“Booga!” I scream. “Use this!”
I throw him a small pickaxe.
Jet Girl does one of her spinning kickboxing kicks and hits Fuckleberry hard in the neck.
He goes down with a thump, landing on his back.
Booga takes up his pickaxe and brings it down with a mighty force into Fuckleberry’s face.
Fuckleberry’s spazzing body is pinned to the tarmac with the pickaxe through his head.
Death-throws shoot through the corpse as burgundy blood pisses out onto the road.
He stops.
He is dead.
Fuck him.
Booga and Jet Girl bundle themselves into the passenger seat and I floor the accelerator.
We’re gone.
There’s a massive explosion.
The ducks have done their work.
I check out the fire in my rear-view mirror.
I savour the thought that Fuckleberry’s mangled corpse is frying away to nothing.
There’s a million cops chasing us, but we don’t give a fuck. We’re laughing and pissing about, throwing bangers and water-bombs out of the windows, and passing around a can of strong lager.
We can see Dobson up ahead, waving us into a garage. He’s looking really fuckin’ happy to see us as we skid inside.
The door is locked behind us.
Sub Girl is inside, firing her big ol’ gun at the cops through a hole in the wall.
Bring it on you brotherfuckers.
We are united once again and you’ll never take us alive.
FIFTY-THREE
MINE MINE MINE
I lost you in the playground
I lost you near the swings
I was distracted by the Helter Skelter and all the chaos that it brings
I lost you in a crowd of kids
too many faces, too many screams
you jumped out of my pocket like an errant glove
slipped from my hands like a melting ice-cream
but now I’m binding you to me with an idiot string
I’m pegging you by your ears to the washing line
and I’m sewing my name inside you
because you’re mine
mine
mine
FIFTY-FOUR
TANKTROUBLE
Dobson is showing me the Sanitary Salutation Tank thing that he has set up for me.
“Look what I made you,” he says gleefully.
“I know,” I reply, “it’s brilliant, but I don’t think we’re gonna be needing it now.”
“Ah well,” he smiles, “I thought I’d bring it along, you know, just in case.”
“Dobson,” I say, grabbing him by his big ol’ flared collars and planting a squishy kiss, firm on his lips, “you’ve already saved my entire fuckin’ world once today. I love you. You are the fuckin’ man.”
Booga’s scuffing around, looking sheepishly jealous.
“Alright, you big soft doughnut,” I plant one on him too. I’m feeling spiritually benevolent right now, like a bright glowing star is radiating good stuff from the centre of my heart. No one else knows that, in the past few minutes, I’ve watched Booga die and miraculously come back to life. I think I’ll keep it to myself, they really don’t need to know about that right now.
“You’re still the most special guy in the world,” I tell Booga. “And you always will be, so don’t go forgetting that.”
He smiles bashfully and kicks his foot backwards and forwards.
Sub Girl is still blasting her enormous gun at the angry hordes outside. “There’s too many of the bastards. We need to make a break for it,” she shouts, “or we’ll be trapped in here forever and this garage will become our funny garage-like tomb.”
I’m full of fuckin’ bright ideas at the moment... “Everyone... in the tank! Right now!” I shout.
Booga, Jet Girl and Sub Girl try and squeeze into the passenger seat. Dobson is hanging back, scratching his head. “But there’s five of us,” he moans. “How the hell are we gonna get five fully grown idiots into a two-man mini-tank?”
“Sounds like a joke I know,” chuckles Booga.
“So what’s the answer?” asks Dobson.
“Two in the back, two in the front, and one in the trunk, I think,” he replies matter-of-factly.
“That doesn’t really help matters,” says Dobson, crouching down and looking into the side of the tank where I’m sitting. “Oh well, here goes...” He stretches his long, gangly legs across my lap and squashes himself in tight, completely obscuring my view out of the screen and preventing me from reaching the steering wheel.
“Okay Zulu,” I declare, “there’s only one thing for it. You’re gonna have to do the observations and manoeuvres, I’m in charge of acceleration and braking. Everyone alright with that?”
A muffled “Yeah” comes from behind the wall of backsides in the seat next to me.
“All doors locked and windows wound up?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Nobody fart,” I request.
“Okay.”
“All set? Right then, we’re off.”
I slam down the accelerator and we scream towards the two large metal doors at the back of the lock-up. All I can see is Dobson’s armpit.
We crash out through the doors and we’re greeted by a hailstorm of gunfire.
“Don’t fuckin’ slow down, whatever you do!” yells Dobson, trying his hardest to steer a course through the screaming, angry crowd. They’re throwing all manner of shit at us and we’re driving right over the top of them; there’s fuckin’ blood and hollerin’ severed torsos everywhere. Booga has got one hand on the machine gun control and he’s firing the thing off blindly in short, meaty bursts.
I lean around Dobson and switch on the tank’s public address system. “Fuck off!” I shout as loud as I can into the remote microphone. “Get out of the fuckin’ way!” It seems as if no one is listening, the crowd has reached critical mass and I can’t see one person that appears to still have a mind of their own. “You’re a bunch of fuckin’ morons!”
We’re just bursting heads and cracking limbs left, right and centre.
Now we’re at the edge of the crowd and we’re running over the last few people who’ve probably only come here to watch. Fuck ’em anyway, I’m thinking, why should I feel guilty about splatting some tosser who only came away from their TV set for the chance of seeing me get my brains blown out? “Shoot ’em Booga!” I shout. “Shoot ’em all!”
I give them one last farewell on the loudhailer. “You’re all fuckin’ morons! Fuck you!”
And we’re all screaming with happiness in the tank, we’re having a fuckin’ great time.
We’re passing the town sign, speeding out into the desert.
And we’re out of here.
Except we’re not...
The tank is starting to slow down...
“Keep your speed up, for fuck sake,” shouts Dobson, “they’re still comin’ after us!”
“Shut up everyone,” I command, “listen...”
The tank is making a very worrying clunk-clunk-clank noise.
“What the hell is that?” I ask.
“You’ve fucked your new tank,” explains Dobson, “you’ve only had it a couple of weeks and it’s fucked already.”
“Okay, dad, there’s no need to get your knickers in a twist,” I whinge.“So what do you suggest we do now?”
Dobson cranes his neck around until I can see one beady eye, sandwiched between his slinky suede jacket and his giant squashed afro. “I don’t fuckin’ know,” he replies. “How about we drive into the centre of a gung-ho redneck town in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere and try to get away with shooting anything that moves?”
“Sarcasm,” I retort, “is the lowest form of wit.”
“And this tank,” adds Dobson, “is becoming the slowest form of transport.”
The tank grinds to a stop.
Perfect timing on all counts.
We can hea
r the whole town gaining on us – the thunder of a thousand rampant feet, hell-bent on excessive death, merciless bloodletting, and savage retribution.
Oh shit.
FIFTY-FIVE
THE BATTLE OF ARMADILLO
“What are we gonna do now?” shouts Booga, wriggling like an eel and doing his best to make an impossible situation worse.
“We’ve got to get out,” I cry, “we can’t all stay in here, we’re a sitting duck unless we can spread out. And we’ve got to try and turn the tank around so that we can use the cannon.”
Jet Girl pushes down the door handle with her chin and falls out onto the hard dirt ground. Sub Girl and Booga fall out on top of her.
Bullets are starting to ping and whiz around the back of the tank.
Dobson reverses himself out of the driver’s door and unfurls his spindly legs. He surveys the marauding mob that is steaming its way towards us. “I’d estimate that we’ve got about one minute and twentyseven seconds left to live,” he observes. “Any bright ideas, anyone?”
Booga and the girls are putting their backs into it, trying to shift the tank around. But it’s no good, the damn thing won’t budge.
I’m out of the tank and I’m banging away with Booga’s AK-47 and the bastards are banging right back at me with shotguns and air-rifles and harpoons and there’s shit flying everywhere.
“Fifty-seven seconds,” announces Dobson calmly, as if we’re playing some TV adventure game and the timer will go ‘ping’ any moment and we’ll be out of the running, going home with an embossed pencil instead of the matching pair of scooters.
I’ve got a rucksack full of grenades and Sub Girl and Jet Girl are helping me chuck them into the surging crowd. It’s not making any difference at all; the fuckers are appearing faster than we can blow them up. They’re coming out of nowhere, millions of the bastards. They must have all phoned up their freak families and invited them down for the bash. And now they’re getting real close. I can see the murder in their eyes and I can smell their hatred on their breath.
The sun is beating down; sweat is squirting out of my pores. This is gonna be a blood-fest and a half.
“Why don’t we just run away?” asks Booga.
“Run to where?” says Jet Girl, looking around at the deserted pencilline horizon.
“Twenty seconds,” says Dobson.
And I’m shouting obscenities – “Come on you inbred whoreson brotherfuckers! Come and get yours, you ignorant bitches! You fuckin’ shit-cake eating barbecue salesmen!” – because I really feel that we haven’t got them quite angry enough yet.
“Ten seconds.”
“You can quit it with the countdown, Dobson,” I say nervously.
“Eight,” he says firmly, pushing buttons on his over-sized digital watch.
“Does anyone know the Lord’s Prayer?” asks Booga.
“Six.”
I’m saving the last grenade for myself.
“Five.”
Oh God. They’re almost here.
“Four.”
They’re right upon us.
“Three.”
Fuck it. I pull the pin on my grenade and throw it as hard as I can into the mouth of the screaming hick twenty feet in front of me.
“Two.”
This is it. We’re dead.
“One......... What the fuck?!”
Right out of nowhere a tidal wave of white liquid floods in from the side, crashing across the advancing multitudes like a molten avalanche, washing them into disarray, and half drowning the buggers.
And here’s Barney, a couple of short chaps by her side, holding a water cannon each. There’s a huge tanker truck behind them.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says, grinning her mad grin. “I had trouble laying my hands on enough milk.”
“Milk?!” I say, almost paralysed with disbelief. “What the fuck?”
Barney sighs coolly and flops her head to one side in a cheeky, cutesy way. “Yeah, I know it’s fucked. But it’s a whole mother thing I’ve got going on, I’ll explain it to you some other time.”
BAM!! There’s a loud explosion – the guy with the grenade in his mouth has lost his head. Brain-blood mixes with the milk forming a kind of thick shake for cannibals. Nice.
The rest of the mad bastards are starting to get up – they may be wet, cheesy and stinking, but they’re still mad. And there’s even more of them flooding out of the town.
“I’m fresh out of milk,” says Barney, throwing down her water cannon.
“We need a more permanent solution to the problem,” I remark, surveying the slowly reanimating Chankers death-squad.
“I’ve brought my army along with me,” suggests Barney.
“Oh great,” I reply flatly. “Come on then, bring ’em on. Things can’t possibly get any worse than they already are.”
Barney lets out an almighty wolf-whistle that screeches across the battlefield like one of those flying-farty-balloon-whistle things that you give away at kids’ parties.
From behind the brow of a very low hill we can hear the marching of dozens of tiny feet. They line up along the hillside in a tidy formation. They appear to be a lot stronger and more together than the last time I saw them. Now they have real swords, and shields that look like panels from a disassembled aircraft. Their muscular bodies and chromed accessories glint sharply in the glaring sunlight.
“That’s your army?” I ask.
“Yeah,” replies Barney.
“What happened?”
“Oh, you know, we’ve been working out a bit – running, jumping, that kind of thing.”
Barney steps fearlessly away from the protection of the tank and calls out to her men...
“PANCAKE!”
The diminutive army immediately scurries about in an orderly fashion, raising their shields above their heads and forming a huge circle of interlocking metal pieces.
“SHUFFLE!”
The large, silvery pancake starts to shuffle towards us. Some of the milky people of Chankers are turning their attention away from us and wandering over to take on the barmy army.
“OPERATION!”
The front ranks of Barney’s army raise their shields. Out come the broadswords, slashing and stabbing a pathway through the angry, confused crowd.
And they don’t stop.
They just keep on marching through.
“Barney,” I say, with bemused excitement, “these short guys are fuckin’ excellent!”
They reach the tank and surround us in a protective circle. With them has come the full attention of the enemy, they’re jeering and chucking stuff at us and some of them are firing shotguns and rifles.
One or two of the little army men are dropping down dead.
“GARAGE!”
The army closes ranks, forming a tight, impenetrable box around us and the tank. A couple of dozen soldiers fall back and grab hold of the tank; with one swift “Hup!” they’ve raised the whole damn thing two foot into the air. Two more guys have dived underneath, they’re passing each other spanners and wrenches and shouting unintelligible mechanical diagnoses. Zulu bends down and sticks his afro under the tank, joining in on the complex conversation.
“Ready?” asks Barney.
“Ready!” shout the little mechanics.
They drop the tank and move back to their defensive positions.
“Tank Girl, Booga...” orders Barney, “get in!”
So we get in. The doors close behind us. We look at each other, worried but exhilarated.
The crowd outside are starting to rip a hole through the front of our protective human box. Barney walks calmly past my window, spinning a sawn-off shotgun on her pinky as if it’s as light as a toy gun.
She stops right in front of us and we watch as all the tension drops from her shoulders and she straightens out her posture.
She turns slowly, smiling confidently.
And she belts out in a deep and thunderous roar –
“ARMADILLO!”
As quick as a flash, a score of tiny hands are grabbing the outside of the tank and we are pushed forward to the front of the assembly. The tiny army guys clamber over each other, expertly forming an oval shell of overlapping metal plates.
I can only guess that our appearance from the outside – with a bristling skin of shining iron scales and a tank cannon protruding out the front like a funny mammalian nose, hungry for insects – is indeed very much like a giant armadillo.
That’s kinda funny.
Me and Booga are chuckling away. “Fuckin’ armadillo,” I laugh.
The whole mass of people, metal and tank starts to move forwards. I turn on the tank’s engine – it’s sounding fine again – but I have zero control over my steering; our direction is at the mercy of Barney’s army.
“What are we supposed to be doing?” frets Booga. “I can’t see a fuckin’ thing.”
A static crackle blasts out of the C.B. radio. “Tank Girl, this is Jet Girl,are you in there?”
“Yeah, we’re in here,” I reply. “Where the hell are you?”
“Three hundred feet and rising,” she reports. “I got washed away by a tidal wave of milk and ended up near to where I’d parked my jet.”
“Shit,” I exclaim, “that’s a stroke of luck. Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she says, “apart from all the yoghurt that’s setting in my pants.”
“Well I wouldn’t worry about that, darling; it might actually do you some good.”
“Cheeky!” she titters. “Anyway, I’ve got a bird’s-eye-view of all the shit that’s going on down there, so if you need any help, just give me a shout.”
“How is your defence system?” I ask.
“Gone,” she says glumly. “Some kids pinched it while we were fucking around in town.”
“In that case,” I proclaim, “you can be our eyes, because we can see shag-all from down here.”
Jet Girl blares back in a loud, static, muffled burst, “Well start firing, you blind fuckers. There’s a spearhead of twats standing right in front of your guns and they’re looking to have your knackers on toast for their dinner.”
Booga flips up the cover on the armoury panel and primes everything he can lay his hands on.
I grab a hold of the automatic gun controls and pull the trigger firmly down. Fuck it, I’m thinking. I take a roll of gaffer-tape out from behind my seat and tape the trigger back. The guns are blastin’ away at the bastards outside and the smell of burnt gunpowder and red-hot smoking gun-oil is getting me well over-excited.
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