by Jack Spain
‘But there are only two of us here,’ Balor reminded the King.
‘Will you be serious?’ the King bellowed.
‘Poppycock,’ Balor snapped back. ‘Everyone here knows everyone else. It would be impossible for a spy to get in here.’
‘Nonetheless, I want you to hunt out any spies. Just as a precaution. And if you find any, we can have a good old-fashioned interrogation. That would be fun. And stop saying poppycock. It’s annoying.’
‘You started it this time!’
‘I don’t care who started it.’ King Bruan was furious. ‘Oh, I wish it were the good old days when I could have you hanged, drawn quartered, burnt, tortured and thrown into prison for the rest of your life.’
‘Fair enough. I’ll put my best man on it,’ Balor told the King before calling out to his assistant, Morphu.
A thin ragged man, covered head to tie in bandages, wearing a habit, similar to Balor, descended the stairs and came into the laboratory.
‘Morphu,’ Balor began. ‘The King thinks that there may be a rat in the hill. I want you to root him out and come back to me with his name.’
Morphu looked somewhat confused. The King cast his eyes up at the ceiling in frustration. Balor waited a moment for dramatic effect before he corrected himself.
‘I’m terribly sorry, Morphu,’ he said. ‘We are looking for a spy. Report any suspicious activity to me.’
Morphu nodded and, having looked at the King, turned and went back up the stairs. The King leaned in close to Balor.
‘Can you trust him?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ Balor replied.
‘How do you know he won’t talk?’
‘He’s a dead. He cannot talk. The perfect spy. You know what they say? Dead men can’t talk. But mark my words, he’ll find any dirty rat that is spying on us!’
‘I’m not happy. There’s been a lot of talk in this hill since Cormac died and you brought him back to life as that thing. He’s creepy. He looks like a zombie,’ said the King. ‘If he cannot talk, how will he tell you about the spy?’
‘What spy?’
‘I don’t know what spy. The one Cormac the zombie is going to rat out.’
‘I don’t call him Cormac anymore. His name is Morphu,’ Balor replied, ‘ and I don’t see why people should talk. Morphu is the epitome of genetic recycling. A good use for the dead.’
‘Most people here don’t think he was dead when you recycled him. Now they are afraid he’ll eat their brains!’
‘Unlikely. Morphu is a vegetarian. He only eats carrots.’
‘A vegetarian zombie?’
‘He’s not a zombie,’ Balor protested.
‘And how come everything you make eats carrots? That rabbit eats carrots.’
‘It’s just a statistical anomaly.’
‘Fair enough. However, when I kick the bucket I don’t want to be recycled by you.’
‘Pity,’ replied Balor. ‘How about we bury you and let the worms eat you?’
‘Sounds reasonable,’ replied the King. ‘It seems an acceptable compromise.’ It was then that the King came to a sudden realisation. ‘Quick,’ he yelled. ‘Get after Moriarty before he tells the whole hill about this road and causes a general panic.’
‘Right!’ Balor said and he spun about on his heels and dashed up the stairs. He was surprisingly fit for someone of 1,766 years of age. The King watched him go and then turned back to study the map. In his heart, he knew that the road was coming, and he despaired as he wondered how long it would take for the cross on the map to make its way up the line to the hill.
The Road
Balor called for Moriarty early the next day shortly after the sun came up, and, after a few hours looking for Chopper, the two little men rode out in the direction of the roadworks that Moriarty had found. Along the way they saw plenty of evidence of animals that had been displaced by the construction work. They passed endless numbers of birds, rabbits, mice, badgers, hedgehogs and rats that had set up new temporary homes away from the site.
Chopper was unable to run at full speed because he was carrying two little men instead of one, making it difficult to get a rhythm to run that could balance them both. As a result, by the time they eventually managed to reach the low hill overlooking the site, it was late in the afternoon. Balor was truly astonished by the scale of the operation.
They were confronted by the smell of diesel fumes and dust in the air as they approached the perimeter of the roadworks. Having stopped at a hedge, the two little men dismounted the rabbit and sneaked through to have a closer look. What they saw was startling. The site of the roadworks was massive. There were various machines digging and moving dirt. In some areas, men were digging in holes with twice as many men watching. To one side were a few caravans with different company names and slogans on them.
MICHAEL MCMANUS CONSTRUCTION
A FAMILY BUSINESS AND AN
ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY ROAD-BUILDING SCHEME
TRESSPASSERS WILL BE PERSECUTED UNTIL THEY ARE PROSECUTED
The biggest machine caught Moriarty’s eye. It was a huge, noisy, yellow bulldozer and it had what seemed to be speed stripes over the top, which looked quite odd. It had a wide metal plate that would rise when it was moving backwards and drop as it charged forward. As it moved forward, it would level the land in front of it, tearing up all of the vegetation and cutting a wide muddy scar into the land. The bulldozer was driven by a smallish man with a yellow hard hat. He used a number of levers that operated the bulldozer as it tore up the land. This machine caught Moriarty’s attention more than anything else.
After a few moments, Balor turned to Moriarty and told him to wait while he had a look around. Moriarty, who was deep in concentration, immediately agreed. Balor then disappeared into the hedgerow in the direction of the caravans.
At one point, the bulldozer stopped levelling the area of the immediate roadworks and turned towards a new hedgerow. It seemed to be going at full speed and ploughed right through the hedgerow before pulling back and charging again, ripping up all the ground and bushes in its path. Moriarty was astonished at the power of this machine and began to have visions of it tearing through the cavern. It was far too big to fight. If there were some way to stop this machine, he thought to himself, the road could be stopped. But he didn’t know how it could be done. The cogs in his brain started to whirr.
Balor seemed to be gone an eternity before a loud whistle blew and the machines all finished what they were doing and moved to a place in the middle of the roadworks where the engines shuddered and stopped. The drivers climbed out and walked towards a hut nearby.
A man in a black suit wearing a pair of shiny Wellington boots wandered around the site. He was giving the workmen orders. Moriarty focused on this man. After a few minutes it became obvious that this man was very important, and probably the boss. He was showing a new logo for the company. It looked like something that a child had drawn. The man became very angry if anyone objected to it.
‘It’s my company and I decide the company logo,’ the man yelled at his workers, confirming Moriarty’s suspicions. He then produced some fluorescent yellow jackets from the boot of the big black car and handed them out. The workers all smiled as they took the jackets. No matter where the man looked, the workmen were smiling, and everywhere he wasn’t looking, they were studying the new logo with a look of dismay on their faces.
From the conversations that Moriarty was able to hear, the man was none other than Michael McManus, the same name on the sign. He explained that the new logo was the result of a competition that he had organised at the local school. He also explained that it was by a strange coincidence that his daughter attended that very school and had entered the competition and won.
‘It’s a salamander, from South America. You like it, don’t you!’ Michael McManus said. He wasn’t asking. He was telling them to like it and be done with it. He then walked away towards a large white hut.
After a few moments o
f hard thinking, Moriarty turned to Chopper.
‘I’m going to have a closer look at that man in the suit. You stay here and wait for Balor,’ he told him. Chopper tried to follow but Moriarty again ordered him to wait and, reluctantly, Chopper obeyed.
Moriarty carefully made his way along the hedgerow towards the hut that Michael McManus had entered. Having reached the hut, he crouched behind a big blue plastic barrel and watched patiently. While he was there, he spotted Balor under a nearby caravan, looking up at the underside of the floor.
Michael McManus eventually emerged from the hut, wiping his hands with a few pieces of paper which he threw into the barrel and walked towards some parked vehicles. Moriarty was careful not to be seen as he watched him go. When he got to a big black car, Michael McManus opened the boot and took out a pair of shoes. He left the boot open and walked around to the driver’s door, opened it and sat on the driver’s seat. Then he began to take his boots off and put on his shoes.
There were several cars parked side by side between him and the black car. Moriarty checked his Comither magazine and then emerged from behind the blue barrel and ran under the closest car. He then ran from that car to another, and then on to another when he was sure that the coast was clear. Eventually, he was under a large van right beside Michael McManus.
Moriarty, lying on his belly, watched very attentively as Michael tied his shoelaces. Suddenly the engine in the van above Moriarty started up. The little man covered his head with his hands immediately and that instant the van pulled away, leaving him completely exposed.
Moriarty lifted his head to look Michael McManus straight in the eye, all the time clutching his magazine of Comither on his belt with his left hand. But to his surprise, Michael McManus was gone. He was walking toward the boot of his car with his Wellingtons. Without any hesitation, Moriarty jumped up and climbed onto the driver’s seat before ducking down between the two front seats into the back of the car. Seconds later, Michael got in and closed the door. He looked in his rear-view mirror and scratched his closely shaven head before starting the car and driving away.
Chopper, obedient to the last, watched the car leave the site before curling his feet under his chest to wait for Balor.
Moriarty’s journey in the back of Michael McManus’s car was less than luxurious, despite the fact that the car itself seemed to be the height of luxury. It had soft leather seats, a new-car smell, and a plush, deep carpet. The back of the car was also home to a collection of loose toys and sweet wrappers that flew from side to side whenever they went around a corner, making the journey quite treacherous, and sticky. The worst was yet to come. Moriarty looked forward between the front seats to see Michael McManus fiddling with some controls in the middle of the dashboard. Suddenly a horrible wailing noise filled the car. Moriarty quickly covered his ears. It was country and western music. He absolutely hated country and western music. He found it depressing, and when it was loud, he found it loud and depressing. As far as Moriarty could tell, it was all the same, sad songs about sad people living on sad horses or in old trucks, about marriages that broke up, about the sad cows and sad sheep that were sick. The worst ones were sad songs about truck drivers with horses in the back, whose wives were constantly crying because the cows and sheep were sick, and sad.
Moriarty assumed that things couldn’t get worse, but they did. Michael McManus continued to fiddle with the controls until finally a new, even more terrifying noise filled the car. It was Irish country and western music, which unlike the American version seemed to be about sad tractor drivers talking to their sad sheepdogs about their sad wives who were crying because the sad sheep and sad cows were sick.
Finally, Michael McManus uttered a few hard-to-hear negative phrases of his own before picking up a shiny silver disc and inserting it into the dashboard. There was a long silence before a new sound filled the car. It was Kylie Minogue, an Australian pop star, singing a catchy song called ‘Can’t get you out of my head’. Moriarty’s eyes narrowed and he cast an evil glare at the back of Michael McManus’s head. He liked the song, and on the whole he didn’t think Kylie Minogue was that bad, as after all she wasn’t really that much taller than he was, but that song was so catchy it often took him hours to get it out of his own head. To make matters worse, Michael McManus must have really liked the song because, to Moriarty’s despair, he played it three times in a row before they finally pulled off the road and went between some high iron gates.
They pulled into a garage and a big metal door closed behind them, making everything quite dark. Michael McManus turned the engine off which, much to Moriarty’s relief, stopped the song. He climbed out and closed the door behind him. A few seconds later, Moriarty could hear another door open and close. He waited silently for a few seconds and thought about what he was going to do next.
Moriarty pulled out the magazine of Comither from his belt and took a good look at it before putting it back. He then pulled his sword from its sheath and carefully ran his fingers along the blade for a moment before putting it back. Easy peasy, he thought to himself, before climbing up onto the driver’s seat to open the door.
Stealthily, he peeked out the window. When he was sure that the path was clear, he grabbed the handle of the door and pulled it as hard as he could. There was a loud click and the door swung open slightly. Moriarty froze and looked out the window again to see if anyone had heard it. He was lucky. He slowly pushed the door open and jumped down. The place was huge. There were two other vehicles and a large motorbike parked beside the car. Light streamed in through a single window on the far side of the garage.
As it was still daylight, he decided to find somewhere to hide until later. He ran across the back of the cars, looking at the names. The one he had been in was called a Jaguar XJR. The larger car beside it was called Range Rover Vogue, and the smallest didn’t have a name. It just had four intersecting circles on the back and a number. Moriarty ran over to the motorbike in the corner and hid behind the back wheel for a moment. This didn’t have a name either. It just said 2300CC on a black panel on the side. Moriarty could see a few empty cardboard boxes so he squeezed behind them and sat out of sight in a dark part of the corner. As he waited, he took the magazine of Comither out of his pocket and studied it again. He carefully, quietly began to click a vial out of the magazine and then click it back in again, deep in thought about what he was going to have to do.
Chopper sat patiently on the edge of the roadworks as Balor jumped up and down, grimacing and contorting his face in the most evil ways, as if he wanted to scream but wasn’t allowed. He began to call Moriarty a long list of unsavoury things in a muffled sort of way. Chopper had seen Balor angry before, and, on occasion, he had even observed him jumping up and down. However, it was clear that he had never seen him this red-faced with anger and he was impressed, especially as Balor, careful not to be heard by the humans, was managing to be so angry in such a quiet way. Eventually frustrated at not being able to express his frustration with words, he stopped and adopted the pose of someone who was meditating, like a monk, making quiet humming noises with his eyes closed. If this was meant to calm him, it certainly didn’t work as a second later, his eyes sprung open and he started up again, before finally running out of steam and going to sit beside Chopper. He scratched his bald head and wondered what to do. Chopper nudged him and Balor, having calmed down, turned to the sabre-toothed rabbit and patted him on the chin.
‘Don’t worry. I know where he has probably gone. Michael McManus is the name of the man running this operation. He’ll have gone after him. He has always had the most elementary powers of deduction. No doubt due to a complete lack of patience. We’ll find the address in one of the work huts, I’m sure,’ he said, attempting to comfort Chopper. ‘I don’t know what he plans to do when he gets there, but if he keeps his wits about him, he’ll be fine.’
‘When has he ever kept his wits about himself?’ Balor whispered before beginning to consider a plan. All he could do now wa
s wait, and wait he did. A long time passed before the last of the workmen climbed into a van and drove off. Finally, they were alone.
Balor cautiously led Chopper out of the hedgerow into the worksite and began to make his way towards the huts. Something caught his eye. It was a piece of string on the ground in front of him. The string was attached to a stick that had been stuck in the ground. There was another piece of string that attached that stick to another stick and continued for some distance, with a stick every twenty feet. It was too small to be a fence. He followed the piece of string in the direction of the end of the site. It cut away from the hedgerow and went out across the fields that had not been ploughed up. There was a second string that ran parallel on the other side of the site. They marked out the direction of the new road.
At this instant, Balor completely forgot that Moriarty even existed. He smiled and clapped his hands before rubbing them together with glee. Chopper observed him from the hedgerow. Balor was obviously excited about something or other and he ran back to the hedgerow to sit down beside Chopper.
‘We’ll stay here until its dark,’ he told the rabbit in an upbeat, reassuring tone. ’And then we have a few little things to do. After that, we’ll go and get Moriarty. I wouldn’t worry about him. The worst he could do is kill somebody else. He’s been useless at getting himself killed.’
Chopper didn’t understand a word that Balor said. He was comforted though by the tone of the druid’s voice. He leaned forward and folded his front paws tightly underneath his chest and snuggled into Balor.
Balor didn’t notice, although he automatically started to pat Chopper clumsily on the head, much like a distracted parent. His mind was racing as he thought through his latest brilliant idea, making expressions as if he was accepting praise from a cheering crowd, pretending to be modest in an unconvincing way.
