They Came and Ate Us: Armageddon II: The B-Movie Read online

  THEY CAME AND ATE US

  ARMAGEDDON II: THE B-MOVIE

  ROBERT RANKIN

  They Came and Ate Us

  Armageddon II: The B-Movie

  Originally published by Bloomsbury

  Bloomsbury Edition published 1991

  Corgi Edition published 1992

  Kindle Edition published 2012 by Far Fetched Books

  Diddled about with and proof-read by the author, who apologises for any typos or grammatical errors that somehow slipped past him.

  He did his best, honest.

  Copyright Robert Rankin 1991

  The right of Robert Rankin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Follow Robert on Facebook or visit

  http://thegoldensprout.com

  Dedicated to the memory of

  Captain Robert Fleming Rankin

  The Zen Yachtsman

  1911 - 1990

  He had the last laugh and he let us share it.

  Thanks Dad.

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  THE END OF PART ONE

  If you ain’t where you is, you’re no place

  God

  In the year 2050 planet Earth finally got the chance to enjoy Armageddon. It had originally been scheduled to occur in 999 and after that fell through, in 1999. However, due to certain legal loopholes in the original contracts and God moving in the mysterious way he is known and loved for, the thing didn’t actually get under way until 2050.

  But when it did it was a real showstopper. Cracking special effects, flaming chariots, angelic hosts, fire and brimstone, the whole kith and caboodle and the kitchen sink. All in glorious Buddhacolour and broadcast live as it happened.

  The major pay-off came with the playing of the now legendary UNIVERSAL NOTE, which magically transformed Earth from an irradiated plague-pit into a pretty reasonable facsimile of the original Garden of Eden. An event of no small fabness by any reckoning.

  God then put his only daughter Christeen (twin sister of Jesus Christ, but unfairly edited out of the New Testament) in charge of the show and left her to get on with it.

  The run-up to all this involved numerous comings and goings. These included spacemen, time travelling, sex, violence, TV gameshows, the Antichrist and a sprout called Barry. But all that is far too complicated to go into here. One point which might just be worth mentioning is that an independent survey carried out on the planet Phnaargos in 2050 did manage to pinpoint the single root cause for the disastrous course of human history taken during the latter part of the twentieth century, a course leading inevitably to the terrible Nuclear Holocaust Event of 1999, which laid waste to two-thirds of the known world. The survey proved beyond any doubt that all the fuss and bother was the fault of a single man. That it could, in fact, be parcelled up and laid fairly and squarely upon the guitar-shaped doormat of one Elvis Aron Presley.

  Yes, that very one!

  PART ONE

  1

  I was not born to live a man’s life but to be the stuff of future memory.

  King Arthur

  I knew Hyde Park when it was a flowerpot!

  Hugo Rune

  At two thirty in the afternoon of 16 August 1977 the telephones on the desk of police chief Sam J. Maggott of Memphis PD rose against him. Spitting Big Mac, Sam snatched up the noisiest protester and shouted ‘Yo’ into it, the way one does. The not-too-distant voice of a junior officer poured a stream of incoherent gibberish into Sam’s ear. This concluded with the words ‘you’d better get over here quick, chief.

  ‘You wanna run that by me again, boy?’ Sam swept the other jangling phones into an open desk drawer and slammed it shut. ‘You are telling me what?’

  ‘He’s dead, chief. Elvis. And there’s some deep dung going down here.’

  ‘Goddamn!’ Sam Maggott held the handset at arm’s length and regarded it as he would an African American come to propose marriage to his teenage daughter. ‘You pulling my pecker, boy?’

  ‘I swear to God, chief.’

  ‘Someone shoot the son-of-a-bitch?’ The phone was back at Sam’s ear.

  ‘Seems like he had a heart attack or something. He’s lying in his bathroom. His security are all over the place going crazy. You gotta be here ... oh no . . .’ The line went brrrrrrr.

  Sam voiced certain words to the effect that the junior officer’s cranium was in fact a male reproductive organ and flung the handset aside. Elvis Presley dead. The paperwork . . .

  Dragging his prodigious bulk from its reinforced chair he waddled across the room, perched cap upon head, clipped badge upon breast, jammed handgun into calf-skin holster. As he turned the door handle he also turned a fleeting glance back to his fetid office. The walls were made gay with forensic blow-ups of murder victims, mugshots of rapists and serial killers, samples of human hair in small plastic packets. The threadbare carpet was scarcely to be seen beneath discarded burger boxes and crumpled beer cans. The water cooler steamed gently and spent Camel butts formed suitably Egyptian pyramids above invisible ashbowls. Sam sighed deeply. Home sweet home.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ said Sam. And indeed he would, eventually. But not before the world as he knew it had turned into something far beyond his wildest imaginings.

  I kid you not at all.

  Enter Wed 2 June 1993.

  The network helicar levelled out at five hundred feet and buzzed the line of stopped traffic.’. . .

  ‘And for all of you travelling to work on the M25, my advice is don’t do it. We have a toxic waste spillage with extreme bio-hazard causing five-mile tailbacks both east and west. Stay home and make love, good people. And back to you in the studio Ramon.’

  ‘Well, not too much joy there I’m afraid, and very little joy in Red China at the present by the sound of it. Reports are coming in that the government now has the entire population jumping up and down on the spot in unison for five full minutes every morning. Nothing to do with the health of that benighted nation, we understand. But a concerted effort to alter the axis of the Earth and shift the ever-widening ozone hole directly over Washington . . .’

  A manicured hand flipped the dial of the in-car TV and it moved back into the dash. On the wrist was a watch like a gold tattoo. A peerless pin-striped cuff led up a sleeve of likewise confection to a shoulder clenched by red elastic
. It was a short haul to the receding perfumed chin, the pampered cheeks and the sun-bleached tresses.

  The Porsche was deep in the tailback. The driver deep in the kind of cold fury that only one who has paid out 35K for a car to go zoom and finds it going nowhere can really experience.

  John Timothy clenched the racing wheel and ground his expensive caps. He slumped back in the bucket seat and did some Oming. It didn’t help one little bit. He thumbed open the electric window. Took a deep breath. A leathern fist swung in and smashed across his face.

  ‘Christ.’ John spat blood down his designer shirt-front. He turned in horror to view his attacker. A second fist joined the first and both began to pound upon him. The passenger door was flung open. A bald-headed woman forced her way into the car. The leathern fists had hold of his club tie, drew it up. His head struck the sunroof. The bald woman snatched up the car phone, wrapped the cord about his throat, and began to apply her strength.

  John fought to free himself, climb from the car. The bald woman tapped the window button and the window swished up severing three ringers from John’s right hand. He opened his mouth to scream. His Filofax was rammed into his jaws, penetrating deeply into his throat. Credit cards spilled from the open end. The bald woman snatched one up, drew it across his filled throat. Sliced his head from his body . . .

  Jack Doveston’s wife leant over his shoulder and perused the word screen. ‘Voodoo Yuppie Killers,’ she read. ‘The new bestseller from the author of They Came and Ate Us.’ Jack looked up fearfully, he hadn’t heard her come in.

  ‘Car phones don’t have cords,’ she observed. ‘It would be physically impossible to push a Filofax down anyone’s throat and as to slicing off heads with a credit card . . .’

  She was laughing as she left the room. She made no attempt to hide it. Jack did lip chewings. One day he would be famous. He just knew it. One day. And when he was . . .when he was. Jack punched in FILE UNDER SEMINAL NOVEL and closed down.

  Four men sit about a table in a secret room. A top-secret room. It is an American top-secret room. It is in a government establishment. It is deep under the ground. To get into this room you need major security clearance. Only these four men have such clearance.

  These men wear identical grey suits. They might be brothers.

  The room is lit from above, the way that snooker tables are lit. Great for atmosphere, card games, that kind of thing. Good on cheekbones and hands. Hands which bear enigmatic signet rings. We have seen all this kind of thing before. We hope that this time it is going to be worth it.

  ‘Gentlemen.’ One man speaks, the others listen. ‘Gentlemen, we have a crisis situation here.’

  ‘Are we in security?’ asks one. It doesn’t matter which. ‘Free from bio-scan?’

  ‘The monitors read out at zero.’ Heads nod. Cheek-bones are brought into play. All this is being viewed from above.

  ‘Gentlemen.’ The first speaker again. ‘You have all had time to look at the tapes. You have all been at the press conferences. You all have intimate knowledge of the problem at hand.’ More sombre nods. Some papers are moved slightly.

  ‘I can see no alternative but to put the plan into operation. Any delay now could prove disastrous, with the talks coming up.’

  ‘You have run this through the appropriate channels? It can be done? It will actually work?’

  ‘With the present situation being what it is no-one will suspect anything. We are responsible for security. The measures are purely protective.’

  ‘Then Project Wormwood has a green light.’

  ‘There is no other alternative?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘And you are certain that the public will not suspect?’

  ‘We have already run two pilots.’

  ‘But what about infiltration? My sources tell me that pirates have penetrated the outer networks.’

  ‘That is being dealt with.’

  Heads nod all the way round the table. At least they know what’s going on.

  ‘Are we talking total body prosthesis?’ someone asks. Which leaves all but a very few as much in the dark as when they came in.

  There now comes a similarly unexplained cut to the year 2060. It might be Earth, but it sure as Hell looks like paradise. Grassy knolls, languid rivers, a copse or two, or they might be thickets, it’s often hard to tell even close up. Arcadian glades. Plenty of those. And panning slowly across, some rude dwellings. Peering more closely one is able to make out certain signs hanging above the door-ways. One says Ye Blacksmith, another Ye Miller. Another still, Ye Keeper of Cattle. On a somewhat larger hut at the far end a sign reads Ye Ministry for Development, Land Registration, Monetary Control and the Reinstatement of the Status Quo.

  In the doorway of this hut stands a tallish, broad-shouldered, whole-headed sort of a body. He stares into the sky and suddenly catches sight of something which may or may not be an enormous ballpoint pen.

  ‘Rambo,’ he cries out excitedly to someone within the hut. ‘Quickly, it’s us. We’re back on again.’

  ‘Eric, me old bucolic muckamuck,’ a voice replies. ‘I trust that you are not piddling windward.’

  ‘No Rambo, honest. The biro is back. I can almost make out the exercise book and the tobacco packet. It’s Rankin, he’s in the pub again and he’s writing.’

  ‘Well, glory be.’ Rambo Bloodaxe, for it is indeed he, thrust his head out through the hut opening and joined his bestest chum. ‘Then if that’s the way of it we’re really going to make good this time.’

  ‘And not without good cause, Rambo. All these meek who have inherited the Earth are really getting up my olfactory organ.’

  2

  ACUPUNCTURE: A spiteful habit much favoured by the shifty Chinese.

  Hugo Rune, The Book of Ultimate Truths

  Rune’s distrust of the ‘damned Chinee’ appears to have had its genesis during a meal he once took with George Orwell at a Chinese restaurant during the early 1930s. Orwell records the incident in his first draft of ‘Down and out with Hugo Rune.’

  ‘Rune had invited me out to dinner to discuss this idea he had for a book set in the 1980s about his big brother. I recall that in those days his appetite was quite prodigious. We were halfway through the thirteenth course when he suddenly clutched at his neck and fell to the floor. With the aid of a wok spoon and a couple of chopsticks I managed to extricate from his throat a three-inch bone which later proved to be the femur of a Ring Tailed Marmot.‘The restaurant owner was profuse in his apologies and promptly tore up the bill. Rune however was enraged and later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.’Evelyn Waugh also records this incident, although in his account it took place six months earlier and at a different restaurant. Curiously his description of the bone is identical.

  Sir John Rimmer, The Amazing Mr Rune

  The road to Graceland, Elvis Presley Boulevard, is, so to speak, about as broad as it is long, and not paved with particularly good intentions. Dogs do not foul its footpaths. Loiterers, either with intent or merely shoelaces to tie, are moved along at the hurry up. Winos with paper sacks do not take sup in this neck of the woods. To paraphrase Bobby the Z, ‘There are no bums outside the gates of Graceland.’ Young female worshippers, come to lay their offerings before the King receive a scant welcome from the killer canines and armed militiamen of the so-called ‘Memphis Mafia’.

  But now, with a suddenness that made it all the more terrible, the unthinkable had occurred. The King was dead. And now chaos reigned supreme. The gilded gates yawned, feet trampled the sacred lawns. Police helicopters swung in faulty circles, bullhorns demanded order. Cordons stretched across the road, cops displayed their weapons and ambulance sirens mourned dreadfully. The word was already on the network, an era was over. Elvis the man was dead, but Elvis the legend was only just beginning.

  Sam Maggott has penetrated to the epicentre of the chaos. It is the eye of the hurricane. Here is only an unearthly silence, an awful loneliness. There is little enough dignit
y in birth but there is none whatever in death. A fat man lies on a chill tile floor. He is wearing pyjamas, a yellow top, blue bottoms. His knees are drawn up almost to his chin. Already he smells bad. Sam pushes back his police cap, runs a knuckle over his moist forehead. Behind him people are running about shouting, crying, arguing. The dead man is at last all on his own. Sam stoops to examine the corpse. He feels the thick blue neck. Almost lovingly he strokes the cold bloated cheek. A grey sideburn curls away beneath his touch and flutters gently to the tiles. Sam is fascinated. He stares at it dumbly, then plucks it up and pokes it back on to the dead cheek. Upside down. He notices to his amazement that the deceased is wearing a wig.

  Sam won’t be telling the press. Later he will be very surprised that no-one else has.

  To the sounds of the immortal Jimi Hendrix, Jack Doveston swung his banjoed Oldsmobile into the car park of the Miskatonic University. It was full. The students’ cars were newer and flashier. The students were punctual. A ready curse sprang to Jack’s lips. He slammed the greedy Olds on to the grass verge, slammed the ‘broken down’ sticker on its windshield, slammed the rust-ridden door and slammed away up the drive.

  The university never failed to impress him. It hardly could. All those Gothic spires and cupolas. All that tortured stonework, the fluted columns, the gargoyles and galleries. The mullioned windows with their stained-glass grotesqueries. Awesome. But for all of it Jack’s heart dwelt in the dimly lit sub-basement, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  Jack skirted the grandeur and made off down a set of side stairs. He let himself in with his pass key and threaded his way through musty corridors bound for the very womb of the great university. It was definitely the womb rather than the heart. The heart was three floors above, the great hall. Or at least that was what Jack’s wife considered. ‘Your own little womb, which you enter daily by the back passage.’