Crawlers Read online

  She was going to get the best exam results – not just the best her school had learned to tolerate from its pupils but the best results it was possible to get. Then she was going to go to the best university, where she would study Earth Sciences. Jasmine would graduate with a top-class degree and soon after that she would realize her ultimate goal: she would become an environmentalist, using her skills and knowledge to change destructive behaviours of governments and industry all over the world.

  Jasmine knew what she wanted out of her life. But talking about things like that – even to Ms Gresham – just wasn’t what you did around Samantha and Lauren. So she kept looking out of the window, avoiding Ms Gresham’s eye.

  As she did so, however, Jasmine felt a small pang of guilt. Because if she didn’t answer, and Samantha and Lauren stayed silent, then the only person left was . . .

  ‘Lisa,’ said Ms Gresham, rounding on the fourth of the students she was taking to the theatre that night. ‘What do you want to be?’

  Through the curtain of lank, mouse-brown hair that she kept over her face at all times, Lisa Staunton darted her teacher a pleading glance. But Ms Gresham was implacable.

  ‘Come on, Lisa,’ she coaxed. ‘You can tell us.’

  ‘Yeah, Lisa,’ said Samantha. ‘We’re all friends here.’ Samantha’s voice was sincere. Only the smirk she gave Lauren when Ms Gresham wasn’t looking told the truth.

  Jasmine turned to watch.

  Lisa Staunton was a mystery to her. Ever since their first day at Swatham Lisa had slipped instantly into the role of school victim and underdog – and stayed there. Samantha and Lauren barely bothered to mock Lisa to her face any more. Instead, she had become a kind of Swatham catchphrase: if, say, an elbow of your school blazer was wearing through, you could say it had ‘gone a bit Lisa’ and everyone would know what you meant. Lisa’s much-mended clothes were the stuff of school legend, together with her spots, her overbite, her total lack of friends and a host of other attributes, real and imagined.

  But despite the fact that Lisa was treated so cruelly, Jasmine sometimes wondered if she didn’t secretly somehow like it that way. She did nothing to defend herself. Her default reaction to everything was simply to sit there, shoulders hunched, hair over her face, silent, passive. She was doing it now.

  ‘What were your ambitions when you were little?’ asked Ms Gresham. ‘What would you most love to do, Lisa? What are your dreams?’

  For another moment Lisa didn’t answer – just quivered slightly like a cornered animal. She blinked her watery eyes very rapidly several times, then, to everyone’s astonishment, said: ‘I used to want to be a ballerina.’

  The four girls and their teacher shared a short silence. Then Samantha and Lauren burst into hoots of laughter.

  ‘What’s so funny, you two?’ asked Ms Gresham, annoyed.

  Jasmine sighed. It was going to be a long evening.

  THE BARBICAN CENTRE.

  The main entrance on Silk Street.

  7:35 PM.

  THE LIGHTS OF the entranceway were dazzling after the darkness outside. Ben followed Mr Clissold and the maroon-jacketed backs of the other boys down a white-walled, fridge-bright passage. Automatic glass-panelled doors slid back and the Barbican opened around him.

  Ben looked up, surprised. At the time it was built the Barbican was probably supposed to look smart and futuristic. It didn’t any more: to Ben, it just looked weird. The proportions were boxy and lumpish, the lights low and gloomy. The carpet beneath his feet was an unappealing mud-grey with what looked like thousands of blue worms trampled into it for a pattern, and almost everything else he could see was made out of concrete, spattered with small embedded stones, giving the walls the texture of lumpy porridge. Beyond the black open counter that served as the Barbican’s box office the foyer splintered into a confusing array of walkways and stairs that led in contrary directions, like something out of an Escher print.

  The Barbican, thought Ben, looks like it was designed by a kid.

  ‘Hi!’ said a voice, interrupting his reverie. Ben looked down: a man had come out from behind the counter. He was dressed all in dark blue with an orange armband. He had an unfeasible gelled blond hairdo and an equally unfeasible smile: his eyes looked oddly glassy and blank.

  ‘I’m Jeremy,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the Barbican. This way, please.’

  ‘Jeremy’ led the group along a walkway, down two flights of stairs that were carpeted in the same horrible pattern, and finally held open some double doors off to one side of the foyer’s lower level.

  Suddenly Ben and his tutor group were in the stalls of the Main Theatre. The auditorium and its upper balconies were a good size and mostly full; the noise of over a thousand people chatting and settling into their seats swelled around Ben as he followed the group along to their row. He had been to big theatres before, so this didn’t faze him.

  Ben realized he was going to be sitting next to Robert. To his surprise, Robert was smiling at him.

  ‘Thanks, Ben,’ he murmured as Ben sat.

  ‘What for?’

  Robert’s smile faded a little, but he leaned closer to Ben. ‘For . . . you know, sticking up for me.’

  Mr Clissold had sat down on Robert’s left, in the middle of the group; Hugo and Josh were beyond him, almost certainly out of earshot, what with the surrounding noise of the rest of the audience. But Robert obviously felt he was taking a big risk in saying what he had. Ben figured he’d better say something back.

  He shrugged. He opened his mouth. He got as far as: ‘It was noth—’

  Then an ice cream landed on his head.

  The sensation was very cold and very sudden, and at first Ben was uncertain what had actually happened. As he groped in his sticky hair to find out, a chilly dribble of vanilla ran down the side of his neck. He looked up, and his eyes met those of a girl sitting above him, at the front of the circle.

  The girl was about his age, and she was gorgeous. Her skin was the colour of melting chocolate. Her large and beautiful dark brown eyes stared straight down into his. Her lips, even pursed in deep annoyance as they were, filled Ben’s mind with sudden and distracting thoughts of kisses. Ice cream on his head or no, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  The girl looked along her row. At the spot directly above where Ben had been sitting, something was happening.

  7:47 PM.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Ms Gresham. ‘Everyone outside.’

  ‘But, miss,’ said Samantha, blue eyes glinting, ‘you’ve got to admit it was a good shot.’

  ‘Right on his head!’ said Lauren. ‘Genius!’

  ‘Get . . .’ repeated Ms Gresham, in a tight voice Jasmine had never heard her use before, ‘out. All of you. Now.’

  Samantha touched her bottle-blonde mane above her right ear and smiled. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘We didn’t want to see your stupid play anyway.’ She turned to Lauren. ‘Come on, babes, we’re going.’

  Grinning, Lauren followed her mistress. Lisa got up and meekly went after them.

  Jasmine scowled.

  She made it out of the row of muttering, disapproving theatre-goers just as the lights were going down. The performance was about to start – and, in the passageway beyond the doors, so was the one from Ms Gresham. She wasn’t the first teacher Samantha had pushed to the limit. Here we go again, Jasmine thought.

  ‘I am so disappointed in you girls,’ Ms Gresham said as the doors closed behind her. ‘You four were the only ones in the class whose parents even deigned to give their permission for you to come on this trip. The journey was a nightmare but we get here at last, I buy you all a treat to make the most of the occasion, and what happens? You have to go and ruin it.’ She looked around the group. ‘I just don’t know what to do with you. Don’t you want to take something from your education? Don’t you want the chance to make something of yourselves? Because if not, I’m sorry to say I’m starting to wonder why I should bother with you.’

  Samantha let that hang
in the air for a moment, shrugged, then said, ‘Great. Don’t. See if we care.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Lauren as Samantha turned to receive the high five she already had waiting.

  Ms Gresham went very pale.

  Jasmine put her hand up. ‘Miss?’

  ‘Yes, Jasmine?’

  ‘Miss, are we going back in to watch the play?’

  ‘No, Jasmine,’ said Ms Gresham. ‘It seems I can’t take you girls anywhere without you making a nuisance of yourselves. So we’re going home.’

  Jasmine did not reply. It was as she’d expected.

  The play they’d been about to see was Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1. Unlike perhaps anyone else at her school, Jasmine had read it. The play was going to be one of the set texts for their exams at the end of the year. English literature wasn’t Jasmine’s best subject – in fact it was her weakest – but she needed a full set of first-class exam results to get her plans started and prove to her mother that she was serious. Seeing the play could really have helped, particularly since she’d never actually seen one performed professionally before.

  Jasmine had thought Ms Gresham was different, strong enough to stand up to Samantha – or at least to see past her and realize that not everyone at Swatham was the same. But no: once again it was ‘you girls’. In minutes now, Jasmine thought, they would be back on the bus, leaving another missed opportunity behind them.

  She was wrong.

  7:52 PM.

  There. Ben’s maroon school jacket was going to need a visit to the dry cleaner’s and he was giving off a strong whiff of vanilla, but at least he’d managed to get the worst of the goop out of his hair. He took his head out from under the hand-dryer and looked in the mirror.

  He was standing, alone, in a gents’ toilet on the Barbican foyer’s lower level – the nearest washing facilities he’d been able to find after his dripping and ignominious exit from the theatre. The yellow-shaded fluorescent strip lights buzzed overhead, flickering.

  Look at this place, Ben thought. Even the toilet walls were made of concrete – great panels of it, looming inwards, making the space seem narrow and claustrophobic. What with this and the impressions he’d had of the rest of the Barbican so far – the pulsating carpet, the empty corridors deadened into silence now the performance was underway – the whole situation was beginning to remind Ben of something. It took him a while to work out what, but when he did, he forgot about the ice cream and smiled.

  Games. The place reminded him of games: specifically, old-school first person shooters – the ones where you’re running down corridors and being attacked by monsters. That was what walking around the Barbican felt like. Ben’s grin widened as he let his imagination run with the idea.

  If this was a game, your classic survival horror type, the room he was standing in would have a monster in it. Something or someone would be lurking in the cubicles, would crash through the door or drop from the ceiling and try to eat his face, or—

  His grin froze. The washbasin mirror was wide: in the corner of the reflection in front of him he’d seen movement.

  Ben turned. He stared. He blinked. But he saw nothing.

  Idiot, he told himself. He turned, pushed open the heavy swing door and stepped out, his thoughts going back to the gorgeous girl in the theatre.

  Behind him, something moved again.

  7:54 PM.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Ms Gresham to the Barbican security man. ‘Hello?’

  The guard’s glassy stare swung and locked. ‘No way out,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Ms Gresham, ‘that’s what the man at the main entrance said too. But which way is the way out, please?’

  The security man didn’t move. He just stood there, arms folded, in front of the glass door. ‘No way out,’ he repeated dully.

  After a couple of false starts – the way wasn’t straight forward – Jasmine’s group had found a walkway down from the upper circle to the ground floor of the Barbican’s foyer. But as they did so, Jasmine had noticed something strange. The building’s staff, in their orange armbands, had gathered from all areas of the complex. None of them spoke. Their radios remained on their belts. But they spread out wordlessly around the foyer’s edges. Keys were inserted. Glass-panelled doors were locked shut. For good measure, the staff then stood in front of the doors, each one assuming the same position as the security guard: arms folded, glassy eyes staring emptily.

  One by one, Jasmine realized, all the exits were being blocked. For some reason it appeared that the Barbican’s staff wanted to keep everyone from leaving.

  What was going on?

  7:56 PM.

  ‘What the hell . . .?’ said Ben, aloud. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs on the lower level of the foyer. He’d been on his way back to the theatre when his attention had been caught by the nearest of the massive, grey, square concrete pillars that bestrode the room like giants’ legs.

  Halfway up each pillar an oval grille had been punched into the concrete. These metal-slatted vents stared out into the room like black, lidless eyes. And something was coming out of them.

  For a second Ben was reminded of a nature documentary he’d seen once about worker ants – columns of them, marching unstoppably over every obstacle. With a tingle he realized that what he was seeing was something similar.

  A long line of spider-like creatures was emerging from the foyer’s air-vents. The creatures were hairless, pale, rubbery-looking, and a bit bigger than Ben’s hand. Each one forced its way, wriggling legs first, through a hole in the grille, then followed its predecessor, crawling up towards the ceiling. Their movements were identical and the flow of them seemed endless. Gaping, Ben walked to the next pillar along, on the opposite side of the stairs, and saw another emerging line of creatures just like the first lot – just as many.

  ‘What . . .?’ he gibbered again. ‘What the hell . . .?’

  An alarm bell rang.

  ‘Attention, ladies and gentlemen,’ boomed a voice from loudspeakers all over the building. ‘This is an emergency. This evening’s performances are cancelled. The building is being evacuated. Please make your way to the upper level of the foyer.’

  Ben looked around the foyer’s still-empty lower level. The sudden alarm had made him jump: his heart was beating fast and a sick taste was climbing the back of his throat. For a moment he wasn’t sure what to do.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please make your way to the upper level of the foyer as quickly as possible. This is not a drill.’ The voice carried on, repeating its instructions again and again.

  The theatre doors slapped back on their hinges and the first people came through. Chatting loudly, a rapidly thickening snake of theatre-goers milled past Ben, doing what they were told and heading up the stairs. So far the crowd were all adults – ordinary men and women dressed in jackets and coats and cardigans. Some of them looked annoyed. Some looked disbelieving. Most looked confused and more than a little panicky. Ben didn’t want to have to explain what he was doing there and why he wasn’t moving, so he didn’t meet their eyes. Instead he looked up at the pillars again – but the strange creatures seemed to have gone. He was still searching for any sign of them when—

  ‘Freeman!’

  It was Josh, using Ben’s surname. Ben turned and saw that Mr Clissold and the tutor group were just coming out of the theatre. By now the crowd going up the stairs was forcing Ben to shrink back against the railing to avoid being swept along with them. He knew that it would probably have been a mistake to stay on his own, but as he watched Josh and the others make their way towards him, a part of him wished he hadn’t waited.

  ‘Right,’ said Mr Clissold as they reached him. ‘Now at least we’ve got everybody. Well then, until we find out what this is all about I suppose you’d better follow me.’

  The mass of jostling people pulled the group along. The pressure of the crowd was irresistible, the staircase narrowing and squeezing them on like toothpaste out of a tube.
/>   ‘Um, sir . . .?’ said Ben. Even if the crawling things hadn’t vanished it would have been hard to make anyone believe him, but he had to say something. ‘When I went to the loo, I saw something weird.’

  ‘Not now, Ben,’ said Mr Clissold.

  Hugo made a snorting noise in his nose. Josh just smirked – and perhaps, Ben reflected, that hadn’t been the best way to put it. Ignoring a sympathetic if nervous look from Robert, he gritted his teeth.

  Forward progress was getting slower. The upper level was rapidly becoming packed with bodies. The Main Theatre must have emptied completely by now, along with the Barbican’s concert hall, cinemas, and the rest of it. But there was nowhere for the crowd to go. Moments ago there had been silence and emptiness; now there were people everywhere, and they were getting anxious. Individual voices merged into the swelling crush as the crowd took on a life of its own, becoming something less than human. The noise was getting louder and the room was getting hotter.

  Ben looked up at the ceiling.

  8:03 PM.

  Jasmine hated crowds. It was partly her height: for her, being in a crowd usually meant getting a faceful of some stranger’s armpit. But worse even than that was the loss of control, the helplessness. Jasmine hated feeling powerless, hated it more than anything, but she felt it now: her arms were pressed to her sides; the room was so tightly packed that moving at all was an effort. As the people around her surged and shoved all she could do was sway with the rest and try to keep her feet.

  ‘It’s all right, girls,’ said Ms Gresham from beside her. ‘It’s all going to be all right.’