The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D.'s Christmas Carol (4 page)

“
No more than I want to be standing in front of c
losed doors when I’m hit by fourteen tonnes of enraged pig monster
,
”
I countered,
my eyes locked onto the
killing machines that were wheeling around like two very heavy members of a flock of birds.

The doors of the lift slid open at that point. Penny shot me a very smug look and stepped smartly inside. I quickly joined her, changing the settings on my sidearm
as I did so
. Penny hit the ground floor button as the boars began their charge once again. I leve
lled the gun and fired, all four
remaining electrical charges streaming tog
ether out of the barrel in one continuous bolt
. I hit one of the animals squarely in its snarling face and blue fire raged around the inside of its mouth, arcing from tooth to tusk and even crackling out of its snout. There was a strong smell of burning pork. The stricken boar
’
s stride faltered and it crashed to the floor, cracking the surface as it did. The other boar continued its run
as though it hadn’t noticed its partner’s fate
.

The
lift
doors slid shut and we started to descend. Suddenly, there was a
crunching impact and the
surface of the doors bulged inward, despite being designed to withstand a direct hit by a medium size rocket grenade. Exactly why anyone would be firing a rocket grenade at the Director
’
s lift was a question the designer had not chosen to reveal
the answer to
. It was unlikely that a direct impact by oversized supernatural pig monster was high on the list of protective specifications
with which he had been provided
. The lift jerked and there was an
ugly grating sound, but the mechanism
forced its way past the bent and twisted metal and then resumed a smooth descent.

“
What was that?
”
Penny demanded
, turning on me
.
“
What did you do?
”

“
Me?
”
I complained, hurt that she would assume that the wanton destruction of Agency property was my fault. Admittedly, it usually was, but it
’
s the principle of the thing.
“
Don
’
t go blaming me.
”

“
You walk into Mrs F
’
s office and we
’
re s
uddenly attacked by
grandeur-deluded
pig monsters on a lead? Who else am I supposed to blame?
”
she asked archly and made a good point.

“
Whilst that is true,
”
I admitted reluctantly,
“
this one isn
’
t on me. I
’
m an innocent bystander caught up in events, not the perpetrator.
”

“
Innocent?
”
she asked sceptically.
“
Do you even know how to spell that?
”

“
Penny, I
’
m hurt,
”
I objected again.

“
Not as much as you should be, I
’
m guessing,
”
she replied. A brush with close and imminent death didn
’
t s
eem to have dampened her spirit
.

“
Have I done something wrong?
”
I guessed from her attitude.

“
Think about it for a minute,
”
she suggested.
“
It
’
s more a case of what you didn
’
t do.
”

I thought about it, but nothing came to mind. It couldn
’
t be the whole toilet seat thing that women get so hung up about because Penny didn
’
t use the gents and she was no longer responsible for the return of
mission
equipment so she couldn
’
t be mad about my losing the Portal
Energy Inverter on my time out in the field
.

Penny sighed in annoyance,
“
Do you really need a hint? I mean really? What is tomorrow?
”

“
The first day of the rest of my life?
”
I offered, but
I had
realised my sin of omission
immediately
.

“
Jokes?
Do you really think that
’
s the way to go?
”
she asked in
a manner which
suggested strongly that an alternative way
to go
ought to be sought at the earliest convenience.

“
I didn
’
t give you a Christmas present,
”
I presum
ed.

“
No present, no card, not even a cheery
‘
H
appy Christmas, Penny
’
as we passed in the hallway,
”
she listed pointedly.

“
If we get out of this I know where I can get
you
some
serious
eggnog,
”
I offered.

“
Don
’
t do me any favours,
”
she refused immediately.
“
Oh no, wait, you
don
’
t
do me any favours.
”

The lift d
oor opened as we arrived at
ground level and I was able to escape out into the lobby, which was suitably decorated in understated fashion with a 40 foot Christmas tree festooned with lights that ran in complicated patterns through the branches. It had been explained to me that the patterns were carefully designed by Qoppa Branch to soothe and calm visitors with the optional extra of being able to be switched to a pattern that would instantly hypnotise anyone looking at them and send them into a state of deep sleep
in case of festive rioting
. U.N.D.E.A.D. acknowledged all the major religious holidays with some sort of decoration so there was rarely a day that the lobby was completely free of them, though public decency kept us away from displays that incorporated bleeding sheep
’
s heads and disembowelled pythons.

During a lockdown, the lobby was one of the main rendezvous points, especially for those in the building who weren
’
t normally there or didn
’
t have duties to carry out under an emergency
situation. This late on Christmas Eve, however, the only people in the building were those covering the various dep
artments over the holiday and they were busy carrying out the
emergency tasks
that there was nobody else around to do
. The lobby was empty except for Penny and me and a woman with a half-ruined face holding the chains of two giant attack boars whilst floating serenely a couple of feet above the carpet.

“
Didn
’
t you kill one of those?
”
Penny asked when she spotted them.

“
Apparently not,
”
I supposed.

“
Well that was remiss of you. What do we do now?
”

I had been thinking about that, as hard and as fast as I could and I had come up with only one line of action,
“
Run!
”

I sprinted across the lobby at an angle and I didn
’
t need to look back to know that Penny was right behind me. There was a pair of angry snorts followed by the cra
sh of giant trotter
s against the lobby floor with the attendant cracking of expensive tiling.

“
ID card!
”
I shouted at Penny as we approached the door I was aiming for. I slowed down to allow her
to pass me, extracting her ID
from the lanyard around her neck as she did so. I was putting myself between her and the charging boars, though what exactly I intended to do if they reached either of us I didn
’
t know.
‘
Get crushed horribly to death
’ seemed
the most probabl
e answer
.

Penny waved her pass across the reader and the doo
r popped open, allowing us to d
ash through it and
slam
it shut behind us. The walls shuddered
under
two immense impacts behind us, but held. A large amount of dust was released from the ceiling and I made a mental note to discuss that with Property Services since someone clearly wasn
’
t using their cleaning spells properly.

“
We can
’
t just keep running,
”
Penny gasped, leaning against the doorway for a moment to compose
herself
.
“
We need a plan.
”

“
I have one of those,
”
I told her.
“
Well, a destination at least.
”

“
Care to share?
”
she enquired.

“
The armoury,
”
I revealed.

“
We
’
re going to need a bigger gun?
”
she asked with a grin.

“
Something
like
that,
”
I agreed and we too
k off down the corridor as though
someone had
cried havoc and
let slip the pigs of war behind
us.

There are a good many secure locations within the Victor Von Frankenstein Tower. The cells below us with their indestructible inmates and Qoppa Branch
’
s testing rooms are the most dangerous and so the most heavily protected and reinforced, but the Armoury comes a close third. U.N.D.E.A.D. has its own infantry corps on standby in strategic locations around the world, but a direct assault on the headquarters building would have to be repelled in the first instance by the staff within it and so there is a large stock of frighteningly destructive weapons held within a specially-built vault to which only a select few have access. Quite apart from the immensely strong construction of the vault and the magical defences built into that construction, the armoury comes equipped with a failsafe protocol to prevent the weapons it contains fr
om falling into the wrong hands … or tentacles … or whatever.

Some people would consider my hands to be the wrong ones, but desperate times and desperate measures and all that.

Penny and I wound our way through the twisting corridors until we came to the armoury
’
s si
de entrance. Penny used her ID
a
nd submitted to the retinal, DNA
and aura scans that were needed to ensure that she
was
Penny Kilkenny before the door popped open and we were able to slip inside.

“
We can always stay here until the troops arrive,
”
Penny suggested and then stopped to look at the array of offensive
(in all senses of the word)
weaponry stored all around her.
“
Oh my.
”

“
We could do that,
”
I agreed without considering it for a second,
“
but there
’
s no telling how many
other
people would get killed in the process. We
’
re everyone
’
s best bet for dealing with this
right now
.
”

“
We are?
”
she asked, surprised.
“
Boy,
is everyone screwed.
”

“
Now that
’
s not the right spirit,
”
I told her and regretted the inadve
rtent pun straight away. I located
the weapon that I had been looking for on the shelves and my thumbprint and blood sample were enough to have it released to me. I then went to the armoury computer terminal and input my codes.
“
Computer
,
arm failsafe option
-
armoury,
”
I instructed it.