Cowboys and Dinosaurs - Chapter 23

23. The Red Beaver Of Courage

"YOU! YOU WITH YOUR HEAD IN THE BEAVER! GET BACK IN THERE AND DIE LIKE A MAN!"

He heard shots ring out behind him. He could hear no ricochets off the spongy landscape - only the fact that he still seemed able to run convinced him he had not yet been shot.

"I'M GETTING OUT OF HERE LIKE SHIT OFF A SHOVEL!" he yelled, wasting precious breath. "I'VE GOT MY SHIT TOGETHER! I'M RUNNING LIKE SHIT!"

Even at this distance, he actually heard the indignant indrawn breath. "YOU! SAY YOUR FACKING PRAYERS AND HELLO TO BEARDY JESUS! GEOFFREY, A RELOAD!"

The emotionless voice behind the megaphone spoke again. "I HEAR PROPER GUNSHOTS. LET EVERYONE BEAR WITNESS THAT I WARNED YOU." A seven hundred horsepower Maybach motor screamed into life like a demonic legion singing a capella. The ground shook as the Tiger moved into pursuit.

Steve tumbled end-over-end down a drainage cut and was rolled in cold stinking water. He struggled to his feet and plunged on through banks of nettles, thistles, and the occasional stray length of barbed wire.

Only another half kilometre. Only a finger's width on the A to Z.

Am I running in the right direction? I have to have run at least two fingers and a thumb by now.

The Tiger's engine roared behind him like a hole into Hell, blanking out the noise of the gunshots; but there were gunshots. He saw a perfect bullet-shaped hole appear in a dock leaf to his left. For some reason, on a road bordering the marsh, he could see a car keeping pace with him. It was a green Volvo. He was sure he ought to recognize it from somewhere. But he was too busy to bother with such things.

It has to be around here somewhere...

...and then he leapt over a nondescript grey fence and plummeted down the other side of it, far, far further than he'd expected to plummet.

***

"USUTHU!"

"REMEMBER OUR BODY BALANCE CLASSES, JUSTIN! USE CHI POWER!"

"OW! THAT WAS MOIRA STEWART, MOTHERFUCKER!"

The vutwamini had the eastern arc of the enemy line engulfed in a shrinking ring of stabbing spearpoints and captured blank-firing rifles. Potshots were being taken at legs at point blank range to shrieks of German pain and whoops of Zulu delight.

"NOW THERE'S A BITTER PILL! OUR OWN DAMNED RIFLES!"

"OW! MY FEMUR! MY FEMUR'S BROKEN! SOME MEDICAL ATTENTION HERE!"

Syndii stood with her iklwa upraised, ready to plunge it down and taste plump manflesh.

"You are the one called Gary", she said.

"MY FEMUR! YOU'VE BUST MY FEMORAL ARTERY, YOU BITCH! I FEEL FAINT!"

"Gary, the femur is a bone inside your thigh, the femoral artery being in an approximately similar location. What you are holding there, Gary, is not your thigh. Therefore I can only conclude that the bone I have injured, if I have injured any bone at all, is your arse bone."

Shanice walked up behind Syndii and whispered in her ear. Syndii shook her head.

"They're not retreating", she said. "They're regrouping. Did we get all the real pieces?"

Shanice held up an iklwa strung with brown and sodden forty-four magnum revolvers, the spear-shaft threaded through their trigger guards.

"It's a miracle", sobbed an emotional vutwamini, overcome with emotion as she stabbed recumbent Anne Sommers sales team members viciously and repeatedly.

Syndii unclipped her grenade cannister and extracted a low tar cigarette, which she lit.

"If it's a miracle", said Syndii, puffing out clouds of menthol, "it's a one-metre, underhand-stabbing really short assegai miracle." She ran a finger down the broad, deliberately blunted blade of her iklwa. "How many of the sisters think they can still fight?"

"All of them, isangoma."

"How many can still fight?"

Shanice hesitated briefly, then admitted: "Five or six, isangoma."

Syndii nodded. "We're done, then. Alasdair and Daniel have us. As soon as they regroup and hit us again, we're finished, and when that big monkey comes back from killing Private White-Trash, we're probably dead as well."

Shanice's hands twisted on the shaft of her own weapon. "Isangoma?"

"Yes, Shanice?"

"His name's Steve. He's earned a name."

"They've all earned names, Shanice. We're all Zulus now."

***

Pieces of landscape hit every part of Steve, culminating in a sickening impact to his hands, elbows and face.

Spitting out gravel, he raised himself up. He was lying in a bed of railway ballast, dry gravel dust irritating his nostrils. His hands were resting on a shiny metal rail. The rail was vibrating.

The High Speed One line to Stratford International ran across the eastern end of the marshes. Trains might eventually pass through here at over a hundred miles per hour. Or maybe less - they would be decelerating into the station. He wasn't sure.

A train was coming now. Whether it was a real train, some sort of gravel-laying engine, or a pump truck being manned by Charlie Chaplin, he didn't care. It was a chance, and it had to be taken.

He forced himself to his feet and pelted over the rails.

***

Syndii looked across at Shanice.

"So", she said.

"It's been an honour", said Shanice.

"And a privilege", said Syndii.

Vutwaminileutnant Kandeece snapped out a long class B cigarette from the elastic band round her German helmet. She looked at it regretfully.

"Was saving this for the victory celebration", she said. "But on the whole..."

She passed it to Syndii, who took a puff and passed it on to Private Cracker, who was now Private Arnold. In the distance came the very faint sound of a mournful harmonica.

"Private, uh, Andy, turn that bloody MP3 player off", snapped Syndii.

"It's Max Geldray's golden selection", complained Private Andy. "This is The Battle of the Alamo, as sung by Frankie Avalon as 'Smitty' in the movie of the same name."

Syndii sighed. "Then leave it on."

Suddenly, clear and crisp in the cold air, came the unmistakeable sound of a hunting horn, and another sound - massive hooves splashing into water, sucking out of mud, walloping earth. Massive, majestic horses bearing frantic peer-pressure-crazed Afghan tribesmen born on the pavement outside the British Embassy in Kabul. Beards, beards, beards. Great beards of the east wildly flapping. The British Olympic Buzkashi Team had come at last.

***

"Он имеет это! Нанесите вред уродливому ублюдку!"

The riders swept in from the East like a ten-man Scourge of God. In the mist, they appeared far more numerous, as if the supernatural fog had disgorged hundreds of wild hairy horsemen. Jules had read a book on the subject. He couldn't remember who it had been by, but he suspected it was James Herriot. Gunfire (blank round gunfire, at least) did not hurt them; it only made them mad. They gabbled in a strange, unearthly language, the language of devils.

" Слева! Слева!"

" Остановите ублюдка! Остановите его!"

Jules had not signed on to Anne Sommers Sales and Marketing for this. He remembered happy days in double glazing sales, knocking on doors, saying Good morning, I do apologize for bothering you, I'm not selling anything, we've simply noticed your home is ideal for our purposes as a show property and for that reason we can offer you a discount on a full set of luxury UPVC doors and windows would you be interested? Haha, your little doggie appears to have bitten my groin, almost as if he was...trained to do so.

But anything was better than this. Huge, slavering horses thundering in from all directions, everyone wearing a German helmet a target, boots and kneepads thudding into coalscuttles. One bearded apparition leapt from his saddle and bore Euan from Graphic Design to the ground, yelling 'WHERE IT IS AT! YOU HAVE IT AND YOU TELL US WHERE IT IS AT!"

A helmeted figure came pelting at him out of the mist. He raised the MP40 and pulled the trigger; it made a Realistic Firing Noise, as he had been promised by the packaging. Some of the Anne Sommers troops had been able, First World War Russian army style, to wait until wounded genuine re-enactors dropped their blank-firing weapons and then scoop them up. Jules had not.

"You're dead!" he sobbed. "Dead! Why don't you lie down and die!" He threw the MP40 at his attacker and drew the rubber SS dagger it had come with. "Come on! Come on, you bastard!"

"Jules! JULES, it's me!"

"Carina?" he gaped. "Carina from Direct Channels?"

"I'm exhausted", gasped Carina from Direct Channels. She was covered in mud. She would lose the deposit on their uniform. They would all lose the deposit on their uniforms.

"You need - to get this away from here", she said between wheezing inbreaths.

"You look terrible", said Jules. "How far have you run?"

"At least - a hundred yards", panted Feldwebel Carina, her face a mask of Olympian effort. "You have to - get it away. They mustn't get it."

Heavy, hoofed shadows stomped and sploshed all around them. The red thread of a laser gunsight swept across the landscape like the gaze of a Terminator robot.

"His name is Tiny", said Feldwebel Carina. "We have to - get him to a vet. This is important, Jules."

The creature in Carina's arms was clearly dead, if indeed it had ever been alive. It appeared to have no head.

"Erm", said Jules. "I'm not sure about this, Kreen."

Feldwebel Carina appraised the low morale of her troop, and came to a decision.

"If you get him away from them", said Carina, "I'll give you a blow job. If you get him all the way to the vet's, I'll swallow."

Jules's ears, on which he had never before suspected the existence of muscles, pricked up. He snatched the pathetic dead parcel off his Feldwebel and scurried off into the mist.

Carina sighed and sat down hard in six inches of cold water.

"What have I done", she said, putting her hands on her helmet and rocking it gently back and forth. "What have I done?"

***

All of a sudden, all on the battlefield was silence. The steady, insistent background crackle of gunfire rippled away to nothing like the last few pops of a mouthful of Space Dust.

Syndii looked north indignantly and bellowed:

"DID ANY OF YOU BITCHES RAISE A WHITE FLAG?"

Coal-scuttled helmets shook nonplussed back at her.

She squinted north and south. "DID ANY OF THEM RAISE A WHITE FLAG?"

"Don't think so, isangomaführer."

She bounded up onto the top of a rusted oil tank and shielded her eyes against the sun. A short way to the north, on the other side of the vast bank of nettles where the impi had been disposing of their prisoners of war, a lone car was approaching down the overgrown track that led to the factory.

It made up for the fact that it was a lone car by being a very big and very expensive one. The length of a house, it glistened with layers of paint that looked deep enough to have doubled its kerb weight. All parts of it that were not painted glittered with chrome, but in an understated way that spoke of self-assurance and inherited wealth. The things that glittered most prominently were the tall pediment-and-colonnade radiator, the Spirit of Ecstasy, and the letters ROLLS ROYCE.

If its radiator shape had been the twin giant nostrils of BMW or the three-pointed shuriken of Mercedes, the sides of the car might have been pock-marked with wadding dents by now regardless of expense. But the majority of the fingers on the triggers were British, no more able to damage a Rolls than Douglas Bader could have buggered the Queen. Rolls Royce had manufactured armoured cars in the First World War; very possibly the strategy had been that no German would dare to shoot at them for fear of the insurance cost.

The plates on the front and back of the Roller bore the number: K1NG B1TCH

"I'm sure that's illegal", said Shanice. "It's got too many letters."

Syndii was trembling despite herself. "He carries a legal one in the boot. If he gets stopped, his driver gets out, says Oh, I'm So Dreadfully Sorry, Officer, replaces the illegal plate with the legal one, and goes on his way again. The legal plate reads P155 OFF. He's been known to screw a second one on the front that reads R022ERS. Often the arresting officer doesn't notice, and in any case, he'll get mysteriously transferred to another part of town as soon as he gets back to the station." She wrung her assegai nervously in both fists. "It's Ronnie Dowd's car. The Burglar King. Head of the Gay Mafia."

The car came to a leisurely halt directly between the Zulu and Axis armies, as if daring somebody to attack it. Gigantic shapes emerged from it - triangular shapes dressed smartly for dinner in dicky bows and DJ's, forming an honour guard around the vehicle. Once the cortège was laid out with almost military precision, a man stepped out onto the grass. Considerably shorter than his personal gorilla collection, he was nevertheless of impressive height, wearing an impeccably-tailored two-piece pinstripe topped off with a pink carnation, which he stopped to adjust and smell as his feet hit the turf. His expression was to some extent unreadable behind twin mirror lenses of sunglasses. Behind him, like a single Smartie in a bag of humbugs, followed an even smaller figure, walking with some difficulty and beaming with happiness.

The man with the pink carnation looked up at the vutwamini.

"Syndii, isn't it? How is your father nowadays?" A row of perfect teeth showed in a smile. A pinstriped sleeve flicked left and right, wielding an invisible racket. "I miss him in the squash court." The accent was surprisingly upmarket, the product of a second generation gangster education.

Syndii felt her leg muscles quivering, and willed her bladder sphincter to stay tight shut. "He's fine. He says you were a good opponent."

"Corruption trials do drag on so. It's a good job the Old Bailey is so close to our club."

Syndii looked anew at the primary-coloured-lycra-clad figure behind Dowd. "Excuse me...isn't your name...Steve?"

Dowd turned and vouchsafed the creature a momentary glance. "Steve? It might have been once...he has now changed his name by deed poll. It is now Gaylord McQueen." He glared severely at Gaylord McQueen. "Isn't it."

The man in lycra shivered in sexual ecstasy. "Yes, Master."

Dowd smiled behind his sunglasses. Then, he turned around and took in the scene all around him, as if only now realizing he was surrounded by armed men and Zulus.

"I'm sorry, have I interrupted something?" His expression was affability itself. Surely lightning could not strike out of a cloudless sky? "I came here to meet a number of associates of mine. I am, as you know, a respectable businessman with a pride in my ties to the local community, and I am informed that certain franchisees of mine have been acting a trifle over-zealously. Whilst not actually being employees, they have been granted the right to operate using the Burglar King name. Burglar King is a caring organization who deliver a public service - if we did not supply certain public needs, some of which happen, by dint of government short-sightedness, currently to be illegal, then parties far less enlightened than ourselves would supply those same needs. I don't speak of Yardies, or Triads, or the Pashtun Mafia - these are cosmopolitan times, and we judge a man by the colour of his heart, not of his skin. I speak of people who have no morals, people without class or style. In a word, criminals. And what would the result be?"

The golems around the car found voices, and barked out: "CHAOS, MR. DOWD."

"Exactly! Chaos, as set out on page fourteen of the Burglar King Fit For Business checklist! We need a society where it is common for what to happen?"

There was a brief pause for recollection, then a chorus of: "FOR LITTLE OLD LADIES AND THE HEROES OF BOTH WORLD WARS TO WALK THE STREETS IN SAFETY, MR. DOWD."

Dowd clicked his fingers. "Precisely! I'm very excited at the quick responses I'm getting here! And the police, gentlemen, do not do this! Bless them, they would love to, but they have their hands tied by legislation. It is on us that this mantle rests, for we are not common criminals, gentlemen. What are we?"

This time the response was immediate, and proud. "EXCEPTIONAL CRIMINALS, MR. DOWD!"

"Which means what?"

"WE ONLY EVER MURDER OUR OWN!"

"Excellent! Well recited parrot fashion, my lovely sexually attractive boys! A Burglar King sanctioned operation is one operating under strict BK corporate ground rules, which are", he began to count on his exquisitely manicured fingernails, his voice becoming louder, "One, no violence against civilians unless in self defence; Two, no firearms where there is risk of collateral damage; Three, no activities liable to alarm civilians, unless in self defence. Now, would anyone care to stand up and explain to me how ALL THREE OF THESE FUCKING THINGS HAVE HAPPENED IN THE LAST TWO HOURS?"

Two sheepish shitstained figures dragged themselves unwillingly upright. One of them raised a hand.

"...Please, Mr. Dowd, sir. We're very sorry. We got carried away. We've never had shooters before, and we, we got excited." Eyes remained downcast at the dirt, incapable of looking up and meeting their leader's gaze.

Mr. Dowd's eyes were twin pools of pitilessness. "Where is Lucian Fanshaw?"

A trembling hand pointed in the direction of the tank tracks.

Mr. Dowd nodded infinitesimally. Two of his immense minders moved off wordlessly after the tank tracks like golems set in motion.

Mr. Dowd turned his attention to Syndii again. "Now, has anybody been hurt?"

Syndii inspected her troop critically. "We have one who might need a quick trip to hospital. And one broken Nichelle Nichols, one Moira Stewart, and one Tessa Sanderson." She locked gazes with her anguished subordinate. "Tessa Sanderson went all the way down to the quick, and Mercedeeze was very attached to her."

"Let me see. I have a teenage sister, I understand how important huge flimsy artificial finger extensions can be." Mr. Dowd examined the offered hand. "Yes. Yes, this damage looks quite unpleasant. If it comes off completely you'll be able to type, play guitar, operate heavy machinery, all manner of stuff. I own a beauty parlour in the Whitechapel Road, a poor place but mine own. I believe this could be repaired in expert hands. Do we have a deal?"

Mercedeeze blinked with cow-eyed stupidity. Then, at a nod from Syndii, she nodded vigorously.

The smile reappeared. "Excellent. Gentlemen, Syndii will direct you in the loading of the casualties. We are on an ambulance run." More of the golems shambled forward.

"The nearest hospital is Hackney", said Syndii. "But they gave my brother a four hour wait for a broken arm."

Mr. Dowd raised a dismissive hand. "We have our own medical facilities. Taking bullets out of arms, removing ice picks from occiputs, that sort of thing. If there is anything more than a five minute wait, believe me, words will be had, and they will not be pleasant words."

He moved forward to assist an unsteady Venusia into the back of the Rolls. As he did so, Syndii leaned close to his lycra-clad sex slave.

"Steve?" she hissed sotto voce - and then, remembering the outlandish name, "Gonoroid?"

"You have to call me Gaylord McQueen", objected Gaylord McQueen.

"Are you kidding? He's treating you like dirt!"

"I know", squirmed Gonoroid, barely able to contain himself. "Isn't it fabulous?"

"He has no respect for you! He's not allowing you to exist in your own space!"

"It's only because deep down, he really cares about me", whispered Gonoroid defensively. "Plus, I believe I can change him." Then, looking back up the track, he frowned and said, out loud:

"Isn't that Liz?"

A moment later, Syndii nodded, and added:

"What's she doing with that fish tank?"