Jonathan Barnes - The Somnambulist

Like most schoolboys, the Prefects were easily bored. Half an hour was all it took to rout the combined forces of the Directorate, the Metropolitan Police Force and Love, Love, Love and Love. The streets around them were upholstered with corpses; the gutters ran red with the blood of the fallen. Hawker and Boon were in the midst of removing a man’s eye with the horseshoe attachment on their penknife when they caught sight of Mr. Skimpole tottering uncertainly toward them.

“Skimpers!’ shouted Boon. “What the devil are you doing here? Hawker, look. It’s Mr. S.”

Stepping over a dozen or so dead bodies with fastidious care, the albino finally reached their side. “What have you done?” he hissed.

“Pretty much what you asked, haven’t we, Boon?”

The other man nodded in fervent agreement. “The Mongoose is down, Maurice Trotman’s snuffed it and we’ve tidied this lot up as a bonus. Practically done your job for you, I’d say.”

“Please go,” Skimpole gasped. “You’ve done enough.”

“Well, I like that.”

“Dashed ungrateful’s what I call it.”

“What…” Skimpole stopped, his face screwed up in pain, until he managed at last a feeble: “What do I owe you?”

“Owe us, sir? Jolly decent of you to ask about a payment at a time like this.”

“You don’t owe us a bean, sir.”

“Not any more.”

“What?” Skimpole wheezed.

“Point of fact, we’ve taken what you owe already.”

“Shouldn’t worry, sir. It’s quite within your means.”

“Rather a bargain, I’d have said.”

Boon ruffled his hair affectionately. “I’d get home, though, sir, if I was you. He doesn’t look at all well, does he, Hawker?”

“Positively peaky.”

“If you’re going to die, sir I’d do it at home, Keeling over round here’s just going to look like you’re following the crowd. No, no, place to do it’s back in Wimbledon. Mortality’s unusual there. Out of the ordinary. People might take a spot of notice.”

A voice floated across to them. “Stop!”

Amused, the Prefects craned their heads to look. “Oh, I say, who’s that?”

“Isn't’ he the fat johnny from the club?”

“Could be.”

Dedlock stepped forward, a revolver clasped tightly in his hand. “Let him go.”

“You don’t understand,” the albino murmured.

Hawker moved toward Dedlock.

“Don’t move. I know what you are.”

Boon grinned. “I doubt that.”

“It’s all right,” Skimpole muttered. “They’re working for me.”

“For you?”

Stifling a yawn, Hawker sauntered across to the scarred man and knocked the gun from his hand. “Name’s Hawker. Don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” And he gripped the older man’s hand in a parody of a handshake.

At once, Dedlock felt a terrific burning sensation which began at his fingertips and rushed over his entire body, a broiling, intense, pulsating heat. He fainted almost immediately.

Hawker shrugged and let him fall to the ground. “Just a little gift,” he explained. “No extra charge.”

“What’s happened to that funny green fellow?” asked Boon.

“Did a bunk down the tube, I think,” Hawker replied.

“Shall we have a look-see?”

“Why not?”

“I’m too tired to walk.”

“Agreed.”

They turned back to Skimpole.

“Ta-at, then, sir.”

“Tinkety-tonk.”

The Prefects linked hands, looking for an instant oddly innocent, like real children. Boon crumpled his brow, apparently deep in concentration.

I expect by now your disbelief is not so much suspended as dangling from the highest plateau of credulity. Even so, I regret that this next incident requires a further extension of that capacity.

The two men seemed to shimmer slightly, flickering like a reflection in rippling water. This effect lasted for no longer than a few seconds before they disappeared. Oh yes, disappeared. I can’t put it any more plainly than that. One moment they were there, the next they had been erased from existence. The sole sign that they had ever stood in that spot, their only residue, was a pungent smell of fireworks and the lingering aftertaste of sherbet dip.

They left maybe three dozen people alive. The living were outnumbered by the dead.

This, then, was the final horrible coincidence of the day, as all the strands knitted together to ensure the total failure of my plans. It is as well that I am a good and patient man and not prone to bitterness — somebody with a greater propensity toward self-pity than I might justifiably consider themselves a second Job.

I hurried the Chairman along the tunnel, back toward the sphere. He was degenerating fast, half his face gone, his body oozing and excreting spurts of that terrible green liquid. I tried to keep clear of the stuff but inevitably a little of it reached my skin, fizzing and sizzling like acid. Where it touched me, my body smelt like burning sausages.

We reached Love at last and I tried to get the old man inside. Behind us, I could hear someone running in our direction. Then a faint cry: “Tan!” It was Moon, of course, looking for revenge or some such. I bundled the Chairman through the green door and into the main hall.

What happened then was confused and difficult to follow. Even today I have great difficulty arranging events in their correct order.

The Chairman recognized the great hall as soon as he saw it, and I must say that his reaction was not one of grateful homecoming. Presumably he associated it with his long incarceration, with the tank and the amniotic fluid. In consequence, he became suddenly frantic to leave and return to the surface.

He roared something which I imagine was intended to be “No,” but, so thoroughly had his innards been eaten away by that viscous green slime which still oozed from his every pore, the words that emerged from his ravaged throat sounded more like animal roars than human speech.

Heroically, I tried to reason with him. “Mr. Chairman, please. I can repair you. Believe, me, it’s for the best.”

“Sur-face,” he growled, more coherent now. “SURFACE.”

“Stay. I beg of you.”

He seemed to calm down a little at this and I stepped closer, hoping to lead him by the hand and return him to the tank. Very probably, it was the worst move I could have made. With one swipe of what was left of his right hand (technically now more of a stump) he hit me hard across the face and sent me sprawling to the ground. I still carry the legacy of that blow today — a purple mark on my left cheek, around the size and shape of an apple, often mistaken for a birthmark.

I lay there, unable and unwilling to move, as the Chairman, dripping with poisonous green fluid, turned back toward the door and the outside world. How much indiscriminate havoc would he wreak before he was stopped? Given that his slightest touch was potentially lethal, I fancied the cost would be high indeed.

What I hadn’t bargained on, however, was another man, just as deadly as he.

Later, I reasoned that I must have reached the main hall just as the Somnambulist had removed the final sword from his belly. As I was thrown to the floor, he stood up, dusted himself down and looked over toward us.

The Chairman gaped at the Somnambulist. He pointed and screamed something which sounded at the time like “My God,” though it has since been put to me that it was something else entirely.

Spewing green acid, the Chairman staggered forward and flung himself at the giant. The Somnambulist, weakened by his ordeal, was taken aback at first, but soon fought back, and furiously.

There was a crash and a stumble behind me. Edward Moon appeared by my side, intending no doubt to challenge me to a duel or bring me to justice. Mercifully, we were both distracted by a far more terrible sight.