The zombie didn’t give in. Though she could now see that its metal spine was detached from the bottom of the creature’s back, making its legs useless, the thing pushed up onto its arms and hauled itself across the bridge, growling as it slithered towards them.
“This way,” Boy said, heading to the Ghost Estate.
Violet panted, trailing behind her friend, and almost tumbled again checking behind on the zombie’s progress as it clawed after them.
The sky was streaked in the lighter blues of the coming morning as they passed through the pillars to the estate.
“Where are we going?” Violet asked, looking round again. “We need to go to Town. We have to help!”
“Yes, but we can’t go that way. They’ve blocked off the Market Yard, we won’t get in or out without being seen. We’ll use the other tunnel, the one to Archer and Brown.”
Violet could almost have forgotten that the tunnel existed if she hadn’t seen Iris Archer use it the previous morning. It led back to her dad’s workshop and up the spiral stairs to the optician’s shop. It would bring them right to the heart of Town, where Edward Street met Splendid Road.
“Okay,” she puffed as they powered up the hill past the lone lamp post, “but tell me what happened. Did you get a chance to warn anyone?”
“No, the zombies were too quick. Tom gave them their orders and they took off. I couldn’t keep up and by the time I got there the place was blocked off, so I waited for you. That’s when I saw Tom and the zombie and…”
“How did you knock the zombie over like that?” Violet interrupted, remembering how the monster had collapsed.
“I yanked out the wires at the base of its metal spine! I was trying to figure out how I’d rescue you and then I thought, well, the zombies aren’t really living, it’s just the metal frame that makes them move. They’re more like robots than anything else. So I tried it – I pulled off the metal bar at the base of its back and it cut the power to its legs!” He grinned as they reached the turnstile to the graveyard.
“Violet!” Somebody called her name.
She looked around and saw Tom standing on the estate path, another zombie with him.
“Violet, I’ll find you!” he cried again.
Boy quickly pushed open the creaking gate. The noise sounded sharp in the quiet of the graveyard. Tom looked up and spotted the pair at the top of the hill. He chased after them.
Violet panicked and hurried Boy through. As the pair darted by the broken headstones and crosses, Violet’s head spun trying to remember exactly where the tunnel was hidden.
Tom was already at the turnstile when a loud boom shook the graveyard, rocking the ground beneath them. The pair were jolted forward by a powerful force, both landing face down on the grass. When Violet looked up, there was a huge plume of smoke rising into the sky from the other side of the cemetery.
Her ears were ringing. She struggled onto her knees and crawled to Boy, who was lying ashen-faced behind a nearby tomb. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his bottom lip. His mouth moved but she couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Suddenly shadow-like figures began to emerge through the clearing dust.
Nurse Powick was standing in the middle of the graveyard, the shoulders of her long navy cloak covered in a fine powder of debris. Her hands waved about as if she was directing an orchestra. She appeared to be shouting, but Violet couldn’t hear a word through the throbbing in her head. Beside the woman, where the tomb that led to the Outskirts had stood only moments before, there was a huge cavity in the ground that Arnold now clambered out of.
“What are you doing here?” Powick ordered, spotting Tom just inside the gate. Violet’s hearing had returned a little and she could just about make out the words.
“I…um…I came to check if you needed help,” Tom stuttered.
“You’re meant to be making sure things run smoothly at the Town Hall!” Powick barked, a slight note of panic in her tone. “Get back there at once!”
Violet held her breath, waiting for Tom to give them away. Red-faced, Boy’s brother glanced around at the graves one more time.
“I said now, Tom!” Powick roared.
Violet breathed out in relief as the blue-eyed twin backed away, turned and disappeared down the hill without saying a word. He could have given them up but once again he hadn’t. She looked at Boy. He didn’t react.
Then another figure emerged from the dark hole. Hugo, the zombie, stomped through the smoke, dragging someone behind him.
Violet was sure it was Dr Joseph Bohr, the man she’d spoken to through the iron bars of his cell. She could see him better now. He looked old, really old, his white hair thin on top and wispy round his ears. His brown eyes were large in his sunken face and his clothes hung loose over his shoulders and hips as though he were nothing but bone.
“Get your ghastly hands off me,” the doctor said, pulling away from Hugo. “I can walk by myself, thank you very much!”
Four similarly aged men and women followed behind him, each escorted by their own zombie. They had to be the other scientists who had been kept in the cell with Joseph Bohr. One of the men whimpered and coughed as he stumbled through the smoke before falling forward onto the grass.
“Magnus, you were always a coward,” Arnold laughed. “Imagine a nuclear physicist who couldn’t harm a fly. I remember you were forever herding them out of the windows of Hegel instead of swatting the things. What a waste of a good mind!”
The old man looked up from the ground. “I wasted my mind?!” he snorted, incredulous. “Arnold, you lost your marbles long ago. Why don’t you just do away with us now and save all of this commotion?”
“Do away with you? Why would I do something like that when the best is yet to come?” Arnold smiled. “You lot threw me out on the rubbish heap long ago, you laughed at my discoveries and made nonsense of my science. Finally I will prove to you all what Arnold Archer is capable of. This time the world will watch. Nobody will be able to deny my genius!”
“Nobody cares about your genius any more, Arnold,” Joseph Bohr rebuked. “This is stuff of the past. Move on, old boy. We’re all a bit long in the tooth for these games!”
“Move on?” Arnold shouted, his face now fit to burst, like a shiny red cherry. “You might have moved on, Bohr, but I couldn’t. You ridiculed me and you think I’d let you get away with that? I certainly didn’t allow Spinners off the hook, so why should I allow you?”
“Dr Spinners?” a woman asked, stepping forward behind Joseph. She wore a long purple nightdress, pink slippers and still had curlers in her slightly orange hair. “What did you do to him? His accident was highly suspicious at the time. I wondered if you were involved… Oh, Arnold…please tell me you didn’t… Not murder…?”
“Shall we just say Dr Spinners has served Arnold well these last few years, Teresa.” Nurse Powick smiled widely.
“But he…he died,” Magnus stuttered.
“Died?” Arnold smiled. “Yes, technically he did, but he won’t be dead for much longer!”
“Stop this madness or—” Joseph Bohr stepped forward, but Arnold Archer pushed right past him and strode towards the large hole in the earth.
“Why do you think they blew out the entrance to the Outskirts?” Violet whispered, her words sounding swallowed.
“To fit that through, I’d say!” Her friend pointed.
“Mind my machine! Be careful, for God’s sake!” Arnold instructed as four zombies, sharing the weight of what looked to be a large glass cylinder, stomped out of the enlarged tunnel.
Powick ordered the zombies to set the object down as Arnold walked around, inspecting it closely.
The machine looked like a huge test tube turned upside down so that its rounded end faced skywards. The glass sat on a round gold base that had what appeared to be a control panel screwed to its surface. Inside the tube was a large gold plate cut in the shape of a human body with leather cuffs at the hands and feet. Blue and red wires snaked throu
gh small pierced holes in the plate.
“What is it?” Violet whispered.
“It must be the DeathDefier,” Boy replied.
“We’ve seen all this before, Arnold.” Joseph Bohr was dismissive. “Your machine might look a little different now but I’m sure it still doesn’t work. You’re playing with the impossible. You’re a fool, Archer!”
“Nonsense!” Arnold snapped. “I’ll show you what’s possible! Soon my machine will purr and our esteemed colleague, Dr Spinners, will live again – if only to eat his own words!”
“No, Arnold, you didn’t…not Spinners, not my…” Teresa stuttered.
She broke down sobbing. Joseph Bohr comforted the orange-haired woman while she clung feebly to his arm.
“It’s okay, Teresa!” the doctor soothed before changing his tone. “You don’t scare me, old boy. You’re still just a crank in a white coat!”
“A crank who happens to be in control of your life right now, Joseph. I’d be a little less frivolous with my words if I were in your position!” Arnold Archer turned back towards Powick. “My machine looks fine!”
“Okay, move out!” the nurse announced, signalling to the four zombies.
The creatures bent down and picked up the DeathDefier with ease, making it look feather-light as Powick and Arnold lead the group from the graveyard and down the hill towards Town.
“Who is Dr Spinners?” Violet whispered, pulling Powick’s letters from her pocket and scanning through them for the name. “Look, Arnold wrote about him in his letter to Powick. He said he was Powick’s boss and that he was giving him trouble. He must be dead, Boy. Maybe Arnold murdered him like that woman said!”
“I don’t know, Violet,” Boy replied quietly, “we can think about it all later. Right now we just need to get help.”
Boy stood up and dusted off his clothes. “Let’s go find Dad and the others and figure out a plan!”
He grabbed her hand, pulling her up, then they raced across the grass, sliding onto the ground by a hole just in front of the back wall. It was the entrance to the tunnel that wound back to Archer and Brown’s. Boy slipped wordlessly into the darkness. Violet followed, dropping down beside him. Her feet stung as she hit the floor.
A chill wrapped her bones. This tunnel passed under the river and she’d forgotten how cold it could be. The pair ventured forward, the hollow sound of the wet walls dripping onto the stone haunting their journey.
“Powick told Tom nobody could ever care for him because he’s got a black soul,” Violet whispered into the dark after a few minutes. Her conversation with Boy’s brother was still playing around her head and she felt she needed to tell Boy. “She told him that Macula chose you instead of Tom because he’s bad. He said he’s the real power, not Arnold’s machine, and that Powick wants him to use that power on your birthday! It was weird and scary, Boy!”
Violet didn’t mention what Tom had said about making Boy pay.
“What does that mean though, saying he’s a black soul?” her friend questioned, his voice echoing round the small stone tunnel.
“I don’t know, but it has to have something to do with what Powick said to Arnold in the castle about your birthday and the curse…but what curse? The only curse I’ve heard anyone talk about is that crazy one Edward mentioned and Arnold wrote about – the curse of the Divided Soul – but I thought that had to do with William, not with Tom or you?”
As the words slipped out, a memory hit Violet – it was something to do with Macula but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
“If Tom thinks he’s the real power and not Arnold’s machine, does that mean he believes he can raise the dead?” Boy sniggered, interrupting her thoughts.
Violet shrugged. “I tried to ask Tom what they were going to make him do but he didn’t tell me. Whatever it is though, I don’t think he wants to do it!”
“Not this about him being good again, Violet. He just got that zombie to capture you. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t been there!”
“But Powick has told him he’s bad ever since he was young… Imagine if someone was telling you that all the time, you’d believe them too. He just needs someone to tell him different, someone to tell him that he’s good and that everything will be okay! He needs someone to love him, like a proper mam—”
Violet stopped suddenly. She hadn’t meant to say it that way. Why didn’t she think before she spoke, like her dad always told her to?
“Well, he should have thought of that before he killed mine!” Boy snapped, just as the pair broke out into Eugene Brown’s laboratory at the end of the tunnel.
Violet kept quiet.
She squeezed past the metal tables crowded with miniature eye plants and walked to her father’s desk. His handwriting swirled across the blackboard beside it. Where were her parents now? A lump rose in her throat as she thought about them. Maybe this was how Boy felt about Macula all the time, though probably much, much worse. She would get her parents back, but he’d never see his mam again.
She reached under the chunky wood desk. Stretching her fingers, she felt the large metal key hidden below the lip of the middle drawer and grabbed it, then headed for the spiral stone steps up to the shop.
Suddenly Boy pulled her back.
“What are you doing?” Violet shook her arm free.
“Listen.” He pointed up the stairwell.
A door banged, followed by a dull thud of footsteps as people entered the room above. Crashes filtered down through the stone ceiling.
“Sounds like someone is searching the place,” Violet whispered.
Another door slammed and four large shadows prowled down the spiral steps towards them.
“Hide!” Boy gasped.
Violet crawled under her father’s desk as her friend dived for cover behind the large armchair, just as four men, dressed all in black, burst into the room.
“Well I never!” one of them roared, kicking over a coffee table by the large fireplace. “They’ve let this place go downhill, haven’t they?”
“Remember when it was our spot?” another one said, shoving her father’s papers to the floor and plonking down on the table, his legs dangling just millimetres from Violet. “Cheek of ’em, turnin’ it into some kind of posh science lab!”
“I’ll show ’em,” another one laughed, hurling a metal table across the space.
Violet flinched as a loud crash ricocheted off the walls, rattling her eardrums once more. The room exploded in laughter, then another of the men began to draw all over the blackboard. They were acting just like some of the older boys in Violet’s school did whenever they were trying to be cool.
“Did ya see Ed and George just now – think they’re cock of the walk, tellin’ us all about their da and how they’ll be runnin’ this place again. Bet they’ll be quakin’ in their boots when he turns up though. They’ll be all ‘Yes Da, no, Da, three bags full, Da’!” another snorted. “I didn’t even know they had a father. Sounds like a right weirdo too, if ya ask me!”
“Well, Arnie’s won me over already and I’ve never even met the man,” another replied. “Them Townsfolk woulda never let us out! And there’s rumours he’ll pay a darn sight better than his tight-fisted sons!”
Violet felt sick as she pulled back further into the shadows of the desk. The Watchers were out!
The Watchers, a gang of rough and burly men, had been George and Edward’s guards when Town was called Perfect. They’d made sure the No-Man’s-Landers stayed inside the walls of No-Man’s-Land and used an invention called the Hollower to steal the imaginations of the Perfectionists through their glasses, keeping them under the brothers’ control. Ever since Perfect fell they’d been locked in the basement of the Town Hall on the orders of the Committee.
Now, as Powick had planned, they’d been let out.
Violet quivered. How could the people of Town ever take on the zombie army and the Watchers together? Tom was right – maybe their only chance was to escape and l
ose their home for good.
The Watchers began to play games around the cellar space. They were knocking the steel tables off each other like bumper cars.
“Well I never would have called this place luxury when we was living here, boys, but it was a damn sight nicer than it is now!” one of them said, just before crashing his steel table into his friend’s hip.
“Oi, what was that for?” the round-tummied man moaned as the culprit laughed.
One of the potted eye plants tumbled to the ground. The laughing Watcher stood on the plant’s head. There was a loud piercing shriek and a mass of white and red gunk splattered across the stone floor.
“Oh yuck,” he howled, lifting up his shoe to pull off the squashed and oozing eye plant before flinging it across the room.
“Serves ya right,” the injured man sniggered.
“Come on, fellas, stop yer messin’. That Boy’s not ‘ere. We best get up to the street and report back!” the Watcher sitting on the table above Violet announced to the room.
“Don’t be a stiff, Fists – give us a bit longer, we’ve only just got here! They said to search the place with a fine-tooth comb and that means ‘well good’. They’ll think we didn’t do our job properly if we come out so soon and empty-handed! You know what George an’ Edward’s like!”
Fists? Violet flinched. He was a leader and one of the scariest Watchers. She remembered how his fiery red hair poked out from under his black knitted cap.
“We still have to go to Will Archer’s place on Wickham Terrace to search there too, remember,” he answered. “They’re desperate for that Boy. Wonder what he’s done now? Coulda wrung his neck meself in Perfect. Always climbing in over that wall like a dirty squirrel! We’ll catch ’im this time! Feed ’im to them zombies, I reckon! Might catch that Will Archer too – could never stomach that fella neither, like father like son!”
The Battle for Perfect Page 11
