‘A movie’’ I asked incredulously. ‘Are you nuts? Didn’t you see The Adrian Lush Show? SpecOps and Goliath would pare the story to the bone!’
   ‘We’d present it as fiction, Miss Next,’ explained Flex. ‘We’ve even got a title. The Eyre Affair. What do you think?’
   ‘I think you’re both out of your tiny minds. Excuse me.’
   I left Dilly and Mr Flex plotting their next move in low voices and went to find Bowden, who was staring at a dustbin full of paper cups.
   ‘How can they present this as art?’ he asked. ‘It looks just like a rubbish bin!’
   ‘It is a rubbish bin,’ I replied. ‘That’s why it’s next to the refreshments table.’
   ‘Oh!’ he said, then asked me how the press conference went.
   ‘Kaine is fishing for votes,’ he told me when I had finished. ‘Got to be. A hundred million might buy you some serious airtime for advertising but putting Cardenio in the public domain could sway the Shakespeare vote—that’s one group of voters you can’t buy.’
   I hadn’t thought of this.
   ‘Anything else?’
   Bowden unfolded a piece of paper.
   ‘Yes. I’m trying to figure out the running order for my stand-up comedy routine tomorrow night.’
   ‘How long is your slot?’
   ‘Ten minutes.’
   ‘Let me see.’
   He had been trying out his routine on me, although I protested that I probably wasn’t the best person to ask. Bowden himself didn’t find any of the jokes funny, although he understood the technical process involved.
   ‘I’d start off with the penguins on the ice floe,’ I suggested, looking at the list as Bowden made notes, ‘then move on to the pet centipede. Try the white horse in the pub next and if that works well do the tortoise that gets mugged by the snails—but don’t forget the voice; then move on to the dogs in the waiting room at the vet’s and finish with the one about meeting the gorilla.’
   ‘What about the lion and the baboon?’
   ‘Good point. Use that instead of the white horse if the centipede goes flat.’
   Bowden made a note.
   ‘Centipede… goes… flat. Got it. What about the man going bear-hunting? I told that to Victor and he sprayed Earl Grey out of both nostrils at once.’
   ‘Keep it for an encore. It’s three minutes long on its own—but don’t hurry. Let it build—then again, if your audience is middle-aged and a bit fuddy-duddy I’d drop the bear, baboon and the dogs and use the greyhound and the racehorses instead—or the one about the two Rolls-Royces.’
   ‘Canapés?’ said Mum, offering me a plate.
   ‘Got any more of those prawny ones?’
   ‘I’ll go and see.’
   I followed her into the vestry, where she and several other members of the Women’s Federation were getting food ready.
   ‘Mum, Mum,’ I said, following her to where the profoundly deaf Mrs Higgins was laying doilies on plates, ‘I must talk to you.’
   ‘I’m busy, sweetness.’
   ‘It’s very important.’
   She stopped doing what she was doing, put everything down and steered me to the corner of the vestry, just next to a worn stone effigy, reputedly a follower of St Zvlkx.
   ‘What’s the problem that’s more important than canapés, o daughter-my-daughter?’
   ‘Well,’ I began, unsure of how to put it, ‘remember you said how you wanted to be a grandmother?’
   ‘Oh, that,’ she said, laughing, ‘I’ve known you’ve had a bun in there for a while—I was just wondering when you were going to tell me.’
   ‘Wait a minute!’ I said, feeling suddenly cheated. ‘You’re meant to be all surprised and tearful.’
   ‘Done that, darling. Can I be so indelicate as to ask who the father is?’
   ‘My husband, I hope—and before you ask, the ChronoGuard eradicated him.’
   She gave me a hug.
   ‘Now that I can understand. Do you ever see him in the sort of way I see your father?’
   ‘No,’ I replied miserably, ‘he’s only in my memories.’
   ‘Poor little duck!’ exclaimed my mother, giving me another hug. ‘But thank the Lord for small mercies—at least you get to remember him. Many of us never do—just vague feelings of something that might have been. You must come along to Eradications Anonymous with me one evening. Believe me, there are more Lost Ones than you might imagine.’
   I’d never really talked about Dad’s eradication with my mother. All her friends had assumed my brothers and I had been fathered by youthful indiscretions. To my highly principled mother this had been almost as painful as Dad’s eradication. I’m not really one for any organisation with ‘anonymous’ in the title, so I decided to backtrack slightly.
   ‘How did you know I was pregnant?’ I asked as she rested her hand on mine and smiled kindly.
   ‘Could spot it a mile off. You’ve been eating like a horse and staring at babies a lot. When Mrs Pilchard’s little cousin Henry came round last week you could hardly keep your hands off him.’
   ‘Aren’t I like that usually?’

   ‘Not even remotely. You’re filling out along the bustline too—that dress has never looked so good on you. When’s sprogging time? July?’
   I paused as a wave of despondency washed over me, brought on by the sheer inevitability of motherhood. When I first knew about it Landen had been with me and everything seemed that much easier.
   ‘Mum, what if I’m no good at it? I don’t know the first thing about babies. I’ve spent my working life chasing after bad guys. I can field-strip an M16 blindfold, replace an engine in an APC and hit a two-pence piece from thirty yards eight times out of ten. I’m not sure a cot by the fireside is really my sort of thing.’
   ‘It wasn’t mine either,’ confided my mother, smiling kindly. ‘It’s no accident that I’m a dreadful cook. Before I met your father and had you and your brothers I worked at SO-3. Still do, on occasions.’
   ‘You didn’t meet him on a day trip to Portsmouth, then?’ I asked slowly, wondering whether I really wanted to hear what I was hearing.
   ‘Not at all. It was in another place entirely.’
   ‘SO-3?’
   ‘You’d never believe me if I told you, so I’m not going to. But the point is, I was very happy to have children when the time came. Despite all your ceaseless bickering when you were kids, and teenage grumpiness, it’s been a wonderful adventure. Losing Anton was a storm cloud for a bit but on balance it’s been good—better than SpecOps any day.’
   She paused.
   ‘But I was the same as you, worrying about not being ready, about being a bad mother. How did I do?’
   She stared at me and smiled kindly.
   ‘You did good, Mum.’
   I hugged her tightly.
   ‘I’ll do what I can to help, sweetness, but strictly no nappies or potty-training and Tuesday and Thursday evenings are right out.’
   ‘SO-3?’
   ‘No,’ she replied, ‘bridge and skittles.’
   She handed me a handkerchief and I dabbed at my eyes.
   ‘You’ll be fine, sweetness.’
   I thanked her and she bustled off, muttering something about having a million mouths to feed I watched her leave, smiling to myself. I thought I knew my mother but I didn’t. Children rarely understand their parents at all.
   ‘Thursday!’ said Joffy as I reappeared from the vestry. ‘What use are you if you don’t mingle? Will you take that wealthy Flex fellow to meet Zorf, the Neanderthal artist? I’d be ever so grateful. Oh my goodness!’ he muttered, staring at the church door. ‘It’s Aubrey Jambe!’
   And so it was. Mr Jambe, Swindon’s croquet captain, despite his recent indiscretion with the chimp, was still attending functions as though nothing had happened.
   ‘I wonder if he’s brought the chimp,’ I said, but Joffy flashed me an angry look and rushed off to press flesh.
   I found Cordelia and Mr Flex discussing the merits of a minimalist painting by Welsh artist Tegwyn Wedimedr that was so minimalist it wasn’t there at all. They were staring at a blank wall with a picture hook on it.
   ‘What does it say to you, Harry?’
   ‘It says… nothing, Cords—but in a very different way. How much is it?’
   Cordelia bent forward to look at the price tag.
   ‘It’s called Beyond Satire and it’s twelve hundred pounds; quite a snip. Hello, Thursday! Changed your mind about the book-flick?’
   ‘Nope. Have you met Zorf, the Neanderthal artist?’
   I guided them over to where Zorf was exhibiting. Some of his friends were with him, one of whom I recognised.
   ‘Miss Next!’ said Stiggins as I approached. ‘We would like to introduce our friend Zorf.’ The slightly younger Neanderthal shook my hand as I explained who Harry and Cordelia were.
   ‘This is a very interesting painting, Mr Zorf,’ said Harry, staring at a mass of green, yellow and orange paint on a large six-foot-square canvas ‘What does it represent?’
   ‘Is not obvious?’ replied the Neanderthal.
   ‘Of course!’ said Harry, turning his head this way and that. ‘It’s daffodils, isn’t it?’
   ‘No.’
   ‘A sunset?’
   ‘No.’
   ‘Field of barley?’
   ‘No.’
   ‘I give up.’
   ‘Closest yet, Mr Flex. If you have to ask, then you never understand. To Neanderthal, sunset is only finish-day. Van Gogh’s Green Rye is merely poor depiction of a field. The only sapien painters we truly understand are Pollock or Kandinsky, they speak our language. Our paintings are not for you.’
   I looked at the small gathering of Neanderthals who were staring at Zorf’s abstract paintings with emotion-filled wonderment, tears in their eyes. But Harry, a bullshitter to the end, had not yet given up hope.
   ‘Can I have another guess?’ he asked Zorf, who nodded.
   He stared at the canvas and screwed up his eyes.
   ‘It’s a—’
   ‘Hope,’ said a voice close by. ‘It’s hope. Hope for the future of the Neanderthal. It is the fervent wish—for children.’
   Zorf and all the other Neanderthals turned to stare at the speaker. It was Granny Next.
   ‘Exactly what I was about to say,’ said Flex, fooling no one but himself.
   ‘The esteemed lady shows understanding beyond her species,’ said Zorf, making a small grunting noise that I took to be laughter. ‘Would lady-sapien like to add to our painting?’
   This was indeed an honour. Granny Next stepped forward, took the proffered brush from Zorf, mixed a subtle shade of turquoise and made a few fine brush strokes to the left of centre. There was a gasp from the Neanderthals and the women in the group hastily placed veils over their faces while the men—including Zorf—raised their heads and stared at the ceiling, humming quietly. Gran did likewise. Flex, Cordelia and I looked at one another, confused and ignorant of Neanderthal customs. After a while the staring and humming stopped, the women raised their veils and they all ambled slowly over to Gran and smelled her clothes and touched her face with large yet gentle hands. Within a few minutes it was all over; the Neanderthals returned to their seats and were staring at Zorf’s paintings again.
   ‘Hello, young Thursday!’ said Gran, turning to me. ‘Let’s find somewhere quiet to have a chat!’
   We walked off towards the church organ and sat on a pair of hard plastic chairs.
   ‘What did you paint on his picture?’ I asked her, and Gran smiled her sweetest smile.
   ‘Something a bit controversial,’ she confided, ‘yet supportive. I have worked with Neanderthals in the past and know many of their ways and customs. How’s hubby?’
   ‘Still eradicated,’ I said glumly.
   ‘Never mind,’ said Gran seriously, touching my chin so I would look into her eyes. ‘Always there is hope—you’ll find, as I did, that it’s really very funny the way things turn out.’

   ‘I know. Thanks, Gran.’
   ‘Your mother will be a tower of strength—never be in any doubt of that.’
   ‘She’s here if you want to see her.’
   ‘No, no,’ said Gran, slightly hurriedly. ‘I expect she’s a little busy. While we’re here,’ she went on, changing the subject without drawing breath, ‘can you think of any books that might be included in the “ten most boring classics”? I’m about ready to go.’
   ‘Gran!’
   ‘Indulge me, young Thursday!’
   I sighed.
   ‘How about Paradise Lost?’
   Gran let out a loud groan.
   ‘Awful! I could hardly walk for a week afterwards—it’s enough to put anyone off religion for good!’
   ‘Ivanhoe?’
   ‘Pretty dull but redeemable in places—it isn’t in the top ten, I think.’
   ‘Moby Dick?’
   ‘Excitement and action interspersed with mind-numbing dullness. Read it twice.’
   ‘A la recherche du temps perdu?’
   ‘English or French, its sheer tediousness is undimimshed.’
   ‘Pamela?’
   ‘Ah! Now you’re talking. Struggled through that when a teenager. It might have had resonance in 1741 but today the only resonance it possesses is the snores that emanate from those deluded enough to attempt it.’
   ‘How about The Pilgrim’s Progress?’
   But Gran’s attention had wandered.
   ‘You have visitors, my dear. Look over there past the stuffed squid inside the piano and just next to the Fiat 500 carved from frozen toothpaste.’
   There were two SpecOps agents in dark suits but they were not Dedmen and Walken. It looked as though SO-5 had suffered another mishap. I asked Gran whether she would be all right on her own and walked across to meet them. I found them looking dubiously at a flattened tuba on the ground entitled The indivisible thriceness of death.
   ‘What do you think?’ I asked them.
   ‘I don’t know,’ began the first agent nervously. ‘I’m… I’m… not really up on art.’
   ‘Even if you were it wouldn’t help here,’ I replied drily. ‘SpecOps 5?’
   ‘Yes, how did—’
   He checked himself quickly and rummaged for a pair of dark glasses.
   ‘I mean no. Never heard of SpecOps, much less SpecOps 5. Don’t exist. Oh, blast. I’m not very good at this, I’m afraid.’
   ‘We’re looking for someone named Thursday Next,’ said his partner in a very obvious whisper from the side of her mouth, adding, in case I didn’t get the message: ‘Official business.’
   I sighed. Obviously, SO-5 were beginning to run out of volunteers. I wasn’t surprised.
   ‘What happened to Dedmen and Walken?’ I asked them.
   ‘They were—’ began the first agent, but the second nudged him in the ribs and announced instead:
   ‘Never heard of them.’
   ‘I’m Thursday Next,’ I told them, ‘and I think you’re in more danger than you realise. Where did they get you from? SO-14?’
   They took their sunglasses off and looked at me nervously.
   ‘I’m from SO-22,’ said the first. ‘The name’s Lamb. This is Slaughter; she’s from—’
   ‘SO-28,’ said the woman. ‘Thank you, Blake, I can talk, you know—and let me handle this. You can’t open your mouth without putting your foot in it.’
   Lamb sank into a sulky silence.
   ‘SO-28? You’re an income tax assessor?’
   ‘So what if I am?’ retorted Slaughter defiantly. ‘We all have to risk things for advancement.’
   ‘I know that only too well,’ I replied, steering them towards a quiet spot next to a model of a matchstick made entirely out of bits of the Houses of Parliament. ‘Just so long as you know what you’re getting into. What happened to Walken and Dedmen?’
   ‘They were reassigned,’ explained Lamb.
   ‘You mean dead?’
   ‘No,’ exclaimed Lamb with some surprise. ‘I mean reas—Oh my goodness! Is that what it means?’
   I sighed. These two weren’t going to last a day.
   ‘Your predecessors are both dead, guys—and the ones before that. Four agents gone in less than a week. What happened to Walken’s case notes? Accidentally destroyed?’
   ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Lamb laughed. ‘When recovered they were totally intact—they were then put through the shredder by a new member of staff who mistook it for a photocopier.’
   ‘Do you have anything at all to go on?’
   ‘As soon as they realised it was a shredder, I… sorry, they stopped and we were left with these.’
   He handed two half-documents over. One was a picture of a young woman striding out of a shop laden down with carrier bags and parcels. Her face, tantalisingly enough, had been destroyed by the shredder. I turned the picture over. On the back was a pencilled note: ‘A.H. leaves Camp Hopson having shopped with a stolen credit card.’
   ‘The “AH” means Acheron Hades,’ explained Lamb in a confident tone. ‘We were allowed to read part of his file. He can lie in thought, deed and action.’
   ‘I know. I wrote it. But this isn’t Hades. Acheron doesn’t resolve on film.’
   ‘Then who is it that we’re after?’ asked Slaughter.
   ‘I have no idea. What was on the other document?’
   This was simply a handwritten page of notes, compiled by Walken about whoever it was they were watching. I read:
   ‘…9.34: Contact with suspect at Camp Hopson sales. 11.03: Elevenses of carrot juice and flapjack—leaves without paying. 11.48: Dorothy Perkins. 12.57: Lunch. 14.45: Continues shopping. 17.20: Argues with manager of Tammy Girl about returned leg warmers. 17.45: Lost contact. 21.03: Re-established contact at the HotBox nightclub. 23.02: AH leaves the HotBox with male companion. 23.16: Contact lost…’
   I put down the sheet.
   ‘It’s not exactly what I’d describe as the work of a master criminal, now, is it?’
   ‘No,’ replied Slaughter glumly.
   ‘What were your orders?’
   ‘Classified,’ announced Lamb, who was getting the hang of SpecOps 5 work, right at the point where I didn’t want him to.
   ‘Stick to you like glue,’ said Slaughter, who understood the situation a lot better, ‘and reports every half an hour sent to SO-5 HQ in three separate ways.’
   ‘You’re being used as live bait,’ I told them. ‘If I were you I’d go back to SO-23 and 28 just as quick as your legs can carry you.’
   ‘And miss all this?’ asked Slaughter, replacing her dark glasses and looking every bit the part. SO-5 would be the highest office for either of them. I hoped they lived long enough to enjoy it.
   By 10.30 the exhibition was pretty much over. I sent Gran home in a cab fast asleep and a bit tipsy. Saveloy tried to kiss me goodnight but I was too quick for him, and Duchamp2924 had managed to sell an installation of his called The id within VII—in a jar, pickled. Zorf refused to sell any paintings to anyone who couldn’t see what they were, but to the Neanderthals who could see what they were, he gave them away, arguing that the bond between a painting and an owner should not be sullied by anything as obscenely sapien as cash. The flattened tuba was sold too, the new owner asking Joffy to drop it round to him, and if he wasn’t at home to just slip it under the door.
   I went home via Mum’s place to collect Pickwick, who hadn’t come out of the airing cupboard the entire time I was in Osaka.
   ‘She insisted on being fed in there,’ explained my mother, ‘and the trouble with the other dodos! Let one in and they all want to follow!’
   She handed me Pickwick’s egg wrapped in a towel. Pickwick hopped up and down in a very aggravated manner and I had to show her the egg to keep her happy, then we both drove home to my apartment at the same sedate 20 m.p.h. and I placed the egg safely in the linen cupboard with Pickwick sitting on it in a cross mood, very fed up with being moved about.

22. Travels with My Father

   ‘The first time I went travelling with my father was when I was much younger. We attended the opening night of King Lear at the Globe theatre in 1602. The place was dirty and smelly and slightly rowdy, but for all that it was not unlike a lot of other opening nights I had attended. We bumped into someone named Bendix Scintilla, who was, like my father, a lonely traveller in time. He said he hung around in Elizabethan England to avoid ChronoGuard patrols. Dad said later that Scintilla had been a truly great fighter for the cause but his drive had left him when they eradicated his best friend and partner. I knew how he felt but did not do as he did.’

THURSDAY NEXT—private journals


   Dad turned up for breakfast, which was unusual for him. I was just flicking through that morning’s copy of The Toad when he arrived. The big news story was the volte-face in Yorrick Kaine’s fortunes. From being a sad, politically dead no-hoper he was polling ahead of the ruling Teafurst party. The power of Shakespeare. The world suddenly stopped, the picture on the TV froze and the set gave out a dull hum, the same tone and pitch as the moment Dad arrived. He had the power to stop the clock like this, time ground to a halt when he visited me. It was a hard-won skill—for him there was no return to normality.
   ‘Hello, Dad,’ I said gloomily. ‘Did you hear about Landen’s eradication?’
   ‘No, I didn’t—I’m sorry to hear that, Sweetpea. Any particular reason?’
   ‘Goliath want Jack Schitt out of The Raven.’
   ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘The old blackmail routine. How’s your mother?’
   ‘She’s well. Is the world still going to end next week?’
   ‘Looks like it. Does she ever talk about me?’
   ‘All the time. I got this report from SpecOps forensics.’
   ‘Hmm,’ said my father, donning his glasses and staring at the report. ‘Carboxy-methyl-cellulose, phenylalnine and hydrocarbons. Animal fat? Doesn’t make any sense at all!’
   He handed back the report.
   ‘I don’t get it,’ he said quietly, sucking the end of his spectacles. ‘That cyclist lived and the world still ended. Maybe it’s not him. But nothing else happened at that particular time and place. Maybe it’s something to do with—’ He frowned and looked at me oddly. ‘Maybe it’s something to do with you.’
   ‘Me? Listen, I didn’t do anything.’
   ‘You were there. Perhaps me handing you the bag of slime was the key event and not the death of the cyclist—did you tell anyone where that pink goo came from?’
   ‘No one.’
   He thought for a bit.
   ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘see what else you can find out. I’m sure the answer is staring us in the face!’
   He picked up the paper and read: ‘Chimp merely pet, claims croquet supremo,’ before putting the paper down and looking at me with a twinkle in his eye.
   ‘This non-husband of yours—’
   ‘Landen.’
   ‘Right. Shall we try to get him back?’
   ‘Schitt-Hawse told me they had the summer of 1947 sewn up so tight not even a trans-temporal gnat could get in without being seen.’
   My father smiled. ‘Then we will have to outsmart them! They will expect us to arrive at the right time and the right place—but we won’t. We’ll arrive at the right place but at the wrong time, then simply wait. Worth a try, wouldn’t you say?’
   I smiled.
   ‘Definitely!’
   Dad took a sip of my coffee and leaned forward to hold my arm. I was conscious of a series of rapid flashes and there we were in a blacked-out Humber Snipe, driving alongside a dark stop of water on a moonlit night. In the distance I could see searchlights criss-crossing the sky and heard the distant thump-thump-thump of a bombing raid.
   ‘Where are we?’ I asked.
   ‘Approaching Henley-on-Thames in occupied England, November 1946.’
   ‘Is this where Landen drowned in the car accident?’
   ‘This is where it happens, but not when. If I were to jump straight there, Lavoisier would be on to us like a shot. Ever played “Kick the can”?’
   ‘Sure.’
   ‘It’s a bit like that. Guile, stealth, patience—and a small amount of cheating. Okay, we’re here.’
   We had reached a section of the road where there was a sharp bend. I could see how an inattentive motorist might easily misjudge it and end up in the river—I shivered involuntarily.
   We got out and Dad walked across the road to where a small group of silver birches stood amidst a tangle of dead bracken and brambles. It was a good place from which to observe the bend; we were barely ten yards away. Dad laid down a plastic carrier bag he had brought and we sat on the grass, leaning against the smooth bark of the birches.
   ‘Now what?’
   ‘We wait for six months.’
   ‘Six months? Dad, are you crazy? We can’t sit here for six months!’
   ‘So little time, so much to learn,’ mused my father. ‘Do you want a sandwich? Your mother leaves them out for me every morning. I’m not mad keen on corned beef and custard, but it has a sort of eccentric charm—and it does fill a hole.’
   ‘Six months?’ I repeated.
   He took a bite from his sandwich.
   ‘Lesson one in time travel, Thursday. First of all, we are all time travellers. The vast majority of us manage only one day per day. Now if we accelerate ourselves like so—’
   The clouds gathered speed above our heads and the trees shook faster in the light breeze; by the light of the moon I could see that the pace of the river had increased dramatically; a convoy of lorries sped past us in sudden accelerated movement.
   ‘This is about twenty days per day—every minute compressed into about three seconds. Any slower and we would be visible. As it is, an outside observer might think he saw a man and woman sitting under these trees, but if he looked again we would be gone. Ever thought you saw someone, then looked again only to find them gone?’
   ‘Sure.’
   ‘ChronoGuard traffic moving through.’

   The dawn was breaking, and presently a German Wehrmacht patrol found our abandoned car, and dashed around looking for us, before a breakdown truck appeared and took the Humber away. More cars rushed along the road and the clouds sped rapidly across the sky.
   ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ said my father. ‘I miss all this, but I have so little time these days. At fifty daypers we would still have to wait a good three or four days for Landen’s accident; I’ve a dental appointment, so we’re going to have to pick it up a bit.’
   The clouds sped faster; cars and pedestrians nothing more than blurs. The shadow of the trees cast by the sun traversed rapidly and lengthened in the afternoon sun; pretty soon it was evening and the clouds were tinged with pink before the rapidly gathering gloom overtook the day and the stars appeared, followed by the moon, which arced rapidly across the sky. The stars spun around the Pole Star as the sky grew blue with the early dawn and the sun began its rapid climb in the east.
   ‘Eight and a half thousand daypers,’ explained my father. ‘This is my favourite bit. Watch the leaves!’
   The sun now rose and set in under ten seconds. Pedestrians were invisible to us as we were to them, and a car had to be parked for at least two hours for us to see it at all. But the leaves! They turned from green to brown as we watched, the outer branches a blur of movement, the river a soft undulating mirror without so much as a ripple. The plants died off as we watched, the sky grew more overcast, and the spells of dark were now much longer than the light. Flecks of light showed along the road where traffic moved, and opposite us an abandoned Kübelwagen was rapidly stripped of spares and then dumped upside down in the river.
   ‘What do you think, Sweetpea?’
   ‘I’d never get bored of this, Dad. Do you travel like this all the time?’
   ‘Never this slow. This is just for tourists. We usually approach speeds of ten billion or more daypers; if you want to go backward you have to go faster still!’
   ‘Go backward by going forward faster?’
   ‘That’s enough for now, Sweetpea. Just enjoy yourself and watch.’
   I pulled myself closer to him as the air grew chilly and a heavy blanket of snow covered the road and forest around us.
   ‘Happy new year,’ said my father.
   ‘Snowdrops!’ I cried in delight as green shoots nuzzled through the snow and flowered, their heads angling towards the low sun. Then the snow was gone and the river rose again and small amounts of detritus gathered around the upturned Kübelwagen, which rusted as we watched. The sun flashed past us higher and higher in the sky and soon there were daffodils and crocuses.
   ‘Ah!’ I said in surprise as a shoot from a small shrub started to grow up my trouser leg.
   ‘Train them away from your body,’ explained my father, diverting the course of a bramble that was trying to ensnare him with the palm of his hand. My shoot pushed against my hand like a small green worm and moved off in another direction. I did the same with the others that threatened me but Dad went one step farther and with a practised hand trained his bramble into a pretty bow.
   ‘I’ve known students literally rooted to the spot,’ explained my father. ‘It’s where the phrase comes from. But it can be fun, too. We had an operative named Jekyll who once trained a four-hundred-year-old oak into a heart as a present for her boyfriend.’
   The air was warmer now, and as my father checked his chronograph again we started to decelerate. The six months we had spent there had passed in barely thirty minutes. By the time we had returned to one day per day it was night again.
   ‘I don’t see anyone, do you?’ he hissed.
   I looked around; the road was deserted. I opened my mouth to speak but he put a finger to his lips. At that moment a car appeared around the corner and drove rapidly down the road. It swerved to avoid a fox, skidded sideways, off the road and landed upside down in the river. I wanted to get up but my father held me with a pinched grip. The driver of the car—who I assumed was Billden—broke the surface of the river, then quickly dived back to the car and resurfaced a few moments later with a woman. He dragged her to the bank and was just about to return to the submerged vehicle when a tall man in a greatcoat appeared from nowhere and placed his hand on Billden’s arm.
   ‘Now!’ said my father, and we dashed from the safety of the copse.
   ‘Leave him!’ yelled my father. ‘Leave him to do what he has to do!’
   My father grabbed the interloper and with a sharp cry the man vanished. Billden looked confused and made a run for the river, but in a few short moments a half-dozen ChronoGuard had dropped in, Lavoisier among them. One of the agents rugby-tackled Landen’s father before he could return to rescue his son. I yelled. ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden
   I yelled. ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden
   I yelled: ‘No!’, pulled out my gun and aimed it at the man who held Billden.

   The next thing I knew I was disarmed, sitting on the ground and feeling shocked and disorientated after my brief enloopment. It was how I imagine a stuck record might feel. Two SO-12 operatives stared at me while my father and Lavoisier talked close by. Billden was breathing heavily and sobbing into the damp earth.
   ‘Bastards!’ I spat. ‘My husband’s in there!’
   ‘So much to learn,’ muttered Lavoisier. ‘The infant Parke-Laine is not your husband, he is an accident statistic—or not. It rather depends on your father.’
   ‘A lackey for the Goliath Corporation, Lavoisier?’ said my father. ‘You disappoint me.’
   ‘Greater need prevails, Colonel. If you’d handed yourself in I wouldn’t have had to take these extreme measures, besides, the ChronoGuard can’t function without corporate sponsorship.’
   ‘And in return you do a few favours?’
   ‘As I said, greater needs prevail. And before you start waving charges of corruption at me, this combined Goliath/ChronoGuard operation has been fully sanctioned by the Chamber. Now, it’s so simple even you can understand it. Give yourself up and your daughter can have her husband back—whether or not she decides to help Goliath. As you can see, I am in a very generous mood.’
   I looked at Dad and saw him bite his lip. He rubbed his temples and sighed.
   ‘No.’
   ‘What?’ exclaimed Lavoisier.
   ‘No,’ I repeated. ‘Dad, don’t do it. I’ll get Jack Schitt out or just live on my own—or something!’
   He smiled and rested his hand on my shoulder.
   ‘Bah!’ went Lavoisier. ‘As hideously self-righteous as each other!’
   He nodded to his men, who raised their weapons. But Dad was quick. I felt him grasp my shoulder tightly and we were off. The sun rose quickly as we leapt forward, leaving Lavoisier and the others several hours away before they realised what had happened.
   ‘Let’s see if we can lose him!’ muttered my father. ‘As for that Chamber stuff—bullshit. Landen’s eradication was murder, pure and simple. In fact, it’s just the sort of information I need to bring Lavoisier down!’
   Days amounted to no more than brief flashes of alternate dark and light as we hurtled into the future.
   ‘We’re not at full speed,’ Dad explained. ‘He might overtake me without thinking. Keep an eye out for—’
   Lavoisier and his cronies appeared for no more than the briefest glimpse as they moved past us into the future. Dad stopped abruptly and I staggered slightly as we returned to real time. We moved off the road as a fifties-style truck drove past, horn blaring.
   ‘What now?’
   ‘I think we shook him off. Blast!’
   We were off again—Lavoisier had reappeared. We lost him for a moment but pretty soon he was back again, keeping pace with us.
   ‘I’m too old to fall for that one!’ He smiled.
   Soon after two of his cronies reappeared as each one found us and matched the speed at which we were moving through history.
   ‘I knew you’d come,’ said Lavoisier triumphantly, walking towards us slowly as the time flashed past, faster and faster. A new road was built where we were standing, then a bridge, houses, shops. ‘Give yourself up. What do you hope to gain from all this? You’ll have a fair trial, believe me.’
   The two other ChronoGuard operatives grabbed my father and held him tightly.
   ‘I’ll see you hang for this, Lavoisier! The Chamber would never sanction such an action. Give Landen back his life and I promise you I will say nothing.’
   ‘Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?’ replied Lavoisier scornfully. ‘Who do you think they’re going to believe? You with your record or me, third in command at the ChronoGuard? Besides, your clumsy attempt to get Landen back has covered any tracks I might have made getting rid of him!’
   Lavoisier aimed his gun at my father. The two ChronoGuard held on to him tightly to stop him accelerating away, and we buffeted slightly as he tried. I had a sudden thought.
   ‘Do you guys cross picket lines?’
   The ChronoGuard agents looked at one another, then at the chronographs on their wrists, then at Lavoisier. The taller of the two was the first to speak.
   ‘She’s right, Mr Lavoisier, sir. I don’t mind bullying and killing innocents, and I’ll follow you beyond the crunch normally, but—’
   ‘But what?’ asked Lavoisier angrily.
   ‘—but I am a loyal Timeguild member. I don’t cross picket lines.’
   ‘Neither do I,’ agreed the other agent, nodding to his friend. ‘Likewise and truly.’
   Lavoisier smiled engagingly.
   ‘Listen here, guys, I’ll personally pay—’
   ‘I’m sorry, Mr Lavoisier,’ replied the operative, slightly indignantly, ‘but we’ve been instructed not to enter into any individual contracts.’ And in an instant they were gone as December arrived and the world turned pink. What was once the road was now a few inches of the same pink slime that Dad had shown me. We were beyond 12 December 1985, and where before there had been growth, change, seasons, clouds, now there was nothing but a never-ending landscape of shiny opaque curd.
   ‘Saved by industrial action!’ said Dad, laughing. ‘Tell that to your friends at the Chamber!’

   ‘Bravo,’ replied Lavoisier sardonically, ‘bravo. I think we should just say au revoir, my friends—until we meet again.’
   ‘Do we have to make it au revoir?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong with goodbye?’
   He didn’t have time to answer as I felt Dad tense and we accelerated faster through the timestream. The pink slime was washed away, leaving only earth and rocks, and as I watched the river moved away from us, meandered off into the flood-plain and then snaked back, swept under our feet, and then undulated back and forth like a snake before finally being replaced by a lake. We moved faster, and soon I could see the earth start to buckle as the crust bent and twisted under the force of plate tectonics. Plains dropped to make seas, and mountains rose in their place. New vegetation established itself as millions of years swept past in a matter of seconds. Vast forests grew and fell in seconds. We were covered, then uncovered, then covered again, now by sea, now by rock, now surrounded by an ice sheet, now a hundred feet in the air. More forests, then a desert, then mountains rose rapidly in the east, only to be scoured flat a few moments later.
   ‘Well,’ said my father, ‘Lavoisier in the pocket of Goliath. Who’d have thought it?’
   ‘Dad,’ I asked as the sun grew visibly bigger and redder, ‘how do we get back?’
   ‘We don’t go back,’ he replied. ‘We can’t go back. Once the present has happened, that’s it. We just carry on going until we return to where we started. Sort of like a roundabout. Miss an exit and you have to drive around again. There are just a few more exits and the roundabout is much, much bigger.’
   ‘How much bigger?’
   ‘A shitload. Quiet, now—we’re nearly there!’
   And all of a sudden we weren’t nearly there, we were there, back at breakfast in my apartment, Dad turning the pages of the newspaper.
   ‘Well, we tried, didn’t we?’ said my father.
   ‘Yes, Dad, we did. Thanks.’
   ‘Don’t worry,’ he said gently, ‘even the finest eradications leave something behind for us to reactualise from. There is always a way—we just have to find it; Sweetpea, we will get him back—I’m not having my grandchild without a father.’
   It did reassure me, and I thanked him.
   ‘Good!’ he said, closing his newspaper. ‘By the way, did you manage to get any tickets for the Nolan Sisters’ concert?’
   ‘I’m working on it.’
   ‘Good show. Well, time waits for no man, as we say—’
   He squeezed my hand and was gone. The world started up again, the TV came back on and there was a muffled plocking from Pickwick, who had managed to lock herself in the airing cupboard again. I let her out and she ruffled her feathers in an embarrassed fashion before going off in search of her water dish.
   I went into work but there was precious little to do. We had a call from an enraged Mrs Hathaway34 demanding to know when we were going to arrest the ‘unlick’d bear-whelp’ who had cheated her, and another from a student who wanted to know whether we thought Hamlet’s line was ‘this too too solid flesh’ or ‘this too too sullied flesh’, or even perhaps ‘these two-toed swordfish’. Bowden spent the morning mouthing the lines for his routine, and by noon there had been two attempts to steal Cardenio from Vole Towers. Nothing serious; SO-14 had doubled the guard. This didn’t concern SpecOps 27 in any way, so I spent the afternoon surreptitiously reading the Jurisfiction instruction manual, which felt a little like flicking through Bunty during school. I was tempted to have a go at entering a work of fiction to try out a few of their ‘handy book-jumping tips’ (page 28) but Havisham had roundly forbidden me from doing anything of the sort ‘until I was more experienced’. By the time I was ready to go home I had learned a few tricks about emergency book evacuation procedures (page 34), read about the aims of the Bowdlerizers (page 62), a group of well-meaning yet censorious individuals hell-bent on removing obscenities from fiction. I also read about Heathcliff’s unexpected three-year career in Hollywood under the name of Buck Stallion and his eventual return to the pages of Wuthering Heights (page 71), the forty-six abortive attempts to illegally save Beth from dying in Little Women (page 74), details of the Character Exchange Program (page 81), using holorimic verse to flush out renegade book people, or PageRunners as they were known (page 96), and how to use spelling mistakes, misprints and double negatives to signal to other Prose Resource Operatives in case emergency book evacuation procedures (page 34) failed (page 105). I was just learning about protocols relating to historical novels (page 122) when it was time to clock off. I joined the general exodus and wished Bowden good luck with his routine. He didn’t seem in the least nervous, but then he rarely did.
   I got home to find my landlord on my doorstep. He looked around to make sure Miss Havisham was nowhere in sight, then said:
   ‘Time’s up, Next’
   ‘You said Saturday,’ I replied, unlocking the door.
   ‘I said Friday,’ countered the man.
   ‘How about I give you the money on Monday when the banks open?’
   ‘How about if I take that dodo of yours and you live rent free for three months?’
   ‘How about you stick it in your ear?’
   ‘It doesn’t pay to be impertinent to your landlord, Next. Do you have the money or not?’
   I thought quickly.
   ‘No—but you said Friday and it’s not the end of Friday yet In fact, I’ve got over six hours to find the cash.’
   He looked at me, looked at Pickwick, who had popped her head round the door to see who it was, then at his watch.
   ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But you’d better have the cash to me by midnight sharp or there’ll be serious trouble.’
   And with a last withering look, he left me alone on the landing.
   I offered Pickwick a marshmallow in an attempt to get her to stand on one leg. She stared vacantly at me so after several more attempts I gave up, fed her and changed the paper in her basket before calling Spike at SO-17. It wasn’t the perfect plan but it did have the benefit of being the only plan, so on that basis alone I reckoned it was worth a try. I was eventually patched through to him in his squad car. I related my problem and he told me that his freelance budget was overstuffed at present as no one ever wanted to be deputised, so we arranged a ludicrously high hourly rate and a time and place to meet. As I put the phone down I realised I had forgotten to say that I preferred not to do any vampire work. What the hell. I needed the money.

23. Fun with Spike

   ‘Van Helsing’s Gazette: “Did you do much SEB containment work?”
   Agent Stoker: “Oh, yes. The capture of Supreme Evil Beings, or SEBs, as we call them, is the main bread-and-butter work for SO-17. Quite how there can be more than one Supreme Evil Being I have no idea. Every SEB I ever captured considered itself not only the worst personification of unadulterated evil that ever stalked the earth, but also the only personification of unadulterated evil that ever stalked the earth. It must have been quite a surprise—and not a little galling—to be locked away with several thousand other SEBs, all pretty much the same, in row upon row of plain glass jars at the Loathsome Id Containment Facility. I don’t know where they came from. I think they leak in from elsewhere, the same way as a leaky tap drips water. (laughs) They should replace the washer.” ‘

Agent ‘Spike’ Stoker, SO-17 (rtd), interviewed for Van Helsing’s Gazette, 1996


   The incidents I am about to relate took place in the winter of the year 1985, at a place whose name even now, for reasons of propriety, it seems safer not to divulge. Suffice to say that the small village I visited that night was deserted, and had been for some time. The houses stood empty and vandalised, the pub, corner store and village hall but empty shells. As I drove slowly into the dark village, rats scurried among the detritus and small pockets of mist appeared briefly in my headlights. I reached the old oak at the crossroads, stopped, switched off the lights, and surveyed the morbid surroundings. I could hear nothing. Not a breath of wind gave life to the trees about me; no distant sound of humanity raised my spirits. It had not always been so. Once children played here, neighbours hailed neighbours with friendly greetings, lawnmowers buzzed on a Sunday afternoon, and the congenial crack of leather on willow drifted up from the village green. But no more. All lost one late winter’s night not five years earlier, when the forces of evil rose and claimed the village and all that lived within. I looked about, my breath showing in the still night. By the manner in which the blackened timbers of the empty houses pierced the sky it seemed as though the memory of that night was still etched upon the fabric of the ruins. Parked close by was another car, and leaning against the door was the man who had brought me to this place. He was tall and muscular and had faced horrors that I, thankfully, would never have to face. He did this with heart filled with courage and duty in equal measure, and, as I approached, a smile rose on his features, and he spoke.
   ‘Quite a shithole, eh, Thurs?’
   ‘You’re not kidding,’ I replied, glad to be with company. ‘All kinds of creepy weirdness was running through my head just now.’
   ‘How have you been? Hubby still with an existence problem?’
   ‘Still the same—but I’m working on it. What’s the score here?’
   Spike clapped his hands together and rubbed them.
   ‘Ah, yes! Thanks for coming. This is one job I can’t do on my own.’
   I followed his gaze towards the derelict church and surrounding graveyard. It was a dismal place even by SpecOps 17 standards, which tended to regard anything merely dreary as a good venue for a party. It was surrounded by two rows of high wire fences, and no one had come or gone since the ‘troubles’ five years previously. The restless spirits of the condemned souls trapped within the churchyard had killed all plant life not only within the confines of the Dark Place but for a short distance all around it—I could see the grass withering and dying not two yards from the inner fence, the leafless trees standing lifeless in the moonlight. In truth, the wire fences were to keep the curious or just plain stupid out as much as to keep the undead in; a ring of burnt yew wood just within the outer wire was the last line of undead defence across which they could never move, but it didn’t stop them trying. Occasionally a member of the Dark One’s Legion of Lost Souls made it across the inner fence. Here they lumbered into the motion sensors affixed at ten-foot intervals. The undead might be quite good servants of the Dark One but they were certainly crap when it came to electronics. They usually blundered around in the area between the fences until the early morning sun or an SO-17 flame-thrower reduced their lifeless husk to a cinder, and released the tormented soul to make its way through eternity in peace.
   I looked at the derelict church and the scattered tombs of the desecrated graveyard and shivered.
   ‘What are we doing? Torching the lifeless walking husks of the undead?’
   ‘Well, no,’ replied Spike uneasily, moving to the rear of his car. ‘I wish it were as simple as that.’
   He opened the boot and passed me a clip of silver bullets. I reloaded my gun and frowned at him.
   ‘What, then?’
   ‘Dark forces are afoot, Thursday. Another Supreme Evil Being is pacing the earth.’
   ‘Another? What happened? Did he escape?’
   Spike sighed.
   ‘There have been a few cuts in recent years, and SEB transportation is now done by a private contractor. Three months ago they mixed up the consignment and instead of delivering him straight to the Loathsome Id Containment Facility, they left him at the St Merryweather’s home for retired gentlefolk.’
   ‘TNN said it was Legionnaire’s disease.’
   ‘That’s the usual cover story. Anyhow, some idiot opened the jar and all hell broke loose. I managed to corner it but getting the SEB transferred back to his jar is going to be tricky—and that’s where you come in.’
   ‘Does this plan involve going in there?’
   I gestured at the church. As if to make a point, two barn owls flew noiselessly from the belfry and soared close by our heads.
   ‘I’m afraid so. We should be fine. There’ll be a full moon tonight and they don’t generally perambulate on the lightest of nights—it’ll be as easy as falling off a log.’
   ‘So what do I do?’ I asked uneasily.
   ‘I can’t tell you for fear that he will hear my plan, but keep close and do precisely what I tell you. Do you understand? No matter what it is, you must do precisely what I tell you.’
   ‘Okay.’
   ‘Promise?’
   ‘I promise.’
   ‘No, I mean you have to really promise.’
   ‘All right—I really promise.’
   ‘Good. I officially deputise you into SpecOps 17. Let’s pray for a moment.’
   Spike dropped to his knees and muttered a short prayer under his breath—something about delivering us both from evil and how he hoped his mother would get to the top of the hip replacement waiting list, and that Cindy wouldn’t drop him like a hot potato when she found out what he did. As for myself, I said pretty much what I usually said, but added that if Landen were watching, could he please, please, please keep an eye out for me.
   Spike got up.
   ‘Ready?’
   ‘Ready.’
   ‘Then let’s make some light out of this darkness!’
   He pulled a green holdall and a pump-action shotgun from the back of the car. We walked towards the rusty gates, and I felt a chill on my neck.
   ‘Feel that?’ asked Spike
   ‘Yes.’
   ‘He’s close. We’ll meet him tonight, I promise you.’
   Spike unlocked the gates and they swung open with a squeak of long-unoiled hinges. Operatives generally used their flame-throwers through the wire; no one would trouble coming in here unless there was serious work to be done. He relocked the gates behind us and we walked through the undead no-go zone.
   ‘What about the motion sensors?’
   A beeper went off from his car.
   ‘I’m pretty much the only recipient. Helsing knows what I’m doing; if we fail he’ll be along tomorrow morning to clean up the mess.’
   ‘Thanks for the reassurance.’
   ‘Don’t worry,’ replied Spike with a grin, ‘we won’t fail!’

   We arrived at the second gate. The musty smell of long-departed corpses reached my nostrils. It had been softened by age to the odour of rotted leaves, but it was still unmistakable. Once inside the inner gates we made our way swiftly to the lichgate and walked through the crumbling structure. The churchyard was a mess. The graves had all been dug up and the remains of those too far gone to be resurrected had been flung around the graveyard. They had been the fortunate ones. Those that were freshly dead had been press-ganged into a second career as servants of the Dark One—not something you would want to put on your CV, if you still had one.
   ‘Untidy bunch, aren’t they,’ I whispered as we picked our way across the scattered human bones to the heavy oak door.
   ‘I wrote Cindy some poetry,’ said Spike softly, rummaging in his pocket. ‘If anything happens, will you give it to her?’
   ‘Give it to her yourself. Nothing’s going to happen—you said so yourself. And don’t say things like that. It gives me the wobblies.’
   ‘Right,’ said Spike, putting the poem back in his pocket. ‘Sorry.’
   He took a deep breath and grasped the handle, turned it and pushed open the door. The interior was not as pitch black as I had supposed; the moonlight streamed in through the remains of the large stained-glass windows and the holes in the roof. Although it was gloomy we could still see. The church was in no better state than the graveyard. The pews had been thrown around and broken into matchwood. The lectern was lying in an untidy heap and all sorts of vandalism of a chilling nature had taken place.
   ‘Home away from home for His Supreme Evilness, wouldn’t you say?’ said Spike with a cheery laugh. He moved behind me and shut the heavy door, turning the large iron key in the lock and handing it to me for safe-keeping.
   I looked around but could see no one in the church. The door to the vestry was firmly locked, and I looked across at Spike.
   ‘He doesn’t appear to be here.’
   ‘Oh, he’s here all right—we just have to flush him out. Darkness can hide in all sorts of corners. We just need the right sort of fox-terrier to worry it out of the rabbit-hole—metaphorically speaking, of course.’
   ‘Of course. And where might this metaphorical rabbit-hole be?
   Spike looked at me sternly and pointed to his temple.
   ‘He’s up here. He thought he could dominate me from within but I’ve trapped him somewhere in the frontal lobes. I have some uncomfortable memories and those help to screen him—trouble is, I can’t seem to get him out again.’
   ‘I have someone like that,’ I replied, thinking of Hades barging into the tea-room memory with Landen.
   ‘Oh? Well, forcing him out is going to be a bit tricky. I thought his home ground might make him emerge spontaneously but it seems not. Hang on, let me have a go.’
   Spike leaned against the remains of a pew and grunted and strained for a few minutes, making some of the oddest faces as he tried to expel the spirit of the Evil One. It looked as if he were trying to shit a bowling ball out of his left nostril. After a few minutes of exertions he stopped.
   ‘Bastard. It’s like trying to snatch a trout from a mountain stream with a boxing glove. Never mind. I have a plan B which shouldn’t fail.’
   ‘The metaphorical fox-terrier?’
   ‘Exactly so. Thursday, draw your weapon.’
   ‘Now what?’
   ‘Shoot me.’
   ‘Where?’
   ‘In the chest, head, anywhere fatal. Where did you think? In my foot?’
   ‘You’re joking!’
   ‘Never been more serious.’
   ‘Then what?’
   ‘Good point. I should have explained that first.’
   He opened the holdall to reveal a vacuum cleaner.
   ‘Battery powered,’ explained Spike. ‘As soon as his spirit makes an appearance, suck him up.’
   ‘As simple as that?’
   ‘As simple as that. SEB containment isn’t rocket science, Thursday—it’s just not for the squeamish. Now, kill me.’
   ‘Spike!’
   ‘What?’
   ‘I can’t do it!’
   ‘But you promised—and what’s more you really promised.’
   ‘If I’d known that meant kill another SpecOps officer,’ I replied in an exasperated tone, ‘I wouldn’t have gone along with it!’
   ‘SpecOps 17 work ain’t no bed of roses, Thursday. I’ve had enough, and believe me, having this little nurk coiled up in my head is not as easy as it looks. I should never have let him in in the first place, but what’s done is done. You have to kill me and kill me well.’
   ‘You’re crazy!’
   ‘Undoubtedly. But look around you. You followed me in here. Who’s crazier? The crazy or the crazy who follows him?’
   ‘Listen—’ I began. ‘What’s that?’
   There was a thump on the church door.
   ‘Blast!’ replied Spike. ‘The undead. Not necessarily fatal and severely handicapped by that slow swagger—but they can be troublesome if you get cornered. After you have killed me and captured Chuckles up here you may have to shoot your way out. Take my keys; these two here are for the inner and outer gates. They’re a bit stiff and you have to turn to the left—’
   ‘I get the picture.’
   Another thump echoed the first. There was a crash from the vestry and a shape moved past one of the lower windows.
   ‘They are gathering!’ said Spike ominously. ‘You’d better get a move on.’
   ‘I can’t!’
   ‘You can, Thursday. I forgive you. It’s been a good career. Did you know that out of the three hundred and twenty-nine SpecOps 17 operatives who have ever been, only two ever made it to retirement age?’

   ‘Do they tell you that when you join?’
   There was the sound of stone against stone as one of the headstones on the floor started to be pushed aside. The undead who was thumping on the door was joined by another—and then another. Outside we could hear the noises of the awakening. Despite the moonlit night, the Evil One was calling to his servants, and they were coming running—or shambling, at the very least.
   ‘Do it!’ said Spike in a more urgent manner. ‘Do it now before it’s too late!’
   I raised my gun and pointed it at Spike.
   ‘DO IT!’
   I increased the pressure on the trigger as a shaky form stood up from the open grave behind him. I pointed the gun at the figure instead—the pathetic creature was so far dried out it could barely move, but it sensed our presence and teetered in our direction anyway.
   ‘Don’t shoot it, shoot me!’ said Spike with some alarm in his voice. ‘The job in hand, Thursday, please!’
   I ignored him and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell harmlessly with a dull thock.
   ‘Eh?’ I said, chambering the next round. Spike was quicker than I and loosed off a shot that disintegrated the abomination’s head. It collapsed in a heap of dried skin and powdery bone. The sound of scrabbling from the door increased.
   ‘God damn and blast, Next, why couldn’t you do as I told you?!’
   ‘What?’
   ‘I put that dud on the top of your clip, idiot!’
   ‘Why?’
   He tapped his head.
   ‘So I could trick Chuckles in here to come out—he’s not going to stay in a host he thinks is about to croak! You pull the trigger, out he comes, dud bullet, Stoker lives, SEB sucked up—QED.’
   ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked, my temper rising.
   ‘You had to mean to kill me! He might be the personification of all that is evil within the heart of man, but he’s no fool.’
   ‘Oops.’
   ‘Oops indeed, knucklehead! Right, we’d better be out of here!’
   ‘Isn’t there a plan C?’ I asked as we headed for the door.
   ‘Shit, no!’ replied Spike as he fumbled with the key. ‘B is as high as I ever get!’
   Another creature was rising from behind some upended tables that had once held a harvest festival display; I caught it before it was even upright. I turned back to Spike, who had the key in the lock and was muttering about how he wished he was working at Sommeworld™.
   ‘Stay away from the door, Spike.’
   He recognised the serious tone in my voice. He turned to face the barrel of my automatic.
   ‘Whoa! Careful, Thursday, that’s the end that bites.’
   ‘It ends here and tonight, Spike.’
   ‘This is a joke, right?’
   ‘No joke, Spike. You’re right. I have to kill you. It’s the only way.’
   ‘Er, steady on, Thursday—aren’t you taking this just a little bit too seriously?’
   ‘The Supreme Evil Being must be stopped, Spike—you said so yourself!’
   ‘I know I said that, but we can come back tomorrow with a plan C instead!’
   ‘There is no plan C, Spike. It ends now. Close your eyes.’
   ‘Wait!’
   ‘Close them!’
   He closed his eyes and I pulled the trigger and twitched my hand at the same time; the slug powered its way through three layers of clothing, grazed Spike’s shoulder and buried itself in the wood of the old door. It did the trick; with a short and unearthly wail an entity emerged from Spike’s nostrils and coalesced into an ethereal version of an old dishcloth.
   ‘Good work!’ muttered Spike in a very uncertain voice as he took a step back. ‘Don’t let it get near you!’
   I ducked as the wraith-like sprit moved in my direction.
   ‘Fooled!’ said a low voice. ‘Fooled by a mere mortal, how utterly depressing!’
   The thumping had now increased and was also coming from the vestry door; I could see the hinge pins start to loosen in the powdery mortar.
   ‘Keep him talking!’ yelled Spike as he grabbed the holdall and pulled out the vacuum cleaner.
   ‘A vacuum cleaner!’ Sneered the low voice. ‘Spike you insult me!’
   Spike didn’t answer but instead unravelled the hose and switched the battery-powered appliance on.
   ‘A vacuum cleaner won’t hold me!’ sneered the voice again. ‘Do you really believe that I can be trapped in a bag like so much dust?’
   Spike sucked up the small spirit in a trice.
   ‘He didn’t seem that frightened of it,’ I murmured as Spike fiddled with the machine’s controls.
   ‘This isn’t any vacuum cleaner, Thursday. James over at R&D dreamt it up for me. You see, unlike conventional vacuum cleaners, this one works on a dual cyclone principle that traps dust and evil spirits by powerful centrifugal force. Since there is no bag there is no loss of suction—you can use a lower wattage motor; there’s a hose action—and a small brush for stair carpets.’
   ‘You find evil spirits in stair carpets?’
   ‘No, but my stair carpets need cleaning just the same as anyone else’s.’
   I looked at the glass container and could see a small vestige of white spinning round very rapidly. Spike deftly placed the lid on the jar and detached it from the machine. He held it up and there inside was a very pissed-off spirit of the Evil One—well and truly trapped.
   ‘As I said,’ went on Spike, ‘it’s not rocket science. You had me scared, though, I thought you really were going to kill me!’
   ‘That,’ I replied, ‘was plan D!’
   ‘Spike you you you Bastard!’ said the small voice from inside the jar. ‘You’ll suffer the worst torments in hell for this!’
   ‘Yeah, yeah,’ replied Spike as he placed the jar in the holdall, ‘you and all the rest.’
   He slung the bag round his body, replaced the spent cartridge in his shotgun with another from his pocket, and flicked off the safety.
   ‘Come on, those deadbeats are starting to get on my tits. Whoever nails the least is a sissypants.’
   We flung open the door to a bunch of very surprised dried corpses who fell inward in a large tangled mass of putrefied torsos and stick-like limbs. Spike opened fire first, and after we had dispatched that lot we dashed outside, dodged the slowest of the undead and cut down the others as we made our way to the gates.
   ‘The Cindy problem,’ I said as the head of a long-dead carcass exploded in response to Spike’s shotgun. ‘Did you do as I suggested?’
   ‘Sure did,’ replied Spike, letting fly at another walking corpse ‘Stakes and crucifixes in the garage and all my back issues of Van Helsing’s Gazette in the living room.’
   ‘Did she get the message?’ I asked, surprising another walking corpse, which had been trying to stay out of the action behind a tombstone.
   ‘She didn’t say anything,’ he replied, decapitating two dried cadavers, ‘but the funny thing is, I now find copies of Sniper magazine in the toilet—and a copy of Great Underworld Hit-men has appeared in the kitchen.’
   ‘Perhaps she’s trying to tell you something?’
   ‘Yes,’ agreed Spike, ‘but what?’
   I bagged ten that night, but Spike only managed eight—so he was the sissypants. We partook of a haddock chowder with freshly baked bread at a roadside eatery and joked about the night’s events while the SEB swore at us from his glass jar. I got my six hundred quid and my landlord didn’t get Pickwick. All in all, it was a good evening well spent.