by Scott Innes
Gillian straightened up and looked at me; she nodded.
‘You’re right, Kevin, I’m sorry. We have a job to do and no time to waste. I hope we’ll be able to come back this way, with Rodway in tow, and examine these amazing discoveries further.’
What a treat, I thought miserably.
We walked on in near silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. At one point I could have sworn I saw something scuttling along the ceiling right above us, but if I did, it moved too quickly. Most likely just my imagination – they say your eyes can play tricks on you sometimes. Certainly that’s the excuse I always used after paying £6 million for a crocked Robbie Fowler. Then, just when I began to wonder whether the tunnel might not have any kind of exit at all and that we’d be forced to trek all the way back the way we’d come with our collective tails between our legs, Gillian spotted something.
‘There, look,’ she pointed to the wall on our right just ahead. It was a grille, identical to the one we’d squeezed through to enter the tunnel (some of us with more dignity than others – seeing the arse of Gerry’s trousers begin to split right in front of my face as we shuffled our way in head-first had not been on my to-do list for the day). The tunnel continued on into the black up ahead, suggesting that there must have been at least one other exit along the way.
‘I think this is about right,’ Gillian said, scratching the back of her head. ‘I don’t remember every detail of the tunnel maps but given how long we’ve been walking and the direction we’ve been travelling, this should be the place. Barrington12, could you do the honours, please?’
Without any hesitation, he stretched out an arm and plucked the grille free as though it was a ripened apple on a tree. One by one – Gerry first as, with respect, he was probably the most expendable and he’d be the first to admit that – Barrington12 gave us a leg-up through the grille, where we wriggled our way out.
Finally, there was a waft of fresh air as Gerry forced open the hatch at ground level and spilled out into the coolness of the night. I was close behind (his trousers had now split to all bloody hell ahead of me) and once outside, I reached a hand back in to tug Gillian out to freedom. With a scraping, clattering effort, Barrington12 soon joined us.
‘Wow,’ I said, looking around us in wonder. ‘I’ve been on this planet for a year and I’ve never seen anything beyond the four walls of the Compound. And now… this.’
By a combination of Barrington12’s lights and the pale glow of Palangonia’s three large moons, we looked around to find ourselves in a wide forest clearing. Tightly packed trees circled us on all sides, their boughs reaching high into the sky, taller than any I had ever seen back on Earth. The grass underfoot was spongy and damp; it had evidently rained not long before. I pointed at a flattened trail ahead of us, which suggested someone had walked through the meadow relatively recently.
‘The tribespeople,’ Gillian said darkly. ‘We must all be on our guard. They don’t trust us and with good reason. They’re unlikely to hesitate if they see us out here.’
I glanced back over my shoulder and gasped. The others followed my gaze and looked on in silent awe. Through a gap in the trees, way off towards the horizon, we could faintly make out the thick grey outline of the Compound, small lights twinkling on the machine-gun turrets positioned across the breadth of the wall. It had a strange kind of beauty when viewed from afar, out in the wilds of an alien planet like this.
‘It’s not much,’ I said, ‘but it’s our home. Come on – let’s find Rodway sharpish and get ourselves back to it.’
‘This way,’ said Gillian, pointing. ‘There was an intel report from General Leigh’s team at a Council meeting a few months ago which said that most of the Winged Terrors seemed to originate from nests on the lower slopes of Great Strombago. If we’re going to find him anywhere, it’ll be there. Though Christ knows how the hell we’re going to get up to retrieve him.’
I swallowed hard – I hadn’t realised that was going to be our destination. It would’ve been just our luck for the long-dormant volcano, one of the great Palangonian landmarks that had spewed its last over ten thousand years prior, to choose today to wake up.
‘We’ll deal with that problem when we have to,’ I said, pressing on across the clearing.
Little did we realise we’d have several others to deal with first.
INTO THE WILD
We hiked through dense forest for a couple of hours before Gillian suggested we make camp for the night. Aside from being pestered by mosquitoes the size of 50p coins, we were entirely alone. I was only too happy to stop – my legs were aching something rotten and Gerry looked half-dead. It was probably the most exercise he’d had since he bought that treadmill which got stuck on the fastest setting. He ran full pelt for a day and a half before a power cut finally rescued him.
‘Let’s try to be as quiet as we can,’ Gillian suggested as she set down her pack beside a thick black tree. ‘We’ve been lucky so far, but there are many strange and foul things out here in the forests of Palangonia and we’d be well advised not to draw attention to ourselves.’
This was clearly a dig at me. I’d brought my guitar so that I could regale everyone with my own interpretations of the songs on Rumours (though my interpretations were absolutely identical to the album versions – why would you want to tamper with perfection?). In truth, what I felt most was embarrassment – Gillian seemed to have taken to this adventure with gusto and with little outward fear or anxiety for what may lie ahead. Me, I still felt like a tourist, ready to complain to one of the guides because bad weather had obscured the best view of some local landmark.
We began to unpack our sleeping bags and blankets. Gerry hadn’t brought any – no room amongst the junk food in his bag – and he was looking at my quilted one enviously. I was astonished to see Gillian produce one of those snazzy pop-up tents from her pack – why hadn’t I thought of that? Right on cue, heavy rain began to fall between the leaves of the trees above, spattering us with fat drops which soaked me to the skin within thirty seconds.
‘Crikey,’ Gillian said, clambering into her tent quickly, ‘not a moment too soon! Goodnight, all. Tomorrow, if our luck holds, we may reach the foot of Great Strombago by late afternoon. Sleep well.’
She waved and then zipped up the tent door. I glanced at Gerry, who was leaning back against a petrified tree trunk, pulling his knees up to his chest and looking thoroughly miserable. Barrington12 just stood there doing nothing.
‘You are waterproof, aren’t you?’ I asked. It had never come up before.
‘Nope,’ Gerry sniffed. ‘I’ll probably wake up dead from pneumonia in the morning.’
‘Not you,’ I rolled my eyes.
‘BARRINGTON12 IS BUILT TO WITHSTAND EXTERNAL LIQUID INTERFERENCE,’ he confirmed. ‘IF YOU WISH, I CAN STAND GUARD TONIGHT AND WATCH FOR ANY INTRUDERS BROACHING THE BORDERS OF OUR CAMPSITE.’
‘That’d be cracking,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’ And actually, I did feel reassured. He may have been a complete liability as a football coach (once suggesting that I play with only one striker in favour of a tighter midfield – the very idea!) but the kid could handle himself. I snuggled down in my sleeping bag beneath a large overhanging luminous blue leaf to keep the water off my head. I’ve never been a fan of camping, really. As far as I’m concerned, it’s like sleeping indoors, only nowhere near as good.
‘Kev?’ Gerry whispered from close by. ‘You awake?’
I frowned.
‘Well, yeah,’ I said. ‘I only climbed into my sleeping bag twenty seconds ago. What’s up?’
‘Do you think we’ll find Rodway?’
‘One way or another,’ I said grimly. There was silence for a few moments before Gerry spoke again.
‘What do you make of Gillian?’ he asked. ‘Do you still think she could be the spy?’
I glanced over at Gillian’s tent and considered this for a few moments.
‘No,’ I said finally. ‘I don’t. She wouldn’t be out
here if she was.’ But then, I’d been wrong before. I mean, I used to think ‘dreadlocks’ was a fear of keys.
‘I hope you’re right,’ Gerry said. ‘If anything happened to us out here, nobody would ever know.’
This was certainly a good point. If Gillian was the spy, and had come so close to being exposed, what better way to deal with those who had discovered her secret than to offer to take them beyond the Compound walls and out into the great Palangonian nowhere before quietly bumping them off? If Gillian tried anything during the night, would Barrington12 intervene? His loyalties would be divided between her and me and he’d probably just stand there doing naff all.
With these unwelcome thoughts swirling in my mind, I floated off into a dreamless sleep.
I awoke with a start. What was that sound? I poked my head up slowly from the warm depths of my sleeping bag and looked around. The light through the trees was dim but it was clearly close to dawn. The rain had stopped, and it felt pleasingly cool. There it was again! A heavy rustling sound, like something large moving through the undergrowth in the distance. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I glanced over at Gillian’s tent and sat up with a jolt. It was unzipped and the flap was open – there was no one inside. I stumbled to my feet and, wearing just my pants, socks and the T-shirt with my own face printed on it (I’d had a box of them made to hand out to my England lads as a souvenir when I resigned – there were no takers, so I kept them for myself. Waste not, want not). I padded quickly over to the tent and peered inside. It seemed a bit of an invasion of privacy, but then, if she was indeed the spy and had legged it during the night, she’d already invaded the privacy of everyone in the Compound. Inside, her sleeping bag was empty.
‘Gerry!’ I cried, pulling on my trousers and jacket and whirling round to the dead tree beside which he’d been sleeping. ‘Gillian’s gone – she slipped away in the night!’
My jaw dropped. Like Gillian, Gerry was gone. I looked up ahead to where Barrington12 had stationed himself, but there were just the indentations of his heavy feet on the muddy forest trail. I was completely and utterly alone.
Except I wasn’t. Something was making that dreadful sound. And it was coming closer.
‘Pssst!’
I glanced up, and to my alarm saw three figures perched quite high above me in the boughs of an enormous tree.
‘Quickly, Kevin!’ Gillian said, waving frantically to me to join the three of them in their lofty sanctuary. ‘It’ll be here any moment!’
‘What will?’ I asked, still slightly dazed with sleep and half-wondering whether this was all some strange dream elicited by sharing a full bottle of Irn-Bru with Gerry during the journey the evening before.
‘That!’ cried Gerry in horror, pointing through the trees behind me. And then I saw it.
Worse – it saw me.
Fear is something to which, in football, you cannot succumb. The roar of a hostile away crowd, the anxiety of a hopeless relegation scrap, the bowel churn before taking the decisive spot kick in a penalty shootout – these are things you must not be afraid of, otherwise you’re setting yourself up for failure. And as I stood there in the great Palangonian nowhere, I realised that ‘coming face to face with a monstrous space bear’ was most definitely another one for the list.
‘Kev!’ Gerry screamed again, and I knew from the unabashed terror in his voice that I was in big trouble. That, and the fact that a giant space bear was heading right for me. I leapt into the air but the branch around which Gerry had wrapped himself was far too high.
‘I can’t… get it…!’ I grunted, hopping on the spot in complete futility. Each time I landed, I felt the ground beneath my feet vibrate – but not from me. An ear-splitting growl filled the air, reverberating off the thick black trunks of the trees circling our clearing. A flock of small birds took flight immediately and were gone – I’d never felt more jealous in my entire life.
‘Wait!’ Gillian said.
‘I don’t have time for that!’ I snapped, allowing myself a glance over my shoulder – the bear was breaking through the trees at a rate of knots and in less than a minute would be upon me, tearing me limb from limb.
‘Hang on…’ Gillian said, and I looked on from ground level, baffled and annoyed at the lack of any assistance from my companions. She scuttled agilely along the same branch that Gerry was impotently clinging on to and then she turned back and gestured frantically to the motionless Barrington12, who was sitting in the boughs of the tree, watching the terrible scene unfold impassively. ‘Barrington12, I need you!’
Instantly, he stood up and, with the posture and balance of a high-wire walker, followed Gillian onto the branch. I heard it begin to groan ominously above me, before the sound was drowned out by another roar from the bear.
‘I’m going to die!’ I cried, almost laughing as a strange hysteria began to take hold. This really was the end. To my bemusement, I realised that my final thought was going to be one of disappointment – not at my demise (though that was going to be a pain in the arse, quite frankly) but at the fact that I’d never uncover the identity of the spy after all. I could only trust that Gerry would continue to fight for the truth after I was gone. I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. We all had to go sometime.
‘Kevin!’ Gillian shouted down. ‘I think this could work, but you need to buy us some time!’
I opened one eye and then the other, then immediately closed them again – the bear was standing at the edge of the clearing, reared up on its hind legs and pummelling its chest, roaring so loudly that I thought my ears might bleed.
‘How am I meant to do that?’ I shouted back as the bear started scraping the ground in front of it with both feet in succession, like a bull preparing to charge, its razor-sharp claws cutting great thick clumps out of the soil.
‘Try to give it the runaround!’ Gillian suggested urgently.
‘Oh, simple as that, is it?!’ I said in exasperation. ‘Right… okay…’ I took deep breaths and shook my head to clear the fear and doubt. I’d once read that to survive in a situation like this you needed to make a wild animal respect you, so I took a few steps forward on legs made of jelly and stared straight into the burning yellow eyes of this killing machine the size of a double-decker bus.
I stood there, rooted to the spot like Kieron Dyer defending the far post during a corner, as the horrifying beast bore down on me. Its thick fur was matted and dirty and badly afflicted with mange. Its paws were each twice the size of my head and its mouth was big enough to swallow me if not whole then certainly with a couple of big chews. The thing that differentiated it from a bear on Earth, aside from its luminous yellow eyes and its incredible size, was the enormous swishing tail that whipped around behind it as it ran, trailing like a loose shoelace. The forest floor beneath my feet seemed to tremble as I awaited my inevitably grisly fate. Somehow I’d always known I’d cop it by being ripped to shreds by some kind of giant space bear. Bloody typical.
‘Almost there,’ Gillian grunted from above me but I couldn’t look – my eyes could not tear themselves away from my impending doom. Then, just as the bear was upon me, it stopped and turned its back. All I could hear was my heart beating to break free of my chest as, with a low growl, it flicked its tail out and towards me. Instinctively, I jumped backwards and the thin, barbed tip of its tail swept through the air right in front of my midriff, ripping a gash right across my Newcastle Brown Ale jacket. I blinked, stunned. Had I had my usual waistband-expanding jumbo breakfast at Mr O’s that morning, I would surely have been scrabbling about collecting my innards at that very moment.
‘It’s toying with you!’ Gillian said from somewhere close by. ‘You’re just sport!’
‘Reassuring,’ I muttered.
‘It’s a chance,’ she said – and she was right. The bear looked at me with cold disdain but also, just maybe, a grudging respect. Clearly, it had expected to finish me with one move but they didn’t call me Cool Hand Kev for nothing. (To be fair
, they’ve never called me that.)
The bear flipped its tail out towards me but again I dodged it, this time with more room to manoeuvre. My confidence began to grow and I felt on top of the world, like Lee Dixon must have done that time he won Crufts (before the subsequent investigation and career-ending scandal that revealed he had been wearing a dog costume all along).
‘Almost,’ Gillian said in a strained voice, but I only had eyes for the monster. It turned back to face me, realising that its tail trick was not going to get the job done. Even from thirty yards away I could smell its foul breath. Fat globules of drool flew from its maw as it studied me, a more challenging foe than it had expected to face. My eyes darted about for something, anything I could use to keep the thing at arm’s length for just a little longer. It was circling me, evaluating me, but it wouldn’t wait long to make its move. Then my foot crunched on something. I allowed myself the briefest glance to the ground and saw I was standing in a small cluster of large cones, at least double the size of your average pine cone back on Earth. Before I even had time to think about it, my feet seized the initiative.
‘Come on then,’ I cried, fire in my eyes. ‘Have a bit of this!’
The bear snarled and made its move – and so did I. With the deft moves of a man who had scored over two hundred career goals, I flicked one of the heavy cones into the air with my left foot and with my right I leathered it on the volley, grinning with satisfaction as it thwacked painfully against the creature’s snout. It yelped in pain and surprise, curtailing its run and retreating back a few steps.
‘You want some more?’ I asked, giddy as the adrenaline coursed through my veins. ‘Here we go!’
Unfortunately my second volley went way off target – I was only wearing socks; I must stress that it absolutely wasn’t an issue of technique – and instantly the bear sensed weakness. Before I could line up a third cone, it was running at me, jaws wide, tired of playing games.