Dr Babbage eventually manages to pull himself up to a seating position. “It’s a temporary suspension,” he tells Stump. “Frank could be back at school next week, for all we know. Don’t you think you might be overreacting?”
“Overreacting?” snorts the colonel. “Zombie blood is in the hands of the British medical establishment! Can you imagine what they’ll make of it? A few loose tongues, and the press will get hold of it; we’ll have a national health scare on our hands. Overreacting? You are a bigger fool than I thought, Babbage.”
Stump comes close to me, and for a moment I think he’s going to hit me again.
“This leaves us with just one option, Wasdale. I am ordering you to carry out the mission now. This evening. You are to get your sad grey ass round to the Ramsbottom’s' and bring me those documents before dawn. This is your one and only chance. There won’t be a second. Understand?”
Dr Babbage hauls himself up onto the sofa and gives me a look that’s somewhere on the line between sympathy and encouragement. I nod. I don’t have much choice in the matter, do I?
“I will expect you to call, within a few hours," barks Stump. "So, what are you waiting for? Get to it!”
Like a pair of obedient but slightly flustered hounds, the two of us make our way into the hallway and open the front door, leaving Stump inside the house. Outside, the western horizon is darkening, turning the sky the colour of zombie blood.
Chapter 6 - The Mission
Ruby’s house, from the front, looks quite like ours, but without the conservatory. There’s a light on in the front room, and in one of the rooms upstairs. All the curtains are drawn.
Dr Babbage tries ringing the bell, but it must be broken. Sighing nervously, he bangs three times on the door with his knuckles. Within seconds, we hear movement on the other side of the door; a jangling of keys, and a deep phlegmy cough. The door opens, revealing a freshly decorated hallway and a tall, well-shaven man with short black hair. He looks at us like we might be selling something.
“Er, hello,” stutters Dr Babbage. “Mr Ramsbottom?”
“Lieutenant Ramsbottom, yes. And you are?”
“Charles Babbage. This is my grandson, Frank. He’s a friend of Ruby’s, from school.”
Lieutenant Ramsbottom eyes me up and down with suspicion. “Yes, she’s mentioned you."
I smile and grunt and, for some reason that I can’t describe, begin to rock back and forth from one foot to the other.
“She’s up in her room” says the Lieutenant, coughing once more. “Do you want me to get her?”
That sounds like a good idea, but Dr Babbage seems keen to pipe up with his rehearsed scenario:
“I was wondering, Lieutenant Ramsbottom, whether Frank can stay here for a few hours. I’ve been called to an emergency meeting, and I don’t like to leave him on his own. I can pick him up on the way back from my meeting. I know that it’s short notice, but...”
The lieutenant’s eyes narrow somewhat. “Your lip,” he says to Dr Babbage. "It's cut up. Is everything all right?"
Dr Babbage nods unconvincingly.
Lieutenant Ramsbottom shouts up the stairs for his daughter. After a few moments, Ruby appears at the top of the stairs, rubbing her eyes like she’s just woken up.
“Bernie?” she says, shuffling down the stairs, glaring at me like I’m a dreamy apparition. “Um, this is a surprise...” She looks up at her Dad. Lieutenant Ramsbottom explains the situation to her, in a clipped and formal tone, like he's giving her a briefing.
“Course,” says Ruby, turning to me. “I’ll show you my room, and you can feed Trevor if you like. Come on up...”
I wave to Dr Babbage and follow her up the stairs. Behind me I hear the front door close and at the top of the stairs I stop and listen as Dr Babbage’s footsteps fade into the night. I get that same tingling feeling of freedom in my belly that I had yesterday evening.
“Welcome to my kingdom,” says Ruby, pushing open the door to her bedroom with her foot. Trevor the puppy comes scampering out, and seems very pleased to see me, jumping up and down and scraping my jeans with his surprisingly sharp claws.
“Pick him up if you want,” says Ruby. “He quite likes it.” I do as she says, and Trevor licks my face and wriggles like a mad thing in my arms. Ruby laughs and invites me to sit on her bed.
“What do you think?” she asks, sweeping her arm around the room. She clearly wants my opinion on her posters. Some of them show books and films, and some are just photos of hairy men with electric guitars and bare chests. I give her the thumbs up.
“Oh!” she says, “let me get you a pen and paper.” She opens one of her drawers and pulls out some posh writing paper and a silver fountain pen. Trevor jumps out of my arms as I pick up the pad and pen. Why do you call him Trevor? I write. Strange name for a dog.
“It was going to be my baby brother’s name,” she says, throwing a chocolate treat into Trevor’s eager mouth. “My Dad thought it would me a nice touch, naming our dog after him.”
What happened to your baby brother?
“He never made it. Stillborn. My Mum died during his birth.”
Gulp. I don’t know quite what to write next.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s sad, but it happened ten years ago. Dad says we need to move on. Anyhow...” She changes both her expression and the subject. “What was in that letter you picked up from reception?”
I write down a summary of what was in the letter, and her jaw drops open. “But you haven’t done anything wrong, Bernie!" She shuffles along the bed, widening the gap between us. "Is it right, though, about your disease being a danger to others?”
I shake my head and write it’s not contagious.
She looks at me, suddenly wearing that same surly expression that she had when I was first introduced to her, and I don't like it. “What is it with you, Bernie? I feel like you’re not quite giving me the whole story.”
I’m not, am I? And I don’t feel good about it, either. All this lying and deceiving is starting to eat into me like rot. I need to change the subject...
Mind if I watch TV? I write, pointing to her little portable in the corner.
“OK, fair enough. Don’t think there’s much on, though.”
She finds a program about cooking with chicken, and I sit there staring at it but not concentrating. My mind is racing, desperately searching for a decent excuse to go roaming around her house searching for her father’s key cards. Then I have a brainwave.
I need to go to the toilet, I write. I might be some time, though. Is that OK?
“Sure. I understand. It’s across the landing, on the left. I’ll send for a search party if you’re not back by midnight.”
Fantastic! A minute later, I’m standing next to the toilet in the bathroom, thinking not peeing. Her father’s bedroom must be up here somewhere, mustn’t it? There’s a chance that I’ll find what I'm looking for, if I rummage around a bit. The problem is that the mere act of thinking about it is making me insanely nervous. What if Ruby hears me creeping around? An image of the Mannequin flickers into my mind, alongside Stump’s words: this is your one and only chance, there won’t be a second.
Well, here goes nothing...
As slowly and quietly as I can, I turn the lock and pull open the bathroom door. I take a quick peek out. At the end of the landing, Ruby’s door is slightly ajar. I can hear the muffled sounds of voices coming from her TV. I tread across the carpeted landing, lightly and slowly, like a man on the moon, and turn the handle to the first door on the left. It squeaks loudly, and I clench my teeth, waiting for Ruby to suddenly emerge from her room. She doesn’t. I shuffle into the room, gently pulling the door closed behind.
It’s dark inside, and I spend what feels like a geological age groping for the light switch. It was worth the effort, though. I'm pretty sure I’ve got the right room. On the bedside table is a man's watch and a dog-eared book with a picture of a soldier on the front. An army uniform, neatly ironed, hangs
from the wardrobe door. I creep around the bed and open the top drawer of the bedside table. Unbelievably, the draw is full of marbles. What are the chances of that? They roll around and bash into each other like marbles do, but in a vastly amplified fashion. I freeze, listening for footsteps on the landing. Again, nothing. I try to slow down my breathing - too fast and it'll make me vomit. Cautiously, I close the drawer of marbles and open the one beneath it. This time, the contents are more sensible. Some paper, a few rings and bookmarks, and - hey presto! - some coloured key cards and three bunches of keys, each as fat as my fist. To be on the safe side I take them all, and stuff them into my jeans pocket. It causes quite a bulge, but I could always explain that away.
Just as I'm easing the drawer closed, the bedroom door suddenly bangs open. Lieutenant Ramsbottom is standing there, with his daughter next to him. He's looking extremely angry, but Ruby looks sad and confused.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he snaps. Ruby's eyes now look wide with shock. It’s a good job that I’m not a talking boy, because if I was, I’d ask “Is this the bathroom?” which would be a particularly stupid thing to say. Instead, I sit down on the bed and hang my head, struggling desperately to find some way to wriggle out of this. None comes, and the weight of failure begins to press down on my thoughts. It’s all over, isn’t it? There’s no way I’ll complete the mission, no way that Ruby will remain my friend, no way that little Benny will be spared whatever misery Colonel Stump has in store for him. It’s all over.
My nerves get the better of me. I begin to feel quite nauseous, and the room begins to shimmer and spin. This is going to be one heck of a faint; I know that even before my head hits the duvet.
*
I’m not out for long, because my watch says 8.05 PM when I come to. What time did Dr Babbage drop me off? I think it was about seven, so that means I might still have an hour here before he comes to pick me up. I’m lying flat out in Lieutenant Ramsbottom’s bed. Someone has pulled the duvet over me, tucked me in. A glass of water and a pad and pen have appeared on the bedside table. I reach into my jeans pocket. The cards and the keys have gone. The drawers of the bedside table are closed. I'm guessing that I've been found out, big time.
I hear the floorboards creaking outside, and Ruby’s face appears in the crack of the door.
“Bernie?” She turns back towards the stairway. “Dad! Come up here! He's woken up." There's a slight panic in her voice. "Hurry up, Dad!”
Lieutenant Ramsbottom comes crashing in, and he still looks angry. This time, I suppose, it’s justified.
“I demand an explanation,” he says, looming above me with arms folded. “Who are you? What is wrong with you? And why were you trying to steal my work keys? Ruby has told me you can’t speak well, so you can write everything down. If I detect any hint of untruth in your statement, I’ll call the police. You have ten minutes.”
And then he’s gone, leaving me alone with his daughter. Her eyes look different, and it doesn’t take me long to realise why.
Why are you crying? I scribble at the top of the pad.
“Because I trusted you, and was looking forward to getting to know you,” she says through quivering lips. “I liked you, you idiot. And now I find out you’re nothing but a thief. A crook. That’s why I’m crying.”
I remember watching an old film on my TV back at the base. There was a character who was faced with a dilemma; whether to switch off his dying wife’s life support machine. She’d been in a coma for a year, and the doctors had told him there was little chance of recovery. It wasn’t the happiest film, and I can’t remember whether he switched her off or not, but I do remember the narrator’s gravelly voice: there are moments in life when we simply have to make a choice: to act and not look back, and to put our faith in the future...
This is one of those moments.
I drive my pen frantically across the page, scribbling and scratching, filling the whiteness with words. I leave nothing out. I write about my parents, my death, about the Mannequin bringing me back to life. I tell of my years at Camp Tiger and all the things they did to me there, about Colonel Stump, and Benny, and Dr Babbage. I write about my instructions to steal Lieutenant Ramsbottom’s cards and the documents in his safe. I ramble on about the awkward practicalities of being undead: the lack of pain, the magic juice, the creams, the ceaseless hunger, the sweating, the pooing, the vomiting. I put it all down, and by the time I’m finished I’ve filled ten pages. As I hand the pad to Ruby’s father, a strange calm comes over me, a calmness that can only come from knowing that you’ve done right, that you’ve done something that ultimately will be for the greater good.
Lieutenant Ramsbottom reads the whole thing twice, eyebrows raised all the while, and then hands it to Ruby. She reads it, and then puts it down and does something quite unexpected: she kneels in front of me on the bed and gives me a big hug.
“Do you take me for a fool?" asks Lieutenant Ramsbottom. "How much of this is actually true?”
“All of it,” I try to say, feeling a renewed confidence in my limited abilities.
“You love it?” queries the Lieutenant. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I pick up the pad again. All of it is true, Sir. I’m done with lies.
He looks at his daughter as if for approval, then back at me. He leans over, his face just inches from mine. I can smell his dinner on his breath. He's staring at me, unblinking, as if he's fishing for untruths in my eyes. He doesn't speak but is clearly weighing up things in his mind. Finally, he stands up and says, “OK, here’s what we’re going to do...”
Two hours later, I’m sitting in the back of Colonel Stump’s car, on the way to the barracks. Dr Babbage is in the passenger seat, Stump is driving. The Mannequin, by all accounts, is waiting back at camp Tiger for news that the mission has been a success. Stump certainly knows how to pile on the pressure. In my pocket, I have the key cards for Lieutenant Ramsbottom’s office, plus the two big bunches of keys that I found in his drawer.
I never thought for a moment it would come to this, but I’m now acting as a spy. Lieutenant Ramsbottom seemed unwilling to use that term directly, but Ruby seemed quite excited about it: You’re a double agent, Frank! How cool is that? Her father told me that what I’m doing is very risky, and that I was perfectly within my rights to refuse. When I agreed to do it, he made some calls to people he knows in various intelligence and security agencies. For a lieutenant, he seems to have associates in surprisingly high places. Once he'd finished his calls, he told me to go ahead with whatever Stump ordered me to do. My main concern was Stump's threats to little Benny, but the lieutenant reassured me that Stump and Dr Babbage would not find out about my treachery. Not until it was too late, anyway. He also told me to be very careful, that he and his colleagues could not guarantee my protection. I don't know quite what I'm getting myself into. I've seen loads of spy films, so I know that these sorts of arrangements have the habit of going wrong.
My thoughts are interrupted by Colonel Stump's annoying voice. “Why the hell are you driving so slowly, Babbage? We’re not out for a picnic.”
Dr Babbage pushes down on the throttle, and the hedgerows of the country roads start to flash by at a dangerous speed. I hope nothing’s coming the other way. Dying in a road accident is not something I want to do twice.
I haven’t seen Dr Babbage sweat so much since we passed through security at the airport. His shirt is soaked, and blood from his cut lip has congealed into a brown lump in his beard. I’ve seen him look better. Colonel Stump keeps swearing at the satellite navigation display, prodding it with his podgy finger to reprogram the coordinates. Eventually he gives up and smashes its screen with his knuckles.
“Damned hire vehicles,” he curses. “Pull off the road Babbage, we’ll walk from here.”
We stop in a stony lay-by and walk along a dark single-lane road for half a mile or so. Stump is carrying a torch but seems reluctant to switch it on.
“There it is,”
he says eventually, stopping and pointing through a gap in the scruffy hedgerow. At the other end of a downwards-sloping field there’s a dimly-lit fence, topped with three lines of barbed wire. Behind that are the low buildings of the barracks.
“The main gate is on the other side,” says Stump. “This would be the best place to get over. You still got the cards?”
I grunt and pat my jangling pocket.
“If it turns out they’re not the right ones, just smash your way in there, OK? You know how much I need those documents. Don’t get caught. Use the gun if necessary..."
He hands me the black rucksack he's been carrying and prompts me to reach into the front zip compartment. I find it straight away, a slim pistol with a rough handle. I take it out and glare at Colonel Stump. He's only ever let me fire blank rounds. Why is he trusting me with this?
He takes the pistol from me and puts it back in the bag. The he unzips the main compartment and pulls out something that looks like a thermos flask. Surely this is no time for a cup of tea.
He unravels some wires from the felt lining of the flask, together with a tiny plastic box.
"When you're ready to blow the safe, strap this whole device as near to the lock as you can get it. There's a roll of gaffer tape in the sack. Then plug the wire marked A into the socket marked A. The wire marked B .... even a dumbass like you can guess where that's got to go. Once the connection's made, flick the switch on the side. Then you've got twenty seconds before it goes off."
I start to panic. I've been thinking so much about getting the keys from Ruby's house that I've forgotten completely about having to blow the lock on the safe. Lieutenant Ramsbottom has no idea that I'm pretty much going to lay waste to his office. Stupid of me. I really am a dumbass, like the Colonel says.
Stump puts the rucksack onto my back and tightens the straps. "You are to get back here as soon as you can. If we're not here when you get back, then hide in the trees, lay low, until we arrive. Got that?”
I nod.
Frank Wasdale- First Mission Page 6
