The Unhappy Medium 3: Wretched Things: A Supernatural Comedy, page 52
Soon, there were flailing monks and punching Myrmidons surrounding Gabby, Viv, Valenti and Bennet on their railing, a mass of seething hand-to-hand combat they could do little but observe.
‘Oi!’ shouted Gabby at a nearby Myrmidon. ‘Watch where you’re bloody going! You just trod on my foot.’
‘Goddammit,’ shouted Valenti, ‘ain’t no one gonna cut us free?’
‘Yes! Cut us free!’ demanded Bennet of the nearby monks. ‘You there. I beseech you, cut us free!’
‘In a moment,’ replied a long-bearded cleric, locking his arm around the neck of a screaming Myrmidon. ‘I very busy.’
‘I got it!’ yelled a young novice, dashing forward.
He hadn’t. Coming out of nowhere, an Ancient Greek intercepted the poor boy before he could get anywhere near their ties, punching the novice so hard in the face that he shot up the sloping deck.
‘Haaaahaaarggghh!’ screamed the triumphant Myrmidon, beating his chest at them before dashing back into the melée, fists flying.
Water was surging into both ends of the Black Sea Princess. Anything loose was pouring out of the superyacht, turning the water around the two sections into a strange mix of bubbling water, Russian kitsch, and bewildered swimming crewmen with absolutely no idea of what was happening to them.
The bow, seawater filling its cabins, kitchens and bilge in a violent torrent, lurched further to starboard.
‘Anything else in your socks you want to share?’ asked Viv, pointing hopefully at Bennet’s feet. ‘Only this ship is sinking; unless we get these bloody things off, we’re going down with it.’
‘Terribly sorry,’ replied Bennet, shouting to be heard over the screaming and cussing around them. ‘I’ve got nothing.’
Back on the stern, the former emperor had heaved himself up from the deck, struggling for balance as the rear section listed horribly to port.
‘Why?’ raged Andronicus, his fury and entitlement dancing the tango. ‘Why must I be thwarted at every single bloody turn?’
‘Just doing our job, old boy,’ replied Newton, pulling frantically at his zip ties. ‘It’s nothing personal.’
‘OF COURSE, IT’S BLOODY PERSONAL!’ snapped Andronicus, jabbing a finger at Newton for emphasis. ‘Well, … let me tell you, … this isn’t over. Oh no! If I’m going down, everyone goes down.’ The former emperor cupped his hands, then turned to face the barge, still attached to the sinking stern by a few hundred yards of chain. ‘ACHILLES! ACHILLES!’ bellowed Andronicus. ‘Launch, dammit! LAUNCH THAT BLOODY MISSILE!’
Achilles, alerted by the shouting, appeared at the door of the launcher’s cab, bewilderment tattooed across his face as he tried to make sense of the spectacle before him.
‘What in the name of Zeus …!’
‘ACHILLES!’ repeated Andronicus. ‘LAUNCH THE MISSILE! NOW!’
‘Right!’ yelled Achilles, snapping out of his incredulity and dropping back down into the cab.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ said Helena von Kraakenhausen, who was there waiting for him. Before him in the cabin was the bloodied but unbowed German. Rather than being dead, she had spent the trip from Viktor’s dacha hidden beneath the launcher, waiting for her moment.
Using every ounce of her pent-up rage, Helena slammed her military-grade boot into Achilles’ jaw, shooting him straight back out of the cab and onto the deck of the barge.
‘NOOOO!’ howled Andronicus, watching in horror from the ravaged stern. ‘She’s supposed to be dead! Dima told me he’d killed her!’
‘Seemingly not,’ laughed Newton.
‘Dima!’ shrieked Andronicus, looking around for his former bodyguard. ‘Where are you, dammit? You failed me! Like everyone fails me!’
‘Damn you, imposter,’ said Dima, dragging himself up onto the sloping deck. ‘You ain’t the boss of me! You possessed Comrade Boris Nahrapov. You stole my friend, my mentor, my real boss. Yeah … well now …,’ snarled the gunman, cocking an automatic. ‘I take … you.’
‘Noooo!’ screeched Andronicus as the gunman surged towards him. ‘Help!’
Ajax, the only Myrmidon to have remained on the stern section, tore across the deck. Ramming into Dima, he sent the enraged henchman sprawling, his machine gun careering away across the sloping deck to fall uselessly into the sea.
‘Yield, fool!’ snarled Ajax, blade raised above his head, ‘That I may strike thy head from thy neck.’
‘Fuck you, bitch!’ replied Dima, kicking the Greek hero in his guts with sudden, sickening violence.
‘Argghhhhhh!’ wailed Ajax, dropping his rusty blade, then folding like a map.
‘Niiiiice,’ admired Newton. ‘That’s just gotta hurt.’
‘I kill you, bastard,’ threatened Dima, leaving the bent-double Ajax to his pain. Crawling up the sloping deck like a lizard, he closed on Andronicus the Terrible. ‘I kiiiiiiiilllllll you.’
‘Hey, wait up,’ shouted Newton. ‘Before you do that. How about you cut me free?’
‘Why I do that?’ demanded Dima, stopping in his tracks. ‘I have this dog to kill … with my bare hands.’
‘Oh yeah?’ screamed Ajax, jumping onto the Russian’s back, pushing him to the floor. “We’ll see about that.’ Grabbing Dima’s hair, the Greek began slamming his face into the deck, each blow hard enough to clang the aluminium like a dinner gong.
‘Get off him,’ yelled Newton, who was just in range. His kick wasn’t as good as Dima’s. Still, Newton’s foot landed bang on Ajax’s temple, kyboshing the Greek’s skull so effectively that he shot off the Russian and rolled away, hands covering his bloodied skull.
‘Now can you cut me loose?’ asked Newton, quite surprised at what he’d just achieved.
Dima nodded, then rolled back up, lurching after Ajax’s fallen blade. Standing, he jammed it between Newton’s wrists … then slashed it back.
Newton was free.
Ajax, his head a light show of blue and yellow stars, was attempting to stand … and failing. Slipping backwards on a deck rendered treacherous by his own blood and spittle, he was up and down like a break-dancer. But Dima had no intention of letting Andronicus’ bodyguard up, kicking the Greek savagely in his face and sending him flailing wildly backwards until he ran out of deck, plummeting into the foaming water below.
Then, because he wasn’t anywhere near finished, Dima Matsigura turned back for Andronicus the Terrible.
‘Oh, crap,’ gulped the former emperor, sensibly bolting away towards the rising stern, Astrid following on behind him, the poor girl too aghast even to scream.
Dima and Newton were right behind them.
Over on the barge, the battle between Helena Kraakenhausen and the mighty Achilles had gone up a notch.
‘Desist,’ ordered Achilles, landing a series of savage punches across her jaw. ‘Don’t make me fight a mere girl. T’is not … seemly.’
‘Unseemly for you … or for me?’ replied Helena, delivering a gut-bursting blow to his lower intestine. ‘Shut the hell up, … dinosaur!’
Achilles staggered backwards, holding his belly. Thoroughly shocked by Helena’s fighting skills and stunned by her righteous fury, he was too flummoxed to dodge an incoming kung fu kick to the face that took him off his feet for a second time.
Leaving the leader of the Myrmidons to his concussion, Helena was up and into the cab. As the missile above the launcher began hissing and popping like an oversized firework, she began looking for an off switch, careful to avoid the ugly red boil of the firing button. Frantically searching back and forth along the controls, she began wishing for the first time in her life that she’d studied Russian.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ snarled the bloodied Achilles, throwing himself back into the cab. Grabbing Helena by her Lara Croft ponytail, he pulled her back … then propelled her head forward into the steering wheel, setting off the horn. Stunned by the impact, Helena was in no fit state to resist as the Greek dragged her out onto the barge, hair first. ‘Now, I have you,’ snarled Achilles, spitting out blood. ‘Witch!’
Achilles began a furious assault, kicking and punching the curled-up Helena so hard she began to black out.
‘Achilles!’ screamed Andronicus, dashing along the deck, arms waving. ‘Forget the woman! Launch. … Dammit. LAUNCH!!!’
The unconscious Helena was now too far gone to stop Achilles as he flung himself back into the cab, blood trickling into his fogged eyes from a savage gash on his forehead as he readied himself to fire.
‘Right,’ said Achilles, wiping his hands across his smashed-up eyes. ‘Let’s go.’
Squinting through a bloody mist, Achilles finally found his button, an ugly, unmistakable mushroom of red plastic sitting dead centre of the dashboard.
Cackling maniacally, Achilles lifted his hand, palm flat, ready to slap it down … and turn Constantinople to glass.
The barge lurched.
Andronicus’ Iskander wasn’t going anywhere.
The movement of the barge was so sudden and so severe that Achilles was thrown bodily against the metalwork, his already battered head making contact with a ghastly CLANG.
Vision strobing from the impact, Achilles tried to pull himself back up. The barge bounced again, slapping up and down in the water as something massive began to heave itself up from the Black Sea … onto the metal platform.
The Bonetaker, because he tended not to die, had not died. The air crash had been bad, certainly, bad enough, in fact, to send him to ground in the dunes while he regained his composure. But, crucially, he’d come to his remarkable senses just in time to see the Black Sea Princess sailing away, the barge towed behind it.
So he’d swum.
And now, as timely as ever, he’d arrived.
As the punch-drunk Achilles tried once more to relocate and depress the firing button, the Bonetaker began shaking the barge like a duvet, sending the Greek upside-down beside the pedals. With the Ancient Greek again incapacitated, the Bonetaker rose to his full eight feet, and headed for the cab.
‘Oh. … My. …Gods!’ gasped Andronicus, pausing in his flight from Dima and Newton to gaze in pained astonishment. ‘NOOOOOOOOO!’
‘Gotcha,’ said Newton, rugby tackling the bewildered former emperor to the deck.
‘Pin him down!’ yelled Dima, right on his tail. ‘So I can kill the bastard.’
‘ACHILLES!’ shrieked Andronicus, as Newton slammed him down. ‘I beseech thee! LAUNCH!’
Achilles, meanwhile, after dragging himself painfully back onto the seat, was staring horrified into the side mirror. Water cascading off his leather coat, Achilles could make out the Bonetaker moving towards him along the edge of the launch vehicle, his fists balled. Shaking off his horror, Achilles turned back to the controls, blood pouring down his forehead into his car-washed vision as he attempted to launch.
‘ACHILLES!’ screamed Andronicus from beneath Newton. ‘PLEASE!’
Achilles slammed his hand down on the big … red … button a split second before the Bonetaker exploded into the slab-sided launcher.
But the Bonetaker’s weight, slamming up and into the cab, had the launcher rearing over again. Balanced on its rail, the Iskander flopped to the side, falling completely off its rails as its rocket motor began to initiate. Spewing yellow and white, it bounced upon the metal deck before rolling back and forth as the barge rocked, in time with the Bonetaker’s assault on Achilles.
‘Oh, crap,’ muttered Newton, staring at the unfolding nightmare. ‘This isn’t good.’
Then, the missile fully fired, a massive plume of fire and smoke shooting out beside the launcher as the missile leapt from the barge … and into the sea.
‘NOOOOO!’ screamed Andronicus. ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’
‘Oh shit …,’ said Newton, thinking of taking cover from the inevitable explosion but realizing how pointless that would be. ‘Ooohhhhhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiiit!’
On the bow of the Black Sea Princess, all fighting had instantly ceased. Downing tools, Myrmidon and Purgatorian alike, were turning to watch their worlds end, snuffed out in a sudden flash of primal atomic energy.
Which, funnily enough … didn’t happen.
It could have been the sudden immersion in seawater. It could have been because the missile had been plundered for black market metals a year earlier.
It might just have been … a dud.
Ultimately, all that mattered was that it didn’t go off.
Frothing and hissing, the Iskander had plunged into the deep Black Sea and sank, leaving nothing more than a ring of smoky, glowing bubbles behind it.
‘Explode!’ begged Andronicus. ‘Pleeeasssseeeee.’
‘Blimey,’ gasped Newton, unclenching his teeth. ‘I really need to change my boxers.’
‘KILL ME,’ wailed Andronicus, his black heart broken like a savoury cracker. ‘I don’t want to live.’
‘No one wants you to live,’ said Dima, slapping his hands around the despot’s throat. ‘Especially me.’
‘No … no! Don’t kill him!’ urged Newton. ‘That’s not how this works.’
Back on the barge, the Bonetaker had dragged the burbling, broken Achilles out by his leg. Dangling the leader of the Myrmidons upside down, the Neanderthal periodically punched Achilles at the slightest hint of defiance, encouraging a final, inevitable submission.
‘OVER,’ declared the Bonetaker. ‘PARTY … OVER.’
Looking on in dismay from the only part of the bow still above water, the Myrmidons were at a loss. Seeing their glorious leader smashed into defeat, they had stalled, creating a pause that was instantly exploited by Enrico and the Purgatorians, and the warriors were overcome.
‘Now would be a good time,’ advised Gabby, nodding to her restraints as the bow lurched over another fifteen degrees.
‘Right,’ agreed Enrico, rushing over to release his fellow Purgatorians. ‘Offa course. Sorry I tooka so long.’
‘Thank you so very much,’ said Bennet, rubbing his hands to recover the circulation. ‘Better late than never.’
‘Everybody backa to da Olympias,’ ordered Enrico, as the gurgling waters began to climb up the deck towards them. ‘Abandon da ship.’
‘Please, … let me kill the bastard,’ pleaded Dima, back on the stern.
‘Yes, … kill me,’ agreed the sobbing Andronicus. ‘I want to die! Tell you what. Put me in a cell somewhere.’
‘Nah, don’t kill him,’ insisted Newton. ‘It’s what the bugger wants. You kill him, and you’ll be sparing him a lot of grief. He’ll be back up there plotting his next five breakouts. Why do that when we have a world of retribution waiting for him down here? Trust me, we’ve got a place that’s tailor-made for Mr Terrible here. Do it our way, and you’ll have all the revenge you could ever wish for.’
‘I hope so!’ snarled Dima. ‘Because this bastard, he take my boss. He has taken everything from me. I’m a henchman. It’s all I know. What do I do now? Eh?’
‘Well, we’re gonna have to do something with you, that’s for sure,’ replied Newton. ‘You’ve been working for the baddest of the bad. Not something we can easily let go of, is it? You’ll have to talk to our human resources people,’ he suggested. ‘See if they know what to do with you.’
‘Me and my men,’ suggested Dima optimistically, ‘we work for you now! Da?’
‘We’ll see,’ said Newton. ‘We’ll ¬– wooooaaaahhhh.’
The back half of the Black Sea Princess, fast running out of flotation, sank rapidly, violently shifting under Newton’s feet as the stern began to vanish beneath them.
‘My adorable shoes! They will get wet,’ whimpered Astrid, gawping in horror at the rising seawater.
‘Time to go,’ declared Newton, gesturing at Andronicus. ‘Grab this arsepipe and his ladyfriend. We have to bring them with us. Let’s get the hell off this boat … before it takes us all with it.’
The bow of the superyacht, meanwhile, had emptied.
With the Purgatorians and the bowed and broken Myrmidons aboard, the Olympias had prised herself clear of the sinking wreckage. It backed away as the Black Sea Princess raised her pretentious bows to the skies before slipping away into the dark Black Sea.
The stern, with Dima, Newton and the Terrible Andronicus upon it, wasn’t far behind.
Enrico, shouting orders to the now experienced rowers on the Olympias, pulled the trireme around, offering the warship’s ram to the survivors as the stern section of the superyacht began to roll over.
‘Ok, trickster,’ said Newton, dragging the whimpering Andronicus up from the slanting deck. ‘Time to go.’
The former Emperor of Byzantium was dragged … then thrown.
Like a bag of coal slung from a first-floor window, the would-be tyrant plummeted onto the decorated bows of the Olympias.
‘Arggghhhhh.’
Newton and Dima, holding the bewildered Astrid, were right behind him.
‘Well, well. So dis ees da Terrible Andronicus, eh?’ observed Enrico.
‘I’m not terrible,’ pleaded Andronicus, predictably playing the victim. ‘I’m misunderstood.’
‘Like hell you are,’ laughed Newton. ‘You’re an arsehole. That’s what you are. A gold-plated, card-carrying arsehole. What is there to misunderstand about that?’
‘Oh Lord Almighty!’ wailed Andronicus, turning his face rather pointlessly to heaven. ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’
‘Someone shut him up, for God’s sake,’ said Vasilakis. ‘What a loser!’
‘You all ok?’ asked Newton, spotting Gabby, Viv, Bennet and Valenti.
‘Surprisingly, yes,’ sighed Viv. ‘Usual close shave, of course, but we’re still in one piece.’
‘Thank goodness for that!’ exclaimed Newton, shaking his head at the magnitude of the near miss. ‘All the bad guys accounted for?’
‘It looks that way,’ answered Vasilakis. ‘We have all the Ancient Greeks, the mercenaries, Homer, what is left of the crew, the Russian and his girlfriend.’
‘And the Bonetaker has Achilles and Helena,’ added Gabby. ‘Bless him.’
‘He does?’ asked Newton, looking around. ‘Where?’
‘He’s swimming over now.’ replied Gabby, pointing towards the barge. In the water, a large lump was moving whale-like towards them, two smaller lumps held safe before it as the Bonetaker brought the bloodied bodies of Helena and Achilles to safety.
