Hell And High Water

by Angela Blythe

  The happy couple had brought no weapons, but Miles, who had been on a long campaign before and thought on his feet, had picked some up for them to use. On a quick journey to the basement, he was thrilled to find some metal pipes that had been left over from a recent plumbing refurbishment in the Bandroom.

  The dead were moved towards them. Maggots, worms and small fish falling out of the green slimy orifices on what was left of their bodies. They were mindless, determined, and possessed by the evil in the Melden Triangle.

  The Fellus still had a few the villagers that could see what was happening. Most of them were bound but a few of them had escaped the duct tape. He was amazed at the sights he could see; the plan had worked. There were now various invaluable bits and pieces in Moorston. He hadn’t had to lift a finger.

  The Fellus would be able to utilise some pieces of these monsters and corpses, which he needed for his transformation. He would take a visit down there when they had finished, before the bodies were cleared away, and see what he could recover. It wasn’t far away; he could keep it fresh until he got it to his lair.

  Reinforcements were on the way and the rest of the Wedding Party converged onto the side of the river to help. The Sea Dragon was currently not a threat until it came at them. If they wanted to prevent this, they would have to fight it in the water, that wasn’t a priority.

  The immediate threat were the zombie corpses heading straight for Miles and Tammy. The two of them were cutting their way through them as well as anyone could, but there were just so many coming at them. The other problem was that they seemed to have to injure each limb, torso and head to stop them.

  If they missed a piece, possessed by the essence from the river, it came after them as a new creature. This made them even more dangerous, and potentially they had five mini enemies after the initial first one. Each section had to be destroyed. It was hard work for Fred and Wilma.

  The first party to help them were Rick, Joe, Darren, Craig, Lauren and Nigel.

  Joe went through them quickly, his chainsaw cutting them in half. Once on the ground, he would chunk up each grasping limb.

  The rest of the team had another method. Rick snagged each with his chain and pulled them towards him, then getting them in the head with his axe. Lauren took the right arm, Nigel the left, Darren and Craig chopped up their legs. Each one took about ten seconds to kill.

  Wee Renee was on the scene with her machete chopping them up one by one. Her Barbara Streisand ringlets had long fallen out and her long straight white hair was back. In her white jumpsuit, she could be mistaken for a ghostly assassin in the fog.

  Wee Renee looked back and could see more emerging out of the river. They seemed easy enough to knock down and dismember. The corpses had been soaking in the water, rotting gently on the river or Seabed. All were very soft, most being over a hundred of years old. They were only really held together by a breath of tissue and a tormented soul.

  Miles and Tammy fought on valiantly. This was their Wedding night. It wasn’t the one that they would have wished for. They were joined together for better or for worse. Tonight, was worse. Hopefully every day after this should be better.

  This Sea Dragon decided that it wasn’t going to stay in the water, and it began to make its way to the edge. Graham and Jason the DJ were closest to it, as most people were either watching or fighting the torrent of undead coming out of the water.

  Graham saw it first. It was moving steadily out, and his eyes were on them.

  ‘Hey!’ Graham shouted. Graham had a standard claw hammer as his weapon after returning back to the Bandroom, and Jason held a thick bar from an old metal gatepost with a fleur-de-lys on the end that he liked to use.

  Tammy’s cousins, Sam and Natalie were backing off from the zombie hoard. Their movement caught the Sea Dragon’s attention and it changed direction slightly. One of the cousins was dressed in a black and yellow striped outfit and the other was dressed in a pale pink striped outfit. The pink one had a tail. The black and yellow striped one, which was Natalie, was closest and her back was to the dragon. Jason and Graham ran down the Riverbank hollering at the two women.

  Natalie had very brightly coloured hair. Green, blue and pink dye had been applied in patches. This was probably why she got killed first. The Sea Dragon just put his mouth over Natalie’s head and began to chew. Sam took two more steps back from the zombies. This put her sister in front of her, the Sea Dragons black head was where her face used to be, her sister's blood cascaded onto the ground.

  Sam soiled herself, badly. She had always suffered from Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Other people had suffered from Sam’s IBS too, as well as her highly disagreeable nature. It crossed her mind first that she was lucky that wasn’t her, secondly that she had lost her sister. She didn’t know that the Dragon had two lethal areas.

  The Sea Dragons tail rammed itself into Sam, forked and spiky. It aimed for the brown patch on her pink striped costume. It punctured through the bowel area, at first pushing the front of Sam’s abdomen out, like a pregnant stomach, then the tail popped through. The Sea Dragon pulled back with force, disembowelling Sam, reverse-ways. Her intestines now hung out of the large hole in her anus – six inches wide. This trailed into the river, red and sausage like, next to the tail of her costume.

  The Sea Dragon took its teeth out of Natalie’s half-eaten corpse and had a taste of the closest bit of its new victim. It didn’t seem to like the flavour. Bitter.

  Jason was there before Graham. The Sea Dragon was turned away. Jason gave it a good old whack with his metal fence post. He felt the vibration go up his arm, so he knew it had made a cracking impact. The Sea Dragon decided that it didn’t like that. It darted its head downwards at Jason, grabbing him by the shoulder and lifting Jason up in his teeth.

  Pat clumped over with her weapon, thumping it heavily into the Dragon’s chest. Ivy was attacking him too with a sharp branch that she had found. The front half of the Dragon was on land, so Mark gave a run and jump, landing on its back. He scrambled up to reach the Dragon’s head and tried to pull its jaws open. Even with his Vampire strength, the Dragon still would not drop Jason. It retreated back away from the bank a little.

  Wee Renee could hear yelling from behind and saw just about through the fog that the Sea Dragon had a person in its mouth. She could not tell who it was and ran over to see who was in danger. There looked to be two people lying on the ground. Even in these bad conditions, Wee Renee could tell that they were covered in blood.

  She looked at Angela and the other Vampires, who, apart from Mark, were not doing anything.

  ‘What’s wrong with you. Why aren’t you giving it some welly?’ Wee Renee asked Angela.

  ‘We can’t get in there, its river water,’ Angela said. ‘We’ll die in fresh water and then will be no use to anyone. You’ve got to bring it out here.’

  ‘Mark’s in there,’ Wee Renee commented.

  ‘No, he’s over the riverbank. There’s only room for one on the neck,’ Angela pointed out.

  Wee Renee remembered what Sid had said. You’ve got to be clever about the water. This was what he had wanted her to do. She knew what he meant, especially since she had recently sampled it in Friarmere. Wee Renee ran to the river’s edge, upstream from where Sam and Natalie were and tasted it. It was very salty.

  ’Get in,’ Wee Renee said. ‘It’s Seawater. Honestly, it’s savoury, not fresh. The salt must be coming up somehow.’

  Angela trusted Wee Renee and immediately ran into the river, climbing onto the middle of the Dragon’s back. Behind her, Penelope, Jackie and Marcel ran in. It didn’t take long for the Dragon to be ripped apart, piece by piece.

  Wee Renee knew that the Sea Dragon would be dealt with, so ran back to help with the sheer number of corpses. Many of Friarmere Band had helped in Tammy and Miles’s first battle. Wee Renee was happy to see that there were just a few moving pieces on the grass now and that would be all of them. The fighters walked back to stare with wonder at the Sea
Dragon’s corpse. A real-life dragon.

  Our Doris instead looked down at the corpses of Sam and Natalie.

  ‘What the…!’ Our Doris muttered.

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean. I think she was supposed to be Bagpuss and the other was a Bee. Who can tell?’ Wee Renee replied.

  There was only about two minutes rest for everyone. They all sat on the riverbank, panting. Father Philip was at the top end of where they were, continually saying prayers to keep back the ghostly pirate hordes. They were so solid now that everyone could see them. Their bodies were duller, tinged with shades of grey compared with their weapons, which gleamed menacingly in the night. Handguns, hooks and swords, long chains and manacles. These looked as real as the ones that the humans held in their hands.

  They yelled and cursed. Their faces angry and murderous, they sought revenge for their lucrative lives that had been cut so short. They would not go back to their watery graves unsatisfied.

  The waiting heroes imagined that they would be their next opponents. How anyone fought a load of Ghosts, they did not know. It was pure evil feeding them from the river, but Father Philip seemed to have that covered. Ivy ran to him and stood in front of him just in case for one moment the Holy spell that was holding them gave way, and he would be attacked.

  ‘Give us a minute,’ Pat said to the pirates, from where she sat on the grass, legs akimbo. ‘We’ll get to you, I promise.’

  ‘You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?’ Our Doris said. No one did. They were too tired to.

  The bubbling increased in the deepest part of the river. It boiled like an enormous amount of water was rising upwards, which in fact it was. In the centre, the frothing was high above the general level of the river. It went from the astounding level of five feet above the flow of the river to ten feet in its centre. There was a noise too – a movement. A displacement of an awful amount of water, like a huge roaring wave.

  It pushed the corpse of the Sea Dragon downriver, along with several of the zombie corpses. Jason lay dead inside the head of the Sea Dragon, dying before they had managed to kill the beast.

  What rose out of the water was curved and round. An island. It had appeared in Moorston. An island of marshmallow flesh. Mother was here.

  The massive dome of the colossal squid squeezed through the large crack. She bulged out across the river from edge to edge, the atmosphere was electric. Now it called its children from Moorston, the ones who were not restrained. It called the ones from Friarmere too. They had finally arrived from over the hill. The heroes were outnumbered. Seventy villagers, from Moorston and Friarmere, waited behind the group. Mother was going to feed.

  ’What’s next?’ Wee Renee asked. ‘The Flying Dutchman, sailing up the river to wish us good evening?’

  ’What is that?’ Angela asked.

  ’I think it’s what made all the little squids. It’s hard to tell because we can only see the top of it. I imagine if we saw it fully, it would be a larger version. I think that is what has been living under the land for millions of years. It’s come right out of Davy Jones’s locker,’ Wee Renee said.

  ’Is it a Kraken?’ Ernie asked.

  ’I have to admit I don’t know what it is officially. It probably predates all know writings,’ Wee Renee said.

  She was right about it being the same as the mini squids because soon the tentacles started to appear further down the riverbank. This showed just how huge the beast was.

  Its many limbs whipped out of the water, straight and curled, thin and thick. The suckers grabbed anything and everything. Trees, rocks, clumps of earth, it seemed that it was going to take anything loose with it as a souvenir.

  Angela had had enough of this and ran up the slimy dome, standing right on the top of it. Altogether it was a strange picture. A small young woman, dressed as Margaret Thatcher, covered in a Sea Dragons blood and positioned alone on top of a giant wobbling dome of evil.

  ’Children,’ she shouted. Mark, Marcel, Penelope and Jackie joined her first. Her children. The dome was pretty hard to get into and they didn’t know how thick it was. Where was the brain of a squid, if she had one? Was it even a squid?

  Bob thought about what Mr Bardsley had said and was looking for the beak. He couldn’t see it, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. It could be lower down or at the back. If it were a jellyfish, it would be totally different than a squid.

  Ernie was amazed at the sheer scale of this. It was clear they couldn’t see all of it, but the bit he could see was twice the size of the old Friarmere Bandroom.

  The Vampires were finding it hard to puncture the top of the dome. It was so big that probably fifty people could have balanced on top of it. Wee Renee and Agnes bravely joined the Vampires on top.

  ‘Sod this,’ Our Doris said, and with that bounced her way up to join them in her cowboy boots. Tony was the last to join them on top.

  Tony fired a couple of shots into the dome, which made it quiver. It left holes that Jackie put her fingers in and started to open further. Our Doris hacked away with her sword and it was cutting beautifully through the flesh.

  Agnes carved huge lumps out with her cutthroat razor. The three humans continue to make openings that the Vampires could tear open. Wee Renee took out her SILS drying solution and was throwing it into every open wound that she could. Chunks of Mother began to be tossed into the water.

  On the edges of the river, Joe was trying to cut off any limbs that he could catch. Rick got a thick one of them with the chain, pulled the chain around a tree and attached it securely. Now the squid could not go anywhere without losing one of its legs. Gary started to chop one of the smaller tentacles up. Miles managed to secure one of the tentacles by jamming his brass pipe straight through it and deep into the silt below. Sue, Sally and Kathy working with Bob and Adam were spraying and setting alight everything that stayed still long enough.

  Wee Renee dried, Our Doris sliced, and the Vampires continued to work on throwing out chunks of the jelly body into the flowing river. There was now a distinct hollow in the top of the giant squid Mother.

  Ivy and Father Philip observed the pirates. They could see it all too. Their faces were aware of the enormity of the fight before them and were quite amazed. The pirate at the front, who wore the biggest hat, opened his mouth. His eyes glinted, moving with the action. Ivy got the impression they weren’t expecting this. Inside the pirates' mouth, Ivy could see it was clogged with seaweed. They understood that they would be next. After all, Pat had promised.

  The villagers of Friarmere were now right at the riverbank, behind everyone battling its Mother. The Fellus could see this. He was no longer in control, Mother was closer, but he could see through his lone squid eye. The villagers began to grab anyone that they could, to try and get them towards a tentacle.

  Mother badly needed sustenance for her fight. The only way she could do this would be to drag them under the water and put them inside her tube of a mouth at the base of her body, still buried under the crack.

  The villagers felt that their lives depended on their sacrifices. If weren’t needed for fighting, they would happily volunteer themselves.

  Behind these layers of good and evil fighters, hardly visible, the drifting ghosts of Moorston sadly looked on. They knew at least four would join them after this war tonight and they so wished it wouldn’t keep happening here.

  Soon the group of Vampires and humans were so deep inside the colossal squid that they could not be seen. Bob started to spray the edges of the squid’s body, instead of the tentacles. He was concerned that this might be dangerous to his friends, but he thought that the body needed to be attacked more than the arms. A lot of those now were useless and dead, but some were still very active.

  With the help of the Friarmere villagers under her control, the Mother now had Hazel, Alan, Beryl, Brenda and Jennifer in her tentacles. Others tried to free them, especially the vigilante group. This would all end if they could just defeat the mother.

  ‘Mum
!’ Bob shouted. Sue came over to light up the front area, which Bob had sprayed with the petrol. As soon as she did this, the squid seemed to let out a strange scream that vibrated far beneath them. They realised how deep this creature extended.

  Mother decided she had had enough. She began to retreat. She was trying to extinguish the fire on her body by going into the water.

  ‘Quick!’ Sue said, ‘spray some more.’

  Adam’s group joined them, and the boys sprayed as the women lit up the squid.

  As the squid got lower in the water, it was trying to pull its tentacles back under. Each person that had a tentacle around them was being pulled the other way by two helpers, while a third struck the limb. Mother still controlled the villagers, who fought the rescuers, to ensure that Mother would be fed.

  Some of its legs were firmly anchored. In her haste to put out the fire, she tore them off halfway down. She intended to go, whatever she had to lose. There were eight brave fighters inside its head. The edges, squishy and jellylike began to collapse inwards as it descended.