My Hero (32 page)

‘How much is that dogma in the window,' Titania chimed in, ‘the one with the waggly—?'

‘Shut up, you. The main thing to remember,' Regalian said, ‘is that this book will be Dracula's first novel, right?'

‘Presumably.'

‘Oh, undoubtedly. Which is where basic authorship theory comes in. What you have to bear in mind is—'

The ground vanished.

For the first twenty-fifth of a second, nobody noticed. Inside the Slushpile, all surfaces are nondescript to the point of self-effacement. The proper adjective is
bleak
. After all, the place is little more than a rather more than usually desperate Job Centre, but without even the pretence of furniture or, indeed, walls. And in even the most godforsaken Job Centre in, say, Merseyside you'll
always find one human touch; a framed photograph of wife and children on someone's desk, a postcard from some colleague's holiday resort pinned up on a notice-board, a grey-leafed, cigarette-burnt avocado plant hiding in a corner. Nothing like that in the Slushpile. So, when the ground suddenly became transparent and faded away, there were no instantaneous cries of
My God! Look!
It was really only when they started to fall through an apparently empty void and the old thirty-two-feet-per-second-per-second routine cut in that anybody paid it any heed.

‘What the—?'

‘Oh, good, it's worked.'

‘Oh Christ, we're all going to—'

‘What you have to bear in mind,' Regalian continued blithely, as an endless supply of nothing at all whistled past their ears, ‘is that everybody's first novel invariably has the author as its hero. Which means—'

‘
Aaaaaaagh!
'

‘—That our friend with the pointy teeth will not only be in Reality, he'll now be in Fiction
as well
. And that,' Regalian added with a chuckle, ‘is where we'll let him have his reward. Oh yes,' he added, with a certain degree of satisfaction, ‘that'll be a positive pleasure. Someone he can really get his teeth into.'

 

Paul McCartney rarely goes shopping in Marks & Spencer these days. It's been ages since Sean Connery dropped in to a bar for a quiet drink and some peace and quiet. For roughly similar reasons, Claudia sent Max down to the Slushpile to see to the prisoners. Being mobbed by hysterical crowds can be so wearing.

He landed - no doors in the Slushpile, for the same reason that there are no window boxes on a submarine - a little bit off course; not on the deserted outskirts, where the prisoners had been dumped, but rather further
in, which was a pity. Almost before he'd scrambled to his feet, a pack of scavenging characters came ambling up, eyes bulging, ribs visible in wasted carcasses, tongues lolling. He recognised them as heroines of attempted clog-and-shawl period romances, all naive innocence and demure cotton halter-neck dresses; but it was all right, he was wearing both his guns now, and after he'd shot five or six of them they went back the way they'd come, carrying their dead with them. They stayed pretty much out of his way after that, although he could hear the soft pad of their feet as they followed at a respectful distance. He did have an uncomfortable moment or two when a small knot of starved and crazy fugitives from the Danielle Steel cloning vats tried to jump him; even a .45 bullet isn't guaranteed to stop a Redditch housewife's idea of Joan Collins who hasn't eaten for three years, and Max was glad he'd remembered his Bowie knife. He gave the science fiction compound a very wide berth, however. You can't carry that much firepower and still walk upright.

Arrived safely. Checked both guns loaded, knife handy down leg of boot. Assumed gunfighter's roll.

‘Howdy,' he said; and stopped, bewildered.

Nobody here.

Signs that they'd been there, not long since; chewed-through ropes and more discarded gags than a comedian's dustbin. Just no prisoners, that was all.

Rescued? Surely not. Eaten by characters? More likely, but if so, where were the bones? Even the fluffy kittens from the Children's colony would have left a few scraps of bone, if only for later. Being held hostage? Could be. He clicked his tongue impatiently. The last time they'd used this place as a temporary holding cell, he'd had to go in with a special operations unit to free Superman from a mob of fundamentalist hobbits. With Gatling gun
ammunition running at twenty dollars a crate, he wasn't sure his budget would run to a repeat performance.

Gosh-danged pesky characters, he muttered to himself.

Whatever the situation, there was nothing to be gained from hanging about here. She would have to be told. The thought appalled him, but he had no option. It was rather like being Henry VIII's fiancée, looking at the seating plan for the wedding breakfast and seeing that the president of the executioners' co-operative is going to be sitting on the top table.

Just as he was about to give the order to be beamed up, he noticed something skulking in a shadow out of the corner of his eye. Nothing unusual in that; an awful lot of skulking goes on in the Slushpile. It's the nearest thing they have there to a rich cultural heritage. This, however, was skulking with intent to attract attention.

‘Howdy,' he said.

The skulker (skulcator? skulksman?) shuffled a few steps forward, hesitated like a hungry alley cat, and then darted back into the shadows. Max sighed. This sort of thing could go on all night if he let it. He had two options, one of which was to establish a bond of trust and confidence between himself and the shy, wild creature a few yards away. He opted for the other.

‘You in the shadow,' he said, drawing his gun and thumbing back the hammer. ‘Come out before I blow your head off.'

The skulkster quivered a little and then crept towards him on hands and knees. Max recognised it as a Comic Irishman; very much a discontinued line, suggesting it had been here a very long time indeed.

‘Top o' the morning to ye, sorr,' the creature hissed. ‘An' will you be after bein' Herself's assisthant, faith an' begob?'

Max shuddered a little. A hundred years at least since
anybody's written a character like that. It'd be a kindness to put the poor thing out of its misery.

‘Sure am, stranger,' he nevertheless replied.

The creature shuffled nearer, until he could see the poor mad gleam in its eyes. A century living with its own dialogue had long since turned its brains to mush. Pity tightened his finger on the trigger, professionalism restrained it.

‘An' if I was to be after tellin' ye where thim new-comers might be after having got to,' the relic wheezed on, ‘might ye not be afther considerin' puttin' in a good word with Herself for a pore ole comic relief that's been here since there was afther bein' snakes in dear ole Erin, begob and bejazus?' Then it started coughing and snuffling. Max felt slightly sick.

‘Reckon so,' he forced himself to say. ‘Figure the agent-lady's always on the scoutaround for—' He closed his eyes. ‘—promising young talent. Why don't you-all tell me what's on your mind?'

The creature told its tale while Max listened, occasionally nodding while the translator circuits in his brain began to glow white hot. When the narrative had finally spluttered to its barely comprehensible end, he nodded again.

‘Thanks, partner,' he said, ‘right neighbourly of you.' He glanced down, and just as a fresh wave of revulsion started to course through him, an idea slipped in through the cat-flap of his mind. ‘Say,' he enquired, ‘can you do Scottish too?'

‘Och awa' wi' ye, mon,' drivelled the creature. ‘Do ye no ken frae ma accent I was born beside the bonny braes of Strannochmuir? Also Welsh, look you. And Nondescript Rustic, arr—'

‘Sure thing,' Max broke in quickly. It was a long time since he'd eaten, but there was still something left inside
his digestive tract, and he didn't want it ending up all over his shoes. ‘Reckon that Scottish stuff's what we done been looking for. Vacancy aboard the
Enterprise
for a chief engineer. Interested? If you are,' he added rapidly, ‘just nod.'

The creature nodded.

‘Right,' said Max, as the transporter beam hit him. ‘We'll let you know.'

 

Six coffins . . .

‘Hello?' Regalian shouted. ‘Anybody there?' He desisted, and tried thinking instead. Logic: if this was, as he suspected, a coffin, then it followed that they were probably in a crypt. If that was the case, chances were there was nobody else in it with them; and if there was, he wasn't sure he
wanted
to be helped out of his nice safe box by one of them.

Think . . . It suddenly occurred to him that he knew how to get out of a coffin. You just apply your mind, and the screws that hold the lid on start to unscrew of their own accord. He tried it; and a moment later, he heard a tiny, distant tinkle, as of small metal objects falling on to a stone floor. He lifted his arms and pushed against the lid, which gave way. He sat up.

God, he thought, that was thirsty work. What I wouldn't give right now for a nice long cool pint of AB negative . . .

Instinctively, his hand flew to his neck. Sure enough, he located a small, tender patch. A bruise, probably, and two tiny puncture marks.

Oh
spiffing
. Just what I need at this particular juncture. Another lid fell away, and Skinner sat up, massaging his neck and looking as if he'd just received IBM's tax demand by mistake instead of his own.

‘You too, huh?' Regalian said. ‘It's true what they say about suckers; one born every minute.'

Skinner just swore. Not long after that, Hamlet emerged. His teeth had already started to grow, Regalian noticed gloomily.Those could be a problem, horrible great sharp things, but what could you do? Stick corks on the points?

‘Girls?' he queried, ‘Come on, we haven't got all day.'

Sure enough, the last two remaining lids fell away, revealing Jane and Titania. Both of them were rubbing their necks and running through a wide repertoire of non-verbal communications. What's the betting that, if you translated the thoughts, each one would prove to begin with the words
If ever I get my hands on the little
. . . Well, quite. They'd have to join the queue, that was all.

He hesitated. He counted.
Six
coffins. He remembered. He rubbed his hands together, and made noises indicative of evil satisfaction.

‘I know you're in there,' he said. ‘Out you come.'

‘Shan't,' said a voice from inside the sixth coffin.

‘Sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘Fine. Skinner, pass me the hammer. Titania, reach me over one of those pointed stakes. Yes, the oak will do fine. Hamlet, look lively and fetch the silver bullets . . .'

There followed the sound, by now familiar, of screws hitting flagstones, followed by the creaking of a coffin lid being raised. A white, ghastly face peeked over the lid.

‘You rotten cheats!' it said. ‘You haven't got any stakes after all.'

His heroic reflexes made it possible for Regalian to grab the coffin lid and wrench it out of Dracula's hands before he was able to do a snail impression. ‘What's this, then?' the hero shouted, pointing to his neck with his free hand. ‘And before you make any funny remarks, I may not be
able to kill you with my bare hands, but I could have a lot of fun trying my very hardest and eventually failing.'

‘All right,' whimpered the vampire. ‘Point taken. Look, I can explain.'

‘Oh good,' Jane growled. ‘He can explain. That's all right, then.'

‘It's for your own good,' the vampire said. ‘Honest. I'd have thought you'd have worked that one out for yourselves.'

‘Our own good?'

‘That's right.'

‘Being turned into sunlight-shunning, invisible-in-mirrors, make-mine-a-bloody-Mary-hold-the-Mary
vampires
for our own good, huh?'

‘Yes.'

Regalian stood for a moment, hand on chin, thinking. ‘Do you know something?' he eventually asked.

‘What?'

‘I think,' he said slowly, ‘that the only reason people think you can't kill a vampire by shoving its head up its own arse is because nobody's ever actually tried it. What do you think, guys?'

Skinner nodded vigorously. ‘Let's research,' he said. ‘I love research. People tell me I should have been a professor or something.'

‘Listen!' the vampire shrieked.

‘Sorry?'

‘Vampires, right? They're undead. Can only be killed with stakes or silver bullets.'

‘Reputedly.'

‘And now you're vampires, right? Think about it.'

‘I'm trying not to, actually.'

‘Please,' the vampire urged. ‘Talk about helping you guys out. I mean, you lot
are
on the run from Claudia, with her dreaded henchman Max close on your tails. I'd have thought you'd be grateful.'

Regalian frowned. ‘How did you know that?' he said quietly.

The vampire grinned feebly. ‘Because,' he explained, ‘they're standing right behind you.'

‘Sure,' Regalian sneered. ‘Pull the other one.'

‘With pleasure,' said a female voice. Regalian spun round, and found himself peering down the muzzle of the Scholfield, so close that he could see the heads of the bullets in the cylinder. They weren't dull black, like lead, or orange and shiny, like copper-jacketed; more sort of white and shiny. ‘Or rather, Max will do it. Max, get the block and tackle.'

Titania made a threatening noise. ‘You won't get away with this,' she said. ‘We outnumber you three to one.'