BRITLAND CALLING: 4. Conclusion.

Chapter 2. THE SLAUGHTER IN DEPARTMENT

THE STONY PATH quickly led the party and their "Death Row" Hereford cows to an iron gate that gave relief to a thick hedgerow that bordered the field. The mist in this area of Level 3 was nowhere to be seen.

Toby pushed open the gate which squealed its opposition to the disturbance of its closed sleeping position.

Out through the gate trampled the party with their Hereford cows, cows that under the purple light were mainly dark purple-brown but with light purple heads, tummies and feet. The party found themselves trampling onto a vast concrete yard that fronted the ominous steel-walled meat factory. But perhaps more ominous were the two uniformed factory guards loitering close by ...

"Remember to act as stupidly as possible," said Toby to Tommy, in an urgent undertone. "Pass the word on as discreetly as possible."

The word was passed on in a ludicrous fashion once it reached the Four Playing Card Suits—but this would have simply looked like stupid drover antics if the factory guards had noticed them. Spade's attempts to pass on the message to Alice through a series of coughs and sneezes was probably the most ludicrous.

The guards approached slowly, eyeing the party with a professional mixture of curiosity and suspicion. One guard was older than the other. In fact they looked like a father and son.

"Afternoon, sirs," said Toby to the guards, casually, in a strong drover accent. Then he quickly turned to look back at the end of the queue of his party. "Which daft idiot amongst us left that there gate open?" he shouted, pointing at the open iron gate. If there's one thing us drovers ought to know, it's never leave a gate or door open on farmland.'

"It wasn't me, ooh arr, me lovely, ooh arr," shouted Spade, who had thankfully kept her afro hair sucked well beneath her wooden skin. She looked like a nailed-on country bumpkin in her farming gear, particularly because of the way she kept nodding her head in time with a series of ooh arrs. She then waded out away from her nearby cow as if she was a scarecrow come to life before charging back to the cow and attempting to mount it with a flying somersault. Of course normally she would have easily managed such a gymnastic feat. But as she was trying her best to look like the stupidest drover who ever walked the farms of Urgland's Level 3, she managed to land on her head and bounce herself off the cow's back and back down onto the concrete yard's floor. "Ooh, my toe bone!" she shouted, jumping up from the ground and blowing vigorously on her forearm. And all the while she had a good grip of her personal treasures sack.

"What an idiot drover, if ever I saw one," said the older guard to the younger guard.

"Boy, I'm not surprised, Dad," replied the younger guard to the older guard who was now confirmed as his father. "I've heard some whacky stories about the legendary stupidity of the inbred drovers, but that little nutcase beats anything I've heard of. What's she doing, keeping that dirty old sack wrapped around her wrist?"

"She's probably been told not to leave it unattended. So she makes sure she doesn't let it go no matter what she gets up to."

"What's in it, d'you think?"

"Who knows what a drover like that might keep in a dirty old sack? Probably some vegetables to bring home with her, or something like that."

Toby ignored the guards' conversation and shouted out, "Someone close that gate, now!"

"I'll close it," volunteered who else but Spade, racing towards the gate. But when she got to the gate she stood staring at it looking perplexed and took to banging her head with a clenched fist.

"What's the problem, girl?" shouted Toby at Spade.

"Ooh arr, bother me if I can't remember how to close this here gate. Me brain's turned to scrumpy and lime, me lovely."