by Brian Hughes
“Just a moment. There’s another switch around here somewhere. I’ll try again.”
Cluck!
Cissy’s toothy features were briefly illuminated. The kitchen lit up like a great yellow sun, revealing the cooking utensils piled around her boots. Then the bulb blew with the sort of noise that a newspaper would make if it slapped you on the head. And the kitchen was plunged into an even denser darkness than before.
For several moments their eyes readjusted.
A blip. A minuscule blip, no greater than a firefly flitting rapidly towards the roof.
“There’s a cellar or something runs the length of the row. Down the stairs.” Hogan shook the bracelet and squinted. Cissy swallowed nervously at the concept of such a place. Oddly enough her imagination, for once, understated the mammoth vault below her.
“Where are the...” She tried to avoid the term ‘Altarian Beasts’ as though it was bad luck. Rather like saying Macbeth in the theatre, or swearing in church. At length she concluded with a simple, “Creatures?”
“I don’t know. It’s too dark to see properly.” Hogan shook his wrist again, felt his hand brush the sink, and gave up. “They’re around here somewhere though.”
Pity the Old Empire hadn’t improved his night-vision when they’d rebuilt him.
“What about Amanda?” Cissy’s voice was barely audible. “Is she...?”
Her voice petered off into a murmur.
“Unrecognisable by now I would imagine.” Hogan supplied the missing words. “To be hopes to God the other Altarian Beasts haven’t found her. Otherwise...”
He gave a quick demonstration of what the ‘Otherwise’ entailed.
Although she couldn’t see it, Cissy recognised the sound of somebody blowing out their cheeks and then releasing the air. The kids at school had often used it in relation to her boils. Suddenly she didn’t hate him anymore. If she was going to die she might as well die with dignity. Best to put all of their faults behind them now and get along.
“Sorry about the Tachyon bomb.”
It was such an apathetic and heartfelt repentance that Hogan stood in silence for some time.
“That’s all right. Dangerous things anyhow, Tachyon bombs. You don’t want to be around when one of those buggers goes off. Very odd properties!”
Cissy brightened slightly.
“There should be a door to the cellar somewhere.”
“I’ll check the hallway.”
“No.” There was the scuffle of bodies in the darkness brushing against each other. Cissy’s voice shrivelled into a dried leaf. “It’s probably in the kitchen.”
“Don’t be daft, Cissy. What sort of backward species’d put a dangerous landing off a room where everyone’s too preoccupied to remember it’s there.”
A thoughtful silence ensued. “Right. Well, there should be a door behind you then.”
There was. It creaked open on its unoiled hinges accompanied by a deafening clatter of heavy objects falling.
“Broom cupboard,” muttered Cissy embarrassed.
“There you are!” said Marshal smugly. “Didn’t think there’d be...”
Crash! Wallop! Smack! “AAAAAARRrrrgggghh...” THUD THUD Thud Thud thud thud. DUMPHF!
“...Cissy?”
“I’m all right.” Cissy’s voice echoed up from the bottom of the cellar steps. It sounded cold and slightly hurt.
“Yes, well. That’s open for debate...” Hogan’s silhouette appeared in doorway. “Have a look round for the light switch.”
He moved gingerly in.
Down below, the sounds of footsteps and metal scraping against a granite floor were closely followed by a disgusted ‘Urgh’. Cissy wiped the spider’s web onto her vest. Eventually, after a great deal of shuffling and tentative prodding, the light came on.
It was a circumspect light, creating an oval on the floor exactly where Cissy was standing. Her eyes shut instinctively in the fashion of two giant clams.
“Have a good trip?” The commander appeared from the gloom. He turned up his collar and blew small clouds of steam into his hands as the chill permeated his bones. Then he jabbed his nose in the air and took a swig of the basement’s atmosphere.
“What’s that God awful stench?”
“I know that smell!” Cissy’s eyes narrowed to slots. After several inhalations she gritted her teeth and looked up in alarm. “Brasswick’s!”
“Brasswick’s?” Hogan frowned. “What’s that? Some sort of personal remark against my future relationships?”
“No!” snapped Cissy affronted. “Brasswick’s Butchers! I’d recognise that smell anywhere! That’s the stench of rotten meat being hung up to cure!”
She was so pleased with herself at having recognised the pungent aroma that it took Cissy several seconds before it began to sink in. Marshal watched the smug expression drain from her face.
“Oh my God! Does that mean...?”
“Exactly!” He cocked one eyebrow in a conspiratorial fashion. “I only wish I’d brought a torch!”
“Well, I’m quite glad you didn’t! I don’t think I want to know what’s down here.” She fumbled awkwardly for the useless bazooka. “C’mon. Let’s go home.”
“Yeah! Like I can sprout rocket launchers and blast myself into space!”
“Look! We could die down here!”
“That thought had crossed my mind!” Hogan’s tone was growing increasingly sarcastic with every added inflection.
“NO! You don’t understand! WE COULD ACTUALLY DIE!”
Amanda Duck had almost reached completion. Just one or two sections missing now, but they would soon be gathering together outside in the cold night.
She was no longer recognisable. Her old ladies couldn’t have pointed her out in a crowd and said, ‘There goes that annoying social welfare officer.’ Instead Amanda had become quite simply, ‘FrgaRRG,’ Altarian Beast language for ‘Queen & Ancient Mother of All!’
She bided her time. Such terrible power! It flowed through her veins and throbbed through her head. Drawing the other creatures towards her by means of a piquant musk that only they understood.
That was how the Old Empire had wanted it. Gather them all in one spot and drop the Tachyon bomb. It would destroy most of northern England, but that was nothing to them.
Two rows of cocoons swung from the ceiling encrusted with excretion. All creaking in the breeze that had worked its fingers through the grates overlooking the pavement outside. Musty, off-white testicles, some cracked, others oozing pus. All resembling giant mothballs suspended from a resinous loft.
“Oh my God!” Cissy buried her face into the folds of Hogan’s lapels. “It’s a meat larder! Is this for Ama...for the Great Queen?”
Hogan gently pushed her away and approached the first groaning chrysalis, his teeth gritted so hard that small hollows had appeared in each cheek.
He pulled a knife from his coat pocket, opened it out so that the serrated edge caught the dim light in a starburst, and then prevented the bolus before him from swinging with a steady palm.
“You’d better stand back!” Cissy automatically did so. She didn’t need telling twice. Earth people might have been stupid but they weren’t total imbeciles. “If we’re unlucky, what I’m about to do might stink the place out!”
The dagger punctured the first layer of crust. Cissy brought the bazooka onto a precautionary level with her right eye, noticed that the sights were missing, went on to notice that one end of the weapon had now become more of a funnel than the barrel she’d expected, and lowered it all again, hopelessly. Marshal pushed.
There was a pop, followed by the release of what smelt like marsh gas strained through an old sock. The escaping methane produced a childish rasp. Then a crack, and the first layer of coating began to draw apart so that it resembled a mouth. Cissy and Hogan waited for the entrails and slops to come tumbling down.
As soon as it became apparent that nothing was going to charge out with nasty, pointed teeth Hogan fol
ded his knife, pushed it back in his pocket and set about the opening with his bare hands. There was the faintest of shredding noises, hardly louder than cotton wool being torn apart. The gash opened a microcosm more and something slimy moved within it.
Another push. The casing split. Tendrils of saliva criss-crossed the opening as the walls of the chrysalis slowly parted with an unpleasant noise. A trail of orange pus slithered out, dripping onto the grey stone floor. It steamed as it did so. Hogan leaned in and gave one last shove with all his might.
Two beady eyes peered back at him, blinking. Two pellet-like eyes surrounded by numerous bags and wrinkles. The commander stepped back. “What the bloody Hell’s that?”
Cissy’s mouth dropped open into a gawk.
“Mother?”
She stepped forward.
“Mother? What’s going on?”
“Cecilia?” The eyes blinked rapidly and an upside-down face spat some fibres from its puckered mouth. “What the Hell do y’ think you’re wearin’ girl? Go and get a coat on and cover yourself up!”
That was Cissy’s mother all right. Even wrapped up inside an asbestos gherkin there was something familiar about those timeworn chastisements.
“No man’s gonna be interested in y’ if your gonna go round showin’ your nipples off to all and sundry!”
“Mother! What are you doing in there?” Cissy started to tear at the husky sheath surrounding her frail parent. “I don’t understand...”
“Somethin’ came and got me!” Mrs. Doyle attempted to wriggle herself free. This was difficult, partially because the cocoon was more solid than it appeared, but more importantly because she was hanging upside-down and her top set of teeth were trying to exchange places with the bottom set. “This mornin’ when that policeman was annoyin’ me! Like a big slug it was! All wobbly and grey! Like your father!”
“This morning?” Cissy brought her rescue attempts to a halt. “You’ve been down here for that long? But...who the Hell has Sergeant Partridge got down at the station...?”
The cell door opened, its hinges complaining at being disturbed. Constable Jaye placed her full body-weight behind it, felt the momentum gather in the bars, and watched as it swung open onto the naked room beyond.
Mrs. Doyle had already caught sight of her hunchbacked friend and was now bouncing up and down resembling a pogo stick that had acquired a mind of its own. There was the soft thud, thud, thud of fur-lined boots on the floor.
Jaye stood back, smiled graciously and offered the entrance to Mrs. Wainthrop with an upturned palm. Mrs. Wainthrop obligingly scurried inside. The door was pushed closed once more and the large iron key was ground clockwise in the lock. It concluded with a reassuring clunk!
The two old women excitedly greeted each other. There was no verbal communication, just a great deal of chattering and trembling. Jaye studied the scene with an amount of intrigue.
Then it happened.
Constable Jaye had seen many puzzling events in her time with the force. Flashers beneath the viaduct in the cruellest of winter conditions. Transvestites with beards who’d thought they could actually pass as women. She’d even once caught a criminal who’d broken into the jewellers on his way home from a fancy dress ball wearing a black mask and carrying a sack with the word ‘SWAG’ on it.
But she’d never seen anything quite like the sudden metamorphosis of the two, apparently harmless, old biddies before her. Not only did their expressions drop with unexpected ferocity but the features continued tumbling down their baggy necks as well. It was a revolting sight but Jaye felt compelled to watch further. It was almost as though the pensioners were suddenly melting before her eyes.
“Sarge!” She shouted, but her voice had broken into segments far too crumbly to adhere themselves into a recognisable sentence. She swallowed, lubricated her cracked throat and tried again, this time with more emphasis. “SARGE!”
The two figures had started to join at the shoulders. Gradually they merged their individual forms into one glutinous mass.
“What’s the problem?” The sergeant’s voice echoed down the stairs from what seemed a much too distant quarter of the station. “Tell ’er if she’s a good girl I might not sneak in later on and break ’er arm!”
“SARGE!”
Suddenly the whole room was overflowing with one gigantic creature. A huge inchoate foetus that was nearly all mouth and slavering gums. And what mammoth teeth! Giant pointed stalactites, dripping with slime and tapering to savage points. The Altarian Beast compressed itself against the bars with all the threat of an inflatable dinghy that had been opened in its packing crate.
Then the iron gave a creak, screamed like a tortured baboon, and the brackets tore away from the wall in plaster chunks.
Constable Jaye was already halfway up the stairs, her flat shoes slipping with panic.
“SARGE! CLOSE THE DOOR! CLOSE THE DOOR!”
She burst into the lobby, her black hair matted to her dark skin, her bosom straining the buttons of her tunic. Jack stood and stared.
“What’s going on?”
Jaye never got the chance to explain. As she opened her mouth the whole wall behind her came crashing down in a thunderous explosion of bricks. A massive mouth roared into the lobby, the blast of its larynx rattling through the building.
The crack of the fifth cocoon tore apart beneath Hogan’s determined grip, the husk splitting open like some mighty conker. Cissy had helped the other old people out of their prisons, a delicate operation due in part to Cissy’s weak muscles and in part to that particular brand of stubbornness that permeates ninety percent of the aged population. The battle had resulted in one or two minor injuries. Now a crescent of geriatrics sat huddled on the stone floor, attending to various bruises and complaining bitterly in the manner that such people do.
Hogan heaved and was confronted by another pair of myopic eyeballs. This time they were fixed beneath the gummy rupture of a mouth, the solitary tooth of which created a whistle when it spoke.
“Mind me ’emorrhoids! God strueth! I don’t know what’ll I’ll do if them burst!”
“Another mystery solved!” Cissy had heard the news of the old people’s disappearance from Allison earlier.
“Does this mean that Amanda Duck was going to...?” She wrinkled her lips at the thought that had just entered her imagination.
“Eat them? Probably.” Hogan carefully dragged the moist senior citizen from his cradle, an operation reminiscent of a cow giving birth.
“I lost a leg in the War, y’ know!” said a creaky voice from somewhere around his kneecaps.
“Well I haven’t got it!” With this curt, and some might say ‘ignorant’ comment he turned back to Cissy just in time to witness her mother drawing up alongside.
“What’s goin’ on ’ere, Cecilia?” From somewhere in cellar, though God alone knows where, Mrs. Doyle had uncovered an abandoned walking stick. “I’ve just sin Mrs. Wainthrop and that butcher bloke y’ work for being ’atched from these...” She searched desperately for a word that might best describe the storage pods. “These bollocks...”
“You were all being stored here for meat, Mother!” Cissy shouted. “There’s these gastropod things see and…”
“It’s this bastard’s fault, innit?” Although it was a question it wasn’t intended to sound like one. Mrs. Doyle took a prod at Hogan’s ribs. The stick bent. An odd metallic clunk echoed around the damp walls.
“Mind me ’emorrhoids! Ooh God! The bugger’s are itchin’!”
The senior citizen gripped the small of his back and rocked forwards on the floor, his wizened expression crinkling deeper than a brown paper bag. Marshal stared at the one-legged gibbon. He’d have to be carried from the cellar, moaning all the bloody way no doubt! Some of the other biddies would have to take charge. He had other urgent matters to attend to.
“It was the ’eat. It’s made ’em stand up like angry hornets!”
Hogan searched amongst the coal lying in banks again
st the oozing walls, emerging moments later from the darkness clutching an eight-foot pole with a hook on one end. The old man flinched, his eyelids drawn back in terror.
“Wot y’ gonna do with that?”
“Open the window!” Hogan prodded the rusted hasp that bolted the grate. “It buggerin’ stinks in ’ere!”
The grating squealed open beneath the decades of neglect, a frown of authority settled firmly on Hogan’s brow. At length he turned to Cissy who’d been trying to ignore the whinges of her mother.
“Organise this lot for us, Cissy. Tell ’em it’s like the old days. In the War or sommet.” He threw a generalised wave across the collection of grumbling heads. “We’ve got to find Amanda Duck! Before all of the work we’ve done becomes redundant!”
At the bottom of the mud pit Three-Nine-Five complained beneath the breath from his mechanical lungs. A slug of damp soil snaked despondently down his forehead, crossed the bridge of his aching nose and dripped miserably from the tip. He couldn’t be bothered to wipe it off.
Built into Three-Nine-Five’s headset was a radio receiver. Through it he could tune-in to all the commands from central control. Over the past half an hour he’d heard his colleagues in the Elite Guard being called back to the Firestar. Time was obviously pressing so the mission had been abandoned whilst Colonel Vosh had put plan ‘B’ into action.
‘Abandon search for Commander Hogan!’ the magnificent leader had repeated. ‘All guards return to the mother ship immediately. Evacuate area for Tachyon bomb drop!’
The problem was that Three-Nine-Five couldn’t go. He was stuck, caked up to his bionic eyeballs in swathes of mud. So he sat there instead, grimly accepting his sad lot in life. Not that he’d wanted to be part of the War Effort in the first place. That was just his station. His sort never asked questions. They just got on with the job.
Right up until the end!
Now his receiver was stuck on some low-band wavelength, its mechanisms jammed by a pustule of ooze. An excited human, who sounded as though he’d been taking accelerator drugs, was blathering relentlessly above the noise of what might have been relaxing music had the idiot shut up for a few moments.