Oddjobs 5: The Long Bad Friday Read online

  “So, is that it?” said Ricky, staring up like so many of the police officers on the scene.

  “Fasho,” said the samakha next to him. Morag had no idea why teen gangster Pupfish was here but it was testament to the horrifying spectacle above that none of the police officers around them were freaked out about the presence of a walking fishman among them. “It’s the – ggh! – end of the world, cop-man.”

  “Beginning of the end,” said Nina. “The Venislarn will rise up to torture us for eternity.” She looked at the sky. “Rise. Descend. Those bhul-tamade are gonna come at us from all angles.”

  “We need to do something,” said Rod.

  “Car,” said Morag and made for the open rear door of a police vehicle.

  “Where we going?”

  “I’m just looking for somewhere to sit,” she grunted. She lowered herself carefully, winced at the thought of actually putting her weight on whatever remained of her sitting-down equipment. She was also going to leave blood wherever she sat, but given it was the end of the world, she wasn’t all that bothered. She gestured to Rod. “Baby.”

  He handed her over. It was an awkward exchange, composed primarily of elbows, but Morag soon had her bundle in the crook of her arm. She pushed the swaddling sheet aside. A round puffy face, eyes screwed shut, wisps of ginger hair poking over her brow.

  “Hey, baby,” she whispered. Tiny delicate lips, terrifyingly delicate, mushed together and big brown eyes opened a crack. “Baby. It’s mum. Can you hear me?”

  “You expecting a reply?” said Rod gently.

  Morag blinked tears, not willing to tell him that up until the moment of birth, she could hear her child’s voice, loud and clear in her head. Now, nothing.

  “You think the general public are seeing this?” said Ricky.

  “They’ll be hearing it at their door soon,” said Pupfish.

  Even from within the car, Morag could see the edges of the expanding sky horror curving down to touch the earth.

  “I’ve got to find my parents,” said Nina.

  “We’ve got a job to do,” Rod pointed out.

  “You don’t have any family. Morag has no family apart from poopy-pants there. I’ve got a mom and dad who are going to be terrified when they wake up. Ricky, you’re driving me. Pupfish?”

  “Sho thing,” nodded Pupfish.

  Ricky was momentarily torn. “You need a ride somewhere?” he asked Rod.

  Rod looked helplessly to Morag.

  “Kathy said that the Soulgate wouldn’t finally close until the arrival of Yoth-Bilau,” she said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention – having contractions at the time.”

  “The consular mission then.” Rod looked to Ricky.

  Ricky called a police officer over. “Take these two to the Library of Birmingham.”

  The man nodded, even though his attention was still fixated on the hellhole overhead.

  There were shouts of alarm from near the mansion house. A sinuous shape flowed out of the door on a mat of tentacles.

  “Giddy up, my mount-slave!” squeaked the demon-possessed voodoo doll riding on its back, poking the creature with his pencil spear.

  “That’ll be three of us going to the Library,” corrected Morag.

  “Three and a dnebian land-squid,” said Rod.

  “Is that what that is?” said Morag.

  12:20am

  Ricky kept glancing up at the sky as they drove down the dual carriageway from Great Barr to Nina’s home in Handsworth.

  “You keep your eye on the road,” Nina told him. “I’ll keep watching the skies.”

  The midnight traffic on the road into the city had mostly come to a halt. Cars and vans had stopped here and there. Drivers came out of their vehicles to gawp, to exclaim wildly at each other and, naturally, to video the end of the world on their phones.

  “I can’t believe this is really it,” muttered Ricky as he wove speedily through the staggered vehicles.

  “You don’t think that this is the end of the world?” said Nina.

  “I expected something more… More than distant monsters in the sky.”

  “Oh, there will be more.”

  “Yeah but—” He paused to chicane between two taxis whose drivers were arguing in the middle of the road. “I expected more fanfare.”

  “You want trumpets?”

  “I … I don’t want anything. I just expected, you know, space cannons blowing up the White House, volcanoes rising up, tsunamis.”

  “Give it time,” said Nina. “I’d rather we get to my parents before any of that stuff kicks off.” She realised something for the first time. “Your wife…”

  “I texted her,” said Ricky. “She’s working in Manchester today.”

  “You think they’ve got – ggh! – the end of the world there too?” asked Pupfish from the back seat.

  “It’s kind of a global thing,” said Nina. She swivelled in her seat to look back at him. “You need to find your mom and Allana?”

  He waved her concerns away. “They’re fine. They’re with me. They’re on our side.” He flicked a blue fishy finger between himself and the horrors above.

  “Oh, is that how this works?” said Nina, unconvinced.

  On a slip road, two cars had collided and one had wrapped its front end round a lamppost. A woman was helping an injured man from the vehicle. Ricky radioed it in to the police control centre. The clipped manner of the operator suggested that a prang on the A34 was the least of her concerns.

  “They’re going to be overwhelmed,” said Ricky.

  “And it’s not even morning,” agreed Nina.

  Nina’s mom and dad lived on a long road of tightly packed terraced houses, directly off Handsworth’s main high street. As Ricky pulled up, neighbours Nina had known all her life were out in the street, pointing and fretting at the unfolding sky show.

  “Hello, Mr Chowdhry,” said Nina, trying to get past him to her own front door.

  “What’s all this about then, eh?” said her neighbour but one. Mr Chowdhry owned the Freakshake Shack on the high street and Nina reckoned he consumed half the product all by himself.

  “It’s the end of the world, Mr Chowdhry.”

  He screwed up his fat face and shook his head. “Nah. I think it’s an advert for something.”

  That was sufficiently stupid to stop her in her tracks. “An advert?”

  “You know, a trailer for a movie or something.”

  She pointed up without looking. “The great gaping hole in the sky?”

  “Done with lasers, innit? Looks like one of them adverts for heartburn.”

  It’ll take more than a dose of Gaviscon to fix that quantity of heartburn, Nina thought as she reached her own front door. It opened as she raised her key to the lock.

  “And now she turns up,” said her mom fiercely, as though everything was entirely Nina’s fault. Behind her in the narrow hallway stood her dad and, behind him, Mrs Fiddler.

  “What are you doing here?” Nina said to her former primary school teacher.

  “What are you wearing?” said Mrs Seth with a disdainful look at Nina’s attire.

  Nina had spent much of the previous day in eighteenth century England. In fact, she’d spent several months in Industrial Revolution Birmingham and returned before she had even left. She’d not had time to check with payroll if she could claim overtime for those months. She’d also not had time to change out of the long coat and tricorn hat she’d taken to wearing in the past. She had been kind of enjoying the look up until the moment her mom clapped eyes on it.

  She touched the brim of her hat. “This is a long story. Right now, we need to get you two out of here.”

  “You look ridiculous,” said Mrs Seth.

  “Mrs Fiddler says you can explain all of this,” said Mr Seth.

  “Is this something to do with you?” asked Julie Fiddler, trying to look at Nina through her parents. “I saw it hap
pening and thought of you.”

  “I don’t, I can, and yes it is,” said Nina. “I need you all to come with me. We’re going to get you to a place of safety.”

  “Is there are a safe place from this?” said Mrs Fiddler.

  Julie Fiddler had been Nina’s year six primary school teacher and had remained completely absent from Nina’s life until earlier that week, when Nina had cause to poke around Soho House museum in search of Venislarn weirdness. Nina had given Mrs Fiddler more of an insight into the Venislarn situation than was strictly permitted for members of the public. Her ex-teacher had taken it all rather well, despite being a cardigan wearing, bead twirling fuddy-duddy.

  “No,” said Nina. “There’s no safe place from this, but I can take you to the Library. It will be … well, maybe a bit safer.”

  “No library is open at this hour,” tutted Mrs Seth.

  “Are we going somewhere?” said Mr Seth.

  “I have not got my shoes on, for one.”

  “You have time to put shoes on, mom,” said Nina.

  “Do I need to pack a bag?”

  “We’re not packing bags.”

  “Food!”

  “We don’t need to take food.”

  “Do they serve food at the Library? No. No, I don’t think so.”

  Mrs Seth did a U-turn in the hallway and pushed past the others to get to the kitchen. This was quite a manoeuvre in a narrow hall. Nina’s parents were round folk. They carried it on their bellies, their chins and their jowls. Her dad had the height to carry it off, but Nina’s mom was no taller than Nina herself and did not. Nina had always told herself that one perk of the impending apocalypse was the world would be over before Nina’s youthful metabolism slowed and she became spherical overnight.

  “No time for food, mom!” Nina shouted. She looked along the road and could see Ricky standing in his open car door. She gave him a helpless gesture and plunged in after her mother.

  Mrs Seth stood at the fridge, pawing through sealed plastic boxes of cooking. She opened one, nodded and put it to one side.

  “We don’t have time!” said Nina.

  Mrs Seth lifted a corner of a box and held it up to Nina. “Sniff that.”

  “I don’t want to sniff that.”

  Mrs Seth sniffed it, judged it passable and added it to the pile.

  12:26am

  As the police car drove along the motorway flyover to descend into the city centre, the whole roadway bucked and shook.

  “What the hell was that?” gasped the driver.

  “Not rightly sure,” said Rod.

  “The inevitable destruction of your earth, gobbet!” declared Steve the Destroyer, still riding the dnebian land-squid despite the fact it had suckered itself to the rear passenger window.

  “Aye, something like that,” said Rod.

  The roads were a mess of abandoned vehicles and those trying to flee at speed. In the rear of the police car, Morag held her baby tightly and stared at her face.

  Birth was a surprise. After the pain and exhaustion, there was bewilderment and a strange euphoria. Morag had made this thing. Morag and poor dead Drew. They had cooked up this creature, and despite her own insistence that she was not the maternal type, Morag was enthralled by this wonderful little person.

  The traffic became impossibly snarled closer to the city centre and the police officer took the unilateral decision to drive directly through some roadworks, go the wrong way up a one-way slip road and drive straight across the pedestrianised Centenary Square, narrowly squeezing between the Forward Management building site and the Hall of Memory war memorial. He pulled up directly outside the revolving doors of the Library.

  Morag opened the door and cautiously swung her legs out, knowing the coat she was wearing was now soaked with blood. She waited to see which parts of her would cause her the most discomfort when she stood up again. She tried it. There was some residual pain, but the unfamiliar wrongness of her body, along with its enthusiastic leakages, was more disturbing.

  “Are you guys going to solve this problem?” the policeman asked.

  “Inconceivable!” yelled Steve as the land-squid leapt from the open door.

  “Well, not likely,” said Rod.

  “Yoth-Bilau,” Morag grunted.

  Rod offered to take the child, and when Morag insisted she was fine, supported her back as they walked to the door.

  “Big bonny baby you’ve got there,” he noted.

  Morag smiled automatically and then judged the weight of her daughter. Were her arms getting tired or had the baby – impossible though it was – actually put on some weight since birth?

  Steve and his mount slammed into the glass doors with a wet slap, startling the security guard inside.

  “Bob, open up!” called Rod.

  Security Bob tore his eyes from the creature smooching slimily against the glass to look at Rod.

  “Identification,” he said.

  “Bob, it’s us.”

  “Identification,” the man repeated.

  “Have you not noticed the world’s ending, mate?”

  “All the more reason to follow protocols.”

  “When we’re inside, I’m gonna kill him,” muttered Morag.

  Without letting go of Morag, Rod found his ID and flipped it open.

  “Miss Murray?” said Bob.

  “Do I look like I’m carrying adn-bhul ID, Bob?” she snarled. “You know it’s me.”

  “And who’s that?”

  Morag thought for a moment he was referring to Steve, who was now – with a “Hi ho! Steve away!” – riding his cephalopod pet up the vertical wall of the building, but, no, Bob was pointing at her daughter.

  “It’s a baby, Bob.”

  “Does it have a name? For the security log?”

  Rod thumped the glass and Bob relented. He unlocked the door and allowed them in.

  “Seriously, mate,” said Rod with as much menace as the gentle man could ever produce, “you need to sort out your priorities.”

  Morag and Rod moved to the bank of lifts, across a lobby busy with consular mission office staff hurrying to and fro, as though utterly surprised by the arrival of the day they’d always prepared for. A dual bell and klaxon was sounding throughout the building just in case people didn’t realise that the end of the world was here.

  They crossed paths with Lois Wheeler, the mission receptionist. She smiled out of habit.

  “Well, this is horrible, isn’t it, bab?” she said. “They’re convening in the sub-sub-basement. Vaughn’s expecting you. Don’t let him near any sharp objects.”

  “Er, okay,” said Rod, pressing for the lift.

  “I didn’t know we had a sub-sub-basement,” said Morag.

  “What do you think she meant about Vaughn?” said Rod.

  The lift announced its arrival. Morag was glad to get inside and lean against the support rail. The doors closed and muffled the alarms.

  “Prudence,” she said.

  “What’s that?” said Rod.

  Morag nodded downward. “My Uncle Ramsay said that if he ever had a daughter, he’d have called her Prudence.”

  “Prudence Murray. Nice name.”

  “You think so?”

  Rod shrugged. “Most kids grow up to hate their name at some point.”

  Morag exhaled long and slow, feeling the ache in her body. “At least that’s one problem she won’t have, hmmm?”

  12:30am

  Six people into one policeman’s car did not go easily.

  Mrs and Mrs Seth stared with wild-eyed distrust at the fish-headed samakha, so Nina put Pupfish in the front and her parents in the back. Ricky Lee threw out the parcel shelf and, since Nina was by far the tiniest and Mrs Fiddler by far the oldest, Nina inserted herself in the boot and let her ex-teacher squash up in the back seat with her parents. Ricky gently shut the boot and drove them all towards the city centre via the Soho Road.

  In the confines of the back seat, Mrs Seth tried to off-load the
carrier bag of food supplies on her knees onto Mr Seth’s equally occupied lap. “You will have to take them so I can get my phone,” she said.

  “I have no room!” her husband argued.

  “Nina, what is the address? I need to tell your sister where to meet us.”

  “Priya’s in Coventry,” said Nina. “It’s too dangerous a journey.”

  “Where should she go? Take the Tupperware, man. I only want you to hold it for a second!”

  “Tell her to stay at home.” Nina swallowed any emotion in her voice. There was little love lost between the sisters. The first twenty years of their lives had been a constant battle of one-upmanship, but Nina realised she had just acknowledged she would never see her sister again. “Tell her to stay inside. Stay safe. The cousins. Tell them the same.”

  It was not the right advice. The right advice would be to tell them to kill themselves immediately, in the faint hope they could escape the closing Soulgate, be dead and out of this place before hell wrapped itself around the world – after which even death would be no escape from the eternity of tortures to come.

  As the weight of this truth settled on Nina, her parents squabbled over who should carry what on their knees. Outside, a streak of sickly yellow lightning ripped across the sky, illuminating a vast serpentine shape within the clouds.

  “Hey you, mister sir,” said Mr Seth to Pupfish. “Could you hold some of these?”

  “Do not speak to it!” whispered Mrs Seth harshly, fearfully.

  “Sho thing, Mr Nina’s dad,” said Pupfish.

  “Mom, dad,” said Nina. “That’s Pupfish. He’s a friend of mine. And that’s Chief Inspector Ricky Lee driving us.”

  “Oh, we know all about him!” said Mrs Seth loudly.

  “Er, nice to meet you,” said Ricky.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you two get up to. Filthy! And you a police officer too, young man.”

  “Mom!” moaned Nina and wished she could sink further into the boot, away from the embarrassment.

  “These smell —ggh! – really nice, Mrs Nina’s mom,” said Pupfish.