The Quickening of Tom Turnpike (The Talltrees Trilogy) (21 page)

thirty
two

The
Basement corridors on this side of the building had no emergency lighting at
all, but I was just about able to make out shapes and distances in the dark from
the faint orange glow that seeped underneath the door back into the Spiral
Staircase.  However, this was no place to be loitering when there were enemies
that could see in the dark.

I
was sure I could still hear the clicking of Head Matron’s high-heels in the
faint distance.  Or could I?  Maybe the noise was just in my head.

Up
ahead of me, the door to the Spiral Staircase swung violently open.  I quickly
ducked into a recess in the wall and watched as three small figures emerged,
lumbering from the warm glow.  I recognised all of them as boys from the First
and Second Forms who had fallen ill over the past two weeks and were now in
varying stages of decomposition.  I waited to ensure that they were not
followed through the door by any more menacing zombies.

I
suddenly felt exhausted, injured, weak and tired.  I thought to myself that the
best thing I could do now would be just to head up to my dorm and go to sleep
and if I didn’t wake up in the morning, well, I would be none the wiser.  But I
knew that I had to go after them and there was no time for selfish thoughts. 
The sooner this night was over, the better.

I
padded after them as quietly as I could, past the door and down towards the end
of the corridor where it turned right towards the Pantry.  One of them, the
tallest of the three, whose right arm hung lifelessly from its side suddenly
staggered drunkenly and tripped onto the floor with a resounding crack like a
gunshot.  Neither of the other two seemed to notice.  But, when it floundered
back to its feet, its head was flopped sideways onto its shoulder and I
realised that the loud crack must have been its neck breaking. 

It
caught up with the other two just as I got to about three yards away from
them. 

“Hey!”
 I shouted.  “Hey, turn around!”

They
all swivelled around awkwardly and started to stumble over each other, groaning
and reaching out towards me pathetically.  I propped my cricket bat gently
against the wall, turned back towards them and gassed them with both nozzles. 
All three of them slumped to the floor, giggling and then quiet.

But
suddenly I felt light-headed.  Tingling waves were throbbing up and down my
limbs.  I bent down to reach for my bat, but I slipped and staggered and landed
on the floor, crouching, addled. 

I
realised with horror that I had lost my gas mask in the Changing Rooms – I had
been breathing in all that gas.  Alien sounds were now pulsing in my head,
overlapping and colliding with one another.  I squeezed my eyes shut to try to
focus on being able to regain my faculties.  But behind my eyelids, there was
another world.  And the outside became a faint memory.  I wandered around
inside my thoughts, exploring strange areas.  I could hear someone giggling
before I realised that it was me.

The
throbbing was beginning to subside.  I took a deep breath and, forcing myself
to sit and gripping the familiarity of my bat handle, I dared to open my eyes. 
It was difficult to see, like I was wearing sun-glasses in the dark.  And then
I heard the clicking again.  It was coming from my right.

I
looked up, straining against my eyes to focus.  My body was limp and my face
still sore from where the Fallen Boy had hit me.  I just couldn’t inject myself
with the energy to stand.  I breathed deeply again, as deeply as I could, and I
felt the effects of the gas wearing thin, gradually lifting the ethereal shroud
from in front of my eyes.  There was someone there.  Or something.  And it was
clicking towards me.  It was Miss Prenderghast.

I
managed to heave myself to my feet and began to stagger away from her.  But
then I heard more clicking, this time coming from the direction of the Changing
Rooms.  It must have been Head Matron.  If Miss Prenderghast could see me, then
Head Matron would know where I was too.

The
nitrous oxide had left a dull ache in my brain.  I hobbled as quickly as I
could in the only direction available, through the door to the Pantry.

I
dragged myself up the creaky wooden staircase past the Pantry, ascending into
an electric indigo glow which buzzed from the light of the Fly-Zapper in the
Kitchen.  I waited next to the door with my back to the wall.  There was
someone or something in there, carelessly crashing and clattering about,
causing chaos.  I needed to get past this door to the Dining Room and then
through to the Spiral Staircase.  Even if this was a new zombie, I did not
fancy another dose of antidote.  No, I had to get back downstairs and either
find Barrington, Boateng and Akwasi or find my gas-mask in the Junior Changing
Room.  The way I had just come was barred by Miss Prenderghast and Head Matron,
and if the zombie in the Kitchen saw me, Caratacus would know where I was and
those two would be after me.

I
peered around the doorframe briefly to catch a glimpse.  The Kitchen was an
echoing, metallic area of sanitised surfaces, super-heavyweight cupboards,
mops, mousetraps and tired knives of every imaginable shape.  At the far end,
by a rusting jumble of colanders and ladles, one of the cupboard-doors was wide
open, spewing precious meat and veg onto the floor.  Next to that was a burly,
crouching figure gorging itself on what looked like raw minced beef.  I quickly
stepped back when, for a sharp moment, the figure looked up furtively like a
hyena jealous of its catch.  I waited, hearing nothing.  It can’t have seen me.

But
just as I began to creep over to the Dining Room door, it started shambling in
my direction.  I ducked behind the cupboard where the spreads and sauces were
kept.  It shuffled closer and closer until I could hear it snuffling and
growling right next to me.  I didn’t dare to move.

It
pulled the cupboard open violently so that the door swung out in front of me
and I was wedged between the door and the wall.  It began dragging jars and
bottles from its shelves, smashing them on the floor.  My socks and sandals
were being pasted with beef dripping, mustard and marmalade.  I peered around
the door.  I wanted to know whether it was a new zombie or one of the
quickened.  But when the cynical light of the Fly-Zapper fell upon its face, it
gave me such a shock that I couldn’t help gasping out loud.

Hector
Vanderpump.

Realising
immediately that I had stupidly betrayed my hiding place, I slammed the
cupboard-door into him.  He sprawled backwards, glaring directly at me with
custardy meat hanging from his mouth and a large cleaver from his right hand.

I
ran, slipping and sliding, fumbling through the door to the cavernous Dining
Room.  I could just see the exit to the Spiral Staircase in the distance.  I crashed
into a trestle table, sending punnets of strawberries and cans of whipped cream
flying in all directions.

Vanderpump
was right behind me.  He took a wild swish at me with the meat-cleaver.  I
turned to face him and pulled both triggers of my nitrous oxide cylinders to
give him the full blast.  I preferred the prospect of some passing nausea to that
of having my arms hacked off.

But
nothing happened. 

I
pulled the triggers again.  Nothing.

Surely
I couldn’t have used it all up already?  He took another frenzied swing at me. 
The cleaver slipped out of his hand and flew across the room, crashing through
a window.  In my efforts to evade his attack, I trod back onto one of the
fallen cream cans and slipped and fell heavily on my funny bone.  An electric
shock of agony shot through my right arm as I tried to get back onto my feet.

Vanderpump
had me cornered now with my back to the trestle table and he was bearing down
on me with his teeth gnashing, still hungry.  My fingers were pulling
desperately at the triggers.  All I needed was a little bit more antidote. 
Surely I could eke some out.  Surely...

But
of course!  I suddenly remembered what Freddie had told me about whipped cream. 
Those whipped cream cans are full of Nitrous Oxide.

I
laid hands on two cans and, just as Vanderpump was right in front of me, I
knocked their lids off, forced them both into his slobbering mouth, and
sprayed.  And I kept spraying until both cans were discharged, cream had
started oozing out of Vanderpump’s nostrils and the floor around us was as
white as Christmas.

I
stepped back, slipped again and landed on my other funny bone.  But I was too
exhausted to react to the pain.  I watched as Vanderpump blinked and looked
round him, dazed and spluttering.  Then he noticed me, as if for the first
time, doubled over and started laughing so raucously that he lost his balance,
slipped in the whipped cream and fell asleep, snoring, before he had even hit
the floor.  I sighed with relief.  But my relief did not last.

“You
hold him down,” croaked that terrible voice. 

I
had not seen them enter.  But of course they knew I was here.  I had no time to
get up and Miss Prenderghast was already leaning down on my legs, pinning me to
the floor.

Then
Head Matron’s bewitching face came into view, pallid, placid and deadly.  I saw
the glint of green light from the end of her hypodermic syringe.  And then I
felt it prick my arm.

They
stepped back to watch me.  I hauled myself up defiantly and staggered to lean
against the trestle table.  Surely if I concentrate hard enough...

My
lips and fingers started to tingle.  And the tingling spread, creeping up my
arms and legs.  I couldn’t feel the table, even though I could see that I was
touching it.  When I looked at my hands, they didn’t feel like they were my
own.  My body was numb and then the room started to expand and brighten around
me.  There were faces and bodies in front of me, more than there had been
before, but I couldn’t recognise them.  They didn’t mean anything.  The
distinctions between where-things-were and where-things-were-not faded, and
then disappeared from view totally.  I could not focus because everything had
melted into everything else.  I looked around and it was all the same.  But I could
sense movement.  Plenty of it, and noise, complicated noise.  Jostling and
echoing.  But I couldn’t understand it.

And
then the world lurched downwards.  A blast of white light smashed through my
brain.  And then there was blackness.

thirty
three

“Turnpike.”

“Turnpike.”

“Hmm?”

“Looks
like he’s back from the dead, Sir.”

“Yes,
well don’t crowd him, Strange.”

I
wiggled my fingers and toes.  There was no pain.  None at all.  I blinked and
squinted.  Bright light was bursting through the windows and I was lying in an
unfeasibly comfortable bed.  I propped myself up and sat back against my
pillow.  It looked like the Sick Bay, but it felt far less sinister than it was
when I had been here last.  Colonel Barrington was standing by one of the
windows and Freddie was on a stool next to me.  Over to my left, Samson was
silently asleep in another bed.

I
opened my mouth to start asking questions, but no words would form.  My mouth
tasted like Pritt Stick.

“Here,”
said Freddie, handing me a glass of water.  It tasted cleaner and cooler than
any water I had ever drunk.

Barrington
turned from the window.  “Doctor Boateng found you shortly before midnight,” he
said, pre-empting at least one of the many question that were beginning to form
a jostling queue in my mind.  “You were wandering around in the Basement,
covered from head to toe in food.  He found Akwasi shortly afterwards in the
Crypt, shuddering and foaming at the mouth.  That was all two days ago now
though.  You’ve been asleep for quite some time.  So I’m afraid you missed the
excitement yesterday morning when Mr. Wilbraham called in the polizei to try to
explain who had ransacked the school during the night!”

“Is
he okay?” I croaked.  My voice sounded somehow alien.

“Akwasi? 
He’ll be fine.”  He nodded to the bed next to mine, where I saw that Samson was
still asleep.  “He managed to break an arm during the evening.  I don’t know
how and I should imagine he won’t either.  But it’ll be fine when he wakes up. 
As for all the other boys, between us we managed to cure all of them.  I burnt
the Fetishes after midnight.  And it seems that sleep really has healed all of
their wounds.  Even a boy who managed to break his neck!”

“And
what about Doctor Boateng?”

“I
imagine he’ll be somewhere over the Channel at this moment.”

“It’s
a shame he couldn’t have stayed here to take over Biology from Miss
Prenderghast,” I said.

Barrington
raised his eyebrows.  “Take over Biology?”

“Well
if Miss Prenderghast is gone, then who’ll take Biology?”

“Good
heavens, boy,” Barrington scoffed.  “Are you suggesting that we would have
killed
Miss Prenderghast?  Good Lord, no.  No, no, no.  She is very much as she was
before...”

The
door opened gently and, to my amazement, Head Matron walked in, bold as brass. 
She looked me over, forced a cold thermometer into my mouth, jabbing the tender
flesh under my tongue and then checked her watch.  She tottered over to
Samson’s bed and plumped his pillows.  Barrington studied my baffled curiosity
with a chuckle. 

After
Head Matron had checked her watch again, removed and read the thermometer,
wrung her wrist and left, I began to splutter a jumbled mixture of all of my
indignant questions.  “But, Sir, what on Earth...?  How can they be...?”

“Settle
down, Turnpike.  Now look here, we can’t very well go around killing those who
have been functioning as normal members of society, can we?  Not if we can
avoid it.  Don’t you think people would notice?  What would Professor
Ludendorff say if teachers suddenly disappeared?  And don’t forget that Miss
Prenderghast and Head Matron are nothing more than slaves.  In fact, they’re
less than slaves.  They’re robots.  They mindlessly perform the tasks that they
are ordered to perform.  In any case, they may yet be curable...”

“And
what about Mr. Caratacus, Sir?”

“Well
that really would be murder!  No.  Next term Mr. Caratacus will return to work
as normal.  Well, almost normal...”

“But
can’t we call the polizei and get him arrested?” I interrupted angrily.  I
realised that this was a stupid question as soon as I asked it, but I couldn’t
believe that Caratacus could be allowed to get away with what he had done.

“And
what would we say?  I hardly think that the regular police would believe that
he’s been trying to turn boys into zombies!  There’s no evidence now that he
has even tried to poison anyone.  And, for obvious reasons, we wouldn’t want
the Secret Police involved would we?  Anyway, Doctor Boateng and I have...
dealt with him.  We’ve...” he paused, “we’ve given him a taste of his own
medicine...”

I
choked on my water.  Freddie gasped and said, “You mean... you’ve
zombified
him?”

“Precisely,
Strange.”

“But...
but,” I spluttered, “that means... so who...?”

“The
new Bokor?  Don’t you worry about that.”  Barrington paused, looking down at
his feet.  “It’s someone we can trust.”

It
took me a moment.  “You mean Doctor Boateng?”

He
looked at me and then turned away guiltily.

“How
did you do it?” asked Freddie.

“It’s
all set out in the Witchdoctor’s text.  There’s a procedure for creating a new
Bokor when another one dies.  It’s called “the Summoning”.  Doctor Boateng and
I realised that it was the only possible solution.  So, as soon as all of you
boys were cured, about ten minutes before the end of the eclipse, we gave Mr.
Caratacus a dose of the zombie poison.  It was the only way of making the Summoning
work without actually killing him.  We had a short time before the poison took
hold to perform the procedure.  I won’t bore you with the details as it looks
like Turnpike here is already struggling to stay awake.  Suffice to say that
ten minutes later, Mr. Caratacus was quickened and we had our new Bokor.”  Again
he looked down at his feet.  “So, as I said, Mr. Caratacus will go back to
teaching Latin and none of us will have anything to worry about.  He will of
course have no memory of anything that has happened and will no longer be any
danger to any of the boys, or anyone else for that matter.”

Well,
it was a clever plan and I suppose I should have felt relieved that Mr.
Caratacus would no longer be a threat, but all I could think about was that
Latin lessons would be as boring as Biology from now on.  And my favourite
teacher was now a zombie-slave.   

“Sir,
one thing I don’t get,” I said, “is how you knew that there was going to be a
Quickening even though you didn’t know who the Bokor was.”

“Yes,
quite.  Well it all happened back in the Gold Coast, a long time ago, as you
know.  The account that you heard from young Pontevecchio was accurate, up to a
point.  My wife disappeared along with a number of others the night before a
full lunar eclipse.  There was general hysteria and rumours which under normal
circumstances one would dismiss as superstitious claptrap.  But they were all I
had to cling to for any hope of finding her. 

There
was one man, a Witchdoctor, who had seen a raid of that kind before and was
able to point me in the direction of a Bokor in Dahomey.  Ultimately I learnt
that the raid had been carried out at the order of the Grand Bokor and he had
given my Angela to one of the Lesser Bokors as a gift.”

Barrington
turned back to stare out of the window.  I could see that the recollection of
these events pained him.  But it was interesting that no expression of pain had
crossed his face when Head Matron had entered the room.  It’s difficult to know
the ways in which grown-ups think about these matters, but I supposed that he got
used to trying to separate the memory of his wife from the quickened zombie that
took her form. 

I
was beginning to feel tired.

“There
are a number of Lesser Bokors all over the world.  The Witchdoctor suggested
that I return to England to follow the Bokor of Grand Bois, the Loa of the
Forest.  He said that it was that Bokor who had taken her.”

“Caratacus!”
said Freddie.

“Not
quite,” said Barrington, turning towards us.  “
That
Bokor was a monk at
the Priory of Saint Katherine.”

“The
Wandering Monk!”

“Ha,
yes!  I have heard that nickname before!  It seems that he had been an
anthropologist in Western Africa before the War and there was a particular area
of his research which drew the attention of the Party.”

I
couldn’t help noticing Barrington’s expression of disgust when he explained
that the monk began to work hard for the Party and spent time before and during
the War in Germany and Poland applying his work on the handicapped and the
disobedient.  He continued, “It was shortly after my arrival at Talltrees that the
monk, Brother Benedict, passed away.  Well, it was something that we arranged
to happen.”

Even
though I was sluggish with fatigue, his use of the word “we” stuck in my mind,
but I was too tired to follow the strand of thought. 

“I
thought that the danger would die with him,” continued Barrington, “but
obviously he had agreed with Mr. Caratacus that he should be given the
zombie-poison.  I also realised that the fact that Head Matron and Miss
Prenderghast did not also pass away as a result of his death meant that Brother
Benedict must have summoned a new Bokor to succeed him.  Of course, I had no
idea at that time who the new Bokor was.  And I
certainly
had no idea
that he might be a teacher here at Talltrees!  But then, of course, many years
later, just recently, I noticed the coincidences – the disappearances of a
number of boys, a great deal of focussed activity by Head Matron and Miss
Prenderghast, and, most importantly, the approach of a full lunar eclipse. 
Turnpike,” he said, noticing the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyelids from
drooping, “perhaps you should get some more sleep.”

I
blinked and widened my eyes in an attempt to stay awake.  “Sir,” I said, “what
about all the old zombies, the Quickened?”

“Well
some of the ones you saw the other night will never return.  Their brains were
destroyed - in fact, I saw that you dealt pretty effectively with a rather
nasty one in the Junior Changing Room.  Doctor Boateng and I buried them out in
the Forest later that night. 
But
there are plenty of other Quickened in
the world, and that, I suppose, meant that Mr. Caratacus
was
rather a
powerful man.”

“Really,
Sir?” said Freddie, his mouth wide open.  “How many are there?”

Barrington
chuckled.  “I couldn’t possibly tell you how many.  But let’s put it this way,
Strange:  Next time you are walking down the high street, have a look around
you and just count how many people look like they are just going about their
lives like robots, stamping ration books, pushing prams, stacking shelves.  Who
knows?  There may be thousands,
tens
of thousands.  But we do not need
to worry about them.  They will continue their meaningless routines and none of
them will be any trouble to the rest of us.  Right then, Strange, I think we
should leave Turnpike to get some more sleep.  Come on!” 

In
spite of my desperate struggle to stay awake, I just couldn’t.  My eyes were
closed and there was nothing I could do to keep them open.  I heard Freddie and
Barrington making their way towards the door. 

“So,
Sir,” asked Freddie in a hushed tone, “well if Mr. Caratacus was working for
the Party, does that mean that you and Doctor Boateng are in the
Resistance
?”

I
was trying desperately to cling on to consciousness.  That was it:  When
Barrington had said “we”, it felt like he was talking about the British Resistance. 
But that couldn’t be right, I thought, we were always told that the Resistance
was crushed long ago, when my father was taken.

“Don’t
ask impertinent questions, Strange,” I heard Barrington say in his more
familiar, magisterial voice as he closed the door behind him.  “You’ve got five
minutes to be in prep and if your shoes are not polished next time you cross my
path, it’ll be Detention, okay?”

“Yes,
Sir.”

As
they left the room, I thought I could hear Barrington saying something else
about the underground battle against Nazi oppression and an eternal struggle
against the Bokors, waged down the centuries far from this small woodland
corner of the world.

But
I was falling asleep and it was all gobbledegook.