Part Seven: The Devil's Gardens
Farming activity in Frangipani slowed down whilst the preparations detailed above took place. Once they were completed, the pace didn't pick up again; people were too aware that an attack was going to come, no question about "if", only "when". They hung around close to houses and hovercars. Olivia came back next day and reported one flock of refugee children now settled in Blue Byre. The senior women in the garth families, Minerva amongst them, picked others they wanted evacuated. Mrs Corrigan Senior went along, fussing over her travelling bag.
'I don't want to be spread on the fields,' she quavered, being helped into the trailer up a flight of wooden steps, to sit with other elders.
'Mum!' said an exasperated Minerva. 'Behave!' to a chorus of amused sniggers.
I got gestured closer to the trailer by the batty old woman.
'Er – yes?' I asked, politeness personified, wondering what on earth she'd say.
'You're a credit to your gender, young John. Do be careful,' she said, deadly serious.
Not what I'd expected.
Since there were fewer people around on the garth, I set up a few booby-traps. Nothing subtle, just a rusty engine-block suspended over a barn doorway on a chain. Stepping on the floorboards underneath the rusty hulk would cause it to drop, and to make certain the stumpies would step there I stuck a piece of pipe out of the doorway. Just like a shotgun barrel.
Gloria and Faith conspired to make mischief, too, whilst their mum called other garths and cantons, whilst also trying to direct the farm work.
'Flash-freeze tractor fuel?' they said. 'Oh yes we can help with that!' They soon produced two vacuum flasks filled to the brim with a bright blue icy slush. 'The microwave?' Gloria helpfully asked. 'Oh yes easy to use – open this door, put the bottle in, press that button and run.'
'Run very fast,' added Faith. I added two buckets of nails.
Retaining my now-dirty denim jacket, the pockets of which were bulging with magazines for the FN, I caught myself looking to the horizon every ten minutes when outside. The farmers amongst the garth were trying to harvest what crops they could before our expected guests arrived, and dispersing flocks of cattle or sheep out of pens and into the big unfenced beyond. This seemed daft to me, but I was told by those who knew better that the beasts could be rounded up later. Chickens would be difficult to recover, so their coops and roosts were left until the last minute.
Shona, Anne and myself got the job of putting giant apples into equally giant plastic barrels, gently so as to avoid bruising, and then filling the barrel with a cushioning gel that helped preserve them. Empty barrels were stored outside a barn, filled ones stacked at the rear.
'I don't think you're a credit to your gender,' complained Shona. 'Whatever Mad Minnie might say.'
'Stop whinging and open another barrel!' she got ordered by Anne. 'I think he's been very well-behaved, for a man.'
Mock bow from John.
'Ooh, look who fancies him! 'Cos no woman will - ' said Shona cattily, and would have carried on if the gel hose hadn't gotten her across the thighs.
'Whoops,' I said, stoney-faced. 'That disproves the good behaviour.'
Bad language followed from Shona, until Anne up-ended an empty barrel and dropped it over the other woman's head. Shona couldn't get her arms free and hopped frantically around the barn, banging into the walls until she fell over. That enabled her to crawl free and glower at the two of us, who were weak with laughter.
'I don't fancy him,' Anne sternly told Shona.
'I didn't expect her to,' I added, to a nod from my comrade in mischief.
'Did you hear that? He doesn't make passes at the women here, even the ones who've taken Elective. And he's polite. You ought to take - '
Lessons, instructions or happy medicine, we never found out what Anne would have said next. The warning siren began to howl, and I mean howl; the amplified distress of a lost soul in torment would have been easier on the ears.
'Get to the hovercars!' was my shouted instruction, to the backs of two departing women. I slotted a magazine into the FN and doubled back to the Corrigan housing complex, where women scurried around. Dull whooshing sounds could be heard on all sides as bucketfuls of caltrops were shot into the near distance.
Minerva, stern and sombre, stood by the front door, directing women into two of the hovercars. She physically threw away any items they tried to carry into the cars, and her expression stopped any protests dead.
'I need to destroy your tractors,' was my greeting. 'Olivia left me some fuel to do the job.'
She cast a glance over the other farmhouses in the garth, most now alight and burning fiercely, where hover vehicles and giant tractors were driving away at speed, sending up big dust clouds. The two tractors on this farm were the only ones left.
'Go on – we'll leave the third car for you.' She checked her watch. 'They came in lower than before. You've only got two minutes, three at the outside, before they arrive.'
Great. I hoped a hovercar was easy to use. I dashed into the house, found my way to the kitchen freezer and got the three flasks. One went into the microwave, which was crackling and hissing before I got through the door on the way out.
My plan was to get to the hovercar, see if I could operate it and whiz over to the giant tractors parked quarter of a mile away. Quick burst of sabotage, depart at speed, enemy stands around gnashing teeth.
That was my plan. Fate had other, different plans. I nearly tripped over Gloria and Norma when I came out of the house, clutching my bucket of nails. Anne stood over a hovercar, the engine deck propped open, fussing and worrying.
'The - ' began Gloria, before the microwave and tractor fuel blew half the acreage of house behind us into splinters, creating an impressively big fireball and incidentally killing a whole coop full of chickens due to shock.
'Engine's not running,' announced a piqued Norma. She indicated Gloria with a thumb. 'Shona wouldn't stay behind when the other cars were full, so she – Gloria – did.'
'I'll be done in five minutes,' declared Anne.
Very good, except that we didn't have five minutes.
'The tractors?' I asked. Gloria shook her head. Olivia had removed their batteries. There were spares, over in the Gluck's storehouse, a good ten minutes walk away. I jogged over to the two huge machines, parked side by side, and wondered how to set off my dynamite-flavoured ice cream. Neither machine's engine was even warm. They hadn't been run for hours – a consequence of people not working as intently as they normally did.
Expedience, then. I stuck the heavy-duty vacuum flask up the exhaust pipe of the nearer tractor, backed off fifty yards and unslung the FN.
Whirring and whining sounds interrupted as the Sontarans dropped four dumpy little half-spherical spaceships around the garth.
Anne, I hope you're working flat out! I put a five-round burst up the tail-pipe of the tractor, hoping that a tracer would puncture the flask and ignite the fuel.
It did. And how. The whole rear axle, all ten rear wheels and half the chassis blew apart, one massive shredded tyre bouncing back down to earth dangerously nearby. Making do, I shot holes in the tyres of the second tractor, which already looked battered and lop-sided.
The hovercar's engine sounded ragged and uneven when I got back, but the vehicle floated on a cushion of air, which was enough for me. Gloria sat behind the wheel, Norma crouched down beside her and Anne was throwing tools into the seats.
'Get in! Get in!' called Gloria. Norma quietly swore that Shona would pay when they next met.
One of these sleek, open-topped vehicles could accommodate six people and a driver, so there was room enough for me and my bucket of nails. None of the women seemed to appreciate my foresight, especially as the hovercar began to whine alarmingly loudly when it picked up speed. Our progress became nightmarishly slower once we reached the centre of Frangipani and moved uphill. Only the thought that the stumpies would be toiling slowly over caltrops kept panic at bay.
The Sontarans chose this moment to suddenly appear, in the form of two hovercars, each carrying three toadmen, heading into Frangipani from the north, passing the burning Corrigan household.
'No!' blurted Norma. 'That's not fair!'
Booty captured from Holmlea. No wonder they arrived quickly, not having to hop slowly over a collection of spikes. Gloria darted the hovercar into a barn full of tractor attachments, weaving deftly out the other side, and killing our forward motion until we saw what the enemy were doing.
One hovercar curved back to the giant tractors, one shattered, one listing heavily, near the Corrigan household. Good, I gloated. Only let them dismount and move around on foot!
Norma and Anne scanned a full circle, not seeing any more hovercars. Our attackers only had two, then. This must have been true, since we didn't see any Sontarans on foot during the entire engagement. Held up by barbed wire and crows feet, I hope, and hopefully suffering horribly to boot, so to speak.
'We need to ambush them,' I whispered. Why the whisper I don't know, it just seemed appropriate.
'No! Get as far away as possible!' snapped Norma. Since she sat next to Gloria, her opinion counted for more. Our hovercar accelerated away, just not very quickly. The second Sontaran hovercar, moving on higher ground, spotted us instantly and moved to intercept. Norma's advice now consisted of shrieking in fear. Looking daggers at her, I dragged Anne down into the rear of the passenger bay as we whined along, fearing a long-range shot from the stumpies. Norma joined us, falling on top of me, with a peculiarly slack mouth and glazed eyes. Roughly, snarling an insult or two, I pushed her off, and she sprawled down the side of the car, a huge smoking hole in her back. My nostrils caught the stink of cooked human and I gagged.
The living came first. I unceremoniously shoved Norma's body out of the hovercar, which speeded up thanks to reduced weight. I wasn't to know, but the speeding Sontarans behind us hit the body, got knocked sideways and lost valuable seconds regaining our tracks.
'Swerve! Swerve or you'll get shot!' I bawled at a pale-faced Gloria, who threw the hovercar into rapid, unpredictable left and right turns, heading for the south of the garth.
Suddenly she threw the vehicle into a turn so sharp it nearly overturned, smashing into and through a wooden fence and bearing left. Our pursuers came splintering through the fence behind us, failing to turn as sharply and thus riding right over the patch of crows-feet that Gloria knew were positioned there.
Our hovercar managed to hit the left edge of the patch, suffering a few deep scratches in the lifting skirt. The Sontarans, who must have weighed in at the equivalent of ten or twelve humans, massed so much that their hovercar's skirts, trailing on the ground, were ripped apart in zero seconds flat. The car stopped dead, and the driver carried on over the bonnet, landing squarely on several crows feet and impaling himself. Not fatally, since he squirmed like a worm on a hook.
Gloria, still pale-faced and shaking noticeably, drove us into the cover of the only remaining building before we encountered orchards to the south of Frangipani.
'Anne, can you manage to drive? Good. Take over. And wait here a minute.'
I tiptoed over to the corner of our cover, a giant chicken coop, and put my bucket of nails there. Having seen the almighty bang created by my improvised explosive at the tractor rank, I wanted to stop any pursuit right here. Fresh mag in the FN, set sights at fifty metres – damn Belgian metrics! – and wait for the two toadies on foot to appear. Gloria and Anne were warned to keep crouched down.
Fate must have been watching and wondering how to interfere again. Instead of the two footslogging Sontarans, that other appropriated hovercar came racing around the corner, it's approach covered by the noise of our own, not very well hovercar.
Half-breath left eye shut squeeze trigger –
BANG! went the flask full of tractor fuel, sitting amidst a bucket containing five pounds of nails, screws, nuts, bolts, barbed wire barbs and assorted ball bearings. A lot of this hardware went in all directions, but sufficient went in the direction of our Sontaran hovercar to riddle it and both occupants. Their armour doubtless protected them from fatal injury – for proof see Sontaran doing impression of pinned butterfly in crows-foot patch – but the Amalthean hovercar decided to give up the ghost there and then.
Under my canny strategic direction, we swung north-west, then took the north road back by the Corrigan bonfire, since this was the direction our hover-borne attackers had taken and we had gotten rid of them. This kept us clear of the first immobilised hovercar and occupants. It also showed me that my excacvated surprise on the path to Minerva's house had worked.
'Why was that toadman sitting in a hole?' asked Gloria ten minutes later, when it became obvious that we were alive and going to remain so.
'Because he was dead,' I replied, counting out rounds from the first magazine that hadn't been fired. There weren't that many bullets available and what I had must count.
'Did you have to do that with Norma?' she asked, shivering a little.
'Yes,' I replied, not sounding emotional. 'She was dead. We needed to stay alive.'
Anne interrupted before I could upset Gloria any more.
'What happened to that Sontaran by our house? Falling into a hole doesn't kill you.'
No. Falling into a hole where the bottom is lined with five-inch nails, and the sides are lined with five inch nails angled downwards, so you can't pull your impaled foot out, that immobilises you. Your don't-give-a-toss Sontaran comrades, unable to retrieve you without pulling both your legs off or carrying out a major excavation, they're the ones who get fed up and shoot you in the head. That's what kills you. Or perhaps he couldn't take any more pain and shot himself in the head.
'Who cares? A dead toady is a dead toady.'
Gloria commenced weeping silently. At that point I realised that a traumatised teenager shared the hovercar with me, and sighed.
'Gloria? Stop greeting and listen to a horrid hard-bitten man, if you will. Greeting. Weeping. Crying? Well, stop it and pay attention. Normally, the two things that send me into a rage are women or children being abused.'
Anne began to pay attention, too.
'I saw things so vile at the Sontaran mine that my rage barrier has been broken, I think. Show me a toady and I'll kill it without thinking once, and without feeling anything. You could line up every last Sontaran on this planet and I'd be quite able to walk along that line, killing each one with my bare hands. That's how much I hate them.'
No truer word spoken.
'Also, speaking ill of the dead, Norma was stupid. I am a trained and experienced soldier. When I say we need to mount an ambush, it's because that's what we need to do. "Run away and make sitting ducks of us" is a stupid tactic. She could have gotten you and Anne killed.' I didn't add what I thought made a difference – that Norma discounted whatever I said because of my gender.
The sniffling and crying had ended by now.
'I think you're horrid!' sniffed the teenager. Let her think that, if it kept her mind off Norma's death.
'Quite right! I am horrid. There's a big streak of horrid in me. It helps me cope with being a complete swine.'
Inevitably, I had to explain what swine were.
Our protesting hovercar whined, moaned and dragged itself into Blue Byre hours later, welcomed by a flock of anxious women. Shona, learning about the death of her partner, went into hysterics, made worse by not having a body to grieve over, poor cow. Minerva told me off for unhesitatingly dumping the body.
'They were aiming for Gloria,' I told her. 'Kill the driver and capture three live slaves,' which abruptly shut her up, for all the ill-tempered squabbling between her and both daughters. She made sure Shona was kept away from me while we remained at Blue Byre.
A brief worry that more Sontarans in hovercars would appear proved baseless. Nor could they use the giant tractors, both rendered useless by me. When the women returned to Frangipani, they found a dead Sontaran in the spiked pit outside chez Corrigan, and another dead toady still lying impaled in the crows-foot bed, shot in the head. Must have been too much bother to rescue him. Two more Sontarans, resembling pin-cushions, were found rotting in the orchards days later. The guess was that they were the victims of my nail-bucket-bomb, finished off by shock before they could reach their dumpy little spaceships. Hard as it was for the Sontarans to go down in my estimation, since there isn't much below rock-bottom loathing, I really shook my head that that. Abandoning your own wounded; really, it's just not on for a soldier.
Not a bad score, really. Norma killed in exchange for four Sontarans, no women captured, no transport remaining to steal, and to judge from Sontaran blood spattered on the rusty engine dead-fall, at least one other injured stumpy to cope with. Crushed and stained caltrops to the east and west of the garth showed where the attackers ran foul of our surprise plantations. The barbed wire didn't slow them for long, being cut apart and dragged aside to create gaps. They'd learnt that trick from the attack on Holmlea.
Politics in Hollandia caught up with real life, at last. A new Archate got voted-in, and promptly rescinded the order of exile sitting on Tad and I. The Law Officers sent a hovercraft out to Blue Byre for me, and Imogen, who was pleased as a puppy at the prospect of meeting her mother again.
The women of the Corrigan household saw both of us off, even going so far as to present Imogen with a hand-stitched teddy-bear. I got an amber brooch from Minerva, greatly to my surprise.
' "Oh!" Is that all you can say?' she jibed.
' "Oh" pronounced "thank you". What did I do to deserve this?'
Kept my hands off the women, it seemed. The last man out at Frangipani didn't know the meaning of "restraint", "tact" or "NO!". Plus, Anne spoke up on my behalf. She was at the back of the crowd come to wave goodbye, arm draped over another woman her size. They'd hit it off within half an hour of the refugees arriving at Blue Byre, both helping to put up temporary tented accomodation. I caught Gloria's eye.
'No comment?' I asked her, indicating Anne and friend with a jerk of the thumb.
'Not likely. Mum would skin me. And you're still horrid in my opinion.'
Big sigh from me.
'Yes, it comes with the territory. Hopefully, when things in Magellania get back to normal, you won't need large, violent, horrid people.'
Next order of business was to say goodbye to Anne.
'Are you happy?' I asked, a bit archly.
'Oh yes, certainly am!' she chirped.
'Good,' I said, looking hard at the new partner. 'Fond as I am of you, anyone making you unhappy would suffer. Horribly, mind!'
Anne chased me off with a well-aimed cuff to the head. All assembled got a big goodbye wave from the top of the hovercraft steps,and Imogen and myself settled down for a long journey.
'I'll miss them,' said Imogen, sighing and looking out of the hovercraft window.
'Do you know, I think I will, too. I shall now lie down to get a bit of sleep, since it's a long journey.'
'Do I have to?' aked Imogen, doubtless wanting to stare out of the windows for a lot longer.
'Not now, but I snore terribly and you may have difficulty later on.'
She looked at me, not convinced at all.
'Yes, but everyone knows what a terrible fibber you are, Mister John. Teddy and me will look out of the windows'
Damn. Character assasination by six year old!