The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (30 page)

‘Oh
yeah, I love all that, I’ll go and watch.’

‘Clive
will watch,’ said the driver. ‘I’ll wait here in the Jeep.’

‘Fine,’
said Thelma, clambering through a hole in the roadside hedge, closely followed
by Clive.

‘Do you
need a wee-wee too?’ the driver asked Louise.

‘No, I
went before I came out. That’s a really sharp uniform you have there. ‘What
rank is that?’

‘Oh
it’s not really any rank at all, I bought it from a militaria shop in Brighton.
It’s a genuine Second World War uniform not a fake.’

‘It
really suits you,’ said Louise. ‘I get really turned on by men in uniform.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh
yeah,’ Louise climbed into the Jeep beside the driver and began to tinker with
his trouserwear.

‘Golly,’
said the driver.

‘Yeah,’ said Clive, the
other side of the hedge. ‘I’m into all kinds of stuff other than urolagnia. I’m
an amorist, you see. I enjoy anililagnia, cataglottism, any form of
deupareunia, cypripareunia—’

‘Emeronaria?’
Thelma asked.

‘Yeah,
when I’m on my own. But endytolagnia, frotteurism, lots of matutolagnia,
neanirosis, sarmassotion—’

‘Tachorgasmia?’
Thelma asked.

‘Yeah,
but I prefer synorgasmia.’

‘Who
doesn’t?’

‘Yeah,
right. You’re a bit of a spheropygian, aren’t you?’

Thelma headbutted
Clive in the face and knocked him unconscious. ‘You’re a bit of a prat,’ said
she.

‘Would you object if I
asked to sniff your instep?’ enquired the driver.

‘Your
shoes look ever so tight and I’m really into podoalgolagnia.’

‘I’d be
thrilled,’ said Louise.

The
driver’s head went down.

Louise’s
knee came up.

‘I
think we now have use of a Jeep,’ said Louise, as Thelma made her lone
reappearance through the hole in the hedge. ‘Where is Norman?’

‘I’m
back,’ said Norman. ‘All went according to my plan I see.

Cornelius
is in a police cell up ahead. I suggest we whip over there and pick him up.’

‘Just
like that?’

‘No,
we’ll give him a few minutes, Tuppe appears to be “on the case” as it were. But
I have a very funny feeling, as if something terribly bad is about to happen.’

‘That’s
encouraging,’ said Thelma.

‘It’s
quite oppressive,’ said Norman. ‘Can’t you feel it too?’

‘No,’
said Thelma.

‘Perhaps,’
Louise shivered. ‘Is it getting suddenly cold, or what?’

‘Or
what!’ said Thelma. ‘Look at that.’

Dark
clouds were beginning to roll across the sun-lit sky. A storm was brewing up
from nowhere.

Ahead,
the refugees got their heads down and hastened their pace. To where? Who knew?

‘I
don’t like it,’ said Norman. ‘It’s something bad.’

‘Summer
storm,’ said Thelma, dumping the unconscious driver onto the roadside and
climbing into the Jeep.

‘No,
it’s something more than that.’ Norman was in the back of the Jeep now. ‘Let’s
get going.’

‘As you
wish.’ Thelma revved the engine. ‘Across country?’ she asked.

‘That’s
what Jeeps are for.’

And
across country they now went.

‘Let’s go,’ said Tuppe,
straining open the cell door.

‘How
did
you do that?’ Cornelius asked.

‘Boring
solution yet again I’m afraid. I squeezed through the bars of the cell window
and crept back into the police station and nicked the keys.’

‘There
really is something to be said for your boring solutions,’ said Cornelius.
‘They do seem to get the job done.’

‘Let’s
away quick,’ said Tuppe. ‘Looks like a thunderstorm’s coming.’

Crackle,
crackle, went bolts of lightning.

But
they weren’t bolts of lightning.

‘Ha ha!
Ha ha!’ went unsavoury demonic things, bucketing down to Earth.

‘Let’s
run like shit,’ advised Tuppe.

‘What’s
going on out there?’ asked the policemen in the canteen, springing to those
oversized feet that all policemen have.

‘Up this way,’ called
Norman. ‘Knock right through that fence, I know the short cut.’

‘Rock
‘n’ roll,’ cried Thelma, steering through the fence.

Cornelius streaked past
the reception desk of the police station with Tuppe under his arm and out into
the village high street.

‘Hang
about,’ called the duty sergeant. ‘You can’t do that. Alert, Alert!’ He pushed
a sort of ALERT PANIC BUTTON.

Bells
began to ring.

‘Ha ha!
Ha ha!’ went further demonic nasty things, bumping and careering into the high
street.

‘Urgh!’
went Cornelius, drawing to a sudden halt. ‘I don’t like the look of those.’

‘Halt
in the name of the law!’ cried various policemen, issuing from the police station.

‘Run,’
hollered Tuppe. ‘Just run and run.’

‘I’m
running.’ And the tall boy ran.

‘Get
him. Get him!’ Demonic things, all black as tread and vile as a septic tank
came bowling and tumbling up the high street.

‘Back
to the canteen, lads,’ advised the superior policeman.

‘Run,’
instructed Tuppe. ‘This would be the best thing, believe you me.

‘I’m
still running.’

Black
and horrid, on they came. Many and plenteous. All very bad. Dark clouds rolled
across the sky. Thunder roared and lightning ziggerzagged.

‘Bit of
a turn in the weather,’ said Tuppe. ‘And I was hoping to get a tan going.’

‘Oh
damn!’ Something hideous slammed down before them. Cornelius ducked around it,
ran on.

The
things came bounding after him, some on two legs, others on four. Others on six
or eight.

Cornelius
skidded to a halt.

‘What?’
asked Tuppe.

‘Surrounded,’
said Cornelius. ‘There’s some of whatever they are up ahead. And many behind.’

‘Not
good,’ said Tuppe. ‘Not good.’

‘Any
ideas?’ Cornelius asked.

‘None
springs immediately to mind.’

‘Then
things don’t look too promising.’

‘Close
your eyes and pray,’ said Tuppe. ‘There’s an idea for you.’

‘I
think we could do with something a little more radical.’

‘Better
make it quick then.’

Things
were closing around them. They carried with them their own darkness. It came in
little dark blots, like Hell’s Angels picnicking on a beach. Very worrying.
Very dangerous. Very
very
bad.

These
things smelled bad. They
were
bad.

‘I’ve
run out of places to run,’ said Cornelius.

‘Go for
places to hide,’ advised Tuppe.

‘There
aren’t any.’

And
there weren’t.

‘Help!’
cried Tuppe, as black things closed in about him and Cornelius. ‘We’re not
supposed to end like this. Help!
Help! HELP!’

33

An explosion rocked the
high street, rending Tarmac towards the sky and casting paving slabs through
plate-glass windows.

Shells
whistled down to wreak havoc amongst the screaming, growling things that raged
beyond control.

But
sadly not in Bramfield.

‘Renault
Five at four o’clock,’ bawled Chunky Wilberforce.

‘I read
you, Chunky.’ Rune despatched a heat-seeker from the turret of his tank. The
Reverend Cheesefoot’s Renault took it in the boot. But not like a man.

‘It’s
raining handbags,’ Chunky observed.

But
they were making steady progress. A two-man taskforce. Just like the old days
for Hugo Rune VC, DSO, DSM, last man out of ’Nam and first man in at Goose
Green. Though not, perhaps, for the Brig.

Chunky’s
military career had been forged from a different metal. During ‘the second lot’
he had taken command of the Army School of Art and Design’s mobile camera
obscura division.

This
division catered to soldiers who, although keen on the uniform, ‘had a thing
about not getting their fingernails all dirty from handling guns’, and wished
to pursue a career in battlefield art.

They
worked within armoured personnel carriers, each of which had been gutted of
their weaponry to provide comfortable seating for two artists with sketch pads
and carried sufficient rations of paints, linseed oil and turpentine to remain
in the field for two weeks without re-supply.

The
Brigadier later went on to greater glory when he volunteered to lead the Army
School of Window Dressing’s armoured display window and mannequin trailer into
Berlin. When under intense sniper fire he and his company, armed with little
more than fifty yards of taffeta, one thousand dressmaking pins and a cardboard
box full of price tags, dressed no less than twenty-three shop windows amongst
the smoking rubble of the city, to raise the morale of the Allies as they
marched in.

But as
ABC once said, ‘That was then and this is now.

‘XR GTI
at twelve o’clock,’ bawled Rune. ‘Boom,’ went a gun in Chunky’s turret.

‘Whoomph!’
went the XR GTI—inflated air-bag and all.

But none of this was
helping Cornelius.

‘Help!’
went he.

And
‘Help!’ went Tuppe, as dark and evil beasties moved in for the kill.

‘Hang
about,’ said Norman. ‘Perhaps we should have taken a right turn back there. I
had no trouble just sort of locking into where Cornelius was and finding him in
the police cell, but I seem to be a bit confused now. Dark all of a sudden,
isn’t it?’

Very
dark.

And so
many many refugees being force-marched into that nasty wire compound erected
around the village green. That wasn’t good. And this
was
England, after
all.

‘No!’
declared a quite unanimous one and all. And all.

‘Serious
disturbance up this end,’ cried a fellow in the uniform of an American marine
into his army-surplus field telephone.

‘Bzzt-wzzz-zzz,’
received a fellow in a Russian military greatcoat, somewhere near the middle of
the marching column (static from the sudden storm probably, or faulty parts).

‘What
did he say?’ asked the fellow sitting next to the fellow in the Russian
military greatcoat. He wore a Dragoon’s uniform,
circa
1848.

‘Fire
over their heads,’ said the military-greatcoat fellow who had been dying to let
off a couple of rounds.

‘Good
one.’

And the
shots rang out.

And you
just don’t do that kind of thing.

And
Charge!

They’d
had enough, these refugees. Driven from their homes by rabid cars, camped all
night upon a hilltop, hungry, tired, forced to march at gunpoint.

Quite
enough!

And so
they turned.

As one.

Like
you would. Because this
was
England, after all.

‘Back
out, retreat!’ Chunky’s men, in their armoured cars and jeeps, now found
themselves under attack. Jackboots put the foot hard down upon accelerator
pedals. Wheels span, tracks churned tarmacadam.

A great
battle cry rose from the throats of the refugees, like an atavistic howl. A
jeep was overturned. Nasty wire netting was ripped aside and trampled
underfoot.

Stirring
stuff really.

And
Bramfield wasn’t a large village. And there were thousands and thousands of
refugees. They gave chase to the retreating vehicles. They poured into the high
street through side-roads, alley-ways, bridle-paths, footpaths, side—paths,
cycle—paths, pedestrian—access—only paths, private— access-only decoratively
paved paths which lead to bungalows with coach lamps on the gateposts that
light up at night when you drive your car in. Down these, the people swarmed.

By the
thousand.

And all
into the high street.

Much to
the surprise, it must be said, of the satanic creatures who were still in the
act of falling upon Cornelius and Tuppe.

Bewildered
and outnumbered (and previously lacking for description), these now rose upon
great bat-like wings; called obscenities from their beaked mouths; shook scaly
fists and defecated fish hooks, razor blades and copies of
Hello!
magazine
[23]
onto the raging mob beneath.