Crawlers Page 14

  ‘How should I know what these are?’ asked Jasmine, annoyed. She considered the objects and frowned. ‘They look a bit like . . . pupal casings, maybe.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You know – cocoons? Like for caterpillars?’

  Samantha snorted and grinned. ‘Bit big for caterpillars, don’t you think?’

  Ben didn’t see what she was grinning about: he didn’t think this was funny. Besides, he had just noticed something else:

  ‘This one’s got shoes.’

  It was true. In the second row up, a little higher than his eyeline, the toes of a large pair of battered-looking workman’s boots were protruding from the front of the lower end of one of the cocoons. And once Ben saw the first pair, he started seeing shoes all over the wall – brogues, trainers, all sorts. He even spotted a section of smaller cocoons, high up, all sporting footwear similar to his own school shoes.

  Ben took a step back. The bad feeling he’d had since they’d entered the theatre was intensifying.

  ‘They’ve got people inside,’ he murmured, feeling a sickly stirring in his stomach.

  ‘Guys?’ called Lauren suddenly. ‘Guys!’

  Exchanging a startled look, the three of them went back to rejoin her.

  ‘There’s something in here with us,’ hissed Lauren in a panicky whisper. She pointed at the empty auditorium. ‘Out there.’

  Everyone squinted into the darkness and held their breath.

  ‘There’s nothing,’ said Jasmine.

  Clunk.

  ‘There!’ said Lauren.

  ‘I think one of the seats just moved,’ Ben whispered.

  They were the kind that flip up when no one is sitting on them.

  CLUNK, clunk.

  Ben saw it that time: the second, softer clunk was an upholstered seat bouncing against its back. Something was under the seats. And it was getting closer.

  ‘Is it the crawlers again?’ asked Lauren.

  ‘Can’t be,’ said Ben. ‘They’re too small.’

  ‘Well, let’s not wait here for it to attack us, whatever it is,’ said Jasmine. Then she gasped and froze, her eyes wide.

  As they’d all turned right to leave the stage, the light from Lauren’s phone had illuminated a hideous sight.

  Ben had been wrong.

  This crawler was bigger than any they’d seen. Caught in the light just as it had been sneaking up on them from the side, it reared on two of its metre-long legs; extending three more outward into the air around itself in a wide gesture of defiance it held itself there, poised, pale and quivering.

  On its underside, instead of stingers there was a bizarre kind of three-sided beak: this opened like a flower, revealing a red mouth lined with white, incurving hooks and glittering with running slime. As Jasmine stood staring at the creature, transfixed with shock, Ben grabbed her, pulling her back. It was lucky he did, because the thing’s beak or whatever it was suddenly jabbed a full metre straight out of its body and snatched at the space where she’d been standing with a snap.

  ‘Go! Go! Get out! Everyone! Now!’ gibbered Ben, finally regaining the power of speech. Samantha and Lauren were already on their way so, yanking on Jasmine’s arm to send her off ahead of him, he ran.

  Wham. WHAM! Two more of the giant crawlers dropped onto the stage from the lighting rigs above. Ben heard seats being flipped all over the theatre: as he charged up the stairs to the exit he glanced back and saw a converging ripple in the auditorium as even more of them gave chase.

  ‘Run! Run! RUN!’ he yelled, whether to the girls or himself he wasn’t sure. Nobody needed further prompting. The theatre doors banged back on their hinges and swung shut, but no one even thought of trying to seal or block them this time, they just kept running – back up the stairs, back to the foyer’s upper level.

  Ben ran into the choking gas at full pelt, careless of the battle still raging by the main entrance. The girls were ahead, Jasmine nearest: when she suddenly stopped Ben ran straight into her, his flailing arms connecting with two other bodies as he did so.

  ‘Sorry!’ he spluttered. ‘Sorry!’

  ‘Come on!’ yelled Samantha, frantically punching at the wall. ‘Come on, come on, come on!’

  Magically, to Ben’s astonishment, sliding doors parted in the fog. A downward-pointing arrow winked on. Lights beckoned from inside the elevator cubicle. Ben and the three girls piled in.

  ‘Doors closing,’ the lift announced in its female voice. ‘Lift going down.’

  11:38 PM.

  I squirmed in my pit. Twenty-two minutes remained until Steadman’s bombs were due to detonate. I confess, I was anxious.

  I needed only to keep intruders out of the Barbican for just a little longer. But it was fully armed, fully trained soldiers who were being sent against me now.

  I had been careful to choose and retain the strongest of my subjects, keeping them from the attentions of my drones. Even so, my defensive forces were down to half what they had been. The subjects who remained were loyal of course, and touchingly careless of their own safety in their desire to serve me. There were, however, few trained fighters among them, and most were unarmed.

  It was fortunate, therefore, that my newest subjects were soldiers themselves.

  In the lull after beating back the latest incursion, two of these suited men broke away from the pack. Bringing their guns with them they quickly climbed the stairs and – with no direct prompting from me – posted themselves on the balcony. While my main force returned to their positions once more to prepare for the next wave of attack, I watched through the two soldiers’ eyes as they took aim, covering the foyer entrance.

  Their positioning was perfect. The gas was clearing: they had a commanding view. Now any armed intruder who proved too troublesome could – to use a vivid term I’d just gleaned from the two soldiers’ minds – be ‘slotted’ from cover.

  I had snipers. I adore it when my subjects use their own initiative.

  In the pit I settled back as comfortably as I could. The cocoons were protected and soon they would hatch. I had only to wait for my young human protégée to come for me.

  Twenty-one minutes, now.

  11:39 PM.

  ‘You saved us, babes!’ said Lauren to Samantha, eyes shining.

  ‘How?’ asked Jasmine. ‘How did you know where to go in the fog?’

  ‘You’re not the only one with ideas around here,’ Samantha told her.

  ‘Let’s hope yours are better than mine,’ said Ben with feeling. ‘The theatre was a bad suggestion. Sorry, everybody.’

  ‘What were those things?’ Samantha asked.

  ‘Which things?’ Ben asked back. ‘The big crawlers or the cocoon-things?’ Realizing how stupid he sounded, he scowled and banged his fist against the cubicle’s metal wall. ‘I just wish we could find out what’s going on!’

  ‘Those cocoons,’ said Samantha quietly. ‘You’re sure they’ve got people inside?’

  ‘You saw the shoes,’ said Jasmine. ‘Men. Women. Schoolkids.’ She paused. ‘Maybe that’s why, apart from Hugo and Lisa, we haven’t seen any kids with crawlers on them, just adults. Maybe all the other kids are in there.’ She shivered.

  ‘But what’re they doing, all wrapped up like that?’ asked Samantha. ‘What’s going to happen to them?’

  ‘Maybe they’re dead,’ said Ben. ‘Or . . . maybe something worse.’

  ‘Wh-what are you talking about?’ asked Lauren, quailing.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Jasmine firmly.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well,’ she added as brightly as she could, ‘at least now we’re in this lift we can try some different floors. Where are we going first?’

  ‘I thought we’d start at the bottom,’ said Samantha.

  ‘Sounds appropriate,’ said Ben. ‘We’re pretty much at rock bottom ourselves, right? I mean, it’s not like things could get much worse.’

  ‘Stop it, Ben!’ said Jasmine, annoyed. ‘Of course things could be worse. W
e’re still free, aren’t we? We haven’t been caught yet. We’re doing all right!’

  Ben had known what he was saying was unhelpful even as he’d said it. Chastened by Jasmine’s refusal to give in to the bleakness of their situation, he looked at his feet.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, again.

  Maybe Josh would have handled all this better, he thought. Josh almost never seemed down or discouraged; that was one of the things Ben found most annoying about him. How were Josh and Robert doing anyway? he wondered. Was Lisa was still unconscious? But then Ben noticed that the lift was slowing to a halt.

  ‘OK,’ said Jasmine. ‘Get ready on the buttons. If anything bad happens we need to be able to shut the doors and get out of here as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Jasmine,’ said Samantha. ‘I had worked that out for myself, you know.’

  The doors slid open.

  There was no forest of arms reaching in to grab them. There was no choking smoke, no gunfire and no crawlers, big or small – or none they could see. Instead, the room that the doors had opened to reveal was . . . empty.

  Ben, Jasmine, Samantha and Lauren just stood there looking out. The room was silent, a silence Ben didn’t want to break, and for once even Samantha and Lauren seemed to share the feeling.

  To the immediate right of the lift doors was a wall that was covered in mirrors. The Barbican’s usual bare concrete loomed from the ceiling, and the same ‘blue worms trodden into grey mud’ carpet stretched off for some ten metres to the left before turning right round a corner: the room was a sort of L-shape. It was brightly lit and clean. Of what was going on in the rest of the building it bore no signs whatsoever. It was just an empty room.

  The lift’s female voice was the first to speak: ‘Doors closing,’ it said. The panels began to slide shut – but they stopped on Samantha’s foot, and retreated.

  ‘Looks clear out there,’ she said. ‘Who wants to come and check it out?’

  ‘I’ll come!’ said Lauren, with hysterical enthusiasm.

  ‘At least one of us should stay by the lift,’ said Jasmine. ‘It looks all right here, but we might need to make a quick getaway.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Samantha. She and Lauren set off.

  ‘Be careful!’ said Jasmine, but they were already around the corner and out of sight. She sucked her teeth. ‘Honestly. Those two . . .’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  Lauren’s sudden shout froze Ben’s blood.

  ‘What?’ Jasmine yelled back. ‘Lauren, what is it? What have you found?’

  ‘They have a girls’ toilet down here!’ was Lauren’s delighted reply. ‘Oh, thank God. I was going to wet myself!’

  Ben and Jasmine stared at each other. Ben smirked; Jasmine’s lower lip trembled. Then they both cracked up.

  It could have been shock – the unrelenting horror of the evening finally overcoming them both. It could have been the contrast between the basic humanity of Lauren’s reaction and the dreadful things they’d witnessed. Or it could just have been the fact that they needed a laugh: Ben didn’t know and didn’t care. He and Jasmine giggled until they were breathless.

  ‘I’ll stay,’ said Ben chivalrously, once he’d got himself together.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jasmine, smiling back at him.

  When Ben was alone in the lift he sat down on the floor with his back to the edge of the sliding door. Every ten seconds for the next few minutes the hydraulics would nudge him gently.

  ‘Please do not obstruct the doors,’ the lift’s voice commanded. ‘Please do not obstruct the doors.’

  Ben kept watching the corner even after Jasmine had gone around it. His sides and lungs ached – from laughter or gas or both – but his heart felt like it was glowing.

  Jasmine was beautiful, she was clever, she was brave and cool in a crisis, and now Ben knew that she could laugh about things: Jasmine was awesome. He had felt it when he’d first locked eyes with her. OK, having an ice cream land on his head wasn’t the best introduction, and he’d really thought he’d screwed things up that time she’d called him smug. But there was a connection between them – wasn’t there?

  Ben certainly hoped there was but, nerve-rackingly, he couldn’t be sure. Ben was usually fairly confident around girls – a natural by-product of growing up with two bossy older sisters. But whenever he was close to Jasmine and they weren’t running for their lives, that confidence seemed to desert him.

  At any rate, Samantha’s warnings earlier about Jasmine being a traitor now seemed like a sick joke or bad dream. There was no doubt in Ben’s mind: if they ever got out of this, he was definitely going to try to get to know Jasmine better.

  If they got out of this, his brain whispered back to him.

  Ben’s smile faded.

  I like him, thought Jasmine. Sure, Ben had faults. He could be cocky. He could be gloomy. He was a little aloof, detached from things – which probably made him seem a bit cold and self-possessed sometimes. But that, Jasmine told herself, sounds quite a lot like someone else we know – right? In fact she and Ben seemed to have quite a lot in common: not just because they were outsiders in their schools, but in the way they acted, the way they thought. He was brave, he was quick on the uptake, and he was cute. She wondered how he felt about her . . .

  Jasmine was round the corner now. The sight of stairs leading up to the right brought her up short: she suddenly realized that this was the bottom flight of the main stairs, the ones they’d been on earlier before the adults had chased them out at the balcony level. She bit her lip. She hoped that those people (the ones who weren’t cocooned, she reminded herself, shuddering) were all up there in the foyer, still fighting. If any of them happened to come thundering down those steps, she didn’t fancy her and Lauren’s and Samantha’s chances of getting back to Ben and the lift.

  Not far from the bottom of the stairs were three doors. To Jasmine’s left was one marked CINEMA. To her right was the entrance to the Ladies, marked by another illuminated sign over the door. Ahead, the third door was marked (of all things) THE PIT.

  Wow, ominous much? Jasmine thought. Suppressing a small shudder, she pressed on the heavy swing door to the lavatories, and went through . . .

  Into darkness. After the bright light outside Jasmine was so surprised that she forgot to hold the door open: when it swung shut behind her she was stranded. She’d just begun to grope blindly for the door handle when the overhead strip lights flickered on, then off again.

  Jasmine froze. In the flash of light, she’d seen that the room was long and narrow, with cubicles to the left and a row of basins on the right. In front of the basins, arms crossed, stood Lauren and Samantha – waiting for her.

  ‘You startled me,’ said Jasmine, with an easiness in her voice that she didn’t remotely feel. The lights flicked on, then off again. The other girls hadn’t moved. ‘What’s up with the lights?’

  ‘You took your time,’ said Samantha.

  ‘Yeah!’ sneered Lauren, taking what she obviously saw as her cue. ‘Wanted to be alone with your lover boy?’

  Jasmine did not reply. The way the lights kept flickering on and off was very disorienting. Sometimes they would stay on for one or two seconds at a time, sometimes less. With the darkness and the retina-flashes they left behind it was as if the whole room was strobing. Otherwise though, oddly, the scene was familiar.

  It felt a lot like Jasmine’s school. At break times the toilets were where Samantha held court, with Lauren as her loyal retainer. If it weren’t for the flickering lights – and everything else, of course – this could almost be a situation Jasmine encountered every school day. Weird, she thought.

  She deliberately walked past Lauren, ignoring her, and went into the nearest cubicle – without passing Samantha. There was something about the set of Samantha’s mouth and the way she was standing there that made Jasmine not want to get too close to her. Jasmine shut and locked the cubicle door.

  ‘What’s the deal with you and B
en, anyhow?’ Samantha asked, from outside.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Jasmine asked back, still trying to keep her voice light.

  ‘Don’t try to deny it!’ crowed Lauren. ‘You’ve been eyeing him up all night – don’t think we haven’t noticed!’

  ‘What’s it to you two, anyway?’ asked Jasmine mildly, frowning at the door.

  ‘We know you, Jasmine,’ said Samantha. ‘The way you’ve been acting, playing the leader – it’s not like you. Is it all for his benefit? Or is it something else?’

  ‘Samantha,’ asked Jasmine, opening the cubicle door, ‘are you still carrying on with that stuff about how I’m a traitor in the group? I mean, do you really believe that? Or are you just annoyed because you’re not the one in charge?’

  The lights had flicked off again – for a long while this time. Apart from the blue-green flashes on her retinas, Jasmine had asked her questions in the dark.

  ‘You’re right,’ she heard in reply. ‘Samantha’s not in charge. But then, neither are you.’ There was a rustling, skittering noise in the surrounding blackness. ‘I am.’

  ‘Babes?’ asked Samantha uncertainly. ‘What are you on about? Why’s your voice gone funny? What— Ow! What are you doing?’

  The lights flickered on again, and Jasmine saw that Lauren had now grabbed Samantha by her arms, high up, near her shoulders. The two girls stood like that, face to face.

  ‘Lauren hates you, you know,’ said Lauren’s mouth – but the voice that came out of it was not Lauren’s. It was unfamiliar – deeper, older. ‘She only pretended to look up to you because she needed your protection.’

  ‘Wh-what?’ said Samantha.

  ‘Did she never tell you about the note?’ Lauren’s mouth smiled. ‘I thought not. At Lauren’s previous school all the children in her class signed a little message: We all hate you, it said. A small thing, but Lauren never got over it. Believing she wasn’t strong enough by herself, when she started at your school she attached herself to you, Samantha. But then, tonight, just after eight o’clock, I gave Lauren something better.’