Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens by Alex McCall Page A

I thought that she really had fallen asleep. Eventually she said, “What are you going to do tomorrow?”
    “What?” I asked, momentarily confused.
    “What are you going to do tomorrow?” she asked again. “‘When the rooster gives his call’ as you put it. Are you going to abandon me? Give me up to the chickens?”
    “Rayna…”
    She wouldn’t let me finish. “I wouldn’t blame you. You’ve got to look out for yourself. You hardly know me, after all and you’ve certainly made it clear that you don’t trust me. You even kind of fit in here.” Her voice got all choked up and I thought I could see a tear running down her cheek. “Why don’t you just look out for number one?”
    “Rayna,” I said firmly. “Shut up and stop being an idiot.”
    She looked at me, her mouth hanging open slightly. I was surprised too. I didn’t usually speak firmly. “Of course I’m not going to betray you. I just said that to give us some time.”
    “Time for what?” she asked. I looked at her, worried. How could she not get it?
    “Time to escape,” I told her. “Are you all right? You really don’t seem yourself.”
    She shook her head. “Of course I’m not all right,idiot. I’m tied to a chair and being held captive by a cult who want to give me to their chicken overlords. Who would be all right with this?”
    “OK, OK,” I told her, trying to calm her down. “Take a deep breath. Now start from the top. How did they get you? You must have known to look out for them.”
    She did what I told her, breathing in and trying to compose herself. “Of course I did. But I was looking down towards St Nicholas’, where they usually hang out. I didn’t know that they would be on one of their pilgrimages. They got me from behind.”
    I nodded, carefully remembering everything. So we were in the Kirk of St Nicholas. I vaguely remembered it as a tall church. I think I’d been inside it once or twice to look around, but I couldn’t remember much about it.
    “Their pilgrimage?” I asked. I just had to know.
    She nodded wearily. “From time to time they go to a place of evil and throw stuff at it.”
    “A place of evil? Where?”
    “KFC.”
    I couldn’t help it, I cracked up. She glared at me. “Stop it. If you’ve got a way to get us out of here then do it.”
    “OK, just give me a second.” I started struggling against the ropes that bound me. There had to be a weakness here somewhere.
    After fifteen minutes, I realised that there wasn’t. For all their silliness, someone in the Brotherhood of the Egg must have been in the Scouts or something because these were really well tied knots. I tried rocking the chair backwards and forwards but it was old and heavy and wouldn’t budge. Twenty minutes after that I finally accepted it. There was no way out.
    “Any luck?” Rayna asked. I knew that she’d been doing the same thing. From the defeat in her voice she hadn’t had any more success than I had.
    “Um… no. But I’m sure that something will come up.”
    She didn’t even reply to that, just snorted. I knew that it was hopeless as well. The only one who knew where we were was Glen and he wasn’t likely to notice that we were gone or care if he did. He’d probably just assume that we weren’t to be trusted after all. Even if someone from the train station knew they probably wouldn’t do anything about it. We had a rule that said that if someone didn’t come back then that was it. It was easier just believing that they’d left of their own accord than because they’d been caught.
    There was no one coming to save us.
    “So what are you going to do?” Rayna asked after a while. “What are you going to do tomorrow? When they ask for your decision?”
    I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know,” I said honestly.
    “You don’t know? What is there to know? Either you save yourself or you give us both to the giant chickens.”
    The despair in her voice was horrible to hear.
    “Well what do you