The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (42 page)

Ace is standing
thoughtfully at the edge of the Tank, waiting for us.

"This is a trial?"
I ask. "It looks more like he's already been imprisoned…"

"And that is his
trial, Miss Bellum!" Sandy announces, as we gather alongside
Ace. His words struggle to find any foothold between my ears when I
notice the beads of sweat glinting on Ace's bare torso, and promptly
all thoughts of zombie infatuation are drop-kicked out of the
ballpark by both of my ovaries at once.

"A witch-hunter
trial," Ace remarks. "If he escapes, he's guilty. If he
dies, he was innocent. That sort of thing."

"You mean there's no
such thing as luck?" I demand. "Or a fair hearing?"

"Just a
demonstration of either his reliance on heathen magic, or his
defiance in death," Crispin agrees by my left ear, unexpectedly.
My thoughts of Ace Bumgang run and hide, in an equally guilt-ridden
fashion. "But there is more to it, Sarah
Bellummm
…"

I notice that Homer is
being lowered into a shaft beside the pit, and shortly a steel vault
door opens beside the sink in the underground cell. Homer's stretcher
is placed onto the rigid metal bunk, and the bearers leer at Luke,
before departing again.

I notice Luke's eyes
rolling in terror, and searching the audience above, seeking out our
gaze in an appeal for mercy.

"The Surgeons are
hoping that my cousin Homer will awaken with an appetite!" Sandy
nods in approval. "Another challenge for our prisoner's foreign
wizarding skills!"

The crowd certainly
approve as well, applauding as Homer stirs lethargically.

"Did Luke have the
clockwork hand on him?" I ask Ace, who shakes his head.

"He says it's
somewhere safe, but won't say where," Ace replies. "So I
think they're hoping this will scare it out of him."

"If he's put it up
there, that shouldn't take too long," Carvery agrees.
"Especially if they gave him
Ex-Lax
first."

"But they'd torture
him anyway, from what I gather," Ace continues. "Whether
he's got it on him or not."

I tear myself away from
the spectacle and go to the shaft beside the Tank, where the
stretcher-bearers have just emerged. A hand-cranked metal elevator is
the only means of accessing the underground cell, and the operator
grins toothlessly at me.

"Hoping for a closer
look, Sarah
Bellummm?
" Crispin's voice says beside me
again, and I jump. I turn to see him looking past me into the
elevator shaft, his manner still quite cold and distant. "I'm
sure it could be arranged…"

And suddenly I see
nothing but the inside of a hessian sack, smelling strongly of
chemicals…

* * * * *

The light is murky and
greenish as I open my eyes groggily, the chemical smell now mixed
with a dank mildewy scent, and a suffocating, stagnant silence –
compared to the racket of the citadel. But as I look up, I can still
see the dozens of bearded and excited faces looking down through the
thick, mould-spotted glass.

"Must be
soundproofed," I mumble aloud, and my words echo back to my ears
painfully, from the stained ceramic tiles.

Oh, God – I'm in
the Tank as well!

My right arm is chained
to the pipes under the sink. To my left, Homer is still unconscious
on the bunk. To the other side, Luke is upright, chained to the rings
affixed to the wall.

The opposite wall is in
shadow, as the sun is not yet high enough to illuminate it.

"What happened?"
I ask, woozily.

"My guess is,
someone wants to know if you're the kind of girl to harbour more than
one lover," Luke croaks, and to my great offence I realise he's
laughing at the idea, even through his pain. "That if Homer
wakes up hungry and decides on a little
Sarah Bellum
appetizer, any sign of my heathen magic being used to save your life
will condemn you as a scarlet woman."

"Ah," I say,
gloomily. "So if I die I'm innocent, if I live I'm guilty, yes?"

"Yup," Luke
grins. "And I don't have any magic, so it was nice knowing you."

Homer's stomach gurgles,
on cue, and he mutters something in his sleep.

It sounds like
Goooood
…

"Where's the
clockwork hand?" I demand, grasping for the one thing I know
that does have special powers, which I've come across recently.

"In a safe place,"
Luke replies, suddenly brittle.

"Because if it's
where Carvery thinks it is, now would be a good time to start
thinking about prune juice."

"What?"

"Well, at least we
might have a chance," I snap. "They are intending to leave
us here to die, you realise? Because if we don't die, we're guilty of
something – which means more torture and possibly death will
follow."

Homer's stomach rumbles
again, and I glance nervously at it.

"And it might be
more than just a zombie with a breakfast appetite in here with us,"
I continue. I try to define the horrible mixture of smells in our
subterranean prison, wondering if one of the contributing aromas
might resemble seawater mixed with battery acid. "There might be
a zombie-harboured Squidmorph as well…"

"A squat what?"
Luke demands.

"A kind of
sea-parasite," I explain. "It hides up your bottom like an
alien space-probe when you skinny-dip, and eventually grows to the
size of a battleship. So if you have anything useful hidden up
your
bottom to fight one of those with, make like a supermodel, and flush
out that colon!"

Luke looks from me to
Homer in horror, and then rattles his chains.

"Let me out!"
he screams. "I'm trapped in here with a zombie and a girl
obsessed with probing my ass!"

But before I can protest,
I notice that the sunlight is starting to reach the far wall, where
the lavatory is installed. And as the light quality in the shadows
changes, I spot another familiar shape.

"What are
YOU
doing in here?" I gasp, astonished.

Carvery looks up from the
little tiny leather-bound book in his hands.

Oh, shit – the
micro-diary that I was given, to look after!

But how did he…?

"Well," he
says, uncrossing and re-crossing his legs from where they rest up on
the chainsaw, at his feet. "Just in case Homer fails to hatch a
squidling, or to wake up at all, the Surgeons decided I was the next
best thing to a wildcard against you two."

I stare at him,
open-mouthed. He finally looks up from his – typically
stolen
– reading matter.

"I volunteered,"
he grins.

CHAPTER
FIFTY-FIVE
:

FERMAT'S WOMB

"
I
t's
a trick," Luke gasps, before I can open my mouth to protest.
"They still want the information on the clockwork hand. He's
here to deal with Homer – or any alien squid-monster that pops
out – if it looks like there's any chance I can tell them what
they want first."

Carvery just grins.

"One possibility,"
he agrees. "What do you think, Sarah?"

I pull ineffectually on
the chain securing my arm behind the dirty sink.

"I think you'd jump
at any chance to be the only armed man in a room with two restrained
prisoners and an unconscious zombie," I reply. "It'd give
you the opportunity to live up to your name,
Carvery Slaughter
."

"Could be, could
be," he nods, turning the page of the tiny diary. "Could be
all of the above. Where did you get this copy of Mr. Dry Senior's
diary?"

"That was given to
me to look after!" I hiss through gritted teeth, half-truthfully
this time. "And you shouldn't be reading it – as usual…"

"It's all in code
anyway," he shrugs. "Code and little drawings. Like he was
playing
Draw My Thing
online. On his own, in a little
notebook. Or
Hangman
. Anyway, you missed one. I might be down
here to defend Homer, in case you two manage to get loose."

"Still sounds like a
win-win for Carvery," I grouch.

"Well, unless you've
got anything on either of you that beats a chainsaw, it's not exactly
an evenly weighted contest, is it?" Carvery sighs, and sounds
almost bored. "They could have let me down here unarmed and I'd
still have the upper hand, no pun intended. I think they gave me the
chainsaw just because they like a bit of theatrics. Plus it deters
any onlookers considering a bit of treason after breakfast."

Luke starts to twitch.
It's slight at first, but gradually becomes more spastic and
uncontrolled. I wonder if he's being bitten.

"Are you okay?"
I gulp, wondering about the size of fleas or body-lice that might be
encountered down here.

"Maybe he got the
Ex-Lax
treatment after all," Carvery remarks. "You
might want to turn your head away, in that case. And maybe tuck your
feet in."

"Let me out!"
is all Luke screams. "It's not what you think!"

"Maybe he's got a
Squidmorph too," Carvery suggests. "Keep your legs crossed,
Sarah. It might look for somewhere new to hide after getting flushed
out prematurely…"

"Why are we chained
up anyway?" I ask suddenly, as something occurs to me. "In
a completely inaccessible underground room, beneath a glass floor in
the public square above, with everyone watching? Surely there'd be no
need to chain us up – unless it's
'torture by withholding
use of nearby toilet'
…"

Carvery looks down
between his own legs at the offending piece of bathroom furniture,
which he is currently employing as occasional seating in our
stinking, subterranean tiled cell.

"Maybe there's a way
out, is what I'm saying," I continue. "Maybe they've had
people escape before."

"Maybe it's fear of
whatever imaginary magic they think Luke himself is withholding,"
Carvery replies, nodding towards the spasmodic Mr. Lukan. "He
doesn't look too happy now. I can picture them placing bets on
something exploding out of him fairly shortly, laxative or no
laxative."

The worrying silence
seems a bit more hollow for a moment, and I'm sure a sense a distant
rumble. Like an earthquake.

"Did you feel that?"
I ask. "I'm sure the Earth just moved."

"Sarah, I'm nowhere
near you," Carvery grumbles. "Control yourself, for God's
sake."

Before a retort comes to
mind, there is another judder, closer this time. It has a mechanical
edge to it.

And then a horrible
fingernail-on-slate noise – and Homer's metal bunk scrapes two
inches inwards, into the room.

"That wall just
moved!" I exclaim.

The scraping sound is
still echoing away as Carvery gets to his feet, crosses the cell, and
crouches to inspect the floor under the steel bed.

"There are scratch
marks here," he reports, after a moment's dark silence. I can
see his eyes follow the direction of the scoring, across the width of
the room. "It looks like it's been moved before…"

"It's their Joker,"
Luke pants, rejoining the conversation from his current delirium. "Or
their ace – whatever you want to call it. If the zombie fails –
or the squid-monster – or the psychopath in the room –
the room itself is the final device…"

"Ah," Carvery
muses. "And there was I, thinking that being stuck in a room
with a hormone-riddled idiot necrophiliac was going to be the
definition of Hell. And what an incredible smell you've discovered
down here, Sarah? I can see that not improving, over the next hour or
so…"

The distant rumble
vibrates along the plumbing again.

"We have to do
something!" I cry, trying to suppress some very real hysteria
now creeping up on me. "And God – what's wrong with him??"

Luke is shaking again,
and suddenly lets out a stifled scream – this time with no
words.