Un Lun Dun

“I’m going in,” said Obaday frantically, searching his bag for a weapon, finding nothing but a heavy hand-mirror.

“No!” said Deeba. “That won’t help.”

They were sticking planks and ropes into the water, but for several seconds nothing happened. Then the surface began to bubble. The canal shook and fountained, and a gloved, weed-smothered fist punched out of the water.

“There!” said Obaday.

The fight below the surface was brutal. Thick shudderwrack emerged in temporary claws and mouths, and went swiping back under. Skool’s heavy boot came kicking up at an amazing angle, through a chunk of waterweed.

With huge strength, Skool began to stagger from the deeps, weighed down and bent by weed. But pieces of shudderwrack trembled across the water, alerted by the commotion. They coagulated together, leapt up, and dragged Skool down. Deeba could hear the slimy noise of shudderwrack gnawing.

Deeba took the UnGun from her belt.

“Stand back,” she said. Everyone obeyed.

“Quick,” said Obaday.

“Don’t you…need that?” Lectern said, but everyone ignored her.

Only one of Skool’s hands was in the air now, and as Deeba stepped to the edge and aimed into the water, whips of weed spiraled out, and pulled it under.

Deeba fired.

There was a roaring boom, a spit of flame. She staggered, but this time Deeba didn’t fall.

The air was filled with the smell of cordite, and also, Deeba realized, of the sea. What’s that about?

Then she saw what was happening in the canal. The water was boiling, frothing, and then was choppy, suddenly covered in waves and white foam that jostled the boats and spattered against the concrete walls.

The UnGun had fired the salt crystal. The fresh— though dirty— water of the canal for meters around had been instantly transformed into brine.

The water seemed confused. It was attempting to mimic the sea. Deeba was sure she heard a gull somewhere overhead. Waves were surging as if the canal were tidal, and slapping against the Diss&Rosa.

Meters to either side, Deeba could see where the new patch of ocean met the regular waters. The edges of the join were perfectly sharp.

Clots of shudderwrack drifted to the surface. Their trembling didn’t look like the healthy, unpleasant motion from which they took their name. One by one they stopped moving.

“What’s happening?” said Deeba.

“That’s what happens when the freshwater variety of shudderwrack suddenly finds itself in…the sea,” Lectern said. She eyed the UnGun in awe. Whatever it is, it always uses its bullet well, Deeba thought. No wonder it’s such a legend.

There was one sudden big wave, and the water broke over the concrete wall, and deposited Skool at their feet, flecked with dying weed, and highly bewildered.

84. Across the Yard

There were noises from the factory.

“They must’ve heard the UnGun,” said Deeba.

“Quick,” said Jones. “Let’s get in before they get here.”

But before they were even halfway across the yard, the door flew open. With a waft of fumes, death, and rotting clothes, smombies began to stagger out of the building.

With Lectern and three binja, the rebels were a decent-sized little gang. But there were twice as many smombies.

Angry-looking corpses swayed and lurched in their direction. The wisps of smoke that curled from their mouths and ears and eyes made them look as if they were smoldering.

The binja stepped forward, twirling their nunchucks and their staffs. They somersaulted into action.

Within seconds they were spi

Jones joined the melee, but his current was ineffective. Skool swung enormous punches, but so slow even the sluggish smombies could evade them. Deeba leveled the UnGun, but she couldn’t get a shot clear of her friends.

Then, as the smombies seemed to be getting the upper hand, Hemi put his hands to his mouth, and shouted.

At least, it looked like he did. Deeba couldn’t hear a sound.

But in the air around him, faint shapes began to appear. The ghosts! Deeba had forgotten about them. They emerged out of invisibility. There were definitely more of them than there had been when they set out.

Some were in ancient costumes, some in fashions only a couple of years old. All looked stern and aggressive. They put up their hands like boxers and swept through the air towards the smombies.

“But they can’t touch nothing!” Deeba said.

“I told you we don’t take over bodies?” Hemi said. “There’s exceptions. If someone else has done it first, it’s only fair to take the bodies back.”

One by one, the ghosts stretched out their arms like divers and hurled themselves into the smombies. As the dead men and women were entered, they staggered to a stop and began to twitch. Here and there, ghost-hands emerged from the smombies’ chests or backs, and flew back in, pummeling. The smombies rocked on their feet.

“They’re fighting the Smog!” said Deeba. “To take back control!” She widened her eyes at the thought of the battle going on inside those poor, misused bodies, the Smog pouring through i

“Quick!” Jones ushered them towards the door.

A ghost flew out of a smombie and lay, dazed-looking and semitransparent, on the ground. But elsewhere, Smog was being expelled from smombies’ ears, and the dead bodies were shaking.

“Yes!” said Hemi. He grabbed at the Smog emerging from the nearest smombie, and flexed his hand into an ectoplasmic ghostly state. His spectral hand grabbed the smoke, and he whipped it out of the body and flung it away, dissipating it as it went.

The last Smog-controlled smombies began to hurl stones and lengths of iron past the binja, at the infiltrators.

“Stay down,” said Jones, crawling rapidly for the entrance. Scooching down, Deeba heard a horrible splintering. She turned.

Skool was slow, and could not crouch. A smombie had thrown a particularly heavy jag of iron, and it had landed right in the middle of Skool’s faceplate.

Deeba stared in horror at the asterisk of cracks spreading out in the glass.

“Skool!” shouted Obaday. “Go! Get back to the canal!”

There was no time. Skool reeled and leaned back against the wall, and the glass exploded.

Water burst out of the hole, as if from a broken main.

As the pressure dropped, the diving suit began to crumple and slide down the wall, wrinkling, its head drooping. It looked horribly like a body collapsing.

With wet slapping noises, fish began to gush out of the broken helmet. There were silver ones the size of Deeba’s arm, tiny multicolored ones, an eel, an urchin, a seahorse, a little octopus. They poured onto the lap of the suit and the concrete, and began to flop and gasp.

“Skool!” said Obaday. He crawled over and tried to pick up the fish. They were slippery and flapping frantically.

“Where Deeba shot, it’s still the sea!” he said. “Quick!” He scooped up handfuls of the fish that had worked together to be Skool, and threw them over the heads of the binja, ghosts, and smombies. One by one they landed in the brine. Deeba and the others fumbled to help him.

They worked as quickly as they could, but there were too many to save them all. Slowly, one by one, some fish stopped moving, by the wrinkled-up, emptied-out diving suit.