by Brian Hughes
On the third attempt Three-Nine-Five bumped his head and brought his efforts to a standstill. He reached the conclusion that this went beyond mere stubbornness and the door was itching for a fight.
Allison’s freckled face appeared, bulging with concern.
“What are you doing?” She laid the smouldering teapot on the telephone table and her head wobbled oddly as she tried to steer Three-Nine-Five’s vacant gaze in her direction. “Do you want to go out? Is that what you want?”
“Chicacirruc Chic.” Three-Nine-Five tired to communicate. His arms lashed out wildly resembling a budgerigar attempting to climb back on its perch.
“I don’t understand,” said Allison hopelessly, watching his indecipherable efforts. There was an awful lot of head touching and elbow prodding and fingers being raised.
“You poor thing...” she said at length, picking the teapot back up. “Would you just like a cup of tea instead? Perhaps this time you could swallow it instead of spraying it up the wall?”
And then it dawned on her.
“Charades!” she said aghast. “You want to play charades?”
She created a hoop from her index finger and thumb, placed it against her eye and cranked the other hand around her ear. Three-Nine-Five’s eyes opened wide as a smile broke out across his features. He nodded ecstatically, pointing at the mime, then copied it dutifully to show that he understood.
“Right!” Allison slapped her palms together. She had been good at charades as a kid. Well, everybody had a forte somewhere. This should be fun. “It’s a...book?”
She pointed at the book cupboard somewhere down by her knees.
Lots of head shaking.
“A film, no, no! You’re writing...its a diary, a message...a...a message? It’s a message!” She waved the note-pad from the telephone table above her head triumphantly. The robot nodded violently and raised a metal thumb as the sign of confirmation.
“Thumb?”
The head shook, a frown settling across his weary features. Allison gave an apologetic smile.
“No, I’m sorry...getting carried away. Do go on...” Her eyes narrowed, her jaw set with the rigidity of a cliff ledge, and she concentrated with every ounce of energy her cerebral cortex could muster. “Right, moustache? Badger? Bottle opener? Food?”
This continued for sometime whilst the automaton mimed his damned hardest. Allison’s initial optimism began to wane. It wasn’t so much that the acting was of a dire nature. (In fact under the circumstances it was extremely coherent and subtly thought out.) But Allison was rapidly running out of objects to offer as suggestions. After a number of further failures she began darting back and forth between the bedroom, the lounge and the kitchen, each time returning with a collection of objects that blocked her view.
On every occasion Three-Nine-Five just grew more vexed and at length he decided to try a slightly different tactic.
There was a creak and his eyeballs expanded, poking out of his forehead as though they were about to burst. There followed a groan and a squeal and the robot’s top set of dentures ground down into a curtain constructed of iron. He suddenly resembled an extremely startled horse.
“Oh my God!” Allison cried. “Cissy Doyle! You’ve got a message for Cissy Doyle.”
The thumb came up. The eyes retracted, the teeth wound back into the glistening gums and Three-Nine-Five continued his mime. He created an open fist and moved it swiftly backwards and forwards from a point on his forehead to a point about four inches in front. Allison’s joyful expression dropped into one of disgust.
“And Commander Hogan...” she added. “Right.”
She reached down, grabbed the doorknob, gave it a sharp twist and as the door ground open she watched her companion’s expression change. He grinned, pointed down at the knob, clicked his fingers and showed her a close up of his thumb.
Jack Partridge pounded down the ginnel, his footsteps bouncing off the walls. In the distance he could hear the roar of the giant mouth charging through the town, biting chunks from whatever was foolish enough to block its path.
He reached Old Bridge Lane and stopped dead, his heart beating erratically against his rib cage. Then he collapsed against the lamppost. Beside him Constable Jaye breathlessly attempted to shock her lungs back into working order. She was bent over double clutching her kneecaps, blanketed by such a vast cloud of steam that only sections of her were visible.
At length Jack swallowed and attempted to speak. The words came out straddling the spine of a painful wheeze.
“Oo’s on duty tonight?”
When Jaye replied her sentences were broken into individual sausages of words.
“Who’son...dutyto...night?...Consta...blePark...insSarge.”
“Parkins?” The sergeant rolled his unwieldy frame around the lamppost to face her. There followed a long pause during which neither party spoke.
“And?”
“And what, Sarge?”
“Parkins and...?”
Constable Jaye frowned and studied her flat boots.
“Just Parkins, Sarge. Constable Robins and Constable Took are both off with the flu. And Constable Wright’s gone on holiday to Torquay...to see his aunt.”
Partridge brought one palm up to his forehead with a slap.
“I should ’ave known,” he muttered angrily. “I should ’ave bloody known! The All Points Bulletin! I told that thunder-headed idiot to place an All Points Bulletin. Where’s ’ee gone an’ placed it? On the soddin’ floral compass in the park?”
“That’s why he’s been doing so much overtime, Sarge.”
“Really!” Jack tugged determinedly on his overcoat lapels, his leather gloves squeaking against the damp dewy wool. “And there was I thinkin’ it was because we couldn’t do without ’is charmin’ personality about the place!”
Another roar tore apart the ceiling of the sky, thundering back down from the clouds.
“C’mon!” He grabbed Jaye by one shoulder, forcing her upright. “We’d better get after that thing before it’s too late!”
“Too late for what, Sarge?”
That threw him for a moment. He hadn’t thought what they were going to do when they actually caught up with it. Perhaps they could use Constable Parkins to wedge its mouth open or something.
“I don’t know. We’ll ’ave to invent somethin’ en route!”
Patternoster Row stood still and foreboding. The minutes seemed to stretch forever. Hogan rubbed his eyes and checked his watch. His angular jaw made a sort of rustling sand-papery noise as it was roughly handled beneath his fingers.
“How long now?” A squeaky voice pierced the air by his shoulder. There was a muffled sound from his other side. Just one yank, he thought vaguely, and he could break the old bat’s neck.
“Not long. If we could just...”
At that moment there was a roar from around the corner. It was closely pursued by a writhing mass of lips. Teeth and promontories splayed in all directions, great gangly tendrils of jelly propelling the creature along the cobblestones.
“Oh, bollocks!” Hogan released Mrs. Doyle and darted forward, his sneakers chirping on the stones. “STOP!”
Partridge and Jaye appeared behind the creature, their hearts fit to explode in their mouths. At Marshal’s scream they skewed to a halt assuming that his order had been levelled at them.
“Not you! NOT YOU! DO SOMETHING! STOP IT!”
But it was too late.
The invertebrate slimed across the curb and stopped in front of number three. Its mouth ripped apart, folding backwards on itself with a glug. Then the whole swollen mass reared upwards.
For a moment it swayed unsteadily, back and forth. Then it dived.
With a slop the walls of the building swallowed it up, concentric circles moving out towards the guttering.
Silence dropped across the street.
“Bloody ’ooligan!” Mrs. Doyle emerged from the shadows of number seven, her stick raised to strike at the building befor
e her. “I’ll show it w’at for!”
“Mother!” Cissy grappled with her mother’s right arm.
On either side of Amanda the pointing started to splinter. Tiny cracks appeared between the bricks.
Amanda’s eyes opened. No longer tired but filled instead with energy.
A thunderous, grumbling rip made the ground beneath Cissy’s feet shudder. It felt as though an earthquake had taken hold of the whole of Lancashire. An earthquake savage enough to bring number two and number four tumbling down. They fell like dominoes across the road.
Jack staggered backwards, bumped into Jaye and plunged to the ground with a thud.
Amanda grew into a phallic shaped mass, metamorphosing into the vague shape of an Elizabethan house. Around her the other buildings began to shatter under the pressure, great chunks of masonry falling down in showers of shrapnel.
And still she grew, constantly altering, briefly adopting the architectural structure of the Empire State building. Her huge limpid bulk blotted out the harvest moon, thundering upwards into the dark.
“GET OUT OF HERE!”
Hogan’s powerful voice was almost drowned by the deafening crash as the creature’s hind quarters brought down the terrace. Amanda Duck was fast becoming larger than Greyminster’s oldest fell. She now resembled some sort of massive, bemired cliff. There were indistinct signs of improvised trees growing high up above, resembling armpit hair.
The creature’s head ripped the clouds apart as though they were tissue paper, disappearing beyond them into the ribbon of night.
Not that anybody was watching.
Patternoster Row was smashing down across the cobblestones, the cobbles themselves being uprooted as the colossal form before them groaned.
And with the mightiest noise that human ears could ever withstand, the upturned mountain roared. A melancholy roar that vibrated the hills and toppled the pots from the chimneys. A roar that bellowed from a mouth as vast as the yawning chasm of the Cheddar Gorge.
The sound brought down the last of Patternoster Row’s Victorian dwellings, sending vibrations all the way to the craggy peaks of South Cumbria.
Chapter Fifteen: What the Night Spat Back out Again
Three-Nine-Five was in a hurry, Allison scuttling behind him down the narrow streets. She pulled her dressing gown closed around her chest to stop the wind from indelicately intruding.
“Could you just slow down a minute, Mr. Robot?” The title Mr. Robot was wearing thin already. Three-Nine-Five didn’t respond to that name, which was hardly surprising. As Allison barrelled forward she ran a number of alternatives through her head. Mickey, Spot and Buzz were amongst her favourites.
“I’m afraid my corns are beginning to smart.”
As the words left her mouth she thundered straight into her companion’s stationary back. He’d unexpectedly stopped about halfway down Arcadia Rd. Allison rebounded, ending up sprawled across the pavement wondering what had hit her. Fortunately her skeleton was well padded.
She shook her head and followed his mesmerised gaze towards the rooftops.
Something massive hung against the sky. The clouds around the top scurried in drifts. There was something vaguely familiar about the creature. Despite its generous mass and ever changing outline it bore a resemblance to Amanda Duck.
“What the Hell is that?” Allison shook her head again, as though that might dislodge whatever was interfering with her perception. Unfortunately it didn’t.
The monstrous face was concentrating on an object flitting around its nose. It was a small object that resembled a camouflaged brick, tethered down by a twisted plume of smoke.
Three-Nine-Five spurred himself into action. He bolted with his head down and shoulders forward, a machine designed for cutting through the air. Allison caught the soles of his boots disappearing in a blur around the corner of Belmont Drive.
“Wait a moment!” She hitched up her dressing gown and ran, her dimpled knees out in front of the rest of her body.
“I don’t know what’s going on anymore,” she cried out in despair. “Nobody told me that this was going to happen!”
Amanda Duck lashed out in frustration at the tiny craft. Somewhere deep inside a recollection rang a distant tinny bell.
Buckled memories struggled against her animalistic urges. The memory came from her childhood. The Greyminster Fleapit’s Saturday afternoon matinee. All those films from the 1940’s that the other kids had thrown popcorn at with great enthusiasm. Amanda’s mother had often abandoned her there to the fate of Buster Crab and a hundred unruly school children with home-made incendiary devices.
One particular memory came back to haunt her.
There followed an enormous creak. At first Amanda grew hairy and bulbous. Then her two upper limbs transformed into two gigantic arms that, by comparison to the legs, seemed ridiculously out of proportion.
Moments later Amanda Duck had become the largest gorilla ever witnessed outside the movie theatre. With a hefty drumbeat on her leathery chest, she thrashed hopelessly at the spinning craft. The Firestar ducked with agility, continually outmanoeuvring her lumbering grabs.
Large sections of the buildings fell, crashing off the cobbles and bouncing across the road.
“That’s the tattiest looking ape I’ve ever clapped eyes on!” Cissy dodged the rubble, clutching Hogan by his arm. “It doesn’t even look convincing.”
Whether it looked convincing or not, the walls it was demolishing were extremely real. It was obvious why the Old Empire hadn’t wanted the creatures to fall into enemy hands.
“What exactly is it doing up there?”
“I’ve no idea.” Hogan shaded his eyes, staring up into the huge stomach ringed by clouds as though it was wearing a life belt. “But it’s got awfully tiny bo...”
There was a clump. Actually, clump’s a bit of an understatement. Amanda shifted her left foot and crushed a row of garden sheds. Mrs. Doyle scrambled onto the big toe, waving her walking stick and screaming excitedly.
“MOTHER!” Cissy ran forwards several steps before turning back.
“What’s the PLAN?” she screamed, studying Hogan’s puzzled features. “You have got a bloody plan, haven’t you?”
Hogan shrugged his shoulders apologetically.
“Piss off sharpish and hide somewhere?” He blew out his lips in a resigned manner. “Like North Africa?”
“Oooh!” Cissy tightened her face into a haemorrhoid of rage and turned back to her mother’s outrageous defiance. “You’re a bloody hopeless git! MOTHER! Get down off that toenail. Y’ don’t know where it’s been!”
Colonel Vosh bulldozed the guard from the control panel, sending him spinning across the floor.
“Are you all completely incompetent?”
It was rare that anybody ever witnessed Colonel Vosh in a temper. Well, it was rare that anybody witnessed Colonel Vosh in a temper and actually survived to pass the story on. His collective exterior still cut a ruthless dash, although now it brimmed with dissatisfaction. Most of the bridge crew were trying to blend in with their control panels.
“Must I take charge of everything myself?” Vosh sneered, the strobing lights from the monitor glinting off his sharp teeth.
Through the window he could see a vast pair of eyeballs blinking sluggishly above two huge inverted commas for nostrils. He slammed several keys on the navigation console and the craft darted swiftly into a different position.
Several more chimneys fell, shattering on garden walls. Jack cowered beneath his arms, looking upwards as a tiny oblong appeared, circled twice round the ape’s head and then vanished in a streamer.
The primate watched it too, her vast, sorrowful eyes appearing to moisten. One final swing with a suspension bridge of an arm and the gorilla’s attention was diverted to the toy buildings below it.
“Sarge! Look out! It’s on the move!”
Constable Jaye had been taking refuge behind Jack. Now she stood upright as the double-decker foot swung towards th
em and came down on the only house left standing.
Under pressure bricks don’t react in the same fashion as wooden sheds. The more weight is applied, the more tension is absorbed by each brick, until eventually it can no longer hold itself together against the strain. Thousands of tiny red splinters detonated outwards so tightly packed they formed a single furious fog.
“Oy! Astronut!” Sergeant Partridge strolled as calmly as he could to where Hogan was fumbling for his cigarettes. Jack delved into his pockets, found his own familiar packet and offered him one. “Can’t we do sommet about this?”
He hooked his broad thumb in the direction of the Titan, his other hand returning to his overcoat pocket for the matches.
“Nothing...officer?” Hogan raised one eyebrow, tracing the uniform up and down questioningly. “To be hopes to God it doesn’t get hungry.”
The sergeant screwed his face into a crinkled dumpling of irony.
“Why did you ’ave t’ say that? Third rule of Sod’s Law, that is,” he continued sagely, “Every time someone makes some comment that begins with ‘To be ’opes t’ God…’ it always bloody ’appens!”
Giles Barley, owner of Nine Acres Farm on the boundary of Greyminster, was a farmer of very simple needs.
Money for one. Lots of it for another.
But if his needs were simple it was nothing in comparison to exactly how simple the farmer was himself. Right at that moment, for example, he was steering his milk float down the cobbled back streets, delivering the early morning pints to the residents’ doorsteps.
He was a busy man, what with ordering his son about and shouting at his wife. The prospect of getting up at five o’clock in the morning didn’t sit comfortably on his furrowed brow. Kevin the cockerel had long ago learnt that, in order to reach the great age he wanted to reach, he would have to avoid the temptation to crow as soon as the sun rose. Anything else would result in an antique chamber pot smashing off his head.