by Parker, Des
“Hi anyone out there on our frequency. Are you wearing mohair?” The voice hesitated and continued with an uncertain quiver, trying to sound hip, but falling at the first hurdle. “Um – get some. It’s really cheap now.” The voice started warming to its subject. “The monetary system has collapsed, just as Xavier always said it would in his seminal essay in Quartermass, imprint seven, of the New Science quarterly.”
Another nasally voice interrupted, “They don’t need to know that.”
“Oh sorry, got carried away. It was just like those experiments we did in mass chaos theory and butterfly exhumation.”
Dick, Caroline and Simon looked at each other with disbelief.
“I thought I’d met the biggest dweebs in the world. Boy was I wrong.” Caroline shook her head and rolled her eyes.
The first voice continued, “So, yes - mohair. Get some; it will protect you from the zombies. How does that sound?”
“Sounds alright. Better than the last five transmissions.” The second voice came on again and sounded very complimentary.
“Yes – I think I’ve got the voice now, I programmed the previous five into voice recog software and got a bell curve response that peaked in mid-range modulation.”
“Cool,” said the second voice.
Dick threw himself forward, grabbed the microphone from its cradle on the dashboard and depressed the transmit switch on its side. “Breaka, breaka. This is hung like a horse Harry.”
Simon jumped back as Dick half crawled his way into the driver’s cabin. “Who the hell even talks like that nowadays?”
Over the radio there was a load crashing sound, like someone jumping ten feet in the air and nearly falling off a chair. Sounds of scraping and grabbing furiously for a microphone followed, before a hesitation and a clearly audible intake of breath.
The first voice responded with faltering uncertainty, “Um – coming at ya, hung like a horse.” The voice sounded further away for a brief second, “Who even talks like that nowadays?”
“Told you.” Simon said with a nod.
The first voice continued, but it clearly wasn’t talking to Dick. “Am I supposed to say breaka, breaka?”
The second voice chimed in, “Don’t ask me. I work with quadratic equations and quantum field dynamics.”
“Oh fuck this,” Caroline said, snatching the microphone off Dick. “Hello, are you there?’
“Is that a girl’s voice?” the first voice asked aloud.
“I think so.” The second voice responded.
“What do I say to her? I never know what to say to women. What if she thinks I’m a nerd?”
“You are a nerd.” The second voice interrupted.
“Yes, but I don’t want her to know that. Oh hell, I’ve left the mike open.” The first voice started to speed up now, panic rising. “Oh my God. Oh My God.”
Caroline stared at the radio speaker. “Oh you are fucking kidding.”
“Hey!” she yelled into the microphone, “do you wanna focus?”
“Oh shit.” The first voice stopped.
There was static for a few seconds and then the second voice feebly spoke, “Are you a zombie?”
“Do I sound like a fucking zombie?” Caroline replied sharply.
“No,” came a quiet, frightened response.
“Right. Now do you want to tell us where you are, so we can find you, because you’re obviously not zombies either, so I suggest we meet.”
“Um – okay.” The second voice sounded even more uncertain. “Do you know the Hayward Divide?”
“Caroline looked out the windows of the Bushmaster. “No – but we should be able to find it, there are plenty of signposts along the road.”
“Good. Well, we’re in a cave on the eastern side of the valley floor.”
Simon knew the area. “There are caves all through there, it could take weeks to find it.”
Caroline nodded and depressed the microphone switch, “How will we know which cave?”
“You know about the mohair thing?” the voice on the radio replied.
“Yes – we’re all wearing mohair. How does that help?”
“Then, you’ll know the cave when you see it,” the voice added.
“Okay,” Simon said as he gunned the engine into life. “That was helpful.”
“I have a feeling the answer will show itself when we get to the Hayward Divide,”
Caroline responded.
“Fine by me,” Simon said as he depressed the accelerator and the Bushmaster started moving again.
Dick looked back and forth between Simon and Caroline then resumed his seat in the back. “I didn’t understand any of that. How can we trust them?”
“They sound like me,” Simon replied.
“Whatever,” Dick said as Caroline replaced the microphone in its cradle and the troop carrier moved off down an empty mountain road with a new sense of purpose, and the possibility of safety, at last.
In a dark room, in an old Manor House with really nice furniture and a lovely aspect at the end of a desolate valley, Nick and Bob listened quietly to a small radio on a table in a back bedroom. They had heard the entire exchange.
Nick smiled, “We have them.”
He began to drool.
“Do you mind not doing that on the rug,” Bob whispered.
“Sorry.” Nick responded as a werewolf licked its balls in the corner.
Chapter 26
The Most Dangerous Creatures on Earth
The Hayward Divide is a flat valley between two towering peaks. It is dotted with caves that scratch their way to the surface in and around very old pastures, once guarded by very old herders and shepherds, who are now very dead or have crawled out of their graves and are wandering the distant moors in search of fresh meat as there is fuck all to eat here and the remaining locals are very dangerous to anything supernatural.
It is actually the perfect hiding place for any remaining humans; it is also a locked-in valley with only one way in and one way out, unless you can climb sheer rock faces. Surprisingly, most of the locals can, which definitely makes them the most dangerous creatures on Earth.
The one road leading in comes over a low ridgeline, dips down into the valley, then stops halfway along the valley at a lovely tourist viewing spot. There were no tourists about, and the only life visible was a handful of the most dangerous creatures on Earth, milling about the entrance to a small cave situated about a hundred yards from the valley floor up a low slope.
A large troop carrier came over the rise at the start of the valley and stopped when the cave came into view.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Caroline said with a gasp.
“You know, that is about the third time you have said that in the last twenty-four hours,” Simon replied as he leaned over the steering wheel, his eyes taking in the scene.
Dick leaned forward between the front seats, his eyes looking at the same thing that had captivated both Simon and Caroline, “Do you think they’re friendly?”
“I don’t see why not, it’s not as if they could ever be zombies. And at least we know which cave it is,” Simon said, engaging the gears as the Bushmaster drove slowly across the valley, kicked up over the edge of the road, and gingerly pulled to a stop in front of the cave entrance.
The most dangerous creatures on Earth just moved aside, cast a disinterested glance at the giant troop carrier, and continued eating. The troop carrier may have dwarfed them in size, but there was more zombie killing power in a single one of these creatures than in one hundred Bushmasters.
Simon stepped outside first, not because he was armed, just because he felt no fear. Something told him that no human had anything to fear in this place. He walked up to the nearest creature and it ignored him completely.
Simon, now used to being ignored, was completely unfazed as he studied the creature before him and made a startling discovery.
“That’s strange. They’ve all got metal anklets on, just above their paws. I w
onder what that’s for?”
“Who gives a rats?” Dick replied as he walked past the creature and towards the cave mouth. The creatures also ignored him, but this didn’t have any effect on him, which was not surprising to Simon who firmly believed Dick’s ego more than made up for any lack of respect his profession might attract.
“Oh – but they’re cute, in a kind of hairy way,” Caroline said as she reached out a hand to the creature. Two dark, beady eyes snapped around and glared at her; the creature moved off a little way and showed its arse while its head continued with lunch. “Okay – not that friendly after all,” Caroline added, withdrawing her hand and scampering after Dick.
“I think we should best ignore them and leave them be,” Simon murmured before following after Dick and Caroline.
The most dangerous creatures on Earth continued to ignore them. One took a dump by a wheel of the Bushmaster.
Chapter 27
Sanctuary
The cave was dimly lit. A little daylight managed to sneak inside the entrance, bouncing lazily off the walls before vanishing in the darkness above, then meekly dribbling back down like the spit off a camel’s beak.
The floor of the cave was rough and a little slippery. Simon noticed a foul stench and realised it was probably bat guano.
He always wondered why the people who named things gave it this name. The name sounded innocuous, almost nice – like some kind of fruity cocktail he might order at a tropical island resort while relaxing on a deckchair watching the passing parade of women’s breasts.
This was the worst possible analogy because bat guano smelt like white-hot shit, the kind of shit that reached down your throat, grabbed the inside of your stomach, and thrust your lunch up your nose.
Simon dry-heaved then dry-heaved again; his stomach wasn’t satisfied with the first one and wanted to set some kind of record while trying to crack his spine in the process.
The vile smell sat just inside his nostrils, rabbit-punching him repeatedly in the throat. Simon wanted desperately to run back outside but he was determined not to look weak in Caroline’s eyes.
Dick didn’t care; he just threw up in a dark corner, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and then adjusted his crotch. Caroline scanned the darkness; ignoring them both, while demurely trying to hold back her own desire to puke.
There was a short, disinterested quack as Mr Percival trotted past, unconcerned, before disappearing down a small, side tunnel which everyone noticed as their eyes adjusted to the half-light.
They all followed Mr Percival because he seemed to know where he was going and it might be a good way to escape the smell.
Surprisingly, this worked. Instead of increasing, the smell dissipated the deeper they went into the cave plus the ground dried out. There was a still a faint glow of light even this deep inside the cave, but none of them could determine where it was coming from.
Their eyes scanned the walls and scrutinised the darkness above, but they could not make out where the light was coming from, nor did they see the silent surveillance cameras tracking their every move.
Their image was being watched on a screen as a hand, in mohair gloves, moved a small joystick controlling the camera’s view. A finger moved to a spherical control button and, slowly, the camera zoomed in on Caroline’s chest. A second hand, not wearing gloves, slapped the first hand, and the unseen owner of the mohair gloves dialled out the zoom, once again showing the entire cavern as the three visitors and the duck came face to face with a blank wall.
“Oh look, a blank wall,” Simon said as he scanned around the cave.
Dick was focused, an intense look on his face, a look he did not often display.
“I trust my duck. He hasn’t let me down yet.”
“Well that’s encouraging, I’m glad to see you’re thinking this through,” Caroline added, a clipped tone in her voice, “So, what do we do now? Knock? Maybe there’s a secret corridor behind this rock face.”
Mr Percival looked carefully at the rock wall then walked right up to it. He quacked and tapped it repeatedly with his beak.
The unseen observer at the other end of the video feed pressed a button on his console and whispered, “I like that duck, he clearly demonstrates Mervin Sachs first principle of cross-species resonant intelligence.”
“I thought that was the second principle?’ another voice responded.
“No, Mervin ate the second principle; he was hungry and couldn’t wait for the chicken to finish the chess game.”
“Oh right,” the other voice agreed.
Dick approached the wall, leaned on the rock face, and fell into the corridor beyond as the rocks folded back. “Told you,” he said as he disappeared from the vertical.
Dick landed on a cold steel floor. He looked up and saw a duck’s arse above him as Mr Percival walked over the top of him. “Okay that was weird.”
“What was weird?” Simon asked as he walked by and into the corridor.
“I’ve never seen a duck from below,” Dick replied.
“Don’t you ever look up?” Simon quizzed, offering a hand to help Dick to his feet.
“No. Too much going on below that’s far more interesting,” Dick said as he accepted Simon’s help and nearly pulled Simon over.
“What a surprise,” Caroline added as she passed by, an icy chill in her tone.
The gritty, scratching sound of stone on stone caused them to turn and see the secret door closing behind them with a dull thump. Now they could only go forward.
Simon looked around the corridor. It was about fifty feet long, with a dull-grey metal door at the other end. The corridor was a little claustrophobic, a very low ceiling, just above head height, dark alcoves to the left and right all along the length, and walls that curved gracefully around these corners into darkness.
A line of government-issue fluorescent lights snaked along the edges of the ceiling, and right below them, at very top of the walls, was as a continuous line of vertical slits resembling small vents, barely a hand-span in length, tracking the entire length of the corridor.
This was not the surprising thing though. The thing that most surprised Simon was the wide, flat, metal plating attached crudely to both walls and the middle of the ceiling, tracking the entire length of the corridor and snaking around every corner into the darkness. It looked like the plates had been hastily attached and served no useful purpose. “What are all those metal plates doing on the walls and ceiling?” he asked aloud to nobody in particular.
“Interior decorating to keep out zombies,” replied nobody in particular from hidden speakers.
“What the fuck!” Dick spluttered, reaching for his gun, which was casually slung over his shoulder, and which he now swept across the corridor as non-casually as possible.
“Oh Hi,” said the disembodied voice.
“Hi,” Simon replied dumbly, not quite sure of his answer but confident he recognised the voice from the radio call, “I’m Simon – and these are my friends Dick and Caroline.”
“It’s that girl. Oh hell, what do I say to her? I don’t want to sound like a dick,” the disembodied voice replied.
“I don’t know, make something up,” a second voice replied over the hidden speakers.
“What?” said the first voice, the tone rising sharply as panic set in.
“I don’t know, something that makes you sound cool. She’ll never know.”
“You’re right, she’ll never; oh hell – I left the mike open again.”
“Can we get on with this,” Caroline responded sharply, “and stop looking at my tits,” she added, suspecting there were cameras watching them.
“I wasn’t,” protested the first voice.
“I was,” added the second.
“Why is it that every man I’ve met lately is either trying to kill me, or is some kind of nerd? I mean, God, have all the handsome, smart ones turned into monsters?”
“I haven’t,” Dick protested.
“Or dickheads,” Carolin
e responded with a voice like a knife.
“Hey listen, I said I was.”
“A two-timing dickhead, who never looks up, because it’s more interesting down below.” Caroline tossed Dick’s own words back at him, knocking his ego through the back of his head.
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Not again,” Simon snapped. “Some of us are trying to talk to the man in the wall, who may or may not be a zombie, but at least has better things to do than argue over nothing.”
“Exactly,” responded the first disembodied voice. “See, I told you the predictive power of a quadratic equation would propose the possibility of variables in a new constant.”
“Yes, but the second layer of Pike’s theorem postulates all possible variations will eventually succumb to the normal paradigm over time,” the second voice responded.
“Only if you don’t account for the possibility of edge-shift.” The first voice continued.
“Well that’s true, but only if you forget to carry the two.” The second voice countered.
“Excuse me,” Simon interrupted, “remember us - can we come in?”
“Oh, sorry. Door at the end of the corridor,” the first voice replied, suddenly remembering the visitors.
“Isn’t that a bit obvious?” Simon posited as he walked down the corridor, noticing all the side corridors disappearing in darkness.
“Zombies can’t tell the difference,” the voice responded.
“Oh,” Simon hesitated, “you haven’t met many, have you?”
Caroline and Dick followed behind him, scowling at each other without making eye contact as Mr Percival happily followed, his duck gaze taking everything in, his beak silent on his thoughts.
They reached the end of the corridor and stopped before a large reinforced solid metal door that looked like it could hold back an army. There was a dull thunk as the door opened before them; they found themselves gazing into a high tech underground laboratory.
