The Quickening of Tom Turnpike (The Talltrees Trilogy) (19 page)

Samson
peered through the door.  “He’s in there with Doctor Boateng, studying
something.  They’ve obviously not heard us.”

I
was about to knock again when Samson grabbed my wrist.

“Hey,”
he whispered.  “Are you completely sure about all this?  You know, are you sure
that Caratacus is the bad guy?  And, even if he is, is Barrington definitely
not in on the whole thing too?  I mean, we could be walking straight into the
lion’s den right now.”

I
realised then that there must be a great deal going on which I didn’t know
anything about and there were so many questions which were still unanswered.  I
had seen only a few pages of Barrington’s research log and only half of his
correspondence with Boateng.  It was all so bizarre that I couldn’t even guess
at what the bits I hadn’t seen would say.  In any case,
I
did not know
how to cure zombism.  So if Barrington couldn’t help Milo, Freddie and the
others, then nobody could, and just knowing about it would be no use. 
Barrington was the only hope now.  And the unmistakeable moccasin slippers in
Caratacus’ room were, without all of the other items, more than enough evidence
for me that Caratacus was the Bokor.

“Yes,”
I said defiantly.  “I’m sure.”

This
time I knocked more loudly and, without waiting for a response, stepped
straight in.

Colonel
Barrington’s reaction to my unbidden entry was so far from what I expected that
I was startled:

“Turnpike. 
Thank goodness!” he said, looking up from his research.  “Ah... and Akwasi, my
very best Science pupil.  Good!” 

It
occurred to me that Samson must be very discreet about which of the Masters gave
him lessons because I had had no idea that he did Science.  As Doctor Boateng
looked over towards Samson, I was sure that I briefly noticed an expression of
pride cross his face before he took on a tone of business-like urgency.

“Come
in quickly now,” he said, “and close that door behind you.  There isn’t much
time.  Now then, you must tell me
everything
you know right away.  Do
not spare
any
detail.  Lives are at stake here.”

twenty nine

I
spared no detail of our discoveries from the past few days.  I told him everything
we had overheard and found out, right up to the point when we worked out that
Mr. Caratacus was the Bokor under direct orders from the
Führer
himself
.

Barrington
sat quietly while I spoke, wearing a look of puzzled sadness.  Doctor Boateng
stood up and stalked around the Lab agitatedly, picking up chemical flasks and
items of apparatus and pretending to study them as if he did not want to hear
what I had to say.  But the more I spoke and the more detail I added, the more
attention he paid to me, until he eventually stood next to Barrington, leaning
forward with his hands splayed on the desk in the posture of a Gestapo officer
cross-examining a traitor. 

 “...so
you see, Sir, that was when we realised that you were actually trying to cure
the boys, not harm anyone.  You’re the only person who can stop him.”

The
Colonel sat puzzled, digesting what I had said.  I had no idea why, if
Barrington had known that Freddie, Reggie, Samson and I had been snooping
around after lights-out, out-of-bounds, he hadn’t stopped us already.  But the
expression of complete surprise when I explained that Caratacus must be the
Bokor told me that Barrington had not already deduced this and that he must
have been using us to gather information which he could not. 

When
he eventually cleared his throat, his voice crackled distantly, as if echoing
from another era.

“Caratacus,”
he murmured weakly, emptily.  And then he hissed the name, “Zachary Caratacus! 
Of all people, I would never have thought... And why?  But... now I think back,
he was the Master who was there when Julius Visigoth fell from the Spiral
Staircase.  But... did he ever know the old Bokor...?  And when certain things
must have happened before...”  Barrington checked himself and now looked
directly at me rather than through me, as he had been.  With his more familiar,
more military tone, he said, “Well done, you two.  You have told me more than I
expected to learn from you.”

“But,
Sir, didn’t you know most of this already?”

“I
had managed to deduce a certain amount of it, Turnpike.  But there were a few
crucial things which you boys were much better placed to discover for me.  But
now is not the time to go into this.  We must act and we will be needing your
help.”  He then looked at Doctor Boateng.  “I think you will agree, Edmund,
that our argument has been settled.  What you thought was just bogus research
to keep you on the right side of the Party has clearly been used for real
experimentation without your knowledge.”

“I...
yes,” said Doctor Boateng wearily.  He nodded his head slowly.

“You
cannot be blamed, Edmund,” said Barrington in a conciliatory tone.  “But we
must now move from words to action.”

Boateng
was staring at the floor and let out a deep and shuddering sigh.  He then
looked up steadily at Samson, who simply stared back at him.  Then he shook his
head.   “You may be right.  But, Alec, I think that this is for the two of us
to deal with now.  Don’t you think it is far too dangerous for these two boys?”

“Sir,”
said Samson in earnest, “we want to help, don’t we, Tom?”  He didn’t wait for
me to protest.  “But can’t we just go to the Crypt right now and give the
antidote to all of the boys in there?  Surely Mr. Caratacus can’t try to stop
you.”

“Ah,
now, I’m afraid it is going to be a good deal more complicated than that.  And
I agree, Edmund, that this will be dangerous.  Very dangerous.  But these two
have already displayed ample aptitude for facing down danger.  In any case, we
need all the help we can get from those that know what is going to happen. 
There will be more undead than you and I will be able to cure alone.  And then
we will need to deal with Caratacus and the danger of the old zombies, those
quickened in previous lunar eclipses.  So, will you do it?”

Well,
I had already withstood burial in a coffin, defied gravity’s attempt to snatch
me from the roof of the school and narrowly avoided a beating from the two school
thugs.  And that was just the past two hours.  So I was feeling that my
survival instincts were currently bulletproof.  And anyway, I would probably be
in as much danger lying in my bed with zombies marauding around the school as I
would in the basement, trying to stop them.

“I’m
in.”

“Right
then,” said Barrington.  “Time?”

Boateng
fished a pocket-watch out from his waistcoat.  “Twenty past nine.”

“Well
then.  That gives us sixteen minutes until the Moon enters the darkest part of
the Earth’s shadow.  That is when the first zombies will begin to rise. 
Right.  My research has revealed the following things which we will all need to
keep in mind.  They may prove critical.

In
the next few minutes Mr. Caratacus will be entering into a very deep trance
which will end shortly after midnight.  He will be in a very, shall we say,
delicate state during this period and he is not under any circumstances to be
disturbed.  If his trance were to be broken, the outcome could be
catastrophic.  The Witchdoctor’s text, with which you two are well acquainted,
states that it is during this period that the Loa will enter Mr. Caratacus and
assist him in extracting the boys’ souls from their bodies and depositing them
in their Fetishes.  Of course, I know this sounds like mumbo-jumbo and I’m sure
it is.  So we must, for safety’s sake, presume that there is a germ of truth in
this.”  He rubbed his chin and flicked through pages of the text, musing, “I am
coming to the conclusion that the subjects, perhaps during powerful hypnosis at
the time of poisoning, are reliant upon the Bokor’s completion of this ritual so
that they awake from the death-like state that results from the poisoning... 
Though I must say that the more I read, the more I am inclined towards
abandoning scientific explanations in favour of the Witchdoctor’s
superstition.  After all...”

He
was beginning to ramble now and we were losing him in his thoughts.  Samson
looked at me and shrugged.

Doctor
Boateng interrupted, “Alec, come on.  We don’t have time.  You must press on.”

“Yes,
yes.  What we need to do is administer nitrous oxide to each subject after it
has awoken, but before the ritual has ended.  So I’m afraid, Akwasi, that your
suggestion will not work – there is no use in gassing the boys now, while they
are not inhaling air.  So we must wait until they have been awoken.  If any boy
is missed before the ritual ends, the zombification process will be complete
and he will be incurable.  Quickened.  You will know it when a boy has been
treated with enough antidote.  He will look like he is snapping out of a
daydream and then after a few seconds, he will fall into a deep, restorative
sleep, which, according to the text, and I struggle to believe this, will
remove all of the outward appearances of death and cure all wounds.  But,” he
added grimly, “unless it is totally essential, we should avoid doing any of the
boys any serious damage, broken limbs and so on.  I may be proven wrong, but I
can’t see how sleep could cure broken bones.

The
next point is that you must not underestimate the physical attributes of the
zombies.  They will have arisen from a deep paralysis, so they will move very
stiffly and slowly, and they will not be strong.  But you must not let this
fool you.  According to my research, they will be controlled by Caratacus, or
more precisely, his Loa, and so we can presume that they will have no sense of
self-preservation.  In fact, I suppose that they will have no sense of
self
at all.  They will obey their commands robotically.  So you can assume that
they will try to kill you.  In fact, even a surface wound from one of their
fingernails could result in gangrene.

Finally,
and this you must bear in mind, one of the side-effects of the poison is that
the photoreceptor cones in their retinas will be severely impaired. 
Unfortunately, this is not a good thing.  What it means is that their rod cells
will be more light-sensitive.”  He looked at us for a reaction and realised
that we had no idea what he was talking about.  “They will be able to see in
the dark.  Okay?”

My
mind was whirling.  I had already had enough trouble believing that any of this
was happening.  But now, my Science teacher, Colonel Barrington, was proposing
that I go into battle with him against a horde of see-in-the-dark Nazi-zombies,
some of which had previously been very good friends of mine, who were probably
going to try and kill me.  This all felt like a nightmare.  But I knew I
couldn’t be asleep, because I had never had a dream as deranged before.

“Sir,”
I said, “you said that the boys will not be curable once they are quickened,
but that that won’t happen until after midnight.  So presumably there may be
some zombies which Mr. Caratacus has quickened before, you know like the
Wandering Monk and the Fallen Boy and I suppose... Head Matron.  Well, surely
the cure will not work on them will it?  After all, those ones must have been
up and about for years, mustn’t they?”

“You
are, of course, quite right, Turnpike.  But the Quickened are for Doctor
Boateng and me to deal with.  Mr. Caratacus will no doubt call upon the old
zombies for aid when he discovers that we will be trying to disrupt his plan. 
So we will be relying upon you two to administer the cure to the boys, while we
try to neutralise the threat from the old zombies.  Since the old zombies have
been active for a much longer time, they will be stronger, much stronger, and
will be able to move with more agility than the new ones.  Frankly, I do not
know how many of them there will be, I do not know where they will be coming
from because presumably not all of them live down in the Crypt and so we will
be unlikely to be able to overpower all of them.  Our main strategic focus for
tonight is to cure all of the new subjects before the ritual is over.  Okay? 
Time please.”

“Nine
twenty-nine.  Seven minutes.”

The
window panes were a deep, terracotta red, blackening into blood-tinged onyx. 
Night had begun, one minute until the General Curfew and so even the Seniors
would be on the way to their dorms soon.

“Right. 
We need to get to the Crypt just after the ritual begins.  Put these on.”  He
reached under his desk and pulled out what appeared to be four gas-masks that I
presumed had last been used during the War.  I stretched one uncomfortably
around my head.  It was pinchingly tight and bit into the sides of my nose. 
“And take two of those.”  He pointed towards a row of what looked like black
fire extinguishers next to the door, but with “
N
₂
O“
written on them, rather than “
CO
₂
“. 
“One of those should contain more than enough for what we have to do.  But you
boys should take two each.  Here, strap on these harnesses.”

He
helped to pull straps over my shoulders and around my waist and hitched two of
these canisters to my back.  He passed two pipes, one leading from each can,
under my arms.  “Hold these,” he said, holding out the conical nozzles at the
ends of the pipes.   They had been moulded so that they had handles and
triggers. 

Once
Samson was similarly equipped, he said, “So it is simple.  You pull the trigger
and a jet of nitrous oxide will shoot out of here.”

He
and Doctor Boateng took one canister each and attached their pipes to their
forearms with masking tape. 

“Edmund,”
said Barrington, unlocking the cupboard at the back of the Lab.  “You and I may
well be needing these.”  He reached in and drew out two gleaming shotguns, one
of which he handed to Boateng, and a box of red cartridges, from which he filled
his pockets.  “The only way to kill off the old zombies is to blow their brains
out, I’m afraid.”

Doctor
Boateng looked down at the twelve-bore which sat awkwardly in his hands. 
“Alec, but what about Angela?  You cannot know for certain that there is no
cure for those that are quickened.  Surely you don’t think...”

“Look
here,” said Barrington stiffly.  “It’s quite simple.  If one of the old zombies
is posing a threat, you will have to kill it regardless of who it is or, should
I say, of who it once was.  You must remember that they are not people, even
though some of them have been very effectively preserved.  Come on.  We don’t
have time.  Take some ammunition.  Let’s go.  You boys must try to stick
together.  And try not to lose sight of me and Doctor Boateng.”