‘They’ll eat us,’ said Norman, shivering horribly. ‘I just know they will.’
‘Damn right they will. Norman, think of something.’
‘Me? Why me?’
‘Because you’re the one with the inventive mind. Come up with something. Get us out of here.’
‘Right,’ said Norman. ‘Right. OK. Yes. Well, all right. Let’s imagine this is a movie.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a movie and famous movie stars are playing us. You’re being played by Danny de Vito and I’m being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.’
‘Norman, we don’t have time for this.’
‘No, think. In a situation like this, what would Arnie do?’
I looked at Norman.
And Norman looked at me.
‘Arnie would drive the big truck,’ I said.
‘Into the big truck,’ cried Norman and we made a dash for the cab. We dashed pretty fast, I can tell you. But you do have to hand it to the vegetable kingdom. When it gets the chance to do what it really wants to do, which, as Uncle Jon Peru Joans had told me all those years before, is, ‘get about’, it gets up and about at the hurry-up.
The chimeras swept towards us: a big green ugly snapping sproutish horde of horrors. We were hardly inside the lorry’s cab before they were all about us, evil tendrils whipping and big teeth going snap snap snap.
We locked the doors, I can tell you.
Norman was in the driving seat. ‘Drive,’ I told him. ‘Drive.’
‘Where are the keys?’ Norman asked.
‘I don’t know. Won’t one of yours fit it?’
‘Now you’re just being silly.’
‘Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!’ I caught sight of the little dashboard clock. One of those digital jobbies. It read 23:59. ‘OH SHIT!’
Crack! went the window on my side. Snap snap snap went teeth.
‘You drive,’ yelled Norman. ‘I’ll reach down under the dash and hot—wire it.’
‘How?’
‘Do you really want me to spend time explaining to you how?’
‘No. Just do it.’
I climbed over Norman and he climbed under me. The crashing and bashing was deafening and the lorry was rocking from side to side. Then the passenger window went and we were in really big trouble.
Norman was frantically tinkering under the dash. I was clinging to the wheel and wondering just how you drove a big lorry when suddenly everything went a bit green. Very green indeed.
‘Aaaaagh! Get it off me!’ Norman kicked and screamed. The cab was a thrashing maelstrom of tendrils, gnashing teeth and really horrible sprouty breath. ‘Aaaaagh!’ wailed Norman. ‘It’s got me. It’s got me.
And it had got him.
I tried to beat the thing off, but I couldn’t do much with my fists. There was one of those big sunshield visor things above the windscreen. I figured that if I could rip that off, I could use it as some kind of weapon. I reached up and tried to tear it loose.
And guess what? There was a spare set of keys up there, stuck under the sun visor thing.
Just like there always was for Arnie.
‘Hold on, Norman,’ I shouted. ‘We’re on our way.
I rammed the key into the ignition. Chose a gear at random and put my foot to the floor.
And we went into reverse.
Now I’m damn sure that that never happened to Arnie.
The big lorry ploughed back into Castle Doveston, demolishing stonework and stained glass. I chose another gear. It was a good’n this time. The lorry lurched forward, bringing down further stonework and stained glass. Revealing the chaos within to the monsters without. But whatever horrors followed then, I didn’t see them.
I just kept my foot down hard and we took off at a gallop.
Now, big and mean and ugly the chimeras may have been, but they were no match for the lorry. We ripped through their ranks, mashing them under, me clinging onto the steering wheel and Norman clinging onto me.
‘The time,’ I shouted. ‘The time.’
‘I don’t think there’s any time left,’ shouted Norman. But there was.
Just a wee bit.
Just a final ten seconds.
Ten...
I whacked us up a gear and kept the throttle down.
Nine...
Inside the great hall, chimeras wreaking bloody mayhem.
Eight...
More chimeras up ahead.
Seven...
O’Shit and O’Bastard on the minstrels’ gallery bravely letting fly with their Uzis.
Six...
Splatter and splat as the big lorry mows down further chimeras.
Five...
Castle Doveston silhouetted against the full moon.
Four.
Blood and guts and gore and ghastliness.
Three...
Big lorry, engine roaring, ploughs towards the gates.
Two...
Danbury Collins awakens to find himself inside an invisible suit of armour. ‘What’s all this noise?’ he asks.
One...
Big lorry smashes through the gates of Castle Doveston.
Zero...
A very brief moment of absolute silence. Again Castle Doveston standing tall and proud and unsightly against that old full moon,
And then...
BOOOOM.
The biggest BIG AAAH-CHOO! that ever there was.
26
Are we dead then?
I didn’t see it.
Though I really wish I had.
They told me that the explosion was really quite spectacular.
Some Bramfielders conga-lining around the car park at the back of the Jolly Gardeners, singing in the New Year and the new millennium, thought at first it was a firework display that the Laird had generously laid on for them.
The charges had been so perfectly placed, you see, and the beauty of it was, as I later came to understand, they were not triggered by any pre-set timing mechanism. The Doveston had let fate set them off.
Allow me to explain.
It had been his obsession that the end of civilization as we knew it would occur at the stroke of midnight on the final night of the twentieth century. He said that he knew it. Had seen it. Had felt it. Whatever. And he was so absolutely certain of this, that this is how he triggered the bomb.
A simple cut-out switch linked to the detonator. As long as the electrical mains supply to Castle Doveston remained on, the bomb remained harmless. But should the power fail, the cut-out switch would trigger the bomb.
And so, of course, if the Secret Government of the World had not really engineered the Millennium Bug and sabotaged all those computer systems, the power would remain on. But if they had and the National Grid failed...
The Big Aaah-Choo!
And, at the very stroke of midnight, the computer systems went down and the National Grid failed.
From beyond the grave, he’d had his revenge.
And, love him or hate him, you had to admire him. It was a masterstroke.
But I was telling you about how the charges had been so perfectly placed.
Three separate charges there were. Cunningly angled. They totally atomized Castle Doveston. But through the nature of their positioning, they did something more. They sent three rolling fireballs into the sky.
Three rolling fireballs that formed for a moment the triple snake Gaia logo of the Doveston.
Pretty damn clever, eh?
But, as I said, I didn’t see it. The big lorry I was trying to drive smashed through the gates, hurtled along the road towards the village and then came to that rather tricky bend just before you reach the Jolly Gardeners.
Well, it was dark, very dark now, no street lights or anything. And I hadn’t managed to figure out how to work the headlights on the big lorry and there was a lot of ice on the road and we were going very fast.