Un Lun Dun

The arguments were exasperating her. She sighed, wound a hair around her finger and plucked it out to fiddle with it, huffily scrunched it into a little matted wad, and dropped it into the mechanism. With a sniff of impatience she closed the cylinder, the ant still inside it, and spun it, watched it whir, then slapped it still.

“There’s no point to this,” she a

“We should do something quick,” said Jones.

“What are we going to do?” said Deeba. She turned the UnGun over and over in her hand. “We’re knackered. You’re right— this stupid thing’s useless without bullets. But the rest of you’re right too— we can’t go back now.”

“Propheseers and Unbrellissimo are going to track us down soon,” said Hemi.

“I know, but what can we do?” said Deeba, meaning I’m too knackered. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll have to take the bus back to the Talklands and I’ll call my mum and dad again, and buy us a bit of time with the phlegm effect, and we’ll come back then, or something.”

She fiddled with the UnGun’s cylinder, to empty it of the rubbish inside.

It wouldn’t budge.

She frowned, and tried again, without success.

“Jones,” she said. “Could you open this please?”

“What did you do?” he said grumpily, struggling with it. “It’s jammed.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Deeba said, then hesitated. “I was seeing how it worked.”

Jones pulled and twisted at it, but it stayed firmly shut. He eyed her.

“What did you put in this?” he said. Everyone looked at Deeba.

“Nothing. Just…stuff,” said Deeba. “I was seeing how it worked. Give me that.” She grabbed it back, and tried again and failed again to open it herself.

“Well, that solves that,” snapped Hemi. “There’s no point trying to get bullets when the UnGun’s broken.”

“I can fix it!” said Deeba desperately. “Just give me a minute.”

“Deeba,” said Obaday Fing gently, and laid his hand on the pistol’s barrel. “Stop.”

She stared at him, and her grip faltered. At that moment, there was a scream.

Something rushed overhead, with a noise like a flock of heavy wings. Several voices cried out maniacally together from the sky. In almost the same instant, Deeba heard the words “Boss,” “Message,” “In,” “From,” “Go,” and “You,” shouted in different, but similar voices.

“What’s that?” she said as crazy laughter and the sound of rushing diminished above her. There was a creaking, the noise of heavy thumping.

“What is that?” Jones said.

“Can that have been—” Bishop Bon said.

“— the Hex?” said Bastor. They stared at each other.

“Passing something on?” said Bon.

“ ‘Message from Boss…’ ” said Bastor.

“ ‘In you go.’ Who are they talking to?” said Bon.

There was another scream.

Lights came on in houses, and sleepy people of all shapes peered out.

Panicked UnLondoners came ru

“What’s happening?” shouted Bishop Bon.

From behind a corner at the edge of the square, from the darkness beyond the trembling edges of Webminster Abbey, an enormous shape came lumbering out of the night.

It was clammy-looking and sickly pale. It padded like a clumsy cat. Its body was a pudgy hairless lion’s, but its head was that of an enormous, blindly groping earthworm. It nosed into the bricks and concrete and tar, turning them by some chemical exudations into mulch.

Behind it were other grub-white figures, herding terrified locals before them. They seemed to drag darkness behind them. Deeba realized that they were walking in a bank of spreading, dirty smoke.

“Smoglodytes!” she said.

These were very different from the ones that had paid court to the Unstible-thing when it threatened her. Those had been small and tentative, living in the shallows of the poison. These, now, were mutants from the deeps of the Smog, and they were huge.

Behind the lionworm was a presence like a noseless man’s face on stumpy caterpillar legs; something flying on one bat’s wing and one vulture’s; a gorilla with enormous whiteless eyes in its chest; and others, an impossible variety of impossible shapes. All were colorless. All had either large eyes or no eyes, and bulky filter-noses or huge nostrils or none.

The smoglodytes gnawed and clawed or suckered or whatever at buildings, and even, Deeba saw in horror, at a few UnLondoners too slow to get out of their way, who, with horrified wails, were pulled into the rolling Smog and disappeared.

“They’re claiming the neighborhood!” Hemi said. Locals fled desperately past them, carrying what few possessions they had grabbed. Several gripped unbrellas, opening them in terror, and holding them like shields.

“Everyone move!” shouted Jones. Deeba grabbed one old man’s bags, helped him to the edge of the square. Skool picked up a fallen escapee under each arm, and hauled them out of the road. Deeba and her friends struggled to help the UnLondoners away.

“We have to get out of here!” Hemi shouted. The smoglodytes and the thick Smog they breathed came ominously fast. The outer fringes of the Smog had reached the web, which shook strangely. From a couple of the dark fu

They’re going to come out, thought Deeba. When the Smog gets inside, they won’t be able to breathe. Any moment, as well as predatory monstrosities and choking fumes, the streets would be full of panicking spider-windows. There was no way the locals would get away.

There was no way she would get away.

“Deeba!” Hemi shouted. A smoglodytic tentacled goat-thing was bearing down on her faster than she could run. With a despairing cry, she raised her hands.

77. Fruit

Deeba had forgotten she was carrying the UnGun. She didn’t realize she was pointing it at the smoglodytes, or that she pulled the trigger.

There was an almighty BANG! and an explosion of smoke.

Deeba went flying backwards, sailing over the table, still holding the pistol, her hand stinging and her ears ringing, as something shot from the barrel of the UnGun with a little stab of flame.

Instantly, there was rumbling. The buildings shook.

A plant roared up from below the pavement, splintering the concrete and sending it flying.

Others leapt out of nothing beside it and beyond it, in a thicket and then a copse and suddenly in rows, clambering the sides of buildings and bollards[3] and corkscrewing around lamps.

Deeba stared, her mouth open. In less than a second, the street ran with roots and stems moving so fast they looked like molten wax, setting in exaggerated gnarls. Trees hauled themselves vigorously out of nothing, shook off dust and debris, and were suddenly tall and thick and very there, filling the street and square. Fruit hung from them.

The UnLondoners who moments before had been ru

“Deeba!” said Jones. “Careful!”

“It’s alright,” she said. “Look.”

The vines had twisted themselves into position and grown in an instant around the smoglodytes.

Wrapped around with coils of stems so thickly they were almost mummified, the smoglodytes were immobilized. There must have been more than a hundred of them, frozen in the positions they had taken when Deeba fired.

[3]

Bollard: A little post to divert traffic on a road; a traffic cone.