The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (70 page)

I can't look – I
turn my head away. How could Atum allow this? Or did he already
collect his dues, with Lady Glandula's human body?

"Soulless…"
I murmur unhappily, and wonder why the sky has suddenly, silently,
without warning, turned from gray to blinding white…

The great
mahogany-coloured planks of the deck splinter deafeningly beneath us,
as the whole side of the barge explodes.

The central mast pitches
into the river, every blood-red sail burning like the flags of Hell.

More gun turrets aboard
the aircraft carrier swivel to face us after the first deadly
assault, across the void.

"Holy ship!"
Justin tries to burrow deeper under the bounty hunters. "Who
piss the wife off now?"

But even more horrifying
is the scream that comes from the altar – but it's not the
scream I was expecting.

"NOOOO!!"
Crispin shrieks hideously.

Unwilling, I follow the
sound of the cry with my scorched eyes, dreading what carnage I might
see…

Miss Knobhead is on the
floor by the altar, her nose bloody, her consciousness debatable.
Crispin is on his knees alongside, clutching his hair in shock. And
upon the plinth itself…

What?

…
Homer
–
clutching
his pom-poms to his nearly concave gray chest. Smiling.

No squid… I look
everywhere. Was she indeed blown up, as I had hoped?

Homer sits up slowly, and
surveys us all with a regal – slightly smug – air.

"Oh, I see,"
Justin Time scoffs. "He in too much of a hurry to wait and
inherit
his Mother's wardrobe."

"You mean…"
I begin, and spot the telltale trickle of black squid ink down his
skinny leg again. "Homer – you
volunteered?
"

CHAPTER
EIGHTY-ONE
:

BIG KNOBS AND BROOM
CLOSETS

"
No,
Homer…" Crispin sobs, as his brother wobbles a little,
sliding off the plinth. He gets to his feet, to confront Homer. "You
aren't strong enough – you haven't even been a woman that long!
Let her take a younger body!"

Homer looks offended, and
drawing himself up a little straighter, slaps Crispin across the
face.

Stunned, Crispin holds
his jaw in silence. Pom-pom tinsel dangles from his ear.

"I think you asked
for that, Crispin," I remark.

A projectile from the
aircraft carrier takes out the main ornamental pedestal beyond Luke
and Beneficience, still lost in their starry-eyed romantic reverie, a
leader into the second round of fire.

"I did not ask to be
blown up, Sarah
Bellummm
," Crispin says, rubbing his
chin.

He already sounds more
like his old self.

"You deserve that
too," I snap, crawling over to Whatsit, my housemate, and giving
her an experimental prod. The resulting whine is more telling than an
electrocardiogram result would be. "If Homer wants to be a
zombie queen, he's entitled to be the top Queen, wouldn't you agree?"

"
Goood
,"
Homer approves, but does give his old gray body a rather regretful
glance.

"Um, barge is still
under attack, people!" Justin Time points out, from under his
tenacious captors. "And Atum is still hanging around out there!"

"Maybe he wants a
sacrifice…" Crispin ponders, and shrinks as we all glare
at him. "I was only going to suggest the goat – maybe the
donkey…"

Something golden roars up
out of the whirlpool between the two ships, and lands with an
almighty
boom
in the middle of the damaged deck.

"What did I miss?"
asks the prodigal clockwork cyborg, Higham Dry Senior.

"Grandpappy?"
Crispin exclaims.

"Higham Dry?" I
cry. "You're alive!"

"Not just alive,"
he chuckles, like an inkjet printer with the hiccups. "Look what
I found."

And he raises his injured
arm.

Or should I say,
previously injured.

Where there had only been
a scraggy, bony stump, there is now a complete and seamless sleeve of
golden armour adjoining the rest of the Swiss watchmaker's body of
invention, at the end of which is mounted…

The bejewelled clockwork
hand!

"Turned out this
thing mighty useful," he says, flexing the fingers. His
eye-slits gleam red, bright and powerful like lasers. "It grow
back rest of armour and everything. Don't even need special key for
Mister Whizz
now…"

Ooh – maybe too
much information…

"What happen to
dirty great squid?" he asks.

"
Hoooome
,"
says Homer, patting his belly.

"Really?"
Higham Dry strides over for a closer look. His eye-slits change to
blue, and scans Homer up and down. Alarmingly, the X-ray effect
certainly does reveal the outline of the squid impossibly coiled in
Homer's insides. "Wow. Well, you can wear her clothes all of the
time now, my boy! She not going to come out and play for a long time
after all that that exertion. Hold out your hand."

Homer offers his ragged
zombie hand, with the chewed fingertip inflicted by the donkey
earlier, and Higham Dry Senior raises the special clockwork hand to
meet it.

The tiniest, briefest
spark passes between the two.

"
Ouuuuch
,"
Homer acknowledges.

And then he changes.

The fingertip grows back.
His raw wounds close up. His patchy old skin granulates, and
unwrinkles. The hollows between his bones fill out, and teeth
reappear in the gaps in his jaw. And finally, perhaps more
worryingly, his recent surgery apparently prolapses.

"Whoops," says
Higham Dry. "Maybe give you a bit too much help downstairs."

"Ah, there's the old
boy I remember," Luke observes. "Still doesn't look right
on a dead white fella, but I think it suits you better than trying to
pull off a high-C, Homer."

Homer shrugs, apparently
pleased with the result either way.

Can't say I blame him. He
definitely has the Dry family good looks…

"Now you, Crispin,"
Higham Dry says sternly. "You need to go home and have a good
long look at your boots. In the naughty corner."

"Grandpappy…"
Crispin begins, and is interrupted by the altar exploding, in another
battery of fire.

"Oh yes," I
interject, timidly. "I kind of declared war on the Nine a.m.
Lounge."

Higham Dry turns, in time
to see several large warheads launching skywards from the aircraft
carrier.

That doesn't look good…

"Oh, well – no
rest for the rickets," sighs the zombie cyborg. "Okay, boys
– let's go and spoil their sports. Put Mr. Time down, we catch
him again later."

The three bounty hunters
get to their feet obediently, leaving Justin spreadeagled, head still
under doormat. One by one, they each summon a lightning-bolt, and
disappear into the skies, on the trail of the warheads.

"Before I go…"
says Higham Dry Senior, and he turns back to face me, unscrewing the
clockwork hand.

"No…" I
try to stop him – but as it detaches, a new armoured hand grows
in its place, out of the sleeve of armour. I can see the tiny cogs
and ratchets and springs slotting into place, as it rebuilds itself.

"This belong to
other Higham Dry," he says, and an eye-slit flares, in an
approximation of a wink. "You remember where you found it, yes?"

"Yes," I say,
accepting the clockwork hand once more. Feeling around in my pockets
past the
Trevor Baylis
torch on my keyring, I produce the
long-forgotten scrap of felt plush that used to be a toy rabbit.

"That's the one,"
he nods. He flexes the new hand, as the joints close over the
knuckles. "Clever men, these Swiss watchmakers. They succeed
where ancient Pharoahs and their old spells fail. Make something that
live for ever."

He takes a step away from
me, with almost a salute.

"And you boys…"
he says, waving vaguely at the zombie Dry brothers. "You clean
up this mess before you leave, hmmm?"

Flames burst from his
back-plate, and he soars away after the bounty hunters, leaving a
glowing vapour-trail.

"You should go on
ahead, Sarah
Bellummm
," says Crispin, and seems unable to
meet my eyes. "Justin Time can take you both back to the house."

"What about Luke?"
I ask. "And…"

I don't even know whether
I should mention Ace and Carvery.

"Mr. Lukan has
plenty to catch up on with Mrs. Lukan," Crispin assures me.

Already, I can hear how
that is getting on…

"If he wants to
be a librarian, he can damn well BE a librarian!"

"Over my dead
body!"

"Mr Time!"
Crispin summons the rickshaw pilot. "Take the two young ladies
home, if you please."

Before Justin is even on
his feet, the still-burning side of the Great Barge falls away into
the whirlpool, dragging the rest of the rigging with it.

"It not that
simple," the rickshaw pilot grumbles, hugging the innocuous
doormat to his chest. "This only special prototype…"

As I look at him, a
harpoon streaks between us, embedding deeply in the deck. Its cable,
leading back down into the swirling, bottomless depths, tightens.

The barge tilts even more
steeply over the abyss.

"Quickly, Mr.
Time…!" Crispin prompts. "There may be an Easter
holiday in it for you!"

Over the noise of roaring
water and creaking timbers, the sound of an ethereal singing reaches
our ears – but it isn't Luke. It's the same singing I last
heard in the Well of Our Souls – and other voices are joining
in, forming a mysterious and beautiful choir…

"Cover your ears!"
Justin Time warns, pulling his torn coolie hat down, and tying it
under his chin. "It feeding-time!"

"Crocodile
feeding-time?" I ask, pulling my housemate Frankenminky to her
feet.

"Pardon?" he
says, pointing to his ear, and I mime snapping jaws with my
outstretched arms. "No, not crocodile feeding-time. Baby
Squidmorph feeding-time!"

I look down at the
churning river, to see dozens of thin pink tentacles, like
angel-hair, flying up out of the water and attaching to the ruined
deck of the barge, with their little juvenile grappling-hooks. The
surviving attendant zombies cling to anything still nailed down, in
mortal terror.

Justin kneels on the
little doormat and beckons for my housemate and I to join him. We
squeeze up, in an uneven trifecta.

"Why have they come
here?" I ask. "Was Lady Glandula – I mean, the squid
part – their mother too?"

"Hmmm?" He
adjusts his coolie hat. "Oh no. The babies stay in underwater
cr
è
che for years,
herded by mermaids. Occasionally with visiting rights by their
Daddy."

And he waves a hand
upward, at the looming shape of the river-god, Atum.

"Ahhh…"
I say. "Now I think I know what her problem was…"

"Put clockwork hand
here," says Justin, tapping the middle of the small mat, which
has a woven geometric pattern. The deck of the barge lurches
sickeningly. "Now – just got to turn it in direction of
home…"

The index finger uncurls
and the little gemstones light up, as the rickshaw pilot rotates the
clockwork hand.

The gray clouds in the
sky billow outward suddenly with the distant
whump
of aerial
explosions. Either the demise of the warheads, or of Higham Dry
Senior and the bounty hunters…