The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (33 page)

"Bogey neutralized,
Sir!" the confirmation report finally reaches our ravaged ears.

"Received,"
Captain Rima replies, curtly. He turns to Crispin. "Some of
those pouches will be mature. You will have to exercise great caution
on the next stage of your journey."

"Understood,
Captain." Crispin turns back to the communications console. "And
the transmission you intercepted?"

"I think it best if
we lie low on the edge of the Deep Ocean Trench until it can be fully
de-coded," says the Captain. "Which means you can
reconnoitre with us if so required, after the Eight a.m. Lounge."

"Do not delay your
mission on our account, Captain," Crispin tells him.

"It is a privilege,
Mr. Dry." Captain Rima's smart nod of acknowledgement is almost
a bow. He glances at the diagnostics of the u-boat. "It seems
that our hull breaches are almost fully repaired. Allow me to escort
you to the air-lock."

As we turn to leave the
bridge, beckoning to Homer to detach himself from the crewman's pole
and join us, the officer who had been sent after Mr. Dry Senior's
diary returns.

"No luck, Sir,"
the officer apologises. "Mr. Slaughter, the guest in question,
believes the diary may have been left behind in the Six a.m. Lounge –
at Madam Dingdong's
Bring Your Own Towel Sauna And Spa
."

Oh, no…

* * * * *

We meet up again with
Carvery Slaughter and Ace Bumgang as we reach the airlock, where a
range of diving-suits and equipment is stored, ready for use.

"You have patched up
the hull of
The Great Nematode
well, as I understand,"
says the Captain. "Your hard work is appreciated, men."

"Nobody wants
uninvited eggs laid in his premises," Carvery remarks, giving me
a nasty wink. "Just because some big old hermaphrodite worm
thinks it looks like a good incubator."

"If women ever
figure out how to do that, we are fucked," Ace agrees. "Talk
about woman's inhumanity to man."

Damn
–
there
goes most of the other half of my future fantasy plans, regarding Ace
and the accessibility of his DNA…

"You will be able to
make it to the subterranean level of the Eight a.m. Lounge from here
on foot," the Captain continues, gesturing at the display of
underwater gear. "And here I must leave you all, and return to
my duties. There is the small matter of arrangements to recover Mr.
Dry Senior's diary, from the Six a.m. Lounge. Officer Lyra will
assist you."

On
FOOT??!

Captain Rima Glottidis
does not elucidate further, merely clicks his heels with a nod, and
departs.

I feel as though I'm in a
daze, trying to take in the concept, even though the deep-sea
space-suits with their fishbowl-shaped helmets are self-explanatory.

"We've got to cross
the sea-bed?" I ask, weakly. "In – just those
things…?"

"
The Great
Nematode
is too large to dock closer," Crispin explains, as
Officer Lyra unhooks a diving-suit and holds it out, ready for him to
step into. "And there are many residents in the Eight a.m.
Lounge who would not approve of it surfacing in their vicinity.
Different ocean-bound regulations apply here. We cannot afford too
many perceived declarations of war in just the one morning, you
understand."

I note Ace and Carvery
grinning at each other knowingly, as they shrug on the huge
protective suits over their Naval uniforms. Carvery still has Mrs.
Frittata's shotgun, which is sealed up in a special additional
watertight holster, and strapped to his leg. Homer is hiking up his
Geisha kimono quite cheerfully, and tucking it into his undergarments
to fit inside.

Officer Lyra holds out a
slightly smaller diving-suit for me obligingly, and with great
trepidation and dread, I step inside.

It's not so much wearing
the suit, as being encased in it. It is stifling and claustrophobic,
like being zipped up and buckled inside a watertight sleeping-bag.
Only after the helmet is clipped into place and the hiss of the heavy
oxygen-canister starts, initiating a draft of cool air which
circulates around me in the suit, do I feel any relief from the
sweltering incarceration of it.

"This way,"
Crispin's voice prompts, and I realise there is a two-way radio built
in also. "We will undergo pressure compensation in the airlock."

Officer Lyra presses a
sequence of buttons on the wall, and spins a wheel to open a
vault-like door, and we file into the bare metal cell. Lyra salutes
our departure, and closes the door again behind us.

"What now?" I
ask, as we shuffle around.

Crispin indicates for us
all to grab hold of a strap from the ceiling, like being in a subway
car.

"They flood the
airlock," he says.

A light starts to flash
overhead, and valves open all around the walls, at ankle-height.
Suddenly water gushes through, swirling and rising rapidly.

"Your suits will
compensate for the pressure automatically," he continues, and
I'm aware of my own suit apparently inflating, while the water-level
in the airlock advances above my knees.

Even though I'm dry
inside, it doesn't feel normal for a human being.

"Now I know how the
little plastic dude in the fish-tank always feels," Ace
comments, the water now up to his chest, and already over my
shoulders.

"You've certainly
achieved his exact look," I reply, before the foaming water
bubbles up past my face, momentarily obscuring everything.

Once it is above my head,
I can see. I'm surprised how much everything looks the same
underwater – just – slower.

When the tank is full,
the light stops flashing, and turns green.

"We can still
communicate," Crispin reminds us, after a short silence.

It is followed by the
very definite sound of radio-transmitted flatulence. Nobody owns up
to it, although we all exchange suspicious glances, to see who might
be suffering the side-effect of extra gas in their air-supply.

Fortunately, the outer
doors slide open.

"Before we leave,"
Crispin adds. "You may now arm yourselves."

He opens a previously
unnoticed cabinet just inside the outer doors, which is revealed to
be full of harpoon guns.

"Cool," Ace
remarks.

"Is that all?"
groans Carvery, but takes one anyway. "What are we doing now –
Colossal Squid
acupuncture?"

"There will still be
Great Abyss Tapeworm
eggs adrift in the water," Crispin
reminds us, as we step out onto the gangplank. "Some may be
mature, and looking for a host. Plus the usual sharks, giant octopus,
maybe even
Colossal Squid
indeed, Mr. Slaughter…"

…
Not
to mention Carvery Slaughter now armed with a harpoon, I think to
myself, and try to make sure I don't have my back to him, at least…

I take a first look at
our surroundings. The u-boat,
The Great Nematode
, towers over
us like an entire mobile underwater precinct. Beyond it is a
bottomless blackness, which must be the Deep Ocean Trench. And we are
standing on what is essentially a shelf on the edge of that trench, a
rocky, sandy, weed-and-crustacean coated outpost of sea-floor.

We must be just close
enough to the surface to benefit from a little natural blue-tinged
light from above, although our visibility in all directions is
probably less than sixty or seventy feet.

"There!"
Crispin points, and we all turn. A large white shape floats
innocently on the current – resembling a huge, plastic,
supermarket carrier-bag – until something indefinable wriggles
within. "It may look benign now, but if that larva is ready to
hatch, it will start to eat its way through the hull of any vessel
passing through."

The egg drifts out of
range, into the darkness of the trench, where it abruptly vanishes.

"Of course, some
will be eaten by larger predators first," he concedes.

I feel as though I've
just had to swallow a stone. I hope none of those 'larger predators'
like to pop out of the Deep Ocean Trench for a stroll…

We proceed slowly away in
the opposite direction across the sea-bed, only the resistance of the
water pressure around us our main hindrance. Shoals of small fish
dart by, and the occasional lobster flaps between the rocks –
but nothing menacing seems to occupy these particular waters –
so far.

"Something just ran
over my foot," Ace says, behind me. "There's another…"

The sand beside me
erupts, and a six-foot-long, many-segmented exoskeletal insect
scurries in front of me. I scream, without thinking.

"Great, now I'm
deaf, from electronic audiofeedback," Carvery says. "One
more scream out of you, Sarah, and the only way you'll be getting out
of here is as a dolphin-friendly, harpooned tinned twat."

"We are close to our
destination," Crispin announces, as another multi-limbed critter
hurries past, and disappears under the sand once more. "These
are the juveniles of the
Burrowing Sea-Centipede
. The tunnels
of the adult Centipede should be in the cliffs ahead."

Sure enough, a craggy
pale limestone wall gradually appears through the waters in front of
us, peppered with caves, and sprinkled with self-anchoring
sea-creatures, many of which could be mistaken for plants.

"How big are these
adult Sea-Centipedes?" Ace wants to know, saving me the trouble
of asking for myself.

"We must aim for the
largest tunnel," Crispin announces. "It leads to the
subterranean docking platform. But do not worry. The Centipede that
burrowed this original tunnel is long dead."

"Not that it makes
any difference around here," Carvery chuckles. "I'd quite
like to see a Zombie Centipede…"

I can't say I agree with
him – as we approach the underwater cliff-face, and an almost
perfectly circular cavern, fifty feet in diameter, looms above us…

CHAPTER
FORTY-THREE
:

SPLAT

"
W
e
will have to climb a little way," Crispin points out, over the
two-way radio. "But it is not treacherous."

Hmmm – not exactly
what I was thinking… The opening of the giant tunnel in the
underwater cliff-face is still a good thirty or so feet above the
floor of the ocean shelf we are currently occupying, in our deep-sea
diving-suits. And as we draw closer, I see more of those juvenile
Burrowing Sea Centipedes popping disturbingly in and out of the
vertical surface of the limestone.

It's rather like watching
a demon-possessed Hornby train-set.

"After you," I
say warily, to Ace Bumgang.

I don't like the idea of
either him or Carvery Slaughter bringing up my rear at the moment.
Not while they're armed with harpoon guns, particularly.

So I hang back, until
even the zombie transvestite Homer N. Dry is in front of me, his
Geisha wig now slightly lopsided inside his diving helmet. I watch
carefully where he places his hands and feet in the limestone wall,
observing the safest potential route upwards.

The water provides a
little buoyancy, even though the diving boots are weighted, for ease
and stability of traversing the sea-bed.

"Watch out for the
Cannibal Corals," Crispin's voice warns. "They are more
territorial than you might think."

I snatch my left hand
away from a pit in the surface, as a young Centipede head emerges
from it, scattering limestone sand into the ocean current. It pauses,
before heading out across the surface of the wall, on its many
articulated legs.

It passes over the living
branches and folds of a Coral outcrop, which instantly reacts,
extruding some whitish tripe-like fleshy mantle from within,
attacking and enveloping the intruder. Within seconds, the struggling
seven-foot-long Sea Centipede has been stripped of all living tissue,
leaving behind a fragile shell of exoskeleton.

Within a few more brief
seconds, the segments of remaining shell are washed apart by the
current, adrift on the tide.