‘Switch off your bloody suit,’ I shouted at him.
Norman fumbled once more in his pocket. But this isn’t easy to do when you’re hop, skip and jumping.
What happened next had an elegant, almost slow-motion quality about it. The remote control slipped from Norman’s fingers. It arced through the air. It fell towards the floor. It struck the floor and Norman’s big left platform shoe came crunching down upon it. And then there was a sort of sparkler fizzing. It came from Norman’s suit. The suit began to throb, to pulsate. It began to glow.
There was a sort of ear-splitting whine that turned every head in the place.
And what happened next wasn’t elegant.
What happened next was pure chaos.
25
Tomorrow belongs to those who can see it coming.
The Doveston
Allow me to set the scene, as it were.
Try to imagine that moment before the chaos kicked in.
Picture, if you will, the great hall.
Picture the duff decorations. The crudely daubed and badly stencilled walls. That vile dog-dragon thing that dangles from the chandelier. Picture the mariachi band, on high in the minstrels’ gallery. It’s the very band that once played Brentstock. Older now, of course, but still with lots of puff. And see their instruments. The trumpets and the flugelhorns, the cornets, the euphoniums, and indeed the ophicleides.
Now picture the people below them. All those beautiful people. Those rich and famous people. Those have-it-alls at the very top. Those people of the Secret Government. See how very well dressed they all are. How gorgeously attired. Some are on their feet, but most still loll about, languidly beckoning to waiters and shavenheaded dwarves.
And try if you can to picture Norman. He’s right down there in the very middle of the great hail. He’s still got his trilby on his head. Oh no, he hasn’t, no. He’s torn his trilby off his head. He’s beating at himself with it. He seems to be on fire. There’s this big corona of light all around him. There’s smoke rising up from his shoulders. And he’s flashing on and off. His suit. It’s going like a stroboscope. And there’s this awful noise now. It’s coming from the suit. It’s a high-pitched whining sound. A real teeth-clencher, an ear-drum-piercer.
All eyes are upon Norman. The lollers are scrambling to their feet, covering their ears and howling.
And now the chaos kicks in.
‘Ooooh!’ went Norman, beating at himself. ‘I’m reaching critical mass.
Now, generally speaking, your really big punch-up starts small and works its way towards a crescendo. A bit like a military campaign. Minor skirmishes, leading to the battle proper. Usually the two opposing sides get the chance to size each other up before charging headlong. That’s the way it’s done. You wouldn’t just jumble the two sides together, bung everyone into a big room and simply blow a whistle, would you?
That would be chaos.
Wouldn’t it?
Yet here, suddenly, in the great hall, were two utterly opposing sides, all jumbled up together. What sides are these, I hear you ask. One male side and one female, is the answer.
As Norman’s suit reached critical mass it discharged such a rush of power that there could be no middle ground. The force was overwhelming. The women overwhelmed with love, the men with absolute hatred. Norman was no longer Norman at all. To the women he was a God-like being. To the men, the Devil Incarnate.
Now, women always know what men are thinking and a woman will fight hard to save the man she loves. So, as the men rose up as one to slay the evil demon, the womenfolk rose up as one to save the man they loved.
And if you’ve ever seen two hundred women take on two hundred men in a no-holds-barred grand-slam tag-team main event, then you’ll know what I mean when I tell you it was brutal.
I got welted with another bloody handbag.
It was the war of the sexes. A kind of simultaneous female uprising of the kind no doubt dreamed about by Emmeline Pankhurst (1858—1928) that now legendary English suffragette leader, who in 1903 founded the militant Women’s Social and Political Union.
It was war.
But then war, what is it good for? I ask you. Absolutely nothing (Good God y’all).
The women beat upon the men and the men lashed out at the women. Norman tore his jacket off and flung it into the air. As waiters’ trays went sailing overhead and love-sick dwarves bit waiters in the nadgers, I did that thing that the handyman’s dog did. I made a bolt for the door.
I was not alone in doing this. Norman, on his hands and knees, his trousers round his ankles, caught me up.
He had his bunch of convenient keys in his hand.
‘Out,’ went Norman, ‘Out. Come on, I’ll lock the door.’
We scuttled out and slammed the front door shut upon the chaos. Norman turned the key in the lock. ‘That should keep them at bay,’ he said.
‘What’s the time? What’s the time?’
‘Damn,’ said Norman, kicking off his platform shoes and pulling up his smouldering trews. ‘My watch is in my jacket. But there can’t be much time left. A couple of minutes at most.’
‘Let’s head for the gates then. I’ll race you.’
I was on the staffing blocks and I was almost off, but Norman said, ‘Hold on.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘What is it?’
Norman peered into the darkness. ‘There’s something wrong out there,’ he said. ‘I can feel it.’
I squinted about. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I told him. ‘This is no time to be scared of the dark.’
‘It’s too quiet. Too still.’
‘It’s not back in there.’
Sounds of battle issued from within the walls of Castle Doveston. Breakings of glass and smashings of furniture. And the occasional thud as someone blundered into an invisible pillar. Although, in all the hullabaloo, you really couldn’t hear those.
‘Look,’ and Norman pointed. By the light that issued from the windows of the great hall, a rather dancing light with lots of moving silhouettes, we could see the big black lorries. They now had their tailgates down and ramps leading from their open rear ends to the ground. Norman limped on stockinged feet across to the nearest lorry.
‘We don’t have time,’ I shouted to him. ‘Come on, Norman, let’s go.
‘No, wait.’ Norman sniffed at the ramp. ‘Offal,’ he said, ‘dead meat. The lorries are empty, but whatever was in them dines upon meat.
‘Wild animals.’ I was soon at Norman’s side. ‘Set free in the grounds, just in case anyone was to escape the explosion.’
‘He didn’t miss a trick, the Doveston, did he?’
‘He never left anything to chance.’
‘Oh Gawd,’ said Norman and he pointed again. This time out into the night. I peered in the direction of his pointing and I didn’t like what I saw.
There had to be hundreds of them out there. Thousands, perhaps. Lurking where the hall’s light dimmed to night. Lurking on the edge of darkness, as it were.
Chimeras.
Fully grown? Half grown? Maybe just a quarter grown. But great big sons of birches none the less. Towering well above the eight foot mark, fanged-mouths opening and closing.
Chimeras.
Part sprout. Part basilisk. All predator.
Actually, if they ever come up with the technology again to make movies and they choose to make one out of this book, that would be great for the trailer. Imagine the bloke with the gravelly voice going, ‘They came from the night. Part sprout. Part basilisk. All predator.’
Mel Gibson could play me and perhaps Danny de Vito might be persuaded to play Norman.
‘What in the name of Meccano are those?’ Norman asked. ‘Are they triffids, or what?’
‘They’re what and we’re surrounded and time is running out.’