Skullenia

by Tony Lewis

  “Thanks, Mrs. Strudel, you’ve been a really big help.”

  She beamed. “Oooh, you’re welcome, my dear. Now, you’re sure I can’t tempt you with anything?”

  The zombie smiled as he crossed the kitchen to give her a farewell peck on the cheek. “There’s plenty in here to tempt me, but I’m afraid my dried up old innards just couldn’t take it. See ya.”

  “You take care now.”

  * * *

  The alarm resounded around the coffin interior, causing a hapless Ollie to wake with a start and crack his head on the dense wooden lid with a reverberating THUD. A few choice expletives bemoaning his lot as a member of the clan of the undead escaped from his mouth as he drew the lid aside. It’s not natural, he thought as he extricated himself, spending half my life in a bloody box. What am I, a poxy tortoise? He quickly got out of his jammies and slipped into his evening attire because he wanted to get to the kitchen and line his stomach with a sandwich and a cuppa before Flug unleashed the red stuff. It was bad enough swallowing a pint of blood on a full stomach, but chugging it down within minutes of getting up and on empty was liable to result in a rather fragrant maroon yawn.

  He drew the curtains back and gazed out of the small window that was the only normal thing in his subterranean boudoir. The sun had set and an eerie glow had settled over the landscape. It looked like the cover of a pulp horror novel, the sort that boldly stated you shouldn’t enter the creepy old building or go out alone after dark, and that within ten pages someone had been hacked to bloody chunks because they’d gone into the creepy old building or gone out alone after dark. All was normal then.

  A loud bang from upstairs meant the impending preparation of his breakfast, so he quickly ran out of the room, hurtled up the stairs, tore along the corridor, sprinted across the office and exploded into the kitchen. In a flash he had the kettle on to boil, a cup and tea bag ready, and was almost done buttering a slice of wholemeal bread when Flug came purposefully into the room to join him.

  “Hi, Boss,” he droned as he made his way over to the fridge. As the door opened and the little light came on, Ollie heard the distinctive gloopy slap of a chunky liquid connecting with the side of a glass. Although he had never figured out for sure where Flug got the stuff, he was starting to formulate the theory that Skullenia had, what he could only think of, as a Bloodman. Anywhere else on the planet you had the cheerful clinking bottles of the milkman to wake up to, but seeing as he was the only person living (as it were) here that liked a cup of tea on a regular basis, a milkman’s round would be a very short lived business venture. A horrible vision invaded his thoughts. Sometime during the dark recesses of the night, the awful hair drier whine of the engine and the clink of bottles as the little vehicle made its way up and down the streets, announcing the arrival of the day’s deliveries. He wondered if the residents put out those miniature cards with the numbers on them, with a red arrow to let the Bloodman know how many pints they wanted.

  “How’s about a pint of scarlet top today? It’s extra thick with plenty of clots. Lovely on a bowl of cereal.” My God, he thought, that can’t be healthy, suddenly wondering how much cholesterol was in a pint of blood. Mind you, that would depend on whose blood it was. If it was a drop from an Olympic athlete then you were laughing, but if it came from a member of the local branch of ‘I can’t stop eating and come here to alleviate my guilt and blame every other bugger but myself for piling on loads of weight anonymous’ then you could be on a diet that had the potential to put you in an early grave. Not a pleasant prospect at all. Ollie made a mental note to get it checked out.

  He carried on preparing his sarnie and was just about to spread a blob of Marmite on it when he caught sight of Flug upending the bottle over a pint glass. It didn’t pour. It flowed. Slowly. Like lava from a lazy volcano. He shuddered so much that he put the knife straight through the bread.

  “You okay, Boss?” Flug enquired.

  “Fine, thanks,” Ollie replied, trying to avert his gaze.

  “You look a bit pale.”

  “Really, I wonder why that is?”

  Even Flug was capable of working that one out.

  “Aw, me sorry. Would it help if me put a little umbrella in it?”

  Ollie grimaced and shook his head. “Flug, mate, it wouldn’t help if Catherine Zeta-Jones presented it to me wearing nothing but a smile and a thong made of pearls which had next week’s winning lottery numbers drawn on them. Try to understand what I’m saying to you. Listen to the words. I don’t like drinking blood, never have, never will. Am I getting through to you? Nothing you can say is going to make me feel any better about it okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good.”

  “So no umbrella den?”

  “AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH.”

  “Someone seems a little tetchy today. Get out of the grave on the wrong side, did we?”

  Ollie glanced over at the door. “Ah, Stitches. Thank goodness you’re here,” he said.

  “Nice of you to say so.”

  “I was just thinking I wish Stitches were here.”

  “Understandable.”

  “Talking to Flug and drinking that mess instead of me.”

  The zombie scowled as he sat down at the kitchen table.

  “My, you really are a grumpy bloodsucker today.”

  Ollie finally got round to finish making his tea and sandwich before joining his colleague at the table.

  “I’m sorry,” he said around a doughy mass of bread, butter and Marmite, “but you know how it is.” He indicated the glass on the side.

  Stitches pulled a disgusted face. “Enough said, but hey, I’ve done a bit of digging and found out a few things.”

  “Go on.”

  He proceeded to tell Ollie about his conversation with Mrs. Strudel. Ollie listened whilst he drank his tea and was so interested that he also managed to get his blood down without too much of a struggle.

  “Are you sure this is on the level?”

  “Mrs. Strudel seems to think so, and she knows Hector as well as anybody. Anyway, why would she make up something like that? Serves no purpose.”

  “Fair point. What time is it?”

  “A little after half six“.

  Ollie rose form his chair and put his used dishes into the sink. “Right, we’ve got about two hours before we have to meet Obsidia. I’m going to pop down and see the Professor while you sort out some transport.”

  “No problem.”

  “Good. We’ll leave about seven.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Ollie quickly washed up and headed down to the laboratory. He knocked on the door, gingerly though so as not to disturb the occupant, just in case he was in the middle of some wacky and no doubt explosive experiment. The last thing he wanted was an unexpected remodelling job. He didn’t think the Prof would be too pleased either. He was quite used to detonations that he was prepared for, but a surprise one could do untold damage.

  “Come in, come in,” came a voice from the other side.

  Ollie opened the door, poked his head round and peered inside. Better safe than sorry. Crumbles’ idea of health and safety was on a par with a medieval building site. The coast seemed to be clear though. At least the Prof wasn’t running for cover with his hands over his ears shouting at everyone to get out. A good sign.

  “Hi, Prof. Are you busy?”

  “Never too busy to see you, my dear. Come through, don’t be shy.”

  “Thanks,” the half vampire said as he walked into the room, trying not to be too obvious about glancing at the floor. You could step on something unexpected in here at any time, and sometimes the unexpected would creep up on you, grab your foot and try and step on you.

  “Now then, young man, what can I do for you? Can I help you at all?”

  Ollie liked to maintain the illusion that the Professor was a happy go lucky older gentleman, who had a passing interest in all things scientific, rather than a moderately senile near-terrorist who was cap
able of blowing things up just by moving them a few feet across his lab. There was no telling what was stable or unstable in the room, which was why it was best not to touch anything. Even the air could be dangerous.

  On the whole though he wasn’t a bad chap, and was generally great fun to be around. Plus, there was always the chance that he might, one day, come up with something vaguely useful.

  Ollie thought for a moment about the investigation that was going on.

  “I think maybe you can. We do have a bit of a problem at the mo. Some werewolves have gone missing and we’ve been asked by Jocular to locate them. Oh, and Ronnie’s done a bunk as well.”

  “Mmmm, that is a perplexing mystery, “said the Prof, tapping his fingers against his top lip in his best ‘trying to look intellectual’ stance. “And as luck would have it, I think that I might have something that will help.”

  He walked over to a battered metal cupboard, the sort that looked like it should be sitting in a school corridor, covered in stickers and awash with lewd graffiti, and emitting a feeble thump from within because the class nerd had been shoved in head first with his pants over his head, after another failed world record, wedgie marathon attempt. The door opened with a loud squeak. He rummaged around inside for thirty seconds or so before pulling from its recesses what looked suspiciously like a television remote control with two bulbs attached to the end.

  “There we go,” he announced, proudly brandishing the object like Stone Age man presenting the first wheel with the corners rounded off to his mates.

  “Wassat?”

  “It’s a television remote control with two bulbs attached to the end.”

  Ollie hadn’t felt so underwhelmed since the time that he had watched the World Rubik’s Cube Championships on the TV as a lad, and marvelling as the winner completed the puzzle in one point six seconds, only then to announce that it was a triumph for the visually impaired and that colour blind folk were people too.

  He tried not to show his immense disappointment, but it was a feeling that was becoming more and more common around here. It was a never ending catalogue of hopes dashed, promises not kept, dealing with the dross of society and just plain rubbish. Kind of like the X Factor auditions.

  “So what does it actually do, if anything?” he asked with a healthy and robust dose of scepticism.

  The Prof smiled. “If you take a look here,” he said, taking the back panel off and pointing to a small switch just under the zero button, which in turn was connected by a series of wires to a circuit board on top of the original, “notice how the green light comes on when I flick it.”

  Ollie was marginally impressed. Indeed one of the lights had come on. A small bulb the size of a pea glowed a very bright shade of green.

  “I see it.”

  “Well, if this is pointed in the right direction at something, the infra-red unit, which I’ve adapted, picks it up and the light turns red.”

  Ollie had now moved on from being marginally impressed to being reasonably intrigued. Not in a ‘what the hell is this deranged pensioner on about now’ way, but in a ‘this is interesting, I think I might stick around and not make up feeble excuses to get out of here because he’s using his slipper as a mobile phone’ way.

  “What sort of something’ll turn the light red?”

  “Something living, say, anything bigger than a cat. If it passes within a hundred feet of this the remote picks it up and the light turns red.”

  “Even if it’s hidden?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  By way of demonstration, Crumble passed his hand in front of the device and sure enough, the small bulb changed from green to a vibrant red.

  Ollie smiled as being reasonably intrigued gave way to being genuinely impressed. “That’s very clever. How does it work, exactly?”

  The Professor flicked the switch again, turning the unit off and placed it on his workbench.

  “Good question. It picks up the electric field given off by anything with a pulse. If it’s got a heartbeat, this beauty will find it.”

  He picked up the device again and handed it to Ollie who accepted it gratefully, which was a strange feeling he was not accustomed to experiencing down here.

  “This could come in handy if you’re trying to find missing lycanthropes, I would imagine.”

  “I think you might be right there. Thanks, Prof.”

  “No problem, my dear.”

  Ollie made to leave the lab, but just as he was about to go Crumble grabbed his arm. “Oh and one more thing. Try this; it could be useful as well.”

  He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small packet which he placed into Ollie’s outstretched palm.

  “It’s a Sherbet Dip.”

  “Indeed it is.”

  “Mmmm, I don’t want to be negative but how is this going to help me?”

  Crumble raised his eyebrows in an expression that said come on young fellah, think about it.

  “Just take it,” he said closing Ollie’s fingers around the tube. “You never know.”

  Ollie put the confection in his pocket, safe in the knowledge that he would indeed never know, and almost glad that the moment of clarity and inventiveness had gone, and that things had returned to normal.

  “Indeed you don’t, Professor, indeed you don’t.”

  * * *

  The lights on the ceiling flashed by as the trolley was wheeled along the corridor. It was just like those bits in a film, where the hospital staff are rushing a casualty to accident and emergency so they can get to work on them, and miraculously save their life no matter how severe their injuries. Or, failing that, just in time for them to get their final dying, prophetic words out before they popped their clogs. But, Ronnie thought, there was nothing miraculous going to occur when he got to wherever it was that he was being taken. If that mental soldier had seen fit to shove a needle under his nail, there was no telling what this pompous, uptight little doctor intended to do with him. Ronnie had tried to engage the two porters in a conversation, but it was no use. They were obviously sworn to secrecy and were being as tight lipped as it was possible to be. They wouldn’t even look at him as they pushed the trolley like an express train, they just stared blankly ahead, glass eyed and silent as if nothing at all was going on inside their heads.

  “So come on guys, tell me,” Ronnie tried again as the fluorescent tubes whipped by. “Or at least give me a clue where we’re off to. I bet it’s a surprise party, isn’t it? And there’s me thinking you’d forgotten my birthday. Hope there’s blancmange and a great big cake.”

  This riposte at last elicited a response from one of the gown wearing goons. He spoke in a voice that was a deep bass. It was gravelly, as if he’d smoked a few too many fags or had recently chewed on a handful of nails.

  “Oh, you’re gonna get a nice surprise alright, buddy. The Doc is gonna take real good care of you.”

  Ronnie tried to raise his head enough to be able to see the man properly. He had a hard face in which a long history of violence and enforcement was etched, the lines and craggy features testament to the horrors that he had seen during the course of his life. Dark eyes stared out from underneath a protruding brow that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a gorilla. He looked like a tough guy. If he wasn’t here he’d be a rugby player, a bouncer or maybe a brick wall. His dazzling conversation and witty comebacks suggested the latter.

  “Well, I should hope so,” Ronnie shot back, “he’s a doctor; he’s supposed to take real good care of me.” The last five words were slurred out in a very bad American accent.

  “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Doc here is your friendly neighbourhood MD,” the man rumbled in reply. “As far as you’re concerned, you’ll have someone working on you with all the skill of a blind trainee butcher. Make no mistake, he’s very good when he needs to be, but with you, let’s face it, who cares how much it hurts.”

  The porter had a sneer on his face when he said the last bit. It was the sort of predatory
look you’d see on a wildlife documentary, just before some poor, dumb herbivore got a first hand look at its insides. Ronnie decided that discretion was by far the better part of valour. In other words, it was time to shut the hell up and stop poking fun at the circus freak.

  He rested his head back onto the trolley and concentrated on the still passing neon lights. He was still at a bit of a loss as to why he was being held here, wherever here was, but if he was honest it was probably more to do with him not wanting to admit to himself that he knew exactly why he was here. Judging from the little scraps of information that he had been able to glean from the exchanges in the white room, it appeared to him that this was not only a military installation but some type of research facility as well. And being the sort of guy to be able to put two and two together and jump immediately to any conclusions that presented themselves, Ronnie was under the almost certain impression that gene research of some description was going on here. When that sadist Cowan had spoken to him and James earlier, he had asked them both to ‘Do whatever it was that they did’. Presented with those facts and statements, even Flug would have been able to see that Cowan and the Doctor, and therefore the American military, wanted to harness their special talents. Just imagine, Ronnie thought, legions of highly trained soldiers artificially engineered to mutate on the order of a commanding officer. It didn’t warrant thinking about. Any army, terrorist group or even a basement rebel with an overzealous dedication to a cause, or a grudge against a local shop owner, that got hold of the technology that he feared was being manufactured here, would be completely and totally invincible. It would be an army with superhero-like powers, a supernatural fighting force that nobody would be able to resist. There would be no happy ending at the end of this movie.

  This was scary stuff, and people needed to know what was going on. All he had to do was get off the trolley, incapacitate the two fugitives from the zoo and find a way out of the obviously secure and secret facility, and alert the relevant authorities, whoever they may be. Piece of cake!

  “Here we are, buddy,” said the porter. “Safely delivered. The Doctor will see you now.”