The Deadly 7

by Garth Jennings

  * * *

  The heat that greeted them on the other side of the doors was similar to that of Nosh’s belly just before incineration time. Rio was insanely hot and bright enough to make Nelson squint even through Donna Gatsky’s woman-of-mystery sunglasses. The driver opened the back door to a long, black limousine.

  “Big car!” shouted Nosh.

  “Oh, now this mode of transport is very me,” said Hoot.

  “Shut up and get in!” shouted Stan, and the monsters ran ahead of Nelson, who had stalled on purpose to let them in first. The driver had been too busy answering a text message from his boss to notice his car rocking as seven monsters climbed aboard.

  Nelson did not like any of this. He didn’t want to be Donna Gatsky anymore. He didn’t want to get in a car with someone he didn’t know. He just wanted to find his sister and go right back home again.

  He would have stood there debating his next move for longer had he not turned around. One simple twist of his neck was all it took to change his fate, for it just so happened that Brian had been looking out the window at the same moment, and his big, gluey eyes noticed an oddly small lady in a suit quickly look away. That was all it took. He might have been disguised as a woman in dark glasses, but that quick, frightened little turn of Nelson’s head was the giveaway. Brian’s fingers opened, the name card fell to the floor, and he ran toward the exit doors, shoving people and luggage trolleys out of his way.

  * * *

  Nelson dived into the limo and the driver raised his eyebrows in surprise before closing the door. The man had never seen anyone so keen to get in his car before.

  The passenger area of the limousine Nelson was now lying on the floor of was big enough to have two large leather sofas facing each other, drinks cabinets down either side, a TV and DVD player, and the velvet ceiling was covered in little white lights like stars. All of this ludicrous luxury was hidden by the seven monsters clambering over each other for the best seat.

  “Dis a big car, Nelly-son!” cried Nosh, who had already licked the armrest and decided that when no one was looking, he would definitely be eating it.

  Nelson flipped over and looked out the tinted window to see the strange tall man with the bulgy white eyes running after the limo as it pulled away from the curb.

  “That man! Look!” shouted Nelson, and they all turned to look out the rear window just in time to see Brian reaching out with his huge sausage fingers to grab the car.

  “Ugly man!” shouted Nosh.

  “I don’t know who he is, but he was after me. He had a card with my name on it and…” Nelson trailed off because the man had given up chasing the car and was now standing in the middle of the road just staring at it, traffic screeching to a halt behind him to avoid running him over.

  There was a loud buzzing noise, and Nelson turned to see the tinted partition that separated him from the driver lowering.

  “Hello. My name is Jesus,” croaked the man.

  * * *

  I should like to remind you that people in Brazil speak Portuguese. It’s a lovely language, and though they use the same alphabet as we do, their words often produce sounds we rarely make with the English language. The reason I mention this is because when you see the name “Jesus” (which is as common a name in Brazil as John is in England) pop up you just have to say it like this, “Hay-zoose.”

  * * *

  Jesus was huge. He had been a world-champion kickboxer until three years ago, when an opponent kicked him in the throat and he had all but lost his voice for good. His massive body was topped by a completely bald head, a broken nose, and two pairs of glasses (his driving glasses and, directly on top of them, his extra-large sunglasses). Jesus was now a driver for a major Hollywood studio, and it was his job to deliver Donna Gatsky straight to the movie set where the entire cast and crew were waiting for her to come and tell them off for not doing things as she wanted them done. Little did Jesus know that not only were his passengers actually a boy called Nelson Green and seven monsters, but that he would not be going anywhere near the film set today.

  THE EMPTY HEAD

  “Can you just stop mucking about with everything, please? We have to get out of this car,” Nelson hissed to his monsters, who were too busy having a blast to listen. Most of them were sticking their heads out the window or the sunroof and howling at the hot world zooming by. This was clearly a lot of fun, especially after that plane ride. Miser was busy stealing everything he could get his tentacles on from the minibar—Nelson noticed that his body was now covered in various-sized lumps and bumps. He was clearly hoarding an awful lot of stolen goods in those strange pockets in his skin.

  “Look, we have to find my sister, and we are stuck in a car going the wrong way right now!” said Nelson through gritted teeth. Miser pressed one of the buttons and lowered the glass partition behind Jesus’s head.

  Jesus hadn’t noticed the glass lowering, as he was listening to Kanye West at a very loud volume.

  “What are you doing?” whispered Nelson, and Miser flexed his tentacles eagerly, like a magician about to perform a trick.

  “A car and a driver—a fortuitous turn of events, wouldn’t you agree?” said Miser, but Nelson couldn’t see how being stuck in a car was anything other than rotten luck.

  “Spike, would you be so kind as to take control of our driver?” said Miser, and Spike sighed.

  “Oh, do I have to? It hurts,” said Spike.

  “I’ll do it, yer whiner,” snapped Stan, reaching over and plucking a cactus needle out of Spike’s arm. A jet of water instantly sprang from the hole it left behind.

  “Ow! See? That did really hurt,” said Spike, holding the sore spot on his arm as his eyes filled with tears.

  “Big baby,” muttered Stan, giving the cactus needle to Miser. By now the rest of the monsters had noticed that something was going on and stopped mucking about in order to watch.

  “What are you going to do with that?” said Nelson.

  “Behold,” said Miser, “we will now make Jesus as empty headed as Master Spike,” and with a whip-crack of his tentacle he stuck the cactus needle into the back of Jesus’s big, bald head.

  “No!” shouted Nelson, but it was too late: Jesus was already slowing to a stop in the middle of a freeway. But the man didn’t cry out; he simply slumped forward as if he was a toy whose batteries had run down.

  “Someone’s going to smash into us!” shouted Nelson as he looked out the back window and winced as a small van swerved suddenly to avoid them.

  “It’s all right for you lot. You can just sit there. I have to do all the work now,” moaned Spike, climbing through the partition and sitting next to Jesus.

  Outside, cars, trucks, and vans honked and screeched their brakes and shouted in anger and fear at this stupid driver who had parked his limo in the middle of the freeway. All Nelson could do was hold his breath, clench his teeth, and pray no one hit them.

  * * *

  It is worth pointing out that one of Spike’s biggest problems was that he was so full of envy that he always felt empty inside, and, apart from water, he was. However, he could transfer that emptiness into any living thing by sticking one of his needles into them. Once someone is empty, they are easily led. Nelson wished Spike had thought to mention this when they were at the airport, but never mind.

  * * *

  The monsters fell silent and watched as Spike turned to face Jesus.

  “Here we go then. Nod if you can hear me, Jesus,” said Spike, and Jesus nodded obediently.

  “Great. So, I am your new master and you will go where I want you to go,” said Spike, and again Jesus nodded.

  Spike turned to the others and said, “He’s ready.”

  * * *

  There was a loud bang and the limo lurched forward and over to the side of the freeway. Nelson smashed his face into the opposite armrest and felt the inside of his nose get that cloggy feeling that meant a nosebleed was on the way. They had been clipped by a car that was now p
ulling in ahead of them.

  The driver of the car jumped out, saw that his front bumper was hanging off, and stormed angrily toward the limo, which was still rolling to a stop among the grass and rocks.

  “Whatever you’re doing, do it quickly!” shouted Nelson, flipping his head back and pinching his nose to stop his nosebleed. Even with his head in this position, he could almost see steam coming out of the angry driver’s ears.

  “We must close our eyes…” hissed Miser, and the monsters all did as he said.

  “Nelly-son, shut eyes,” whispered Nosh, and Nelson pretended to close them, then opened them again, because he didn’t want to take his eyes off the furious driver approaching them.

  “We say her name,” said Miser, and on the count of three they all did as instructed.

  “Celeste.”

  Just as before, the monsters’ arms shot up and all pointed in one direction.

  “Ommmmmm,” hummed the monsters.

  “Jesus,” said Spike, “take us to Celeste.”

  Jesus opened his eyes very wide as if he’d just been stung by a bee, and he threw the car into gear and pressed his foot down on the accelerator.

  The angry driver leaped out of the limo’s path and shouted something that, even in a language Nelson didn’t understand, sounded very rude indeed.

  While the monsters remained frozen with their arms pointed toward the right-hand side of the car, Jesus turned the wheel to the right and began to drive at full speed in this direction. This would not have been so bad had there been a road there, but as there wasn’t he barged straight through a low wooden fence and continued across an empty field.

  Nelson was the only one of the group who was not in a trance. Instead he could only watch with every muscle in his body as tense as the strings of a tennis racket as they left the freeway far behind and bounced their way across the field toward a dirt track heading west.

  THE END OF THE ROAD

  Nelson’s nose had stopped bleeding and he stood up so that the top half of his body stuck out of the sunroof. The weather was incredible. Sticking your head out a car window in England never felt like this. It was like being blasted by a jumbo jet, but instead of gas fumes, the air was filled with wonderful new smells like smoky wood, wet soil, and jasmine. The track stretched ahead in a straight line for miles, and there were very few other cars. Most of the vehicles they passed were trucks carrying cattle or goats to market, and every now and then they would whistle past a dusty old cabin with no sign of life other than the occasional dog (at which Nosh licked his lips hungrily).

  It had taken Nelson a while to get used to being driven in a stretch limousine by a man who was being controlled telepathically by a cactus-shaped monster, perhaps not helped by the fact that the monster was acting on behalf of a bunch of other monsters who were able to track the whereabouts of his sister, but by the time they were an hour into the high-speed journey, and with his old clothes back on, free of lipstick and with hot, thrilling air filling his lungs, Nelson felt absolutely certain that every inch they traveled was an inch closer to Celeste.

  Driiing! Driiing!

  Nelson ducked back into the limo, where Uncle Pogo’s leg was ringing. He stared at it for a second, wondering if this was his uncle calling to see where on earth Nelson had gotten to.

  Driiing! Driiing!

  The monsters remained completely oblivious to the phone ringing. They were still humming away in the trancelike state that allowed them to find Celeste—their arms pointed in exactly the same direction and vibrating as if an electric current was passing through their very strange little bodies.

  “This is Pogo. I’m sorry I can’t take your call at the moment, but please leave a message after the beep and I’ll get right back to you … Beep!” said his uncle’s recorded voice, and then Nelson’s father spoke.

  “Pogo? It’s me. Stephen. Are you there? Can you pick up? Oh, no, of course you can’t literally pick up, because I’ve phoned your leg. Anyway, I tried you at the house but you weren’t there and I just wanted to know if Nelson was all right…”

  Of course it didn’t make sense to speak to his dad at this moment in time, but Nelson was so happy to hear his father it knocked sense right out of the equation. He hit the Answer button and caught his father just before he hung up.

  “Dad!”

  “Nelson?”

  “Yes! Yes, it’s me! Hello, Dad.”

  “Oh my goodness. What are you doing answering your uncle’s leg?”

  “Dad, you don’t have to worry, I’m completely fine. In fact, everything’s great,” said Nelson, and then suddenly realized how stupid that sounded. As far as his parents were concerned, his sister was missing, presumed dead—you can’t get much further from great than that.

  “Oh! Well, that’s good. Where are you? The ring sounded like a foreign tone,” said his father, in a voice that, even through the speaker in a plastic leg, was clearly the voice of a completely exhausted human being.

  Nelson hit the button to close the sunroof. “I’m watching TV. But I’m all right, Dad. Uncle Pogo is just, erm, taking a nap. Uh, how are you?” Nelson was now wishing he’d never answered the darn phone in the first place.

  “It’s not good news, I’m afraid…” said his father, and Nelson instinctively clutched at the pendant to avoid any sudden surge of unhappiness.

  “The police here … they’ve been very helpful … I mean, they’ve done everything they can…”

  Nelson opened his mouth to say something that would give his father the same certainty that he felt in his bones. Something that would fill his father’s heart with the same amount of hope that he was experiencing. But he would never get the chance, because at that very moment a truck slammed into the side of the limo with the force of a tank.

  Blam!

  The monsters snapped out of their trance as they were hurled against the side of the limo interior, and the call from Nelson’s father cut off the very second the plastic leg collided with Nosh’s fat face.

  Before anyone could even say “Ouch!” the truck hit the left side of the limo again, and everyone and everything inside was flung to the right. The fact that Jesus had such a firm grip on the wheel was the only thing that stopped the limo skidding off the track entirely.

  Spike shouted, “Speed up, Jesus!” Which Jesus did, allowing them to avoid the third collision the truck had been going for.

  “What’s happening?” yelled Nelson, but the monsters were in too much of a panic to make sense of anything. Nelson looked out the rear window, which was now cracked in a cobweb pattern, and saw the truck gaining on them. There was too much dust being kicked up to see who had it in for them, but I’m pretty sure you’ll have guessed who it is by now, even if Nelson hasn’t yet.

  “It’s going to hit us again!” shouted Nelson, and turned around to see Stan punch the entire sunroof into the air and then leap up through the hole.

  The angry monster landed on the roof of the limo and turned to face the approaching truck. “Let him catch up!” he yelled over the roar of wind and motor engines being pushed to their limit.

  “What are you gonna do?” called Nelson.

  “Whatever yer do, don’t stop!” bellowed Stan to Jesus, and with that he launched his fierce red body into the air. For a moment, his legs and arms whirled around as if he was running on air, before he slammed onto the hood of the truck. The metal beneath his hooves buckled like tinfoil and Stan took a moment to steady himself before pulling back a clenched fist that he clearly intended to go straight through the windshield. The driver had no idea there was anything standing in front of him, but whipped the steering wheel hard to the left to avoid a rock in the road, sending Stan flying.

  Stan managed to grab the side mirror on the passenger side, but this snapped off as easily as a chocolate biscuit after it had been dunked in a cup of tea, and it tumbled into the road, taking Stan with it.

  “Stan!” shouted Nelson, but the monster was already just a cloud of dust
in the distance.

  Just then the sun’s rays fell on the horrible face that belonged to Brian, and Nelson realized who was trying to kill them. What he didn’t know was why.

  * * *

  “Charge!” shouted Miser, and he led Crush and Hoot out of the sunroof.

  “Wait! Don’t be stupid!” cried Nelson, even though he knew no one was listening to him right now.

  * * *

  Now, before I tell you what happened next, I just thought I would point out that Nosh did try to help but became lodged in the sunroof like a cork in a bottle, and Spike couldn’t take part as he was making sure Jesus stayed on course, so a fight was out of the question. Puff assumed everyone else had things under control so he had taken this opportunity to have a nap.

  Let’s get back to the action.

  * * *

  Crush leaped through the air and hit the truck windshield like a gigantic bug. The glass shattered on impact and Crush tumbled onto the passenger seat.

  “Honk!”

  At that exact moment in time, Hoot flew back into view, carrying Miser in his claws. As he swooped over the truck, Hoot dropped Miser like a bomb onto the roof.

  Blam!

  Miser’s tentacles whipped out from either side of him and gripped the top of the driver’s cabin. Miser took as many steps backward as he could before pinging himself forward like a catapult, looping back and crashing through the windshield.

  “Honk! Honk!”

  Crush was really too small to be much use in a fight against a very large zombified man, but Miser was able to slap Brian silly with the whip-crack of his tentacles. Of course, Brian had no idea what was attacking him. He couldn’t see the monsters, but he could certainly feel the sharp stinging pain of their punches, kicks, and slaps. With one hand on the steering wheel, he beat the air around him with his other fist in the hope it would connect with whatever was attacking him. Poor old Crush got smacked right in the hooter and dropped into the footwell of the passenger seat. His usual honk had turned into a rather sad-sounding squeak, and his eyes were crossed and blinking randomly.