by Scott Innes
‘Please,’ Gillian whispered, squeezing my arm urgently. ‘This is my life we’re talking about. I’m telling you, Kevin: it’s not me. It isn’t.’
I was torn. There was every chance that this was an act to buy her own survival, a cornered animal doing everything it could to escape from harm. But as I looked at her, I realised I couldn’t go through with it. It wasn’t necessarily that I believed her – it was that I wanted to.
‘Well?’ snapped the first guard. ‘What is it?’
I turned to face them. ‘What do you think of the décor in here?’
‘The… what? What are you talking about?’
‘The wood panelling aesthetic – what do you make of it? I was never all that keen before but I’ve started to come round to it. I think it has quite a calming, soothing effect.’
‘What in God’s name are you blathering about?’ asked the second guard, lowering his gun. ‘You said there was an emergency.’
‘There is,’ I nodded. ‘Fort Emmeline is so drab, you guys must have noticed that. Grey walls, no atmosphere. I think the General needs to seriously consider a redecoration job. Something like this might be just the ticket.’
The first guard flipped open his visor and looked at me with venomous eyes.
‘You’re a real piece of work, Coogan,’ he said. ‘The General will hear about this. Wasting Compound Guard time is a criminal offence.’
He pointed his rifle at us both threateningly and then the two of them marched out of the office and stomped away down the corridor, muttering to one another in annoyance.
‘Kevin,’ Gillian said, hanging her head and taking a deep breath before looking at me. ‘Thank you. I… don’t know what to say.’
‘Don’t say anything,’ I replied. ‘Not yet. Because I still haven’t made up my mind about you. But I will. Like Iain Dowie with a league table, I’m going to get to the bottom of this.’
‘We both will,’ she said determinedly. ‘The spy, whoever it is, has crossed a line. And with access to a Keycard, we’ll all be in grave—’
She stopped suddenly and we both stared fearfully through the open balcony doors as an ear-piercing scream filled the air… along with the dreaded sound of flapping wings.
DEATH FROM ABOVE
I stood there on the balcony, helplessly watching as a pack of Winged Terrors, six of them at least, swarmed down. The two guards were under attack, one of them completely incapacitated and already in the process of being torn limb from limb. The other was injured, a bloody gash across one forearm, his armour easily pierced as he fired indiscriminately into the air with the gun in his free hand.
I’d never seen the foul creatures this closely before – they were muscular and strong, chests like those of a gorilla, covered in a mat of dirty black fur. The claws on their hands and feet were razor-sharp and their faces were something from a nightmare; the menacing grins on their hideous goblin-like features sent a chill down my spine and their wingspan was like some kind of enormous hang-glider. I could barely see either of the guards now as the group tore and swiped at them while they pleaded in vain for help. The day before, I’d assumed that being smooshed behind a big bookcase was the worst way to die but now I knew better. Suddenly, my heart skipped a beat as another figure appeared on the scene, watching in horrified fascination.
‘Rodway!’ I shouted down from the balcony. ‘Get back inside and out of sight, you damn fool!’
My star striker looked up at me, his face pallid with shock – and then within seconds, two of the Terrors broke free from the main throng and set upon him. With a muffled cry he fell to his knees.
‘What do we do?’ Gillian asked in distress, clutching the balcony rail with white knuckles. ‘The guard outposts are too far away – we’re on our own!’
‘Oh, Jesus and Mary!’ I cried as two of the Terrors flew away, one carrying the first guard’s legs, the other hoisting guard number two’s upper torso. The remaining two beasts gathered up Rodway, thankfully still in one piece – but barely.
‘Stop right there!’ I bellowed angrily at them. ‘He’s my top target man!’
The Terrors looked up at us on the balcony and one of them, the leader going by his size, barked a harsh, guttural laugh. Then, carrying my poor number nine between them as he struggled to break free, they flew up and over the Compound walls and vanished from sight.
I looked at Gillian who stared back at me in utter horror.
‘What now?’
‘What do you mean, “what now”?!’ I said, incredulous, as I swung a leg over the balcony railing. ‘I’ve got to rescue him – he was still alive when those flapping wazzocks grabbed him, there’s no time to waste!’
‘Jesus Christ, Kevin, this is the sixth floor!’ Gillian said, grabbing my arm and pulling me back onto the balcony. ‘Take the lift down to the ground level at least.’
It was a smart call. I’d always had a terrible fear of heights – Steve Bruce once quipped that this was probably why my Newcastle side choked the league title in 1996. Prat.
‘Kevin, stop,’ Gillian said as I tore back inside her office. I turned impatiently in the doorway and looked back at her.
‘I have to move fast,’ I said in frustration. ‘There’ll be no Fergie time here, the clock is ticking!’
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked in a ‘don’t you get it?’ kind of tone. ‘The Compound is in lockdown – there’s no way they’ll open the gates for you. And if you try to sneak past the guard posts, you’ll be shot. I’m on the Council, remember. I know how seriously they’re taking matters of security at the moment.’
She faltered slightly as she said this last part – we both knew we had unfinished business in that arena to discuss.
‘Well, I’m not just going to stand here and do nothing,’ I said eventually. ‘That kid out there was a complete waster until I talked some sense into him. Now he’s turning his life around – I’m not going to sit on my hands and watch it end like this. If I have to die in a hail of bullets, then so be it.’
‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ said Gillian in a thoughtful voice – I could see she was running something through her head. Finally, she said, ‘I’ll help you. I know a way. And maybe I can prove to you for certain that I’m not the spy after all.’
I listened stoically as she outlined her plan. When she finished, I nodded.
‘That’ll do.’
At dusk, I stood with Gerry and Barrington12 behind the bins at the back of the Compound infirmary. Every little sound had me on edge – if anyone got wind of our plan, we were buggered. It was a chilly evening and I wished I hadn’t left my thick gloves at the bottom of my backpack. Gerry had brought an enormous cricket bag, packed with clothes, four bottles of Irn-Bru, a six-pack of Vimto, twelve tins of baked beans, nine tins of spaghetti hoops, seven tins of mulligatawny soup and a Toblerone.
‘I told you to pack some bottled water,’ I told him when he showed me the contents. I was irritable, distracted. I felt the weight of the world upon my shoulders ahead of our expedition and longed for the days on Earth when I could have just called up any of the other ex-England managers for advice. A lot of people don’t realise the special bond we all share. It’s unlike anything else in football – no one else has experienced life in that goldfish bowl as we select few have done. I haven’t seen the old gang as much as I used to since the invasion of Earth, but back in the pre-L’zuhl days we’d regularly meet up to set the world to rights. I got along famously with all of them, despite some of their eccentricities. Let’s face it, Glenn Hoddle can be a difficult man – I remember years back, the FA came really close to introducing a rugby-style sin bin system in football, only for the scheme to collapse after Glenn insisted that it also include sins from former lives. He travels the galaxy now with the disembodied living head of his faith healer Eileen Drewery in a jar, dispensing their New Age wisdom. Good luck to them.
Sadly, I fell out with most of them in 2016 – and it was over one of my proposa
ls too. It was for an ITV Sunday night drama series called King & Country. The concept was simple but ingenious – we would all play ourselves in the show, driving round provincial English towns in a van and getting into scrapes with the locals and solving some kind of mystery in each episode. Everyone was well up for it, though Roy Hodgson took some persuading. He kept saying, ‘I only watch BBC Four,’ which to me sounded like a lie. There’s no such channel. Anyway, eventually they all signed on: me, Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle, Sven, Steve McClaren, Fabio Capello and Roy. We had Joanna Lumley signed up to play a kind of mastermind figure to our gang who would listen to police-band radio and tell us where any strange unsolved crimes had taken place, and I’d even had an approach from Danny Boyle to direct the pilot episode. I was only too happy – I said to him, ‘I’m not a fan of your silly druggie films if I’m being brutally frank, but your sister, Susan, has the voice of an angel.’
Sitting down with the boys in the writers’ room was where the trouble began. I had a basic outline for the opening episode: there’s a spate of weird big cat sightings in a Cornish village, so we all pile into the van and drive down – we stop off at a pet shop on the way to buy some toys and treats to lure the big cat out of hiding.
Then, Sven asked if there could be a woman working in the pet shop.
‘Okay, sure,’ I said, scribbling it down. ‘The pet shop is owned by a woman called Sarah.’
‘And then Sven seduces her,’ Sven said, nodding.
‘No, of course not,’ I replied, appalled. ‘This is going out at 7 p.m. on a Sunday night. Get a grip, please.’
Well, I’ve never seen a man go from aroused to angry so quickly – Sven stood up and kicked over his chair, calling me all sorts of filth before storming out. Then Steve Mac and Venables said they were nipping out for a coffee and never came back; Glenn and Fabio fell asleep. It was a disaster. ITV passed on my rejigged proposal (just me riding around in a van solving mysteries alone, with a title card at the start explaining that the others had all been killed by an unexploded World War II bomb beneath Wembley) and King & Country was no more. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive them.
As we stood there behind the Compound infirmary, a figure turned the corner and hurried towards us. Gillian was wearing a thick waterproof coat and was carrying a rucksack over one shoulder – Millets, so she definitely wasn’t mucking about.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘This afternoon’s Council meeting ran late – there’s been a spate of zero-gravity hotspots appearing around the Compound, small pockets where the laws of physics have ceased to apply; not uncommon in this nebula apparently. Anyway, yesterday we lost an entire Pizza Express and every diner and staff member within it, just floating off into space. Terrible business.’
The zero-gravity problem had been a real irritation, so I was pleased to hear that something was finally being done about it. We had lost a pre-season friendly against the hobgoblins of Raskus Fortuna when Rodway’s last-minute penalty happened to pass into one of the hotspots and the ball had floated up into space barely a foot from the goal line. I’ll tell you what, I never once had that problem in the Premier League, so credit to them where it’s due.
‘Let’s get going,’ Gillian went on, speaking quickly, and, I felt, a little nervously. She sounded the way we all felt. ‘I told the Council I wasn’t feeling well by the end of the meeting, that I’d eaten something that didn’t agree with me – that ought to buy me a few days of peace, but if I’m gone for longer than that then people are going start to start asking after me. Right: according to biological assessments of the planet, Winged Terrors are believed to eat a full meal once every one to two days. They took away two Compound guards, so if we’re lucky, they won’t get round to Rodway until tomorrow night or even the morning after. But just remember your end of the bargain too, Kevin – if I assist you with this, you must help me find my Keycard before anyone else does. My career depends on it. Possibly my life.’
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘let’s not have any more of that kind of talk. We four are a team now, as much as any I’ve ever played for or managed. There’s a kid somewhere out there in the dark, scared out of his wits and maybe not long for this world. But I happen to know that there’s something those Winged Terrors didn’t count on: us. Let’s bring our boy home, alive and in one piece.’
ETCHINGS
It was pitch black in the tunnel. I couldn’t even see my own hand if it was outstretched in front of me – and when I tried it just ended up caught in a filthy mass of cobwebs that turned out to be Gerry’s hair.
‘Watch where you’re going!’ Gillian snapped as I clipped her heel for the fiftieth time.
‘I can’t, can I?’ I whispered back. ‘It’s darker than that book of poetry Martin Keown self-published!’
‘I can’t believe not one of you thought to bring a torch,’ she sighed.
‘That’s fine, we can just use one of those that you brought with you,’ I replied bitingly.
‘I was packing in a hurry,’ she said, sounding a little hurt. I felt bad for losing my rag slightly, so made a mental note to send Gillian a WHSmith voucher when we got back.
‘KEVIN KEEGAN!’ Barrington12 exclaimed from behind me. I rolled my eyes.
‘What is it this time?’ I asked impatiently. ‘Bearing in mind that I’ve already explained to you three times today how indirect free kicks work. The answer is: nobody really knows.’
‘I WAS GOING TO OFFER MY SERVICES,’ he went on. ‘I CANNOT HELP BUT NOTICE THAT THE THREE OF YOU ARE STUMBLING ABOUT AHEAD OF ME AS THOUGH YOUR VISUAL ACUITY HAS BEEN SIGNIFICANTLY IMPAIRED. PERHAPS IF I ACTIVATED MY NIGHT MODE IT WOULD IMPROVE MATTERS FOR ALL CONCERNED.’
There was a loud click and suddenly the tunnel path ahead of us was wreathed in light – I had to shield my eyes from the initial glare. I looked behind me at Barrington12, who had had to hunch over in order to fit into the tunnel in the first place – a large light bulb was now protruding from each of his clunky shoulder panels and I could now see clearly for a good ten yards ahead of us.
‘Ah, that’s better!’ Gerry said, and then bent to look at the sole of his shoe. ‘Oh, I knew it, Kev – stepped in dog muck.’
‘It won’t be dog muck,’ said Gillian ominously. I found myself feeling grateful that she didn’t elaborate. I was still stunned by the fact this network of tunnels existed beneath the Compound – and also by Gillian’s apparent knowledge of them.
‘Well, you found a book in the library that should give you a few clues,’ she had explained as she led us to the tunnel entrance. ‘I haven’t read it myself, despite what the library computer may say, but I know that the Modge book has a wealth of writing about these subterranean routes – though even he didn’t know who originally built them. They’ve been here for centuries and whoever constructed them has long since departed. It can’t be the native tribespeople; these designs are too advanced. But once we humans arrived and built this Compound here, it made sense to retain access to them in the event of a L’zuhl strike.’
‘Or a promising young striker being kidnapped by bad alien bats,’ I added.
‘That too.’
The tunnel entrance, one of several hidden away around the Compound – which had been strategically built on this location in order to take advantage of them – was located beneath a tangle of weeds and shrubbery on the wasteland at the far end of the infirmary premises. It had become a bit of a dumping ground; there was litter and a few white goods left in pieces all around, which only added to the surprise when Gillian pushed her way through the grass and heaved open the heavy grille entrance with relative ease – once again I was quietly impressed by her physical prowess. Inspired, I made a mental note to make sure I went out for a jog at least once a month once life returned to normal – if indeed it ever did.
That had been almost an hour ago as I looked at my watch, bathed in the glow of Barrington12’s shoulder lights. There was still no sign of the tunnel reaching its end. Inside there
was no human litter, understandably, but the walls were smeared with unpleasant-smelling goo of which I really didn’t care to know the origin. The soil beneath us was split by a tiny trickling stream, the dirty-looking water the only sound we could hear other than our own footsteps.
‘Look at these,’ Gerry said, scrunching his nose at a crudely drawn painting scratched into the stone wall to our left.
‘My goodness,’ Gillian said, hurrying over for a closer look. ‘These must have been made by whoever built these tunnels – the alien race who once lived on Palangonia! These are extraordinary! Barrington12, more light please!’
I peered at them, but they didn’t look all that impressive to me. I mean, I’m not having a go but I think I could have drawn better than that, and in the dark too. They seemed to depict several kneeling stick men around a large platform with runes and other symbols that I didn’t recognise. One did look a little bit like the Blackburn Rovers club crest but I decided that was more than likely just a coincidence. Atop the platform was another stick figure, this one with long flowing hair at its back; he was ascending to the heavens as beams of light shone down.
‘Kids’ stuff,’ I sniffed. ‘They wouldn’t even bother showing that on Blue Peter if someone sent it in.’
‘Oh no, Kevin, far from it,’ Gillian said, scrutinising the art closely. ‘This is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever been privileged to see!’
‘PRELIMINARY SCANS OF THESE ENGRAVINGS SHOW THAT THEIR SOURCE IS NOT FOUND ANYWHERE IN BARRINGTON12’S DATA BANKS. THESE ARE HITHERTO UNKNOWN TO WIDER GALACTIC CIVILISATION.’
‘So was Shaka Hislop until I signed him from Reading,’ I muttered. ‘Look, I’m sorry to have to break up this little Sister Wendy thing you’ve got going on here, but there’s a young man’s life at stake somewhere above ground, you know.’