by Heide Goody
“Don’t,” she said uselessly.
The Venislarn hoisted himself over the first row of houses with ease. Morag could not be sure in the streetlights’ weak illumination but the god-creature appeared to be growing. He was waking but he had not fully risen. Zildrohar-Cqulu slipped over the roofs into the next street.
Morag ran after him.
Rod had been in some tight spaces before, both metaphorically and literally. The ancient tunnels beneath the Syrian desert sprang immediately to mind. But, right now, the dented and overturned cab of the Class 66 locomotive held a special place in his top ten list. It was one of those situations in which being a big man really wasn’t an advantage.
He groaned and gasped as he tried to turn himself around and face the door. He couldn’t find room to bend his elbows so he could bring his hands around, and his left foot appeared to be wedged in something. And, not terrible in itself but adding a sprinkling of irritation to the situation, his phone was ringing and he couldn’t reach it.
He grunted, twisted and suddenly was able to push himself upward into a larger space. He yanked his foot free and booted violently at the upside down cab door. It gave on the fifth kick and he pulled himself forward and out onto the rubble-strewn remains of the platform.
Vivian was hurrying along the platform. He waved wearily at her.
“Where is it?” he said.
“Zildrohar-Cqulu was heading north. I think I saw Morag chasing after it.”
“Okay,” he said and then held up a finger. “Excuse me.” He answered his phone.
“It was Ingrid,” said Nina.
“What?”
“Dr Ingrid. She did it. Where are you?”
Rod wiped a line of blood from his forehead. “Bournville. Near the chocolate factory. Zelda-Val Doonican is out. He broke free of the train as I tried to drive it out of town.”
“I’ve stolen a bus,” said Nina.
“It’s not a competition,” he said.
“I’m coming to you.”
“Why have you stolen a bus?”
“You know, YOLO. Um, question. How tall is a double-decker?”
“Twenty feet. I don’t know.”
“And the tunnels on the A38. How tall?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Never mind. I’m about to find out.” She ended the call.
“What’s the plan, Mrs Grey?” Rod knew how to await orders.
Vivian looked at him and then at the general direction Zildrohar-Cqulu had left in.
“We declare an emergency. A chemical leak. We need these homes evacuated.”
Rod nodded and discovered that nodding hurt.
“And we follow its trail,” she said.
Morag dashed across a road, through the gap in an iron railing fence made by the passage of a god and into a well-lit car park at the rear of a huge square building that might have been a factory or might have been a college of the sort built in the decades that architecture forgot. Across the way, the elephantine Venislarn stood with its front claws on a white transit van, chewing on the unfortunate men who had been in it. A security guard whose commitment to his job was woefully misplaced ran towards the Venislarn, waving his torch about as though that would somehow make a difference.
Zildrohar-Cqulu issued a mighty chordal roar and the guard immediately fell to his knees and began to bash at his own skull with the torch. On the third strike, the torch went out and she did not see what became of him.
Beyond Zildrohar-Cqulu and the end of the car park stood a church and an apartment block. The noise the creature made was going to draw attention and the sanity-robbing power of his cry would soon have people killing themselves or others. Getting the god-monster away from the general populace and out of sight seemed the best plan.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Hey, Yo-Zildrohar!”
The Venislarn swung its spiked head about and regarded her with opalescent eyes. Morag instantly saw – instantly felt – that she was utterly beneath him. She was not merely insignificant; on a molecular level, an atomic level, she belonged to the order of things that were not worth paying attention to. Its head swung away and it began to head out of the car park.
“Hey!” she screamed. “Hey, per muda khi ummaq! Don’t you turn your back on me!”
It was enough. Zildrohar-Cqulu turned, swatted the savaged transit van aside and roared. Morag felt his hatred, his real and physical hatred, stab into her. She summoned what Venislarn prayers she could bring to mind and recited them until the psychic assault lessened.
Zildrohar-Cqulu was stalking rapidly towards her.
Morag ran off to the side, aiming for an open freight service door in the square building. The Venislarn god followed, which was simultaneously what Morag wanted and a very bad thing indeed. Fear gave her speed but she was no match for the enormous alien. If she got to the service bay ahead of Zildrohar-Cqulu it would be only just, and then he would have her.
Nina ploughed a path through suburban Selly Oak, along a high street crowded with cars and the local student pub-goers. She kept one foot on the accelerator, one hand on the wheel, one eye on the road and, at the same time, flicked through the phone she had taken from Dr Ingrid Spence.
The woman had appalling musical taste.
Celine Dion, Luther Vandross, something called Enya and the Bee Gees filled her phone’s music library.
“What the hell’s a Bee Gee?” she said and then suddenly had to swerve to avoid a young woman in the road.
The bus bounced off a parked car, cut down a Belisha beacon at a zebra crossing and wobbled back into the centre of the road. Blue emergency lights reflected inside the bus from somewhere behind. Nina would have looked in her wing mirrors but she had lost both of them some miles back.
She continued to flick through Ingrid''s phone until she found the music track she was looking for.
The freight loading bay in the rear of the factory was three feet off the ground to make it level with a parked trailer. Morag leapt up and dived through the door with a rare show of athleticism. Zildrohar-Cqulu bellowed behind her. A man in a purple boiler suit inside the entrance was trying to kill himself for his new god. However, he was attempting to do this by bashing himself over the head with a large box of chocolates and she imagined it would take him a long time to do any significant damage. Morag, selfishly if pragmatically focussed on her own safety for now, ran on.
There were stacked pallets loaded with cling film-wrapped boxes of chocolate throughout the warehouse space and, ahead, crisp strip lighting indicated the direction of the factory proper.
Zildrohar-Cqulu barrelled through the doorway, scooped up the chocolate-box-basher in his jaws and, claws grasping for purchase on the smooth concrete floor, galloped on in pursuit of Morag.
Morag had read once that the best way to escape from a charging crocodile (a creature which, despite appearances, could run faster than a human being) was to run in zig-zags and thus force the pursuer to make awkward turns for which it was simply not built. Though the horror on her tail was no crocodile – it was five times the length of any crocodile she had seen (and growing!) – Morag put her hope in dodging and weaving to keep Zildrohar-Cqulu always off balance and slightly out of reach.
Morag ran onto the factory floor – it was night and the machines were silent and the place deserted – and ducked down a left turn between stacks of empty packing cases and rows of machines that wrapped and boxed chocolate eggs. Zildrohar-Cqulu skidded round to follow her, sending egg boxes flying.
Morag cut right, under rollers of printed tin foil and alongside a series of box-building robots. Zildrohar-Cqulu thrashed through the sheets of tin foil and barged aside machines that had been bolted to the floor.
Morag lunged left between conveyor belts that were empty and still. She risked a glance back and saw that she had actually put some distance between her and the Venislarn. And that was the hell of her situation: she had to stay ahead of him but keep him focussed solely on her until
whatever help was coming came.
“Yo-Zildrohar! Pasp phe! Pasp phe!”
She powered through a set of double doors and up a flight of stairs.
The loading bay door was part demolished. There were ruined shelves, scattered chocolates and blood smears around.
“I’m guessing he’s here,” said Rod.
Vivian would normally have chided a colleague for such a redundant and obvious statement, but with ripped and dirtied clothes and a cut drying on his forehead, Rod was possibly mildly concussed and Vivian did not believe in mocking the afflicted.
She crouched to examine the claw marks in the floor.
“He is getting bigger,” she said. “As he grows, he will reach out mentally and draw in servants.”
“Servants,” said Rod.
“Locals. He is the tyrant of dreams and the speaker of men’s souls,” said Vivian. “He will draw people like flies to a bug-zapper.”
“And do what with them?” he asked, pointing to the eyeless and legless man.
Vivian nodded. “His mind is unknowable.”
“I don’t like him,” said Rod simply.
“We have no means to contain him,” said Vivian. “We must simply do our best to find and… distract him and hope the powers that be can throw a cordon around this.”
“Right, I’ll get after him. There must be CCTV in this place.”
“I will find the security office,” she said.
Rod nodded tersely and headed off.
Vivian walked over to a fire alarm box on the wall and smashed the glass. With luck, that would drive any night staff from the building. She then took a minute to consider where the administrative and security offices would be if the factory had been laid out by a sensible person such as herself. She set off purposefully and, two minutes later, opened the door to a room of surveillance screens, public address systems and electronic door controls. Vivian sat down and calmly surveyed the closed circuit television footage.
She saw Morag. She saw Rod. She saw Zildrohar-Cqulu. She flicked an intercom switch.
“Rod. Miss Murray is in the development kitchens on the first floor.” Vivian saw both Rod and Morag look up at her voice. “It is part of the chocolate experience, Rod,” she said and then added, “Miss Murray, you might want to find somewhere to hide. I believe your only exit is blocked.”
Morag could have kicked herself. Vivian was right.
A good portion of the Cadbury chocolate factory was given over to an interactive chocolate experience for the public. She had run through a Mayan village, a Victorian high street, an unlit cinema, and had now come to a large room that was some PR person’s dream of what a chocolate factory should look like. Kitchen stations were set around for the rolling, moulding and sculpting of milk chocolate. Open vats of thick, liquid chocolate sat beside tasting stations and product demonstrations. And it was indeed a dead end.
Morag slipped between a vat and a set of storage cupboards a fraction of a second before the doors exploded open and Zildrohar-Cqulu burst in. Yes, he had definitely grown. He could barely fit through the double doors now and pulverised plaster rained off his back as he forced his way in.
With nowhere to go, Morag hunkered down, put her hands uselessly over her head, closed her eyes and tried to psychically project the idea that she wasn’t there at all.
The risen Venislarn howled. The sound rattled the hanging kitchen equipment and set the windows humming in sympathy. Morag pictured the people outside, the crowds of curious drawn by the chaos, and what that sound would do to their minds if they got close enough.
Zildrohar-Cqulu padded across the room. It took Morag a second or two to work out what the strange and new rattling noise was. It was the Venislarn’s breath. It was trying to sniff her out. The god edged closer.
“Let me try something,” said Vivian over the PA.
A moment later there was light and sound. TV screens around the room came on, showing television adverts and images of chocolatiers at work — providing a narration to the tasks that ought to be going on at the various stations. Around Morag, machines came to life. Vats hummed, paddles stirred and conveyor belts rolled.
Zildrohar-Cqulu reared back and lashed out, smashing a workstation against a wall, sending wrapped chocolate bars flying. He stood upright, taller than a house, and ripped clusters of TV screens from the walls. The diversion had worked. It had him angry but it had distracted him and, if Morag was to escape, now was the moment.
She bolted and ran past the giant creature towards the door. She was not fast enough. Zildrohar-Cqulu turned, claws outstretched. Bowls of liquid chocolate, machinery and belts were swept up and round in a great tide that caught up with Morag and sent her tumbling. Something heavy rolled painfully over her leg and then a hot mass of sticky melted chocolate crashed over her. Panting, she skidded, crawled and threw herself into a corner. Wide-eyed and injured, she pressed herself up against the wall, grabbed a pipe for support and waited for Zildrohar-Cqulu to finish her off.
Chocolate dribbled down her face. The liquid, hot but not scalding, coated her entirely. Where her legs lay in the lake of chocolate that now covered the floor, she could feel the gloopy substance pulling on her skin, almost attempting to draw her down into the brown goo.
Zildrohar-Cqulu stood less than ten feet from her, chocolate spattered across his claws and torso, like a toddler let loose with cake decorating. He swung his head back and forth, sniffing noisily. His face barbs quivered. Morag looked directly into those irisless eyes and that restless inhuman mouth. He could simply angle his head forward and snatch her up.
And yet he didn’t. Morag wondered insanely if he was averse to chocolate-coated food.
Zildrohar-Cqulu roared. Unholy phlegm spattered Morag.
“Heat vision perhaps,” said Vivian from the PA. “Zildrohar-Cqulu, he of the flame-vision. You currently look and smell like chocolate.”
Morag stayed perfectly still, happy to be one with the chocolate for the time being.
“We will work out what to do with you before you set completely. Rod should be with you at any moment.”
And he was. Rod appeared in the doorway, gun in one hand, phone in the other. Zildrohar-Cqulu’s head whipped round. Rod’s face ran through a whole gamut of emotions — surprise, fear, resolve – in a split second.
“This way, lad!” he called and, with a wave of his arm, ran off again. Zildrohar-Cqulu obliged, sending a spray of chocolate in his wake. The monster wriggled through the doorway and was gone.
Morag sat there for a moment and then attempted to get up. “Oh, God. I’m setting.” With a grunt, she pulled an arm free. Several pounds of molten chocolate came with it, leaving a fat hollow in the chocolate swamp.
Rod was a fit man but definitely built for strength not speed. He had to put in considerable effort to stay ahead of the pursuing monster. It was near impossible to maintain a phone conversation with Nina as he ran.
“What file?” he yelled.
“The Invertible Hymn of Sanq’hu,” she repeated.
“And what am I meant to do with it?”
“Oh, Jesus bhul!” swore Nina.
There was a sound of grinding metal that sent ear-splitting feedback down the phone.
Rod leapt over a bannister in the stairwell, then another, taking two flights in two bounds. Above, it sounded like Zildrohar-Cqulu was simply destroying the stairs as he came.
“There’s a police and fire brigade cordon around the factory. I just burst through it. Where are you?”
Rod bounced violently off a wall and dived headlong through a set of doors. “Warehouse F.”
“Right. Coming to you.”
“To me?”
Within the chocolate-encrusted folds of her clothing, Morag felt a buzz.
She peeled an inch-thick plaque of chocolate off her hands, levered open her nearly solid jacket and rescued her phone from the chocolatey reservoir of her pocket. She had received a direct message from Nina. There was a file at
tached. It read, INVERTIBLE HYMN (EDITED) – PLAY NOW.
Morag opened the file. There were perhaps droplets of drying chocolate in the phone’s speaker but the music file played. It was vaguely musical. It didn’t sound awful. It didn’t sound particularly tuneful either. It sounded like a series of chords played rapidly on an organ or a synthesiser, a sound pattern that didn’t follow any conventional melody or serve any purpose apart from checking every key on the keyboard worked. It was a non-tune, a backwards tune.
“Nina, you’re a bloody genius.” Morag hurried from the room.
The warehouse Rod had run into contained aisle after aisle of industrial shelving, laden with pallets of chocolate bars of all varieties, ready for shipping. Rod picked an aisle and ran. Behind him, he could hear masonry snap and crumble as the Venislarn titan blasted through the doorway and into the warehouse.
“Take a left,” said Vivian’s voice from a speaker, loud and echoing like the voice of a peevish God.
Rod took the left as instructed. He had twisted his ankle in escaping from the locomotive cab and now it screamed at him, threatening to betray him at any moment.
“Right,” said the voice of God. He ran right.
Zildrohar-Cqulu thrashed through the shelves behind him, sending a clattering cascade of chocolate bars, selection boxes and snacks down from above. Directly ahead, a floor-to-ceiling roller door was slowly grinding open.
“It’s not for you,” said Vivian. “It’s for Nina.”
“Nina?” said Rod and then yelled in pain as his left foot truly gave out on him.
He turned. The ugly Venislarn god, with an accompanying shower of sweeties spraying before him, charged at Rod.
“Get out of the way,” said Vivian.
Rod momentarily heard the growl of an engine, saw the flash of headlights and stumbled out of the way as a double decker bus sped into the warehouse.
