“Our visitor is feeding,” she said simply.
“Feeding?” Edwin Manifold shrieked, the rest of the room aghast. “What, like a cannibal?”
And again the council’s voices erupted.
“Enough!” Sir Justice finally shouted, the balls of his fists pressed into the table as he rose, frustration etched into every muddy crease of his skin. “It’s true. The frenzied nature of the attack, the lack of remains, not to mention a discernable weapon - they all point to a flesh eater. But this is no man.”
“Then what the hell is it?” Carol Lee pleaded.
The King was looking desperate. “Jon? Please, help us out here!”
But the magician could only shrug. “I must confess, your majesty, I just,” he shook his head mournfully, “I just I don’t know,” he frowned. “Professor?”
Tucker felt the mood in the room change as the strange little man beside him wrung his hands, even giving a faint chuckle. Other than Jon Way, few people in Albion liked Professor Chandler. His intellect and clumsy mannerisms made them nervous. Tucker could see why.
“Well, there are cases in science where a man or a woman has survived an object passing through the frontal lobe,” he began. “There was one, I remember, where an explosion caused a park railing to fly into the air and shoot straight through a man’s skull. The heat of the metal cauterised the wound almost immediately and, besides a problem with short-term memory, he made a full recovery,” the Professor said. “Although I doubt he was entered into many beauty contests after that, eh Jon?”
The magician smiled timidly. The Professor cleared his throat. “Such episodes are, of course, rare. However, for a person to be shot and appear dead before rising again, eating human flesh and kidnapping redheads, well...”
The old man clasped Tucker’s arm. “Please, forgive me for my flippancy, my boy. I’m afraid I’m at an age where there’s only so much doom and gloom one can stomach, but you do have my sympathies for the loss of your friend.”
“Erm, thanks,” Tucker muttered.
And the professor paused, as if completely lost in thought as he sat back in his wheelchair, stroking his lip with a long fingernail. The rest of the council looked at each other during the awkward silence that followed. The Duchess blinked her long, elegant eyelashes and adjusted her wig. Edwin Manifold polished his gold, oval glasses and Missus Wiggins purred.
Finally, the Professor recovered himself. “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, who could survive a bullet to the brain? Well, beyond that limited human experience, I’m sure I could not, nor most of us at this table. But could Lord Truth for instance? Could you, Princess Serena, or you, Jon?”
Tucker watched as each member of the council shifted eagerly in their seats, such was their sudden interest in the question.
“I think not, Professor, and I assure you,” Jon Way smiled sourly, shaking his head, “neither of us are planning on coming back from the dead.”
“Yes, but by your example, Jon, who knows what is now possible?” the Professor spoke warmly. “Scientists such as myself have been forced to accept that the parameters of our subjects have been unimaginably stretched. I have witnessed events for which there is no empirical data. Your powers indicate a mystical energy, a life force shall we say, that few ever believed existed. And who’d have thought that here, at the end of the world, is where we should find it?”
All eyes stared at Jon as the Professor continued. “Some see these things as miracles, and well they might, councillors, for our understanding of them is far from comprehensive. What we may previously have laughed at in ignorance we now have to regard with respect. Consequently, we are left floundering in the realms of what we used to term myth or magic to explain them,” the Professor shrugged. “As such there may be some precedent for this killer in legend perhaps? But aren’t we missing the point, rather? Surely our most pressing concern is where this devil is now?”
Jon Way frowned. “The most logical conclusion would be that he’s still underground, Professor, using the network of tunnels to evade us, possibly keeping the girl down there.”
“But that means he could surface anywhere, Jon!” the Duke of Luton exclaimed.
“Most likely where there’s a large group of people to feed on.” Serena Way glided towards the table.
“Just people?” Edwin Manifold wondered aloud. “I mean, if it’s not a man then what about animals,” he said, stroking his cat. “Are they safe?”
Serena ignored the question and gripped her husband’s shoulder. The magician got up to leave as Sir Justice sprang back. “That’s it!” he yelled. “C’mon boy, we’ve got to go. Now!”
“What the cheese? Where?” Tucker spluttered. He was wearing a black t-shirt with red lettering that spelt: “Hip-Hop broke my heart”. He had no idea what it meant but its neck was practically being ripped off as the sheriff heaved him out of his chair.
“Captain, call out your guards,” Sir Justice ordered. “Your highness, the keys to your armoury, if I may?”
“Wilfred?” Jon Way looked at him, startled.
“It’s alright, Jon, go see your bairn,” the sheriff said.
“You’re sure?” the magician nodded.
“Aye, of course.”
Tucker watched as Jon Way and Serena rushed past them, Buckley flying ahead. The rest of the council looked on, stunned, as the King fished for keys in his baggy pockets.
“Your highness, are you sure about this?” Edwin Manifold started, clearly alarmed. “It’s most irregular.”
Sir Justice, however, was already on the move, yanking Tucker up the stairs.
“Sheriff!” Tucker pleaded. “What gives?”
“It’s like the princess said, Mister Tucker,” Sir Justice answered gruffly, turning to catch the bundle of keys the King threw at them. “This beastie wants to eat, doesn’t it?”
Carol Lee was calling Eleanor, one of the castle guards and her second in command towards her now, the rest of the council still gawping under the flickering light.
“Yeah, so?” Tucker replied.
“So, who’s to say he prefers people to chicken or goats, eh?” Sir Justice hollered, his frame casting as a massive shadow as he bound up the chamber’s steps.
“What the sweet creamy mascarpone are you talking about?” Tucker was now chasing after him.
“There’s only one place to go for a raw square meal in Albion, isn’t there, you great buffoon?” the sheriff called back. “The farm, Mister Tucker, the farm!”
Chapter Twenty-One
THE STARS looked odd from beneath the biodomes. Even though some of the plastic sheeting had perished the farmhouse sat beneath acres of translucent cells, each prism warping the heavens to give them a murky glow. It was like living under a glass ceiling that needed a good clean, Ma Coven thought, as she closed the farmhouse curtains. She had lived on the homestead close on twenty years, but she still wasn’t used to it.
“How terrible it was, what happened to all those people at the bar this morning, Pa,” the buxom woman said to take her mind from the enclosed sky above her. “And Fred and James and Davey from the potato factory too! They’ll be missed here at the farm, I’ll warrant.”
“Bunch of reprobates, the lot of ‘em,” Pa Coven snorted. “And lazy too. They’re easily replaced.”
“Oh, Pa, how can you be so heartless?” the farm wife shrieked as she pulled at another curtain, its cotton length patterned with pink roses and its edges trimmed with lace. “T’is a regular sin to speak so ill of the dead, and besides, they was like family they was.”
Pa Coven looked up from his book and fixed his wife with a knowing stare, his red nose bristling under grey whiskers. “It was a regular sin the way they was always carrying on with you, woman, that’s for sure. Couldn’t tear their eyes from your bosom, the lot of them.”
Ma Coven blushed as she switched on a standard lamp in a corner of the room, a blue crystal setting light to a rusty bulb. The filaments were rare in Albion nowadays and the yellow coil cas
t its glow over the farmer’s ample bookcase which, at a glance, displayed a leather bound set of encyclopaedias, the complete works of Shakespeare, and a collection of Batman comics. Few of them had ever been touched, Pa Coven instead choosing to leaf through a well-worn John Grisham.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Ma Coven pretended. She was a lot younger than her husband and often teased for flirting with the farm hands, several of whom she had actually taken to her bed. Of course, Patrick Coven was generally too busy counting his money to notice that his wife was cheating on him.
“That’s a fine pile of Lutons you have there, Pa,” the woman said, nodding at the stacks of wax credits that littered her dining table. “Business is certainly picking up since Lord Truth died, isn’t it? Maybe I’m in line for a new dress?” she added cheekily, her brown eyes blinking under curled auburn hair.
Pa Coven grinned, snug in his armchair by the fireplace, yellow and amber crystals glowing in the hearth. “You’ve no need of dresses, woman. You’ve already more than every girl in this city put together. Honestly, you must rival the Duchess of Luton herself for closets,” the farmer thumbed towards the ceiling. “There’s whole rooms full of your gubbins up there.”
Ma Coven sidled towards her husband, her wide hips swaying seductively as she brushed his knee with a perfectly manicured hand. “But surely you want a wife worthy of one of the richest men in the city?” she chided. “With Lord Truth not around to replicate our food stocks anymore, I’ll warrant you’ll be richer still.”
Bending over she planted a thick red kiss on his balding head, her low cut dress pressing his book flat against him. “Maybe,” she purred, “the richest man in all Albion?”
The farmer chuckled giddily as she retreated. “With that arrogant bastard gone our produce is only more precious, isn’t it, my love? I’ve already put prices up. But truly Masie, what’s left out there for you to buy?”
His wife picked up a feather duster and began wiping it across the mantelpiece, over a carriage clock and a large family photograph framed in gold, a pair of silver candlesticks and a small, ceramic cow with tinkling udders. “Why, I’m sure I could find something you’d like, Patrick,” she suggested with a wink. “And maybe then we could try for another baby?”
“Another one? Why, we’ve already got eleven and you barely look on them as it is!” Pa Coven exclaimed.
“Patrick Coven, that’s a terrible thing to say!” Masie stamped her heels on the shag pile floor. “Why, only yesterday I saw the one with the red hair and freckles playing with his nanny in the yard...”
But the farmer was already on his feet. “Masie Coven, I will not give you another child and that’s final,” he said, reaching for his coat. “If truth be told I’m not even sure where the last few came from. Seems that a stork blows through this farm every six months!”
“But it befits a farmer to have a heavy brood,” his wife insisted. “And what man would be so cruel as to deny his wife a round dozen?”
“This one!” Patrick retorted, grabbing his leather tobacco pouch from the coffee table and marching into the hallway. “Masie, I will not be having this argument with you yet again. I’m going to check on me cows.”
“Oh that’s right, go see your cows, you care more about them than me!” his wife wailed as he slammed the front door behind him.
Patrick Coven stomped into the farmyard. “I’ll not be having more children,” he muttered to himself in the dark. “Cluttering up the place like they do, wasting all my money.”
Stooping, he lit a rolled-up cigarette. The flame burnt purple and green patterns into his vision and he cursed himself for not turning on the dome’s crystal lights before he’d left the house. Silently, he wondered if Masie would use the panel by the coat rack to switch them on for him.
She didn’t.
And so he stood alone in the pitch black of the farm, surrounded by nothing but the dark domes and their mottled stars.
“Sod it,” he said, grabbing a small crystal torch from his trouser pocket and his flat cap from his coat. “I know where I’m going anyway. Know this place like the back of my hand, I do.” And, fixing the cap on his head, he set off towards the cowsheds.
Pa Coven’s flashlight focused on the grassy path, a well-worn rut between fields, the wind seeming to howl as it broke through the vents and tore through holes in the plastic biospheres. “Children,” he muttered again. “As if there aren’t enough of us already.”
Patrick Coven had spent his entire life on the farm, watching it, in turns, degrade and develop. It seemed to him a microcosm of what the world was like before The Fall: its plants and animals, men and machines, working in perfect harmony with one another, or not at all.
The light from his torch fell across a fat juicy cowpat and he stopped to admire it. That’s a fine consistency for a pat, he thought as he spied a dung beetle scampering across its knotted surface.
The little insect picked out a piece of the manure with its shovel-like head and began rolling it into a ball. As the ball became bigger another beetle joined him and together they began rolling their prize into the grass. There they would bury it, the farmer knew, and then make love under ground. After which the female would lay her eggs inside the dung ball, preparing her brood.
Together, the two insects were playing their part in his finely balanced ecosystem. By burying and consuming the dung, the beetles were providing more nutrients for the soil. They were also protecting the cows from more harmful insects by slowly removing the manure. A helluva lot more useful than my kids, the farmer thought.
Pa Coven was fascinated by insects. Dung beetles were one of the few things he had ever looked up in his encyclopaedias. Apparently, the ancient Egyptians believed they were sacred. That they rolled the sun into the sky each day and then carried it off into the other worlds after sunset. However, these two would never get the chance to enjoy such lofty ambitions. They were, instead, about to get eaten by a family of bats.
Patrick Coven watched as the scrawny creatures swooped onto their prey, snapping and flapping at each other, beating their leathery wings in each other’s faces to try to get at the food. Those bats are starving, the farmer thought, before the victor finally flew off from the cow pat, the insects dangling from his teeth, its competitors following sluggishly behind in the moonlight.
This is why the world ends, Pa Coven thought. Because there’s never enough to go around.
And he was about to be off when he heard a heavy crash coming from the hedgerow behind him.
“Wassat?” he cried.
Thwack!
It was as if someone had vaulted over the bushes and...
“Who’s there?” he shouted, swinging his torch in the thick dark.
And, for a brief second, the farmer stared into the demonic eyes of his killer, drool stretching from its widened jaws, its gums receding like curtains at the theatre, each revealing knives playing the part of teeth.
In his horror, Pa Coven dropped his flashlight to the floor.
And he screamed.
.............
“E-aye-aaaaayyyYAAAHHHH!”
Tucker and Sir Justice heard the cries as they ran, bounding headlong into the farm through a gap ripped in the biodomes’ plastic shield.
“He’s here already!” Tucker shouted in panic. His arms were full of weapons, most of them seemingly antiques, following their trip to the armoury.
But Sir Justice took no notice of him. He was too busy waving his arms and shouting at the King’s Guards, their swords aloft as they too galloped into the fields. “Spread out!” he yelled. “Those on horseback, head for the farmstead and stay there. Make sure those people are safe!”
When the sheriff turned back to Tucker it was only to find him scrabbling around in the dark, trying to locate a fallen cutlass. “C’mon, Mister Tucker, make yourself useful and shift that young arse. Honestly, were all you bloody knights so good for nothing?”
“I wasn’t a knight, I was a freakin
’ apprentice,” Tucker swore, spying the silver blade of the ceremonial weapon poking out from a damp slurry of horse manure. “Great, now I’m wading knee deep in animal crap and I can’t even see it,” he added.
“Here,” Sir Justice tracked back to the boy and placed a contraption over his head, strapping it down over his hair. The goggles smelt strongly of rubber. “Try these,” he said, flipping a switch.
Slowly Tucker’s spectral range intensified, his world turning bright green, just as it had the night before when using the sheriff’s binoculars.
“Night vision?” he muttered. “Cool.” The boy stared up at Sir Wilfred Justice’s emerald visage, glowing luminously under his battered cowboy hat. “What about you?”
The sheriff smiled, his few white teeth sparkling like fluorescent diamonds. “I’ve got my instincts, boy. Now c’mon.”
“But where?”
The sheriff shrugged. “Judging from that scream, I’d say somewhere near the cow sheds, wouldn’t you?”
Tucker began running but it was a struggle under the weight of all the gear and he was forced to use his knees to stop the weapons slipping from his chest. There was the cutlass, a bowie knife, several revolvers, a heavy machine gun with a bullet belt, some grenades, and a bow and a bag of arrows that had been slung over his shoulders. “Do you really think you’ll need all this stuff?” he asked.
“Quiet.” Sir Justice said, holding up a clenched fist as an order to slow down. He had his axe strapped to his back and was using the infrared scope of his rifle to scan the surroundings. “So, why was it, Mister Tucker, that you never became a knight like your friends, eh?” he whispered as he squinted down the barrel of his gun.
“They weren’t my friends,” Tucker said quietly as the pair crept around a hedge. “Well, except for Six, I mean, and maybe Eddie.”
Looking up, it seemed to him that the domes’ inflated cells were like gigantic bubble wrap.
“Really?” the sheriff hissed. “What about Lord Truth?”
Tucker looked down and sighed. He was being interrogated again. I guess that’s why he’s brought me along, to keep me close because with Six gone I’m now the big suspect, he thought.
The Last Days Page 17
