Do I? Lucius asked himself. Thinking about it, he probably didn’t, but he wished someone could tell his mouth that. “Yer damn fuckin' right I do,” he said. “I eat punk-ass gangster rappers for breakfast.” No, no, no, no, I didn’t mean that! What I meant to say was, please don’t hit me, sir.
The giant reached down and hooked his hands beneath the cars on either side of him, effortlessly flipping them over. It was an amazing feat of brute strength; one that Lucius knew, if he wanted to be taken seriously, he would have to match.
No fucking cars my side, he thought, scanning the immediate area. There was a bicycle chained to a nearby lamppost, however. Lucius walked over to it, picked up the back wheel, and pulled as hard as he could. The bike clattered against the post and refused to do anything else. “Good job it’s tied up,” he said, slapping the dirt from his hands.
“I’m gonna rip that safety-pin right outta yo face,” Snoop Diggity growled, “and shove it where where the sun don’t shine. And then, in about it week, you’ll take a shit, and it’ll sting like a motherfucker, and you’ll remember this night.”
Lucius was in no mood to fight, especially not with King Kong’s stunt-double. He opened his mouth to apologise, to tell the giant that he was merely an old, confused GP, wandering the streets after a particularly mystifying night. What came out, though, was, “You fucking gangster rappers are all the same. There wouldn’t even be any rap if it hadn’t been for us punks. When was the last time you threw a television set out of a hotel room window?”
“Today, bitch,” Snoop Diggity said, then added, by way of an inaudible mutter, “but it was only the ground-floor window, and it wasn’t so much an entire TV as just the remote. Dead fucking batteries, bitch. Can you believe dat shit?”
“And when was the last time you got really drunk? I mean, so drunk you went out hunting for badgers, and then when you found one, you shaved its eyebrows off?”
“I don’t—”
“Or so drunk that you pretended to be pregnant, found a policeman, and then pissed on his helmet?”
“What kind—”
“Yeah, you gangster rappers are all the fucking same. Singing about your money and hoes, how much bling bling you got and how many guns you supposedly own. Well, Gigantor, how many guns do you own?”
Snoop Diggity reached into his jacket and came out with something Dr. Cain had only ever seen in a museum before. “With this one, I’d say about twenty, maybe thirty.”
Lucius gulped. The safety-pin in his face stopped bleeding momentarily as all the blood in his body rushed down to his legs. “That’s, erm… that’s a very nice musket you have there,” he said. “Antique?”
The giant appraised it. “I’d say so, bitch.” Pointing its barrel at Lucius, he continued, “I don’t know what’s gotten into me tonight, but I jus’ got this itch that can’t be scratched…”
“Oh, I’m a doctor,” Lucius said. “Maybe I could sort you out with some crea—”
“Not that kind of itch, bitch,” Snoop Diggity said. Wow, Lucius thought, he really is good at rhyming. “I got me an urge to kill stuff,” the giant said, just barely managing to cock the musket’s tiny flint lock with his fist-sized thumb. “And you, punk, are next.” He punctuated his statement with a menacing grin, his golden grill glinting in the moonlight.
Lucius closed his eyes, expecting the musket blast to be the next – and last – thing he heard. So, it came as quite a surprise when he heard an elderly woman’s voice instead:
“Timothy, you put that gun down right this instant!”
Timothy?
Lucius opened his eyes. She was marching up the street with that look about her; an expression suggesting you’d be a fool to engage her in light banter, and an even bigger muppet to discuss the week’s politics. Whoever she was, Snoop Diggity was afraid of her. The rapper took a step back, lowering the musket as ordered. His eyes became doleful, as if this dear, little old woman with a face like thunder was capable of knocking him out with one solitary blow to the temple.
“Mama, I wasn’t gonna shoot nothin’,” Snoop Diggity lied. “I was just showing the punk my antique.”
She walked up to the giant and slapped him, hard as you like, right across the face. What was funny was the little hop she had to perform in order to reach. “What have I tole you, boy, about callin’ people names?”
“But Mama, he is a punk.”
She jumped up and slapped him again, this time on the opposite cheek. “You’d better apologise to that man right now, boy, or you ain’t recordin’ no songs with DJ Bizzle and MC Rizzle for a week, do you hear me?”
While they were arguing, Lucius took a step back, and another, then another, and before they knew it he’d managed to slip away. “I almost got shot,” he muttered to himself, strolling swiftly down a side street. It wasn’t quite true. To get shot, first you would need a functioning gun (which the musket wasn’t), and you would also need an assailant with fingers small enough to fit through the trigger-guard (which Snoop Diggity didn’t have). If anything, the most dangerous thing about that whole scenario had been the giant’s livid mother.
“Fucking mums are fucking mad!”
Lunging out into the road, Lucius kicked a brick through the front window of Burns and Stiffs’ Funeral Home.
If he’d perhaps looked both ways, like his mother always taught him, he might have seen the bus careening toward him at sixty miles per hour. But he hadn’t, and the last thing he heard was a meaty pop – like a sausage being pricked – as his body made way for seven tonnes of steel.
41
Ted didn’t know where he was going, or what he would do when he got there. He’d spent the last half-hour trying to convince his mother that not-quite-Bill wouldn’t come back as Zombie Elvis, and yet she’d still insisted on barricading the bathroom door just in case. Maybe she was right. Maybe he would come back as Zombie Elvis; stranger things had already happened tonight, beginning with his foregone fish-finger tea.
“What the hell is going on?” Ted cried at the moon, which insisted on changing phases every few seconds. Somewhere out in the night, he heard the hiss of air brakes, like a bus coming to an abrupt stop. There was a tang in the air, of smoke, of barbecue almost. Somebody was having a cookout, he guessed, but he’d never smelt meat like that before.
Walking along the dark, desolate street, Ted thought about the peculiar circumstances by which his father had met his fate, about the way the phone lines had suddenly went down, about Doctor Cain showing up with fat in his hair and a safety-pin through his nose – God, he’d regret that in the morning…
He thought about how his mother had reacted to not-quite-Bill’s body, perched there on the toilet with a face full of peanut-butter sandwiches. How she’d cried for almost three whole minutes before going back to her baked-beans puzzle and “a nice glass of sherry to calm me down.”
But that hadn’t been the end of it. Not that he thought it would be. When his mother started singing Patsy Cline songs at the top of her voice, Ted knew he had to do something.
Anything…
By and by, he began to encounter people even more confused than himself out on the street. Apparently, there’d been a massive explosion at a local nightclub. That, Ted thought, would explain the scent of burning flesh at least.
“D’you know where Tulsa is?” asked a small man with a singed noggin and wonky spectacles as he rushed up to Ted.
Ted recoiled from the lunatic. “I’m no geography teacher,” he said, “but I believe it’s in Oklahoma…”
The still-smouldering man checked his watch, like this had some bearing on the whereabouts of the American city. “Twenty-four hours,” he said, hopping from one foot to the other as if he were standing on hot coals. “I’m only… twenty-four hours from Tulsa,” the man sang. It was at this point that Ted bid the maniac adieu and walked in the opposite direction.
The street became filled with them; people singing, dancing, climbing onto cars and removing clo
thes and swinging body parts that should never be swung in public. It was a very carnival atmosphere, just without the carnival. Everyone in town had apparently been infected – affected – by whatever had changed his father.
If that’s the case, Ted thought, then why not me? Why am I the only…
His thoughts trailed off as the sudden, overwhelming urge to dress himself all in leather struck him like a nine-pound hammer.
Turning back to the Gene Pitney fella, who’d taken to singing about how something had gotten hold of his heart, Ted said, “Hey mate, I told you where Tulsa was. Now it’s your turn.”
The man stopped dancing and smiled. “What are you after?”
“Leather,” Ted said. “The campest leather I can get my grubby little mitts on.”
42
“Holy shit!” Sharon Conker said, making her way up the aisle to the front of the bus. “Did you just hit somebody?”
McLoud, the cowboy, shook his head and flicked on the windscreen wipers. Blood and brains smeared left and right across the glass, a tell-tale safety pin slowly sinking out of sight. “I don’t think so.”
“Then what’s all that red stuff?” Sharon asked. “And is that a finger?”
It was indeed a finger, caught beneath one wiper, tracing its final fuck-yous upon the windscreen.
“So I hit someone,” the cowboy sighed. “He came out of nowhere. I’ve never driven a bus before. There was something gritty in my eye.”
“All very good excuses,” Clive the Cameraman said, “but nothing they will take into consideration when it goes to trial.”
“Look, can we get a wriggle on,” Kavannah said, shifting nervously in his seat. “It’s going to be getting light in a few hours, and we haven’t even completed our line-up yet.”
“Whatever,” Freddie/Sharon said. “Who wants to live forever, anyway?”
“Okay, buckle up!” McLoud said, putting the bus in drive. “Does anyone know any good songs?”
43
“Is she dead?” Clarence asked. “If she’s dead, I’ve got to get out of here. I don’t like being around corpses at the best of times. Now that I’ve seen them dancing and feasting on brains, I like it even less.”
“I’m not dead,” Marcia said, pushing herself up into sitting position. “I’m just… extremely fucking horny, and strangely attracted to you right now.” She didn’t know where it came from either, but it was best to just let it all out, be honest about it. What was the point in trying to control something so powerful, something so natural and carnal? It was like trying to tell Paul Potts that three burgers was plenty, and did he really need the fourth and fifth.
“What?” Clarence gasped. “Now I know you’re dead… or maybe I died… am I dead? Is this heaven?” He looked terrified. “I was too young to go. I haven’t even finished paying for my X-Box yet. I’ve never even once slept with twins!”
Goth Girl lit a cigarette and grinned. “This is getting very interesting,” she said, exhaling smoke from between her black, glossy lips. “Methinks one of you is infected.” The way she put it – playfully, and not in the least bit bothered – made the whole episode even more surreal.
“There’s something about the way you look tonight,” Marcia said, seductively slinking across the laundrette – if indeed such a thing were possible. “Can you feel it? Can you feel…” – she hissed, licking her lips as if she’d just finished a bag of donuts – “…the love tonight?”
Goth Girl almost choked on a lungful of smoke.
“But… but you’re a lesbian,” Clarence said, taking a step back, as if Marcia was not a woman at all, but a crocodile, or a giant praying mantis, or Madonna.
“I was playing hard to get,” Marcia said, almost slipping in a puddle of spilt soap. “Everything I do (I do it for you).”
“Did she just speak in brackets?” Goth Girl asked. “Is that even fucking possible?”
“Apparently,” Clarence said. “Look, Marcia, this isn’t you. You’ve been taken over by the aliens, and they’ve infected you with… whatever it is they’re using. You don’t love me, or fancy me, because you’re a lesbian, and I’m cool with that.”
“You’re the first, the last, my everything,” Marcia continued, “the wind beneath my wings, the best a man can get. Nothing compares 2 U. I want you to want me.”
“Now she’s talking in numbers…” Goth Girl said, clearly impressed.
“She’s talking out of her arsehole,” Clarence said, sliding along a wall of washing machines.
“First time ever I saw your face, it must have been love.” She wriggled her hips, as if this would somehow sway Clarence’s decision to just give up the goods. “Tell me what you see, here and now, no, don’t speak; love will keep us together, even though you don’t bring me flowers.” She sighed. A tear fell from the corner of her eye and slowly rolled down her cheek. “I can’t make you love me, but I just want you to know one thing. That I would do anything for love (but I won’t do that).”
Clarence relaxed. It sounded like she was done for now. “Look, Marcia, you’re ill. You’ve got the alien in you. You’ve been through… wait, hang on; when you say you won’t do that, what exactly do you mean?”
“What?” asked Marcia.
“You said you would do anything for love, but not that. I’ve always wondered what that thing is.”
“Anal?” Goth Girl said. “I mean, I’d do anal, but some people wouldn’t, and personally I’ve never seen Meat Loaf as a fan of it.”
“I don’t think he wrote a song about not doing anal,” Clarence said. “Surely it would be a given that many people wouldn’t do it. If the song had been called, 'I Would do Anything for Love (Including That)', then it might make more sense. No, he had to have been talking about something else…”
“His sister?” Goth Girl suggested.
“Yeah, that kinda makes more sense,” Clarence said. “I mean, incest is a problem at the best of times, but the woman in the video didn’t look like his sister. I imagine Meat Loaf’s sister to be relatively well-built for some reason.”
“Does it matter?” Marcia asked. “You’re the one that I want…ooh…oooh, ooh.”
“Is she going to keep going on this all night?” Goth Girl said. “Only, I don’t think I can take it…”
Just then, the launderette door flew open. It hadn’t occurred to any of them that locking it might be a good idea.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” the man said, stepping over the threshold. “I just need to check the dry-cleaning for any leather items.”
44
Everything was going according to plan. Better than that, even. These people were idiots when they got the music in them. The Pit-Dweller would have given itself a nice pat on the back if it had hands, or even a back to pat in the first place.
Down below, Bellbrook was on fire; people were running naked through the streets, singing at the tops of their beautifully pained voices. It had watched as a group of death-metal fans burned the local church before hanging themselves from a tree in the adjacent cemetery. It had seen rival street-dancers pummel each other into oblivion. It had witnessed an elderly woman climb to the top of the library – bring ‘em back or we’ll break your legs – where she’d managed four full minutes of unbridled yodelling before a disgruntled owl came along and knocked her off her perch. It had observed the local policemen partake in a spirited drag race to the tune of 'Greased Lightning'. It had seen children (who should have been in bed, in all fairness) taught to pickpocket by some bearded vagabond, who then sang into the faces of their mortified victims.
It was all too good to be true; pity it would soon be at an end. There couldn’t be that many left down there, after all, scurrying about like rats in a musical maze. Still, it wasn’t over yet. Plenty more enjoyment to be had before sun-up.
45
“What’s going on out there?” Clarence asked the newcomer, who (true to his word) didn’t seem the least bit interested in anything besides the pi
les of dry-cleaning in back. “Are there zombies? Is that Michael Jackson pimp still alive?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ted replied, rifling through a pile of soiled garments. “All I know is that my dad is dead, my mom is Patsy Cline, and I really need to find some… aha!” He held up the leather catsuit. “Reckon I could fit into this?”
“Not a chance,” Goth Girl said. “You should have shaved your chest before you came out the house.”
Ted looked deflated, emotionally if not physically. “I’ll have you know that this body packs down quite nicely. Why, I once managed to squeeze into a 34'' waist! Granted, that was back when I was more like a 36''…”
Looking at him, Clarence would have put him closer to a 50'' now.
“Well,” Ted said, “I’m going to try this on, anyway.” Glancing past Clarence, he thought to add, “Why’s that woman looking at you like she wants to eat you?”
Clarence turned to find Marcia straddling one of the clothes dryers, sucking her finger and eye-balling him as if he were an ice cream sundae and his penis was the cherry on top. “Shit, it’s getting worse…” he said.
“What’s getting worse?” asked Ted.
Clarence turned back to him, averting his eyes as the man attempted to squeeze his substantial bulk into what was essentially a leather body sock. “This! The aliens!” he cried. “This whole bloody nightmare is getting worse! She’s over there looking at me like I’m some sort of all-you-can-eat buffet, you’re over here looking like Shamu in a bin-bag, and Goth Girl over there—”
“What about me?” she said, folding her arms like a petulant child.
“Well, you’re a Goth. Isn’t that enough?”
She nodded in agreement. “Yeah, but you don’t have to be so mean about it.”
“Oh my God, you’re totally right!” Ted said, half-in and half-out of his new leather suit. “This isn’t right at all. I watched my father die tonight, sitting on the toilet. He was Elvis Presley. He’d gone from black-and-white Elvis to fried banana Elvis in less than three hours. That’s not right in a million years, is it?”
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