by John McNally
Just another day at the office. King nodded at an underling.
“The code is being sent to the nominated site now. The root equation will follow,” said King.
While Kaparis waited for Li Jun to confirm its safe arrival, he made chit-chat.
“Do you admire the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, Commander? I find the operettas insufferable, but the melodic structure of the songs prefigures much of modern ‘pop music’.”
“I’m no musicologist.”
“Oh, do loosen up.”
Said the world’s greatest psychopath.
Li Jun confirmed the data transfer.
“We have the majority of the code, thank you so much,” said Kaparis. “All that remains now is for you to provide the key equation.”
“Is that all?” asked King. “What is it that you really want? Fame? Love? More billions? There are better ways to spend your vast wealth. Ending global poverty, eliminating AIDS, malaria – even war.”
“Oh, I quite enjoy a war. The equation, please. And where is Dr Allenby at the moment?”
“Dr Allenby is under arrest. We have only just managed to extract the missing equation; it’s held in his own mnemonic code. I will release it the moment we’ve had time to break it.”
“The mnemonic, Commander. This is no time for games. We’ll soon know if it’s genuine. I suspect my people are far better than your poorly paid ‘public servants’. Otherwise, I’m afraid, matters must stand as they are… ad infinitum.
“The long day closes, Commander. And this, the last tick of the clock…”
FORTY-FOUR
Hudson stopped pedalling and freewheeled.
He’d seen the toy jeep on the road as he came down the hill. Curious, he thought, stopping for a look. He could hear a motorbike somewhere. If it was the police, he should at least be seen to try and get away.
Hudson did everything for effect. He didn’t really have bowel problems, or problems making friends, or migraine headaches. He could poo on any toilet he liked. But his mum and dad were locked in a brutal divorce and being awkward was his way of getting back at them.
Some hope, he thought, and pedalled on towards the—
Whisshsshshshshshshshsh!
An arrow of blue light and smoke shot up from the toy jeep and struck him neatly in the middle of the chest. Startled, he skidded and beat at it as it fizzed and smoked and tried to burn a hole in his jumper, the bike falling away beneath him with a clatter.
He thought he heard something. He looked down at the toy. He could hear something. He could hear his name…
“HUDSON! HUDSON! HUDSON, DON’T FREAK OUT!” Finn shouted as Hudson’s massive face bent to stare in terror.
“HUDSON, IT’S ME! FINN! INFINITY DRAKE! FINN!”
“Uh??!” Hudson said.
“DON’T FREAK OUT. LONG STORY. I CAN EXPLAIN, BUT NOT RIGHT NOW! RIGHT NOW YOU’VE GOT TO PICK US UP AND GET US AWAY!”
Hudson looked like he was about to cry.
* * *
DAY THREE 08:52 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey
“What is it to be, Commander?”
King stalled to the last.
“Even with these codes, the engineering challenges are such that it is very unlikely you will be able to repeat the experiment, and even less likely you will have time to do so before we track you down…”
“There are a million places I can go, way beyond the reach of a few Western governments. I have people everywhere, even if they don’t know it yet. All I have to do is pay. The world is my oyster, yours is a clam, full of rules to obey and principles to fall short of.”
There was a pause. Both men glanced at their array of screens. Gods on Olympus.
King felt the Presidents and Generals and force commanders watching. Ready to make deadly decisions of their own.
Kaparis had prepared meticulously. Played his hand perfectly.
Did this mean they were beaten? No. Not yet. Wounded? Yes.
There would be other battles, thought King. Other days. Kaparis had been identified and his vanity was so vast it would only be a matter of time before he was traced and destroyed. King would probably be out of a job, but he would see to it personally anyway.
* * *
Convinced he had very serious problems and that he’d somehow managed to contract a major mental illness, Hudson pedalled home. He turned into his driveway.
Hudson prayed repeatedly and continuously and silently that none of this was really happening, that he was well, and he silently promised God he would never ever fake an illness or a behavioural quirk again, that he would go back to being normal, the most normal, most average, most unremarkable middle-class boy in Berkshire (and that was up against some pretty stiff competition).
He unlocked his door. The home phone was ringing as they got into the hall. He knew it would be his parents. What should he do?
With shaking hands, he opened his backpack. The tiny people were still there. Tiny Finn Drake was still there.
“DON’T ANSWER!” yelled Finn, looking up into frightened eyes the size of swimming pools.
Hudson made an involuntary warble noise.
“CUT THEM OFF! DIAL 999! TELL THEM YOU NEED TO BE PUT THROUGH TO COMMANDER KING! TELL THEM IT’S AN EMERGENCY! AND SAY THE WORD SCARLATTI!”
“Sca—?”
“OR BOLDKLUB! AND THEN LIFT US UP AND PUT ME UP ON YOUR SHOULDER SO I CAN SPEAK!”
Hudson picked up the phone long enough to hear his mother squawk then put it down again. He loved his parents dearly, and they didn’t deserve what he was putting them through, not one tenth of it. He wanted to cry.
“YOU’RE GOING TO SAVE US, HUDSON, YOU’RE GOING TO SAVE THE WORLD!”
He dialled 999.
FORTY-FIVE
DAY THREE 08:54 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey
As the American President shifted in his seat, ready to command his own people to take over, King finally spoke.
“The mnemonic for the equation is this:
‘But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near…’”
Kaparis glowed. Bravo, Allenby. He loved a puzzle. And he LOVED seventeenth-century literature.
He told himself he would crack it in seconds as he mouthed along.
“And yonder all before us lie…”
“And yonder all before us lie…”
“…Deserts of vast eternity.”
“…Deserts of vast eternity… Ah, don’t you just adore the metaphysical poets?”
“The key to which is…” said King, swallowing his urge to verbally let rip, “…where B is acceleration and E opens—”
“SIR!” A technician brutally interrupted. King raised an eyebrow. This had better be good.
“It’s him.”
“Allenby?” For a fraction of a second King wondered – dared to hope – that Al had somehow…
“No. Drake, sir. Infinity Drake,” whispered the technician.
King’s mind spun. Was he quite mad? Had the tension got to him?
“Where B is acceleration and E opens… What, Commander?” prompted Kaparis.
“One moment please, caller…” said King, and jabbed hold.
This had better be really good.
“Drake?”
“Commander King?” said a tiny voice.
“What the…”
King had been so fixed in the language and thought patterns of command, he couldn’t quite…
“We’re at Hudson’s! QUICK! We got the nest location and we got one of them! But…”
“Infinity Drake?” King repeated in disbelief.
“Yeah, I got caught up with the crew, Spiro…”
“We know…”
“Another bad guy is here now though, and he’s coming through the door! He’s here now! Just get here as fast as you c—”
“Units are on their way.”
They heard a smashing of glass, th
en – drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr – the line went dead.
“Trace that call! Get a team in there, NOW!” called King.
Demands were coming in from the screens around the world.
“What is going on?”
“Can you confirm that was Drake?”
“That kid? Can you be sure?”
“I believe I can,” said King, and looked down at the call unit linked to Kaparis. Still waiting on hold.
It was his turn to take a risk.
* * *
“Run, Hudson!”
Hudson watched in terror as Kane – a bleeding, burnt fiend – reached through the broken glass of the door panel to undo the lock.
“RUN!”
Hudson dropped his backpack and turned and ran through the house.
Kelly, Stubbs and Delta crashed into a mountain of sweet wrappers, cans, comics and a fleece.
Finn rode on Hudson’s shoulder. At least he’s easier to control than Yo-yo, thought Finn, and held on tight.
* * *
DAY THREE 08:55 (BST). Siberia
Deep in the Siberian permafrost, Kaparis listened, appalled, to the Hook Hall ‘hold muzak’.
Vangelis.
Insult to injury.
Not only was it an astonishingly poor recording, it also speeded up and slowed as the signal oscillated around the world to give the impression that it was being performed by an orchestra of drunkards.
Staff were busying themselves around him.
Li Jun had picked up a spike in activity from the open-channel emergency radio traffic she could still access. A 999 call had been followed by an open-channel request for a ‘Boldklub’ rapid-response team.
Kaparis had already ordered the evacuation of the bunker.
The screen array above and around him was blinking out. The chamber was becoming dark.
What a lot of effort for a single equation.
What little reward.
Vangelis.
* * *
“Lock it! Lock the door, Hudson!”
Hudson threw the latch on the door and started to back down the cellar steps. The tiny voice jabbered at his ear all the way.
“Barricade it! Don’t just lock it. They’re on their way, we just have to hold out. He’s already injured, he won’t get through that easily. Find a weapon or—”
“Shut up!” said Hudson. “This is not… natural,” was all he could manage.
“Sorry, Hudson. My bad. I know it seems mad. I can explain. Just not now,” said the voice.
The cellar was old and musty and lit by a single bare bulb. There was a workbench covered in junk and wine racks.
From above they could hear the sound of Kane searching. Coming down the stairs. He found the cellar door – locked. He kicked at it.
BANG!
* * *
DAY THREE 08:58 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey
King came back on the line.
“My apologies for the interruption…” King started.
Kaparis could sense a thousand years of superior breeding and sound judgement were back. The bile rose in his gut. One of the few bodily functions he still retained.
“The key is: where B is acceleration and E opens –” King plucked some disinformation out of the air – “n to the power of three atmospheres per—”
“There will be other days, Commander,” Kaparis interrupted immediately.
King elected to remain silent.
“This hasn’t even started.”
Kaparis cut the line dead.
* * *
BANG!
Hudson could see the door shudder at the top of the steps.
He looked around in terror. There seemed to be plenty of junk on the workbench, but no obvious tools to use in self-defence.
“Bottles, you can use the bottles,” Finn suggested quietly, as Hudson crouched, terrified, in the corner.
“There’s a way out through the coal hatch… we could hide there,” Hudson whispered.
SMASH!
Kane had smashed a big hole in one of the small panels at the top of the door. Through it he could just see Hudson’s terrified face, lit by the single light bulb. He reached inside his shirt and detached the semi-dormant Scarlatti from his chest. Pulling hard to tear out the barbed mouthparts. Blood spurted out of the wound as the Beta Scarlatti gave up its hold.
It was angry to be ripped awake in this way and struck its wings.
WKKKDSKDDWKKK!
FORTY-SIX
Finn heard the noise and his blood ran cold. And suddenly he knew what Kane would do.
“Put me on the workbench! Just get to the hatch and run, Hudson!” he called in Hudson’s ear.
The beast was coming through the hole in the cellar door. Still groggy, it dropped at first, rat-like, to the top step. But, refuelled by Kane’s blood, and with the air thick with Finn’s scent, it soon struck its damaged wings together and took off.
Wkzzwkzzkzkwkwkwkzzzwwkwwk…
Hudson ran to the coal hatch. But, unlikely hero – unlikely human being – that he was, he wasn’t tall enough to reach up and throw the bolts that locked it in place.
“CHAIR!” Finn yelled at him from the workbench.
Whether he heard him or not, Hudson grabbed a rickety old stool.
Wkzzwkzzkzkwkwkwkzzzwwkwwk…
Hudson froze when he saw it in the half-light. Finn had seen him do it before in school. Finn had done it himself the day before in the woods.
Wkzzwkzzkzkwkwkwkzzzwwkwwk…
“JUST RUN, HUDSON! GET OUT OF HERE!” Finn shouted.
Hudson reacted. Jumped on the stool. Threw back the heavy bolts on the hatch and punched it straight up.
Finn saw blue sky. Felt fresh air. For a second.
Hudson jumped up and swung wildly from the lip of the opening as he tried to haul himself up and out.
The Scarlatti circled the single bare bulb, getting a fix on Finn.
What do I do? thought Finn.
He did not know.
But I am not afraid of life, he thought. I am not afraid of death.
He saw the beast curl as it prepared to dive. He ran for cover, any cover, as it drew out its stings and arrowed towards him.
Among towers of old magazines, random tools and an unfinished model aircraft lay the gaping mouth of a bone-china vase, lying on its side, its neck neatly broken, waiting for repair beside an exhausted tube of superglue.
Finn felt the breath of the Scarlatti on his neck and dived head first through into the body of the vase. As he hit the inside of the ice-white cave, the whole thing jolted and spun 180 degrees, as the beast bashed against it in frustration. Finn scrambled up, thinking, hoping, calculating that the Scarlatti couldn’t possibly make it through the same broken aperture after him.
But instead of sanctuary, he had dived into a trap.
The gap was tight, but the Scarlatti already had its head inside the broken neck of the vase and was wriggling and crawling the rest of itself through, blotting out the light, its wings ever louder as they echoed round the glazed tomb.
WKKKDSKDDWKKK!
Finn watched the head, twice his own size, squirm and writhe, its mouthparts, still slick with Kane’s blood, flicking and extending towards him. He was a sitting duck.
But so was the beast, Finn realised, and it was getting no closer. Its anger was in the way. The more the beast struggled, the more it flicked and flexed its outsize wings, so that each millimetre of progress was countered, and the angrier it got. If it had relaxed, for just one moment, it would be in… but its rage was holding it back.
Stay mad, was Finn’s only thought. Just keep being mad.
In a flash, Finn ran straight at its Easter Island head and – springing hard on one of its mandibles – vaulted up the creature’s terrible face, grabbi
ng one of its antennae where, like a thick tree root, it entered the top of its iron skull.
The beast writhed in outrage and its wings clattered – WKKKDSKDDWKKK!
Finn clung on. The beast instinctively withdrew, leaving a crawlable gap between its head and the top edge of the broken vase. Get out, thought Finn – and nothing else. Get out! Get out!!
He let go of the antenna and clawed his way out down the back of the monster’s neck, its scaled head giving way to a flexible coating of thick barbed-wire hair at the top of its back. But, as he clawed his way down, he found himself trapped once more – this time rendered deaf and blind – stuck directly between the creature’s beating, cacophonous wings.
WKKKDSKDDWKKK!
Before Finn could wriggle away, he was enveloped by light suddenly, then had the sensation of falling first downward then rapidly upward.
WKKKDSKDDWKKK!
It was a fraction of a moment before he realised what was happening – they were airborne.
Finn watched the items on the workbench rapidly shrink beneath him… then everything was thrown into a blur as the Scarlatti careered and crazed around the cellar, taking Finn on a nightmare rollercoaster ride.
The noise was incredible. The wings were incredible. The sense of unleashing unstoppable power was overwhelming. He was inside the maelstrom.
The beast spun and twisted and corkscrewed crazily to try and get at him, to try and throw him off. Finn clung on, still facing backwards. He threw a hand round to cling on to another clump of back wire, as soon as gravity and momentum allowed, so that he could pivot round and lie askew on the creature’s back, at least facing forward.
WKKKDSKDDWKKK!
Which was worse. Much worse. He suffered wave after wave of sheer terror as they near-missed then near-missed again – wall, door frame, ceiling, floor. He knew the rodeo must end, inevitably they would slam into something, and at this incredible speed he would not survive.