Wrath of the Lemming-men

by Toby Frost

  ‘Um, it depends how you define soul. . .’ Rhianna began.

  ‘Look, Leighton,’ said Smith, ‘I need to talk to you. It’s a very serious matter.’

  ‘Of course, Sir.’ He leaned forward, and Smith suddenly caught a whiff of dust and hair pomade, and under that something stale. ‘Is it a member of staff?’ Leighton asked, quick and serious. ‘You need me to sack someone?’

  Smith shook his head. ‘Where are all the guests, Mr Leighton?’

  ‘Well, it is the slow season—’

  ‘There’s nobody else here, is there?’

  Leighton’s face froze for a moment – and there was no jollity there, just a sort of blank surprise. ‘Perhaps you’d best step into my office.’

  He pointed down the corridor. Carveth shone her torch at a pair of wide walnut doors, inset with lacquered stripes. The doors depicted an ocean liner, over which soared a space rocket. One of the panels in the door had been smashed.

  ‘Now this,’ Leighton declared, cheerful again, ‘is the nerve centre of Lloydland. Who likes cookies? I bet you do, little lady.’

  ‘Are you calling me fat?’ Carveth demanded.

  Leighton roared with laughter. ‘Would you check her out! Fat? Golly no. I’m just making a comparison, see?When your mom here makes cookies, what does she put in them?’

  ‘Marijuana,’ Carveth said.

  ‘That’s right, cookie dough! Well, this is where the dough gets baked. This office is where the dough of ideas rises in the oven of activity. Come on in!’

  Leighton threw the doors open and Carveth walked past him. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said.

  The office was big and empty. It looked to Smith as though someone had dumped a desk in the waiting room of a very prestigious railway. A painting of Andy Atom hung on the far wall. There were no lamps, or at least not in the conventional sense. Instead, four large, glowing objects threw coloured light across the walls. They looked like shapes cut from coloured ice, Smith thought, curving up like incomplete arches, their edges hard and sharp.

  Rhianna gasped. ‘Crystals!’ she whispered.

  ‘Embrace nothing.’ Suruk tilted his head, wary. ‘This is the doing of the Vorl.’

  ‘You like my ornaments, huh?’ Leighton grinned. He rummaged in the desk, pulled out a cardboard box and passed it to Carveth. ‘You’ll love this!’

  ‘Is it Vorl stuff?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a My Little Xenomorph gymkhana set!’ He turned, beaming, to Rhianna and Smith.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Carveth muttered. ‘Bloody crazy –ooh, there’s a horsebox and everything.’

  ‘Very impressive, Leighton.’ Smith leaned over to the others. ‘Listen,’ he whispered, ‘We have to find out what happened here. Leighton needs careful handling, men. I think I’d better—’

  ‘Deranged atom person!’ Suruk roared. ‘How did the workings of the Vorl come to be in your citadel of lunacy? Answer me, or I shall beat you to death with your own feet!’

  Leighton stared, his eyes full of horror and surprise.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he whispered. ‘A talking dog!’

  ‘Where are the other guests? Did you devour them?’

  ‘Easy, Suruk,’ Smith said.

  ‘I – no – well, not many of them. I had no choice,’

  Leighton said, and he sagged. He sighed, as if the life was escaping from him like a punctured balloon. Leighton’s shoulders drooped, and as the smile fell from his face his youth seemed to as well. He pulled out a seat and dropped into it. ‘I had no choice. They left us here.’

  ‘They?’

  He nodded, woebegone. ‘We did a deal. We’d party out the war here – my guests and me – and they’d leave us alone. I mean, it didn’t matter, right? Whoever won, men or Ghasts, they’d still need entertainment, and we’d have enough money to get by no matter what, my guests and me. Right?’

  ‘Wrong,’ Smith said. ‘Ghasts don’t have leisure: they march. For one thing, I doubt they’d fit their arses in the rollercoasters, but that’s beside the point.’

  ‘They cheated us,’ Leighton said, talking to the opposite wall. ‘They told us they’d leave us alone. And they did –to starve! They didn’t bring us any food. All we had was haute cuisine. . . and that never lasts long. We looked for stores, for anything we could eat, and we found caves under the park. That’s where I found the crystals. Then the ghosts came. I guess they wanted their crystals back. But by then. . . the damn dirty ant-men sold us out!’

  The light throbbed on Leighton’s face, striped it with shadow. Leighton was seeing the truth, Smith realised, perhaps for the first time. Smith saw it too, although, mercifully, he did not know the details.

  ‘They must have known what we might find – must have planned to take it back later when we’d gone. Some of us went into the caves – and they didn’t come back. By then, we’d split into little tribes, hunting each other through Ballad Point.’ Leighton shuddered. ‘I ate a fashion model. And then another. One wasn’t enough.’

  ‘It is understandable,’ Suruk said. ‘After all, they are quite small. In such circumstances, I am sure we would all do the same.’ He looked right, then left. ‘Anyone? Ah. Well, I seem to be in a minority.’

  Carveth said, ‘Excuse me. Loo break.’

  ‘Down the corridor, on the right,’ Leighton said. He watched Carveth go.

  ‘And so the bourgeois, once isolated from the world, turned to savagery to relieve their boredom,’ Rhianna said. ‘You could write a book about that. Many books, in fact.’

  Leighton turned to Smith, and he looked desperately weary. ‘You’re not a family, are you?’ he said. ‘And he’s not a small dog.’

  ‘Quite,’ Suruk observed.

  ‘My delusions dragged you out here,’ Leighton said. ‘You three and that poor little girl. And now—’

  Feet thudded down the corridor. ‘Boss! Boss!’ Carveth ran into the room. ‘Boss, they’re here!’

  ‘The Vorl?’ Smith rushed to the door.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘The Ghasts!’

  11 To the Death!

  They ran out of the office, ducking low as they scuttled to the window. ‘They’re down there,’ Carveth whispered. ‘Hundreds of them.’

  Smith unfastened the rifle sight and stood at the side of the window, scanning the avenue below. Empty. ‘Where, exactly?’

  ‘The whole damn lot – Ghasts, Furries, all of them, up the far end of the road.’

  ‘Bollocks. Can’t see a thing. Are you sure you didn’t –wait a moment. That letter box just moved.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Leighton stood beside them, jostling with Carveth for a position at the window. ‘What’s that red thing?’

  Smith turned. ‘A lemming sentry, Leighton. I’m afraid the Ghasts are back, with help. They have the Yull with them.’

  ‘Yull?’ Leighton scowled. ‘Goddam it, I’ll have no talking rodents in my theme park!’

  Figures scurried into the road, jogging beside the buildings: forage-caps flapping, the Yull were moving into position. Ghast support officers strutted among them, thin and scrawny by comparison, directing their advance.

  Under a sign that read: ‘Tell your friends about us!’ a praetorian dipped its head and barked advice to an armoured lemming with a banner on its back. If Hell had theme parks, Carveth thought, their parades would look like this.

  ‘Mimco Vock!’ Suruk snarled. ‘That banner shows his ancestral sign. I shall descend and challenge him!’

  ‘No you bloody won’t!’ Carveth replied. Her eyes looked huge. ‘You’ll stay here, and protect. . . Rhianna. You’ll get killed down there!’

  ‘You doubt my skills, pixie? I am Suruk the Slayer, of the line of Urgar! I have the skill of dozens, the strength of ten—’

  ‘The mental age of four,’ Carveth said. ‘Boss, don’t let him go down there.’

  ‘Nobody is,’ Smith said. ‘If they want us, they can come up and get us. Maybe we can trap them on the stairs. Suruk, old friend, what d
o you think?’

  The M’Lak frowned. ‘Well said. When outnumbered, it is best to choose the fighting-ground. Mazuran, put the seer in the room with the crystals. Perhaps she can speak with them. We four will guard the stairs. The Yull will crave a frontal assault: they will lose many soldiers before they reach us.’ He grinned, ready for battle. ‘You like this plan?’

  Smith nodded. ‘It sounds good.’

  ‘We must make a barricade on the lower landing. Keep the seer back, Mazuran. Her powers will be of no use against axes.’ He turned and took a step towards the doors, then looked back. ‘The Yull will not retreat.’

  Carveth looked at her gun, as if unable to believe that it would work. ‘Oh, arse.’

  ‘We will have to slay them all,’ Suruk said. ‘Still, there is at least a bright side to this situation.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘We will have to slay them all.’

  ‘Great,’ Carveth said.

  Smith said, ‘Go on. Leighton, you’d best go and give them a hand. I’ll be down in a minute.’

  He watched as Suruk shepherded the other two out of the room.

  Smith turned to Rhianna. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘This is it. See if you can call up the Vorl while we’re away. Stay safe, Rhianna. I won’t be long.’

  ‘You too, Isambard.’ She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Go in peace.’

  He loosened his sword. ‘Something like that.’

  *

  The Yullian sentry raised his telescope to his eye and looked left, then right. Nothing. The road was deserted.

  Content that nobody was watching, the sentry slipped his axe into his belt, pulled down a picture of Sally Squirrel and with a dirty chuckle stashed it in his pack.

  Susan punched an inch and a half of stainless steel into the base of his neck. The sentry gasped and shivered, and she lowered him to the ground.

  Wainscott stepped out of the shadows. Craig lifted the sentry’s legs, Wainscott his shoulders, and they struggled into a storeroom and laid the dead lemming on the floor.

  Wainscott tipped his head and listened. ‘Right then,’ he said. ‘You can come out now.’

  Dreckitt breathed out; it felt like he was deflating.

  ‘Goddam,’ he said. He’d thought he was good, but these people were either brilliant or insane and he was still uncertain which. The Deepspace Operations Group had been very pleasant to him, but to see them at work was unsettling. Susan – who reminded him of Pippi Longstocking as she might have been depicted by Wagner – was talking to Nelson, the unit’s computer expert.

  ‘Alright,’ Nelson said, turning from his portable set. ‘There’s two Ghast ships touched down about a mile West of here. The main movement of troops is towards the central building, Ballad Point. The lemmings are flocking to it.’

  ‘Maybe they’re going to jump off the roof,’ Craig said.

  ‘Doubt it,’ Wainscott replied. ‘Not while there’s someone they could murder in there. Alright, everyone. If our chaps are here, they’ll be in Ballad Point. We’ll take the main entrance. Susan, you and Brian work up from the flank.’ He smiled. ‘Cheer up, Dreckitt. As soon as we’ve dealt with these few hundred maniacs, you’ll be with your filly again.’

  *

  Smith and Leighton dragged a table to the top of the stairs and laid it on its side. Carveth carried a computer terminal, and while she propped it up against the table the men hurried back for more goods. Soon they had made a bar-ricade of office furniture, stretching across the landing.

  ‘They’ll have to come up the stairs,’ Leighton said, ‘straight into your guns.’

  Carveth was pushing a monitor up against the barricade when she heard them down below. Like soft rain onto a plastic roof: dozens of paws on the stairs.

  Beneath her the ground began to shake, and she ducked down and clutched her shotgun across her chest.

  The feet stopped pattering. She crouched there, hearing her own breath.

  ‘ Hephep!’ a voice shouted from below.

  ‘ Huphep!’ the lemming men shouted back.

  She closed her eyes. They were down there, no mistaking now. Cold seeped over her skin.

  ‘Humans! This is lieutenant Hephuc, servant of the revered Colonel Vock!’

  The speaker did not have an accent, as such, but his voice was quick and straining, like an accelerating moped working through the gears.

  Smith glanced at Carveth: she was staring straight at him, eyes wide, small hands locked around her gun. Smith winked at her.

  ‘Is Colonel Vock there?’ Smith called.

  ‘Yes!’ the voice snapped back. ‘He’s on the stair!’

  ‘Where on the stair?’

  ‘Right there – ow!’

  ‘Attention, vermin!’ It was a new voice. ‘I am Colonel Mimco Vock! My stupid minion does not realise that you ridicule him with your cowardly windmill song. Offworlder scum, you cannot stand in our way. The time of man has passed: this is the hour of the Yull!’

  Carveth suddenly caught a glimpse of him: Vock was at the very edge of the stairs, back pressed against the wall, and for a second she saw him in profile. He wore bright red armour, polished to a shine, along with a helmet with large, round ceremonial ears. His chin was tilted up, his whiskers trimmed and waxed. The overall impression was of viciousness, pomposity and fur. Then Vock stepped aside and he was gone.

  ‘British, there are four of you and two hundred of us,’ Vock called, and Smith could hear the smirk in his voice. ‘Perhaps it is time to consider surrendering, eh?’

  ‘Alright then,’ Smith replied, ‘come out in tens with your hands up.’

  ‘How dare you insult me! It is you who cannot defeat us! I have granted these soldiers the honour of depriving you of your ammunition. Once your guns are dry, I will assault and I will take you alive – screaming, and very much alive.’

  Suruk chuckled. ‘You will drink deep of your own folly, fools.’

  Smith checked his rifle and loosened his sword in its scabbard. ‘Listen,’ he said quietly, ‘these bastards think that because we value our lives, we’re not a fraction as good as them. But they don’t realise the half of it: when a man fights for what he believes in, he fights twice as hard as a dozen lemmings. Alright?’

  Carveth did some mental arithmetic. ‘Alright,’ she said.

  Smith reached into his jacket and took out her war diary. ‘You ought to hang on to this.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she replied.

  Suruk leaned close to Smith. ‘There will be many dead lemmings and much fur. Would your breeding-woman appreciate a nice new muff?’

  ‘Probably not, but thanks.’

  ‘Then let us begin, Mazuran.’

  ‘You there, rodents!’ Smith called. ‘I’ve got something for you to chew on!’

  ‘Sunflower seeds?’ a Yull cried hopefully, and yelped as an officer beat it into silence.

  ‘But if you want it, you’ll have to come and get it. You think you’re up to climbing a few stairs, or do you need clogs on for that?’

  Vock squealed with rage. ‘Stupid offworlders, now you die. Humph! Now we will rip out your hearts, plunder your cities and chew on your seeds! You cannot stop the Divine Migration! Hep Tiktokicloc! Huphep Popacapinyo! Yullai! ’

  ‘ Yullai! ’ they screamed, hysterical with rage, and under the screams came the drumming of hundreds of feet. ‘ Yullai! ’

  A pack of lemmings burst into view and Smith’s rifle cracked out, Carveth’s shotgun boomed and they fell squeaking. More swarmed up and Smith fired, cranked the handguard and fired again, his hands a blur as he sent shell after shell into the horde and tossed the Yull back down the steps.

  They rushed forward in a swarm of dyed fur. Howling, they charged at the barricade and, howling, they fell back down, bowling their comrades over behind them. The Yull trampled the wounded and the hesitant and the carpet was thick with furry bodies but still they did not stop. Screaming to the war god the Yull surged up again and Smith’s rifle ran dry.


  He pulled his pistol as the first lemming reached the barricade. As Smith blasted the Yull, Suruk scrambled over the defences to meet them hand-to-hand. His spear whirled and three rodents fell headless down the stairs.

  ‘Drink folly, lemming-spawn!’ Suruk roared, and he cut down another Yull and leaped back before he could be overwhelmed.

  Smith’s pistol was empty, and as he fished out a speed-loader Lloyd Leighton ran to his side and heaved a document shredder down the stairs, braining several Yull. He stormed down the length of the barricade, wild with fury, battering furry heads with a bronze statuette of Andy Atom. ‘Oh, you want some fun, do you? You too, huh?’

  A frothing, grinning soldier crawled over the barricade and Smith ran it through. ‘Stuff this in your cheek pouches!’ Beside him Carveth pumped the shotgun and fired again and kept on until her arms arched and the recoil bruised her side. Suruk threw a Yull to the ground and lopped off its head. But although the stairs were hidden under fur, it was clear what was happening: whether by accident or design, the Yull were making a ramp of dead lemmings in front of the barricade.

  A murmur ran through the Yull, a ripple from the foyer to the top of the stairs: ‘ Wesscot!’

  Smith stopped, panting, unable to catch their meaning.

  The lemmings stood back, ready to fight but frozen by indecision. Why didn’t they attack? Was that gunfire he could hear, far away?

  ‘ Wesscot hakup Yull! Fecinec! ’

  The Yull scurried down the stairs. They drew back from the barricade as if draining into the ground. Suddenly the staircase was silent, and only the furry bodies remained, like so many old coats. A cloud of fluff hung in the air.

  ‘That’s right, run!’ Carveth leaned over the barricade.

  ‘Show us your little fluffy tails!’ She looked round and her grin disappeared. ‘Oh, hell.’

  Lloyd Leighton was dying. He lay on his back, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth like jam. A small axe stuck out of his chest. With a sort of fascination, Carveth noticed that the axe handle was lacquered black, beautifully inlaid with gold.