The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [362]
“Wot are U saying?” I asked.
Bradshaw looked carefully out of the open door, indicated all was clear and beckoned for us to leave.
“There mite be some moor vyrus around,” continued Snell. “Wot’s in this cuppboard?”
He strode towards a small wooden cabinet that had telephone directory pages pasted all over it.
“Wate!” cried Bradshaw, striding from the other side of the room. “Let me.”
He grasped the handle as a thought struck me. They weren’t telephone directory pages, they were from a dictionary. The door was shielded.
I shouted but it was too late. Bradshaw opened the cupboard and was bathed in a faint purple light. The cabinet contained two dozen or so broken jars, all of which leaked the pestilential vyrus.
“Ahh!” he cried, staggering backwards and dropping his gum as the carrot transformed into a loud parrot. Bradshaw, his actions instinctive after years of training, pulled the cord on his Eject-O-Hat and vanished with a loud bang.
The room mutated as the mispeling got a hold. The floor buckled and softened into flour, the walls changed into balls. I looked across at Havisham. Her carrot was a parrot, too—it had hopped to her other shoulder and was looking at me with its head cocked to one side.
“Go, go!” she yelled at me, pulling the cord and vanishing like Bradshaw before her. I grasped the handle and pulled—but it came off in my hand. I threw it to the ground, where it became a candle.
“Hear,” said Snell, removing his own Eject-O-Hat, “use myne.”
“Bat the vyruz!”
“Hange the vyruz, Neckts—jist go!”
He did not look at me again. He just walked towards the cupboard with the broken jars and slowly closed the door, his hands morphing into lands—complete with miniature trees, forests and hills—as he touched the raw power of the vyrus. I ran outside, casting off the now useless hat and attempting to clip on the chin strap of Snell’s. It wasn’t easy. I caught my foot on a piece of half-buried masonry and fell headlong—to land within three paces of two large cloven hooves.
I looked up. The Minotaur was semicrouched on his muscular haunches, ready to jump. His bull’s head was large and sat heavily on his body—what neck he did have was hidden beneath taut muscle. Within his mouth two rows of fine-pointed teeth were shiny with saliva, and his sharpened horns pointed forward, ready to attack. Five years eating nothing but yogurt. You might as well feed a tiger on Ryvita.
“Nice Minotaur,” I said soothingly, slowly reaching for my automatic, which had fallen on the grass beside me, “good Minotaur.”
He took a step closer, his hooves making deep impressions in the grass. He stared at me and breathed out heavily through his nostrils, blowing tendrils of mucus into the air. He took another step, his deep-set yellow eyes staring into mine with an expression of loathing. My hand closed around the butt of my automatic as the Minotaur bent closer and put out a large clawed hand. I moved the gun slowly towards me as the Minotaur reached down and—picked up Snell’s hat. He turned it over in his claws and licked the brim with a tongue the size of my forearm. I had seen enough. I leveled my automatic and pulled the trigger at the same time as the Minotaur’s clawed hand caught in the toggle and activated the Eject-O-Hat. The mythological man-beast vanished with a loud detonation as my gun went off, the shot whistling harmlessly through the air.
I breathed a sigh of relief but quickly rolled aside because, with a loud whooshing noise, a packing case fell from the heavens and landed with a crash right where I had lain. The case had Property of Jurisfiction stenciled on it and had split open to reveal—dictionaries. Another case landed close by, then a third and a fourth. Before I had time to even begin to figure out what was happening, Bradshaw had reappeared.
“Why didn’t you jump, you litle fool?”
“My hat failed!”
“And Snell?”
“Insyde.”
Bradshaw pulled on his MV Mask and rushed off into the building as I took refuge from the packing cases of dictionaries