The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (67 page)

"Murderer!" I
shout.

"Not without the
formal ceremony!" Crispin hollers.

While Crispin wrestles
with his cousin for possession of the knife, I thrust the burning
torch at the attendant with the clockwork hand, before he can
intervene again. He dodges to the far side of the altar, causing me
to collide with the body of Miss Air-Head, as I struggle to reach
him.

"Give that back!"
I squeal at him, digging into Whatsername's ribcage with my elbow as
I flail forwards. "It was given to me to look after!"

A hiccup beneath me
almost goes unnoticed.

"Sarah…"
says my housemate. "What's going on? Where's Carvery?"

Oh, God – not now!

"Get down, get
down!" I hiss at her, pulling her clear of the plinth. "Sshhh!
They want to use your body as a zombie Queen Squidmorph host! They
mustn't know you're awake!"

"That queen over
there?" She points over my shoulder.

"No, no –
that's Homer. Remember? He just wants to be a prom queen," I
reassure her. "That one, over the other side. Being dragged
around by her tentacle, by the big angry cyborg. Long story."

"Why is there a goat
and a donkey watching?" she asks. "And who is that man with
his head under the rug? Where is Carvery?"

I really don't know which
of those questions I'd rather answer least.

"I have to get the
clockwork hand back, and try to get us home!" I whisper,
hurriedly. "Ace is here somewhere…" Oh, yes. I spot
him surreptitiously attempting to untie Luke from the wooden cross –
while Crispin and Beneficience fight over his potential as a
sacrifice – kicking out at any attendant zombies who interfere.
"The man under the rug is…"

I have a brainwave, and
hurry over to Justin Time. He is pinned to the floor by the booted
feet of two of Higham Dry's bounty hunters upon his driving cape, and
still at gunpoint by the Naval officer, resolutely hiding his head
under the small mat.

I lift up one corner, and
he screams.

"Justin," I
greet him. "Can you summon the rickshaw?"

"My wife smash all
of them up already!" he rages. "I am grounded!"

"But I've seen rugs,
captive on the aircraft-carrier outside…" I begin. "Is
that your wife General Lissima's boat? The big Naval ship? Could we
get away from here on just a flying carpet?"

"You should be so
lucky!" Justin scoffs. "You never sneak one past her!
Believe me, every day I have tried! Sometimes four, no, six times a
day!"

Lady Glandula is using
her attendants as ammunition, seizing the poor helpless zombies by
the legs and battering them against Higham Dry Senior's armoured
hull. He deflects them effortlessly, scattering spare parts. My
housemate screams as a dusty skull rolls over her foot.

"Perhaps
you
should be the one thinking about mediation and counselling?"
Higham Dry's robotic voice chuckles, as he gives her tentacle a
whip-crack, causing her to drop the enormous urn she had been poised
to throw.

"The gods and I do
not see Eye-to-eye!" she spits.

"Shouldn't have
declared war on him while you were alive, then, should you?"
Higham Dry replies, winding her tentacle around a pillar to deliver a
body-blow. "You wouldn't have had to run away to Egypt in the
first place. Or had the most important Incantations taken away from
you."

"Atum took
everything!" she roars, and the pillar crumbles as she contracts
the tentacle, breaking free. "To the bottom of the ocean!
Everything that was mine! My country! My culture! My business! My
empire!"

"I can see where
Crispin gets his monopoly fixation from," Ace's voice joins us.

"Ace!" I gasp.
"Where's Luke?"

"Said he was going
to sort out his marriage." Ace looks dubious. "I hope that
means he's got a bigger knife than she does."

I look across at the
altar. Crispin and Beneficience are still tussling with the
sacrificial tools. Having disarmed one another several times already,
they are now down to the hooks and the leather belt-roll, in a
stroppy
Tug o'War
that I can clearly see harks back to their
childhood as merely playful cousins.

Of Luke, there is no
sign.

"I need to get the
clockwork hand back," I say. "I think it might be able to
stop them…"

"I have a better
idea," says Justin Time's Naval officer guard. We look up in
surprise, and she pulls off her dark peaked cap. Before I can react,
she has twitched the little leather-bound diary out of my hand. "How
about you all wait here with Higham Dry Senior's men, and
I'll
get
the clockwork hand back?"

"General Lissima!"
I cry out.
No!

"I told you,"
Justin Time groans into his comfort-rug, as his wife runs off with
the precious diary, grinning. "I try to sneak one past her many
times! She always one sucker ahead!"

Over by the pedestal,
Crispin and Beneficience knock the remainder of the floral display
off the altar, and roll around inelegantly on the floor.

"Mine!" shrieks
Beneficience, currently on top, with Crispin compressed beneath her
suffocating bosom.

"Yield!"
Crispin manages to blurt out, before his head disappears again under
an enormous polka-dot corsage.

"Play nicely, kids,"
Ace remarks, a statement which does something else weird to my
ovaries. "Should we do something?"

Oh, yes
,
I'm thinking – but it's probably not appropriate right now.

"I wouldn't even
know whose side we're on at the present moment," I admit.

"The one where none
of us ends up with more alien squid tentacle butt-plugs than we
started out with," Ace reminds me.

I glance up at the three
bounty hunters guarding us, wishing I knew what their weaknesses are…

"'When I fall in
love, it will be for ever…'"

The tussle at the foot of
the pedestal becomes a frozen tableau.

"'Or I'll never
fall in love…'"

Beneficience raises her
head uncertainly.

"Gaylord?" she
snaps. "Is that you?"

Homer, ever vigilant for
a song and dance number, hurries to the foot of the steps leading up
the pedestal, and gestures upward with his pom-poms.

At the top, his bow-tie
and cuffs straightened, a single dead rose from the altar clutched
between his hands, Luke is singing to the rafters.

"Ooh, that lovely!"
Higham Dry Senior the cyborg approves, windmilling an unfortunate
zombie attendant in each hand like a
nunchaku
expert. "It
take a hard woman to reject a man with great big lungs like those!"

Crispin struggles free
from beneath his plus-sized cousin, and looks wildly at the vacant
altar and suspended wooden cross of torture.

"
Nooo!
"
he cries, pitifully. "The ceremony – all ruined!"

"No!" screams
Lady Glandula, now using her tentacle to defend against Higham Dry's
attack. "Make him stop!"

"
Yesss
,"
hisses another voice, and I look in its direction to see Mrs. Time,
General Cutthroat Liss, clockwork hand in her grasp and stripping the
flesh from the zombie still hanging onto it with her own tentacle.

The gray skin and
connective tissue slides off the bones easily, like a well-cooked
spare rib.

I don't think I'll ever
be able to watch
Man v. Lunch
again…

"I'll go after the
General and the clockwork hand," says Ace, close to my ear. "You
stay here with Whatserface and find a way to distract the bounty
hunters."

"How?" I
demand, looking at my useless companions.

Justin Time with his head
still stubbornly under the pointless rug. My housemate Shithead,
huddling up between the drunk billy goat and the albino donkey. And
an even less helpful Carvery Slaughter – turned to stone. My
heart sinks.

I don't think you can
retrieve DNA samples from stone… what a waste…

"Oh, Gaylord…"
says Beneficience, a tear in her eye and clasping her breast, as Luke
sings on. "Can you forgive me?"

The panels in the great
wooden pyramid start to creak, and slide apart, allowing bright
shafts of sunlight through. Slowly, the structure retracts into the
deck of the giant barge.

"You'll think of
something," Ace assures me.

I give up. What do Higham
Dry's bounty hunters
really
want…?

As a last resort, I
snatch the rug from Justin Time's head, and spin it away across the
deck as he scrabbles to retain it.

"Justin Time is
escaping!" I yell. "Trying to steal that doormat! Stop
him!"

It works – the
three bounty hunters launch themselves after the errant rickshaw
pilot, and pin him to the floor. Ace dashes off in the other
direction.

"It's nothing!"
Justin Time protests, struggling. "A trinket! A souvenir!
Nothing special! Not prototype, or anything important like that!"

The last of the panels is
now flush with the deck, and my housemate squints up into the
daylight.

"Oh, no," she
moans vaguely. "It's going to rain."

"Pop Quim,
hopscotch!" says Higham Dry, throwing another unlucky zombie,
javelin-style, at Lady Glandula. "If a man sing up a storm, who
remember to bring umbrella?"

"
Nooo!
"
she shouts. "Make him
stop singing!
"

I look up at the sky,
into a gathering funnel of gunmetal-gray cloud. The Great Barge,
usually as steady as a rock, begins to quiver.

"Not bad, lovely
boy…" I echo. My voice is barely audible, even to my own
ears. "Louder…"

CHAPTER
SEVENTY-NINE
:

PROSTATES OF THE
CARIBBEAN

We start to slide across
the deck as the Great Barge tilts. Alongside, the Nine a.m. Lounge
aircraft carrier also leans inward, with the centrifugal pull of the
vortex appearing, mid-river. The heaped-up dinosaur skeletons take a
dive from its upper deck into the abyss, followed by one of the jets,
parked too close to the edge.

"Hold on!" I
shout at my housemate, halted as my legs entangle with the billy
goat. Apparently, it could remain upright on a sheer drop. "Grab
onto something!"

The
something
she
finds, with her groping clumsy hands, is Justin Time under his heap
of bounty hunters. Justin squeals indignantly.

"I am a married man,
Madam!" he yells, playing his loyalty card as it suits him.

Lady Glandula lashes out
with her tentacle, anchoring herself to the main mast. Higham Dry
Senior clamps onto her with his one mechanical-armed grip, trying to
drag her away.

"You don't want a
little reconciliation with your god?" he says, gesturing over
the side with his other scraggy zombie arm. "Surely it's nothing
personal… just good for business!"

Below us, in that watery
whirlpool, the gigantic Eye is rising, scattering the sunbathing
crocodiles.

For the first time, I see
genuine panic cross the zombie Queen's face.

"No!" she
cries. "I will not enter the limbo of Darkness and Shades! Give
me the rest of the Incantations!"

"Only your frail
human form is in debt to Atum, Mother!" I hear Crispin shouting,
but I don't see him. "Let it go! Take a new body!"

"Frail?" Higham
Dry grumbles, straining on his cyborg chassis. "She is testing
the limits of
WD-40
here, I tell you!"

"This frail human
form is what gave birth to you, Crispin!" she yells.

"Exactly!" says
Higham Dry. "The rest is just indestructible hermit
calamari!
"

Over by the ravaged
altar, Beneficience is on her ample knees, sobbing. Luke reaches her
with his hands outstretched in supplication, still singing, like a
taxi-driving absconding angel.