‘I used to kick ass,’ ex-officer Cecil swigged his beer, ‘but, you know, you get fed up with it, type-cast, always the heavy. I want to get involved in something with a bit more depth. Something to show my compassionate caring side. There’s no future in this comedy stuff for me.’
The barman nodded thoughtfully. ‘I know what you mean. I’m far too good for this nonsense. When this is finished I’m going to audition for something deep and hard to understand, something with Booker Prize potential. Would you like to see my previous reviews?’
‘Yes, I’d like that very much. Could I have the same again, please?’
‘On the house.’ The barman spread his scrapbook on the bar-counter. ‘Read what they said about my performance in They Came and Ate Us.’
The Anti-Rex opened a bigger hole. He could see what was going on in a big way now. Elvis stood before the cameras, throwing poses and making with the sound bites. The Anti-Rex slid his red-hot finger down the steel barrier. It parted before him.
‘Search,’ cried Elvis. ‘Find the bomb. Kill all who stand in your way.’
And the population were doing just that.
‘You’re a real bad boy carrying on like that,’ said the Anti-Rex. ‘Having some kind of a brainstorm are you?’
Elvis ignored him and continued with what was now becoming quite unbecoming. ‘There are those who won’t follow the light. The House of Light. My house. Kill them all. Find the bomb. Call me. Call me.’
‘I’m calling you, asshole.’
Elvis carried on regardless.
‘Ah, excuse me, I mean dear old friend. Elvis, it’s me, Rex. I’ve come to help you.’ The evil one approached the man in the gold lame suit. ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’
‘Search,’ cried the man of gold. ‘Search.’
‘Elvis, what is wrong with you?’ The Anti-Rex stared him eye to eye.
‘Search!’
‘Search? It’s me, shithead. Wake up.’ The Anti-Rex swung a fist at the head of Elvis Aaron Presley. It passed dean through into empty air. ‘What the flip?’
The screens went blank. Elvis wavered, faded and then was gone. ‘What the . . .’
‘You wouldn’t let it lie.’ The voice belonged to Jonathan Crawford (yet again!). He rose from the floor pulling prosthetic rubber brains from the side of his head. ‘Do you know how much trouble I went to, faking up that hologram of Elvis shooting me, programming that speech, all at short notice? No, of course you don’t. Because you never know what’s going on. You really are such a stupid prat!’
Now, you really have to think about that remark. It takes someone with a rare amount of self-confidence to stand in front of Satan the Prince of Darkness, the Lord of Hell, and call him a prat to his face. I don’t think I’d chance it.
‘Well, I would.’ Jonathan squared up to the now pulsating Anti-Rex. ‘Prat, prat, prat!’ ‘You . . . you . . .’ The beast seemed genuinely lost for words. Hardly surprising really. ‘Come on then, spit it out.’ Jonathan took a step backwards. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘You are going to die a death of such hideousness that the agonies of every death that has gone before will be as nothing. You will writhe in anguish for eternity.’
‘No I won’t.’ Jonathan was tinkering with his wrist again, which old Beelzebub really should have recognized as a bad sign. ‘You should be a bit more careful how you speak to me. Remember what happened to your last incarnation? Still in the dustbag of the Great Celestial Vacuum Cleaner, if I’m not very much mistaken. Do you know why you never win? Ever ask yourself that? How come you, with all the natural advantages, never win in the end? Generation after generation of aspiring sinners, and how many ever end up worshipping you? A couple of dozen each century, and most of them stone bonkers. And do you know why?’
The Dark One’s hair stood upon end, brimstone streamed from his ears, his black tongue wavered eighteen inches before his furious face. ‘Tell me why,’ he screamed.
‘Because you’re thick,’ crowed Crawford. “The Devil is a dullard. A dork. Evil, maybe. The very personification of evil. But that’s the point and that’s why you don’t get it. You are the personification of evil, but evil is the manifestation of stupidity. Evil is brainless, heartless and soulless. It’s negative and uncreative. See, there you go, then. Happy to have put you straight. Run along now and shape up.’
The Anti-Rex exploded. Became a tangle of twisting tentacles. A seething festering maggot-nest. A thing of such indescribable vileness as to be virtually indescribable. It flung itself at Jonathan Crawford. And splattered in a fashion, which probably came only as a surprise to itself, against an invisible wall.
‘Missed me.’ Jonathan did a little dance. ‘Got to be quicker than that.’
The objectionable object thrashed violently and gave banshee hollerings. Jonathan put his finger to his lips. ‘Don’t go tiring yourself out. You can’t get through. Little innovation of my own. Quite inspired, really. Based on the holy-water principle. Always fascinated me, the concept of holy water. What could the difference actually be between it and ordinary water? Are you paying attention?’ The thing was a-screaming and a-thrashing. ‘Oh well, please yourself. As I was saying. What I wanted to know was what happened to the water on a sub-atomic level when it got blessed. What gave it its power. How was it done, how did it work, things of that nature. So I investigated. And do you know what I found? No, of course you don’t. I discovered that the water became charged with energy. Magical energy. The blessing contained positively charged words of power. These triggered a chemical change on a sub-atomic level, making the water poisonous to the likes of you. It’s polarities again, you see. Positive and negative. Energy. Matter is energy. The universe is composed of matter, there’s hardly an empty space anywhere. What an interesting fellow I am, don’t you think?’
The horrid nasty maggot-wriggling smelly evil thingy hurled itself again and again at the invisible wall and went, ‘BLAAAAAAAGH!’
‘Elvis Aron Presley. Come out with your hands up.’ Sam Maggott (no relative of any other maggot) stood on the rocking roof of his besieged police car hollering lamely through his bullhorn. Around him crowds surged and pushed and fought and struggled. Certain emboldened officers chose to draw down fire on the rear end of the big military vehicle which was now parked in the lobby of the Butcher Building. Others were doing their best to reverse their cars through the mayhem. These were those who had become aware of the monstrous black creature that was cutting the proverbial bloody swathe through the rioting thousands en route, apparently, for the leading truck of the MTWTV convoy.
‘Let me stroke the nice bunny rabbit,’ chirped Harpo.
‘Chico, turn her back this minute.’ Rex shook his spare fist.
‘We’d best be going now,’ Chico was unmoved, ‘I can’t keep the flames back forever.’
‘Chico, we need her help.’
‘You heartless sod. You’d deprive a poor little two-headed baby of its pet bunny.’
‘Chico!’
‘Oh, all right. I’ll get you another bun, bruv.’
‘I don’t want another one. I want this one.’
‘He wants this one, Rex.’
‘Hurry up. It’s getting very hot.’ Rex stepped into the chamber to avoid the licking flames.
‘No problem.’ Harpo reached out twiddling fingers as Rex stepped forward. ‘I’ll close the wall. Don’t want my bunny getting blistered.’
‘No,’ cried Rex. ‘I don’t think that’s a good-’ the wall closed, sealing Rex, Harpo/Chico and a lovable furry woodland creature into Elvis Presley’s burial chamber ‘-idea,’
‘So,’ said Jonathan, ‘I now enlarge the force-field.’ He tinkered at his wrist. ‘Shape it and close it. With you inside, of course. Then once it has become a nice neat cylinder, like so,’ another tap or two at the wrist, ‘I programme the cylinder to contract into a long thin tube about one micron in diameter. You can just imagine what you’ll look like by then, eh?’
The ex-Anti-
Rex squirmed fearfully within the already shrinking cylinder of force. Jonathan smiledupon it.
‘I hate to piss you off even further, you being so hard pressed and everything,’ he tittered mirthlessly, ‘but you’ll really kick yourself when you hear this. If you hadn’t muscled in when you did and interfered with the hologram all this would have been yours. At the end of Elvis’s speech, once the bomb had been discovered and I had defused it, the hologram was programmed to self destruct. It would have confessed to the world that it wasn’t really God and then proved it by committing suicide live on camera. And then you, as the last legitimate “god” left on the planet would have inherited the lot. I planned to take myself off to another quarter. So you’d have got it all. But now you don’t. Ain’t life a bitch sometimes?’
The furious thrashings within the contracting cylinder confirmed the creature’s agreement that life certainly could be a bitch at times.
‘Well, must love you and leave you, as they say. I’m real fed up with getting blown up, so I intend to put a considerable distance between myself and Presley City before Big Bang time. So long, sucker.’
Downstairs in the lobby, Kevin’s five-star revolutionary force was swapping gunfire with Jonathan’s Repo Men. The going was being made somewhat difficult by the large volume of smoke issuing through the gaps in the lift doors.
Below all this, but by no means above it all, Rex was beating upon the blank wall in a foolish and futile manner.
‘You might do something,’ he told Chico. ‘We’re trapped in here.’
Harpo/Chico was perched on the jukebox sarcophagus. Harpo was stroking Laura rabbit. Laura rabbit looked anything but keen.
‘It’s really hot out there,’ said Chico. ‘We’re far better tucked away in here for a couple of hours. Relax.’
‘Relax?’ Rex threw his arms in the air. ‘The bomb is quietly ticking away somewhere and we’re banged up here with that.’ He pointed at the sarcophagus. ‘We shouldn’t be here, and that certainly shouldn’t be here.’
‘Hey, you’re right.’ Harpo stopped stroking. ‘You’d best burn it too. Where’s your lighter?’
‘Now see here . . .’ Rex made fists, but having nothing feasible to do with them he unmade them again. ‘I was prepared to destroy priceless art treasures, but I draw the line at cremating the body of my closest friend. Especially in a room without a chimney. Here, shift over.’ Rex lifted Harpo/Chico from the transparent panel and peered in at the defunct Presley. ‘He doesn’t look too good, does he?’
Chico’s head peeped over Rex’s shoulder. ‘How good do you think you’ll look after a hundred years in a coffin?’
Rex gave his head a thoughtful scratch. ‘Not as good as this I shouldn’t think.’
‘Probably stuffed,’ said Harpo. ‘Bunny, don’t scratch, or daddy will have to smack you.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I’ll have to smack this naughty bunny.’
‘No, not that, before.’
‘I said, probably stuffed, with dollar bills more than likely. Take that, bad bunny.’ Harpo clouted Laura rabbit across the ear.
Rex rubbed at the panel and leaned nearer to gaze into the passive face of the King. ‘He does look a bit... odd, you know. It’s funny, I really should feel something. He was the best friend I ever had. But...nothing ... That’s odd.’
And indeed it was odd, what with all that previous atmospheric stuff with Laura. But then, considering the constant shifts in emphasis, complications, characters coming and going, and general slipshod incoherence of the entire affair, it was about par for the course, really. And whatever happened to Barry? ‘Let’s have it open,’ said Rex with unnerving suddenness.
‘Oh no!’ Chico was very sure about the ‘oh no’. Harpo joined him in vigorous head shaking and Laura took the opportunity to make a run for it. She was shaking her head also.
‘Yes.’ Rex took Harpo/Chico and sat him on the floor. ‘We should have it open. I have a hunch.’
‘I don’t care whether you have a club foot as well.’ Chico waved frantically with his arm. ‘Don’t open it. The body will decay when the air hits it. There’ll be terrible germs. We’ll catch something chronic.’
‘Imagine the pong,’ Harpo added.
Rex made a passably tolerant face. ‘You know all about the putrefaction of preserved corpses then? Possibly you hold a Master’s degree in the subject?’
‘No need to be sarcastic,’ said Chico.
‘Where’s Mr Floppy Ears gone?’ asked Harpo.
‘It’s Mrs Floppy Ears,’ said his brother.
‘It’s my bunny and I’ll say what sex it is.’
Rex sighed and shook his head.
Laura hid in a darkened corner twitching her dear little nose. Had she been able to speak, it is doubtful whether sufficient adjectives existed to express her opinion of the current turn of events.
‘I’m opening the box,’ said Rex.
‘It will end in tears.’ Chico put on a snooty expression and attempted without success to fold his arm.
‘Where’s my little Floppy Woppy?’ went Harpo.
‘What do you think?’ asked the barman of the Tomorrowman Tavern. ‘I saved that book.’
Cecil held the barman’s glowing reviews up to the light. ‘I spy duplicity,’ said he. ‘I have copies of these very same reviews in a scrapbook of my own. They differ in only one significant respect. They bear my name upon them and not yours.’
‘Rogue!’ cried the barman, reaching for his knobkerry.
‘Scoundrel!’ cried Cecil, drawing himself up to his full and improbable height.
Rex struggled with the lid of the sarcophagus. He made all the appropriate groaning noises. There were close-ups of his gripping fingers, sweating brow, the coffin lid giving an inch or two and then falling back, Harpo/Chico’s pained expressions, Laura’s twitching nose. The lid shifted and fell away with a resounding whack.
‘Hold your hooters,’ Harpo advised.
Chico did so.
Rex didn’t.
‘Elvis,’ he said. ‘Do you know what you look like to me?’
Elvis had nothing to say on the matter.
‘Dead pony.’
‘Pony?’ Chico asked.
‘Pony.’ Rex tweaked the nose of the dead man, took a grip and gave a mighty pull. The skin came away in his fingers. A sheath of latex rubber and nylon sideburns. Beneath the facade was a goodly amount of shining metal, blinking lights and complicated circuitry. ‘Gotcha,’ said Rex Mundi.
‘I can’t see from down here,’ Chico craned his neck. ‘But I assume it’s the bomb.’
‘Yep.’ Rex spread apart the gold lame jacket, exposing further wonderments, more burnished metal and an intricate-looking keyboard.
‘Gosh,’ went Chico unconvincingly. ‘I wasn’t expecting that!’
‘Hmm.’ Rex ran his fingers over the keys. ‘Now all we have to do is crack the combination and disarm the bomb.’
“That would be the logical thing. How much time do we have?’
Rex looked at his watch. ‘Do I still have my watch on?’ he asked. ‘I thought I lost it somewhere.’
Chico shrugged. ‘Search me. Let’s assume that you do.’
‘Good idea.’ Rex looked at his watch. ‘Nearly seven hours. Time to spare. Brilliant. Harpo, would you care to check this keyboard out. You’re the numbers man.’
‘Why, thank you, Rex.’ Harpo smiled his sweetest of smiles. ‘I’d like my bunny back, though.’
‘With pleasure.’ Rex turned and scooped up Laura who was having a scratch at the wall. ‘Shall I mind Mr Floppy Ears for you while you save the world?’
‘Good idea.’
Rex lifted Harpo/Chico into the open sarcophagus. ‘Do your thing,’ he told Harpo.
‘Okay then.’ Harpo flexed his fingers. ‘Now, let’s do this carefully. Assuming that there is a combination, what do we have? Well, all the letters of the alphabet for a start. Pity it’s not just numbers. Right, if y
ou were Elvis, Rex, what would you programme into it?’
Rex did some serious head scratching. ‘My birthday, or perhaps the date of my death. This is whacky stuff after all.’
‘Too obvious.’ Harpo shook his head.
‘His mum’s, then,’ Chico put in. ‘What do you think, mummy’s boy?’
Harpo ignored his brother. ‘Could be his phone number, car licence plate, army service number . . .’
‘I was thinking that perhaps rather than guess it, you might simply use your X-ray vision.’ Rex made encouraging winks.
‘Ah,’ Harpo squinted. ‘Apparently not,’ he unsquinted.
‘We’re doomed, then,’ said Rex. ‘I shouldn’t have expected anything else.’
‘Never say die,’ Harpo smiled cheerfully. ‘Give us a cuddle of my bunny.’
Rex handed the struggling rabbit over. ‘Of course we could just press keys at random, trusting to a power far greater than ourselves, a divine synchronicity, that would assure our salvation and that of the world generally.’
‘Ooh,’ said Chico. ‘Hands up for Rex’s inspired plan anyone.’
No hands went up.
‘Prat,’ said Harpo.
‘Now just you see here . . .’
Harpo interrupted him. ‘Rex, use your head, please. If we just press burtons at random we shall certainly die. This bomb has been placed here with the specific purpose of destroying Presley City, your doppelgänger and the beastly big boy who pointed his gun at us. It is bound to have all sorts of ingenious traps built into it. I’ll bet we only get one go at this.’
‘Hmm,’ went Rex Mundi.
‘Hmm,’ went Rex Mundi again.
‘Why did you go hmm twice?’ Chico asked.
‘Sorry, I thought they were going to cut to another scene there.’
‘But they didn’t, did they?’
‘Seems not.’
‘Then we’d better get on with it, hadn’t we?’
‘Certainly.’ Rex rubbed his hands together. ‘Harpo, do something.’
‘Me? You’re the hero, you do something. And try to make it something thrilling, eh?’