin Gris
, Homer?"
Ace suggests, as the ranks of slave zombies lining the river increase
exponentially.

"I don't think
they'll fall for that one again," Carvery replies, as Homer
looks thoughtful. "Even if he does have the right qualifications
now, under that dress."

Behind us, some of the
slave zombies slither down the steep ochre bank, and form a line
across the shallow riverbed.

"Guess we keep
moving," says Ace. "I hope Crispin knows what he's doing."

That's what's worrying me
– but I don't mention it. The last time I upset Crispin, we all
ended up chained to grubby bathroom fittings in an underground cell…

Herded by the surrounding
gray zombies, we head further inland towards the pyramids, and to
where our mud-filled trench adjoins the main river.

* * * * *

Lady Glandula's
wooden-hulled Great Barge is even bigger and more imposing than I
remember. But that's not all, currently moored on the riverbanks.

A giant steel aircraft
carrier is now anchored alongside, almost parallel in size –
and a row of Nine a.m. Lounge fighter jets are stationed along the
runway of its upper deck.

"I don't like the
look of this," I remark to Homer, and my exhausted albino
donkey. "From what I've learned about inter-Lounge relations so
far, I don't think they're here to borrow a cup of sugar."

The aircraft carrier has
already seen some action, by the appearance of things. Shattered
dinosaur corpses are piled up at one end of the runway, and an
industrial-sized fishing net full of captive flying carpets flaps
helplessly on the end of its restraints.

"They've been busy,
since getting their hands on moonshine fuel and napalm," Ace
observes, as he and Carvery catch up with us.

"Pity the other
Lounges," Carvery agrees. "Hey, maybe they've already
neutered Lady Glandula de Bathtub. That would be a bonus."

"Save you the
trouble," I remark absently.

Prodded onward by the
slave zombies, we ascend the gangplank onto the Great Barge. Greeted
by more of Lady Glandula's attendant zombies from earlier, in their
red leather chaps, we are escorted again into the huge wooden
torchlit pyramid.

But instead of featuring
Lady Glandula de Bartholine as a statue on the imposing pedestal as
the centrepiece, there is the far more recognisable – and
apparently still deceased – body of my housemate, Whatserface,
supine on the wooden plinth at its base.

"Crap," says
Ace. "They found her already."

"Not exactly, Mr.
Bumgang," says a familiar voice, and an equally familiar figure
lurches into view, from behind the gory display. "We are just
preparing for the Rejuvenation ceremony. Glad you could all join us."

"Crispin?" I
gasp.

He looks so different…

Instead of the expensive
black wool suit I've only seen him in thus far, he has changed –
into something far more traditionally
undead.
Ragged,
bloodstained denim jeans and a torn grubby shirt hang casually off
his masculine zombie frame, in a way that short-circuits all of my
mental strength and resistance.

It's so deliberate…
it's so undeniably…

…
Like
your Mr. Wheelie-Bin
,
I hear his voice taunting in my brain, brutally.

"Who's 'we'?"
Carvery asks him, warily, while my mind reels from the unexpected
visual assault. "Is your Mum here?"

"No need to rush
things, Mr. Slaughter," says Crispin, calmly. A pair of zombie
attendants are arranging earthenware pots of various sizes alongside
Thingummyjig's inert form on the plinth. "We are a few organs
short, but I believe that suitable replacements are on the way. Sarah
Bellummm?
"

"Hmmm?" I
respond, still in shock at his change of turn-out.

He smiles lopsidedly,
knowing he's delivered a blow below the belt.

How dare he?
Knowing that I've got a soft spot for all those poor bodies,
naturally decrepitating on the Body Farm…?

"You have assisted
in surgery once already," he reminds me. He moves towards the
plinth and unrolls an embossed leather case, and I see the array of
shiny hooks and blades glinting within. "Would you reprise your
position on this occasion? Or would you prefer a more…
passive
role this time?"

I look from my
housemate's pale, waxlike body, to the golden clockwork hand clamped
around my arm. Dreading to think what sort of impact zombie-frog-nun
magic will have on her – organs or no organs…