They Came and Ate Us Armageddon II The B-Movie

712 Pages·1992·1.11 MB·English

by  Rankin Robert

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
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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!
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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
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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
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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
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
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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
situation here.'
'Are we in security?' asks one. It doesn't matter which.
'Free from bio-scan?'
'The monitors read out at zero.' Heads nod. Cheekbones are brought into play.
All this is being viewed from above.
'Gentlemen.' The first speaker again. 'You have all had time to view the tapes.
You have all been at the press conferences. You all have intimate knowledge of
the problem at hand.' More sombre nods. Some papers are moved slightly.
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'I can see no alternative but to put the plan into operation. Any delay now could
prove disastrous, with the talks coming up.'
'You have run this through the appropriate channels? It can be done? It will
actually work?'
'With the present situation being what it is no-one will suspect anything. We are
responsible for security. The measures are purely protective.'
'Then Project Wormwood has a green light.'