The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (68 page)

And beyond, General
Lissima has finished dismembering the attendant zombie from its grip
on the clockwork hand. She snatches a long-bladed knife from the
altar in the tip of her tentacle, and turns her attention to the
struggle between Higham Dry Senior and Lady Glandula de Bartholine.

"Hey, folks!"
she taunts, waggling the golden clockwork hand, and the leather-bound
diary. "I have something you want! Who is the better haggler?"

And she leaps quickly
aside, laughing, as they both lash out covetously.

"Give me those
Incantations, witch!" shrieks Lady Glandula.

"You going to feel
Higham Dry's foot in your barnacled bottom, young lady!"

Damn – where is
Ace?! And what about Crispin…

Suddenly I have no need
of concern with the latter, as an arm in a torn bloody shirt loops
around my shoulders from behind, extracting me from the billy goat's
legs.

"Thank goodness you
are all right, Sarah
Bellummm!
" he greets me. "I
believe we still have time…"

"Yeah, he's right
there…" I say, pointing at Justin, under the increasing
heap of bounty hunters, my housemate Miss Numbskull, albino donkey
and inebriated billy goat. "Do we need him to get us home?"

"Not
Mr
.
Time," Crispin corrects me, pulling me to my feet. "
Time
in which to perform the ceremony. Before Atum recovers his dues."

"What?" I ask,
and find myself being dragged over to the altar.

General Lissima evades
capture by Higham Dry Senior and Lady Glandula, sliding on her knees
under their flailing limbs like a breakdancer under a limbo-stick,
making it look effortless and elegant as she leans back almost
parallel to the floor.

The second she is clear,
she pivots sharply into a kneeling stance, and unleashes one
devastating strike with her own tentacle. The knife-blade flashes –
and Higham Dry's exposed zombie hand flies off, severed halfway up
the radial bone.

"Who is your Daddy
now, old man?" she grins, back-flipping upright and twirling the
sword into a blur on the end of her tentacle, like a
Wild West
gunslinger. "Bet this clockwork hand looks even more
attractive to you, hmmm?"

"Quickly, Sarah
Bellummm!
" Crispin sweeps the remaining artifacts and
accessories from the surface of the wooden plinth. "Lie down on
here."

"How about no!"
I gasp. "I haven't signed a release form for any elective
surgery!"

"I have to save my
Mother," he states, obstinately.

"It won't be your
Mother!" I shout back. "It'll be me, Sarah Bellum! With an
ancient evil zombie squid parked up her!"

Crispin picks up a knife,
and advances.

"That's the only
Mother I remember," he says sadly.

I back away, around the
altar. Who'd come to Sarah Bellum's rescue? I look all around,
desperately. No sign of Ace, damn it… Homer is still hanging
for dear life onto a pillar, looking like a cheap date at
Peppermint
Hippo
. Luke and Beneficience are lost in one another's attention,
for the first time since 1971. My housemate, struggling on the floor
with the bounty hunters and Justin Time, is probably at less risk
than she ever was in the company of Carvery Slaughter – who is
still a black onyx stone statue.

I sigh. Judging so far,
Carvery would have been my best bet for salvation. Even if he'd used
that last shotgun cartridge already, I'm sure he'd have found another
way of putting me out of my misery before I became a deadly
Squidmorph cavity…

If only I could get hold
of the clockwork hand – perhaps I could turn him back?

But otherwise, I don't
see any point in crying for
'help'
. The mathematics just don't
seem to be in my favour.

I just remember to
sidestep in time, as Crispin makes a grab for my arm.

"I thought you
wanted me for yourself, Crispin?" I try reminding him. "The
old cure for zombies you wanted to try? Sleeping with a virgin?"

Crispin hesitates, and my
hope flares.

"I am glad you are
willing, Sarah
Bellummm
," he remarks. "But…"

"But what?" I
try an eyelash flutter, for the first time, and only succeed in
making myself dizzy.

"Present
requirements are more pressing," he says, regretfully. "And
virgins are not too hard to come by. Especially in the fast-food home
delivery business."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I am sure your
replacement at the
pizzeria
will be equally inexperienced,"
he adds, with a wink.

The nerve of him! As if
I'm as disposable as… as… a burger carton!

Now only clamped onto
Lady Glandula with his armoured fist, Higham Dry struggles to remain
upright, and the mast creaks with the strain.

"I am waiting…"
hints General Lissima. "Nobody want to make me an offer? Atum
looks like he got all day, but I don't."

The giant Eye of the
river-god is rising slowly out of the whirlpool in the river,
gradually blotting out the misty sun in its veil of storm clouds.
Crocodiles who weren't quick enough to escape the vortex tumble down
his sides into the depths.

As I dodge another grab
by Crispin across the altar, General Lissima sighs impatiently, and
with an impossibly high leap onto the mast, strikes downward with her
sword.

The very tip of Lady
Glandula's tentacle is sliced free, with a terrible scream.

"Mother!"
Crispin shouts, as Lady Glandula and Higham Dry Senior hurtle past
down the sloping deck, still entangled. "Grandpappy!"

"
Hoooome!
"
cries Homer, hugging his pillar, like a cheap floozy.

General Lissima laughs,
and scuttles after them, jumping over her husband and the bounty
hunters
en route
.

"So keen to walk the
plank!" she squeals happily, as Lady Glandula's injured tentacle
halts them at the railing right where the crocodile-feeding platform
is attached, high above the swirling abyss. "Now, who wants to
negotiate? Who wants to swear loyalty to the Nine a.m. Lounge first?"

"Never!" spits
Higham Dry, clinging to the platform with his remaining mechanoid
arm, cradling his stump protectively.

"No great loss,"
General Lissima shrugs. "All you boys over at the Six a.m.
Lounge interested in is beer and sauna and clean socks. And
persecuting my husband, which is very naughty."

"The Incantations!"
cries Lady Glandula pitifully, her terror at the proximity of Atum
evident, while she scrabbles to hold onto the side of the barge.
"Give them to me!"

"Hmmm, but what are
they worth, Lady Bathtub?" the General muses, twiddling the
little book between her fingertips. "I already have a ship.
Don't need yours. What else have you got? And don't try to fob me off
with any of your undead pets. I have plenty of those too."

Luke reaches the end of
his song. But this time, Atum remains, his all-seeing omnipotent Eye
taking interest in the proceedings as they unravel below his gaze.

Beneficience takes Luke's
hands in her own and sobs into them.

"Forgive me!"
she beseeches him, still on her knees at his feet.

"My dearest,"
he says gently. "I am so proud of you, in spite of our
differences… You have done such a good job with Corporal
Punishment…"

"He is your son!"
she blurts out. "I raised him – for you!"

"I know, my
dearest," he says soothingly, and pats her a little awkwardly on
the gilt-frilled turban.

In the touching moment of
distraction, Crispin vaults over the altar, and seizes me by the
hair.

"Now, Mother!"
he shouts. "While there is still time!"

"No!" I scream,
and flounder for a good excuse to delay things. "I'm not
sterile!"

"I don't think you
have anything I want, do you?" General Lissima smiles down at
the crocodile-feeding platform, and twirls the sword again, preparing
to strike.

There is a
swisshhh
through the air overhead, and one of the blood-red sails on the
mast abruptly furls, lopsidedly, its rigging pulled sharply by a
swinging counterweight.

"Gotcha," is
all Ace says, as he plucks the General neatly from the deck, too fast
for her to react – and then, on its outermost swing, he lets go
of the rope.

I gasp, as the two of
them vanish over the side, into the boiling darkness below.

Again, with the jealousy
problem… Why not
me
, Ace Bumgang??!

Ow
–
I
wince, as Crispin twists my hair in his fist, holding me captive.

"Mother!" he
calls out again.

Lady Glandula drags her
despairing gaze from the bottomless depths beneath her, and seems to
focus once more on her last chance of salvation. A new body…

Mine!

"
Yesss
,
Crispin…" she croaks, and starts to haul herself back
onto the deck.

Higham Dry Senior looks
on, helpless, and apparently weakening inside his special clockwork
armour. The red glow in his eye-slits looks as though it is fading.

"Nobody want to help
an old man?" his mechanical voice echoes, wryly.

"Nobody want to help
a pizza-delivery girl?" I mutter.

Atum's giant Eye blinks.

Waiting.

"Sing it again,
Gaylord," says Beneficience, breathlessly. "Sing it –
like you used to…"

Luke smiles benevolently
down at his wife.

"'You must
remember this…'"

Beyond the
crocodile-feeding platform, something flashes upwards out of the
water, with barely a splash of foam.

"You are very
scrawny
," Lady Glandula hisses at me, as she slithers
over the railing.

I see the metallic
twinkle and the blur, whirring in the air, like something out of the
Wild West
.

"Yes," I agree,
bravely. "I am a fidget."

The zombie Queen opens
her mouth to respond to my insolence, but only silence emerges.

The silence unrolls
across us all like a deathly flood.

"'As time goes
by…'"
Luke's
heavenly voice croons.

Lady Glandula was never
destined to hear it.

Her human body crumples
onto the floor.

The head rolls slowly
backwards, and plummets from the end of the platform, alongside the
retracting, sword-wielding tentacle that had finished her.

I swear an echo of the
General's laugh flits upward, snatched away in turn by the breeze.

"Typical Nine a.m.
Lounge mercenary!" Higham Dry grumbles. "Rush off leaving
job half done! There still a dirty great big squid up here, young
lady!"

CHAPTER
EIGHTY
:

THE RIDICULES OF
CHRONIC

He's not wrong about
that. Lady Glandula as a human zombie Queen was intimidating enough.
Minus the corporeal shroud of Crispin's mother, into which her mantle
had somehow been squeezed, she's just a giant evil-looking
cephalopod.

Its purple iridescent
eyes seem to zoom in on me as it slides back onto the deck, crushing
the already-rotting remains of its former human hermit-shell
unheeded, leaving a trail of vile slime.

"Yuck!" I
struggle, trying to free myself from Crispin's grip on my hair.
"Crispin, that's not your mother! It's a Squidmorph!"

"She has been my
mother as long as I can remember," he says distantly. "I
have to save her."

"Well, why don't
you
volunteer?" I suggest, and managing to free an arm, flap around
wildly until my hand closes around the hilt of the last, smallest
knife on the altar.