Left right, left right, step over Screw, stop: the General peers down at a scalp leaking real red blood a slippery puddle, then stoops to unclip the cluster-ring of keys from the belt of the slumbering, still breathing Clarke. Left right, left right, the General marches into the suite of staff rest rooms, clambers aboard the staff lockers, pounds with a small fist the big red plate to kill the alarm bell, and for a head-fracking moment the shock of silence trumped by a thunderous thumping on the backs of closed peter doors.
Simply, the General marches to Solitary 1, plunges the big key into the black hole, turns once, twice, and the thick door cleaves free, releasing a pyromanic burst of lemon haze.
‘Chopper! Ye Gods!’
The airborne General enveloped in a mauve smoking jacket and kissed bang-smack the forehead. ‘Giddy see ewe.’
Round the bend brothers-in-arms they march into the kitchens — an orphan’s wonderland as if Father Christmas had dropped by mid-summer. And belly-trapped and thrashing in the skylight — the last escaping Nazi. The Professor bell-tugs a leg to tumble the Nazi clapper-splat piggy-fat the white-tiled floor. They peer over the sleeping Nazi leaking real blood soup running runnels the cracks of tiles against the soles of General Chopper’s rubber black shoes.
A meeting of military minds — they are agreed — the sleeping Nazi best preserved in the freezer room.
The General wanders the diamond-eyed boy in a sweetshop and slabbers his chapped lips at the hanging hams, canned Spams, jarred jams, and the apples and lemons and cakes and chocolate. A rendezvous for a party. Like with the nuns in the workhouse at Christmas. But with proper custard. And fizzy pop that makes his head go fuzzy.
How they bang on the backs of doors for the attention of the General!
Wanted.
For a party.
The first real one General Christopher Robin Chopper invited to.
***
The salty drip of sick seeping from your soul to boot your day <—> The leaking loss of spirit from a pickled captive soon to be kicking pricks in Hell.
Hell hath no scurvy like a liver prawned <—>
The Governor of Springwood Prison, Archibald Hornblower Gerbil James, cocks open a crusted eye, slug-dried to a rusted spring but alive, alive in the vindaloo darkness and very very thirsty <—> Those late-night extras of curried goat with chili poppadoms, Olde Mother Riley’s Eight-Year Special Romanian Reserve, a video nasty of Big Bertha and her Sisters at the Tottenham Turkish Baths, Havana-style-inch-and-a-half-cigars, he can remember barely a kebab about <—>
Hell is Reality flooding back to him. The Governor peels from the broken back of the armchair and in the curtained darkness of the early afternoon promotes left foot between ashtray and goat curry carton and bumbles into the startling half-light of the passageway. He fumbles for a light-switch and slashes in the devil’s bathroom sweet relief of seventy-five litres or more.
Cursing the day bastard Knees was put upon the Earth, the Governor extracts the devil’s black log from the rip-lining of his jacket and jabs the fascia. ‘Hello hello ...’
... szszsz ... ‘Governor!’ ... szszsz ...
Radiation sizzles down his aural drum ... szszsz ... ‘Blunkett!’ ... szszsz ... szszsz ... ‘Yes it’s me. Hello?’ ... szszsz …
... szszsz ... ‘Governor, you’re cracking up! … szszsz …’
‘Shut up, Blunkett, and listen. I’ve no money. I’m miles from Christian civilization —’
‘Governor! We’re coded Red! Do — You — Read — Me?’ ... szszsz ... ‘The lunatics have taken over the Asylum!’ ... szszsz ...
He drops the devil’s black log with a plop into the puddly water, stumbles into the peeling passageway, out the door and across the hallway, and waits an eternity for the boneshaker lift to dump him down on planet insanity, but the wild shock of the wind whips about the throat, and he stumbles mumbling past the community bins and the treasure of a pedal-cycle which he pulls down with a shower of rust and woodlice, and oh, many blue moons since he mounted a bike. And he cares not a rat’s arse that to any resident of the estate peering from behind net curtains at the raging storm he cuts a comic figure — get out of my way! — but nobly the knobbly knees beat the pedals and like a Hell’s Angel he grips the handlebars high, tailshirt flapping, and into the beating rain he braves a chin, and swerving the backstreets of Springwood he is given a country berth.
The Governor snakes a hissing path around the militant wives and mothers. And dumped up and down the steep approach road a dog’s breakfast of ambulances, rozzer-wagons, fire-dragons more menacing than the friendly puff-puffs of childhood dreams. And barring his rightful way to a capitalist dominion the high hand of authority dripping bullets of rain.
‘Don’t you recognise me? I’m a famous Civil Servant!’
Huge hairy dogs with devilish black eyes and punk-chains and gnashing for bollocks on toast.
And like a hideous frame from Batman a giant tubular white light illuminates the jokers on the roof who appear to be more arguing among themselves than rioting on a grand scale. Knees! What the hell have you done to my prison? Knees — this time you have gone too far. This time the keys will be thrown in the drink for good.
Sobering badly and shoulders crushed by a crowd of poor people come to pick over the bones of his misfortune the Governor spots a tall dark figure huddling by the heat of the arclight at the top of the slope and tented in wax rain reliefs.
‘Colin! Colin! Am I glad to see you.’ Little boy licking snot-slime beneath the hanging grey eyebrows of the Chief Constable — ‘We must organise a Media Blackout.’
‘Not this time, Archie.’ The cold dead hand of the Grim Reaper like the gift of leprosy to the marrow of the shoulderblade <—> ‘Why don’t you go and wait in Admin. You’re getting soaked.’
‘But, Colin. Colin. I’ve tumbled the mastermind. Please! Give me a break!’ He appeals, little boy blue, to the head-prefect hat, to the black eyes and wolf teeth and hanging grey eyebrows and waterboarding from a hard cold lip.
‘Oh. So? What? I’m no longer the goat-cunting son of a chlamydian whore?’
‘Colin. Colin. I’d cut off my todger and post it to you if I thought it’d put things right.’
‘Archie, it’s out of my hands.’ Cruelly the twisted grin cuts his pickled conkers with a knife. ‘Wait in Admin. The Big Boys are setting up their electrical equipment. And they want to probe you after lunch.’
He squirms and squeals in the big hairy grasp of the Chief Constable. ‘But, Colin. It’s me Archie. Your old mucker. We go back a long way.’
‘Too long.’
‘But, Colin. What about the old school yard? Eh?’
‘Archie —’
‘What about the love we harvest at Lodge?’
‘Archie —’
‘You owe me, you stinking sonofabitch! You’ve never liked me!’
‘Archie, it’s over.’
‘Go to Hell!’ Driven by a rabid desperation to stop Career, Pension and shiny Medal of Honour flushing the Toilet Bowl of Life and out of sight he storms a gerbil-of-war, and with elbows and knees pumping he pulls free and stomping the punishing rain he rounds on a Fireman — ‘You there! Yes you! Grab your hose thing and fire it at those men on the roof!’
‘— No don’t touch that, sir. It’s dangerous —’
And in the Life or Death struggle for the fire-hose the arms of an octopus clamp his ribs with rings of steel <—> The Chief Constable smashing and grabbing <—> The firehose heavier than seventeen tons and pointing it to the sky the last action Archie can remember <—> Blackness washes blanket-like the conscious mind <—> Backwards falling with the Fireman and the Chief Constable on top, Archie’s crusty flap meets the hard-pressed prison yard and he passes unconscious <—> into a dreamland of twinkling stars and tweeting birdies.
Up on the prison roof of the metropolis, down on a rat’s luck, up crap creek without an umbrella, down in the cauldron of the stomach curdling a witches’ brew of sickness, Tosa-the-Man-Mountain cursed with troubles in spades, to the brim of the bucket, from barbed-wire, razor-wire, spotlights, and a rebellious flock <—> Six climbing sheep defying gravity up the drainpipe and onto the chapel roof when down crumbles the guttering and along snaps a posse of Alsatian dogs <—> The lead Alsatian Winston sinking canine canines into the juicy rump of a potbellied sheep with such enthusiasm for the job, only a powerful sedative given by hypodermic three hours after the event persuading Winston to release his grip <—>
Merely the one miserable hostage. Mellor. Lowly grade one. Sobbing like a liberal at the feet of the Mountain. And whatever they swap for him will be a bonus. Not a hope in hell of a chopper. A skateboard about it. If they are lucky. And Lady Luck is not riding shotgun — last passenger — on the last soul train — to Eschaton and all points east.