by Paul A. Rice
‘Hoods up please, gentlemen!’ George said, waiting whilst Ken removed the glasses from his head, before helping him extract his previously unseen hood from the collar of his flight suit. Ken pulled the hood up and tightened it with the draw cord. The silken material of the cowl moulded perfectly to the outline of his skull.
Mike turned to him and placed his glasses on, Ken followed his lead, and once he had made some final adjustments to his attire, stood and waited, although what he was actually waiting for was anybody’s guess. He shot a worried glance at Mike, by the looks of things his friend was as calm as a commuter waiting for his daily bus. Mike’s unruffled posture helped Ken to dispel some of the insane thoughts that he was starting to have.
He still felt his heart trying to jump straight out of his chest, though. Mr Tiny tried to speak but Ken silenced him immediately. ‘Shut up, idiot!’ He had no time for fear right now. Taking a breath, he turned and looked back at Mike, who was now talking to him in a measured tone.
‘Point the zapper at your wagon and then push the small button, the Spears are going first, go ahead and zap it mate…’ Mike said, waggling his own zapper in the air.
Following his friend’s instructions, Ken pointed his little fob at the vehicle and then pushed the small button. He watched in fascination as the circling whirlpool of liquid energy appeared again, only this time wrapping itself around the Spear instead of him. The air filled with the sound of tearing water and the huge vehicle seemed almost to blink, just the once, and then it was gone. In a blaze of green light, the Spear had simply disappeared right in front of his eyes. Before Ken had time to say anything, Mike had pushed the button on his remote control and the process was repeated. Accompanied by the sound of a watery rip, the second vehicle shimmered in its whirlpool and flicked out of sight.
Mike moved into the centre of the room. ‘Come and stand next to me, big guy,’ he said, beckoning Ken over with a wave of the hand.
Like a sleepwalker, Ken did as he was asked and joined his friend in the middle of the Cavern. His stomach was churning and the pressure on his chest was only marginally less than the loud pounding in his temples. He heard a whining sound from above and looked up to see that the overhead spot lamps were now reeling downwards. There was a soft clicking sound as the huge lamps ignited, their intense beams illuminating the men below in a pool of brilliant green light. Ken was about to say something along the lines of: ‘Bye, George…’ but he didn’t actually get the chance to say anything in the end.
Without a flinch, George leaned forward and, with a small movement of his hand, zapped the two men. The green lights above them started to whine loudly and a weird thickening sensation filled the air. Ken heard the sound of water and felt the suction pulling him inwards, crushing his chest, he sensed that awful sliding feeling enter his head again, a liquid black dizziness that sent him freefalling into the darkness of unknown worlds.
Then he was gone, gone into the blackness, a blackness that was so dark, it was almost bright. The sensation hurt his eyes with its dazzling intensity. So deep and so black...his head began to hold its own private firework display. It felt as though someone was shining a black spotlight under his eyelids. He heard himself scream, only the once. Then, Ken heard, saw and felt no more. He was into the void, an empty, dreamless, black void.
24
Looking for Trouble
It was the noisy neighbours who disturbed him, they were shouting up at the window from the pavement outside the London apartment. ‘Ken, Kenny...come back. Hey you, come on, wake up!’ The clamouring racket was about as welcome as a gunshot in a church, he knew that it must be London, nowhere else was as noisy as that bloody place, but he was damned if he was able to remember how he’d ended up there. Ken caught a whiff of his wife’s fragrance – curled up in the blackness he was so comfortable, so warm and so very content.
He didn’t want to get up.
‘Who is making such a racket?’ he thought, reaching out for Jane and fumbling in the darkness for the feel of her soft touch. She wasn’t there and the bed was cold. Noisy bastard just wouldn’t let it go. Ken’s waking thoughts flared with anger. ‘Who the hell is shouting? Goddamned idiot, what the...It’s the middle of the bloody night!’ He tried to cover his head but the sound just wouldn’t go away.
The voice started to become clearer. ‘Hey you...numb nuts, wake up, come on, we have a job to do, let’s go, shake a leg!’
The unceasing noise gave Ken the energy to open his sticky eyelids. He rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Jane?’ He fumbled for her again. She still wasn’t there, and instead it was the sound of Mike’s voice that yanked him into the present.
‘No, I ain’t Jane, and even if I were I wouldn’t get into bed with an ugly bastard like you! Now...come on, move your arse!’
It was right about then that reality decided to slap Ken right in the face. Struggling against the shocking arrival of truth, he groaned and then gingerly raised himself into the sitting position. ‘What time is it?’ he said, and peered at his watch. It told him nothing and he wasn’t able to focus his eyes on its crystal face.
Mike laughed softly. ‘God only knows, it might be the middle of next week for all I know – are you feeling okay?’ he asked, grinning down at his unhappy partner.
Ken realised the glasses were still on and was more than happy to hide behind their disguise for a while. He felt sure that his eyes were as big as green moons and didn’t quite face any further abuse from Mike, not just yet. With a sigh, he answered: ‘I feel like death warmed-up, I’m gagging for a drink and I think that I might need a couple of those headache pills, too,’ he said, getting to his feet and looking around. The place was familiar and he instantly recognised the curved ceilings with their missing plaster.
‘Great, we’re in the damn Funny House – that’s just bloody marvellous, it’s so wonderful to be home!’ he said, with a grimace.
His dry sarcasm tickled Mike. ‘Bloody hell, Ken,’ he said. ‘You’re a right miserable git in the morning!’ He laughed and grabbed Ken’s upper arm, steering him toward the entranceway and saying: ‘Right then, one each, eh?’
Mike pointed to the floor, where, to his sheer amazement, Ken saw the Spears parked side-by-side. They were in the same position as they had been when he’d last seen them, only this time they were in miniature.
He panicked. ‘Now what the hell do we do? We can hardly get in them like that, can we?’ he asked, hesitantly.
Mike looked at him in despair, ‘Where would you be without me, you dummy? All we do is pick them up, take them outside and then zap ‘em...It’s as easy as pie, me old China!’ He bent down and hefted one of the palm-sized vehicles into his hand. Then he said, ‘Mine was the one on the left, I do recall…’
With a long trail of laugher flowing over his broad shoulders, Mike walked towards the door, shouting out as he went. ‘Close your mouth, Ken, you never know where these flies may have been, especially around here!’
Sliding the hood off his head, Ken did exactly that. Slamming his gaping mouth shut, he bent down and retrieved his Spear. It was a solid weight in his hand, more solid then the Dinky toys he had played with as a kid, but still a toy though, surely? Mind whirling, he followed his friend out into the bright light of day to find him standing on the road with the vehicle on the ground in front of him.
Without a word, Mike pushed the button. Once again the whirlpool arrived to do its magic. In two seconds, the Spear had ripped its way back into their normality, with a slight hiss it settled upon its enormous haunches in front of them. Ken didn’t wait to be told, after all, he was a fast learner, or so George had told him. Without further delay, he pushed the button on his own zapper. Seconds later he was left staring in awe at both vehicles that now rested on the road before him. As Ken stood gawping at the vehicles, he was almost sure that he heard the buzz of flies – yes, a whole swarm of them, and they were most likely heading straight towards the inviting chasm of his open m
outh.
‘Pretty damn impressive, if you were to ask me…’ Mike’s amazed tone helped to bring Ken back into reality. Still grinning, Mike took the glasses off his face. ‘We don’t need these yet, nor the suits,’ he said.
They slipped off the garments, rolled them into balls, and then stashed the suits and glasses in the rear of the Spears. Once changed, they pulled their rifles out of the bags, chambered a round and left the selectors on single shot. Pistols were habitually placed into their snap holsters, and then clipped into waistbands. Finally, Ken dragged out the holdall containing the sniper rifle and laid it across his passenger seat with the zips of the bag left undone. In typical fashion, their years of training had automatically taken over, and even whilst in the midst of some cranium-exploding reality, the two of them casually carried out the tasks that needed doing without a second thought.
Shutting the tailgate on his Spear, Mike paused, and then looked down at his rifle. ‘Do you reckon we need to wear any body armour?’ he asked.
His friend had a very simple answer to that question. ‘I wonder if George will mind,’ Ken asked, pointing his rifle at the side window of Mike’s Spear.
Mike looked at him with a grin, but the expression soon left his face when he saw the evil glint in Ken’s eye. He only had time to say: ‘Shoot your own bloody Spear, you frigging lunatic!’ before Ken fired three rounds in quick succession at the thick glass of the passenger window.
The muzzle-blast was deafening as it crashed into the warm, morning air.
Mike jumped back in a reflex action to the expected spray of broken glass, or possible ricochet. Either way, he needn’t have bothered. All three bullets entered the glass very much like a flat pebble, having been thrown high into the air, would enter the calm waters of a village pond. As the stone slices into the silent surface of the pond, all that can be heard is a soft, bubbling, bloop noise. With a slight shimmer on the surface of the glass, the undamaged bullet-heads popped back out and landed on the ground below. The little thuds that the lumps of lead made as they landed, seemed to be a hundred times louder than the noise of the shots.
Ken shook his head and shrugged, saying: ‘I guess we can bin the body-armour then, unless we have to go on foot…’
Mike glared at him. ‘You’re a crazy old bastard!’ he exclaimed. ‘What would we have done if the rounds had shattered the window and gone straight through, eh, what then, smart arse?’
Ken glanced at him. ‘Packed all of the stuff into my Spear, set fire to yours, and then set a course for home,’ he growled. ‘Fuck Red, fuck the Light Maker, and most of all – fuck George!’ The glint in his eyes made sure that Mike knew he wasn’t joking.
‘Jesus Christ, Kenny! Am I glad that you’re on my side, or what? You’re a frigging lunatic!’ Mike said, incredulously. Then, returning to their current situation, the reality, he grinned at Ken and said, ‘Right, let’s try and find out where Red and his boys are, shall we?’ He jumped into the driver’s side of his Spear and Ken slid into the passenger seat.
Once the machine was started, Mike touched the screen and they saw that a small, white beacon had started shining right in the centre of its weird blue glow. It was away from all the other digital information and shone more brightly than the other symbols on display.
Mike said, ‘There he is – all we have to do is follow that little dot and it’ll take us straight to him. Then we can kick his arse, get the device and go home!’
It all sounded pretty simple to Ken, very simple apart from the last bit, the bit about going home...With those thoughts still fresh in his mind, he slid out of Mike’s vehicle and went to sit in his own chariot. Sure enough, as soon as the Spear started, the white circle appeared on its screen. Ken gunned the engine and waited for the beast to warm up. Flicking through his controls, he soon located the symbol that showed where Red was, he double clicked the white dot so that it shone permanently on his display.
He guessed that Red and his motley crew were in the region of the Kajaki dam; it looked about right – westerly in direction and the best part of a four-hour drive away. It was mainly the amount of water being shown on his display that led Ken to the conclusion; he stared at the display for a while, letting the thoughts run through his head as he did so.
‘That must be the sign of a large dam,’ he thought, feeling for sure that he was right. ‘Hell, it doesn’t really matter as the Spears will just take us straight there anyway. It’s gonna be like some high-tech bloodhound, even if the roads are clear we shouldn’t need to navigate…’ He shook his head at the stupid thought. ‘Of course they’ll be clear, what is it that you’re expecting, rush-hour traffic jams?’
He knew there would still be plenty of debris to negotiate and that the condition of the roads would be an unknown factor until they went out there. They had been in a bad enough condition before all of this had started. Once before – in another life – he’d driven up there and the trip had taken two days of hard slog, all the bridges had been down and the roads were mostly impassable, and then there had been the Taliban. Ken sat there and remembered those days for a while, it had been a long time ago, he knew, but somehow it still felt as though it had been only yesterday.
He shook his head and turned his thoughts to more pressing matters.
He and Mike would simply have to wait and see what this particular trip brought them. There was the obvious problem of their quarry, the device may well be in some cave or another – that’s what George had said – but, what was to say there wasn’t going to be a stay-behind-party waiting for them. ‘Yes, a little ambush, just to set us back...because if Red knows that we’re the only two chasers, well, if he has any sense then he’ll probably come and find us first – that’s what I’d be doing!’ He let the options pass through his mind whilst he fiddled with the screen’s controls.
Ken wondered if Red actually did know they were coming, the guy seemed to be pretty smart, and after all, he’d managed to outwit George and his gang. Still, Ken knew that he and Mike had the Spears and he was also confident in his own abilities and in those of his friend, too. ‘Yeah, we can give a good account of ourselves if we have to, that’s for sure!’ he thought. He felt a lift in his spirits, mainly, he supposed, due to being back on terra firma, back doing what he had always done best. This space-age, other-worldly shit gave him the creeps.
‘Right then, are we ready, big guy?’ Mike’s words came crystal clear over the internal speaker in Ken’s Spear. ‘How do we get out of here?’
His friend’s voice was filled with energy and Ken knew that the journey was calling him, like some far off temptress beckoning Mike with her irresistible charm. ‘Come and save the Light Maker, Michael. Come and save the world, it’s your destiny…’ Ken pushed the thoughts away, looked at his screen and then, somewhat hesitantly, replied: ‘Yeah, let’s do it, I reckon we try the back gate, there was a lot of debris lying around last time I was here and we might have to use the Pusher quite a lot, but let’s give it a go anyway, shall we?’
The Pusher radiated a type of energy that, not unlike the opposite magnets he had felt in the picture, used some kind of unseen force to shove objects out of the way. They hadn’t tried it yet, but George had assured them that not many things would stand in their way. As he looked at his controls, trying to remember where the button for the Pusher was, Ken heard Mike’s voice leap into his cab once more.
‘Well, there ain’t any debris now – check it out, my man!’
Ken had been so preoccupied with the weapons, the Spear and all the other weird objects and happenings that he had not even looked around. Now, as he did so, he saw that the road upon which they sat was indeed clear of all obstacles. All the flotsam of the storm was gone and everywhere he looked was covered in greenery: trees, grass, flowers and weeds, they were all flourishing. It was fantastic, and to his eyes this emaciated country had never looked so good. Ken was hardly able to wait and see what the outside world looked like.
‘Roger that!’
he said. ‘Christ, old George doesn’t mess about does he? We’ll try the main gate then, Okay?’ Ken gunned the engine, laughing as he heard Mike’s sarcastic reply.
‘Yeah, lead on, cowboy!’ Then, and with a final ‘Yeehaaaw!’ from the Australian, the two men rolled out of ‘Dodge City’, Kandahar.
Driving one of the Spears was a complete joy, it was like having a tank that rode upon air, even the biggest bumps were suppressed and the feeling of power the engine gave was immense. It was with some difficulty that they tried to restrain themselves and their right boots. The field of view through the windshield was excellent and it was amazing how quickly they became used to the heads up display – the flashing digits instantly feeding any information the driver, or Rider, wished for. Mike’s words rang true, and it wasn’t long before Ken merely had to think of something and there it would be, glowing blue information at the touch of a thought.
They hurtled through the main gate and out into the world, or what was left of it. The roads toward the city were littered with every imaginable type of debris left over from the storm. ‘George’s housekeeper didn’t do such a good job after all, huh?’ Mike’s dry tones bought a wry smile to Ken’s face as he twisted and turned the Spear through the melee in front of his vehicle.
The going was slow, slower than even he had imagined. Twice he had to use the Pusher button to barge his way through. The unseen force that the device dispensed shoved the jack-knifed petrol tanker to one side. With a screech of protesting tyres, the large obstacle slid awkwardly out of Ken’s way. It was as though some gigantic invisible winch had been attached to the truck and the tanker almost seemed to drag itself out of their path.
The second time he used the Pusher was against a pile of ancient yellow Toyota taxis. They were piled high between the buildings and their bizarre resting place was blocking the street. It was as though they had been washed there upon the bow of some enormous wave. The Pusher made short work of their defiant blockade, sending the taxis tumbling downward with a crash before gently flipping the rusty cars to one side in an effortless display of invisible power. Ken had the distinct impression that the Pusher was yawning; he almost heard its thoughts. ‘Perhaps you should give me something that’s a bit of a challenge, yes?’ The way it so easily dispensed with the blockades was impressive, to say the least.
