Apocalypso (19 page)

‘Oooh,
that’s good.’ Danbury rolled about. ‘And the
close shaves.
Don’t forget
the
close shaves.’

‘He
certainly gets around,’ gagged Augustus, now also on the floor. You could say
he’s hair today and gone tomorrow.’

‘To
baldly go where no man has gone before,’ croaked the doctor.

‘That’s
a quote, isn’t it?’ Danbury dabbed at the tears in his eyes. ‘It’s either Oscar
Wilde, or… or…’

‘Or?’
gulped the doctor.

‘Hairy
Belafonte.’

‘No,
no.’ The doctor shook his laughing head. ‘It was Shakespeare. The Immortal
Bean).’

‘Shut
up, you bastards!’ Sir John leaped from his chair and stamped up and down on
the floor. ‘Shut up! Do you hear me?’

Danbury
drummed his fists on the carpet. Dr Harney tried to struggle to his feet.
Augustus Naseby said, ‘He’s right, enough is enough.’

‘I want
to say something,’ shouted Sir John. ‘Something serious.’

Augustus
nodded. ‘All right,’ said he. ‘Pull yourselves together now, lads. Sir John
wants to say something serious.’

Danbury
and Dr H. climbed to their respective feet and tried to look
very
serious.

‘Go on
then, Sir John,’ said Augustus.
‘Get it off
your
chest.’

Another
moment’s silence.

Then
collapse.         

‘You
utter bastards!’ Sir John Rimmer stormed about, kicking at the bellowing
buffoons. ‘You rotten bastards, stop!’

‘All
right. All right.’ Augustus staggered to the table. ‘Enough, and I really mean
it this time. Come on now, lads, law of diminishing returns and everything. If
Sir John has something to say, let’s listen to what it is.’

The
others nodded, pulled out chairs and placed their bums upon them.

‘Go on
then, Sir John.’

Sir
John looked down at the three seated men. ‘All right,’ said he, ‘you have all
enjoyed a good laugh at my expense and in all truth I deserve it. The false
beard was a foolish vanity. The foolish vanity of a foolish man who led a
failed expedition. Who has endangered the lives of thousands now and possibly
millions in the very near future. I am a failure. I am a fake. Danbury, take
out your father’s gun and put it to my head.’

‘Sure
thing,’ said Danbury, reaching for his pistol.

‘Don’t
be absurd.’ Dr Haney elbowed Danbury in the ribs. ‘You are not a failure, Sir
John. You are a noble man. An English gentleman.’

‘Then I
shall take the gentleman’s way out. Hand me your pistol, Danbury.’

‘Sure
thing,’ said the lad.

‘No.’
The doctor elbowed him again.

‘That
hurts,’ said Danbury.

Sir
John squared his narrow shoulders. ‘You are right, doctor,’ he said. ‘Suicide
achieves nothing. It is the coward’s way out. I must make amends. I will
confront the creature myself.’

‘Bloody
hell,’ said Danbury.

‘Are
you seriously serious?’ Augustus Naseby asked.

‘Seriously
seriously serious.’

‘That’s
serious all right.’

‘There
are at least three thousand people on that ship,’ said Sir John (seriously), ‘and
I do not want their deaths on my conscience. The Americans have clearly hushed
the whole affair up and may well be planning to nuke the ship themselves.’

‘I
would,’ said Danbury.

‘Shut
up,’ said Dr Harney.

‘I will
go,’ said Sir John, ‘out to the ship. We are dealing with a creature that
behaves as if it is a god. I will pose as an acolyte come to praise it and
welcome it back. Once I have inveigled myself into its confidence, I will kill
it.’

Danbury
whistled. ‘That’s very brave,’ he said.

‘Indeed
it is,’ said Augustus, rising from his chair to shake Sir John’s hand. ‘No
matter the outcome, you will have my undying respect.’

‘Mine
also,’ said Dr Harney, shaking the noble hand too.

‘And
mine,’ said Danbury, waving the hand that nobody wants to shake. ‘But… I
suppose…’

‘Suppose
what?’ asked Sir John.

‘That
you might…’

‘Might
not come back?’

Well,
that it could be said that you were…’

‘Dying
for my country, what?’

‘No,’
said Danbury. ‘Going to
beard
the lion in his den.’

13

In his den of a coma and
growing a beard, lay the son of Augustus Naseby.

Well, I
don’t know,’ said Wok Boy, pouring soup into a tube that was sticking out of
Porrig. We’ll have to do something to wake you up. You can’t just lie here day
after day with us waiting on you hand and foot.’

Rippington
sat on Porrig’s chest and nodded his little grey head.

What’s
he saying?’ Wok Boy asked.

‘He’s
saying that you’re pouring soup down his air pipe.’

‘Oh
shit!’ Wok Boy tore out the funnel, spilling boiling hot soup all over Porrig’s
crotch.

‘You’d
have thought that would have stirred him.’ Rippington put on a pained
expression.

‘He’s
just not responding to treatment.’

‘I
thought you had him going yesterday, when you put those red ants in his pyjama
trousers.’

‘I
thought I had him going when I stuck that electric cattle prod up his—’

‘He
says he wants some butter on his rubbing part,’ said Rippington.

‘I draw
the line at
that.’

‘For
the excruciating pain of the boiling soup, I think.’

‘Oh
yeah,’ Wok Boy went for the butter.

Rippington
grinned down at Porrig. ‘You seem to be stuffed,’ he said softly. ‘But I bet I
could wake you up.’

Porrig’s
thoughts moved into hideous territory.

‘No,
nothing like that.’ Rippington turned up the corners of his mouth, exposing his
nasty little teeth.

‘It’s
something I read in a book. One of the
Tales of Earth
series, about this
woman who goes to live in a house with these seven little men and she eats this
apple and falls asleep and a handsome prince kisses her and she wakes up again.
And then she goes off with the handsome prince, leaving the poor little men to
fend for themselves again. I think it’s probably meant to be allegorical.
Either that or it’s intended to show what a fickle and ungracious bunch Earth
women are.’

Rippington
listened. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can understand that you don’t want Wok Boy kissing
you. I thought perhaps we might find a princess and she could kiss you and you
might wake up. Mind you, I don’t know where all the princesses live. Is there a
palace nearby?’

‘No,’ said the vision in
white. ‘I won’t do it.’

Wok Boy
stood in The Flying Pig, his hands in his greasy jeans’ pockets. ‘He’ll make it
worth your while,’ he said.

‘Oh
yeah? So he’s worth a bit, is he?’

‘He’s
got nearly half a million quid’s worth of vintage comic books in his shop.’

‘And I
can have them all?’

‘Well,
not
all.’

‘How
many, then? How much?’

‘A
thousand quid’s worth.’

The
vision in white considered this. Wok Boy considered her titties. He’d plied her
with drinks all the previous evening, but she hadn’t even let him have a feel
yet.

‘It’s
not enough,’ said the vision.

‘I
might be able to push him up a bit. Mind you…’

‘Mind
you
what?’

‘You’d
have to make it worth my while.’

‘What?’

We
could both do well out of this. I can’t touch any of his stock, I promised
someone. But if I could persuade him to cough up a bit more, would you split
the profits with me?’

‘Ten
grand,’ said the vision. ‘Ten grand for me.’ ‘Forget it,’ said Wok Boy. ‘I’ll
get someone else.’ ‘All right. Nine grand and that’s my final offer.’ ‘Tell you
what,’ said Wok Boy. ‘Ten grand, if you throw in a blow job.’

‘I’m
not giving him a blow job!’

‘Who
said anything about
him!
’

It would be painful to
record in detail just what happened next. How Wok Boy got the blow job of a
lifetime and Porrig got a bit of half-hearted lip-pecking and how Porrig
confided to Rippington that he thought the kissing might just work if he had a
lot more of it and how Rippington passed this on to Wok Boy who struck another
deal with the vision in white and how by the end of the day Wok Boy was completely
shagged out and there was not a single comic book left on the shelves of Porrig’s
shop.

And how
Porrig still lay in a coma.

Although
Wok Boy had shifted him over so he could lie down and have a rest too.

Rippington
shook his little grey head. ‘I think we should have another go with the
electric cattle prod,’ he said.

At exactly
five-twenty-three and four-and-a-half-seconds-nearly the next morning, Porrig
awoke with a start.

It was
not the start of a cattle prod, but a natural start. A new start. A new
awakening.

Porrig
jumped to his feet (a jump-start?), rushed across the room, down the stairs and
into his shop. Then Porrig screamed very loudly, rushed out of his shop, back
up the stairs and into his bedroom and began to kick the life out of Wok Boy.

Wok Boy
awoke with a start of his own. And being of a disposition given to long
lies-in, he took unkindly to this treatment and dealt out some of his own.

He did
not beat Porrig into unconsciousness, because that would have been unfair, what
with him just having woken up and everything. But he taught the lad the error
of his ways and sent him off to the kitchenette to make tea.

Porrig
stirred some blue stuff in a cup. ‘All my comics,’ he growled and he scowled. ‘All
my frigging comics. And all for the frigging. I heard them outside on the
landing, humping away, and her making off with my stock. Bloody woman.
Rippington was right about Snow White. They’re all the same. A lot of parasites
out for what they can grab. I’ll have to marry her now, if I ever want to see
my stock again.’

‘Your
thinking processes are a total mystery to me,’ said Rippington. ‘The logic you
work on is nothing less than surreal.’

Porrig
turned to confront the little imp that stood grinning in the doorway. ‘Oh, you
know all about the Surrealist Movement, do you?’

‘Nineteenth
harmonic on the fish scale,’ said Rippington. ‘Never been there myself. But
they say it’s a very nice place. A bit like Penge.’

Whatever
are you going on about?’

‘Surrealing,
where the Surrealists come from. As opposed to
South
Ealing, which is
somewhere else altogether.’

‘Go
away,’ said Porrig. ‘I hold you to blame also.’

‘Why,
it woke you up, didn’t it?’

‘I woke
up by myself.’

‘Nonsense,’
said Rippington. ‘You had your last half-hearted peck on the lips at
seven-twenty-seven last night, which would mean that you should have woken up
this morning at precisely five-twenty-three and four-and-a-half-seconds-nearly.’

‘Oh,’
said Porrig. ‘And aaaaaaaaaagh!’ He thrust his head into the sink and turned
the tap on. ‘Uuuuuuuuuuurghbbbbbbrgh,’ he continued as he swirled water in and
out of his mouth.

‘Surrealing,’
said Rippington. ‘That’s the place for you.’

‘Bastard,’
said Porrig, drying his face on a tea towel.

‘You’ve
lost me again,’ said the imp. ‘That bloody woman. Kissing me on the mouth when
she’d been giving Wok Boy a blo—’

‘Still,
you look well on it. Although I’d rather you didn’t breathe in my direction.
Are you making tea?’

‘Yes.’
Porrig was.

‘And is
that Wok Boy’s?’

‘It is,’
said Porrig.

‘Here.’
Rippington climbed onto the table and…

‘That
is disgusting,’ said Porrig.

‘I bet
you’ll laugh when he drinks it, though.’

Porrig did.

And
Porrig sat and looked out of the window, past the fluttering pigeons and off
into a sky of deepest blue. ‘All my stock,’ he kept saying. ‘All my beautiful
stock.’

‘I’ll
get it back for you,’ said Wok Boy.

‘Oh
yeah?’

‘Yes.
All of it.’

‘And
how do you propose to do that?’

‘I’ll
think of something. Although I don’t know why I should. You came out of the
coma. That
was
the object of the exercise.’