‘Will do, sir.’
‘Ed?’ Johnny clutched his dented skull, climbed from the manhole and peered around. Police Headquarters was merrily ablaze, as were numerous other buildings in the vicinity. The earthly remains of Ed Kelley were liberally distributed about the street.
Johnny consulted the map. ‘You had it upside down. His excellency isn’t going to like this.’
His excellency crossed the floor of room B. It wasn’t a particularly interesting room and it’s doubtful whether it would have got a mention at all, had the Anti-Rex not chosen to enter it. So, the least said about it the better. He pressed his ear to the door.
Click clack click clack clock, came the sounds of weapons being cocked in the corridor beyond.
‘Hmm,’ went The Anti-Rex, withdrawing his ear.
‘Hmm,’ went the real Rex Mundi to Harpo/Chico. ‘So where exactly do I fit into all this?’
Chico munched further toast. ‘You’re the spanner in the works, Rex. You’re not supposed to be here.’
‘You’re preaching to the converted.’ Rex gazed around the cafe. It wasn’t a particularly interesting cafe and it’s doubtful whether it would have got a mention at all had ... do you ever get that strange feeling of deja vu?
‘Listen, Rex, you’re the only one who can put it right. That’s your purpose.’
‘So what do I have to do?’
‘Win the game. Get your initials up for the ultimate high score.’
Rex made one of his most doubtful faces to date. ‘But I don’t know how to win this game. Even what this game is. Can’t you be a bit more specific?’
‘I’ll tell you this, Rex. The game goes on and on, again and again until someone wins it. But it can be won, believe me, and when it is . . .’
‘Then what? Tell me.’
‘And spoil the trick ending? No way.’
‘Trick ending?’ Rex’s doubtful face became a very sour face. ‘There’s going to be another one of those, is there?’
‘Loads.’ Chico finished his toast. Harpo drained the last of his milk. ‘You’ll sort it out, Rex, you’ll win through. I shall be with you. Fear not and things of that nature. Now, shall we take a stroll over to the ButcherBuilding?’
‘Sounds good to me. Check please, waitress.’ Rex called over to the waitress, who was hovering near at hand hoping for a walk-on part. She wasn’t a particularly interesting waitress and in truth it is doubtful whether she would have got a mention at all if . . .
Balberith tore a section of reinforced steel roof from the military vehicle and glared down through the hole. Five faceless individuals gaped up at him.
‘Bloody Hell!’ Kevin applied the brakes.
The lads in the catering truck, who had been happy-snapping through the rear windows, suddenly dropped both their jaws and their cameras. They saw the big armoured car shudder to a halt and the great black beast as it left the roof and plummeted towards them. ‘Oooooooh!’ they went, ducking variously.
Balberith smashed through the rear doors of the catering truck, careened along the spotlessly dean linoleum floor and came to rest in the fruit and salad bar.
‘Ahoy there, intruder,’ called one of Jonathan’s Repo Men through the keyhole of room B, floor sixty-five. ‘We are a heavily-armed militia, low on intellect but high on company loyalty and the work ethic. In precisely one minute we will come bursting in and shoot you. You may wish to give yourself up, or possibly make a getaway through the window. But quite frankly we’d prefer it if you put up a bit of a fight as we’re a right sadistic bunch. Real nasty.’
‘Real nasty?’ The Anti-Rex cocked his Robocop special. ‘You don’t know the meaning of real nasty.’
‘All done.’ Jonathan straightened up and flipped a switch. Banks of electrical jiggery-pokery burst into life. Lights flashed, buzzers buzzed and multiple telescreens shone with 3D views of Presley City, interiors of the Butcher Building, close ups of Jonathan, graphs and charts, curious looping graphics and an old Marc Bolan video.
‘Is he singing “Pewter Suitor”?’ Laura enquired.
‘Nah. That’s “20th Century Boy”. Not even I have got a copy of “Pewter Suitor”.’
‘Is the equipment complete then?’
‘All set. This lot can override the World Casts, jam out all the competition, run the game scenarios side by side for the final showdown.’ Jonathan looked upon all that he had made and found that it was very good. ‘Not even my dad could have set this lot up.’
‘Your dad? You’ve never talked about your family.’
‘We weren’t close.’
‘What does your father do?’
‘Not a lot, I shouldn’t think. He was dead the last time I saw him.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Laura wasn’t of course, but you have to say that, don’t you?
‘I’m not.’ Jonathan smiled grimly. ‘Dad had this accident. He fell into a big flywheel. Very messy. Very final.’
‘A big flywheel, where was that?’
‘Nowhere you need trouble your pretty little head about.’
‘My pretty-little-feather-brained-only-good-for-one-thmg-bimbo-know-nothing-woman’s-head, would that be?’
‘What?’ Jonathan asked.
‘Nothing. Are you really sure that only you alone could have constructed all this?’
‘Only me.’ Jonathan did shoulder swaggers.
‘I’m so glad.’ Laura pulled the gun from between her breasts and pointed it at Jonathan. ‘Then you’re dead, sucker.’
Balberith rose shimmering from the fruit and salad bar.
‘RRRAAAGGGH!’ he went, wiping the residues of plum, pulse, pimento, pomegranate, pepper and passion fruit from his chest.
‘AAAGHRRR!’ he continued, stepping amidst the mess of pear, peach, pomelo, pineapple, papaya, parsnip and potato.
‘GHAAMPRH!’ he added, as he plucked a sprout from his left ear and crunched it to oblivion.
The catering personnel were taking the opportunity to depart via the fire exits. ‘Run for your lives,’ they went, and things similar.
Balberith swept his great arms wide, mangling the hostess trolley and spoiling the spice rack. One reckless fellow with an eye on the main chance (for there is always one) picked up a discarded camera and prepared to take another polaroid. ‘Smile please,’ said he.
Balberith ripped the remains of the fruit and salad bar from its mountings and flung it through the roof.
Then he advanced on the reckless fellow.
‘Just one more. Oh, ouch.’ Balberith grasped him by the crisp, clean lapels of his waitering jacket and hoisted him aloft.
‘What’s your game?’ growled the monster from Hell, gazing with sickly yellow eyes into the face of the far-from-happy snapper.
‘A c-couple of p-pictures for the station head,’ stammered the lost soul, wetting his pants.
‘Pictures?’ A long forked tongue darted from the scaly mouth and licked the tip of the stammerer’s nose. Lick, lick, lick, it went.
‘They’re c-casting for a m-m-movie . . .’
‘Movie?’ The black tongue vanished from view.
‘There’d be a p-p-part in it for you . . .’
Balberith lowered the damp-trousered main-chancer to the floor. ‘A starring part?’ he enquired.
Kevin stuck the open-topped battle wagon into gear and swerved into Lonely Street. On-coming cars skidded to either side, slamming into basement dwellings, ploughing along sidewalks, overturning and bursting into flames.
‘We’re well rid of that,’ cried Kevin. ‘Anyone got a jelly baby?’
There was silence all round.
‘Aw, come on, gang.’
‘Not until we get proper descriptions and solid characterizations,’ said a short plump girl with a freckled face and a shock of ginger hair. Her name was Alison.
‘Could I have a jelly baby, please, Alison?’
‘Plump?’ Alison screamed. ‘I’m not plump!’
‘Calling all cars. Calling all car
s.’ Sam Maggott did his finest Broderick Crawford (no relation of Jonathan). ‘Heavily-armoured terrorist vehicle proceeding north along Lonely Street. Set up roadblocks on King Creole and Roustabout. Halt and detain.’
‘Do what?’ Drunken police voices filled the airways with talk of pressing beer mat investigations.
‘We’re coming in now,’ called Jonathan’s Repo Men. ‘Time to die.’
‘Yours, not mine.’ The evil one stood his ground, raised his supergun and let off rapid and devastating fire through the door of room B, floor sixty-five. Cries of distress poured through the bullet holes. ‘Damned unsporting,’ someone complained.
‘Charge!’ cried someone else. And charge they jolly well did. The punctured door was carried from its hinges and borne into the room. A mighty shield in the van of an avenging army. The Anti-Rex emptied his pistol into it, but to little avail. He was outnumbered and outgunned. The mob poured at him, over him and then all around him. He flung aside the door he was suddenly lying beneath, stared up bitterly and ran a black shirt-cuff across his bloodied nose.
‘You are going to pay for this,’ he spat at the gun muzzles forming a circle of steel above him. ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with.’
‘Oh, but we do.’ The circle of steel expanded and a Repo Man approached. He was rather a curious-looking Repo Man. Far from being the standard blank-faced, broad-shouldered six-foot-sixer, he was short, white-haired and portly. He was dressed in the garb of a Catholic priest and he bore an uncanny resemblance to the now legendary Spencer Tracy. He was carrying a bible and a large silver crucifix. ‘Big guns up,’ he ordered. The big guns went up. ‘Water-pistols out.’
‘Water-pistols, what?’ The stinker on the deck looked uneasy.
‘Holy water capsules in.’
‘Holy wa - oh no . . .’
‘Inane childish chant.’
The Repo Men armed their holy water-pistols and angled them down at the devil-made-flesh.
‘We know who you ar-are. We know who you ar-are,’ they chanted in their silly way.
‘I’d advise you to say your prayers.’ The Spencer Tracy lookalike beamed down at the Anti-Rex. ‘But who’d be listening, eh?’
‘Barry, I can’t see a goshdarn thing.’ It was blacker than a coal heaver’s codpiece in a Blitz blackout.
‘Of course you can’t see, chief. You’ve got your eyes shut.’
‘Ah, sure, that would be it.’ I cotton on pretty quick to this kind of stuff. ‘Why do I have my eyes shut by the way?’
‘So you can’t see where you’re going.’
‘Which would explain why I keep bumping into things, I guess.’
‘You got it, chief.’
‘Barry, excuse me for asking this, but why wouldn’t I want to see where I was going?’ It seemed a reasonable question to me.
Barry made an agitated sighing noise which I didn’t take to one bit. ‘Because, chief, if you can’t see where you are, then nobody else can. Pretty neat, eh? Remember that movie of yours, Death Wears Patent Slingbacks?’
‘Yeah, sure. The one with the subjective camerawork, where the audience saw the whole film through my eyes. The Camera is Woodbine. Bombed out at the box office, I remember that.’
‘The world wasn’t ready, chief. So, do you want to keep your eyes shut while I get you up to the roof, or open them now and get a nasty surprise when you and all your millions of fans see where you are?’
‘I guess I’ll keep ‘em shut. But I don’t like this one bit. Doing a whole scene in the dark ain’t gonna look too good on the screen. Deaf people will think the film’s over and take a hike before I get to do my roof-top ending.’
‘Can’t help that, chief. You got to stick to your four-set clause and I can’t spare the energy to beam you up. Now take a step to the right here, there’s a-’
THUD!
‘Ouch!’
‘Pillar, chief.’
The non-subjective reader saw Laz (in the third person) bump into the pillar and stumble blindly on across the lobby of the Butcher Building, clutching his skull. The same reader also saw the conga-line of Repo Men that followed him, tittering into their hands and nudging one another.
And as Laz reached the lift, this very same reader now observed the Repo Men form themselves into a firing line and cock their weapons noisily.
‘Did you hear that, Barry?’ I put my hand to my ear with more awareness of danger than an ashtray full of broken promises.
‘Er, chief. Could you just lift me up above your shoulder and kind of swivel me round a bit?’
‘Sure can.’ I sure did. ‘What’s to see?’
‘Nothing you’d probably want to hear about, chief.’
‘Laura, no, don’t do it!’ Jonathan covered his face. ‘You don’t want to shoot me.’
Laura smiled and cocked the trigger. ‘But I do, Jonathan. I really do.’
‘No, you don’t. Think about all I can give you.’
‘I have. With you out of the way I can have it anyway.’
‘Laura, please listen to me-’
‘No, Jonathan. You are the enemy. You belong dead. I shall take all this. The Presley hoard, the dead messiah, the power. I shall make it right.’
‘You don’t know what you’re saying. You can’t stop what is going to happen. Only I can stop it. This time I know how-’
‘Sorry.’ Laura squeezed the trigger.
‘You’re making a terrible mistake-’
There was a bang and a thud. Jonathan gaped down at the neat little hole in his chest. ‘You shot me.’
‘This is true. You are shot.’
‘But I’m not dead.’
Laura’s latest wristwatch was an antique Patek Phillippe, emerald encrusted, very exclusive. She studied the tiny diamond-tipped second hand. ‘Bet you can’t count up to five.’
‘One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .’ Jonathan laughed nervously. Laura looked on expectantly.
‘Five?’ she asked.
‘Four and a half. . .’ Jonathan plunged forwards on to his face. Sparks flew from his wrist implants. His little feet twitched and kicked and then were still.
‘Told you.’ Laura strode over and booted him on to his back. The beady little eyes stared up at her reproachfully, but they didn’t see anything.
‘Nobody likes a smart-assed kid.’ Laura grinned, placed her right foot upon the dead boy’s face and ground down hard with her three-inch heel.
It was an act of needlessly gratuitous violence and one which ensured for good and all, that Meryl Streep would be declining to take the female lead in the film version of this one, just like she had with the last two.
Laura twisted her heel a second time. ‘I never liked her anyway,’ she sneered. ‘I’d rather be played by Lady GaGa any day.’
‘Go on then. If you’re going to do it, do it!’ The Anti-Rex glared defiance at the selection of water-pistols pointing down at him. ‘What’s the matter with you? Do it!’
But none of the gunmen looked like they were up to doing very much of anything.
‘What’s all this?’ The evil one climbed warily to his feet, carefully avoiding the unmoving guns.
The Repo Men stood stock still. So many shop-window dummies, suddenly bereft of all life. Anti-Rex gave the nearest a violent shove. It toppled sideways and struck the floor, still frozen in its final pose.
‘Perhaps I have a guardian angel,’ mused the stinker. He retrieved his supergun, reloaded it and shot the head off the Spencer Tracy lookalike.
‘Go on Barry. Tell me the worst.’ I could take it and Barry knew that I knew that he knew I could take it.
‘Seems like a false alarm, chief. I thought you were a gonna there, but it looks like you’re not. Perhaps you have a guardian angel. Now, just reach out your hand and, whisper, whisper, whisper . . .’
‘Press the lift button, did you say?’
‘A complete no-hoper.’
‘What’s that, Barry?’
‘Nothing, chi
ef.’
‘I never said you were plump, Alison,’ Kevin complained.
‘Well, someone did. I suggest we all do our own descriptions. All in favour say aye.’
‘Aye,’ said all in favour, including Kevin.
‘Now, that’s democracy.’ Alison smiled. She was tall and tanned and young and lovely, with long golden hair and large passionate grey eyes.
‘I can dig this,’ said Kevin, the Tom Cruise lookalike. ‘Which way do we go at the traffic lights?’
‘Left,’ said Reg, the Tom Cruise lookalike.
‘No, I’m sure it’s right,’ said Jason, who also bore an uncanny resemblance to the Hollywood star.
‘Now see here . . .’ said Kevin.
‘He is what? And he wants what?’ The MTWTV station head spat out his cigar.
The driver spoke over his shoulder. “The guys in the catering truck, well guy, the others split apparently. The guy says it’s not an animatronics job. It’s a real monster from Hell. And it wants a part in the movie or .. .’ the driver paused.
‘Or what?’ The station head snatched up his smouldering cigar and patted furiously at his smouldering fly.
‘Or he’ll rip up our trucks and tear us all into little bite-sized chunks of meat, sir.’
‘Does he have an agent?’
‘I’ll ask, sir.’
‘Stupid pillock.’ Johnny Dee, he of the flat-top skull and map-reading talents, wandered amongst the flaming buildings in search of a cab.
‘Can’t read a sodding map, gets his human body splattered all over the street, then takes off without a by your leave or kiss my elbow. You just can’t get the help nowadays. Oi, taxi!’
The passing taxi crawled to a halt. And very strangely it did so too. It was literally carbonized, lacking a roof and rattling noisily upon four tyreless rims. On the bare and blackened springs of what once had been the driver’s seat, sat the bare and blackened remains of what once had been something or other. It wasn’t human and it wasn’t nice. It was very angry though and in chapters past it had rejoiced in the name of Bill.