The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (43 page)

Carvery clicks his tongue
disapprovingly.

"That's what happens
when you don't breathe through the contractions, dude," he
warns. "Take your time, and let the suspect chocolate-flavoured
medicine do the hard work for you…"

"I think he's really
sick!" I interrupt, but a new scraping sound joins in –
this time a metallic, hurried skittering noise over the tiles. "Oh,
no – what's that now?!"

"Where?"
Carvery asks, reaching for the chainsaw.

"Something's running
around on the floor…" I begin, and the noise increases in
volume.

And then I scream in turn
– as something hard and unyielding snaps around my ankle like a
clamp!

"It's got me! It's
got me!" I shriek, kicking out at first, not brave enough to
reach down with my free hand – not wanting to risk losing that
as well.

"Great!"
Carvery enthuses, cheerfully. "Which bit of you do you want cut
off?"

But it doesn't feel like
a Squidmorph tentacle. Not this time. Homer is still supine on the
metal bunk. Luke is shuddering on the end of his manacles, his
violent spasms now reduced to a trembling shiver, as if from
non-existent cold.

The
Thing
seems to
latch itself shut around my right leg.

"I can't see what it
is," I moan.

"Pull your
trouser-leg up, Dumb-Ass," Carvery says, leaning down to look –
chainsaw at the ready.

Shaking in fear, I tweak
the sweat-drenched fabric up a little. And something glitters…

"Cover it up,"
Carvery snaps. "Quick. Before they see it."

"Why?" I
squeal, dropping the hem from my fingertips at once. "What is
it?"

"Well, it's not an
electronic tag," he grins, tapping his own ankle in indication
and winking. "Looks like Luke was hiding the clockwork hand on
him all along."

"Like I said,"
Luke manages to whisper. "It doesn't belong – to anyone.
It chooses you."

What?
What does he
mean?

"It's chosen
you
,
Sarah," he adds, rolling his bloodshot eyes towards me.

"Maybe it knows you
were meant to be looking after it." Carvery squints up at the
glass ceiling. "I wonder if Crispin guessed that too, and threw
you in here for that reason?"

"I was planted in
here?" I conclude, shocked. "To get the clockwork hand
back?"

The metal bunk scrapes
further inwards on the tiled floor, with another mechanical groan.
Homer stirs flatulently and mutters again, in his convalescent
slumber.

There is a sudden whiff
of battery acid in the fetid air…

"I don't think
they're going to let us off that easily," Carvery grins.

CHAPTER
FIFTY-SIX
:

PARANODULE

"
C
ut
us free," Luke suggests.

For a moment, I actually
wonder if there's a Squidmorph concealing itself in my own lower
intestine. Everything below the waist threatens to explosively
migrate, as Carvery looks from the chainsaw in his hand to my arm
restrained at the back of the sink, speculatively.

"I think I might be
able to amputate your arm at the ear," he agrees.

"Er, let's not rush
things," I squeak, hurriedly.
Why isn't the clockwork hand
helping us?!
Stupid thing, running and hiding up my trouser-leg
like that… "What plan do we have?"

Carvery sighs, bored once
more, and goes back to sit on the edge of the lavatory

"If you cut us down,
we might be able to brace that moving wall between us," Luke
continues, nodding towards the metal bunk and the unconscious zombie
Homer N. Dry, against the – presently static – deadly
tiled wall, opposite him.

"I don't know if
that's a good idea," I worry, squinting up at the dank glass
ceiling, where the dwellers of the Eight a.m. Lounge are still
watching our predicament from the town square above. I'm sure I see
some cash exchanging hands, and as I seek out and find Ace Bumgang
looking down on us from overhead as well, I notice something else. "I
have a feeling any cutting that happens down here as an escape plan,
is going to be replayed out there too. They've got Ace at
sword-point!"

Carvery and Luke look up
to confirm. Yes – Ace's hands are now bound roughly with rope.
He's a prisoner as much as we are, and as his captors see us looking,
they make threatening motions with various knives and cutlasses
towards him.

"So?" Carvery
grunts. "Less dead weight for us."

The plumbing gurgles
again, and this time seems to come from the toilet.

"God – flush,
man!" Luke groans.

"Wasn't me."
Carvery raises his feet and swings his legs. "Maybe this wall
moves also…"

But instead of a grinding
of invisible cogs and the traversing of deadly chamber-ware
menacingly into the room, there is another gurgle, and a splosh. A
fountain of acrid water spurts out of the bowl between Carvery's
legs, and bubbles across the slimy floor.

"Eeeww!"
Carvery jumps up. "They have some crack cowboy plumbing in
here." He hisses as he tries to brush the water from his
trousers. "Ow…"

"What?" Luke
asks.

"I think they've
overdone the
Toilet Duck
." Carvery wipes his hand on the
wall. "It's burning through to my skin."

Alarmed, I look at the
pool of water trickling over the tiles, as it creeps towards me.

It's black. It smells of
battery acid. And it's
fizzing
…

"The plumbing in
here must lead to to the Well of Our Souls," I whisper. "Carvery
– that's not
Toilet Duck
. It's Squidmorph ink!"

"What do we do?"
Luke moans, rattling his chains hopelessly.

"Whatever you do,"
I begin, "don't let it…"

A massive tentacle whips
out of the bowl, showering the interior of the cell with burning
droplets – and whips straight around Carvery's ankle, turning
him upside down and shaking him.

"Don't let it what?"
he jokes, as his head is bounced repeatedly off the disgusting floor.
"Ow… ow… ow…"

"Don't let it…"

"…GET HOLD OF
THE CHAINSAW!" Luke shrieks for me.

The chainsaw, on cue,
flies out of Carvery's hand as he is pounded deliberately against the
wall, and spins wildly across the tiles. It hits the corner closest
to Luke, and with a squeal he snatches both feet up off the floor,
grateful at least for now that he is suspended higher up the wall on
his manacles.

"Oh, no you don't,"
Carvery snaps, as the tentacle drops him unceremoniously and flails
around instead to find the escaped weapon. He leaps back onto the
hooked appendage, trying to hinder its attempt to arm itself further.
"Bad calamari!"

"Luke!" I
shout. "The chainsaw – see if you can slide it over here…"

"You're crazy!"
Luke squeaks.

I reach out encouragingly
with my free hand.

"If I can get loose,
we can beat it," I say, beckoning. "Just nudge it over this
way. And, er, try not to switch it on. Or this escape attempt will be
over very quickly…"

Luke nods, and with one
eye on the ongoing battle between Carvery and the tentacle, stretches
out carefully with one foot.

"Yes!" I urge,
patting the floor in front of me. "Over here…"

Luke times his soccer
touch perfectly. The perfect speed, the perfect curve, the perfect
amount of spin…

…
And
the tentacle, with a whip-crack, detaches Carvery violently, sending
him flying backwards onto the bunk on top of the unconscious Homer,
and barrels towards me like an express train…

My hand closes around
empty air – as inexplicably, the chainsaw rears up above my
head. With a flick of its hooks, the giant tentacle switches on the
whirring blade, with a roar…

I close my eyes.

The second roar echoes
around the cell, and I'm suddenly swamped in a coating of tepid,
sticky, oozing, suffocating slime.

Oh, God – I'm like
the bad magician's glamorous assistant. Sawn in half… drowning
in my own entrails!

"Aaargh!"

But surely I shouldn't be
able to cry out? Or to still feel that stabbing in my ankle, from the
tenacious golden clockwork hand, hiding up my trouser-leg?

I open one eye,
tentatively. Just in time to see Carvery walking over to flush the
toilet.

The last remnants of
scaly, blubbery skin vanish down the pan. Carvery turns back to look
at me, and I see Mrs. Frittata's shotgun in his other hand.

"Gun must have dried
out properly," he remarks. "Just in time."

"You had the gun on
you all along?" I exclaim, shaking now more with rage than with
fear and revulsion. "Where were you hiding it?"

"Down my pants,"
he scoffs. "Right behind my knob."

"Well, that's
reassuring," I snap. "Knowing that you can conceal an
offensive weapon behind the one you already have."

Even while retaliating,
I'm aware of consciously trying not to picture the implied scale of
the aforementioned deadly Carvery Slaughter attachment…
Stupid
traitorous hormones!!

We all look up. Some more
cash is grudgingly exchanging owners above us in the street, but Ace
is still upright. Thank God…

Homer's bed grinds
another three inches inwards, across the floor.

"I don't
understand," I whimper. "We've got the diary – we've
got the clockwork hand. What are they waiting for? Why are they
torturing us?"

"I think they're
still waiting for the heathen magic," Carvery reminds us. "Sure
you don't have any voodoo on you, Luke? They've even provided you
with a half-dead zombie to start you off."

"They're crazy!"
Luke yelps. "You're all crazy…"

I start to get
pins-and-needles in my ankle, at the location of the clockwork hand.
And as the wall inches closer inwards again, evidently working now
over shorter consecutive periods – like the road-markings
approaching the end of a freeway – the tingling starts to heat
up. It feels as though a candle has been lit under my foot.

"I don't know about
you," I mutter, "but something hoodoo is happening down
here…"

The tiles on the floor
around me start to click rhythmically, and seem to slide against one
another like a picture-puzzle. The walls bulge, organically this
time.

"Dude," Carvery
remarks. "There's a weird light shining out of the toilet…"

Before he finishes
speaking, the room
revolves
ninety degrees.

The light gets brighter,
gradually outshining the daylight from above. The onlookers in the
citadel square overhead back away, covering their eyes.

"Fuck!" Carvery
suddenly exclaims, still looking into the toilet-bowl, like a
lightweight freshman on his first
Rag Week
night out. "It
blinked!"

Luke's shaking stops. As
he breathes out calmly and the light in his own eyes changes, it is
apparent that perhaps he does have a little knowledge of the occult…

"It's a scrying
bowl," he states quietly. "It's Atum. He's keeping his Eye
on us. And on the clockwork hand – and on the little book."

"From the toilet?"
I can't stop myself from scoffing. "If he's the most
all-powerful god of all creation, surely he'd find somewhere better
to watch us from?"

"Careful what you
wish for, Sarah Bellum," Luke warns.

And the entire floor
suddenly drops away, beneath us…

CHAPTER
FIFTY-SEVEN
: