Armageddon 02 - They Came and Ate Us PDF
Preview Armageddon 02 - They Came and Ate Us
They Came and Ate Us Armageddon 2: The B-Movie Robert Rankin THE END OF PART ONE If you ain't where you is, you 're no place, God In the year 2050 planet Earth finally got the chance to enjoy Armageddon. It had originally been scheduled to occur in 999 and after that fell through, in 1999. However, due to certain legal loopholes in the original contracts and God moving in the mysterious way he is known and loved for, the thing didn't actually get under way until 2050. But when it did it was a real showstopper. Cracking special effects, flaming chariots, angelic hosts, fire and brimstone, the whole kith and caboodle and the kitchen sink. All in glorious Buddhacolour and broadcast live as it happened. The major pay-off came with the playing of the now legendary UNIVERSAL NOTE, which magically transformed Earth from an irradiated plague-pit into a pretty reasonable facsimile of the original Garden of Eden. An event of no small fabness by any reckoning. The Big Figure then put his only daughter Christeen (twin sister of Jesus Christ, but unfairly edited out of the New Testament) in charge of the show and left her to get on with it. The run-up to all this involved numerous comings and goings. These included spacemen, time travelling, sex, violence, TV gameshows, the Antichrist and a sprout called Barry. But all that is far too complicated to go into here. One point which might just be worth mentioning is that an independent survey carried out on the planet on the planet 7 Phnaargos in 2050 did manage to pinpoint the single root cause for the disastrous course of human history taken during the latter part of the twentieth century, a course leading inevitably to the Grand Nuclear Holocaust Event of 1999, which laid waste to two-thirds of the known world. The survey proved beyond all doubt that all the fuss and bother was the fault of one single man. That it could, in fact, be parcelled up and laid fairly and squarely upon the guitar-shaped doormat of one Elvis Aron Presley. Yes, that very one! 8 PART ONE I was not born to live a man's life but to be the stuff of future memory. King Arthur I knew Hyde Park when it was a flowerpot! Hugo Rune At two thirty in the afternoon of 16 August 1977 the telephones on the desk of police chief Sam J. Maggott of Memphis PD rose against him. Spitting Big Mac, Sam snatched up the noisiest protester and shouted' Yo' into it, the way one does. The not-too-distant voice of a junior officer poured a stream of incoherent gibberish into Sam's ear. This concluded with the words 'you'd better get over here quick, chief. 'You wanna run that by me again, boy?' Sam swept the other jangling phones into an open desk drawer and slammed it shut. 'You are telling me what?' 'He's dead, chief. Elvis. And there's some deep shit going down here.' 'Goddamn!' Sam Maggott held the handset at arm's length and regarded it as he would a negro come to propose marriage to his teenage daughter. 'You pulling my pecker, boy?' 'I swear to God, chief.' 'Someone shoot the son-of-a-bitch?' The phone was back at Sam's ear. 'Seems like he had a heart attack or something. He's lying in his bathroom. His security are all over the place 11 going crazy. You gotta be here ... oh shit . . .' The line went brrrrrrr. Sam voiced certain words to the effect that the junior officer's cranium was in fact a male reproductive organ and flung the handset aside. Elvis Presley dead. The paperwork . . . Dragging his prodigious bulk from its reinforced chair he waddled across the room, perched cap upon head, clipped badge upon breast, jammed handgun into calfskin holster. As he turned the door handle he also turned a fleeting glance back to his fetid office. The walls were made gay with forensic blow-ups of murder victims, mugshots of rapists and serial killers, samples of human hair in small plastic packets. The threadbare carpet was scarcely to be seen beneath discarded burger boxes and crumpled beer cans. The water cooler steamed gently and spent Camel butts formed suitably Egyptian pyramids above invisible ashbowls. Sam sighed deeply. Home sweet home. 'I'll be back,' said Sam. And indeed he would, eventually. But not before the world as he knew it had turned into something far beyond his wildest imaginings. I kid you not at all. Enter Wed 2 June 1993. The network helicar levelled out at five hundred and buzzed the line of stopped traffic.'. . . And for all of you travelling to work on the M25, my advice is don't do it. We have a toxic waste spillage with extreme bio-hazard causing five-mile tailbacks both east and west. Stay home and make love, good people. And back to you in the studio Ramon.' 'Well, not too much joy there I'm afraid, and very little joy in Red China at the present by the sound of it. Reports are coming in that the government now has the entire population jumping up and down on the spot in unison for five full minutes every morning. Nothing to do with the health of that benighted nation, we understand. But 12 a concerted effort to alter the axis of the Earth and shift the ever-widening ozone hole directly over Washington . . .' A manicured hand flipped the dial of the in-car TV and it moved back into the dash. On the wrist was a watch like a gold tattoo. A peerless pin-striped cuff led up a sleeve of likewise confection to a shoulder clenched by red elastic. It was a up a sleeve of likewise confection to a shoulder clenched by red elastic. It was a short haul to the receding perfumed chin, the pampered cheeks and the sun- bleached tresses. The Porsche was deep in the tailback. The driver deep in the kind of cold fury that only one who has paid out 35K for a car to go zoom and finds it going nowhere can really experience. John Timothy clenched the racing wheel and ground his expensive caps. He slumped back in the bucket seat and did some Oming. It didn't help one little bit. He thumbed open the electric window. Took a deep breath. A leathern fist swung in and smashed across his face. 'Christ.' John spat blood down his designer shirt-front. He turned in horror to view his attacker. A second fist joined the first and both began to pound upon him. The passenger door was flung open. A bald-headed woman forced her way into the car. The leathern fists had hold of his club tie, drew it up. His head struck the sunroof. The bald woman snatched up the car phone, wrapped the cord about his throat, and began to apply her strength. John fought to free himself, climb from the car. The bald woman tapped the window button and the window swished up severing three ringers from John's right hand. He opened his mouth to scream. His Filofax was rammed into his jaws, penetrating deeply into his throat. Credit cards spilled from the open end. The bald woman snatched one up, drew it across his filled throat. Sliced his head from his body . . . Jack Doveston's wife leant over his shoulder and perused 13 13 the word screen. 'Voodoo Yuppie Killers,' she read. 'The new bestseller from the author of They Came and Ate Us.' Jack looked up fearfully, he hadn't heard her come in. 'Car phones don't have cords,' she observed. 'It would be physically impossible to push a Filofax down anyone's throat and as to slicing off heads with a credit card . . .' She was laughing as she left the room. She made no attempt to hide it. Jack did lip chewings. One day he would be famous. He just knew it. One day. And when he was . . . when he was. Jack punched in FILE UNDER SEMINAL NOVEL and closed down. Four men sit about a table in a secret room. A top-secret room. It is an American top-secret room. It is in a government establishment. It is deep under the ground. To get into this room you need major security clearance. Only these four men have such clearance. These men wear identical grey suits. They might be brothers. The room is lit from above, the way that snooker tables are lit. Great for atmosphere, card games, that kind of thing. Good on cheekbones and hands. Hands which bear enigmatic signet rings. We have seen all this kind of thing before. We hope that this time it is going to be worth it. 'Gentlemen.' One man speaks, the others listen. 'Gentlemen, we have a crisis
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