CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
PROTECT THE TROUPE
TEETH BARED AND fingers grasping, Ack-Ack Macaque lunged towards The Founder, only to find that she’d anticipated his attack. As they came together, she grasped the lapels of his jacket and fell back. She rolled away from him, using his momentum to throw him over her head, onto the deck. He landed on his back with a smack that drove most of the wind from his body.
As he lay gasping, the Founder sprang to her feet and fled into the jungle.
He heard gunshots and shouting, and his hands went to the holsters at his sides. One of the Neanderthals was down, toes crushed by the edge of the iron table. Victoria had been upon him before he could fight through the pain and bring his gun to bear. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been quite fast enough. The second bodyguard had seen her move and fired. He was too late to save his colleague—in fact, he’d caught the other caveman with a couple of stray shots—but he’d managed to hit her as well, and now she lay on her side a few feet from her victim, in a spreading pool of blood.
Ack-Ack Macaque struggled to his feet, wheezing for breath. Wide-eyed, the surviving Neanderthal swung the machinegun at him. For half a second, AckAck Macaque stared into the black eye of its muzzle.
Then a shot rang out.
Ack-Ack Macaque winced, but it was the Neanderthal who fell.
Still seated in her chair, Lila held a smoking pistol in her lap.
“Go,” she said.
Ack-Ack Macaque hesitated, looking at Victoria. The former journalist moaned, and tried feebly to move. Her feet scraped the deck as if trying to gain purchase. Clearly distressed, Paul’s hologram image bent over her, calling her name.
“Go on,” Lila said. “We’ll take care of her.”
Ack-Ack Macaque lingered for another moment. He looked from Victoria to where K8 lay, on the other side of the veranda. His two best friends were both down, and both fighting for their lives. He holstered his guns, dropped onto all fours and, with a snarl of fury, plunged headlong into the trees.
t he founder Could run, but she couldn’t hide her scent. It itched in his nose, maddening him as he pursued it through the potted forest and out, through the brass door, into the corridor beyond.
Half a dozen white-suited men and women marched towards him. He rose to his feet and drew his guns. Without breaking stride, he shot the first two, and ducked into the alcove housing the companionway that led upwards to the roof. Ahead, on the curving staircase, he could hear the tap, tap, tap of the Founder’s shoes.
He went up two steps at a time, hauling himself along with one hand on the banister. Having stepped over their fallen comrades, the remaining Gestalt followed him, but couldn’t keep up. By the time he got to the top, they were far behind. His chest burned with the effort, but he knew he was only moments behind her.
The remains of the Tereshkova loomed over him in the rain. The hull looked broken and sad, like a partially collapsed party balloon, and the gondolas had been smashed almost flat. An engine nacelle stuck out like a broken limb, water dripping from its bent and broken blades.
The Founder stood in front the wreck, brandishing her umbrella. As he emerged from the stairwell, she tugged, and the handle came away from the rest of the brolly, revealing a wicked-looking steel blade. She dropped the canopy, and took up a fencing stance. The wind blew her skirt and flapped her jacket.
“Get back,” she said.
Ack-Ack Macaque still held one of the Leader’s pistols in his hands. It wasn’t one of his trusted Colts, but it would do.
Overhead, Commonwealth fighter jets rumbled in the overcast.
“Stop it,” he said.
She glared at him, and swiped the umbrella handle sword.
“Stop what, sweetie?”
“Stop the plague. The machines. Whatever the f*ck they are.”
“Why should I?”
He waggled the gun.
“Because if you don’t, I’ll shoot you.”
She brought the sword up, and held it over her head, with the tip pointing at him. She looked like a scorpion, ready to strike.
“Then you’ll just have to shoot, my dear.”
She started to back away, one step at a time. With a curse he took a pace forward. Her arm whipped down, and the sword flew out like a thrown knife. It caught him in the left thigh. With a howl, he fell to the deck and the pistol fell away. Before he could reach for it, she was there before him, grasping the handle of the sword. He screeched again as she pulled it out of his leg. He used both hands to try to cover the wound and staunch the spurt of blood.
“Shit,” he wailed. The airship’s armour plates were wet beneath him. Rain fell against his face. “Shit, that hurts.”
Above him, The Founder laughed.
“Face it, flyboy, you’ve lost.”
Still gripping his leg, he snarled at her with such vehemence that her monocle fell out. She stepped back, out of reach, waving the sword’s slick point at him.
“There’s nothing you can do,” she crowed. The rain stuck her hair to her face and scalp. “This world’s mine now. Or soon will be. And when it is, I’ll simply move on to another world, and find another monkey somewhere else. One with more vision.” She shook her head, spraying drops in all directions. “And hope he’s a darned sight more cooperative than you.”
Ack-Ack Macaque thought of his fallen friends, and felt rage boil up inside, blotting out the pain.
“Yeah, well. I ain’t finished yet, lady.”
Teeth clenched, he clambered to his feet. He could feel blood running down his leg, soaking into his white trousers, mixing with the rain. He ignored it. Every instinct in his body told him to protect his troupe, wreak bloody vengeance against this interloper, and drive her from his territory.
“Oh, please.” The Founder raised her sword. “Don’t you ever give up?”
Ack-Ack Macaque shrugged. He gave her a defiant grin.
“Let’s find out.”
He took a step towards her, clawed hands stretching for her throat. At the same time, she pulled her arm back, ready to run him through with the blade. He knew he couldn’t win, but figured that, even if she skewered him, he could still probably choke her to death before he died.
For an instant, their eyes locked. They stood poised, ready to strike.
And then the bomb on the Tereshkova exploded.
b owled oVer by the blast, they tumbled together, rolling off the armoured section of the hull and onto the sloping glass of the airship’s nose. Faster and faster they slid. Behind them, the remnants of the Tereshkova burned. Ahead lay the point of the bow, with nothing beyond it save sky and death. In a panic, they scrabbled at each other, still fighting. Leathery hands squeaked against toughened glass, trying in vain to slow their descent.
And then they were there.
The edge rushed at them, and they felt themselves going over. In desperation, Ack-Ack Macaque flung out his hand and caught something. At the same time, The Founder grabbed his foot. They jerked to a halt, their combined weight almost enough to tear his fingers from their precarious hold, and his shoulder from its socket.
Swearing at the agony in his arm, he looked up. A communications antennae stuck out from the glass point of the airship’s bow, and it was from this that they now hung, swaying, a couple of thousand feet above the muddy waters of the Thames. The Founder’s skirt flapped in the wind. A patch of it was on fire. Her feet pawed at emptiness.
“Please,” she said. “Please, don’t drop me.”
Wincing with pain and effort, Ack-Ack Macaque reached up with his other arm and caught hold of the mast.
“Stop thrashing about then,” he said with a grunt, “or we’re both going to fall.”
Beneath them in the gathering darkness, the wind chopped the surface of the river into little waves. Rain fell on the burning wreckage of the Commonwealth Parliament.
Heaving upwards, he managed to hook an elbow over the metal pole that formed the mast.
He could kick her off. She’d hurt his friends, attacked his world, and unleashed all kinds of hell. And now he had her at his mercy. She clung to his ankle with only one hand. All it would take to kill her would be a simple jerk of his leg.
She deserved it, and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Twice he tensed, ready to shake her off— but each time, he relented.
He swore under his breath.
Try as he might, he just couldn’t kill her in cold blood. She was the only intelligent female monkey he’d ever met; and the only one who could call off the invasion.
He looked down at her and their eyes met.
“Okay,” he said.
The Founder started to climb. Her hands worked their way up his legs, tearing cloth and stretching skin. She touched the wound in his thigh and he growled.
“Wait, for f*ck’s sake.”
She stopped moving, eyes wide, and monocle long gone.
“What?”
“I’ll let you up on one condition. Contact the hive. Tell them that I’m the new Leader.”
She grimaced.
“No.”
“Listen lady, I’ve got nothing to lose, okay? I don’t want to live in a world of drones. So do it, and do it now, or I’ll let go of this pole, and drop us both. Do you understand?”
She looked him in the eye again, but it wasn’t a challenge. Their faces were almost touching, and he could smell her breath.
“I’d rather die.”
“Yeah?” He showed her his teeth, and took one of his hands from the mast. “I can arrange that.”
He now held the weight of both of them on one arm.
“All I have to do is let go,” he said. He could already feel his fingers slipping.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
For a long, agonising moment, they remained frozen, locked together high over the river. A squall of rain hit them, drenching them further. Ack-Ack Macaque’s arms felt as if they were being dragged from their sockets.
“No.”
“Fine.”
He let go.
For half a second, they were falling. The Founder screamed. And they jerked to a halt.
Ack-Ack Macaque had his tail wrapped around the mast.
Swinging from it, he put a hand to her forehead, ready to push her away. “Last chance, lady.”
Hair wet and bedraggled, dress torn, The Founder looked up at him. Her eyes blazed. Then she dropped her chin and sighed.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“And tell them to stop spreading that f*cking plague.”
The Founder closed her eyes and hugged him tight.
“Okay,” she said.
The wind battered them, and he saw smouldering fragments of the Tereshkova blowing down towards the distant, darkened roofs of the city.
After what seemed like an eternity, she reopened her eyes.
“All done.”
“No tricks?”
She shook her head. The fight had gone out of her. She’d stopped struggling, and now just hung there, holding on to him as the weather howled around them in the night.
“All activity ceased.” She spoke so quietly he could barely hear her. “They await your orders.”
He looked up. The Gestalt drones on top of the airship had lowered their guns. They stood in the rain and wind, staring impassively ahead.
“And you?”
She looked down at the city beneath her shoes. Her hands were slippery and red with blood from his thigh.
“Please,” she whispered, “just get me out of here.”
Above, William Cole shouldered his way between the passive drones. He held a gun in one hand, and a coil of rope in the other.
“Here,” he called. “Catch this.”