Underworld mousebane and.., p.27
Underworld (Mousebane & Red Mist Book 3), page 27
And he was going to be there.
He opened his eyes. Stared Hell in the face. Dads didn’t take death. They faced it, took any chance they could at beating it, because there were much, much more important things than themselves.
He wrenched himself free of the harness. Pressed himself up to stand on the back of his seat. Wobbled with a glance back to the ground far below. Felt around the Flash’s harness until he found the thing he was looking for. In Catman’s harness Andrew had packed a Taser. In the Flash’s, Amy’s super sprouts. It was all they had.
He clambered over the top of the shattered windscreen. The Flash’s wide, disbelieving eyes on him as he raised Amy’s sprout ready to jump and stuff it into the skort’s mouth.
And if that doesn’t work, we’re doing the 28 Days Later / Viper from Game of Thrones thumb-in-the-eye thing. Except we’ll need to fist it, said the Reptile. Let’s see you eat us when you’ve been fisted to death, alien!
A little voice somewhere told him to stop. But he was done listening to it.
Time slowed. The creature didn’t move.
That little sound right on the edge of hearing grew louder. He thought it the sound of the car splintering, or a vast jaw creaking wide, but it kept going, rising and falling.
He took one last breath and …
“Hey! Oi! Are you listening? I said can someone take a picture? Nutcup is gonna be well jealous, innit.”
Dan lowered the sprout. “Uh?”
“Psst! Dan!”
Finding the squirrel took a moment. There was a lot going on right there. He’d tried not to see what he was leaping into before. A lot of teeth was the main thing. Forearm-long scimitars of black, poised mere feet from the crumpled red bonnet of the Mini. A white dome head. Black, almost human, almost insect-like face. Sticky sand hanging from course fur around the mouth. A set of long hooked fingers gripped the back of the Mini like it was a burger. Frilly tendrils of brown and green grew out from the cracks and the crevices in its body like the fringes on a flapper dress. Fist-size parasites moved and fed in the shadows.
The creature was frozen. A statue save the effect of the wind on its fur and frills. Its free arm doing the clawed equivalent of a finger gun towards the car.
“Oi!” Twig was screaming. He’d managed to find a hole in the side of the skort’s head—maybe an ear—and had jammed his tail right into it. An inquisitive parasite crawled up to him and he punched it, sending it tumbling to the sand. “Can you take a picture?”
Dan took a deep breath. Relaxed his rigid body. “Sorry Twig, I don’t have my phone.”
The pose relaxed. The skort looked bitterly disappointed.
“You’re a human, right?” The skort turned a palm to the sky. “Since when don’t you have your phone? Do you not keep them in like a little pouch or something?” The skort motioned to its stomach.
“Yeah. Sorry. I gave it to Andrew.”
Twig rolled his eyes and the skort’s rolled with them.
“Can you put us down, Twig?”
“Whatever,” he said, then mumbled something.
Dan jumped down from the bonnet, finding himself at the foot of the skort. It had two fleshy, scale-covered toes, like an ostrich. His head reached to just above its ankle. He retrieved the Flash who climbed to his shoulder.
The day was starting to grow hot. The sun had risen higher in the sky, turning it a deeper blue. He covered his eyes and stared out towards the tower. Couldn’t see Simon to the east. Had he ditched them to continue with the plan? Maybe he’d had some M2U to splash on the towers and draw the big one away.
A large hand appeared next to him.
“Step on up,” called Twig. “Let’s go smack dat tower.”
Dan stepped onto the hand and was lifted to the neck of the creature. There was a flat ridge just behind its head where he could sit and hold on to the lichen-like plants growing out of its neck.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Simon?”
“Nah, mate. What’s he gonna do? Get aliens to bone?”
“We need to save my brother,” said the Flash.
“Alright,” Dan pointed a finger forward. An alternative to Simon’s plan was beginning to form. One that was more him. “Punch it, Twig.”
* * *
It was obvious from this close that the tower was a piece of starship. It stuck up out of the sand like the leaning tower of Pisa. As they drew closer, the snapped and twisted metal at its base came into view. A ramp, built from rock and other pieces of scrap, led up to a hatch in its side.
The sand here gave way to brown stone. Scraggy plants grew from the cracks. A blue lichen clung to the smooth rock face.
The tower looked like something humans might build eventually. How advanced were these people?
He had to keep reminding himself that they were people. A different people, but still people from the same place he’d grown up, the same cosmic address. They were neighbours. Sort of. A bazillion years out, but neighbours none the less. And likely people with feelings and hopes and desires. They had to be, otherwise why had they escaped? Why had they planned to come home to rescue those left behind? Just because you were advanced didn’t mean you stopped feeling. In fact, if you were truly advanced you probably had more empathy.
The tower had once been white, but the years and the sand had worn it metal-grey in many places.
Twig stopped them roughly fifty metres away.
“Do you think they’re watching us now?” said the Flash.
“Probably. So maybe we should change our approach. We don’t want to scare them.”
“Why not? Do we not want them to fear us? To fear what we are capable of?”
“You think we should fight them?”
“They want to invade our world.”
“Maybe,’ said Dan. “We could overthink their intentions, keep everything we want to say inside, just attack and kill them. Or they might kill us. But that would be so final. It’d be irreversible. Wouldn’t it be better if we spoke first at least?”
“Are you sure?”
“Sometimes the world is a better place if the ones who think speak. I’m not going to go in there and kill them all. I couldn’t physically. Unless we both win, nobody wins. We don’t get your brother. We don’t go home.” He scratched the Flash on the head. “Nobody’s going to threaten to invade planet Earth unless they really think they should invade planet Earth, but invading isn’t what they need. What they need is what invading gives them. Do you understand?”
“What does it give them?”
“We shouldn’t guess. We have to ask. Twig, put us down.”
The skort knelt and Dan shimmied down its leg and dropped to the sand. The Flash leapt down into his arms.
“And you think this will work?” said the Flash.
“I guess we’ll knock and find out.”
His heart fluttered as he navigated the crags of rock towards the ship. Even this, a small part of the whole, towered above him into the blue sky. How many lived inside? How many were watching him now? With the Flash on his shoulder and his arms out wide to show he was unarmed, he covered the space at a brisk walk. Twig and the skort remained a non-threatening distance away.
He reached the foot of the ramp.
The hatch at the top had a long window that ran vertically on the left, suggesting to him that the door was actually turned on its side. The metal was scarred and dented. Things had tried to get in.
The blue lichen from the rocks had colonised the base of the tower on this side.
He climbed. Raised his hand, hesitated. A moment like this—a neighbourly knock on Gatsby’s door when the cats had snuck through his bathroom window—had predicated everything. Would a knock finish it? Charles Dubois was safe with Fréo. The hitman likely devoured by skorts in the facility. This was the final piece.
Dan glanced down at himself, at his poncho and his boots, having crossed the desert of another planet on the back of an alien king. Back then, at Gatsby’s door, he’d been in flip-flops and hoodie reeling from his first encounter with Parkaman.
He’d changed since then.
Everything always changed.
Change was the only inevitability. It was worth getting used to that.
He rapped his knuckles hard on the hatch. Clang, clang, clang. Didn’t know what he was going to say. It’d come.
The door opened and he stepped inside.
He was who he was.
Dan Dixon: Husband, cat owner, wedding bassist, saviour of Earth.
Burn
The Baliks arrived. Antoni was dressed as the Puncher. Artek peeled off his mask as soon as he saw Amy was OK and the squirrels had control. He launched it into the woods.
“Hey!” said Little Fréo Two. “This is my wood and that’s littering. I will fuck you up.” She’d grown an attitude along with a new body.
“Sorry, tiny talking rabbit,” he said, and glummed off to retrieve it.
The squirrels and their eleven drones milled about, pulling guns on each other and giggling. Pretending they were big, stupid humans. Eleven because in all of the excitement one had blown their own head off. The squirrel responsible had looked very embarrassed caked in brains, but had been allowed to share drones with another. It’d been an “easy mistake to make” apparently.
Their chittering was incessant, but it was comforting to have so many allies.
“How long do we think until Pippa and the rest wake up?” Amy asked Fréo.
“Unsure. Maybe an hour.”
“I don’t know if I can wait that long. Dan’s now down there with monsters and aliens. And I’ve tried calling Andrew, but it just goes straight to voicemail. We have to help them.” She was torn. Wait and get answers or find Dan. She turned to Sternberg. Motioned to his injured leg. “Will you wait here with them?”
“What? And miss out on all the action?” he said.
She smiled at that. She hadn’t expected him to want to come with her as he was.
“The kits will stay,” said Nutcup from the neck of Charles Dubois. The little skort on his head twiddled with the Frenchman’s wispy comb-over.
A group of smaller squirrels including Nutcup Jr had busied themselves tearing through the three cars, coming up dissatisfied with the immaculate nature of the vehicles and so lack of food.
“Really, Dad?” said Junior. “A proper job?”
“Yep. You be old enough now for some responsibility. Guard the humans while they sleep and tell them where we are when they wake. Earn dat respect.”
“I will.” Junior shook with excitement. “I will earn dat respect.”
“I will go with them,” said Little Fréo One. “Put me down, Kyle.”
Sternberg placed her on the ground and she and the kits headed for a second tunnel, the one from which Sternberg and the Fréo twins had escaped.
Amy smiled, but it wavered. She didn’t know how to ask the rest for their help.
One of the squirrel gangsters patted her on the shoulder gently. It shouldn’t have reassured, but it did. The man’s eyes were closed which helped. The squirrel around his neck introduced himself as Birch.
“I got you, Boo,” he said. Then he raised his voice to the gathered drey. “Squirrel bread bins,” he called, and the squirrel gangsters milling about quieted down. “Hush up. We got a mission. Bad bois have invaded all up in our biz. They be alien. They be gangster. Our friend Dan, the Beast, and Orange Death, they need our help. Time to show the rest of these mother flowers who is the loudest. Am I right?”
“Brup! Brup! Brup!”
“I said, am I right?”
“BRUP! BRUP! BRUP!”
Several shots were fired into the air.
Another gangster blew his own head off.
Ten now.
“Ewwww,” chorussed the squirrels.
“Right. First up we need to stop that nonsense,” said Birch. “Floof, you’re going to have to share with Petallica … It’s alright we’ll get you another one soon as we get to the underground facility … That’s right … No, I know you liked that one … Well you should have been looking where you were pointing its thing, shouldn’t you?” He sighed. “No, don’t cry. Anyone could have done it. I didn’t mean to shout … Alright. Good.” He gave Amy a roll of the eyes. Then punched a fist into the air. “Squirrel troops, mobilise.”
Amy offered Sternberg an arm as they marched through the forest towards the industrial estate. His uncertain gait suggested he’d hurt himself during the hustle through the woods to get the squirrels.
“Any idea what we’re going to do when we’re down there?” he asked.
“I thought we’d take a leaf out of Dubois’s book,” she said. “Once we have Dan, we’ll burn it all down.”
* * *
They found the platform already lowered. Nutcup helped retrieve it with a daring drop. It was generally agreed between the squirrels that they didn’t take fall damage, so he loaned Charles Dubois to Floof, and just leapt right off.
In the minutes it took Nutcup to return with the lift, Amy considered it fortunate that he’d had the as yet unseen foresight to give up his drone before going over the edge. She’d made sure the squirrels kept their men away from the pit after that.
“You don’t have to come with us. What with the baby,” said Artek.
Amy and Sternberg had explained to him and his brother the situation on the walk over. The Baliks called for backup. Their men came with supplies for lighting a fire, a big one.
“Yeah, we’re happy to deal with this,” said Antoni.
“I want to,” she said.
They both nodded. That was all anyone had to say about her and her baby, so they descended into the facility.
“Careful,” said Sternberg as they crept along the corridor at the bottom of the shaft. “We don’t know what we’ll find at the end.”
The squirrel gangsters went first. No one volunteered to go ahead of them.
Not a surprise—although their competency with their weapons had already increased. Amy wondered if the powers of the frogs allowed them to grasp concepts quicker than it might take a person. They’d just needed an hour or so to learn. Maybe their power knitted neurones faster. Or perhaps it took knowledge from those they turned into drones.
How much might they grow?
The Baliks carried two large holdalls between them, rammed with explosives. The plan: get Dan and Andrew, blow the place, leave. Preferably, she thought with gritted teeth, without Dubois and his men. She’d happily ditch them down here in the dark.
“Bloody hell,” said Sternberg from up ahead, awe in his voice.
She caught up. Pushing through the squirrels. The room was full of skorts. Thousands of them asleep. Her hand went protectively to her stomach.
“Find Dan and Andrew,” called Sternberg to the squirrels.
“And nobody push any buttons,” said Nutcup. “Uh … just in case.”
They spread out amongst the rows.
“Let’s get to work,” said Antoni, clapping his brother on the back. The brothers split and began readying their explosives at the foot of every shelf. Would bringing the place down be enough? Would that stop the creatures?
They seemed to know what they were doing. Where did people learn to do that? She was glad Sternberg and the Baliks had taken charge. She stood amongst it, arms folded across her chest, feeling useless, feeling worried. Watched, the squirrels disperse warily throughout the room. Surely Dubois’s men should have posted a sentry at the hallway to the platform. Surely there would have been some sign of them here. Maybe they’d all gone up to the facility above?
Sternberg returned.
“No sign of him, the cats, or Dubois’s other men,” he said. His face was worryingly pale. “But come look.”
He led her to the first row. Nutcup and Dubois were there. The squirrel had a look on its face she couldn’t decipher. Sheepish?
The floor was covered in a dried blue liquid. Footprints, bare, Dan’s, led away towards the end of the room. Others, skorts, followed.
“What happened here, Nutcup?” she asked.
Dubois’s chin fell to his chest as Nutcup spoke. “I accidentally let some of them things free. Dan was fine last time I saw him. But there was more thingamies down here. Him and Orange Death was going off to find the Beast. I’m sorry, bruv.”
She took a laboured breath. “It’s OK. I don’t blame you.”
“And round there’s a body.” Sternberg pointed. Her heart jolted. “It’s OK. It’s not Dan. There’s clothes. I wouldn’t—”
She stepped around to the next row. It wasn’t a body. It was a mess. She covered her mouth. Retched as she turned away.
“I thought at first that might be the sentry. One of those that came down with Dubois’s boys, but …” He pointed at the squirrel gangsters. “They aren’t wearing suits. They’re all plain clothed.” He jabbed a thumb back at the scattered corpse. “That guy was wearing a suit and a balaclava like the ones from the station.”
“The ones that left with the hitman?”
Sternberg nodded. “We haven’t heard anything from him. What if Rob made a call earlier before we even came down to Fréo’s cavern? Told the hitman to find Dan at the warehouse. What if that hitman came here with his guys? Found a way down.”
“Then he’s down here somewhere too.”
Sternberg shrugged. “My detective sense is tingling.”
“Or that could just be one of Dubois’s guys who likes to wear a suit.”
“Or that.”
He pointed to some scars on the glass of one of the alcoves nearby.
“Bullet marks,” he said, then knocked a knuckle on the glass. It bent. “This stuff is weird. It looks like glass but it’s bendy and bullet proof. To me it looks like someone else was firing shots while this guy got pulled apart. So where did they go and where did what they shot at go?”
There was a sudden commotion from the end of the room furthest from the platform. Someone shouting.
“Wait here.” Sternberg shuffled past her and peered around the row’s end.
“You better not come any closer. I’ve got a rounders bat and I’m not afraid to use it.”
A smile sneaked across her face.
