Saucerers and Gondoliers - Chapter 10

Chapter 10 - A Life On The Ocean Wave

"GOT IT", yelled Glenn Bob, meanwhile, wrapping the dinghy's mooring rope around a rocky outcrop, and then added: "THERE, Y'ALL!"
The dinghy was now bobbing in a narrow cove bombarded by freezing water. Every breaker threatened to throw the boat at the cliffs and burst it.
"WE GOT TO GET THE BOAT ASHORE", yelled Glenn Bob, "OR WE'LL ALL GET SUCKED BACK OUT INTO THAT THERE MAELSTROM WHEN THE TIDE TURNS, SURE AS YANKEES WEAR GIRLS' DRESSES."
Luckily, the tide still seemed to be driving into the rocks. They struggled the boat ashore, Glenn Bob and Cleo heaving on the mooring ropes from the shoreline whilst Ant ducked under the water to push the hull from underneath. Mr. Turpin smiled beatifically, and seemed to be attempting to eat the raindrops.
A distant gurgling sounded over the storm.
"NOT A JIFFY TOO SOON", bawled Glenn Bob. "THAT'S THE MAELSTROM FORMING UP THERE."
The wave fronts seemed to turn suddenly in the sea like an army changing facing to the right, and actual real solid boulders the size of cottages tumbled across the shoreline in the current, batted along like beachballs caught in a breeze.
"Tide's turnin", said Glenn Bob.
The wind began to die. Trees, rocks, and the occasional yowling megafauna sailed past, tumbling in the torrent. Ant shivered as he watched entire islets shiver from their moorings and roll into the bouncing surf. The entire horizon glugged like an emptying bathtub.
"That could have been us", he observed. Glenn Bob nodded gravely.
***
"Where are we?" said Ant.
Overhead, the sky was clearing, the storm apparently having travelled back out to sea with the tide.
Glenn Bob shrugged. "Don't rightly know", he said. "Tide like that could have pushed us inland clean off the map. Ain't no high ground with rock formations like this for a hundred mile around, excepting of course -"
He stopped dead, forcing Ant and Cleo to stop with him. Ant looked in the direction of Glenn Bob's gaze. There, leaning gently in two different directions, supporting strands of dripping high tension wire, were the unmistakeable shapes of two perimeter fence support pylons.
"- excepting back home", he said.
"Oh, great", said Cleo.
"Don't start", said Ant. "We can just lug the dinghy back down to the waterline, and -"
"And drown", said Cleo.
"Hold on there", said Glenn Bob. "There's smoke coming from that airlock there."
"How can there be smoke coming from an airlock", grumbled Cleo. "Airlocks can't catch fire."
But Glenn Bob had already dropped the dinghy's mooring rope and was running over the rocks towards the line of cliffs.
"GLENN BOB", yelled Cleo, "WHAT IN TARNATION DAGNABIT ARE YOU DOING?"
"Might be folk hurt", yelled Glenn Bob back.
Ant shrugged to Cleo, and they put down the dinghy, being careful not to tip Mr. Turpin, who was now growling like a dog and barking, and followed. The nearest airlock entrance was indeed belching smoke. As they approached it, they saw Glenn Bob picking around in the weed near the open lock door. Still wearing his devegetating gloves, he gleefully picked up a smoking cylinder which spat sparks, and waved it at Ant and Cleo as if picking up fizzing cylinders was clever.
"M99778234A(1) smoke round", he said. "Forty millimetre. Some folks was doing some close combat up here." He bent over and picked up a smaller, stubbier cylinder which looked half melted.
"What's that?" said Cleo.
Glenn Bob looked at the thing he'd picked up in the same way Ant might have looked at a sloughed king cobra skin he'd found in his bed.
"M84322497A1B1 armour piercing round", he said. "Forty millimetre. It...bounced off of something." He bent down to the corridor floor and picked up something else. "Oh, and lookee here - this here is the piece they done fired it out of. M84322497A heavy rocket grenade launcher."
"So if someone was shooting at something with it", said Cleo, "where are they now?"
"No Croatoan citizen", said Glenn Bob, "leaves his piece behind." He thought a moment, and then added: "No live citizen, anyhow." He said nothing more.
Ant ran a finger along the corridor wall. Instead of the usual layer of filth, a greasy residue came off on his fingertips.
"Gosh", he said. "Don't they ever clean in here?" Cleo looked at him severely.
"Looks like oil", said Glenn Bob.
"Feels like warm Swarfega -" Ant said, then added "OW!" and rubbed his hands together to rid himself of the goo. "OW!" he continued, and attempted to pull his hands apart again without success. He held them up to his face. A thin layer of blue goop, the colour visible in the electric light from the doorway, was creeping over his hands towards his wrists.
"JEEZ", he said, and then, turning to Glenn Bob and Cleo, "get it off! Get if off!"
After many long moments of awed staring, Glenn Bob was suddenly galvanized into action. Unfortunately, this action amounted to trying to rub the goop off Ant's hands using his own. "I DONE STUCK MYSELF!" he yelled. His other hand went into his pocket and came out holding a claspknife. "GUESS THE ONLY ANSWER'S AMPYTATION AFORE IT GITS TO OUR BRAINS!"
"IT'S ALREADY GOT TO YOURS", yelled Ant. The circle of goop had now reached his wrists, and he could feel it moving up towards his elbows.
"I GOT TO DO YOUR HANDS FIRST AFORE I DO MINE", yelled Glenn Bob, "OR I MIGHT PASS OUT WITH THE PAIN. HOLD STILL THERE, DAMN AND DANG YOU." The two struggled backwards and forwards across the corridor, Glenn Bob attempting to dig his claspknife into Ant's infected arms. Meanwhile, Cleo seemed to have vanished. The goop glove had now reached Ant's elbows.
Suddenly, Cleo returned bearing an armful of plastic bottles. "Cleaning solvents", she announced, before popping the top off a bottle and rapidly pouring something over Ant's arm that felt like a mouthful of nettles. Ant yelped in pain.
"I'M GUESSIN I'LL HAVE TO TAKE THE WHOLE ARM THERE NOW", screamed Glenn Bob. The goop envelope was rising toward Ant's armpit, and showed little sign of stopping.
"Aha, no response from bleach", said Cleo, the analytical chemist. "Let's try ammonia." Ant's arm burned again, and he shrank away from Cleo's sponge as she dabbed a second horrid substance on it. The goo membrane crawled up onto his shoulder, and even seemed to glow a healthier shade of green as it drank up whatever Cleo had soaked it with.
"It's moving toward my mouth", said Ant in panic, pushing Glenn Bob away.
"Don't worry", said Cleo, "I've still got hydrochloric acid in reserve." She dabbed a milky white substance onto Ant. Ant hoped it wasn't hydrochloric acid. It looked enough like Brasso for Ant to imagine it might not burn. It burned. However, at its touch, the goop thing covering his arm, chest and neck crisped, crackled and fell away.
"That was effective", breathed Ant. "What was it?"
"Something called Drano", shrugged Cleo. "I never used it. Could be vegan mayonnaise for all I know."
"I think it's safe to assume", said Ant, wiping his red raw arm clean with rock pool water outside the airlock entrance, "that it isn't mayonnaise."
Glenn Bob sat against a boulder, scraping his arm clean on the boulder's coating of extraterrestrial space barnacles. He carried on scraping until his arm bled.
"Whatever that blue goo is", said Ant, "I think it's fair to say it's what did for the Croatoan colonists at this airlock."
"If not all the colonists", said Cleo. "We haven't heard from any of them on the communicator for hours."
"Well, yes", said Ant. "But that's just because the communicator's not work -"
He stared down at his communicator. He raised it to his lips and said, slowly and carefully, "Testing, testing, testing. One, two, three."
Sure enough, he could hear his own tiny tinny voice coming from the communicator still wrapped around Cleo's wrist. Glenn Bob looked as if he were about to cry.
Suddenly, something cold and clammy brushed against Ant's leg. Ant jumped.
***
"What is it?" said Ant, as the cold clammy thing slithered around his ankles like a very slow cat.
"Why, that's our champion slitherin sleuth, Truman J. Slughound III", said Glenn Bob delightedly, dropping to his knees and slapping them. "Someone done survived, then, didn'tcha there, boy? Here, boy!"
"I thought he was going to eat my eyes", said Ant mistrustfully.
"Nah", said Glenn Bob. "Old Slughound here has twenty nine thousand teeth, but they're all fer eatin weed."
Truman J. Slughound resembled nothing so much, as his name suggested, as a metre-long slug with far too many eyestalks. He was also disconcertingly changing colour in flickers of electric blue and green.
"He's a Sluggie", said Cleo.
"Diggety-danged right", said Glenn Bob. "Best tracking sluggie in the whole of New Dixie. He's bin set to track you down, and now he's pleased he's found you." He looked round himself in puzzlement. "Don't see no sign of no Sergeant Sheldrake in hot pursuit, mind."
"Sergeant Sheldrake", said Cleo, "is dead. He was eaten by that", she pointed in the direction of the tunnel, "that, that goo."
The sluggie curled up around Ant's ankles and retracted its eyestalks contentedly.
"That's means he's goin to sleep", said Glenn Bob.
"How long for?" said Ant. With the sluggie wound around him, it was surprisingly difficult to move.
"Normally the entire winter", said Glenn Bob. "Mind, he's domestycated there, so -"
Glenn Bob was interrupted by a colossal rumble from the sky. He stared up in disbelief.
"GET DOWN!" he yelled. "SOME COMMIE YANKEE SON OF A DEVIANT IS LANDING A SAUCER ON FULL DRIVE!"
The rumble shook through the rocks underfoot and made the weed that clung to them vibrate. Glenn Bob dived behind a boulder. Ant had to bend to pick up the sluggie coiled around his feet before he could begin to move. Truman J. Slughound felt, if anything, even slimier than he looked, and pulsed orange and red in annoyance as Ant uncurled him from his ankles. Ant dived into cover behind Glenn Bob and Cleo.
"Why is it so dangerous to be close to a saucer landing on full drive?" said Cleo.
Glenn Bob pointed. "Watch the weed", he said. "Watch the weed."
Sure enough, the Gorgons' Hair all over the boulderfield nearby was crumpling, dying and dissolving, curling in on itself, turning from a living brown carpet into dust as if an invisible wave of death were sweeping through it. The wave swept up towards the boulder where Ant, Cleo and Glenn Bob were hiding. Truman J. Slughound made an attempt to ooze up into Ant's lap. Glenn Bob slapped it away irritably.
"Bad sluggie!" said Glenn Bob. "Bad sluggie, there! Sluggies ain't allowed on laps nor beds nor shoulders!"
Then, miraculously, before it could reach their boulder, the wave of destruction stopped.
"They done turned off their motor", said Glenn Bob. "Whoever it is, they done landed."
"They might be friendly", said Cleo.
"Only the military land on full power", said Glenn Bob. "And they only do it in combat zones."
"They're probably the same lot who gooped the colonists", said Ant pessimistically, "coming back for us."
"No", said Cleo suddenly, shaking her head firmly. "Absolutely not."
Ant frowned at Cleo. "Explain", he said.
"Well", said Cleo, "why would they have got into a gunfight down here with the Croatoan people when they could have just killed everyone with a full power landing?" Her face took on an expression of intense concentration, as if she was only just now working out what she was saying. "Whoever was here before, whoever spread the goop, didn't come to kill. They came to capture."
"So my mom and dad might still be alive someplace", said Glenn Bob hopefully.
Cleo thought this over, and nodded grudgingly.
"Great", said Ant. "So by your own logic, whoever's just landed now doesn't care whether or not they kill us."
Cleo frowned and nodded. "I'm afraid so."
***
The sound of voices could be heard. The voices were shouting, but Ant could not understand what was being said. At first he thought this was because the voices were so far away. As the voices came steadily closer, however, he began to realize that this was because they were not shouting in English.
"Why's it taking so long for them to get to us?" said Cleo.
"They landed on top of the mesa", said Glenn Bob. "They got the whole of the Croatoan tunnels to get through between themselves and us."
Eventually, however, the shouting became accompanied by footsteps, coming closer. Peering round the edges of the boulder up the airlock tunnel, Ant saw a group of green-uniformed figures carrying guns, moving rapidly in formation, each one covering the other as he moved.
"I don't know who they are", said Ant to Cleo, "but they could be our ticket out of here."
"Are you CRAZY?" hissed Glenn Bob. "They're COMMIES."
"Glenn Bob", said Ant, "I know this is hard for you to believe, but Commies don't really exist any more since about, oh, the mid nineteen eighties, except in North Korea and parts of Camden."
"LOOK AT THEIR UNIFORMS, gosh darn it!"
Ant looked at the uniforms. Each one had a huge red star on the shoulder. Granted, there was a spaceship going round the star, but it was a star nevertheless, and it was red. And the non-English language that the men were shouting to each other did indeed sound remarkably like Russian.
However, one of the soldiers was about to put his hand on a Jackson's Carmine Sea Puff.
Ant ransacked his memory for the only few words of Russian he knew. He shot to his feet.
"NIET!" he yelled, pointing to the Sea Puff. "NIET NIET NIET!"
Three rifle barrels turned unerringly in Ant's direction. Ant raised his hands very, very slowly. The soldier still had his hand poised over the Puff. "NIET NIET!" yelled Ant, pointing at the thing with both hands above his head and managing to look surprisingly like a rap artist as he did so. This time, one of the Russians seemed to understand, and barked something at the would-be Puff-fondler, who looked down at the beast with an expression of bored distaste and removed his hand.
The Russian who had barked the order bawled something rapid and unintelligible at Ant. Ant attempted to shrug without putting his hands down. "Englishski?" he said.
"Английский?" said the soldier in charge.
"Er - da", replied Ant.
The officer nodded, and beckoned to Ant. Still with his hands up, Ant moved in the man's direction. The rifles on either side of Ant followed him as he walked until the officer screamed at his men again and they lowered their weapons sheepishly. The officer shrieked back into the airlock as if summoning someone else. Then he peered inquisitively at the boulder Ant had jumped up from behind.
"You may as well come out", said Ant. "I think he knows you're there."