They Came and Ate Us: Armageddon II: The B-Movie

  Another jeep rose up behind them. In the rear of this was mounted one of those really amazing rotary machine-guns, like the one Blaine used in Predator.( A friend of mine, who was once in the TA, told me that they can cut a car clean in half at two hundred yards. A pretty awesome bit of hardware by any account.)

  ‘Keep your head down,’ cried Rex. ‘They’ve got one of those really amazing rotary machine-guns, like Blaine had in Predator.’

  ‘They still watch Arnold Schwarzenegger movies in the twenty-first century?’

  ‘Videos,’ said Rex. ‘I used to. Seven nights a week. Look out!’ The jeep shot over a hillock and plunged toward a rather idyllic-looking little farmstead.

  Ebenezer Stuart was a Shaker. American Shakerism dates from the last quarter of the eighteenth century and really flourished during the middle of the nineteenth. To the Shakers God was a fourfold entity. Father, Son, Holy Ghost and the founder of the movement, Ann Lee. With Ann’s birth in 1736 Christ had returned to Earth and the long-awaited millennium had begun. Sexual intercourse, that great depravity, could therefore cease and those who joined the movement gave it up once and for all. The obvious flaw in this didn’t ever seem to strike the Shakers and so it is hardly surprising that Shakerism never caught on as a world religion.

  The Shakers led intensely strict and ordered lives. They produced strikingly elegant furniture, brooms and brushes, cushions, saddles, stockings, gloves and mops. This being interspersed with periods of frenzied dancing, whirling and shaking which brought about episodes of religious ecstasy. They became subject to visions, issued prophecies, spoke in strange tongues. Shakerism had its moments.

  As the New England Shaker community now numbered only three, Ebenezer Stuart being elder-in-chief, they were always on the lookout for new arrivals.

  Ebenezer drew back the hand-stitched kitchen curtain and gazed out upon the new day. A jeep containing two white-faced men was bearing down on him at an ungodly rate of knots.

  ‘Lord bless and keep us,’ said Ebenezer Stuart.

  The jeep struck the clapboard kitchen wall. Tore through it. Gathered up Ebenezer on the bonnet and came to a shuddering halt amidst tumbling treen, elm trenchers and all manner of other Shaker artifacts, which now command such high prices in the up-market sales-rooms of the world.

  There was a lot of dust, crockery tinkling, slat and platter rattling. But this presently subsided and then there was an unholy hush. Ebenezer’s plaster-strewn head appeared above the jeep’s bonnet to view those of Rex and Jack.

  He might have said anything really. There was obviously the opportunity for a great one-liner in there to carry the scene. But anything would have come as an anticlimax before the next bit.

  Rapid machine-gun fire strafed the house. Putting pay to any priceless antiques which might have survived the first assault. ‘Holy Ann,’ gasped Ebenezer, ‘he’s got one of those really amazing rotary machine-guns, like the one Blaine had in Predator.’

  Rex was scrambling down from the jeep, fighting his way through kitchen chaos. ‘Sorry about all the damage. Send the bill to the Miskatonic University. Make it out to Jack Doveston.’

  ‘Ain’t you gonna make a fight of it, young fella?’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Sure as tarnation, whatever that means.’ Ebenezer ducked bullets and made away to the gun cupboard. Here he kept a 20mm anti-tank weapon, which the gunsmith had assured him was ideal for home defence. This was America after all. Jack crawled under the jeep and assumed the foetal position. Rex dragged him out. ‘I think we really should be leaving.’

  Ebenezer was loading up the missile launcher. ‘Who’s after you, soldier? Commies, is it?’

  ‘Could be South America, or possibly United Russian Territories,’ Rex suggested as he and Jack made haste towards the back door.

  ‘Okay,’ said the Shaker, arming up. ‘Pay-back time!’

  Rex and Jack left him to it. For as Duke’s principle states: ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’

  They made off across the farmyard and entered the barn. Here stood a gleaming antique-looking motorcycle combination. Just waiting. The way some of them do.

  ‘I’m sorry, but the Dean cannot see you now.’

  Spike thrust her hands into the pockets of her jeans and scuffed her boot heels on the eighteenth-century Kazak prayer rug outside the Dean’s office door. She turned a bitter gaze upon the Dean’s private secretary. ‘The library is locked up. There’s a guy with a gun standing guard at it. I’ve phoned Jack’s wife and she says he hasn’t been home all night. What’s going on here?’

  ‘Did you identify yourself to the guard at the library, Miss Laine?’

  ‘I do not pass the time of day with the military.’

  ‘Perhaps if you will just wait one moment I will speak to the Dean.’ The private secretary was tall, blonde and obvious.

  Spike considered such women a total sell-out of the female species. Not that she was a feminist. That was a radical view taken to an unattractive extreme. She was a rationalist. She espoused the view that the world would be a far better place if people were accepted upon their merit instead of their age, sex, colour, race or willingness to spread their legs across the Dean’s desk. Being yet young her ideals were still intact. So was her common sense. She pressed her ear to the door. Heated words issued from within. Spike Laine did not wait for the private secretary to return.

  Jack’s wife was finishing her breakfast. Their eldest daughter, Moonchild, conceived at Woodstock to the accompaniment of Jimi’s ‘Star Spangled Banner’, munched macrobiotics. Neither seemed unduly put out by the absence of the breadwinner. They shared little in the way of anything except polite conversation. Jack’s was not a happy house.

  The relationship between Jack and Diane had started well. But that had been back in the sixties. And at the time no-one young realized they were in ‘the sixties’, they just thought the fun would go on and on. But it didn’t.

  They had met in 1967 when Pink Floyd played the UFO in London. They had all the right chemicals and the overland trip to India. They had returned with the obligatory dose of dysentery and recuperated at the expense of the NHS. Later they had struck out for the New World, arriving in San Francisco in time to catch some of the Grateful Dead’s greatest gigs. 1970 had seen them back home once more, Diane’s pregnancy putting pay to further excess.

  Between then and now there was a sort of vacuum. Jack had never really made it at anything. He had tried the lot. Anything of a literary nature, but it had all come to nothing.

  Then five years ago, out of the blue, the offer of work at the Miskatonic had come up and they had crossed the big fish-pond once again. And for what? Jack had lied about the nature of the job. He had just wanted to get amongst all those books and write his own rubbish. And Diane? She festered. She had given up career after career upon Jack’s whim and now she was stuck in a tiny rented house in an undistinguished quarter of Kingsport with no prospect of doing anything.

  The youngest Doveston, Jade, was off at college in the Midwest. The eldest was seeking jobs in New York. The far shores of old Albion were calling Diane home. And Jack had been out all night.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ replied Diane to Moonchild’s unasked question. ‘He’s probably drying out in a police cell.’

  ‘I wasn’t worrying. I was just wondering.’

  ‘I was just wondering,’ said Jack, as the combination rattled perilously along. ‘How come a man from the future knows how to drive antique jeeps and motor-cycles?’

  ‘Basic stuff. Not a lot of progress really went on after the NHE.’

  ‘NHE?’

  ‘Nuclear Holocaust Event. Thirty-first December nineteen ninety-nine.’ He bit his lip.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Nothing. Forget I said it. But cars and stuff. They improved the drive systems, nuclear fission and whatever. But the basic gearing and suchlike remained the same.’

  That answer seemed far too convenient fo
r Jack. ‘Do you have any kind of a plan?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m working on it,’ said Rex, who wasn’t. ‘I have the feeling that something very big is about to happen. And somehow I have become part of it. If I was called back into this century there must be some purpose behind it. Probably divine. I have become a man of destiny, Jack.’

  Rex pressed low over the handlebars and the combination sped on.

  Man of destiny! thought Jack. Self-aggrandizing pillock, more like!

  7

  ASTRAL PROJECTION: The applied science of vacating one’s body at will. Whilst the ethereal spirit self wanders abroad peeping into ladies’ bathrooms, the physical body remains in a state of suspended animation. This unsavoury habit is much practised by waiters.

  Hugo Rune, The Book of Ultimate Truths

  The boy Rizla, Rune’s acolyte and popper-out for Chinese takeaways, once forced open the rear of a TV detector van at his master’s behest. The van proved, of course, to be empty, save for a hand crank leading to the fake aerial, some beer cans and a smutty Danish glossy called Donkey Capers. Rune concluded, rightly enough, that the vans were nothing more than a ‘front’ and that it was in fact an organized group of government-funded astral projectionists who located the unlicenced television sets.

  Sir John Rimmer, Rune: The Man and the Myth

  The controller’s curricle swayed to a halt. The ancient flicked a lever and the cockpit tilted to afford him the view of an eager-faced young man.

  ‘Inter-rositer Prestidigitent KK Byron Wheeler-Vegan, Lord.’ The young man made a stiff salute.

  ‘IP Vegan. What is it?’

  The young man bobbed about in an animated fashion. He was blue-haired and blond-eyed, which wasn’t quite right. ‘I have a two-micron downgrade upon a lateral augmentor. I request a service replacement, as of the now.’

  ‘This is hardly a matter for me, IP Vegan.’ The cockpit jerked up. The curricle prepared to step out once more.

  Byron danced before it. ‘But Lord . . .’

  ‘This is most outré behaviour. Out of my way.’

  ‘But Lord, I have made this request before.’

  ‘Before?’ The retainers began to chuckle. The controller remained grave. ‘What do you understand by the concept of “before”,’ he demanded.

  ‘I asked for a service replacement and I have not received it.’

  The curricle swung about. The controller glared at his retainers. ‘Well?’

  ‘Unthinkable,’ they chorused.

  The young man peeped between the curricle’s legs. ‘I did too.’

  The cockpit swung about. ‘Where’s he gone?’

  ‘I’m down here, Lord. And I did ask for a service replacement. I know I did.’

  ‘Outlandish. Beyond all reasonable thought. Who is viceroy of this gallery?’

  ‘Zoroastra Findhorn, Lord.’

  ‘Incompetent nincompoop.’

  ‘As your Lordship pleases.’

  ‘Well then. Is the fault now rectified?’

  ‘Lord?’

  The controller made exasperated tut-tuttings with his wrinkled lips. ‘Have you not reported, as of the now, to Findhorn? Has not Findhorn, as of the now, replaced your lateral augmentor? Have you not, as of the now, refitted same? And are you not, as of the now, back at your duties?’

  ‘Not as of the yet, Lord.’

  ‘Hiffle and piffle and old plum pud. See to it boy.’ The curricle leapfrogged the cowering inter-rositer presti-digitent and the controller sped away crying, ‘Horses for courses and devil take the hindmost.’

  ‘Well,’ chorused the retainers, making off in hot pursuit. ‘See to it. See to it.’

  Byron Wheeler-Vegan watched as they dwindled into the distance. ‘I’ll see to it all right,’ he said. ‘You just see if I don’t.’

  There is an old theatrical maxim to the effect that overnight success generally takes about twenty years of hard work. There is also an article in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not entitled ‘The Murder at Midnight’. This states, logically enough, that should one man see a murder take place at midnight and inform four people of it during the next four minutes, and should each of these four people tell four new people during the next four minutes and so on and so forth, the entire population of the world would know about it by morning. As to whether this could really work and as to how confused the original message would have become, is anyone’s guess. But it seems feasible, doesn’t it?

  Elvis switched on the TV. Then he fell backwards over a rather tasteful leopard-skin sofa with a cry of horror which awoke the slumbering sprout from his vegetative catnap.

  ‘Hoopla. Careful chief. Oh no!’ Barry gazed through Presley’s eyes at the figure on the TV screen. It was Wayne L. Wormwood. Antichrist and all-round bad egg.

  ‘Mr Wormwood,’ said a comely female talking head.

  ‘Wayne,’ said the stinker. ‘Call me Wayne.’

  ‘Wayne. Yours is the name upon everybody’s lips this morning.’

  ‘Why thank you.’

  ‘MTWTV Murdoch TransWorld Television has had the phonelines jammed since early morning. Everyone seems to know your name and they all want to know more about you.’

  ‘How?’ Elvis asked.

  ‘You ever hear about “The Murder at Midnight”, chief?’

  ‘Hush up Barry.’

  ‘I guess I just made a little speech and it touched the hearts and minds of the good people of this great country of ours,’ said Wayne L. Wormwood.

  ‘Vom-it!’

  ‘Barry. Hush up.’

  ‘But no-one seems to know anything about you, Mr Wormwood.’

  ‘Wayne, call me Wayne.’

  ‘Wayne. This wouldn’t just be some kind of media stunt? Are you trying to sell us something, Mr Wormwood?’

  ‘You have my word as a fellow American.’ Wormwood placed his hand over the area where his heart, had he possessed one, which he didn’t, the rotter, should have been. ‘I swear to you I am selling nothing. What I have I am giving away. And I have a lot to give.’

  ‘I understand that several channels have been bidding to broadcast the speech you intend to make tonight. Is that so?’

  ‘So I understand. However, I have accepted the offer to appear right here on this station. Without charge, naturally.’

  The female talking head refilled the TV screen. ‘So there you have it. Or do you? Wayne L. Wormwood. Who is he? What does he have to say? Find out here tonight. Live at eight on this station only. MTWTV. The station that cares about America.’ Elvis thumbed the remote control. The screen blanked.

  ‘I’m gobsmacked,’ said Elvis. ‘That is impossible.’

  ‘We saw it with your own eyes.’

  ‘Shoot. If I went down there right now and told them who I am, they wouldn’t give me prime time.’

  ‘The National Enquirer would run the story.’

  ‘Hell, Barry. The Enquirer got me living in a bus on the moon with some guy called Lord Lucan. I gotta do me some thinking.’

  ‘Chief. You gotta strap on your piece and blow that sucker away before all of this gets out of hand.’

  ‘Yeah. I guess. Say listen. Have we got shares in MTWTV?’

  ‘You got shares in just about everything, chief.’

  ‘Uh-hu.’ A certain look of enlightenment, which readers of episodes past will instantly recognize, appeared on the ever-youthful face of Elvis Aron Presley. ‘I got me a plan,’ said he.

  ‘I’ve got a plan,’ said Rex Mundi. He and Jack were enjoying a breakfast of stolen milk and raw eggs, although enjoying was perhaps not the word.

  Jack swallowed milk and leaned back amongst the bushes where they had taken hiding. ‘Why me?’ he asked the sky.

  ‘Predestination is my guess,’ Rex replied. ‘Our paths did not cross through sheer chance. There is a guiding force at work here. Believe me. I know these things.’

  ‘Then you know more than me.’ Jack was struggling to persuade his throat that a raw egg really was nourishing.


  ‘Considerably more, Jack. But don’t ask me to enlarge.’

  ‘You feel like telling me your plan, or would you prefer it to be a surprise?’ Jack was working up a really healthy dislike for Rex Mundi.

  ‘It has to be all in here. Somewhere.’ Rex took out the K-squared carbon from his jacket pocket.

  ‘Is that my . . . you stole my . . .’

  ‘Your transposition, yes. We didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands, did we?’

  ‘But they body-searched us. Erghh. You didn’t stick it up your b-—?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Rex reproachfully. ‘Sleight of hand. My Uncle Tony taught me.’ Rex flipped the disc into the air. Caught it. Opened his hand. And there it was gone.

  ‘Very clever. So what do you propose to do with it?’

  ‘Run it.’

  ‘But only I know the entry codes.’ Jack made a smug face.

  ‘I am well aware of that. Do you think I would drag you all over the place if you didn’t?’

  ‘Well. Thanks very much.’

  ‘Let me put it this way. Whatever this contains it is pretty important to someone. The Dean wanted it protected from the hacker. He brought in restricted military equipment to do so. But the hacker still got in. Used it to formulate some kind of spell which brought me back into the past. Does this make sense so far?’

  ‘Some,’ said Jack doubtfully.

  ‘Now you said that the hacker scanned the books at an impossible speed. What does this suggest to you?’

  Jack thought hard. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Another computer.’

  ‘Exactly. Programmed to seek out the words and phrases to put this incantation together. If we can find the mind behind this program we can answer a lot of questions.’

  ‘But how are we going to do that?’

  ‘Run your disc, Jack, and hack your hacker.’

  ‘Very good in theory. But somewhat dangerous in practice. The military have computers, Rex, they have Bio-tech computers. If we run the program on an open band to attract the hacker they will home right in on us.’