[Splat]

It's this one that took half an hour, which is a lot better than I was expecting! Enjoy!

Chapter 17

Alf

"What are you doing Abe?"
Abe looked up as I approached, and then held up a slightly tattered piece of paper. "I’m trying to figure this out, look."

He pointed to a few lines of writing on the page. "What is this?"

"The instructions your omnipotent being left us. Look, it’s all written perfectly clearly till suddenly," He thrust his finger at the paper and I took it off him and read it.

"Ok, ‘Don’t open any of the boxes on the train that say ‘live cargo’ on the side, food can be found in crates saying’ yadda, yadda, yadda. ‘When the train stops for the second time hide in the corner closest to the door’," We’d already done that much. "‘You’ll be safe for a day…’" I came to a stop. After that there was a change of paragraph where a single word was written before carrying on, ‘When you see a crate labelled grinder parts…’ but that one word was more like a squiggle. "What do you think that says?"

"What do you think I’ve been trying to figure out idiot?" I blinked, surprised. "It doesn’t make any sense, if that’s a ‘g’, then… ‘o’, ‘o’… ‘K’? ‘B’? ‘H’?"

"Small B… Goob?"

"‘You’ll be safe for a day. Goob.’ Yup Alf, that makes perfect sense."
"Well I don’t know what it is!" I turned around to where Splat and Munch were using the cards they’d found on the train platform to play Happy Families. "Hey, Splat, Munch."

"Oh no, don’t Alf." Abe groaned.

"You two, come over here, see if you can help us figure this out."

"What’s wrong Alfie? Too much for the mudokon head?"

"Just cause yours is huge, Munch, doesn’t mean there’s any more in it. Well, maybe lots of fat, but nothing useful." Splat finished his verbal beating of Munch and stood up and walked towards us.

"Ha, go and help ‘em Splat. It’s only cause I’m beating you 17 games to 2."

Splat ignored him and came towards us. He looked at the paper in Abe’s hand. "What’s up?"

On the other side of the platform, Munch glanced upwards and answered, "The ceiling."

"The sad thing is," Splat retorted, "He probably had to look to figure that out."

"No I didn’t!"

I considered pointing out that I’d seen him, but decided it’d probably be better for everyone concerned if I didn’t. "We can’t figure out what that word is." I pointed at it.

He read the words around it and answered slowly, "Gooh… qooh… qoob?"

"I guess it could be Q, but the next one would have to be a U." I said, slowly

"It’s got a tiny gap in the top," Abe pointed out. "Quok?"

"Another fully functional word!" I put in. "That other O has a gap in it as well, Quak?"

"So right, your omnipotent being starts randomly writing badly-spelled bird-noises all over the paper." Abe was getting rather touchy again. Suddenly the paper was snatched out of his hand. He looked down in surprise to see Munch examining the paper.

"Gaok." He said like it was the most obvious thing in the world and threw the paper to the ground before hopping off to the crate where he and Splat had been playing. He pulled out a pencil and began looking over the cards.

"So that’s how you’ve been doing it? You dirty little cheat!" Splat marched after him.

Abe reached down, picked up the paper and examined it again. Then he sighed and announced, "I guess we should ignore it. Afterwards, ‘When a crate saying ‘grinder parts’ and another saying ‘Eyestitch 4005’ are brought in by sligs, leave the train’."

"I don’t think he… It’d put it in for no reason." I pointed out.

"Well fine, you tell me what it says!" He thrust the paper into my hand and marched off, angrily. I sighed and sat down on the crate behind me to try and work it out.

* * *

"That’s it!"
Abe, Munch and Splat came running… well, hopping and running. "What? You worked it out?"

I’d been bothering over it for the rest of that day, and for all of this morning. "Yeah, you were wrong about the Q and the A. The Q has a long top bit, its just bent, but it’s a D. Then U, the top of what we said was A overhangs a bit, it’s a C. Munch was right about the K."

It took a few seconds for them to piece together, but then Splat announced, "Duck."

I looked at Abe. He shrugged. Then all at the same time, we bent our legs and crouched down behind the crates.

At which exact point, the door from the next carriage opened and four sligs stepped inside. The leader spoke up loudly, "Alright slurgs, you all heard, they reckon terrorists got aboard this train back at Director Schur’s station, so we’re gonna search every corner and every crate in this coach until we find em. And if I catch any of you slacking off you’ll be polishing the train’s wheels until we arrive." We could already hear the sligs digging through the crates. "Hey, don’t break anything, and get in a line so if they are in here they won’t slip past us. HERM!"

"Uh, yeah Boss?"

"What in Odd’s name are you doing? Are you blind?"

"Uh…"

There were heavy mechanical footsteps and then the slig spoke loudly and in a slow voice. I guessed he was reading off the side of a crate. "Live. Cargo. Did it occur to you idiots that the last stop on this route is a fleech-farm? What kind of live cargo are they likely to have?"

"Uh…" There was a crack. "OW! WATCHA GO AND DO THAT FOR?"

"Because you’re an idiot! Now get searching or we’ll be locking you in the engine!"

By now all four of us had moved to separate parts of the carriage, hoping to slip past the sligs. But it seemed they’d taken their boss’s threats to heart, they were being very vigilant. Any crate that didn’t have the words, ‘Live Cargo’ on the side they were ripping open. Or at least the one closest to me was. I couldn’t see much of the others.

I backed away from the slig, quietly, hoping he wouldn’t dig through the darkest corners. I didn’t have much experience in the whole sneaking about business. This was what Abe did, I ran a bar back home.

I felt my feet hit wood as I crawled backwards. I took my eyes off the slig for a second to glance around. I found myself trapped in a corner and the slig was still coming towards me! The only ways out were straight at him, and he’d have to be more than blind not to notice me, or to climb over the crates, where I’d be in full view for about 5 seconds. Either way, I was trapped. And most definitely screwed!


i'm also gonna edit a little bit in the last chapter, I realised what comes next won't make sense if I don't It's nothing big, but if you're bothered its there for you to see!