The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D. - the Curious Case of the Kidnapped Chemist Read online

  The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D.

  The Curious Case Of The Kidnapped Chemist

  By Darren Humphries

  Also by Darren Humphries on Kindle

  Fiction

  New York City Legend

  The Sword In The Tree

  Stormwreck

  The Great Rock N Roll Doomsday Tour

  An Orc Not Like Others

  To Infinity (and maybe that’s far enough)

  Non Fiction

  The Sci Fi Freak’s Guide To The Televisual Galaxy

  This book is copyright to Darren Humphries 2011

  This book is a work of fiction (which should be obvious to anyone reading it) and all characters, events, names and information are fictitious. Any resemblance to real world places, companies, people or events is purely coincidental except where people may have been mentioned for comic effect. In these instances, no inference should be made about the real person from the contents of this book.

  There are some real world locations used, but these are used in a fictitious context and no inference should be made about the real place from this book.

  All the stunts in this book are carried out by specially trained characters and should not be attempted at home (though where you’d pick up a giant snake demon is beyond me).

  All rights reserved. Please don’t reproduce or distribute any part of this book without the express permission of the author.

  This book is dedicated to my sister Nicola because she’s the only member of the family that might appreciate it.

  Table Of Contents

  A Warehouse In Thaitown, London

  Marylebone Train Station, London

  Agency Headquarters, Oxford

  The Pike, A Pub On The Thames

  The London And Thames Water Board Headquarters, Slough

  37 Old Hob End, Slough

  The Peppermint Hippo

  The Morning After The Night Before

  The London And Thames Water Board Headquarters, Slough II – The Siren Chase

  My House, Oxford

  An Unpronounceable Quarry In Wales

  Virginal Airships UK 57

  Oxford International Airport

  The British Museum, London

  The Abu Simbel Centre For Antiquity

  Agency Headquarters, Oxford

  Director Freidriksen’s Office

  A Warehouse In Thaitown, London

  The problem with your average thousand-eyed, multi-tentacled inscrutable squid deity is that they’re so damned … well … inscrutable. That’s one of the problems anyway. Being multi-tentacled and having the capacity to wipe out an entire town’s supply of mascara in a matter of minutes are amongst the others. Being inscrutable, they don’t see the need to explain themselves to any being that hasn’t been in existence for longer than it took them to have their last bowel movement. They also don’t see why that same principle of not needing to explain anything should not also apply to their acolytes and priests. As a result, when you find yourself in a broken-down warehouse in the arse end of Thaitown, face to what could be called (with a squint and a lot of imagination) face with just such a thousand-eyed, multi-tentacled inscrutable squid deity there’s very little to be gained by asking pointed questions as to what they think they are doing on this plane of existence and why there are two dozen acolytes’ bodies, still twitching in the warm aftermath of recent agonising death throes, scattered around the gelatinous lower regions of their bodies (it would take too hard a squint and too much imagination to call them legs).

  The usual tactic to be employed at this point would to be to run in sanity-sapping terror for the nearest available door, but all that would achieve would be to add another twitching corpse to the pile. Thank goodness, then, for the 52 gigawatt all-purpose Demonspawn Repeller and Barbecue Lighting Kit, as created by the founder of the Agency himself, Victor Von Frankenstein. As the great Dr Frankenstein so rightly pointed out to the chronicler of his life story and scientific achievements, Mary Byron Woolstonecraft, there aren’t that many beings, deities included, that can take the force of several bolts of lightning directly to whatever passes for their private parts without bringing tears to their eyes. If you’ve got a thousand eyes then that’s a lot of watering.

  This particular multi-tentacled monstrosity filled one end of the broken down warehouse without having even fully emerged from the spectacular dimensional portal that was swirling around behind it making a hell of a mess of the internal décor. The paint had long since been stripped off every vertical surface, sucked through into whatever Hell Dimension this thing called home sweet home, and the plaster beneath had quickly followed it. So had the polish off the wooden floor and the interior lining of the roof above. Some of the bricks of the wall now looked like they were seriously considering the trip, rattling wildly as the old mortar around them loosened and was pulverised to powder by the disharmonic vibrations produced as a natural by-product of opening a rift in space. All of which meant that I had to act quickly. If the warehouse walls collapsed it would mean that a thousand-eyed squid deity would be let loose in the city and that hadn’t been allowed to happen for months. I’d been on assignment elsewhere the last time and so couldn’t be blamed. Those less fortunate were on demon dung toxicology courses. Of course, if the walls did collapse then I would be worrying less about the rest of the city and the blame to be apportioned than about the fact that I’d be lying under a ton of roof girders answering the age-old question of what lies on the other side of life. It was question that I was willing to leave unanswered for some time yet.

  “All right,” I yelled over the rushing of the air being siphoned out through the portal into whatever world lay on the far side and the obscene wet slapping sound that characterised the creature’s movements. It didn’t walk or crawl or slither, it sort of oozed. Inside the skin membrane, the unspeakable innards of the thing flowed from one place to another, effectively advancing the creature across the floor. It was a particularly disgusting process, not least because the skin was translucent and everything could be observed from the outside. Seeing oversized internal organs flow from one place to another whilst still remaining internal is not something that you can be adequately trained for. Matters were not exactly improved by the fact that the direction of the aforementioned oozing was in a direct line towards me. “Now we both know that you don’t have the appropriate visa to be visiting this plane of existence. I’ve checked with Border Control and no squid deity has been given leave of passage in the last six months.”

  I couldn’t be sure that it understood anything that I was saying since it was a monster from another dimension of being, but there are proper ways of doing things and giving it one last chance to make a peaceful withdrawal was only fair. It was also required by the operating rules of the Agency. As with most organisations, the rules weren’t necessarily written by someone who understood the job they were writing the rules for and certainly not by anyone who ever had to implement them.

  “This means that you have precisely two choices,” I warned it when there was no appreciable slowing down of the ooze factor. “You can either politely apologise and go back through that portal to wherever the hell it is that you came from or I can let loose with my little friend here and we’ll see how many of the local restaurants we can supply with freshly fried calamari.”

  I thought that I detected a slight pause as result of my warning. Demon from another world it might be, but it had understood my intent, if not the words I was using to deliver it. Either that or it was deciding which of ten thousand ho
rrible deaths at its disposal would be the most appropriate to visit upon me. Since it was technically still in transit between two astral planes, its lower parts having not completely passed through the portal, it wasn’t able to bring its considerable powers to bear on me, being caught between the two conflicting sets of physical laws that were battling for supremacy inside the portal. The bits that were still sliming out of the hole in the fabric of space, however, were getting noticeably thinner.

  The creature quivered slightly and I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and 50 gigawatts of electricity was the better part of getting sucked inside a Squid God to be digested for a couple of hundred years. That had happened to an agent once before and the God in question had used the unfortunate enforcer as a conversation starter at cocktail parties once peace negotiations had been started but before prisoner exchange had been sorted out, the slowly dissolving body visible through the translucent (and in that case light mauve) epidermal layer. Since I still wasn’t sure of the creature’s intent, I dialled the lightning rod down to 10 gigawatts and aimed for one of the largest of the flailing tentacles before I fired.

  I missed the target I was aiming at, but since there were an awful lot of tentacles being waved around at that end of the warehouse it was inevitable that the arcing electrical discharge would jump to some slimy appendage or other and the sharp blue acrid taste associated with using the device rolled across my tongue. I was suitably insulated and wearing the approved safety gloves, so the danger to me was minimal, or at least vastly reduced. As long I wasn’t slimed by the thing or stepped into a bowl of water, thus becoming a conductor in my own right, I was as safe as only a man wielding lightning can be.

  The creature screamed. At least, I assume that the strident wail it emitted, which soared up through the audible spectrum and straight off into ranges that cause dogs to howl, champagne flutes to shatter and blancmanges to spontaneously liquefy, was a scream. It could just as well have been the thing’s way of laughing derisively at me for my inadequate efforts for all I knew, but the way that its gelatinous body heaved and pulsed and, at the point of contact with the discharge, smoked suggested otherwise. After a couple of seconds, I threw the breaker and the discharge cut off abruptly. I braced myself for the feedback and only stumbled forwards a single step at the sudden loss of electrical backwash. The first time I ever used the demonspawn repeller I had ended up flat on my face, but not this time. In the near-silence that followed I could hear the faint crackling of the last of the discharge draining to earth and burned squid flesh popping as it cooled.

  The creature remained still, every one of the thousand eyes glaring at me. An untrained man would have wilted under the intent stare of so many eyeballs and very possibly would have lost control of his bladder, but I wasn’t untrained and focussed my attention fully on just one amongst them.

  “By the power vested in me by the United Nations Department for the Enforcement and Apprehension of Demons and this bloody big stick of lightning…” I cranked the power back up to 50 gigawatts and the generator hum heightened in a suitably threatening manner. It wasn’t supposed to do that, but I’d misaligned some of the components to create the effect since I found that the sound alone could scare the living pants off some of the lesser bad guys I had come across. The Squid Deity might have possessed a thousand eyes, but it was somewhat challenged in the ear department. The fact that it had reacted to me speaking earlier, though, indicated that either its entire body acted as a resonator for picking up vibrations or it ‘heard’ through less obvious means, “…I hereby demand that you get your squidgy fat behind back through that mystical portal, shut it behind you and throw the key into the deepest, darkest place that your universe can offer.”

  A slight lifting of one heavily gloved finger sent thin lightning discharges licking around the poles of the rod held out a safe distance in front of me. Half of the eyes in the room slid uneasily to watch the display of minor pyrotechnics. The other half remained firmly fixed on me.

  “And I hereby demand that you do it right now before my finger slips a bit more.”

  I loosed the full power of the weapon for a brief moment and would have been knocked over backwards by the recoil had I not been prepared for it. The kick of a bolt of lightning has to be felt to be believed.

  The creature squealed once more and immediately started to ooze back out of sight with surprising alacrity. Water running downhill had nothing on the stuff inside this monster with the threat of electric death behind it. A few bricks were sucked out of the walls and bounced off the creature as it retreated. I don’t think that it even noticed. As the fleshy skin retracted, I advanced, keeping the lightning rod out in front of me, but also out of reach of any questing tentacles that might suddenly lash out to disarm me. The repeller had a dead man switch which meant that if the trigger wasn’t held shut then the lightning was unleashed and if it was jerked out of my hands there would be no telling which way the charge would arc. The manufacturers of the insulation suit I was wearing only offered a 97% guarantee and only then when the repeller was being used according to their guidelines. Surprisingly, those guidelines didn’t contain a chapter on Squid Gods.

  After a surprisingly short time, the last remaining vestiges of the creature slid out of sight into the swirling vortex of spatial tear and pulverised polyfilla. The eyes were the last to go, popping out of sight with distinct expressions of reproof in their large discs. Finally, the last eyeball was gone and the portal swirled shut like the last of the dirty water whirlpooling out of the bathtub. It closed with a deeply unimpressive pop and a shower of dust.

  Putting the safety back on the weapon, I shook off one glove and lit up a safebac cigarette, feeling the soothing smoke harmlessly tickle my lungs. For many, the fact that smoking could no longer kill you had taken away something of the allure, but for someone like me, the cool factor remained unarguable. There is nothing more satisfying than exhaling a long plume of smoke after successfully surviving a critical conflict moment.

  When the portal reopened just slightly and a single eye popped back up to check whether the coast was clear or not, I didn’t even bother giving a warning, but loosed the full 50 gigawatts right into the opening. The portal snapped shut with an air of finality on a scream of pain and frustration. Squid Gods may be inscrutable, but they can also be bloody stupid as well.

  Half an hour later I had temporarily salted the site and shored up the abused fabric of reality with some soothing words and basic barrier spells that I always carried in my briefcase for that very reason. The latent energy residuals of the intrusion had been siphoned off by the Scenes Of Catastrophe Officers so that no enterprising scavenger could capture them and sell them on the Black Magic Market. The acolytes’ bodies had been exorcised and then torched to make sure that they weren’t going to turn all zombie and start this whole mess up again any time soon. Though that was unlikely, it paid to make sure.

  With all the relevant paperwork signed and bloodlocked, the case was officially closed and I could look forward to a quick trip home and a fast food dinner washed down with several bottles of cheap wine. Sushi was definitely off the menu. I was also looking forward to the few days of rest and relaxation that always followed a successful operation, giving me time to slob around and do not very much at all.

  That’s when my work phone chimed.

  “If that’s Director Grayson then you’d better answer it,” one of the SOCOs suggested, brushing acolyte ash into a bag for safe disposal (you really can’t be too careful about these things), “he’s been trying to get hold of you for a couple of hours now.”

  “I was kind of busy,” I pointed out, but he had already returned to his task. Whether I rang my boss back or took a bollocking from him in the morning was of little interest to the technician. Clearing up the site of a major disturbance like this one involved skilled and painstakingly detailed work. One small detail missed and there could be hauntings and poltergeist incidents for years.


  I walked out from the warehouse and into the dulling sunshine of late afternoon before tapping the phone. Grayson’s hologram coalesced beside me.

  “Where the hell have you been and why aren’t you answering your phone?” he demanded in his usual short-tempered way. Despite his being the head of the Agency (technically, it was a ‘department’, as in the United Nations Department for the Enforcement and Apprehension of Demons, but who wants say they work for a ‘department’?) everyone else seemed to find Grayson very pleasant to work with so there must have been something about me that rubbed him up the wrong way, like buffing a genie’s lamp in an anti-clockwise direction. “You look like crap by the way.”

  “Thank you for those few kind words,” I replied coolly. I had just finished off a case, which meant that after a couple of rest days I would be free for another assignment and I didn’t want to be trawling for sludge demons in Morecambe Bay again just because I’d annoyed him. “It might have escaped your notice, but I just faced off against a humungous, top of the range cephalopod deity intrusion here.”

  “Humungous, you say?” he mused thoughtfully in his office back at headquarters, his hologram mimicking the expression perfectly. “I heard that it barely filled a small warehouse. I’m sure that your report will contain the appropriate measurements.”

  I bit my tongue to stop myself swearing at him. Director Grayson might now spend his days behind a desk, risking nothing more dangerous than a septic paper cut to his finger, but in previous times he had served his time on the front lines and the stories of his exploits were legion. He had, in fact, once taken down a full legion, in this case a legion of undead roman soldiers, through the innovative, and explosive, combination of dragonfire and an olive oil factory. Many of the stories about him were doubtless exaggerations or simply made up to enhance his reputation amongst the new recruits (very possibly by the man himself), but the files that weren’t locked under Magic Circle seal could still make your hair stand up on end and consider turning white overnight.