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Jack stuffed the three eggs that remained in his overall pocket and started to climb. It was easier than he had thought, and the leaves offered good handholds. But if he had hoped this would offer some sort of escape, he was wrong. The creature snapped the air once or twice when Jack shouted “Eggs en cocotte!”—and then followed him.
Jack clambered up, past the ripening beans and high enough to see the road—and the Jellyman’s Daimler being driven off at high speed. He breathed a sigh of relief, something that didn’t last long, as he suddenly realized that although His Eminence was safe, Jack personally still had to deal with five hundred pounds of dangerously pissed-off Humpty-beast.
“Actually,” said Jack, “I hate eggs.”
The beast snapped angrily at him again.
“No, no,” he added hurriedly, cursing his own stupidity, “I meant that by hating eggs, I don’t eat them. Meringues—yuck.”
It had no effect whatsoever. The creature leaped nimbly to the branch below Jack and swiped angrily at his foot. Jack grabbed the branch above him and pulled himself away—just too late. He felt a stab of pain course through his foot. He looked down. The creature had taken away not only the branch he’d been standing on but also his shoe, sock and, although he didn’t yet know it, his little toe. He winced with the pain and resumed the climb, favoring the arch of his damaged foot rather than the ball. He could hear the wail of sirens as the backup units approached, but they didn’t offer him much comfort. Within a few minutes, he had reached the red aviation warning light, and he stole a quick look below. He was about a hundred feet from the ground, and his mother’s house looked very small. There was a growl from below as the creature continued its pursuit, and Jack hurriedly climbed beyond the red light only to discover a new and dramatically unforeseen problem to contend with: The creature was no less angry, and Jack had just run out of beanstalk.
He hooked a leg around one of the leaves and took the eggs from his pocket. But his hands were shaking, and he fumbled; the three remaining size-B free-range eggs fell from his grasp and dropped away into the darkness. And with them his last possible bargaining chip.
“Bollocks!” he muttered to himself. “What a day.”
The creature slavered, hissed and snapped and made another swipe. Jack tried to avoid the lunge and succeeded, but it was a short-lived escape. The beanstalk was smaller and weaker at this height, and the leaf Jack was holding came away from the main stalk. He made a wild grab for another, but this, too, came away in his hands. He overbalanced, lost his footing, and fell backwards into space.
He saw a glimpse of the Humpty-beast bathed in a red glow as he fell past, then a blur of beanstalk leaves and pods accompanied by a loud rushing noise. He just had time to experience a curious mixture of relief and renewed peril when he landed on the potting shed in an explosion of rotting wood, earwigs and perished roofing felt. He was momentarily stu
Jack shook his head and staggered backwards, his hand falling onto the shaft of an ax that was resting in a block of wood. He knew what had to be done. He hobbled into the shed, rummaged under the broken wood and found his father’s old chain saw. He flicked the switch and pulled on the cord. It didn’t even fire. He pulled again and again as he walked around to the side of the beanstalk facing the road. If he felled it onto his mother’s house, he’d never hear the end of it. On the fourth pull, the chain saw burst into life, and the harsh staccato roar filled the quiet night. The chain saw bit easily into the hard stalk, and he had soon cut out a wedge and then swapped sides to make the final cut. He was halfway through and had already felt a few promising cracks and groans when there was a loud concussion, some sparks, and the chain saw stopped dead. Jack didn’t realize what had happened until a voice made him turn.
“I underestimated you,” snarled Dr. Quatt.
She stood facing Jack with a smoking automatic and looked as though she would be only too happy to use it again.
“I get underestimated a lot,” replied Jack with a wince, as the pain from the thousand and one cuts and bruises he had sustained began to kick in, “and by better people than you.”
“Interfering fool!” she spat. “The bastard Jellyman has escaped. Ten long years of pla
“You just said. Ten years—”
“Don’t patronize me!” she screeched, her eyes flashing dangerously. “My research was only to save lives!”
“And Humpty? Who saved his life?”
“Humpty was an egg,” she retorted. “What is an egg for—if not to create life?”
“How about an omelette?” suggested Jack with a grimace as a muscle twinged uncomfortably in his back.
“Come here, my child,” called Dr. Quatt to the Humpty-beast, still halfway down the beanstalk, which creaked and groaned under its weight. “One more for you.”
“But Humpty was your patient!”
“And the worthy recipient of my greatest research project,” said Quatt with pride. “I was initially worried that night when the gunman shot him, but he was fine. I just had to help the little darling to hatch.”
Jack shivered. She was nastier and more inhuman than he had thought.
“He survived the fall, didn’t he?”
“Oh, yes. He recognized me, you know, and asked for help, so I picked up a chair leg—”
There was a loud, dull metallic clunk, and Dr. Quatt abruptly stopped talking and pitched heavily forwards onto her face. Mary had struck her a glancing blow on the back of the head with a shovel.
Jack’s legs collapsed from under him, and he sat on the ground against the garden swing. The stalk creaked ominously. Mary kicked away Quatt’s pistol before ru
“Sorry, sir, but I thought we’d heard quite enough. Are you all right?”
“No, Mary, I feel like shit. I’ve just fallen a hundred feet and gone through a potting shed—and you need to get out of here.”
“Not without you.”
She tried to lift him, but he was surprisingly heavy, and weakened. He couldn’t stand.
“Go, Mary, before the—”
It was too late. The creature jumped the remaining fifteen feet and landed on Stevie’s tortoise-shaped sandbox with a crunch. It lashed its tail angrily and hissed menacingly at them both before looking down at the unconscious body of Quatt. It nudged her gently with its nose, made a quiet whining noise and then very tenderly picked her up. The beanstalk creaked and trembled as the stresses of the huge weight bore down on the badly weakened structure.
Mary grabbed the ax to use as a weapon, but Jack stopped her.
“Leave it,” he said shakily. “I think I know how this will all turn out. It’s an NCD thing.”
The beast hissed at them once more and then bounded clear over the garden fence with Quatt in its arms, snapping angrily at the officers who had just arrived. They weren’t armed, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they were.
“Tell them to leave it alone,” said Jack in a quiet voice.
“Step away from the beast!” yelled Mary. “It won’t get far—it’s an NCD thing.”
Jack nodded gratefully as the beanstalk cracked again, shook and gently started to fall, while the beast gathered speed in large strides down the road. It had almost reached the first police car and was about to leap over it to freedom when the beanstalk came crashing down on top of it, crushing the hapless creature and Dr. Quatt and scattering sleeping-bag-size bean pods around the neighborhood. The almighty thump reverberated through the ground, split the asphalt and lifted two drain covers. Four cars were cut virtually in half, and there was a spontaneous cacophony of car alarms.