Underworld mousebane and.., p.25
Underworld (Mousebane & Red Mist Book 3), page 25
“And that’s why you can talk to me now,” said Dan. “Because you’ve taken it?”
“Yes. Harvested from the acorns Silva and the others had stored and then altered slightly. Taken before they brought me here. Before I escaped them.”
“How did you manage to send the crate with the frogs to the pool in the woods?”
“I meant to send it to my mother’s shop on the high street.”
“The one where you kept the squirrels?”
Simon nodded. “But I couldn’t operate the teleport correctly. I lost it.”
“And Catman and the Flash found it.”
“They did.”
“And the mother toads, the ones that transformed Martin Shields?”
“Those were for me. I needed a way to control the skorts myself. If the worst came to the worst, I could bring the creatures back here and use the past-Earthers force against them.”
“But I guess after what happened to Martin you were somewhat put off.”
“I’m still toying with the idea.”
“Why don’t these past-Earthers just sneak in? You know, just reintegrate. Do they look really weird or something?”
“I’m sure they’ve calculated their chances of a successful integration and deemed it safer for them to just kill us all.”
“What does that say about us?”
“Says you’re dicks,” said Twig.
He’d retrieved a sprout from somewhere and was munching on it. Dan wanted to ask him where he’d found it, but the grim expression on Simon’s face made him not want to digress.
“I suppose, if viewing from the outside, our response to refugees hasn’t been that welcoming of late,” said Dan.
“Our response to anyone different.” Simon’s lips were white as he pressed them together.
“I can’t imagine the only place that I could possibly call home just not being mine any more.” Dan considered his and Amy’s old place, gone but not forgotten. The scope of what Simon was saying was inconceivable. “Being millions of years and miles away from anything remotely familiar.”
“Of having nowhere you fit.”
“I can empathise. I wouldn’t want to raise kids here. Have you tried talking to them?”
Simon made a low noise in his throat, then shook his head. “They won’t listen.”
“But how do you know this?”
“Some they told us. Some I learnt when they brought me here. The rest, with the impossible discounted, is the most likely truth.”
“What you’ve said does seem to explain how you got Martin past them. I guess their reach is limited. It must be difficult keeping tabs on all the facilities. Do they all have people working within them?”
“That’s right.”
That was thousands of people living in captivity. Dan stroked the Flash’s head. He felt uneasy.
“When will they unleash the skorts?”
“Not long.”
“Do you have any idea how to stop them, get my cat back, and get us all home?”
Simon rubbed his hands together in front of his face. “Just one that will do all three, but you aren’t going to like it.”
No Trace
They forced Amy into the tunnel. A gun pressed against her head. Moving fast like they knew they couldn’t delay. Like they knew exactly what they were heading into.
How much had Big Mac told them? How much did they believe?
“There he is. Get him out.”
They fanned out in Fréo’s chamber. Two hurried to break Dubois free. Several took the corridor towards where Fréo kept the fungus, where the others lay sleeping. Lighting cloths poking from bottles that stunk of petrol as they went, they were cautious but moving with aggressive purpose.
“You can’t,” said Amy. She struggled and someone hit her across the face. Hard enough so that her legs failed, supported only by the man holding her arm.
Charles Dubois laughed as they hacked him free of the resin that held him. His eyes hooked into hers as she was held in place. She chewed her swelling lip.
“I told you,” he said, now free and brushing himself down. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Someone screamed from the next room. Fear or anger, not pain. Then the thump of flame. The hiss and squeak of heat releasing air.
“Fire. Fire.” The sound of silenced gunshots.
“You can’t,” said Amy. She wrestled her way free. They let her go. There was no way out anyway. “You can’t kill her.”
They couldn’t, could they? It wasn’t possible.
She fled after the men down the corridor. Somehow brave against the odds. Found a steaming, flaming mound at the end. Not moving. A heaped shell of moss. Smelled like burned leaves and woodsmoke, unpleasantly pleasingly of autumn in the country. The smoke bit at her eyes with nowhere else to go but back along the tunnel. The charring skort lay across Fréo’s body. Holes in its chest and head. Guarding her in its death. Poor Nutcup. Poor Fréo.
The way to the mushroom room behind them was blocked off with earth. No sign that it had ever been there. Had the ceiling caved when Fréo died? Had Pippa and Sternberg and the rest all been buried alive? They’d been so close to freedom. Her heart became an expanding weight in her chest. Tears ran down her face. Her knees gave and she fell close to the flame. She didn’t care. Couldn’t take her eyes from the burning heap.
What did this mean? For her, for the forest, for everything.
“Get her away from the fire,” someone said.
She was pulled up and pulled out to the main room.
“And you said nobody liked me,” said Charles, flanked on either side by lackeys. He nodded along the corridor. “Shame they had to do that. But you left me no choice. It—whatever it was—was a threat.”
Some of the men filed back up to the surface, their job done. More than enough stayed so that one woman on her own didn’t stand a chance in hell of doing anything. A coward’s honour guard.
“What was it? Really?” Dubois held his hands to the ceiling. He spoke calmly, warmly, like he and she were old friends and he was asking her to share an old secret, or a joke. “What is any of this? The squirrels, the rabbit, you can tell me now. Nanotech or something?”
Words wouldn’t come. She would have told them the truth—hoping it might make them realise what they’d done, might force them to repent—but she couldn’t speak. Fréo was dead. The others buried.
And Dan was gone.
And now there were twelve or more armed men between her and finding him.
“How much did you pay him?”
“That’s all you care about?” His eyebrows pressed together.
“I want to know how much all of it was worth.”
“Not everything is about money, Mrs Dixon. I’m sure you know that.” His grey eyes were hard. “In fact, the main reason I’m here has nothing to do with money. You know your husband killed my sister?”
“Actually the cat did it.”
He frowned. “The orange one?”
“Black. Back when he was a little bigger.”
Dubois stared at her. “How does he do it? Turn invisible, I mean. Where did he get the technology?”
“From the facility beneath Fleetwood Industrial Estate. Feel free to head down there yourself. Eat whatever you find. You might get lucky.”
He glanced at the man on his right. The man had a head like a block of wood, and a nose like a squashed toad. He looked like he’d taken one too many kicks to the face. Amy recognised him as the other man from the warehouse where she’d first met Charles.
“A team has already gone down,” said Toadnose Woodhead. “Nothing to report yet.”
“We’ll get the answer from you,” Charles said to Amy, and turned to his friend. “I’ve spent enough of my life underground. Time to leave.” He clicked his fingers at her. “Bring her.”
He led them towards the tunnel.
“You ought to know that she had a name,” Amy said to his back. “It was Fréo. And she wasn’t one of a kind. There are thousands of her sisters all over the world. They will find you.”
He didn’t look back as he ducked his head into the tunnel. “Then I suppose we better get more Molotovs.”
They climbed in silence. A whumph of heat and billowing smoke rose behind them from more fires lit below.
Could she call the trees to her aid once in the forest? With the wisteria back home she’d spoken to it every day for weeks. Preparing it. Coiling it like a spring. It had taken time. The plants here would likely be of no use.
On the surface, the leaves on the trees were wilted—like the plants knew. There was no song in the canopy—like the birds knew. The clouds hung grey, low, and foreboding. Even the sky knew what had happened beneath the earth.
A part of her felt removed. The ability to feel hope gone. Someone shoved her in the back towards the last of the three cars. She looked for Big Mac but couldn’t see him anywhere. Slunk away ashamed? Or gone to spend whatever they’d given him?
Big Mac’s a rat.
She’d heard a story about rats. Didn’t know if it was true, but she liked it. She liked the idea. When a new food was discovered, one rat would eat it to check if it was poison. One would risk its life for the safety of the colony. Big Mac wasn’t a rat. Big Mac was selfish. Big Mac was human.
She was more angry with him than with Charles Dubois. The fall from a policeman to a traitor.
The first car started. Juddered forward. The right-hand-side tyres—the ones she couldn’t see—slipped in the mud and wet leaves at the side of the road. The front skidded around, curving into the forest. The driver tried again. The back tyres spun.
“What’s he doing?” said Toadnose.
The driver climbed out. Threw his hands to the sky. Swore in a language she didn’t recognise. The passengers exited.
“Tyres are flat,” said the driver to everyone there.
“Here too,” said the driver of the second car.
“What do you mean?” Toadnose cut across the road towards them. “Did you drive over something?”
“No.”
“And ours.” One of the men over by the third car crouched, inspecting the front tyre. “Slashed with something small. A pocket blade maybe. Shredded.”
“Same here,” said the driver of the first car. “That’s all of them.” He suddenly turned, eying the forest behind him. Drew his weapon. The others copied.
She heard the words “the Ghost” muttered from several mouths. She scanned the trees hoping to see a blur.
Charles Dubois growled. “All of you get into the road in a circle. Watch the trees. Weapons up. Any movement, shoot. If he’s out there, he’s invisible.”
The men fell silent forming a circle back to back in the centre of the road. Every eye roving, searching. Guns poised.
Toadnose drew his own pistol and ushered her and Charles back behind the fallen roots that hid the entrance to Fréo’s cavern. Thick black smoke billowed up from below.
Around them, the forest was still. Nothing moved. The silence grew thicker. Not the silence of nothing. The silence of many things not making a sound.
A squirrel jumped up to the top of the roots. It was the biggest squirrel she’d ever seen. At least a foot tall with biceps the size of pound coins. It held a cracked phone in its hand.
“Motherflower, came to the wrong forest.”
It hit play.
Deep bass throb-b-b-bed. Wooooorbbbb!
The ground shook.
“Drum n bass!” said the squirrel. “Drum n bass in the deep!”
The shade of a hundred fluffy tails blotted out the sky.
“J’ai tué un homme. J’ai poignardé un homme,” shouted Nutcup from the back of the baby skort as it launched from behind the large squirrel and latched on to Charles Dubois’s face.
The men screamed. Low and manly, because manly men were they. Amy threw herself to the ground, covering her head as bullets sizzled by, splintering trees. Squirrels clawed at faces. Wrapped around necks. Mind-controlled men fought mindless men. Guns were thrown at heads. Everything was chaos beneath the riotous beats pounding from unseen speakers.
The big squirrel pulled a mic, a wire trailing off behind the roots, and started spitting rhymes.
“Hardcore squizzle comin’ at you like a missile.
Gonna pump you full of peanuts, gonna stab you with a thistle.
I control you with my mind, all your secrets I will find.
You can’t keep nothin’ from me. I’m all seeing. I ain’t blind.
You be crying, you be dying, I ain’t lying to your face,
When the squirrels comin’ for ya, yo, we never leave a trace.
You won’t seen us comin’, we are ninja, we are stealth,
Messin’ with a squirrel ain’t no good for no one’s health.
Motherflooooower!”
Wow, she thought. This was ridiculous.
She kept her head down.
Suddenly, the music snapped off.
“Amy!”
She glanced up. Charles Dubois had offered her a hand. The little skort sat atop his head like a spidery hat. Nutcup’s tail was tightly wrapped around his neck. She took the hand and allowed him to help her to her feet.
Nutcup punched a fist into the air. Dubois mimicked the movement. “Nutcup saves the day again.”
The squirrels brup brupped all around.
She surveyed the road. Squirrel-controlled men retrieved their dropped weapons. She counted. Twelve in all. Plus Charlie boy and Toadnose.
Sternberg came crashing out of the undergrowth and hobbled across the road wincing. He looked her over.
“Amy, are you hurt? We ran to—” He gasped.
“Just breathe. I’m OK.”
“God, having a fucked leg has made me so unfit.” He breathed deeply. “Is everything OK?”
She wanted to smile, but couldn’t. “It’s not,” she said.
“You’re not hurt?”
Her breathing hitched. “They got Fréo, Kyle. And Pippa and the rest are still down there.”
A smile crossed Sternberg’s face and he withdrew something fist-sized from each pocket. He held his hands out. She frowned. It melted into a smile. The tears that had begun to flow changed to surprised laughter.
The twin baby rabbits in Sternberg’s palms opened their eyes. Their finger-tip-length ears looked so soft. Tiny little bead mushrooms bursting from within. One rubbed its paw sleepily over its eyes. The other stretched out its little legs.
“Oh my God.” Amy couldn’t breathe. They were the cutest things ever.
“Oh good, you’re unhurt,” said Little Fréo One.
Amy smiled.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said Little Fréo Two. Her voice a squeak. Her face an adorable scowl. “Those bastards killed me, didn’t they?”
Common Goal
“It doesn’t look like urine?” said Dan, holding the test tube of thick brown stuff up to his face. A rubber cork stoppered the top. “More like honey.”
“It’s concentrated. I collected it.”
Dan imagined what that might have taken. Also imagined what might bring someone to do it, and also admit to doing it …
He gave the tube a little shake. “And it’s from the thing that crawled past earlier?”
“No. That’s from Male Two.” Simon was once again studying his wire baskets. Choosing and returning vials and tubes. “Male One is the one we heard earlier. There are two large males nearby, M1 and M2. M1 lives west of the tower. M2 a little further to the north. I used M2 urine on the smaller skorts earlier to scare them away from you. M1 must have detected it and come looking. The big ones are very territorial.”
He spoke fast. It sounded complicated. Dan was struggling to follow along.
“Pass it here.” Simon held out a hand.
Dan passed the tube over. Simon stashed it in a backpack then handed that to Dan. There were two other tubes already inside labelled M2U. They didn’t look very safe rattling around in the bag, but Simon seemed to know what he was doing.
“And this is from the other male.” Simon pulled a glass mason jar labelled M1U from a shelf. “This goes with me to attract the queen. M1 is her mate.”
He decanted some into another three tubes each labelled M1U and put them into a different bag. Dan could smell it. It was nothing like honey.
“I knew there’d be a flipping queen. Why’s there always a flipping queen?”
“At what point before now has there been a queen?”
Dan waved a nonchalant hand, now fully visible for the first time on the planet. His nakedness was covered by another spare set of Simon’s clothes. This time some loose combats, a T-shirt, and a flapping plastic poncho from Legoland. It was bright blue. He’d been assured skorts were colour blind.
“There just always is,” he said.
Simon gave him an agree to disagree look.
“You’re sure M1’ll follow this?” Dan removed one of the tubes of M2U from the pack Simon had given him.
“If he’s anything like me he’ll come to see off any rivals,” said Twig. He stiffened his arms before him like a posing beefcake. “Brup.”
Simon had been right. Dan didn’t like the plan. Not a bit. Too much riding on alien kinks for his liking.
“He’s never come so close before,” said Simon. “I must have got some urine on you when I saved you. It’s what gave me this idea, actually.”
Dan looked down at himself, disgusted.
“I wondered what that was,” said Twig. His nose twitched.
“How big exactly are these males?”
Simon’s lips pressed together. His gaze glazed. “Well you know the shed in your garden?”
“Yes,” said Dan, almost hopeful. That was quite big, but not so bad.
“About seventeen of those.”
“Oh.” He shuffled his feet, ruffled his Legoland poncho. “That’s more garden sheds than I’d hoped.”
