“Oh,” said Russell, as she pulled away. “I don’t …”
“Understand? You will. And thank you, for everything.”
“I … er.”
Metallic clangs and crashes. She glanced back towards the way she had come, clicked something on her belt. Another white disc sprang up upon the far wall. “Keep down,” and with that she ran towards the disc.
Russell watched her dash across the bar, leap at the disc on the wall, which swallowed her up. And she was gone.
“Oh,” said Russell once more, and then he turned his head, saw something rather fearful and took a dive for cover. From two dimensions into the third they came, clashing and clanking. They were like knights in dead black armour.
Two of them, both tall and wide, of terrible bulk, the floor shook to their footfalls. The helmets were spherical, featureless, without visors or eyeholes. The metal gauntlets had but the three fingers. These clasped enormous black guns of an advanced design. Little red lights ran up and down the barrels.
They came clanking to a standstill before the bar.
Morgan raised his head but Russell forced it down again, rammed a hand over his mouth.
Above, the mighty figures stood immobile as statues, and then their heads began to revolve. Whirring, clicking sounds, the heads turned. Round and round they went.
“The woman is not here,” said one, in a voice like a long-distance telephone call.
“Readjust the coordinates. Search mode. And delayed correct, two minutes.”
Lights flickered upon the carapace breast plates. The white spot grew once more upon the far wall.
Crashing and banging they ran towards it. Terrible creaks and groans of grating metal. Into the disc of light, then zap. Gone. Kaput. Vanished.
Russell peeped out once more. The walls of the bar were as before, no trace of anything remained. Morgan struggled up. “What the bloody Hell …?” he mumbled.
“I think we’re in some kind of trouble,” Russell said.
“Trouble?”
“Trouble?” The voice was that of Luis Z the Spanish landlord. “Trouble? You bastards, what have you done to my pub?”
“It wasn’t us.” Morgan took to backing away. Luis had his big peace-keeping stick in his hand. Russell took to backing away also.
“You bloody mad men! I step out for a moment and you smash my pub to pieces. You’re dead. You’re frigging dead.”
“Run,” Morgan said.
“Run,” agreed Russell.
Luis put up a spirited chase, but Morgan and Russell had youth to their account and they finally out-ran him down near the Butts Estate. Bent double in an alleyway, hands upon knees, they gasped and gagged for breath.
“What bloody happened?” Morgan managed. “What went on back there?”
“I don’t know.” Russell had a bit more breath left in him than Morgan. “I just don’t know.”
“Earthquakes,” croaked Morgan. “And bright lights and flashes and crashes and bangs and voices and –”
“I still don’t know.”
“What did you see? Tell me what you saw.”
“I don’t know, I –”
“A woman, I heard a woman.”
“A woman, yes.”
“You knew, Russell. Whatever it was, you knew it was going to happen.”
Russell nodded slowly. He had known something was about to happen. Though he hadn’t known what and he didn’t know how he’d known. So to speak.
“We’re in deep shit,” puffed Morgan. “That Luis will call the police for sure. We’re wanted men. We could go to prison.”
“It wasn’t our fault, we didn’t do anything.”
“So who did, Russell?”
“I don’t know. The walls sort of opened, she came out, then these things came out. Great black things in armour. I don’t think they were people.”
“Will that stand up in court, do you suppose?”
“We’ve got to go back.”
“What?”
“Go back, try to explain, apologize, offer to make good.”
“What?”
“We must take the blame,” said Russell. “I know we must. We’ll say we were drunk and fighting. We’ll tell him we’ll pay for the damage.”
“Have you gone stark raving mad?”
“It’s the best way. If he’s called the police, I don’t want them bashing down my mum’s door at six in the morning.”
“But the bar’s wrecked, it could be thousands of pounds.”
“We could lie,” said Russell.
“What did you say?”
“I said we could lie.”
“You don’t know how to lie, Russell.”
“But you do, Morgan. You lie all the time.”
“That’s not true, I never lie. It’s Bobby Boy who tells all the lies, not me.”
“What about those mushrooms you say you’ve got growing in your shed, the ones that are the size of dustbin lids?”
“A slight exaggeration perhaps.”
“What about when you were late for work and you told Frank that terrorists had hijacked the bus?”
“Now that was true.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“No, you’re right.”
“So you should do the lying.”
“What am I going to say?”
“You’ll say that armed men burst into the bar to raid the place and that we fought them off.”
“Oh,” said Morgan. “Actually that’s quite a good lie, isn’t it?”
“Better than most of yours.”
“Paramilitaries,” said Morgan, warming to the idea. “With their faces blacked out, carrying General Electric mini-guns, and I fought them off single handed using certain martial arts techniques I learned from the lamas in Tibet.”
“Two big blokes in balaclava helmets,” said Russell. “With coshes and we both waded in, together.”
“We could come out of this as heroes.” Morgan rubbed his hands together. “Get in the newspapers and everything.”
“If we can stay out of court it will do for me.”
“Quite so.”
They trudged back. Trudging had become the order of the day really. Back they trudged.
There were no police cars outside The Ape of Thoth. All was very quiet. A young couple were just going in.
Russell and Morgan exchanged glances, steeled themselves, took deep breaths and entered the bar.
And then they just stared. They didn’t speak. They didn’t breathe. They just stared.
The bar was normal. All completely normal. No broken furniture. No smashed glasses, no shattered ashtrays. Chairs and tables just as they had been, the dartsboard on the wall, everything normal. Utterly, utterly normal.
Morgan let his breath out first. “What the fu –”
“You!” Luis the landlord vaulted over the bar. “How did you …? What did you …?”
“What?” went Morgan.
“I come back and all is well. Nothing is broken. How did you do that? How … how?”
“I …” went Morgan.
“What are you talking about?” Russell asked.
“What?” went Morgan.
“What?” went Luis.
“What are you talking about?”
“This place, all smashed up, I chased you.”
“You never chased us,” Russell said. “We’ve only just come in. This is the first time we’ve been in this evening.”
“What?” went Morgan.
“You bloody have, you bloody –”
“This man is clearly drunk,” said Russell. “Come, Morgan, we will drink elsewhere. Good night to you, landlord.”
“What … what?”
Russell hustled Morgan from the bar.
Outside Morgan went “What?” once more.
“Something’s happened,” Russell said. “Something big, somehow I knew the bar would be OK. Don’t ask me how, but I knew it.”
“When did you know it?”
“Just before we went back in. Something big is happening, Morgan, and we’re in it.”
“You can be in it, Russell, I don’t want to be. I’m just an ordinary bloke. I don’t want anything to do with this.”
“But you always said –”
“Don’t worry about what I always said, I was probably lying. I don’t want any adventures, I want to go home for my tea.”
“You’re in it, Morgan, whatever it is.”
“No, no, no. Hurricanes in the bar, things appearing and disappearing. Wreckage becoming unwrecked. This isn’t my thing, I don’t get involved in that sort of stuff.”