Rankin, Robert - THe Suburban Book of the Dead

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They Came and Ate Us

Armageddon 3: The Remake

Robert Rankin

1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them.

2. And on the seventh day God ended his work and rested from all of the work which he had made.

3. And on the eighth day God gazed upon Elvis and said unto him, 'You had better have a really

good reason for showing up here!'

4. And Elvis answered, 'No sweat, sir.'

The Suburban Book of the Dead

You make few friends travelling north on a south-bound freeway.

Lazlo Woodbine

Along the crest of the hill a line of trees broke wind. And beneath them in the valley, para-dise

was looking just so. Well-tended gardens cloistered quaint dwellings of a rustic nature. Pine-

scented smoke drifted gently from chimneys. Children played amongst the flowering scullion and

scandaroons nestled in the dovecots. It was the 27 July 2061. It was the Garden of Eden. And it

was a bad day for Rex Mundi.

Rex had dodged the bread rolls. Side-stepped the crockery and ducked beneath the salad bowl. But

it was the wok that really did for him.

Had it been one of those aluminium wedding-present jobs you store dead insects in, he might have

survived.

But this lad was in a class of its own. A real hand-beaten bronzer with a formidable fighting

weight. It was no contest. Rex went down for the count.

He passed backwards through the open kitchen door-way and out into the pleasant summery sunlight.

And here he came to rest in the sprout bed. Little transparent birds twittered in a circle around

his head. The incidental music went WAB-WAAAAAH.

The furry face of a small terrier appeared through a hole in the hedge, an ear cocked to the

sounds of breaking china and tumbling whatnots which issued from the family home. When at last

these had ceased, the owner of the face, Fido, crept from his refuge and peered down at his fallen

master.

'Hardly a fitting entrance for the hero,' was his con-sidered opinion. Rex had no comment to make

at this time.

Fido viewed him along the horizontal plane. Even in this undignified repose Rex was a handsome

fellow. Tall, well muscled and still bearing the same uncanny resem-blance to the young Harrison

Ford he had since book one. Pity about the wok-hurling wife, though.

'It's my duty to care for this man in his time of need,' said Fido. 'And having no bucket of water

to paw, I regret I must add insult to injury.' He lifted his rear offside leg and took careful

aim.

'Don't even think about it,' Rex whispered through gritted teeth. 'If you want to help, then

whimper a bit and look concerned.'

'Gotcha, man. Play for sympathy, eh? Shrewd thinking oooooooh—' The contents of the slop pail,

issuing even as it did from the upstairs window, caught them both with unerring accuracy.

Fido took to his heels. Rex clambered to his feet.

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'Now just you see here,' he began.

The spade missed him by inches.

'Dig it deep and dig it now,' were his wife's final

demands. The window slammed shut and Rex was left very much alone.

He gazed around at his wonderful garden. The toil of his hands and the sweat of his brow had

brought all this into being. He had planted every plum and pulse, pepper and pimento, pomegranate

and passion fruit. He had pampered each pear and peach and pomelo, particularly the pineapples,

papayas, parsnips and potatoes. He'd even been patient with the peas. It was a theme garden.

Although for the life of him he couldn't remember what the theme actually was. Nor why he'd

planted the sprouts.

And the house itself. He'd designed that from the ground up. High gabled, daub and wattle. A

veritable tour de force in Arts and Crafts revivalism. All for her. Christeen, his wife.

Christeen, twin sister of Jesus.

But was it enough? Not a bit of it.

Was she contented? Not one smidgen.

Grateful? As if.

Beautiful garden, lovely setting, fabulous house. And what did she want? An indoor toilet! One

trivial oversight on his part, and all this fuss. Perhaps if he'd stayed around to supervise the

actual construction of the house, rather than carousing with his chums at the local grog shop, he

might have noticed the omission. Perhaps if he had not employed the services of Bloodaxe and Death-

blade, Builders to the Aristocracy. Perhaps, perhaps. But there it was.

Rex considered the ramshackled outside dunny he had thrown together. It niffed a bit, but was

surely adequate to their daily needs. There was just no pleasing some people. Women were strange

and exotic creatures and no man, even one as obviously thoughtful and sensitive as Rex, could be

expected to understand them fully. The lady wanted an indoor flush toilet plumbed to an outside

septic tank system and that was that. She would brook no compromise and there would be no peace in

the

marital home until the pit was dug and the tank was in. That was the specific order of the day, as

it had been for more days than Rex cared to remember. There was nothing for it. The deed would

have to be done.

Rex fingered his big red ear, plucked up the spade and made a very bad face indeed.

Now, as with most things, there is a fine art to the successful laying in of a septic tank. And

its correct location plays a very large part in the thing. It must be placed just so. Too near to

the house and it can become a serious hazard to the nostrils in the hot weather. Too far and the

pipes may freeze in the cold. The composition of the soil is of supreme importance, as is that the

site chosen is at a lower level than the toilet. Then of course there are the planetary aspects to

be taken into con-sideration, the local ley system and a careful check to make sure you're not

digging up a fairy's house. You can never be too careful. The correct location is everything.

'That will do nicely,' said Rex, spying out the nearest area of unfilled land. 'Ideal.' He stalked

over, dragging his spade behind him, and peered down at old mother earth. Old mother earth stared

back in a hard, un-compromising sort of fashion. She said, 'Just you try it.'

'I'm not really a spade man,' Rex told the sod. 'More a trowel and dibber fellow me. I generally

leave the actual digging side of things to that nice little man with the Wellington boots and

wheelbarrow who comes in twice a week. In fact, now that I come to think about it, I generally

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leave all the trowel and dibbering to him also. In fact,' Rex stroked his manly chin, 'I hardly

ever come out in this garden at all. I hate gardening.

'You see,' he continued, 'I'm more your man of action. My forte is for heroic deeds. The saving of

civilizations. Putting my life on the line in the cause of truth, justice and some way or another.

I'm the stuff of legend. I'm not a digger of poo pits.' Rex took the offensive spade in both

hands and prepared to fling it. The bedroom window shot up and the slop pail whistled past his

unreddened ear. The hero lowered his head and began to dig.

And he dug. He dug and he dug. He got all sweaty in a macho lager commercial sort of a way. But he

didn't make a lot of progress. Digging holes is a funny old kind of a business. You either have

the way of it or you don't. A friend of mine who once ran the London marathon had the way of it;

he had served an apprenticeship as a grave digger and he could dig a hole two feet wide, six feet

long and six feet deep with a precision nothing less than awesome to behold. Mind you, he did

employ the services of a mechanical digger, something which Rex didn't have immediately to hand.

And the fellow I'm talking about got a stitch and never actually completed the London marathon. I

expect there's a moral in there if you care to look for it.

Rex didn't care to look. He was thinking about lunch. He was thinking that 'well begun is best

begun and best begun is nearly finished', and he was thinking that now would probably be as good a

time as any to down tools and repair to the drinking house. He'd just level out the bottom and

then slip away. No need to mention it to Christeen.

Clunk! went Rex's spade as it made contact with a very hard something. Rex up-ended his implement

and eyed the blunted blade. 'There,' he said, 'that settles the matter.' It would be folly to

continue work with a blunt tool. You couldn't expect a craftsman such as himself to make a decent

job of the thing with a blunt tool. Unthinkable.

Rex put the useless article aside and stooped to root out the blessed blunter by hand. He probed

about with his fingers and found something smooth and cool. 'Hmm.' Rex dug his fingers about it

and strained to pull it up. It remained firm and Rex checked his spine for severe injury. His

digging days were over, he told

himself. Rex kicked petulantly at the object. Now he hopped about on the other foot wondering just

why he had.

Rex picked up the spade, raised it above his head and prepared to administer the killing blow.

And then he stopped. He was gazing down at some-thing rather unusual. The object was a head. A

marble head. There was no mistake about it. He could make out the hairline and a bit of a noble

brow. A marble head. How about that then?

Rex stooped and he scooped. He dug and he delved. He trenched and he tunnelled. He burrowed and

bored. He scraped and he scrabbled and scratched. And when he was done he sat down on his bum and

marvelled greatly, saying such things as 'blow me down' and 'well, I never did'.

For there at his feet lay a full-sized marble statue, which even in its mucky state was dearly a

thing of no small wonder.

It was the statue of a young man, clad in a wide-shouldered suit, legs akimbo. He was frozen in

mid strum upon a carven guitar. He had a serious quiff and killer sideburns.

'Elvis,' said Rex Mundi. 'Elvis, it's you.'

'It certainly looks like him,' said Fido, who had been observing the feverish activity. 'Curly lip

and everything. Nice big hole, by the way.'

'Give me a hand then, we'll lift it out.'

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The dog gave Rex what is called 'the old fashioned look'.

'Well, fetch a rope or something. I'll rig up a block and tackle.'

'To hear is to obey, oh master.'

Rex spat on to his palms and rubbed them together. 'Soon have you out,' he said.

It was somewhat late in the afternoon when the statue of Elvis came to stand upright. And the

garden that it now stared down upon was no longer the pretty and picturesque thing it had earlier

been. This was now a garden littered with broken timbers, snapped ropes and fractured pulleys. A

garden tainted by words of pro-fanity.

The owner of the garden sat exhausted, his feet dangling in the hole of his own making. 'There,'

said he, when finally he could find breath. 'A piece of cake.'

Fido cocked his head on one side and gazed up at the statue.

'It's a killer,' he said. The lad himself.'

'Certainly is,' Rex gasped.

'Cosmic, man. Dead cosmic.'

'And to find it right here in my own back yard.'

'Like I said, cosmic.'

'I wonder how it came to be here.' Rex climbed to his feet and perused his find.

'Probably went under in the Nuclear Holocaust Event. Hey, man, do you know what this means?'

'What?'

'It means that you probably built your house on the very spot where Graceland once stood.'

'No kidding?' Rex was well impressed. 'Some co-incidence, eh?'

'Hmm.' Fido didn't have much truck with coincidence. 'Perhaps.'

'It's a beautiful thing, though. Nice centrepiece for the garden.'

'Shame you took a piece off his nose with your spade.'

'They never put noses on,' said Rex knowledgeably. 'The Greeks and the Romans and whatnot always

made the statues without noses. It was a tradition or an old charter or something.'

'Doesn't look Greek to me, it's of the Italian school, though.'

'Go fetch a stick or something.'

'Mind if I take a leak first? All this excitement. . .'

'Not in my hole you don't.'

'OK man.' Fido lifted his leg and sprayed the statue.

'Get out of here, Fido.'

'Sorry, man.'

'No, wait, look. You've uncovered some letters. Do it again.' Fido did it again. 'What does it

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say?' Rex asked.

'It's a name and a date. Michelangelo Buonarroti. 1504.'

'1504?'

"That's what it says. Michelangelo. Man, that guy was famous. He was the number one.

Michelangelo.'

'The name rings a bell.' Rex scratched at his head. 'Yes, of course. He was a Teenage Mutant Ninja

Turtle, wasn't he?'

Fido looked up at his master. Rex looked down at his dog.

'Sorry,' said Rex. 'It just slipped out.'

'Jump in the hole, man.'

'Do what?'

'Jump in the hole. Quickly.'

'I will not.'

"Then, sorry man.' Fido leapt up at Rex, striking him in the chest and knocking him from his feet.

One man and his dog vanished into the hole.

And not a moment too soon.

There was a sudden roaring of engine and squealing of brakes, and something large and metallic

smashed through the hedge with explosive force. It ploughed up the plantain, demolished the

dovecot, scattered the scan-deroons and came to the traditional shuddering halt on the very spot

where Rex had just been standing.

'What the—' Rex struggled in the pit.

'Keep it down, man. Let go of my ear.'

'I'll do for you, Fido.'

'I saved your life, man. My ear, let go.' Rex released the pooch's mangy tab.

'How did you know it was coming? I didn't hear anything.'

'I'm the seventh pup of a seventh pup. Keep your voice down, I smell big trouble.'

Rex peeped over the rim of the pit. Above him loomed a big shiny chromium bumper and a licence

plate. The licence plate read DEE 1.

'It's Simon Dee,' Rex whispered. 'Returned at last to do another series. I always knew he would.'

'I don't think so, man.'

Rex heard an electric window swish down, then the oiled click as the driver's door opened. He

glimpsed a pair of polished brogues, a flash of patterned sock and a tweedy turn-up or two.

'Anyone at home?' Rex didn't recognize the accent. 'Helloooee.'

I don't like this, Rex thought. As he watched, the passenger door opened and similarly attired

lower ex-tremities lowered.

'Corn off, do you think?' said a second voice.

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file:///F|/rah/Robert%20Rankin/Rankin,%20Robert%20-%20Armageddon%2003%20-%20The%20Suburban%20Book%20of%20the%20De.txtTheyCameandAteUsArmageddon3:TheRemakeRobertRankin1.Thustheheavensandtheearthwerefinishedandallthehostofthem.2.AndontheseventhdayGodendedhisworkandrestedfromalloftheworkwhichhehadma...

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Rankin, Robert - THe Suburban Book of the Dead

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