the aberration

chapter nineteen

Simon Hyde looked over his shoulder one more time before he pulled back the slat. Phil looked up at the sound, stared back at him questioningly when he saw a pair of eyes that could not have belonged to Beef.

Simon's hand fell to the latch, grasped it--and then he heard footfalls.

Master Beef grabbed him by the lapels of his trenchcoat and slammed him against the wall. Simon winced--this had happened to him before.

'What are you doing?' said Beef, inclining his head in that infuriating interrogative way of his.

'I want to speak to him,' replied Simon, attempting to wrestle free. 'You've had plenty of time to speak to him alone. You're not telling the rest of us anything!'

Beef did not let go of his coat. Instead, he pulled Simon away from the wall just so he could push him against it again. 'Now learn your lesson,' he said. 'Shifty men in trenchcoats who follow people around are not allowed near anyone that I don't want them to be around. Until I can decide there is a reason for said shifty man in trenchcoat. I might have to lock you up, too.' He gripped his fistfuls of trenchcoat tighter. 'Don't encourage me.'

Simon looked loathingly back at him. 'Get your hands off my coat,' he said.

Beef obliged; Simon turned away and fixed his collar, his expression darker than ever.

'That's it,' said Beef. 'Hold back the tears and walk away. You know how it works by now.'

Simon walked away with his shoulders up to his ears in a position of barely contained rage.

* * *

Sam placed his cup aside, got to his feet and stretched. 'You know what I really want to do?' he said. 'Play my guitar. That's one of the things I miss the most. Playing my guitar. Give me any guitar and I'll play it.'

'You ever in a band?' asked Fragg, leaning back in a seat, her booted foot resting on another. Koyle had gone to deliver refreshments to the soldiers up top.

'Nah,' said Sam. 'Though I always thought that'd be pretty cool.'

'I was in a band once,' said Winnie.

The two of them turned to her.

'Well, there was just the two of us singing and playing, mostly, and sometimes we had a band. But we went around the country and everything.' Winnie gazed up at the ceiling in reminiscence, her small, wrinkly hands around her fourth cup of tea. 'Agatha got too big for her boots, though. We were doing the penultimate gig of our tour--supporting Blubber Scum, we were--and she called me a whore backstage. When we got back on the stage, I shoved her off and she broke her leg. It was over after that.' Winnie sighed. 'Never spoken to her since.'

The others were silent for a moment, considering it.

Then the spider-thing belched and they all looked at that.

'Pardon you,' said Sam.

On the table behind him, the faint green glow of the spider-brain flickered. But this went unnoticed.

* * *

'Who was that?' asked Phil, as Beef shut the door behind him once again. 'What's happening here anyway, Beef? I mean, those guys with guns and everything...'

Beef did not answer. He sat himself cross-legged on the floor and presented a single biscuit again. Phil looked at it longingly. Beef slid his back to the wall, uncrossing his legs and getting himself into a more comfortable position.

'You know what the biscuit demands,' he said.

Phil squirmed visibly, his sweating fingers wrestling with each other. Beef waited and watched--and then Phil's pained grimace gave way to a hollow, exhausted look.

'Alright,' he said, so quietly that it was nearly a whisper. 'Alright. But when I tell you...please don't hurt me, Beef. Promise me, yeah? 'Cause I don't think I can take much more of this.'

'I won't hurt you,' said Beef.

Phil looked at him suspiciously; then he ran his hands down his gaunt, bearded face. 'You're right,' he said. 'I'm an actor. By profession, in fact. The tramp thing, it was all an act.'

Beef nodded. He flicked the biscuit, sending it spinning into the air, and Phil jumped from his seat and grabbed it eagerly in both hands. The actor did not even chew before it had disappeared and he was looking for the second biscuit with alarmingly barefaced desire.

He looked at Beef expectantly when the second biscuit finally emerged. But Beef waited. 'Continue,' he said.

Phil looked at him wretchedly. 'Like a dog with tricks, eh? Thanks a lot, Master Beef. Though I suppose it's one step up from crushing my fingers under your boots.'

Beef said nothing. Phil's eyes fell to the biscuit again. He sighed and continued as ordered.

'I was supposed to lead you to her,' he told him. 'I was supposed to pretend that...I'd found her myself, and do whatever it took to make you believe it. So I dug out this outfit; thought I'd play the tramp part. It'd give me a credible enough reason to approach you, like...and then I put her in that alleyway and it all seemed like a very natural environment.'

'Why?' demanded Beef. 'Why did you need me to believe all of this? What was the porcelain woman, exactly?'

Phil sighed again. 'The porcelain woman was a test,' he explained. 'That's all I was told. That's all they let me know. I guess they wanted to see what you'd do...'

'Who did?'

'I don't know!' cried Phil, throwing up his hands defensively. He let out a strange laugh. 'That's the thing, Master Beef! I don't know who they are! There's all these identical fat blokes in tweed and they have me trapped...on a bus, just on my way home--but none of them ever says a word! It's all the bartender, or whoever he really is--'

'The bartender?'

'Of the Captain's Fall. The one who dresses like a monk or something. Never see his face. You know him. He tells me in his creepy, quiet voice, right, that he needs me to do all this stuff, as part of this test, and lets me know that he'll set his fat henchmen on me if I don't do what he says. I thought I was losing my mind. And I have to admit, Beef...when he gave me your photo, I nearly did.'

'A test,' Beef repeated, evidently processing the information. 'What was supposed to happen after you'd shown her to me?'

'I don't know,' said Phil. 'I think they were waiting to see how you'd react. Everything I did after that was to keep you believing...to keep my story genuine. They kind of wanted me to be a part of the test. I had to make like I wanted her back, to see how far you'd go.' Phil looked at Beef peevishly, rubbing his sore knuckles at the memory. 'You really went for it, didn't you?'

'And when she broke?' asked Beef.

Phil shrugged once more. 'I don't know if they were waiting for you to do something like that or what. I just had to stick around until they...well, decided what they were going to do with you next. To be honest, Beef, I really didn't understand any of it. I don't understand what's going on with the bartender or the fat men in tweed and I don't understand what the porcelain girl was about. I don't know who you are or why you dress like something out of a bloody...child's nightmare, or why they wanted to test you--whatever that even bloody means. But they were definitely after you. That's all I know for sure, right?' He looked at Beef almost pleadingly. 'And now I'm left stuck here, just as much in the middle of this nightmare as ever, wandering around and starving--'

'They abandoned you, then,' Beef said.

Phil looked at him, unable to tell if there was satisfaction in his voice. But something about Beef made him doubt that there would be unless Beef had done it himself. 'I was never supposed to get caught up in it when they started...herding,' he said. 'Are the others here, too?'

Beef nodded. 'We haven't found the comedian yet,' he said.

'I didn't think they'd go for all of us,' Phil said, broodingly. 'I just didn't know what was going on and when we all got in that car I thought I might have a chance to escape with the rest of you.'

The actor picked at his fingerless gloves again. 'I don't suppose you know anything else?' he tried.

Beef leaned his head back against the wall. 'Just a few other people in exactly the same position,' he said, twirling the biscuit idly in his fingers. Phil watched him miserably. 'And some more weird machines with glowing brains.' He tapped his head slowly against the concrete a few times, apparently in thought.

'Beef,' Phil said. 'You should probably know that I didn't do it alone. I mean, I had help.'

Beef brought his head upright again.

Then his attention was distracted as he heard a noise from somewhere out in the corridor. 'Beef!' cried a voice. 'Master Beef!'

Koyle virtually threw himself into the cell door. 'Beef, our teapot just came back to life and it's got Sam! You took it out the first time, right? We need you now!'

Beef was on his feet and out through the door, taking care to shut it after him. He left the remainder of the packet of biscuits on the cell floor where Phil knelt numbly, dazed, and began to feed himself, pointedly ignoring the surreality of the strangely-dressed soldier's proclamation.

* * *

'Get it off me!' screamed Sam.

The spider-thing sat on him like he was some kind of egg. They were both in the corner of the mess room and Sam could not move anything but his jaw--which he was using to its fullest advantage.

'Get it the fuck off me!'

The spider-thing twitched, but was otherwise completely still. All of its piston-legs were pressed down in a crouch, partly as if it were broken, but also like it had deliberately secured a hostage and was furtively planning its next move.

The soldiers who had been up on the wall, enjoying the tea and biscuits that Koyle had brought them, shuffled in with their rifles at the ready.

'Stay back!' cried Winnie, standing on top of a table with her hands to her cheeks like there was a mouse in the room. 'We don't know what it'll do!'

Fragg took a tentative step towards it. She glanced back at the table, where the bit they had extracted glowed greenly near Winnie's feet. 'Maybe we should destroy its brain,' she said. 'I mean, it wasn't glowing like that before!'

'If we do that, it'll land right on top of him,' said Winnie.

'It's already on top of him!' Koyle pointed out.

'Why don't we just shoot it?' one of the other soldiers suggested. 'If we spray it hard enough, we could get it to...I dunno, fall sideways or something...'

'Don't you bloody dare!' came Sam's voice. 'I don't want scolding hot tea coming out through all the holes you'll leave!'

'Can it hear us?' asked Fragg. 'Maybe we should be discussing this in private!'

Then Beef and Marcus arrived. Beef had no gun, but stepped up to where Fragg was anyway. 'Impressive,' he said, looking down at Sam's scowling face.

'Think you could do something about it, Super Hero Freak Ears?' he said.

'Well, I can try,' Beef replied.

He approached the spider-thing cautiously from the side, placed his boot on its bulbous body and pushed off. It wobbled and teetered suddenly to the side like a shocked and affronted animal, undignifiedly tripping up over the marine as it went. It skittered with alarming speed to the other side of the room, hot brown liquid seeping through the gap around the lid; hit the wall, came off it again at an angle and galloped back in Sam's direction. Beef half-lifted him and threw him out of the way.

The soldiers opened fire. The spray was deafening and chewed away at the wall behind it, and the spider-thing began to spin as the bullets pinged off it and raked sparks from its metal.

Tea began to spout from fresh punctures. Winnie looked grim.

'Stop shooting!' ordered Koyle. 'Just let it empty itself. We don't want to waste ammo that we might need later!'

The spider-thing kept rotating. It then staggered balefully back and forth before careening neatly out through the exit.

'It's not stopping!' Fragg observed. 'We should destroy its brain thing!'

'No,' said Beef. 'We're not done with the brain thing yet.'

He walked through the door after the machine and the soldiers fell into single file behind him.

Sam trailed behind them, rubbing his arm. He watched Master Beef bound heroically down the corridor as the spider-thing cut right. Then it came back on itself and threw Beef into the wall. Beef beat at it with his fists as it muzzled into him, trying to force it off with his leg. The spider-thing was proving to be less than beneficial to his knees, which were still sore from the last battle.

Koyle stood and watched, a strange expression on his face. He had managed to numb the wound from having seen Gibbsy's head explode--to pretend as well as he could that it had never happened. But he found the sight of Master Beef squirming somehow satisfying, and he was compelled to do nothing.

'We should help him,' Fragg said, distantly.

'Shoot!' cried am, running up to them. 'Shoot the fucking thing!'

Beef dealt it a blow that seemed to do more damage to his hand.

Marcus raised his rifle, pulled the trigger and got nothing but a click. 'I'm out,' he said.

Sam shoved Koyle and tried to wrestle the gun from him. 'What is wrong with you?' he yelled, when the other soldier resisted and his dark blue eyes simply stared back at him. Sam gave up and ran over to give the thing a kick. It wobbled sideways and got another kick from Beef but dropped with a clank to its belly before they could turn it over.

One of the other soldiers made a noise of astonishment as his rifle disappeared from his hands. 'Out of the way!' Winnie commanded, waving the gun above her head.

Beef and Sam pushed themselves against the wall. Winnie fired twice--one shot hit the ceiling; the other glanced off one of its legs. 'How do you point this thing?' she enquired, teetering from the recoil.

She fired again. The spider-thing suddenly sprang up, twitching and hissing madly. It rocked from side to side and pulled away from the wall, grating against the concrete on the other side as it spun around.

Beef took the opportunity to step away as something exploded inside it with a loud bang. Smoke mingled with the steam. It trotted drunkenly away from them, hopping as something else inside it popped like a firecracker.

Beef then took the rifle from Winnie. He aimed at the spider-thing's underside and fired repeatedly. As he did, the machine overheated, already dried out. The spider-thing shuddered, let out a last, long whistle as the bullets impacted with it, rising in pitch like an old kettle, and then it exploded more hugely than any of them had expected, hitting the ceiling and ending small shockwaves down the corridor.

The smoke from inside it turned black as the dented tub hit the floor again and smouldered.

Sam, Beef and Winnie turned to the others in unison. Sam looked at them uncertainly; Winnie scowled. Beef's look was unreadable, but he slung the strap of the rifle over his shoulder, pointedly acquiring it.

'Let's get that bucket,' Winnie said. 'We'll throw some water on it and take it outside.'

The soldiers reluctantly moved into action.

'I'll go and check on our friend,' Beef said, remembering that they had been interrupted. He let the soldiers step aside and Sam followed him.

'What are we going to do about them?' asked the marine, shooting the soldiers a glance once they were out of earshot.

'Nothing,' Beef said, as they turned a corner.

'But they were just letting it--'

'If they become a problem,' he said, walking up to the cell door, 'then we'll deal with them.'

Beef noticed that the slat was shut when he placed his hand on the latch. He lifted it and let the door swing open.

Phil was lying on the floor, his head against the concrete bench. His mouth was agape and his eyes stared blankly at the ceiling. He was dead.

Beef quickly knelt by his side and checked for his pulse, which confirmed it. Dark blood had run down his neck and dripped in a pool on the floor beneath him.

Sam followed Beef in. He gawked at the body.

'Somebody killed him,' Beef muttered. Beef looked at Phil's ripped coat and his white, clawed hands. Then he looked up suddenly. 'And I know who did it,' he said. 'Where's Hyde?'

* * *

'Simon! Hey, Simon!'

Detective Muse jogged through the trees and across the dead grass after him. 'Where are you going? Are you leaving?'

'I'm just going for a walk, detective,' Simon Hyde replied, striding ahead, not stopping and not turning. He had a rifle with him.

'A walk? To anywhere in particular?'

'No,' Simon replied, 'but I'm not going to gain anything from hanging around here.'

'Can I come with you?' Amelia asked.

'I'd rather go alone, actually,' he replied.

Amelia jogged faster and came up beside him. 'I'm coming with you anyway,' she said.

Simon stopped. 'No you're not.'

'Why not?' She stopped with him and they looked at each other. When he did not answer, Amelia started moving again with some determination.

Simon sighed. 'Fine,' he said, under his breath. 'Fine.'