The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [550]
“Chesney!” shouted Spike. “I want to talk to you!”
“What do you want here?” came a voice. “This is my patch!”
“Let’s have a head-to-head,” replied Spike, stifling a giggle. “I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement!”
There was a pause, and then Chesney’s voice rang out again:
“Hold your fire. We’re coming out.”
Chesney stepped out into the open, just next to the children’s helicopter ride and a Coriolanus WillSpeak machine. His remaining henchman joined him, holding the President.
“Hello, Spike,” said Chesney. He was a tall man, who looked as though he didn’t have a drop of liquid blood in his entire body. “I haven’t forgiven you for killing me.”
“I kill vampires for a living, Dave. You became one—I had to.”
“Had to?”
“Sure. You were about to sink your teeth into an eighteen-year-old virgin’s neck and turn her into a lifeless husk willing to do your every bidding.”
“Everyone should have a hobby.”
“Train sets, I tolerate,” Spike replied. “Spreading the seed of vampirism, I do not.”
He nodded towards Chesney’s neck. “Nasty scratch you have there.”
“Very funny. What’s the deal?”
“Simple. I want President Formby back.”
“And in return?”
Spike turned the shotgun towards me. “I give you Thursday. She’s got bags of life left in her. Give me your gun, sweetheart.”
“What?” I yelled in a well-feigned cry of indignation.
“Do as I say. The President must be protected at all costs—you told me so yourself.”
I handed the gun over.
“Good. Now move forward.”
I walked slowly up the concourse, the cowering visitors watching us with a sort of morbid fascination. We stopped ten yards apart just near the game-arcade area.
“Send the President to me.”
Chesney nodded to his henchman who let him go. Formby, a little confused by now, tottered up to us.
“Now send me Thursday.”
“Whoa!” said Spike. “Still using that old SpecOps-issue revolver? Here, have her automatic—she won’t need it anymore.”
And he tossed my gun towards his ex-partner. Chesney, in an unthinking moment, went to catch the gun—but with the hand he used to keep his head on. Unrestrained, his head wobbled dangerously. He tried to grab it, but this made matters worse, and his head tumbled off to the front, past his flailing hands, where it hit the floor with the sound of a large cabbage. This unseemly situation had distracted Chesney’s number two, who was then disarmed by a blast from Spike’s shotgun. I didn’t see why Spike should have all the fun, so I ran forward and caught Chesney’s head on the bounce and expertly booted it through the door of the arcade, where it scored a direct hit into the SlamDunk! basketball game, earning three hundred points. Spike had thumped the now confused and headless Chesney in the stomach and retrieved both my automatics. I grabbed the President, and we legged it for the car park while Chesney’s head screamed obscenities from where he was stuck upside down in the SlamDunk! basket.
“Well . . .” Spike smiled as we reached his car. “Chesney really lost his—”
“No,” I said, “don’t say it. It’s too corny.”
“Is this some sort of theme park?” asked Formby as we bundled him into Spike’s car.
“Of a sort, Mr. President,” I replied as we reversed out of the parking lot with a squealing of tires and tore towards the exit ramp. No one tried to stop us, and a couple of seconds later, we were blinking in the daylight—and the rain—of the M4 westbound. The time, I noticed, was 5:03—lots of time to get the President to a phone and oppose Kaine’s vote in parliament. I put out my hand to Spike, who shook it happily and returned my gun, which was still covered in the desiccated dust of Chesney’s hoodlum friend.
“Did you see the look on his face when his head started to come off?” Spike asked, chuckling. “Man, I live for moments