Everyone nodded.
“Yes, the McKenzies live in one, and Terrence Brown in the other,” Rita said. “Of course we remember them, Roger. They’ve been there since we moved in.” She clicked her tongue, as if to say, ‘What are you like, crazy husband of mine’.
Still gazing out through the crack in the door, Roger said, “Well, at least we’ve got a better view of their back gardens, now.”
“You mean…?” Rita said, trailing off for dramatic effect.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Roger said. And then he added, “Oh, shit!”
“Oh shit!?” said Rita.
Roger slammed the door shut and pressed himself against it. “Indeed.”
“What’s going on, Dad?” Zee said. The machete in her hand, in that moment, felt about as useful as a Swiss-army knife, one with toenail clippers, toothpicks, miniature saws, everything except a decent blade.
“You remember the McKenzies?” Roger said, closing his eyes momentarily. He took a deep breath.
“Roger, this game is awful,” said his wife. “Of course we remember the McKenzies. Bruce and Bonnie are a lovely couple.” She paused, slapped a hand to her wide open mouth. “They’re dead, aren’t they?” she said.
“Not quite,” Roger said, bracing himself just in time as something thumped into the door, knocking him forward a couple of inches. He managed to push back just enough to keep the door from swinging open. “They’re now fucking mutants and they want to come in.”
The door rattled and shook in its frame. Roy, who was a portly man and just the type of guy you would put in front of something to prevent it from opening, scrambled across the room and joined Roger at the door.
“This can’t be happening!” Rita screeched. “We’ve known them for decades. Neither of them would hurt a fly.” Bonnie McKenzie was her favourite babysitter, and the Fox’s only real break from parenthood. If she was, as her husband had so delicately put it, a fucking mutant, who was going to look after the boys next time she and Roger fancied a date or a dirty weekend in the desert?
The door, already damaged from Roger’s panicked entrance not too long ago, creaked and groaned as both sides pushed against it. A small crack appeared, and through it came a large, fleshy tentacle.
Rita screamed. “Look out!”
The tentacle stretched all the way across the room, seemingly reaching for her, swinging this way and that as it undulated and squelched.
Mickey latched onto it, lugging it away from the cowering Rita. As it thrashed and jerked, dragging the naked alleyway dweller around the room like a fireman struggling to contain a recalcitrant hose, Rita began to cry.
“She was such a great babysitter! What’s happened to her!? Why does she have tentacles!?”
“I…told…you…” Roger said, gritting his discoloured teeth so hard that one of them popped from his jaw, bounced off Clint’s snoozing face, and rattled its way along the floor. “These things…are mutants…” A giant hand forced its way through a new fissure in the door. Pretty soon, there would be more cracks and holes than there was wood.
“Three plastic buttons and a bag of acorns,” Rita said. “That’s all she used to charge for six hours watching the kids. So cheap…so charitable…and now she’s trying to kill us! Oh, Lord! Oh, what a fucking nightmare! Tom, go hide in your cupboard—”
“But, Mooooooom—”
“Don’t you ‘But, Mooooooom’ me, Thomas Fox. There are mutants outside, now go and hide.”
Tom, reluctant but resigned, ran from the room.
“A little help over here!” Mickey said. He’d managed to pin the struggling tentacle to the floor with one knee. “I can’t hold it all day.”
“That makes two of us!” Roger Fox said, head-butting the oversize hand reaching for him, but inflicting minimal damage.
Zee leapt across the room, bringing the machete around in a wide arc. The blade thunked into the tentacle just behind Mickey. It didn’t go all the way through – it was made of much stronger stuff than Mrs Warbrown’s neck, that was for sure. Over by the door, something screeched in a hundred voices.
“Saw through it!” Mickey yelled, struggling to hold on to the flailing appendage. “Think of yourself as a construction worker!”
“But now’s not the time for a cup of tea and a read through of a skin mag,” Zee said. “Oh, you mean a decent construction worker?” She nodded, then set to work on the tentacle, dragging the machete’s blade through it over and over, back and forth, back and forth. Outside, the neighbour-beast continued to scream, still striving to get in.
“She never gave them bad food before bed,” Rita said, shaking her head, “and she was always happy to hold on to them for an extra few hours if we were running late.”
“Darling!” Roger said, snapping the wrist of the giant hand as it reached for him. “Now’s not the time!” She was clearly in shock, and it would have been unfair to tell her to pull herself together, given the sudden change of circumstances.
“Are you through yet!?” Mickey said, punching the end of the tentacle as if it were a speedball. The trouble with speedballs, though, is that they keep bouncing back, and this one was no different.
“Almost!” Zee said, hacking at the fleshy meat of the thing as violently as she possibly could. White fluid had formed in a pool beneath the squirming appendage; it sprayed out of the wound, coating Zee’s knees and hands. She kept her mouth shut throughout. It was best to, at least until they figured out whether the infection could spread through bodily-fluids. “Aaaaaaaaaannnnd it’s off!” she said as the last coarse sinew was severed.
“Then why is this thing still fucking moving?” Mickey said, dodging and weaving as the tentacle slapped him repeatedly across the face.
The rest of the appendage – that which was still attached to the beast outside – left the room through the same crack in the door it had used to enter. Zee climbed to her feet and ran across to help her father, who was having an awful time of it thanks to the four hands that had now punched their way through the wood.
“Duck, Dad!” Zee said.
“What?”
But Zee was already swinging, aiming for the wrist of the arm that had Roy Clamp around the throat. Roy was making noises like, ‘Grghhh’ and ‘cherck’, which were never a good sign.
Roger Fox managed to shift his head across just enough to avoid the blade. It thumped into the thick, black wrist belonging to the hand that was squeezing the life out of the landlord, and then wedged itself in the door. Roy Clamp fell forward, grabbing at his throat, pulling the severed hand away and throwing it as far and hard across the room as he could. It landed in a bucket of sick, which was, Roy thought, an odd ornament to have knocking around the place.
“I can’t hold the door on my own!” Roger yelled. “The…the mutants…they’re too strong!”
He looked up to find his wife standing in front of the kitchen table. Gone was the fear that had affected her only a few moments ago. She had the look of a woman intent on only one thing.
Keeping the mutants out of her damn kitchen…
“Roger,” she said, with more coolness than she had any right to. “When I say so, I want you to let the door open.”
That’ll be easy, Roger thought. He was already fighting a losing battle. “And then what!?” If they were going to die in the next thirty seconds, it would be nice to know they had had a plan, and that it had just gone sideways.
But Rita Fox did have a plan. She also had a small kitchen knife in one hand and a corkscrew in the other. The corkscrew was probably the more dangerous of the two weapons. “We’re going to take the McKenzies down.”
Roy Clamp positioned himself in front of the door once again. The colour had returned to his cheeks. “We are not going to let those fucking monsters in here,” he said. “It’s suicide!” But Zee had already scooped Clint up into her arms and stuffed him away behind the sofa, out of harm’s reach – providing the mutants didn’t look behind the sofa.
&nb
sp; “Actually,” Mickey said, stroking at his pubic hair as if no-one else was in the room. Rita was a little uncomfortable with it, but she appeared to be the only one. “If we don’t do something, more of those things are going to come. We won’t have a hope in hell of keeping them out. If we let just the two in and barricade the door, we’ve got a lot more chance of surviving the afternoon.”
“If we kill the two giant mutants,” Zee said.
“Hey!” Rita said. “That woman looked after you as a child and she never touched you inappropriately. Show some respect!”
Zee shrugged. “Yeah, but we’re still going to chop her to bits, aren’t we?”
“Damn right we are,” said Rita. “Now, on the count of three—”
“You can’t be serious!” Roy said. “We let those things in here, we’re all dead!”
“If we don’t let them in and take care of them,” Roger said, finally coming to his wife’s defence (it seemed only right…plus she was wielding the corkscrew as if she meant business), “we’ll be outnumbered. Five against two isn’t bad odds.”
A cloven hoof smashed through the door between Roy Clamp’s legs. An inch or two higher and Roy would have had to consider changing his name to Roberta. Outside, something roared, and then another something, and in the distance, several other somethings concurred.
“Okay, we’re doing this,” Roy said. “No need to count to three, either. Let’s get it over with.” And with that, he stepped aside and took up the stance of a boxer in those times before gloves were considered useful.
Roger Fox took a deep breath…
Closed his eyes (and then opened them again, for they were pretty useful tools to someone about to go into battle)…
And stepped aside…
24
Bonnie McKenzie was the first through the door, barrelling into the room on thick, black tentacles. Her face – now somewhere between her navel and breasts (eyebrows?) – was so badly malformed and utterly hideous that it was hard to believe she had once been a capable and friendly childminder with great rates and good morals.
A second later, Bruce McKenzie came through the door, and was comparatively less mutated than his wife. In fact, if it wasn’t for the hairless testicles hanging from his nose and the strange noise he was making (like an angry sea-lion), you wouldn’t have noticed the difference.
Roger slammed the door shut; things were about to get very messy, indeed.
Bonnie must have recognised Rita Fox, or sensed she was the biggest threat in the room in that moment, for it was her that she lunged for first. Dark tentacles seemed to fill the room between the two women, and Rita suddenly found herself wishing she’d spent more time in the cutlery drawer instead of grabbing the first things that came to hand.
Zee swung the machete at the ever-expanding creature. There was so much of it to hit that it was sod’s law that she would miss entirely. It was like trying to kill a jar of eels with a safety-pin.
“You bitch!” Rita screamed at the onrushing beast. She raised the corkscrew and the knife simultaneously, leaving herself hopelessly exposed to the ferocious tentacles whipping through the air. The first hit her in the side of the head, knocking her off balance and causing her to drop the small knife. The second – and this one was the stinker – caught her in the midriff, knocking the wind from her. As she doubled over, she saw her husband in the corner of the room, sitting on top of Bruce McKenzie while the Bruce-monster kicked and writhed, changing shape as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Every time Roger got it in a headlock, the creature simply grew a new head and sucked in the old one. It was, Rita thought – a terribly unfair advantage.
“Mom! Look out!” Zee yelled as she saw the giant arm forming in the air above her mother’s head. Rita looked up, fear etched upon her face, and realised she didn’t have time to react. The fist of the thing came down, and would have annihilated (or at least squashed) Rita Fox, had it not been for the naked alleyway man, who had wedged himself between the giant arm and the floor and was unwilling to step aside, judging from the stoic expression upon his countenance.
“She’s a fucking feisty one!” Mickey said, wondering why it was always him left swinging from the giant mutant’s angry appendage.
Rita, spotting the milky-white eyes on the main body of the beast, said, “I never really liked you, Bonnie! We only used you ‘cos you were fucking cheap!” And with that, she lunged forward, the corkscrew gripped firmly in her palm, only the coiling stainless steel protruding between her third and fourth knuckle, the same way people repel rapists with now-defunct car keys.
The babysitter-monster’s eye squirted thick, viscous cream as the corkscrew plunged into it. There was an audible squelch – like wellington-boots in a muddy field – followed almost immediately by a plaintive shriek.
“Yeah, that’s for complaining about the kids when one of them shit the bed!” She pulled the corkscrew out and rammed it, hard, into the other eye. As she twisted, more white gunk tricked down the creature’s belly-face. A tongue – thick and black, like something you would find lining a giant’s shoe – darted out and lapped up the escaping fluid. “And that’s for the time you refused to read Clint a bedtime story because you didn’t like the protagonist.” She pulled the corkscrew out and held it over her head in both hands, as if she was about to slam it down into the beast’s forehead. “I mean…who doesn’t like Peter Rabbit? What kind of sick bitch roots for Mr McGregor?” She brought the corkscrew down as hard as she could, embedding it between the thing’s seeping eyes.
Bonnie the Babysitter-Beast thrashed violently back and forth, side to side, swinging its tentacles around the room, screaming in a hundred different voices, none of them English. Utterly blind, Mickey knew he could release the monster’s writhing arm without worrying too much about reprisal. He dove to the right, did a little roll, and landed against the skirting. It was, of course, all completely unnecessary, but if this were a film, with a decent budget and a good male lead (Jason Statham, Karl Urban, Jet Li, Kelly McGillis), such acrobatics would be expected by the baying audience.
The creature staggered backwards, white liquid now geysering from both eyes. It was time to put the thing out of its misery, and Zee was more than happy to step up to the plate.
“And this is for that time you caught me flicking my bean and told me it would fall off if I wasn’t careful!” She leapt up into the air, bringing the machete over the top. And then it sliced straight down the middle of the creature. One gushing eye went one way, the other went another. The babysitter beast was now, thanks to Zee’s blade, two babysitter beasts, neither of them functional, both of them already shrivelling up and dying. Zee landed in front of the withering monster, her machete dripping with viscera and white goo. “It never fell off,” she said, wiping her blade on the kitchen tablecloth. “It just got stronger.”
“Am I the only one here who thinks that is way too much information from a seventeen-year-old girl?” Mickey said. He was back on his feet, admiring the pile of dead beast and trying not to vomit.
“Yes, Zee,” said her mother. “Jeez, I’m your mother; I don’t need to hear that kind of thing. Now, go help your father. He appears to be in a spot of bother.”
The spot of bother that her father was in was, in fact, a lot of bother. The Bruce-monster had managed to get to its feet, and had subsequently cornered both Roger Fox and Roy Clamp who were pushing at one another, each hoping that the creature picked the other. In truth, the Bruce-monster was too confused to do anything.
“I’ve got kids!” Roger told the barkeep. “They need me. Sacrifice yourself!”
Roy Clamp pushed back at Roger. “I’ve got a pub to run! This town will go down the Swanee without it, and since I’m the only licensee, and therefore the only man legally able to sell booze in this district, you should sacrifice yourself for the good of the ‘haveners!”
The creature was about to make his final decision – the one on the right was the fatter of the two, but the one on
the left didn’t look as sweaty – when there was an almighty whoosh, and then everything was upside-down for a moment…then the right way up…upside-down…right way…floor…
“How do you like them apples?” Zee said, placing a foot on the severed head. To her left, the headless body crumpled to the floor like Charlie Sheen at an all-you-can-snort buffet. Then, for the Bruce-monster, everything went dark, which was a shame, really, as he was just starting to enjoy himself.
Roger and Roy stared down at the creature, watching as it dried up like a year-old avocado.
“I was just buying some time,” Roy said, patting Roger on the back. “I was never going to let anything bad happen to you.”
“Yeah,” Roger said, coyly. “I saw my daughter with the machete, and I thought it was the best way to confuse the monster until she lopped its head off.” He kicked the severed head across the room, where it disappeared behind the sofa. “Worked a treat, really.”
“Isn’t your son behind that sofa?” Roy asked.
“Ah,” said Roger. “Can somebody move the detached monster head away from my sleeping son? I’m going to start barricading the doors and windows. If we can just hold on long enough, I’m sure all this nonsense will blow over.”
“Yes,” Rita Fox said, slumping to the floor and examining the ooze-covered corkscrew as if it were a new species of slug. “If I remember correctly, you said the exact same thing the day after The Event.”
And in that moment, Roger Fox hated his wife as much as he hated the dead creatures strewn across his living-room floor.
25
“What the fuck is that thing?” Harkness yelled as the colossal mutant came a-stomping toward them like something that had escaped from one of Clive Barker’s nightmares. It had four tree-trunk sized legs, and was as white as snow, but its face was discernibly human, and appeared to be grinning at them from atop the long, broad stalk that was its neck.
Whatever it was, it was running away from the explosion that had just rocked the street and was now barrelling toward the rooted henchmen, screaming something like, “Mike! Or meek! Or…
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