Oddjobs 5: The Long Bad Friday Read online

  “This is all falling apart,” said Councillor Rahman.

  Chad leaned forward. “I think what we all need to do in this instance is take a deep cleansing breath—” He did just that, in case anyone didn’t know how. “I use the Buteyko technique. Works wonders with a bit of barefoot grounding therapy, although that’s hard to do in this environment. We all take a deep breath, think about where we are now and then collectively visualise – we can all visualise, can’t we? – where we want to be in the future.”

  “Where we are now…” said Major Sanders. “It’s the last day of planet Earth.”

  “And yet the pubs are open,” said Chad brightly. He held up his phone to show his Twitter feed. “Landlords are opening up in the middle of the night for those who can’t cope with the end of the world sober. We really must gauge all of our actions through the lens of the media.”

  “We do not need to know how this is going to play out in the media,” said Vaughn. “Our policies on the matter are—”

  “I’m sorry, Vaughn,” said Chad. “I can’t allow that. It is through the media that we perceive ourselves. YouTube, social media, television, radio, recherché arts periodicals. And by perceiving, so we become.”

  “Does this man need to be here?” asked Major Sanders.

  The council CEO put up his hand. “I just think that if this is happening—”

  “Really happening,” added Councillor Rahman.

  “— then someone should have planned for it.”

  “We have planned for it,” said Vaughn. “If you look at the policy here … please, can someone move it closer to my hand?”

  “I think,” Morag whispered to Rod, “I wish I was in one of those pubs.”

  “Aye,” Rod nodded.

  Whether it was in response to her movements or some faint telepathic connection to Morag’s thoughts of drink, the baby stirred. Prudence Murray squeaked, blinked and then cried, if only faintly.

  “You hungry?” said Morag. She had no idea. During the pregnancy she’d accidentally unlocked a telepathic link between her and her unborn. Her foetus’s wants and needs were clearly expressed. Now, she didn’t know if Prudence was hungry, had pooped herself or was just angry with the state of the world.

  Morag unbuttoned the doctor’s coat awkwardly.

  “You need a hand there?” said Rod.

  She gave him a look. He shrank back.

  Morag pulled aside the coat and shifted Prudence in her arms to bring her in line with her exposed nipple. She had no clue what to do next, but Prudence clearly did. Her mouth opened and her face twisted around with urgent focus. Before Morag knew what was happening, her tiny mouth was clamped on like a limpet mine.

  “Hey, you missed! Ow!”

  Morag prised her breast away, slightly aghast at the force it took, and relocated Prudence’s mouth onto her nipple. Morag had never taken the time to picture what it would be like to breastfeed a baby, but if she had, the picture would have involved rosebud lips daintily suckling. The reality was much more earthy, and involved Prudence swallowing down an improbable amount of breast.

  “Do you need to go somewhere to do that?” asked Vaughn, trying to conceal his disgust at the sight of a breastfeeding woman.

  “Go somewhere?” said Morag, glaring.

  “Somewhere more comfortable?”

  “Oh, I am fine right here, Mr Sitterson,” she said with fierce sincerity.

  Vaughn looked away, muttering, “I’m not entirely sure where that baby came from…”

  “The media is providing us with startling and constant updates on the local situation,” Chad was telling the table. He flicked his phone and cast his social media feed to the screen. “Lots of photos and videos of the … thing that landed on the QE Hospital.”

  Omar turned round awkwardly to look and adjusted his specs. “A bezu’akh annihilator.”

  “God, it’s ginormous,” said Major Sanders as, on the screen, a giant apparently composed of butcher’s off-cuts slowly but thoroughly pounded the hospital’s multi-storey car park into rubble.

  “And that’s not even one of the true gods, dear boy,” said Omar. “We’ve been too loose with the terms we have. There are soul-sucking, mind-robbing, country-flattening gods which we’ve not even glimpsed yet. They are all coming, and they’ll rush in like it’s the first day of the January sales.”

  “And you knew about this?” said the deputy council leader, aghast.

  “Need to know basis,” said the major, which was rich from someone who had only needed to know in the last hour.

  “Best to keep these things under wraps,” Omar assured the councillor. “Knowledge generates a level of complicity. Whereas there’s something honest about complete ignorance.”

  Major Sanders pointed at the screen in outrage and the dark shadows at the base of the footage. “And why in hell are there people standing around watching the thing? Look, they’re actually take photos! Selfies!”

  “I know I would,” said Chad.

  “Those people are putting themselves in terrible danger.”

  “I propose that something is done about it immediately,” said Councillor Rahman.

  “I second that,” said his chief executive.

  “A Company are en route,” said Major Sanders.

  “Oh, dear,” said Chad, looking at his phone. He cast it to the screen for all to see. “This is in Edgbaston.”

  The selfie-taker had performed the tricky act of taking a selfie at the very instant a Croyi-Takk had swooped down to snip his head from his shoulders with its fearsome front claws. It was a feat that the selfie-taker would never get to repeat.

  “Perhaps we should put out some kind of warning,” Chad conceded.

  “We need to tell people that trying to get a selfie with an unspeakable horror is a bad thing?” said Morag, then winced at a sudden pain. She pulled Prudence away and looked at her angrily pink nipple, then her little girl. Prudence opened her mouth, showing off six tiny white baby teeth.

  “Teething? Already?”

  Morag had suffered a supernaturally accelerated pregnancy, galloping through the second and third trimesters in less than a day. The thought that her girl might grow up at an equally speedy rate was alarming. Prudence, unmistakeably larger than at her moment of birth, pressed her lips together and blew bubbles of spittle while producing a grizzling ‘mmmmm’ noise.

  “Okay, girl,” said Morag and rocked her teething child. Prudence Murray wriggled powerfully in Morag’s lap. “What do you want, eh?”

  Prudence gave an irritated ‘ngh’ and tried to slide off Morag’s lap. Morag let her so. As her pinky chubby feet touched the ground, the little girl sought out a stance that would maintain her balance. Trying to walk at less than two hours old? Despite the insanity of it, Morag couldn’t help but feel a ridiculous sense of pride.

  Grunting at the aches brought on by fresh movement, Morag held Prudence’s hands high and helped her toddle to the door. Rod looked round at her in shock.

  “Just going for a little wander,” she told him and gave a crazy grin.

  12:51am

  For Nina, getting her parents into the relative safety of the basement under the Library was one thing. Getting them to stay safely out of harm’s way while she got on with her actual adn-bhul job was something else entirely.

  “So this is where you work then, is it?” said Mrs Seth, touching the concrete wall disdainfully as the group moved along the corridor, seemingly against the flow of people who had real and important jobs to do. “No wonder you weren’t keen to talk about it.”

  “I have an office on the seventh floor, mom. An office and a swivel chair and a view across the city.”

  “But you bring us down here, eh?” Mrs Seth tutted.

  “I think it’s lovely,” said Mr Seth automatically.

  “Here. In here.” Nina steered them into an alcove area. “Right, this is you.”

  “This is a kitchen.”

  “Exactly.”

&nb
sp; “Listen,” said Ricky. “There’s got to be some sort of operations room down here. As police liaison, I really need to be there…”

  “Yeah, yeah. One minute,” said Nina.

  “And what are we supposed to do here, hmm?” said Mrs Seth.

  Nina pointed. “Fridge. Put the food in it. Kettle. Make everyone a decent cuppa. If you’ve got time, I dunno, bake some cakes.”

  “This will be fine,” said Nina’s dad. Her mom’s face told a different story.

  “Right. You three,” said Nina to the others, “let’s find out who’s making the decisions right now.”

  “Oh, I see how it is. The young fishboy gets to go, but mom and dad are told to stay in the kitchen,” Mrs Seth continued.

  Nina wanted to keep Pupfish close. In the heart of the consular mission, she didn’t want the young samakha detained or even killed by jumpy, over-zealous staff. Scouting around the nearby corridors, Nina found Morag crouched in one, supporting a ginger-haired toddler as it wobbled about on unsteady feet, making constant ‘ma ma ma ma’ noses.

  “This…” Nina stared at the kid. “This isn’t your child?”

  Morag looked up and smiled. “It’s been a strange day already.” She jerked a thumb at the door nearby. “They’re still squabbling about who should be doing what to handle the apocalypse.”

  “Thanks.” Nina pushed through the door with Ricky, Mrs Fiddler and Pupfish in tow. She saw Omar, a man who looked as well as a man who’d been shot in the chest should look.

  Nina tipped her tricorn hat to the assembled people. “Sorry, I’m late, Vaughn. We got a little tied up. Ah, I see you did too.”

  “Chief Inspector Ricky Lee, police Venislarn liaison,” said Ricky, gravitating towards a free seat near the po-faced army guy.

  “Julie Fiddler. Er, Birmingham Museum Service,” said Mrs Fiddler.

  “Yo, I’m Pupfish,” declared Pupfish.

  “Oh, God. It’s one of them,” said the tracksuit wearing guy at the far end.

  “Pupfish is cool,” Nina insisted. “One of us.”

  “And a sterling young actor,” said Chad. He patted the seat next to him for the samakha to sit.

  An army officer had his phone on the table in speaker mode and was struggling to communicate with whoever was on the other end.

  “Say again, sir,” he said. “We didn’t quite catch the last bit.”

  “You are to proceed as … … … Major Sanders. We are working on a co-ordinated … … … other military forces, although the Americans … … … from the general plan vis-à-vis nuclear deployment.”

  “Sir, I didn’t quite catch that,” said the major. “Say again?” He looked at his phone. “The lieutenant-colonel has gone again,” he told the table.

  “The reception in Snowdonia, huh?” said Rod. “Does he reckon he can sit out the end of the world there?”

  “It’s clear – relatively clear – we are still proceeding with a worldwide co-ordinated military plan.”

  “A lot of social media comments are suggesting this is all a Russia ploy,” said Chad.

  Nina slipped into a chair next to Rod. “The Russians created the Venislarn apocalypse?”

  “The main suggestions are that it’s all down to nerve agents and mind control signals broadcast from mobile phone masts,” said Chad.

  “Normally, I would not discount any theory regarding hostile enemy action,” said Major Sanders, “but no. Let’s cut to the chase. Apart from our immediate orders, what are the next steps?”

  “The electorate will want to see decisive action from us,” nodded the guy in a tracksuit.

  “Action, councillor?” said Omar with quiet disdain. “Human action plays no part in what’s to come. Maurice, now might be the time to bring out the map.”

  As Maurice (who wore a golfing jumper with pink and lilac diamonds to greet the end of the world) went off into the shadows, Omar struggled to his feet. “Let me outline what will happen, if I may.”

  “Professor Omar, please,” said Vaughn with a gracious half-wave of his restrained hand.

  “Some background,” said Omar. He leaned against the back of a chair for support as he began his lecture. The bulging mass at his chest squirmed and clicked. “Nineteen forty-nine, a mysterious skull was discovered in a shop doorway on Broad Street, a skull so massive that it damaged the back door of the police car they took it away in. The official story was that it was an elephant skull and the whole thing was a surrealist joke, left there by the artist Desmond Morris.

  “This was a variation on the truth. It was the skull of a caliturn ogre which had been released in the city following an occult ritual during a party in Varna Street in Balsall Heath, before being destroyed by the consular mission of the time. A wild party by all accounts: students, nuns, gypsies, jazz musicians. I believe George Melly was there. Birmingham had a thriving surrealist scene at the time. The ritual left three people dead – poets, I believe, so no great loss – and had a lasting impact on the survivors, including Desmond Morris and Conroy Maddox.”

  Maurice wheeled in a large picture, as big as a school blackboard and held between two sheets of Perspex. It was a violently colourful, indeed almost jaunty, painting featuring abstract animal shapes in primary colours against a background of lines, dots and squiggles.

  “Conroy Maddox, the surrealist painter and collage maker, who had been making uncannily accurate images of the Venislarn apocalypse since the beginning of the decade, produced this monstrosity in response to what he had seen during the ritual. The fact that he managed to retain his sanity after committing this horror to canvas is testament to the man’s willpower.”

  The collected group around the table stared at the painting. There was something utterly arresting about it. The titanic creatures that marched along the landscape were all trumpet mouths, spindle legs and bulbous bodies, executed in bright primary colours. They did not look like any Venislarn Nina had met, yet it was unpleasantly compelling and somehow felt instinctively ‘true’.

  “It’s a map of the final days of planet earth,” said Omar. “It is, in short, an utterly perfect representation of what is about to happen to us all.” He shuffled to one end. “Following the birth of the kaatbari, the Venislarn hordes will make themselves known in all their bloody glory. The annihilators and Handmaidens and sprouting girr’xod that we’re already seeing on the streets are the leading edge only. What we are presently witnessing are the monsters, things that we can at least physically comprehend. Within hours, the lesser gods will make themselves known. Daganau-Pysh will rise from his slumbers in the Warwick and Birmingham canal and—”

  “There’s a god … thing currently sleeping in the local canal?” said the councillor.

  “As council CEO, I should have been made aware,” said the suit next to him.

  “Even as deputy leader—”

  “Was planning permission sought?” The council executive gave a distraught shake of his head. “Surely, someone should have foreseen this!”

  Omar frowned and waved at the map painting. “Someone literally did.”

  “But could we not have put plans into place?”

  “We have plans,” said Vaughn.

  “Contingency planning of some sort…”

  Vaughn waved about the policy document in his hand. “So much planning. So many pieces. Right now there are stockpiles of euthanasia drugs in warehouses around the country and—” He looked around. “Lois? Lois! Bring in the Tranquill! We have a force of a quarter of a million volunteers who will be taking them door-to-door in their local area.”

  “Volunteers?” said the deputy council leader.

  “We ran a very effective but ambiguously worded social media campaign,” said Chad. “Lots of young people wanting to do their bit for the world. Targeted ads for climate strikers, people who give to Just Giving campaigns. We even got a celebrity endorsement.”

  “That one who used to be in a boy band,” said Vaughn.

  “They all downloaded the a
pp and are now mobilised to hand out boxes of euthanasia pills.”

  Lois entered with a cardboard box. It was small, white with a perforated lift away lid with the word Tranquill printed in a calm, flowing blue font. She placed it in the centre of the table for all to see.

  “Looks like a box of tampons,” said Nina.

  “Thank you,” said Chad. “That was exactly the vibe we were going for. Personal, feminine, caring.”

  “The government target is to have these in half a million homes before three a.m.,” said Vaughn.

  “We predict a seventy percent customer conversion rate,” said Chad and then, aside to Nina, “I picked the font.”

  “Customer conversion rate,” said the council suit numbly.

  “A lot of gentle deaths,” said Vaughn.

  “A lot of our voters,” said the deputy council leader. “I wouldn’t put it past central government to try to kill off the competition.”

  “Oh, look on the bright side,” said Omar. “You’ll never see your political opponents win an election ever again.”

  12:54am

  “Mu-mu-mu-mu-mummy.”

  Morag held her girl by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Did you just say ‘mummy’?”

  “Mummy,” said Prudence and giggled.

  It was very clearly said, particularly for a first word, particularly only an hour or so after birth. And – Morag would have to listen again to be sure – was that a highland accent the wee lass had?

  “Well, aren’t you the cleverest thing?”

  “Mummy!” agreed Prudence and clapped her hands. A passing consular staff member glanced at the little girl but said nothing. Just an ordinary toddler. And the woman probably had more pressing matters on her mind.

  “And if you’re old enough to be speaking. I really think we need to find you something like proper clothes,” Morag told her daughter.

  Prudence wrapped the sheet she wore more tightly around her neck and waddled about making a noise with her lips like an idling tractor.

  “Yes, let’s see what we can find you.”

  There were clothing supplies down here, overalls and uniform spares. From a storage room, Morag took the smallest T-shirt she could find, and the smallest trousers. A pair of scissors turned the cheap trousers into short shorts which, with a length of string for the belt provided Prudence with a wildly flared pair of trousers that looked more like a Georgian ball gown than anything else. The shirt, knotted and tucked into the huge trousers, just about managed to stay on the tot’s shoulders.