Bill Broun - Night of the Animals

“Jesus fuck,” cried Bajwa. “Inspector, you didn’t have to—”

“You fooking bitch!” shouted the other Watchman with a neuralpike. “Now you’re dead, you slag.”

The frightcopter, humming above, descended abruptly. It thudded upon the pavement, its feathery rotor blades folding up and inward. When this happened, the other Watchman with a pike, and the one still fussing with his pop-up prison, retreated a few steps toward the compacted frightcopter, which sat like an enormous black scarab, ticking with heat, its two giant neural cannons slowly gliding toward Astrid. It presented an implacable, story-ending foe, and Astrid knew it.

“Listen! I’m sorry!” she hollered. She crouched down, pulling the doctor to the pavement. “Get down,” she whispered to Bajwa. “Down! Crawl toward the copter!” She did feel sorry; hurting anyone felt repugnant to her, but she also needed to stall them. “I didn’t mean. I didn’t. ”

Astrid motioned to St. Cuthbert and the other constables and Met officers. “Get down!” She glared at the frightcopter with steely anger.

But now the other SCARE pikeman, bolstered by Astrid’s proximity, was barreling heedlessly toward her and the doctor, his weapon’s tip fully charged. This time, a hunkered Astrid held her neuralzinger with both hands, like the trainer she was, and took down the pikeman.

The Met officers, who had switched off their TotalCamou for safety, began scampering toward Astrid and Bajwa, too. The parks constables started to make more tentative, parallel moves on St. Cuthbert.

“She’s bloody off her chump!” one of the Met officers screamed. “I tell you, she’ll kill us all!”

There was a shrill zhinging! sound as the grounded frightcopter fired its neural cannons. First, for a fraction of a second, white tracer laser-lines landed on St. Cuthbert and just above Astrid’s head.

“No!” screamed the doctor.

Then, two darkening fat columns of air, wide as smokestacks, puffed out all along the laser-line guides and turned into the equivalent of million-tubed synaptic extruders. The deadly columns of swirling gray-black plasmas swiped back and forth like windscreen wipers and at once shrank off.

As Astrid had calculated, the shots ranged safely above their heads, but instantly and silently, they had liquefied the brains of all the Met officers and parks constables around the lion enclosure. She and Bajwa watched in horror as the men’s eyes turned into orange sockets even as they timbered to the ground.

The last Watchman scrambled into the eight-by-eight-foot pop-up prison, which he was now treating as a spur-of-the-moment fortress, or at least a kind of safe room.

The winged red doors of the frightcopter flew open.

Astrid felt she had no choice about her next maneuver. She must subdue the frightcopter’s pilot before he killed them all. She sprinted toward it. She ducked under one of the copter’s hot red and gold-crested nacelles. She pushed her back against the main engine cowl, inching toward the door, weapon drawn. As she crouched and rolled into the open, aiming for the pilot, she saw the reason that she and the doctor were still alive: it was empty. The Watchman inside the prison was controlling it remotely.

“You will be hunted down,” the Watchman said to them. He took off his helm, and he clearly considered himself safely ensconced. He was a sallow, weak-chinned, balding man with tiny blue eyes and an incongruously noble roman nose. “But I’m going to kill you first.”

Dr. Bajwa stood up behind Astrid. “Distract him,” he whispered. “I’ve got nothing to lose, have I?”

“What?”

“Distract the idiot in the box.”

So Astrid said to the Watchman, “You can’t, er, see it. from your angle, but above you, chap, I see. I see the king’s own frightcopter. It’s all pretty-ditty Windsor golds and scarlets, and I don’t think His Majesty’s going to be pleased with your performance. You’ve murdered your colleagues. He’s landing down, my friend.”

“Oh, piss off,” the Watchman said, smiling greasily. “You’re lying. King Harry! And now you better hope your affairs are all in order.” He began tapping the aerosol touchscreen on back of his armored hand, and frowned. “What the bloody hell?”

Dr. Bajwa popped his head out of the frightcopter’s cockpit. “I’ve disabled the remote,” he said. “I’ve got an NSeven solarcopter certification. Almost. It’s ours now.”

“It’s a bloody frightcopter,” the Watchman hissed, his face grown incandescent red. “It ain’t some weekend whirlybird.”

“Well, we’ll see, friend. I’ve been to Philip K’s Solarcopter Flight School. In Kent, mate, in case you’re wondering.” He nodded and grinned. “And if you don’t mind my saying, you look like you’ve gone for a burton, old chapper.”

“You’ll all die,” the Watchman spat back.

“I won’t argue that,” said Bajwa.

Astrid and the doctor looked toward the lions. “Cuthbert!” they shouted, nearly in unison.

They ran over to the enclosure and looked over its edge. There he was — St. Cuthbert, slid halfway down the inside wall, up to his thighs in moat water. He was using his bolt cutters like a climber’s pick, keeping himself above the moat. A full inch of bright emerald algae covered the water, so much it hardly rippled. Only four or so feet deep, it posed little danger to adults, but it was cold, and Cuthbert was old, sick, and he’d had a few knocks. The lions gazed at the spectacle of him with interest, but not any sort of bloodlust.

“Cuddy,” said Bajwa. “We’ll get you out of here. Can you stay there?”

“Oi’m St. Cuthbert, my old friend. Oi’m going nowhere. Yow must — yow must get down to Grosvenor Square — with Drystan. Ar, it’s past time. I shall begin my. my last prayers.”

“But we can’t leave you,” said Astrid. “You’ll die.”

“Yes, yes,” said the doctor, nodding.

“Drystan,” said St. Cuthbert. “I will call you ‘Astrid.’ It’s only two letters off ‘Drystan,’ and one of them is ‘ I ’—and I’m here, ain’t I? Ha-ha. But the animals. If I can hear them, so must you because of who you are. Listen for them. They will not hurt me any more than people have already. Go. Go to Grosvenor — now, please. And then come back.”

“But you won’t be safe,” said Astrid.

“If you don’t go, there’s no future.”

“No.” Astrid turned to Baj. “We can’t do this. We shan’t leave him.”

St. Cuthbert, his words smearing together, said, “Please please -gonow. Oi’m just a voice in tha wilderness of the streets. Yow’re the glory. So go. Gogaga-gogo. Go.”

Smiling down at his patient, battling back tears, Dr. Bajwa said, “Well, Cuddy, I guess this is, officially, going for a burton.”

“Yes,” said the saint.

It was with heavy steps, and crushed hearts, that Astrid and Dr. Bajwa climbed into the frightcopter.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” said Astrid. “It’s utter madness.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Bajwa, pulling up the hovering touch-controls. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

And they whirred into the busy London night sky.

MASON GAGE WAS A LONG WAY FROM HIS HOME IN Mingo Grove, West Virginia.

The chief security officer at the American Embassy, still a little grumpy at getting awakened at 4:00 A.M., couldn’t believe his eyes. He was standing in what was officially called the Central Confidence Module, or CCM, but most everyone called it the Roost. Apart from the sound of air whooshing through a ventilation register, the dim room was cool and silent, despite the twenty or so people packed in.