King Cyril the Boneless had ample reason to be exhausted

King Cyril the Boneless, lord of the great land of WakaBanana, was exhausted. Exhausted!

There had recently been a new round of reconstituting the King’s Council, a terribly important body that did various things, the most important of which was to spread the spoils of office around, balancing competing interests and keeping the most valuable or, in some cases, just the loudest, happy.

For King Cyril, who had a team of practised negotiators to deal with the nuts and bolts, the nitty-gritty, the brass tacks of all this, the reconstitution of the King’s Council meant a lot of smiling and back-slapping, even as back-stabbing took place in the background – behind the arras, as they say in the theatre.

There were many complicated rituals related thereunto, and King Cyril, being king, had to officiate at all of them, so he was now truly exhausted. Even a weekend off, or nearly off, when he was helicoptered to his cattle farm for a day and a half, had not been enough to calm the king’s nerves entirely.

Now, feeling insufficiently rested, not to mention insufficiently pampered and massaged, King Cyril had to face his key advisers, of which there were three. By ancient tradition, these advisers took the names Gog, Magog and ­Cheryl, though naturally in a non-­gender-specific way.

King Cyril had barely settled himself into a set of actually rather nicely beaded cushions when Gog began: “Welcome, Your Majesty, back to the daily grind of running the great kingdom of WakaBanana. We trust you are feeling much refreshed after –”

“Give me a moment,” croaked the king, gesturing to an underling to bring him a glass of frosted sherbet. His throat was damnably dry, especially after all that dusty cattle ranch stuff of the preceding days.

The sherbet was brought, in practically no time at all – barely enough time for Gog to give their hands a somewhat impatient wring. “We have a lot of reaction on the King’s Council, of course, good, bad, indifferent,” said Gog.

“Yes, yes,” said the king. This was predictable. “Let’s not waste time on that. How is the Baron Harkonnen, er, Gwede doing?”

“You mean since he was reduced in standing by having his portfolio halved?” said Magog, with a faint suspicion of malice in their voice.

“He’s sulking, Your Majesty,” said Cheryl. “Which, we believe, is preferable to an explosion of some kind –”

“– but leaves us waiting for the explosion to come,” finished the king.

“We are of the view, Your Majesty,” said Gog, “that he should be ignored, whatever tantrums he throws, as we get on with the more progressive policy on the Temples of Power and so forth that we have devised. We’re doing rather well in that department.”

“Yes, but I’m scared of him,” mumbled the king, then said in his firmest authoritarian voice: “We keep a watching brief there, eh?”

The advisers nodded. “The technocrats are in place?” asked the king.

“I think it has all worked out very well,” replied Magog smoothly. “Your Majesty will recall that after the Russian Revolution, when the factories were handed over to the workers’ collectives, they began to falter and became very inefficient. So the former bosses and supervisors were called back in, going as ‘bourgeois experts’. This was of course a good strategy because, when the inefficiencies largely continued, the bourgeois experts could be blamed.”

“Spare me the history lesson,” sighed the king, signalling for another frosted sherbet. And, while he was about it, for the guy who did the foot massage to stand by.

There was a momentary silence as the king positioned his lips for optimum consumption of the frosted sherbet, which had appeared as if by magic on a small occasional table beside him before being assisted to his mouth.

“There is, at any rate, Your Majesty,” and Cheryl spoke with the necessary gravity, “a key matter to which we have not paid attention. And that is –” For a moment, the adviser seemed unable to speak, or at least to have suffered an unexpected glottal stop.

“That is?”

“That is,” spoke the advisers at once, “the zombies.”

King Cyril the Boneless threw the last of the frosted sherbet down his throat and wished for something stronger. He stopped himself from looking anxiously into the wings to see if the foot massage guy was, indeed, standing by.

“The zombies?”

“Yes, Your Majesty, the zombies. We have assumed so far that they are confined to the eastern lands, and that the virus that gives rise to this condition – if we may call it such – has not spread further. There are rumours of zombies popping up elsewhere, but none of them have been confirmed. Still, we have to ensure that we are on full alert and aware of any movement on that front.”

There was a solemn silence. The king and his advisers pondered, reminding themselves of this phenomenon that had arisen even as the King’s Council was rumbling its way towards reconstitution, with much effort by all involved.

Widely spread across the eastern lands were zombies, and it was hard not to imagine them staggering in a zigzag fashion across the rolling green hills, their eyes widely staring and their tongues hanging hungrily from their gaping mouths.

“We’ll have to workshop some solutions,” said the king weakly. “It is said they are controlled by an evil wizard – have we investigated that? Have we got infiltrators worming their way into the ranks of zombies?”

Even as he said it, he realised it was probably not workable to infiltrate zombies. He lay back on his finely beaded cushions. He felt barely able to breathe.

“The army is ready, if need be,” said Cheryl comfortingly. “We have domestic intelligence working through the night to find out what’s going on with the zombies, whether they are likely to leave the eastern lands and come into –”

“No!” moaned the king. “Let us not even mention that possibility. Make sure the army is armed, and double the bodyguards of all key ministers and, particularly, myself.”

“How does one kill zombies?” mused Gog.

“Flame-throwers?” wondered Magog.

“Massive cattle prods?” suggested Cheryl. “If, of course, mowing them down with machine gun fire doesn’t work.”

King Cyril was looking extremely pale, and appeared unable to speak. His throat made convulsive motions, then he moaned: “Buy flame-throwers, buy as many flame-throwers as you can. Train the army and the police in the use of flame-throwers. And triple my bodyguard at once. And ...”

“Flame-throwers,” said Magog, making a note. The king whispered something so softly that Gog, the adviser closest to him in proximity, said “Sorry?” and leaned forward to catch the king’s fading utterance.

“Foot massage,” whispered King Cyril, “foot massage. Please...” DM

Shaun de Waal is a writer and editor.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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