9

The plastic phial lay on the tabletop, empty.

Will sat rigidly, staring into space. His eyes were glazed, the pupils dilated. His face was an eerie grey and his lips an unnatural blue.

Tim reached cautiously forward and touched his hand to Will’s neck, feeling for the pulse of the jugular.

There was no pulse.

Will Starling was dead.

Will’s eyes suddenly opened and so too did his mouth.

“Through a veil of cucumber I viewed the errant bicycle,” said Will.

“Pardon me?” said Tim, in some surprise.

“The spotty youth of time dwells upon the doorknob of pasta,” said Will.

“Again I confess to bafflement,” said Tim. “But rejoice, nevertheless, that you have not popped your clogs.”

Will said nothing more for a moment, but then his opened eyes grew wide.

And then Will said, “Run for your life.”

“My what?” asked Tim. “My life?”

“Run,” cried Will and he leapt from his seat, overturning the table and wastefully spilling the drinks that Tim had purchased.

“You have spilled the drinks,” said Tim, stepping back to avoid the falling table and the glasses. “By Our Lady of the Flatpack, you have taken the Retro, haven’t you, Will?”

“I know all.” Will was up and about and now on the move. “I know the past and the near future too. We must run quickly, and now.”

A crowd was beginning to form. Detached from the general crowd, it encircled Will and Tim and the now fallen table. It was a crowd of onlookers, as crowds so often are, a crowd which had “become interested”.

“Everybody run!” bawled Will. “Big trouble coming. Everybody run.” And he made to push into the crowd, to reinforce his words, as it were, with appropriate and demonstrative actions.

The crowd, however, yielded not.

A lady in a straw hat said. “There you have it, the youth of today, brains broiled on seedy substances. It was never so in my day.”

“Yes it was, too,” said a chap in a J-cloth bandana. “In your day it was all eating frogs up flagpoles and savouring the smells of Sarah.”

“Let me through,” cried Will, buffeting against the burly belly of an interested onlooker. “It’s on its way. It will kill you all.”

“Please make way,” said Tim. “My friend is somewhat drunk; he’s liable to project his supper onto a number of you, simultaneously.”

At this, the owner of the burly belly that Will was presently drumming upon made an attempt to step back, but this attempt was without success as further ranks of interested onlookers now penned him in.

“Run!” shouted Will. “And those who can’t run, waddle.”

“And there,” declared the lady straw hat, “you bear witness to the perils of under-eating. Delirium. Under-eaters are so ungross, aren’t they?”

“I’ll agree with that,” said the chap in the J-cloth bandana, a chap of considerable girth. “You may be a dotty old loon, but your finger is on the return key of truth upon this occasion.”

“That’s no way to speak to your mother.”

“You’re not my mother.”

“If I was your mother, I’d give you poison.”

“If you were my mother, I’d take it.”

There was some applause at this, for even in the future, the old ones are still the best.

“Prepare to receive vomit,” Will opened his mouth and began to push a finger down his throat.

“Back up!” cried he of the burly belly.

“Don’t push me,” said a burlier-bellied fellow behind him.

“But this chap’s about to hurl spew.”

“That’s no excuse for rudeness.” The burlier-bellied fellow smote the burly-bellied fellow on the back of his broad-necked bonce.

“Fight!” shouted Tim. “In that direction. Relocate yourselves, or you’ll miss it.”

“You can see a fight any day,” said the lady in the straw hat. “You can even order one via your home screen. Have a professional pugilist come round and give you a sound thrashing.”

“Can you?” asked J-cloth man.

“Indeed,” said the lady. “Give me your mail code and I’ll have one sent around to you later.”

“Well … I …”

“My point is this,” said the lady, standing her ground, although others were now giving theirs. “You can always see a fight, but vomiting is another matter altogether. It’s years since I’ve seen anyone actually vomit. Oi! Careful there.” And the lady swung her handbag to smite a relocating crowd member who was brushing up against her. “My point,” she continued, to the J-cloth wearer who was now being similarly jostled, “is that vomiting is a rarity nowadays. Like, say, a one-legged fish, or a very small pony that you might carry in your pocket rather than ride upon, or perhaps—”

“A chocolate chair,” said J-cloth.

“Don’t be absurd,” said the lady and she swung her handbag once more, bringing down her jostler, who collapsed onto the fallen table, breaking two of its legs and one of his own.

As fists began to fly, or at least to swing in heavy arcs, Tim pulled Will through a gap in the crowd.

“Run?” he asked.

“Believe me,” said Will. “I do mean ‘run’.”

And then, amidst the to-ing and fro-ing and the barging and the fists that swung in heavy arcs and the grunts from those whom these fists struck, and the oaths that were sworn and the insults exchanged, came a voice, louder than the rest, the voice of one who had now entered the Shrunken Head.

It was a voice of deep timbre and rich Germanic accent.

It cried, “William Starling. Where is William Starling?”

“Baal and Sons, Inc,” swore Tim, sighting a head that was higher than the rest, with a face upon it that Tim knew and feared. “It’s the robot thing again.”

“It’s another one.” Will was now making speed towards the rear of the bar where stood the stage and the fire exit. “I really do mean ‘run’.”

“I’m running,” said Tim. “I’m running.”

And he was.

The terrific black-eyed and foully-smelling figure, alike unto the previous terrific black-eyed and foully-smelling figure, to a point which argued in favour of cloning, but in fact was mass production, would have stormed through the bar to fall upon his prey, had his way not been barred by the mêlée, which now appeared to involve all those present, with the notable exception of Tim and Will.

And the Slaughterhouse Five, who lounged upon the stage, sipping virus cocktails and offering verbal encouragement to the struggling crowd.

Will climbed onto the stage. Tim struggled to follow him.

“Hoopla,” cried Dantalion’s Chariot. “You can’t come up here, you’re not an entertainer.”

Will threw a fist, a lean fist albeit, in consideration of its prospective target, but a hard fist none the less and one thrown with considerable force, and accuracy.

It caught Dantalion’s Chariot on the highest of his many chins.

“Outrage!” cried the Soldier of Misfortune, as the Chariot toppled and fell to the stage. “Breach of contract. We will sue the management of this establishment.”

“Out of the way,” shouted Will, shaking his fist at the Soldier. “In fact, run too, if you have it in you.”

“Actually I’m a bit puffed,” said the Soldier, raising calming palms. “Impersonating weather can really take it out of you.”

“There’s a big storm coming,” said Will. “Through the fire exit, Tim.”

“I’d be ahead of you,” said Tim, “if I wasn’t following.”

And almost together they reached the fire exit – which was locked.

“Locked!” Tim rattled at the door. “That’s illegal. I may well sue the management also.”

“Only if you live to do so.” Will now too took to rattling the door.

And then the shooting started.

Exactly where this latest terrific blackly-eyed and fetid figure had acquired its firepower was a matter that Chief Inspector Sam Maggott, who would later arrive at the crime scene to view the carnage and count the dead, would muse ruefully upon, before concluding that he just didn’t know, the firepower in question being of a type that he had only viewed in a certain classic twentieth-century Hollywood movie, the now legendary 7.62 M134 General Electric Minigun which, as we all know by now, or at least should, is armed with six rotating barrels capable of despatching six thousand rounds per minute.