The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (65 page)

"We can try," I
say loftily, pulling myself together. "If Carvery has enough
charge left in his Taser to help resuscitate…?"

I glance at Carvery, but
he shakes his head.

"I'm sure you can
find a way to channel the power of my father's right hand," says
Crispin, confidently. "If not – we have other resources
here…"

"You are not
sterile!" says a booming voice, and suddenly I'm drenched from
head to foot. "That's better!"

Blinking away the effect
of the uninvited bucket of lavender-scented water, I can make out a
huge shape waddling past me, from behind the taller pedestal in the
centre of the pyramid. She resembles a fertility goddess in all the
most generous ways, not so much
wearing
bright colours and
patterns as swaddled and pleated into them, like a fat and jolly
Christmas cracker, covered in ribbons, bows, tinsel and beads.

"My cousin,
Beneficience Vassally Dry," says Crispin, a hint of pride in his
voice. "Beneficience has spent her life researching the
phenomenon of witch-doctors, and their powers of suggestion on the
superstitious mind. As well as raising the orphans she has rescued
from their clutches…"

Corporal Punishment –
of course
…

"…Should all
other technology and magic fail, Beneficence assures me that the old
traditional methods still have their uses."

Beneficience is setting
out bunches of dried herbs and flowers around my housemate's corpse,
flicking infused oil over her from a small ceremonial flail, and
scattering citrus peel alongside.

"Traditional methods
of what?" Ace asks, quizzically. "Barbecue marinade?"

"I'm still full,"
Carvery adds. "I had chilled monk brains for breakfast."

"Speaking of
braiiiinsss
…" Crispin remarks. "Our remaining
organs seem to be arriving. Just in time."

We look round, and do
indeed see Justin Time entering the pyramid. At zombie Naval officer
gunpoint, pushing a small wheelbarrow.

"This is all that
was recovered, on your instructions," the captive rickshaw pilot
grumbles angrily. "That old man, he was a very mean haggler. He
wanted a new house with full indoor plumbing!"

"I'm sure it was
worth it," Crispin muses, as the wheelbarrow squeaks to a halt
beside me. "Yes – these seem to be intact…"

"Oh, no, Crispin…"
I murmur, in horror. "Not THOSE brains…"

The donor organs are
entangled in a mass of Sister Summer Jaundice's striped nunnery
stockings, and bits of splintered cello.

"It is a fifty-fifty
chance, Sarah
Bellummm
," Crispin announces, detaching a
cheerleader pom-pom from the mess. "Miss December very kindly
signed her donor card as well."

"And you owe me a
new girlfriend!" Justin Time spits, receiving a sharp nudge from
the muzzle of the officer's gun.

"Now, now, Mr.
Time," says Crispin, while Homer slides off the donkey and homes
in on the rescued pom-poms. "There are eleven more months on the
calendar. I'm sure you will find one to your taste before your wife
obliterates them all. Um. Are these necessary for female
resuscitation, does anyone know?"

"God, don't give her
those," Carvery groans, as Crispin rummages in the wheelbarrow
and holds a pair of silicone implants aloft. "She'll never stop
talking about them."

"Mother might find
them amusing…" Crispin ponders, but catches his cousin
Beneficience's disapproving eye. "Perhaps not. Sarah
Bellummm
,
would you identify and prepare the heart and
braiiinsss
from
this mélange?"

Reluctantly, I scoop the
required replacements from the wheelbarrow and transfer them to
silver dishes, plucking out chips of wood and strands of tinsel.

If only there was a way
of telling if it is the musical witch's heart or brain! Someone has
to pay their share of the rent… but I don't think I want to
live with a housemate whose solution to disagreements is to turn the
opposition into frogs. Or nuns…

But the sad soggy lumps
of inactive tissue give me no clues at all. No puffs of green smoke,
no flashes of glitter. Not even when Beneficience Vassally Dry wafts
a stick of burning sage over them, mysteriously humming
Follow the
Yellow Brick Road
to herself.

"Now, Sarah
Bellummm
," Crispin says darkly, taking up the largest
surgical knife. I gulp. "Shall I insert, while you stitch up?"

Homer twirls past with
Miss December's recovered pom-poms, and Beneficience continues her
humming and chanting and air-smudging with the sage, as we commence
work on Miss Frankenminky once more.

"What are you hoping
for?" Ace asks Carvery, as they stand by and watch, with the
armed guard and the still-grumbling Justin Time. "Boy or a
girl?"

"I don't think it
matters," Carvery replies. "I won't be touching it."

Within a short interim,
once again Crispin and I are facing one another over the watertight –
if still dead, and this time partially pickled – corpse of my
housemate.

"Now," says
Crispin, wiping off his hands on those mind-numbingly ragged jeans.
"To resuscitate her…"

"Oh," I snap
sarcastically. "You wanted her alive?"

"Well, of course
ALIVE
, Sarah
Bellummm
," he echoes, without a hint
of irony in his tone. "Mother is quite specific about that
requirement. We can try some of your earlier suggestions…
invoke a special god, say some magic words – we are already in
a forbidden temple, obviously. Oh – and sacrifice an illegal
immigrant. That was an excellent idea."

A creaking sound reaches
our ears from the ceiling above, and a dark shape begins to lower
from the apex of the wooden pyramid.

"A very suitable
idea," Beneficience Vassally Dry concurs, in her bass rumble.

The shape appears in the
torchlight as a large wooden cross, affixed to a wheel suspended by
chains from the darkness overhead.

Bound to the cross,
bleeding, but still breathing, is…

"Luke!" I cry
out, before I can stop myself. "No!"

"Beneficience is
quite sure that the ceremonial sacrifice method could work,"
says Crispin. "Unless you have found a better way to control the
clockwork hand, Sarah
Bellummm
."

Our taxi-driver tries to
raise his head from his chest, but is either unwilling or unable to
acknowledge us.

I try to wrestle the
clockwork hand from my arm, pressing on the gemstones, attempting to
lever up the fingertips.

Nothing…

"What?"
Beneficience explodes, snapping the building tension in the room,
like a ripe carrot. "Crispin! You promised! I have waited since
nineteen seventy-one!"

"Not now,
Beneficience…" Crispin mutters.

But his rotund cousin is
fuming.

"Not only did he
leave me deserted, a virtual widow, he has made a mockery of my
mission – by fathering bastard children to every witch-doctor
he can find ever since! Sometimes even seducing them with a
fish-and-chip supper! My favourite!" Beneficience throws her
sage-stick to the ground, and jumps up and down on it petulantly.
"You promised!
You will have your revenge
, you told me!"

"See?" Justin
Time says triumphantly, slapping Ace on the back. "Perfectly
normal! I told you, no-one is worse than
my
wife!"

"I'll take yours any
day," Ace remarks. "Seriously."

"I think Mr. Lukan
found your methods of obtaining marital sympathy from the local
elders and priests objectionable, dear cousin," Crispin says,
soothingly. "You will know your vengeance, as promised. But for
now, negotiations take priority."

"I'm doomed either
way, Sarah," Luke's voice croaks, and I look up at his miserable
limp form on the cross. "Don't do it. It's for the Queen…"

"How dare you!
Runaway husbands should be seen and not heard!" Beneficience
grabs an olive branch from the altar, and beats him soundly with it.

"Well, Sarah
Bellummm?
" Crispin prompts me, to the background noise of
thwacking olive branch and shaking pom-poms. "How shall we
proceed?"

How indeed… I give
up on trying to activate the clockwork hand, my fingers blistered and
raw.

And what did Luke mean…?

Before I can summon an
answer, there is a flash overhead.

A lightning bolt appears
from nowhere – inside the pyramid – and strikes out,
earthing itself on every available downward surface. The pedestal,
the chains suspending Luke's wooden cross, the plinth with the body
of my stitched-up housemate, which arches and contorts inhumanly…
and finally, the floor.

Throwing up sparks, with
the smell of scorched cedar.

Three flapping figures
descend the bolt in a huddle, their coolie hats and chain-mail masks
all too recognisable, landing with a resounding thud.

The lightning fades as
they turn to face us, swirling their capes outward, and folding their
arms in an attitude of intimidating attention.

Oh, God – Higham
Dry Senior's Six a.m. Lounge bounty hunters…

A small white billy goat
skids out from amongst their armoured legs abruptly, belches a large
Guinness burp, and runs to hide behind our donkey.

"Damn, I nearly had
him that time!" shrieks a wizened and familiar voice, behind the
first bounty hunter's cloak. "Er, help an old man up, somebody.
Stupid knees only bending one way these days."

CHAPTER
SEVENTY-SEVEN
:

IRON MANDIBLE

Ace and Carvery are the
first to respond to Higham Dry Senior's call for assistance,
untangling him from the bounty hunters and dusting him down.
Beneficience Vassally Dry wrings her hands and cries in between
beating Luke on the cross, and Crispin just looks embarrassed, like a
seven-year-old caught playing in his father's shed.

"What did I miss?"
demands Higham Dry, straightening his robes and coughing like a
chimney-sweep. "Is the old trout awake yet? Ah, Justin Time,
still alive, I see. We will have to do something about that as well."

"Mercy!" yells
Justin Time, throwing himself prone onto the floor. The billy goat,
who had been loitering nonchalantly behind him, bleats in panic, and
dives beyond a pillar.

"Grandpappy,"
says Crispin, clearing his throat bravely. "You know it has to
be done."

"Pooh!"
grouches the old man, and beats his hacking chest a few times. A
clockwork cuckoo appears from his breast pocket and squeaks out a
chime, along with a few centuries' worth of dust. "Nobody care
anymore, my boy! They all either drunk or blowing stuff up! No place
in the world for fancy women now! The only thing they good for the
curing, is of being teetotal and pacifist!"

"Hear, hear!"
Luke and Justin burble, in unison.

"
Ouuuch
,"
Homer agrees sadly, looking down at the remains of his prom dress.

"But, Grandpappy,"
Crispin continues, while Higham Dry Senior hobbles over to inspect
the body of my housemate, Twatface, displayed on the wooden altar.
"If a reconciliation could be made and the undead curse lifted,
there would be no more fighting. Just good trade routes for
business."

"You live in
rose-tinted goldfish-bowl, Crispin." Higham Dry prods my
housemate's body with his carved bone walking-stick. "All work
and no play make a dull criminal record! Why you so loyal to your
mother? Let her rest in pieces like the others! Make your own new
friends and playthings. No room in the world for dead old hoarders
and their
fancy-schmancy
loot. I told you when you little,
growing boy need to eat more fish and seafood. Grow your own
braiiinsss
."

The elderly zombie puffs
his way over to me, nodding more approvingly – or perhaps just
arthritically.

"You still looking
for your first time, young lady?" he enquires, his eyes bright
with insinuation. "Don't waste it waiting for young Crispin. He
only interested in unsound medical advice."