The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (55 page)

"I will drop you off
here," Lissima Domina announces, as we approach another small
jetty. "I have to take my wayward husband back to my ship."

"To the mothership?"
Ace queries.

"Back to Hell!"
screams Justin, and is knocked unconscious again by an alien
tentacle-wielded knife-butt.

"Just a regular old
ship, Mr. Bumgang," she says, smiling. "I can't be having
my naughty spouse running around on dry land. Not even to see his
Playbunny Boy
girlfriend. Leave the controls to me."

Rather reluctantly, Ace
and Carvery leave their posts. Luke is also sad that his ride is over
so soon, letting out a sigh, his skis sinking below the surface as we
decelerate.

Corporal Punishment helps
Homer to his feet, and Crispin offers me his arm.

"Shall we, Sarah
Bellummm
?" he says.

We step ashore.

General Lissima's boat
turns and roars away again, back downstream into the Shambles.

If anything, it is even
hotter here than in the jungle. There is less shade, and the ground
underfoot is closer to sand and dust than to mud. A few scrubby
shrubs cling to the terrain between the huts and shacks, but anything
green has been stripped from them, by the livestock and the
scavenging monkeys.

"Serves you right,"
says Carvery, as a chattering, boisterous monkey picks his pocket,
and promptly Tasers itself.

Not for the first time,
I'm glad I didn't attempt that route.

"This way."
Crispin gestures towards a dried-out track, marked out either side
with bird skulls on sticks. Their feathers are strung between, on
lengths of frayed old string.

It doesn't seem to be a
great indicator of this Cult being a peaceable one…

As we trek further,
occasionally a piece of coloured paper flutters in the dust, or is
caught against the scrub.

Luke picks one up.

"'
The winter of
our discontent
…'" he reads. "What is that –
some sort of war propaganda?"

I rescue another, caught
in a strip of bark.

"This one just says
'
Alas
…'" I add.

"They are prompts,
Sarah
Bellummm
," Crispin replies. "The discarded
notes of Cult sermons."

"Not one of those
self-appointed preacher cults?" says Ace. "That's it, I'm
not drinking anything they serve here. It'll be a suicide by cyanide
cult."

The ramshackle buildings
ahead are arranged around a square, the tallest, facing us, shrouded
in a heavy red-and-gilt curtain. As we approach, we see an elderly
gentleman, in a white turban, totter across the quad with a tea-tray
to knock on the door of one of the lower buildings, which has a
golden star on its door.

On the breeze, I swear I
can hear a piano, and the sounds of someone practising their scales…

"Your early morning
call, General Winslow, sir!" says the tea-vala gently, rapping
again on the door.

"Early morning
call?" repeats Carvery. "It's ten a.m!"

"Do not let them
hear you making light of the time, Mr. Slaughter," murmurs
Crispin. "They are a delicate sort in the Cult of Atum."

The distant voice
accompanying the piano clears its throat, and starts afresh.

"Ta-ra-ra
boom-dee-ay! My knickers flew away!"

We exchange looks.

"They went on
holiday! They came back yesterday! Ta-ra-ra boom-dee-ay…"

Ace twirls a finger
perpendicular to his ear.

The door with the golden
star on flies open, and out storms a whiskered, well-built,
middle-aged man in a string vest and khaki shorts, sporting a uniform
peaked cap, and brandishing a cane.

"I heard that, you
naughty boy!" he roars, with an impressive voice that you knew
was born to
enunciate
, not just speak like any old commoner.
"I also heard you singing your scales with
Doh-Ray-Me-So-Farty!
You are lucky I have not had my first cup of tea or I would be right
over there to give you a good hiding, yes I would! Tea-vala! In my
cabin now! And bring extra sugar!"

"Right here, General
Winslow, sir!" The tea-vala picks himself up from behind the
door, having kept the tray and its contents miraculously upright, and
follows him back inside.

"We are fortunate,"
Crispin remarks. "It looks like a regular rehearsal day. On
matinée
performance days, the General has been known to
execute both leads and their understudies before brunch."

"Ah, maybe that's
what this is for," Luke remarks, handing over another of the
slips of paper he has been collecting as we walked. "'
Casting
for female lead and understudy. Must have good legs, high-C, and
dance
.' What is a high-C?"

"It's what Homer's
got, since the operation," Ace points out.

"You could audition,
Homer," Carvery suggests. "Then we'd have a man on the
inside."

"They'll be none the
wiser to that," Luke agrees. "So long as they don't look
too closely at his high-C."

"
Goooood
."
Homer hops up and down excitedly, and turns begging eyes on his
brother.

Crispin's manly shoulders
sag.

"Yes, yes," he
sighs. "We can play along, Homer. It may buy us a little time in
which to find out if they have any real intelligence on the river-god
Atum's recent actions, or if the Cult is merely a front for the
General's Broadway ambitions."

"Did somebody say
Broadway?!"

We turn around. A skinny
young woman, with chestnut-red braids, clutching a cello case, looks
at us like one big hopeful question-mark. She wears big honest
spectacles and a very
Amish
-style
pinafore dress, a cross between
Anne of Green Gables
, and
Corporal Punishment's dream librarian pin-up.

"Are you talent
scouts?" she breathes. "Is this
The Jungle's Got Talent,
Get Strict With Me
audition tour?"

"Ah, now I see how
the General finds his recruits," Crispin remarks. "Where
are you from, Miss…?"

"My name is Summer…
well, it's the name I've chosen since I ran away from the nunnery on
the mountain, where I was called Sister Jaundice. And the best I got
there was second fiddle in the nuns' orchestra, for the children's
Sunday school choir. What I really want is to play on Broadway, join
a conservatory, study at Juilliard, perform under Andrew
Lloyd-Webber…"

I feel my hackles rising,
catching me unawares as the bespectacled drama shrimp makes big eyes
at Crispin's expensive black suit.

Am I… am I getting
jealous
…
?!

"I think you've come
on the wrong day, my friend," Luke interrupts, patting Homer
reassuringly on the back, and I realise I'm not the only one feeling
threatened. "Today we are auditioning for dancing girls."

"Oh." The big
blue eyes resemble Shubunkins lost in goldfish-bowls. "I can
tap-dance…"

"Strippers,"
Ace cuts in.

"And
Playbunny
Boys
," adds Carvery.

"Ohhhh…"
Now, Summer Jaundice looks decidedly less hopeful. "Don't
dancers need musicians?"

"We've already got a
pianist," I say.

"
Gonnne
,"
says Homer, looking down at himself through the grass skirt,
wistfully.

Luke pats him on the back
again.

"Man, that's
something you dead white boys just gotta learn. Use it, before you
lose it."

The invisible pianist in
question starts up on cue, with an off-key rendition of
'Anything
Goes'
… but by the reaction from the General's cabin, it is
quite clear that
Anything
definitely does not
Go
as far
as musical talent is concerned.

"That is one of my
favourite songs and you has just ruined it, my lovely boy!"

The General bursts out of
the gold-starred door again, this time armed with a revolver, his
other hand holding a half-finished mug of tea. He marches across the
square to the far side, kicks open the door to the dormitory opposite
with his 13-hole Army boot, and empties the gun into the unseen room
beyond.

The chorus of
'Anything
Goes'
ends with an open-ended B-Flat, by the sound of it struck
heavily with the forehead.

"Wow," Summer
Jaundice gasps. "The judges are really harsh!"

"We still have a
pianist." I catch hold of Crispin's arm possessively,
remembering his
Franz Ferdinand
in the restaurant last night,
and what nearly happened on that piano before the power-cut…

"Not dropped off
yet, Sarah
Bellummm
," Crispin confirms, coughing
modestly.

A second door in the
dormitory opens, and a completely different figure steps outside to
light a cigarette, her blonde tresses in big rollers, wearing only
white stockings and an oversized khaki shirt.

"Now that's the
competition you've got to worry about, Homer," Carvery remarks.

The strange woman turns
and stretches, revealing a
Playbunny
tattoo on one lithe hip.

"I hope you has been
rehearsing, Miss December!" snarls the General, sipping his tea
and scowling.

"Cynthia," she
corrects him. "Only creeps call me Miss December. Creeps and
creepy boyfriends, anyway."

"We has got a big
day coming up! Entertaining the troops! I will not be having you lazy
boys and girls spoiling it by sloppy rehearsals and coming down with
the mumps and all turning up dead like last week! Poor old tea-vala
spent the intermission sewing arms and legs back on instead of
serving the tea! And Miss February has already cried off sick with
the jungle bottom and called her agent to pick her up and still makes
my life a misery with the long-distance phone-calls about her luggage
not being returned! Now – what has we got here then?"

And the scary General
turns towards us, and strides over.

Instinctively, we all
salute.

"Here to audition,
sir!" pipes up Summer, as foolhardy as she is desperate,
apparently.

"Has you got a
bikini in that cello case?" the General barks.

"Just a cello, sir!"

"Then I hopes you is
good at ironing shirts and peeling spuds!" he shouts. His eyes
move on to me, looking at my back-to-front field hospital scrubs.
"What has happened to you, Sonny-boy? Did they sew your head on
backwards?"

"No, sir! Got
dressed in the dark, sir!" I'm too scared to correct him as to
my gender.

"Well, at least you
is honest as well as dimwitted. We can always use more medics. Can
you tell a hand from a foot?"

"As long as it is
not on a monkey, sir!"

"Good!" His
gaze crosses over to Ace and Carvery. "What is up with you two
Pansy-boys? Run away from the Navy, have we? Fancy a bit of singing
and dancing instead, do we?"

"Oh, the uniforms…"
Carvery looks down at his. Ace is still shirtless. "We're not
absconders."

"Nah," Ace
joins in. "We're strippers."

I swear, my lungs
contract all by themselves. I so do NOT need that image in my mind
while trying to stand to attention in front of this terrifying and
allegedly deluded man…

"Ah," the
General muses. "Chippendales, eh? Well, I hear there is some
market for that, especially among the other lovely Pansy-boys we has
got here. And I see you has brought along some exotics. Something for
everyone, whether they is into spear-chucking or limbo-dancing, no
doubt. Looks like we can put on quite the variety show with all of
you circus freaks here today…"

…
And
then his eyes level with Crispin's.

For a fleeting moment,
there sees to be almost a spark of recognition – of FEAR –
in the General's eyes…

But then just as quickly
it is gone, and the glassy stare of madness returns.