Chimera Book One

Chapter Eighteen

‘It’s eating us alive!’ wailed Jamie.

‘No,’ shouted Sir Regulus. ‘We’re being taken into the bombardment compartments.  Brace yourselves!’

The shovelisk made a raucous, revving noise at the base of its long throat. Then, with a sharp, quick flick of its head, it ejected the contents of its mouth.  Kyp, Jamie and Sir Regulus hit the ground hard, covering their heads as debris rained down around them.  Kyp grimaced as the lifeless body of Polly Honeydew landed close by.  Ankle-snatchers lay twitching on their backs.   

They’d been deposited onto a narrow conveyor belt that extended across a vast, vaulted chamber of beaten metal panels.  On either side were long parades of cylindrical pits, out of which protruded long mechanical arms as tall as cranes; some ended in powerful serrated claws or hooks, others brandished circular saws, drill-bits, and chainsaws.  With a sudden jolt, the conveyor began to move.   So too did the mechanical arms, their lethal-looking devices whirring into life.

‘Dismantlers!’ cried Sir Regulus, pulling Kyp and Jamie to their feet. ‘Run!’

They ran against the direction of the conveyor, but the distance between them and the mechanical arms remained unchanged.  Kyp risked a glance over his shoulder to see Polly Honeydew’s motionless body near the first of the dismantlers, which plucked it from the conveyor and carried it high into the air.  Another dismantler brandishing a pair of metal scissors speared Polly Honeydew’s dress. The machines began to fight over her body, one taking her arm and the other her leg.  With a tearing sound, they pulled the doll into pieces, the two dismantlers taking their prize down into their respective compartments.  From out of the pits came sudden flashes of sparks and the appalling smell of burning hair.  Terrified ankle-snatchers were trying to evade a similar fate, but a dismantler wielding a tenderising mallet splatted them into puddles of goo.     

‘Run faster!’ cried Kyp.

But it was the conveyor that increased its speed. His legs dragged from beneath him, Sir Regulus fell, knocking the two boys over.  They hurtled in a heap towards the greedy, grasping dismantlers.  Sir Regulus knelt up and drew his sword. 

‘Hold on!’

With a mighty effort, he stabbed his sword through the conveyor into the mechanism beneath.  A terrible screech followed, accompanied by a blue flash of sparks and a bone-shaking jolt that launched everyone into the air.  Kyp landed, bounced, then rolled off the edge, his jumper snagging on a sprue of metal, leaving him hanging above a pit brimming with stinking yellow sludge.  Stripped remains of wooden chairs and tables floated on its surface like bleached bones.  The vat began to boil suddenly, as out of it erupted another dismantler, this one ending in a hose, which it levelled at Kyp’s face.  Before it could discharge its corrosive fluid, Kyp was yanked upwards by the serrated pincer of another dismantler.  As the mechanised arm rotated, Kyp was afforded a bird’s-eye view of the other pits; in one he witnessed a chest of drawers having its legs sawn-off by a shoal of hacksaws; in another, a pack of flame-throwers menaced a terrified footstool. 

Kyp looked about for his friends; Sir Regulus remained on the conveyor belt, jumping backwards and forwards to avoid a dismantler’s hammer. Jamie was hanging upside down from a dismantler on the other side of the conveyor belt, a second mechanical claw taking hold of his arms and pulling him taut.  A third dismantler took an interest, its circular saw slicing through the air towards him. 

The air was filled suddenly with the wail of sirens. 

Back at the far end of the conveyor, a shovelisk made ready to deposit another load from the Plummet Pit.  The dismantlers turned to see what else the shovelisk had brought them.  With a defiant cry, Bertram launched himself out of the monster’s jaws, riding a skateboard through the air and onto the conveyor, before wheeling at breakneck speed toward the waiting dismantlers.         

With greedy anticipation, the dismantlers tracked Bertram along the conveyor belt.  The arm brandishing the circular saw, which had been but a hair’s breadth from slicing Jamie in two, swerved towards the pig. The dismantler holding Jamie’s arms opened its claw and went after Bertram too, leaving Jamie hanging by his feet from the second.  By stretching out both hands and swinging his body, Jamie managed to grab hold of the dismantler’s tendon-like cables  - and just in time, as it too lost interest in Jamie and let go of his legs.  Jamie gave a cry as he dropped, but his grip on its cables meant he didn’t fall. He scrambled down the mechanical arm and jumped nimbly onto the conveyor.

The dismantler holding Kyp now targeted Bertram. With a hiss of pistons, it swung about, before descending speedily towards the skateboarding pig.  It discarded Kyp, who dropped from its open claw and fell heavily onto the conveyor belt. Jamie pulled him to his feet and shouted at him to keep moving.  They ducked, rolled and dived their way past drill-bits, scythes and wrecking balls as more dismantlers sprang up to converge on Bertram. 

Bertram was enjoying himself. He out-smarted the machines, performing daring jumps and complicated stunts.  In their confusion, the dismantlers attacked each other, the hammer of one smashing the drill of another. More dismantlers clashed, their claws, hooks and hydraulics entangled. A chainsaw sliced through the arm of the dismantler wielding the circular saw.  Now severed, the whirling disc decapitated machines on both sides of the conveyor.  The fallen dismantlers collapsed into the pits below.  Pillars of flame erupted.  Rivets fell like hailstones.  Kyp, Jamie and Sir Regulus drew together protectively as more of the dismantlers tore into each other and fell to ruin.  Bertram wheeled towards them out of the smoke.              

‘Wow!’ he said, as more explosions boomed.  He hopped off the skateboard. ‘That was amazing!’

‘What were you thinking?’ yelled Sir Regulus. ‘You could have been killed!’

‘Bertram saved us, Sir Regulus,’ said Jamie.  

An explosion shook the conveyor, an entire section falling into the burning pits below.

‘We’re not out of danger yet,’ said Sir Regulus.

They ran to the very end of the conveyor belt, looking down to see a large metal basket positioned below it.  At their backs, fires burned more fiercely.  Sparks fizzed.  Smoke thickened.  Another explosion set the conveyor quaking.

‘What now?’ panicked Jamie.

‘Into the basket,’ ordered Sir Regulus. ‘Quickly.’

The four of them leapt from the conveyor into the basket. For a moment nothing happened, then, with a violent jolt and revving of machinery, the basket rocketed towards the chamber roof.