The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum (45 page)

Carvery grins, and fires
the gun at the last bracket holding the bed to the vertical surface.
The tiles splinter, and the bed sags a little more.

Right on cue, we hear the
grinding of the mechanical press in the wall starting up again –
no doubt to start with the squishing action once more…

"Give us a boot,
Ace," Carvery prompts.

Ace nods, and kicks us
away from the deadly wall.

There is a split second
of inactivity – and then a horrible, pitching, metal-shearing,
scraping squeal of breakage…

The torrid air blasts
past my ears as we fall, accelerating, into the void. The daylight
overhead shrinks rapidly to a blessed dot.

I struggle to get
Crispin's expression out of my mind, as he unwound that rope…

"Where does this
hole lead to?" I ask aloud.

Jagged rocks are barely
visible in the darkness, and I pull the
Trevor Baylis
torch
out of my sleeve and crank it up to try and see anything. I get a
small fright, as the first thing it illuminates, briefly, are the
faces of the two townsfolk who fell earlier – watching us fly
past curiously from handholds they had evidently grabbed in the fall.

Just as fast, they are
gone – and we are still falling.

"All the way,"
Luke says, grimly.

The chasm widens, from
the width of the cell we formerly occupied, to a vast cavernous space
– from cathedral-sized, to football field, to infinity…
and inexplicably illuminated, with glowing blue, green and lilac
patches on the surface of the rocks.

"Must be some sort
of fungus," Ace muses.

"Yeah – a
radioactive one," Carvery adds wryly. "An old mine, maybe?"

"What was that?!"
Luke yelps. We all look at him. He points into the darkness.
"Something flapped past us – right there!"

We strain our eyes into
the gloom. The rushing of stagnant air through the steel bedstead
whistles and hoots eerily, making it hard to pick out any other
ambient noises.

"You're imagining
things," Ace grunts. "Too much hoodoo on the brain. There's
nothing down here…"

A thump on the head-rail
of the metal bunk interrupts him, and a shadow blots out the glow
from the infected stalactites.

"Zombie!" Luke
squeaks.

But it's not – oh,
no, it's not… it has the gray leathery skin, the
xylophone-like ribcage and warty knees… but no zombie has that
giant scissor beak – with
TEETH –
or those
membranous wings, which would out-span the rotor blades of a
Chinook
helicopter…

"Carver," Ace
whispers. "It's your Mum. I'd recognise those bingo wings
anywhere."

Carvery merely clips the
back of Ace's head with the shotgun butt.

"It's a
Pterodactyl!" I gasp. "What's it doing down here? How could
it survive for so long?"

And then we're all nearly
thrown off the bed, as with a deafening scream of metal, we hit an
unseen railroad track, and proceed to slide onward. Only the braking
provided by the beast's outstretched wings stops us all from being
catapulted to our deaths.

"The dinosaurs never
died out," Luke tells me. "They just – moved
downstairs…"

The massive beak
stretches in a yawn, and the giant bird-lizard assesses each of us,
with a blinking yellow-orange eye.

"What do you suppose
it eats?" Carvery ponders, and I can see him weighing up the
option of shooting it pre-emptively, as opposed to waiting to see
what it will do first. At the moment, our only balance on the narrow
track is provided by its sail-like skin membranes.

Homer sits up, slowly,
rubbing the back of his bald gray head.

He must have been jolted
awake by our landing. As he focuses gradually, the Pterodactyl lets
out a long, low, guttural clicking sound – like something from
Ridley Scott's
Aliens
…

Homer turns his head, to
look up at the towering monster perched on the head-rail of our
mobile gurney.

"Do you know what it
wants, Homer?" I ask, hopefully.

My heart sinks, as I see
the withered zombie's shoulders hunch nervously. He tries to inch
backwards towards us, huddled at the foot of the metal bunk.

"
Braiiiinssss
,"
he croaks at last.

And the great monster
winks at us…

CHAPTER
FIFTY-NINE
:

A TOWN CALLED
PANCREAS

(PANCRÉAS AU
VILLAGE)

"
H
omer!"
I exclaim. "You said 'brains'!"

"He's a zombie,
Numb-Nuts," Ace tells me. "Of course he says
braiiinsss
."

"Not Homer –
he only says 'home' and 'good' usually," I point out. "Maybe
that bump on the head has fixed him…"

"I'm less concerned
with his vocabulary, than his answer to 'What does the Pterodactyl
want?' being
'braiiinsss'
," Carvery cuts in.

We all look at the giant
perching bird-lizard on the head of the metal gurney, as we squeal
precariously onwards down the underground tracks.

"It's how they
survived for so long," Luke mumbles.

"You mean, how they
failed to die out," Carvery replies. "Zombie dinos. That's
all we need."

My bladder contracts to
the size of a pea at his words.

And yes, I do mean
'pea'
.
Not the alternative spelling, or meaning. I wonder how long it's been
since I last went. And if I can hold it this time.

"You mean, there
could be others?" I whisper.

"You know, on this
tin bedstead, we look just as though we could be in a dino-sized
take-out carton," Ace pipes up cheerfully. "Chef's Special
Noodles."

"Don't you mean
Brain's Special Faggots?" I say sourly, and get a clip around
the ear.

"Chicken Balls in
Cowardy Custard?" Luke suggests.

"We'll be Crispy
Sitting Duck in a minute," says Carvery.

"
Spaaare Riiibs
,"
Homer agrees, and pokes me in the right mammary, with a bony gray
knuckle.

"You are improving,
Homer," Ace observes. "Although I don't think there's much
going spare on Sarah."

"You wish," I
mutter, aping Carvery Slaughter's most typical comeback – only
not loud enough to be heard, of course.

"When we've all
stopped discussing Tit Wings and Brain Crackers, it might be an idea
to figure out what to do about not becoming a buffet," Carvery
reminds us. "Like she says, how many of those things are likely
to be out there? And if we shortchange this one, will it piss them
all off?"

An eerie hooting and
cawing echoes around us, in the darkness.

"Okay," Carvery
continues. "There are lots more of them. That answers that
question."

"This is all my
fault!" I bawl at last, unable to stop myself.

"No, really?"
Ace snaps sarkily.

"Really!" I
blub into my sleeve. "Crispin was trying to make me a job offer
to be his new secretary, and I mentioned someone – well, a
corpse – at the Body Farm, and it made him cross. And it was me
that knocked Homer out as well, earlier. I'm so sorry. And now we're
hurtling into the middle of the Earth on a gurney to be eaten by
zombie Pterodactyls, and it's all my fault!"

"This is happening
because you turned down a job?" Ace says, incredulous. "Wow.
How big does your head feel on a normal day, Sarah?"

"Not nearly as big
as yours, when you figure out it's only because she'd rather stalk
you with a pizza," Carvery remarks. "I'm going to shoot
this bird in a minute just because I'm bored, you realise…"

There is a sudden
whoosh
,
and another thud in the middle of the bunk, between us and the
monster.

Only a brief impression
of a tattered black suit and a rope tell us anything…

"Crispin!" I
gasp, raising the
Trevor Baylis
torch, to confirm who has
unexpectedly dropped in.

He turns, and his black
eyes seem to flash.

"We will need this,"
he says, tonelessly – and extends the rope, with the noose at
the end.

With a flick of his
wrist, he lassos the unwary Pterodactyl.

"What are you
doing?" Luke shrieks. "Are you crazy?"

"There is an
alternative, if you prefer." Crispin nods behind us, in the
direction we are heading.

We look.

Funny. Molten lava does
appear exactly the same as Hollywood would have us believe…

…
And
every ledge on the way down seems to be lined with teeth…

"Is that a…"
Carvery begins.

"Zombisaurus Rex,"
Ace grins, as we fly past, its ash-white jaws closing just short on
the burnt air in our wake. The torchlight shines right through its
battle-scarred ribcage, its heart a pulsating blackened mess,
dribbling clotted opaque slime.

Oh my God… it's
like wishing you'd never peeked into the back of the ambulance…
and those jaws alone could contain a whole dormitory, never mind one
lonely narrow metal bunk…

"Pull up the corners
of the blanket," Crispin orders, taking charge once more. "It
should be able to hold us all."

We scoot to the middle
and bunch up the corners, like a hastily-grabbed picnic cloth in the
rain. Standing in the centre, Crispin secures the end of the rope
around the scrunched-up hem, so that we are enclosed in a tight,
sweaty bundle – a hobo's worldly possessions.

"Mr. Slaughter,"
Crispin says, after checking the tension in the knots. "Please
fire a shot to alarm the beast. But not to hit it."

"There's a lot of it
not to hit," Carvery grumbles, but manages to lean out of a fold
in the blanket anyway, to check his lack of aim. Ace and Luke each
grab hold of one of his legs to weight him down, and Carvery hollers,
his voice slightly muffled. "Tell Sarah if she goes near my ass,
she'll lose her teeth!"

"Yeah, I heard that
about your ass!" I shout back, and clap a hand over my own
mouth, horrified.

Did I say that out
loud?!

Being below sea-level
must be having a serious effect on my self-control…

But fortunately for me,
everyone seems to have other concerns right now…

"Here we go,"
Crispin announces, grimly.

The gun roars.

And with a shriek, the
Pterodactyl protests, and apparently flaps free of the head-rail.

We all crack heads as we
collide in the bottom of the blanket, and I taste Pirelli-flavoured
vulcanised rubber as Carvery's heel catches me in the mouth.

I remember thinking,
Ahhh
– so that's what he meant about teeth
…

But then the ominous
sound of tearing from below, and a squeak of terror from Luke
indicates something else…

"We're caught on a
spring!" Ace calls out.

"Mr. Slaughter!"
Crispin shouts. "Shoot us free of the bunk!"

"Watch it!"
yells Luke. "My ass is hanging half out of that hole already!"

"Better clench then,
buddy!" Carvery's voice warns.

There is a second
resounding boom from outside. The Pterodactyl screams indignantly at
the noise. And a sudden sensation of weightlessness, as we are
catapulted into the air…

CHAPTER
SIXTY
:

JURASSIC PRICK

"
W
here
will it take us?" Luke demands, now trying to hold the small rip
in the blanket together, having extricated his buttocks from it. We
are swinging rather dangerously around in the bundle suspended from
the Pterodactyl's neck, and I'm currently hoping that Carvery's
trigger-happy shotgun has a safety catch on it.