Pax Britannia: Human Nature (34 page)

However, the curve of the drive, provided the thing, of which Josiah Umbridge had become a part, with a shortcut by which to intercept the escaping police car and its passengers.

Teeth gritted, knuckles white around the steering wheel - his left arm aching right down to the bone - Ulysses watched as the chimera hove into view, galloping over the last rise of turf to reach the road.

The only way out was the private estate road that cut across Ghestdale, but to make it they were first going to have to pass through the stone-pillared gates and, right now, that meant confronting the chimera head-on.

Ulysses pushed his right foot down as hard as he could, as if trying to ram the pedal beneath through the floor.

"Look out!" Allardyce yelled, and pulled hard on the steering wheel, as the creature skidded onto the road, its hideousness revealed again by the wildly swinging headlights.

"Get off!" Ulysses shouted, fighting to get the car under control as it bounced off the gravel drive, its tyres gouging ruts in the perfectly-manicured lawn.

The car swung back onto the road with a squeal of tyres.

There was a resounding crash and the car lurched sideways. Jennifer screamed and the freak that she had named Jacob moaned in terror as well.

"Bloody hell!" was all the inspector could think to say.

Allardyce looked out of the driver's window. He saw the dark mass of the chimera moving alongside the car, maintaining a galloping to keep pace with the speeding vehicle. And then he cried out in unintelligible dread as the chimera's old man's face appeared, craning forwards over the top of the car on its elongated neck.

There was another crash and the police car's passengers were shaken out of their seats, Jennifer falling into Jacob's lap.

"What's he trying to do?" Jenny wailed.

"My guess would be that Umbridge is attempting to ram us off the road." Ulysses glanced back over his shoulder at Jenny. "To get to you. You were to be his bride, after all."

Jennifer face in reaction to this statement said it all.

"But don't worry, that's not going to happen. I'm going to get you out of here. We're all getting out of here!"

And then the stone pillars of the estate entrance stood ahead of them. Desperately willing the car towards them as it powered up the drive, Ulysses aimed right for the middle of the open gateway.

With another resounding crash, the chimera collided with the car again, denting the driver's door and crazing the window, such was the force of its attack. The wheels on the nearside left the ground and the car scraped against a gate post as it hurtled through, this second collision righting the vehicle again.

Ulysses was sure he heard a squeal of pain and thought he saw the Umbridge-chimera run headlong into the opposite pillar, out of the corner of his eye.

With the road across the moors clear ahead of them, Ulysses risked looking in the car's rear-view mirror. He could see the house, flames dancing high into the sky, the brilliant orange blaze lighting up the estate like a beacon. Visible against the burning house was the malformed shadow of the vivisect-beast. Ulysses thought he saw the creature shaking its head - as if the old man was trying to recover his senses - and then the monster was on the move again, dogged in its pursuit of them. But they had the advantage; on a straight run, Ulysses sincerely doubted that the beast would be able to keep up with the car.

"So, what now?" Allardyce asked, turning back to Ulysses.

"Now?" Ulysses said, as if this was genuinely the first time he had considered where they should go from here. "Now, we head in to town for reinforcements and then head back up here to run down the beast and put an end to it!"

"Reinforcements?" Allardyce screeched. "Where do you think we are? This isn't London, you know. There are no automata-Peeler grunts here."

"Call ahead!" Ulysses demanded, thinking on his feet. "Tell your friends at the Whitby constabulary that you need them up here now, with everything they've got!"

"I don't bloody believe this," Allardyce muttered under his breath as he took out his police-issue personal communicator.

"What don't you bloody believe?" Ulysses challenged, his dander up.

"Any of this. Is your life always like this?" Allardyce demanded. "Is it always this mad?"

"Not all of the time," Ulysses muttered, taking his right hand off the wheel to massage the place where the ape's arm had been attached to his body. "What were you and your men doing at Umbridge House anyway?"

"We had an anonymous tip-off that something was up."

"I took the liberty of calling for back-up, sir, when I became fully aware of the seriousness of our situation," Nimrod explained.

"So it was you?" the policeman railed.

"Yes, inspector."

"I don't believe it!
You
called me for back-up?"

"I know. I couldn't believe it either, as I was making the call, sir."

The car's occupants fell silent.

Ulysses returned to massaging his arm. It still pained him, but then he had undergone major surgery only a few hours ago.

How had Seziermesser done it? he wondered. How long had he taken to perfect his technique and test the properties of his secret formula? And where had he got the animals from? He and Umbridge must have been planning this for months, if not longer; two madmen sharing the same twisted vision but with entirely different motives.

Ulysses had to admire the vivisectionist on one level, to have accomplished such a feat of creation. But for the most part it appalled him. If it hadn't been for the good doktor, then Ulysses would still have his arm. But then, if it hadn't been for the surgeon's skill with a needle and nerve-splicer he wouldn't have been in any fit state to fight back against the crazed beast that old man Umbridge had become.

And it must have been quite some cocktail of drugs that Seziermesser had plied him with, (a) to overcome his body's natural defences to stop it rejecting the chimp's arm, (b) for him not to be doubled up in agony, gibbering like a moron on the laboratory floor, and (c) for him to have come round so quickly, without feeling any extreme ill-effects. He wondered how long he had until their effects wore off.

Or was it something else that was keeping him going? Had the doktor in fact attached additional adrenal glands to his body while he was poking around inside him, reattaching his shoulder? Was that what was keeping his body stimulated to the point of euphoria?

His mind starting to wander, as he tried to make sense of all that had happened to him in the last twelve hours or so, Ulysses did not see the dip in the rutted moorland road. The car flew into it, its bumper impacting into the road surface on the other side, before bouncing out again. For a split second Ulysses lost control of the vehicle and, breaking, spun it on the loose dirt surface of the track, sending it off the road.

Shouts of panic and surprise filled the police car as it slid to a halt facing the wrong way amidst a knot of gorsy tussocks. The engine died.

"What the hell are you playing at, Quicksilver?" Allardyce shouted.

Slowly Ulysses released his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

"Look, get this ruddy thing started, you bloody idiot!"

"Are you alright, sir?" Nimrod asked from the backseat. "Would you like me to drive?"

In a daze Ulysses reached for the ignition key and turned it.

"Yeah, that's it. Get your man to drive. Or here's a better idea. Swap seats and I'll drive."

The engine rattled into life again.

"I'm alright," Ulysses said, coming out of his stupor.

"No, let me drive!" the agitated inspector demanded.

"I'm alright! I -
Hnnn!
" Ulysses winced and threw up a hand to his temple.

"Look, Quicksilver, you're obviously in no fit state... Bloody hell! You've got to be frigging joking!"

The look in the inspector's eyes demanded that Ulysses follow it, although his screaming sixth sense had already told him all he needed to know.

Leaping over the tussocks and trenches, the uneven ground not hindering its progress in any way, the chimera galloped towards them out of the night.

Slamming his foot to the floor, his heart racing, Ulysses willed the car to start moving as the monster bore down on them. The car's wheels spun, churning the damp moorland to mud, and then incredibly they found purchase again. The automobile shot forwards, throwing the passengers around inside the car as it bounced over the rough heath and back onto the rutted track.

But the beast had caught up with them again now. As Ulysses pulled hard on the wheel, spinning the car to the left and onto the moorland road, the chimera made contact. The police car lurched as its rear end briefly left the road. There was a second crash as the monster reared and brought almost its full weight down on the back of the car. The rear window shattered, showering Nimrod, Jenny and Jacob with glass fragments as the monster's crab-claw smashed its way inside.

Tyres gripping the road again, the police car shot forwards, leaving the lethal pincer snapping at thin air.

Giving voice to a booming bellow of frustration the chimera powered after them. The small part of the increasingly feral creature - the primitive part of Umbridge's brain that lusted after Jenny Haniver - was determined not to let her get away, not when she was practically within its clutches.

It hurled its elastic octopus limb at the car again. This time the pincer snapped shut around the rear nearside-wheel of the car. There was another part of the old Umbridge intelligence at work here, the part that demonstrated the old man's cunning that had helped to make him one of the richest men in the Empire.

Those inside the police car heard the loud bang of the tyre bursting as the crushing claw punctured it and proceeded to tear its rubbery remains from the wheel.

Ulysses felt the effects immediately as the car jolted and bounced on the road. He had to fight the steering wheel as it pulled to the left, and the vehicle veered dangerously close to the edge of the road.

Again the car slewed sideways, as the vivisect hit it side on.

"Hold on!" Ulysses shouted, although whether he was addressing himself or his passengers wasn't clear.

He pulled the car sharply to the right and then left again, as the road swerved sharply to avoid an outcropping of rock. He was dimly aware of the monster charging past and thought he heard the clatter of its armoured limbs as it scrabbled over the rocky summit of the obstacle.

And then it was down the other side and the road was leading the police car back into the path of the persistent beast.

Understanding the limits of his new body better now, or rather the lack of them, the vivisect threw its full weight at the left-hand side of the car.

Wrong-footed, Ulysses overcompensated as the road took them over the crest of a sloping stretch of moorland, the rugged landscape dropping away to Ulysses' right in a sudden incline. The car's right-hand wheels left the road, skidding through the mud and wet grass at its edge.

The inhuman creature's grotesquely human head appeared beside the wailing Allardyce as the beast put all its weight behind its enormous right shoulder. The window beside Allardyce cracked and the metal pillar between the door and the body of the car buckled inwards.

Ulysses' view of the world rolled sideways, as the car left the road. The world began to spin before his eyes and he threw up his hands to shield his face as the windscreen shattered.

Tiny shards of glass filled the air around the five of them as they rolled with the car, the vehicle tumbling down the slope of the hill. The roof dented, window glass popped and shattered, the beams of the headlights spun wildly, illuminating inverted trees, then scrubby moorland, then nothing as the impenetrable darkness passed overhead and then back to moorland again.

With a dull
crump
, the car rolled to a stop against a sandstone boulder.

Ulysses opened his eyes and blinked. He was in darkness, lying on his side, with the befuddled moans of his companions close by.

"Is... Is everyone alright?" he said, desperately trying to shake the clouds of concussion from his mind.

He tried to look round but a sharp pain in his neck stopped him from trying any more. He slouched even further over to the right as the door beside him was wrenched open.

"This way, sir," he heard Nimrod say from beside him and felt himself being hauled from the battered vehicle. Finding his feet he stumbled after Nimrod as his manservant led him further into the shelter of the rocky outcroppings beside which the car had come to rest.

He was aware of Allardyce running ahead of them and, looking back, saw the freak Jacob assisting Jennifer as she stumbled after them.

His wits felt addled, as if he was having some kind of out of body experience. Was this the effects of the doktor's drug therapy wearing off or a result of the crash, he wondered as his mind began to stray again.

He almost blacked out as preternatural awareness threatened to overwhelm his traumatised mind. A second later he heard the screeching, primeval cry of the triumphant chimera as it bore down on them, having stopped briefly at the crash site to inspected the wreckage of the car for bodies.