The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (26 page)

It's a close one. Mainly
because the hen is chained to the cannonball, by one leg.

"Stupid chicken,"
says Crispin's grandfather, shaking his head sadly. "If she
learn to fly faster, then maybe she beat cannonball. Okey-dokey –
here I come…"

And he steps off the
ledge. My reward for screaming, is another cuff around the ear from
Carvery, and a wince from Ace Bumgang, who is still clutching his
bleeding arm.

But Higham Dry Senior
merely drifts gently to the ground, his robes inflated around him
like a
Disney
-esque parachute.

And looks mightily
pleased with himself too – I can see where Homer gets his
self-confidence from…

"You see any Jedi
Master do that?" he asks, sniggering. "Maybe – but I
don't watch all of the series.
Sooooo
… you like my
experiment? Chicken wasn't always fixed to cannonball, but too many
chickens just fly away. Did you know they can fly? Who knew, right?
But one day, I will find a chicken who can move faster than a
cannonball. Then that be really fast food, no? Come downstairs. We
make chicken soup."

"Your grandfather…"
Ace begins quietly, as the portcullis raises for us. "Is he a
zombie too, or just really old?"

"Oh, he passed away
many years ago." Crispin taps himself on the sternum. "It's
all clockwork in there. Have you ever seen
Sucker Punch
? Kind
of like the soldiers in that movie. Only harder to kill." He
sighs. "It's not like Mother hasn't tried…"

"Oh, you been to see
the Lady Glandula de Bartholine?" Higham Dry Senior's hearing
evidently hasn't deteriorated a jot. He leads the way down some stone
stairs, illuminated by candle-lit wrought-iron chandeliers.
"Blood-sucking harlot. How is she these days?"

"Much the same,
Grandpappy," Crispin admits.

"Yay," Ace
seconds him, sorely.

"Slept her way out
of the primordial ooze, she did." Higham Dry Senior's carved
bone walking-stick clatters along the stone floor ahead of us, at
quite a respectable pace. "Jumping from body to body like a
secretary at staff Christmas party. She still hanging onto the last
one? It run out of entropy quite soon, I think."

"Spending most of
her time dormant, yes," Crispin confirms.

"I thought it very
quiet around here lately. Nice and peaceful." Higham Dry nods.
"But when she find a new one she likes, you wait. It be all
boiling oil and crocodiles and embalming people alive again."

We find ourselves in a
vast galley kitchen, designed evidently to serve the mountainous
fort. You could have fitted Silverstone race track in it quite
comfortably.

I glance at Ace to see if
I can gauge his attitude regarding the subject of indoor drag-racing
possibly crossing his thoughts, but his
I-am-not-The-Stig
poker-face is as inscrutable as ever.

I imagine what other
secrets those dreamy brown eyes might also be hiding, and sigh…

…
A
billy goat trots past us along the longest granite worktop I have
ever seen, breaking wind happily, while chefs with cleavers try to
catch up with it.

"Oh, what a shame,
goat escape from bath-tub again," Higham Dry Senior sympathises.
"We have a new chef from foreign place, I don't know where –
I think maybe Basildon? Chef
Reggae Reggae
. He promise us
recipe for goat curry. We been trying to marinade this goat in
Guinness for three weeks already, but it drink it all every time,
then run away. So we stuck with chicken soup for now. And the
barracks very upset, all Guinness gone, they trying to make their own
in the laundry. Not good. They blow it up nearly every day, trying to
figure out secret ingredient. But as a result, we now know how to
make napalm, so something good come of it."

"How do you catch
the goat?" I ask.

"We wait for it to
fall asleep with big hangover, then just follow smell," Higham
Dry Senior shrugs. "Simple… All of you, come with me. You
all look very peaky. Need chicken soup."

I realise, as the cooking
smells in the cavernous kitchen envelop us, that I haven't eaten
since Crispin's strangely erotic food game, when I arrived at his
mansion last night – and my stomach rumbles disturbingly. Yes.
Food would certainly be welcome…

"I'm full,"
says Carvery, picking his teeth, and finding what appears to be a
fingernail, extracting it thoughtfully. It gives me an unpleasant
lurch in my own gut. "Zombie
Nando's
."

"Don't know if I'm
up for eating anything yet," Ace grumbles. "Not since Sarah
puked on me as well."

"Everyone feel
better after soup," Higham Dry assures us, and hands the failed
speed-chicken and cannonball to one of the chefs. "Oooh, look
who joining us for breakfast… just in time too! We go to
dining-room…"

I look around to see the
miserable flying rickshaw pilot, Justin Time, being hustled in by the
three scarily larger-than-life, faceless bounty hunters. Higham Dry
Senior gestures for them to follow as well.

The dining-room, a short
walk from the kitchen, is another vast room, its vaulted ceiling
supported by many pillars. Twin candle-sconces on every pillar give
the impression of each having glowing eyes, watching all proceedings
in this particular room.

Higham Dry hobbles
rapidly to a throne-like chair at the head table, and two guards
mysteriously appear at his sides. It is evident by the change in
atmosphere that we don't have permission to sit yet.

So we hover nervously,
while Justin Time is deposited in a prostrate heap, sobbing, on the
carpet-runner in front of him.

"He was stealing
those flying rugs himself, as you suspected, Lord," the first
bounty hunter rumbles, in his unearthly deep voice. "And holding
them to ransom."

"Ooohh," Higham
Dry smiles, nodding his elderly glee and rubbing his hands together,
which crack like a bag of walnuts under a lump-hammer. "You very
naughty boy, Mr. Time! What I do with you, eh?"

"Be merciful, Lord!"
Justin Time cries, his mouth full of thankfully less sapient carpet.
"I was testing our security measures – an example of where
improvements might be needed…"

"Hmmm, where have I
heard that before…?" Higham Dry Senior ponders. "What
was that film with the also very naughty children… Oh yes,
Mission Without Permission!
I don't fall for your weak excuses
this time, Mr. Justin Time. I think maybe I show YOU an example, of
my Jedi mind powers…"

"No…"
Justin Time pleads. "Not that… anything but the mind
tricks, Lord…"

"You!" Higham
Dry Senior points suddenly, with a tremulously wizened forefinger.
"Yes, you, the
Calvin Klein
poster-boy, with the shotgun.
You are under my spell, you hear me?"

Carvery looks over his
shoulder, just in case there is another gunman in the room, and then
shrugs.

Higham Dry points to the
biggest guard, on his left.

"Kill this man."

Carvery shrugs again, and
blows the guard's head off.

"Ooh." Higham
Dry rattles the finger in his ear. "That was loud!"

"Doesn't prove
anything." Ace, Crispin and I all state the obvious.

"And you!" The
old man points at Homer. "You, now, are under my spell…
Now dance! Like a
sexy
concubine!"

Homer shrugs in turn, and
pirouettes away around the pillars, shedding his last
ostrich-feathers – giving it his all.

"Oh, God," Ace
mutters. "This is going to be a really long morning…"

CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
:

THE LOST BONES

"
N
ow
you!" Higham Dry Senior's shaking finger of doom finds me,
pointing in an almost accusatory manner. "You are in my power…
your mind is bending to my will…"

I don't feel any
different. But then, I wasn't exactly expecting to. Mostly just
curious – at what he might find to instruct that I would
cheerfully have done anyway, like Carvery Slaughter and Homer just
demonstrated…

"Mercy!" the
prisoner Justin Time pleads into the carpet, ignored.

Apparently he is the only
one falling for this little sideshow.

The elderly robed man
gestures at Ace Bumgang, standing next to me.

"Kiss him!" he
snaps, a glint in his eye. "Like you mean it!"

Ooohh
–
any
excuse!

But as I turn to look at
Ace and catch
HIS
eye, it's evident that someone in the room
has bigger mental powers than the Dry brothers' zombie grandfather.

I can almost hear Ace's
voice in my head…

Sarah, you so much as
try it, and you're going home in a padded envelope…

I gulp, wondering what
the punishment is for rebelling against supposed Jedi mind tricks.
Either the old man's, or Ace Bumgang's.

But as I procrastinate
over what I would rather die doing, we are interrupted by breakfast
arriving.

"Ahhhh, you all get
off lightly this morning!" the old man cries appreciatively,
smacking his lips as the servers file into the dining hall, with
silver tureens and platters. "Just in time – sit. And the
rest of you. We eat first. Then play more mind games."

We all move cautiously
towards the long table, and Justin Time peels himself tentatively off
the floor. The only ones who move confidently are the three outsized
bounty hunters, who settle themselves into the three largest chairs,
and take out their own chopsticks.

Even Higham Dry Senior's
remaining guard is included, although he pauses before seating
himself to tie a bib onto the old man first.

It has a picture of a
white rabbit in a waistcoat on it.
Now why does that remind me of
something…?

"Chicken soup!"
Higham Dry Senior approves, lifting the lid of his own tureen.
"Mmmmm… and plenty of extras. Everybody must eat. Good
for your
braaiiins
."

Two of the servers heave
the body of the dead guard onto their shoulders.

"Tell him when he
wake up that he only get his usual rest break allowance!" says
Higham Dry. "I am not running a hotel for layabouts here!"

The two servers nod, and
carry the body out between them.

The soup does smell
appetizing. I examine mine first for any bits of chicken anatomy that
can't be identified. Or ones which I'd rather not.

The enthusiastic slurping
of the bounty hunters behind their chain-mail veils indicates that
it's safe to start, so we pick up our spoons in turn.

"Maggots!" the
old man suddenly shrieks, and I drop my own spoon in fright.

The others take no
notice. He is prodding something yellow on his side-plate, and a
server hurries over to his side.

"What sort of cheese
is this?" Higham Dry demands, poking at it.

"Goat's cheese,
Lord," the server informs him, obsequiously lowering his eyes,
in a half-bow as he speaks.

"I told you before,
you cannot make cheese out of billy-goat!" the old man rants.
"And not even one maggot! It taste of nothing, I tell you! Bring
me the blue cheese. With the holes in. The one that hums when you
blow on it."

"Yes, Lord."
The server removes the offending plate, and scurries away.

We continue eating,
although I check to make sure my soup has no active swimmers in it.
Even Carvery and Ace, who claimed not be hungry, are tempted enough
by the aromas to taste their food.

Crispin and Homer both
have their heads down, eating as heartily as the bounty hunters and
the wayward rickshaw pilot, who is eating and sobbing at the same
time. I wonder what that means the elderly man has in store to
follow…

"I see you enjoying
your noodles, my boys," Higham Dry beams, nodding his approval
at the two younger Dry zombies. "Gobble up so fast, too. You
must all have the worms, no?"

"Just very hungry,
Grandpappy," Crispin replies, while Homer pats his own naked
gray belly in agreement.