by Brian Hughes
Chapter Fifteen: Of Barbecues and Botch-ups
“You alright, Sergeant?” The brilliant light bit into Jack Partridge’s eyes with what appeared to be sharp little teeth. He carefully inched his eyelids apart and tried to refocus on the world beyond.
Blurred shapes filled his vision. Splashes of orange, globes of cerise, slowly reforming themselves into Clewes’ hair and Nesbit’s nose. Gingerly he patted his crown. And then winced.
“Y’ve got a nasty lookin’ bump on your noggin’ there.” Superintendent Hodges forced his way through the gathering around him. “We found this on the bed.”
One podgy hand held up the light bulb.
“What actually ’appened ’ere? We asked Robins but ’ee just kept gibbering about some giant candy floss!”
“Mrs Duvall!” Jack levered himself up using Nesbit’s Macintosh as a rope ladder. “She brought me a good ’un round the back of me ’ead with somethin’!”
He noticed the broken shards across the floor and decided not to elaborate.
“The old bugger’s escaped!” Still dazed he attempted to salute. “I’ll get after ’er straight away, Sir.”
“No need t’ bother, Jack.” Nesbit shook the letter that Jack had taped together in front of his bewildered eyes. “This is all we need f’r the time being.”
“Right...” Hodges snuffled himself perpendicular and adjusted his tie round his sagging throat. “Seein’ as you appear to ’ave everythin’ in order, Reg, I’d best be gettin’ back t’ me wife.”
“Good luck, Sir.” Malcolm offered him an optimistic smile. His superior, turgid with embarrassment, chanced one back before blustering off up the stairs. “I ’ope you don’t need it though.”
“Now then, Clewes.” Nesbit studied the list that Millicent Broadhurst had originally delivered. “Off t’ Mrs Wainthrop’s ’ouse!”
He raised his eyes to the rosy-cheeked Jack who was still testing his head for new contours.
“Apparently there’s a thirty foot sheep roamin’ the streets!” He thought about that before adding, “At least, that’s accordin’ to Constable Robins and always assumin’ that Mrs Duvall didn’t inject ’im with cocaine on ’er way out. Whatever the case, we’d better take the threat seriously.”
A number of expressions contorted his pliable face. No matter how ridiculous some of the recent events might have seemed, it was still very difficult to believe that a monstrous sheep was wreaking havoc across the town.
“So, after you’ve ’ad a cup of tea t’ steady your nerves, p’raps y’ could look into that one for us, Jack.” Nesbit stuffed the catalogue of demands into his pocket and turned back to Malcolm. “In the meantime, we’ve got an atom bomb t’ sort out!”
The gargantuan sheep wasn’t the only titan terrorising the streets tonight.
Having all but demolished the memorial hall, the forty-foot serpent was now engulfed in its own flames. Its huge wings were fanning the inferno to greater heights.
With the sort of stumbling take-off for which albatrosses are rightly famed, it stuck its snout to the ground, ran forward on its stubby legs, snapped four elms, uprooted three bushes and narrowly missed a startled hedgehog, before launching itself from the craggiest section of South Ringing Fell.
With a great crack of limbs and talons and joints the creature rose into the star-speckled sky.
Far below its dangling toes the scorched terrain of its launch pad bustled with activity. Blue strobes lit up the landscape gothically. Figures clothed in glistening yellows, authoritative blues and medical whites bustled through the melee trying to bring order to the chaos.
Amongst it all, Miss Duvall had Pip were making their escape. Every so often some bulky fireman would drag a pythonesque hose across Strongarm Lane, forcing the two of them to take cover in the uncomfortable hedgerow.
Nothing further would be heard for several moments, except for the swell of lungs, the rhythmic crunch of hosepipes across gritty cobblestones and the distant confusion spilling down the slopes.
Then off they’d lurch again, shadowy figures embroiled by the guttering night.
In this stop-start fashion they eventually reached Devils Copse.
“Miss Duvall,” gasped Pip, doubled up and trawling her breath. “This is all getting a bit out of hand, don’t you think?”
“I’ve certainly had quieter nights,” replied Miss Duvall, one hand steadying her ancient frame against a tree trunk, the other clutching her heaving diaphragm. She caught her breath and listened intently. “You’re not crying, are you dear?”
“No!” snapped Pip. “Just got a midge in me eye, that’s all!”
She gave it a quick rub as proof, making her eyelid swollen and raw.
“Miss Duvall, you’re the great detective,” she added with less acerbity now. “Would you kindly explain to me what’s going on?”
“Haven’t a clue, dear.” Drawing down a deep breath Miss Duvall blinked with the bafflement of an owl confronted by a clockwork mouse. “I suppose I’m more of a ‘missing biscuit tin’ sort of investigator really.”
What appeared to be some sort of gigantic cloak filled the night overhead.
It turned the stars between the threadbare branches an omniscient black.
The powerful sensation of dread surrounding it was accompanied by the occasional grunt of flame.
Then the phantom slid past, reeling on towards the town.
“I don’t want to die.” Pip’s broken words were barely audible, but Miss Duvall managed to catch them all the same.
“Well, when you get to my age, death doesn’t really bother you much, Phillipa.” The reassurance failed to have the desired effect, so Miss Duvall added, “Not that we’re not going to die anyhow.”
“Millicent Broadhurst did!”
Pip instantly regretted having said that. She clutched her bosom as though forestalling any further outbursts and at length went on, “I’m sorry, Mrs Duvall. It’s been...”
A thoughtful pause.
“A difficult evening so far.”
“Yes, well...” Miss Duvall’s cheeks flapped in the darkness. “To be honest, Phillipa, I’ve been trying not to think about poor old Millie.”
Pip heard a snuffle, although it might have been a squirrel muttering in its sleep overhead. She turned the pensioner’s character over in her mind.
“The odd thing is...” she ventured. “You reckon that death doesn’t bother you, but you’re worried about it really, aren’t you? That’s why you’ve got your mysteries, isn’t it? To take your mind off the greatest one of all.”
“Nonsense, girl,” Miss Duvall began, somewhat too haughtily to ring true.
“Miss Duvall,” interrupted Pip. “I might be young, but I’ve still got my wits about me.”
There was a pause for the consideration of this statement.
“I see my detectives skills are starting to rub off, eh?” What sounded like a grunt left Winifred’s nose. “Anyhow, I let Millie down badly this time,” she continued as though she’d confronted the issue and stowed it away in some mental attic along with all her other regrets. “And I feel dreadfully guilty about what happened. What a daft old duffer I’ve been, Phillipa. If only Millie were here with us now.”
Zombies are not renowned for their sentience.
Come to that matter, they’re not renowned for having free will at all.
In the case of Millicent Broadhurst it was doubtful that she’d ever had either of those qualities when she was alive, but seeing as such matters are open to theological debate perhaps now isn’t the best of times to discuss them.
The small mound of rubbish at the rear of Wainscot Lane trembled slightly. Unidentifiable landslides tumbled down its unstable banks. A crack appeared between a bundle of chip wrappers and a collection of brown daffodil stems. Millie’s head poked itself up, resembling a gorilla’s thumb, all grey and wrinkled and covered in straw.
Her nostrils flared, sucking in the pungent aroma of the refuse.
&
nbsp; She tested the various smells of the night, rolling them round on the back of her tongue.
Then, almost as though she’d heard Miss Duvall’s request, she clambered bow-legged from the rubble and lunged off down the alley, her stiff arms stretched out before her and several fish heads trailing behind.
“Mrs Wainthrop?”
Another burst of hammering. It produced no other sound from inside the cottage than the scuttling of a mouse beneath the floorboards. Sawdust spiralled down from the sphagnum filled gutter onto Nesbit’s toecaps.
“Alright Malcolm, y’d best put your shoulder into it.”
“Are y’ sure, Sir?” Malcolm scratched his head through his ginger mop. It was more of an attempt to buy time than an actual itch. Trellised honeysuckle and grotesquely coloured garden gnomes surrounded Mrs Wainthrop’s porch. The idea of battering the door down because she hadn’t turned her hearing aid up seemed a bit on the drastic side.
“Of course I’m sure, Clewes!” The nib of Nesbit’s pipe prodded Malcolm on the shoulder. He might have been trying to make a point. He might just have been trying to remove some earwax from the mouthpiece. “If some idiot ’as managed to create a nuclear device then Mrs Wainthrop’s ’oneysuckle is the least of our problems. There’s full instructions available for atomic weapons on the Internet, y’ know?”
“Where would they get the plutonium, Sir?” Obviously Malcolm still had his doubts. Property damages would probably have to be met from the responsible party’s wages which was why, he suspected, Nesbit had delegated the job to him. “It’s not exactly readily available.”
“’Ow the ’ell should I know where it’s come from? P’raps they found some at the council dump!” Nesbit leaned closer to his colleague’s freckled nose. “But unless y’ want t’ be responsible for creatin’ an ’ole where Greyminster normally stands, I suggest y’ give it some welly!”
“Right you are, Sir.” Chewing his bottom lip decisively, Malcolm squared his shoulder against the jamb.
There was a thump.
His shoulder rebounded and the brass knocker rattled several times.
Malcolm stepped back for another attempt, weighing up the distance. Not far enough yet, he reckoned. Another couple of paces brought him down the wooden stairs.
Nesbit flattened himself against the porch in anticipation, his pipe sticking out from the shadows like some antiquated stovepipe.
With a furrowing of the brow, Malcolm charged again.
That is, he charged for the first couple of steps. After that one of his boots hit a garden gnome; a grotesque figure, its trousers round its ankles and a suggestive fishing rod where gnomes don’t usually sport such items. Mrs Wainthrop’s advancing years had obviously turned their cataracts against aestheticism.
Malcolm’s assault turned into a stumble.
Then a lurch.
And finally a stagger in which his head tried to change places with his knees.
With a crack that brought down half the eaves and toppled three further gnomes from the window ledge he smashed through the centre panel, his shoulders wedged in the splintered hole.
The remains of the door shredded from their hinges, the weight propelling him into the heart of Mrs Wainthrop’s cottage. Bangs and chimes were winded back into the porch, accompanied by a ball of dust and the midriff of a pottery shire horse.
As the commotion settled, Nesbit emerged from his recess, muttering, “Well, that should ’ave woken the old bat up.”
The sensation of cold air rushing vibrantly through smoking nostrils was satisfying to say the least.
The thrill of catching the thermals, rising on their broad shoulders and gliding effortlessly above the silver backed clouds, was even better.
Beneath the dragon’s pale undercarriage spread an ever-reforming landscape of meringue mountains and cumuli meadows watched over languidly by the watercolour moon.
Full of never-before-experienced emotions the dragon soared.
Its great wings flapped without the need for effort, its beady eyes catching occasional glimpses of the countryside far below. With a sense of devilment it suddenly swooped, tearing the clouds apart like strands of gossamer. Then it darted, excitedly, across the spine of the fells.
Forests were snatched up and shaken in its thunderous wake, promontories of moss and rock momentarily eclipsed by its powerful shadow.
Another snort sent a seventy-foot boa of flame scorching upwards through the night, lighting the lanes that led to Carlisle so that they resembled electric eels.
Then the rumble started, deep inside where the dragon’s cast iron stomach was calling out for attention.
Dinner time!
In the thicket of Devils Copse, Gertrude, by far the largest of the Barley flock and a sheep that under normal circumstances would easily have won the Greyminster Best of Breed Fayre, chewed, in the nonchalant manner that sheep tend to do such things, at a swaying poplar.
There was a splintering noise and the thick trunk fractured with the ease of a cornstalk. Gertrude’s tiny teeth chomped steadily down its length, stripping the bark from its girth and digesting the pulp with such rhythmic precision that the tree had soon vanished into her gullet.
Another creak echoed from her bloated intestines, portending doom.
As she clamped her jaws round an ivy-swathed elm the moon vanished. It wasn’t the usual darkeness generated by a gauzy cloud meandering across the lunar lantern. This was a menacing dark that enveloped the senses and cut off all the sound within a fifty feet radius.
Gertrude raised her tiny head. She was just in time to see two sets of talons descending.
With a shuddering scream that sent vibrations into the distant peaks, the dragon swung upwards again, lifting the swollen sheep, half-chewed elm and all, above the treetops.
For a moment it appeared to be struggling beneath the weight.
Miss Duvall and Pip watched in silence from the ditch where the water mill that had occupied the copse in centuries past no longer stood.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” whispered Miss Duvall, ducking instinctively as the great woollen globe swung precariously overhead. “But wasn’t there one of those ridiculous Godzilla films on the television tonight?”
“You’re not expecting Mothra to turn up as well, are you?” Pip ducked behind her companion’s ample behind.
“I’m not sure what to expect any more,” replied Miss Duvall whilst Gertrude was hoisted towards the edge of the wood as though by some dilapidated crane. “But it’s odd, don’t you think, how things out of recent television programmes and newspaper articles keep cropping up in these little incidents?”
The little incident continued above the millpond, Getrude’s hooves occasionally breaking the stagnant surface as the dragon struggled, scattering ducks in all directions.
From the dry stone gates that led into Devils Copse rose the animated swearing of Giles Barley. Miss Duvall could just make out his silhouette through the undergrowth. He was waving a walking stick towards the serpent and hurling abuse. Not much of a weapon, it has to be said, but obviously the best he could improvise at such short notice.
Behind him the more portly shape of Seymour Barley raised a blunderbuss to one of its walled eyes. Shouts rose into the night.
“Put moi property down y’ scaly, theivin’ barstard! Shoot the blardy thing y’ darft great pillock!”
A crack of buckshot rang out, each tree trunk fracturing the sound until the copse chimed with gunfire.
Presumably Seymour’s aim was as wonky as his eyes. Undeterred the serpent fluttered higher, the still chomping sheep swinging idiotically in its grip.
“Give me thart gun!” Giles snatched the blunderbuss from the shadowy gonk.
“Time to take cover,” stuttered Miss Duvall, placing her palm on the top of Pip’s head and forcing her down. “If the creaking noises are anything to go off there’s going to be a bit of a...”
‘A bit of a...’ wasn’t the most apt of descriptions.
>
What happened next there was ‘a hell of a bloody lot of...’ and the force of the blast was equivalent to standing beneath a harrier jump jet.
In an all-consuming fireball that scorched the trees, stripped the tumble-down walls around the copse of ivy, boiled the ponds and gave several doves an unexpected suntan, Gertrude spontaneously combusted.
Spinning orbs of charcoaled meat shot through the foliage in sooty plumes, lighting up the sagging clouds in furious belts of orange and green.
The whole night was suddenly alive with the smell of cooking.
Sizzling sausages coiled themselves around cedars. Best lamb chops, of a magnitude rarely seen outside genetic engineering plants, slapped themselves, hissing and spitting, over shrubs and abandoned millstones.
With rubbery flatulence several hundred feet of large intestine slopped onto Giles and Seymour. The landslide was so unexpected that it stemmed their rising oaths. The gizzards continued to unwind in a shimmering mound that smothered them both, the farmers now forcing their way, breathlessly, towards its summit.
“There’s never a dull moment!” A familiar weary voice broke through the crackling flames.
“Sergeant Partridge? Is that you?” Miss Duvall thrust her head above the embankment and suddenly realised the predicament she was in. “Ah...yes. Well, here we go again! I’d better come quietly, I suppose.”
She compliantly held up her wrists to the overweight policeman.
“But you’re making a mistake, you know?”
“Reckon I made a mistake volunteerin’ t’ take Bill Foster’s shift tonight.” Jack wheezed himself to a halt and watched as Pip emerged next to the old dame. She appeared to be wearing some sort of purple hat made from five pounds of lamb’s liver.
“Don’t worry, Mrs Duvall. There are more important things afoot than arrestin’ innocents.”
He glanced up at serpent. It was still writhing apocalyptically overhead, a huge tuft of wool now hanging from its claws snaring the uppermost branches of an oak.