Crawlers (15 page)

Ben had heard almost the exact same words, he realized, from Jasmine herself. But he was distracted: over the last minute or so, while Samantha had been speaking, Ben had begun to hear a strange sound. It was a sort of low groaning,
punctuated by moments of silence so regular that they seemed almost mechanical.

‘
AWWW-huh-huh-hurr
,' it went. Then again: ‘
AWWW-huh-huh-hurr.
'

The sound was getting louder as it came closer. It was coming from the ceiling.

Lauren's face, when it appeared, was already a picture of misery. Tears and snot had left trails in the dirt on her cheeks. Her red eyes rolled in their sockets like those of a frightened horse. The journey through the ceiling cavity had obviously been rough on her. But then, as Samantha had warned, Lauren caught sight of her destination. Her lips puckered, trembled, then parted, releasing a high wail that set Ben's teeth on edge.

‘Quiet!' he barked, in a desperate stage whisper. ‘The adults are just down the passage!'

‘Babes,' Samantha commanded.

‘But it's smaller than the other place!' Lauren moaned. ‘I
can't
!'

‘Come on, babes. Come down with us, you'll be fine . . .' Samantha began to coax Lauren through the movements she would need to make to join them in the cupboard.

Cursing inwardly, Ben turned to face the door again.

‘Where's Jasmine?' asked Samantha, once Lauren had dropped heavily to the floor.

‘Right here,' said Jasmine – startling Ben again.

She slipped through the ceiling gap easily, landing neatly on both feet.

And now there were four of them in there.

Ben had two older sisters. Back when his family still went on holidays together he'd got used to spending long car journeys with them all crammed together on the back seat while their parents sat in relative comfort up front. Sharing a broom cupboard with three girls he barely knew, however, was a novel experience for him.

His brain started filling with unhelpful thoughts, mostly centred around the worry of touching someone inappropriately by accident – and exactly how mortifying that would be. Under the dust and grime his skin began to prickle. He found himself pressing his back against the door.

‘Well isn't this cosy?' said Samantha, grinning in his face. ‘Poor Jasmine and Ben,' she went on, looking from one to the other. ‘You'd probably be all right if it was just the two of you in here. In fact,' she added, ‘I think Ben here might even quite like it.'

Lauren stopped snivelling and cracked a smile. Ben flushed beetroot-red and found something to look at on the floor – not
that he could see much of it with everyone standing in there. He didn't know what Jasmine's expression was, and didn't dare look at her to find out.

‘Yeah,
whatever
, Samantha,' he heard Jasmine say. ‘If you don't mind, some of us are trying to concentrate on how to get us out of here. Now: I counted three rooms that we passed on the way here. Is that right?'

‘Yeah,' said Ben gruffly. ‘That's right.'

‘Well, do you think we've got far enough along the passage to get around the guards?'

‘One way to find out,' said Samantha. Brushing against Ben's stomach with her arm, she reached past him for the doorknob.

‘No!
Wait!
'

To everyone's relief, Samantha hesitated.

‘We might only get one shot at this,' said Jasmine quickly, ‘so let's do it carefully. Ben, did you find anything in here that might help us?'

Ben pulled himself together. ‘I, um, didn't see anything that exactly jumped out at me,' he said. ‘There are some bits and pieces in the toolbox. Otherwise the closest thing we've got to a weapon in here is probably that mop.' He gestured bleakly towards the corner where it stood.

‘Then you should have that,' said Jasmine, twisting round with difficulty to reach it. Lauren was pressed up against her, but managed to pass it over.

Ben reached past Samantha, who was smiling again, and grasped the wooden shaft. It was reassuringly solid, and it did feel good in his hand, even if he didn't have much of an idea of what to do with it.

‘Our hero,' quipped Samantha, in a sarcastic breathy voice.

Ben scowled and said nothing.

‘Anyone want anything from the toolbox?' asked Jasmine. ‘Lauren, you can take this hammer. Me and Samantha'll go with these screwdrivers. Better than nothing.'

Lauren looked at the hammer in her hand, nonplussed, as if she'd never seen one before.

‘All right,' said Jasmine. ‘
Now
I guess we open the door.'

‘Hold on,' said Ben. ‘I've got to say it: what if we
haven't
gone far enough? I mean, to be honest, before you three got here I was kind of all set to come back and tell everyone this place was a dead end.'

‘You think we should go back?' asked Jasmine seriously.

‘Well . . . yeah,' said Ben. He shrugged. ‘Maybe. I don't know.'

Lauren's knuckles whitened on the black rubber of the hammer's grip. She sniffed again, but resolutely this time. ‘I ain't going back,' she said.

‘Me neither,' said Samantha, who had finally stopped grinning. ‘I've had enough of that room, whatever happens to us out here.'

‘Ben?' said Jasmine.

He blinked. ‘All right,' he said.

‘All right,' echoed Jasmine with a quick, tight smile. ‘We take our chances. Everyone ready?'

No one replied.

Ben turned to face the door for the last time. He put his hand on the doorknob, visions of Hugo's last moments in the security room flashing through his mind. He took a deep breath, hefted his mop in his left hand, turned the knob gently, and pulled.

Directly outside the door, the passage was empty. He saw grey concrete walls and shiny, red, brick-shaped floor tiles that glittered faintly under the strip lights above.

Holding his breath, he peered out.

There they were – the sentries, standing frozen outside the security-room door, some twenty metres away. There were fewer of them than Ben had been expecting. They were turned inward around the door, still concentrating on that. They had their backs to him. And one of them was Hugo.

He was standing there like a statue, just like the others. Ben could see the crawler on the back of his neck.

Ben gulped. But his plan had worked. They had a chance.

‘What can you see?' hissed Samantha in his ear, making Ben almost jump out of his skin. Infuriated, he turned and
put his finger to his lips, but Samantha just raised her eyebrows and turned her palms up in a
Well?
gesture.

Before he spoke Ben glanced out into the passage again, taking a second to get the details straight in his head.

‘We could make it to the lifts,' he mouthed, still not daring to breathe. ‘But we obviously can't just press a button and then stand there waiting for one to arrive: the sentries would get us. I think we'll have to try for the stairs.'

‘What?' Samantha whispered back, cupping a hand around her ear.

‘I said,' Ben hissed, ‘I think we'll have to try for the stairs.'

The glass-sided stairwell was just a little further along the passage than the lifts, which were just a few metres away. The double doors that gave access to the stairs were that much closer to the sentries, but Ben figured that way lay their only chance. He supposed they would just have to tiptoe out, and hope they weren't heard. It was a desperate plan, but it was all he'd got.

‘Eh?' said Lauren. ‘I can't hear you. What did you say?'

‘Heaven's sake,' said Ben, losing patience. ‘I . . .' By chance, before repeating himself a second time he decided to risk a quick glance at the sentries.

It was lucky he did. They had just started to turn towards him.

‘Oh crap,' he said. ‘Run!'

Clutching his mop, Ben launched himself out of the door just as, with the same eerie synchronicity that characterized all their movements, the sentries spun round to face him.

Ben sprinted up the corridor, the soles of his school shoes slapping on the brick-shaped tiles, his heart pounding loud in his ears. He reached the double doors to the stairs just when the sentries opened their mouths and started screaming.

He skidded to a halt, frozen in his tracks as much by the sound as by the fact he'd reached his goal. The crowd by the security-room door had obviously thinned out at some point over the course of the evening: while there had been nearly thirty people visible on the monitors earlier, now there were ‘only' ten, plus Hugo. (
Where are all the others?
wondered a part of Ben's mind dazedly.) At any rate, the remaining group, a roughly even mix of men and women, certainly made a thoroughly bloodcurdling noise.

They just stood there at first, their voices rising like sirens until each of them found the highest, most piercing note they could reach, then they held it. Heads trembled. Chins wobbled. Staring eyes threatened to pop out of sockets. Hugo was right there screaming with them. Their hands lifted from their sides. Then, still screaming, they charged.

As he watched them come Ben's thoughts ran something like this:

He had to hold them off until Jasmine, Samantha and Lauren were through the doors. He had to do this because he had the mop. Ben was no martial artist, but if he held the stick crosswise, just above waist height, he might temporarily be able to stop the sentries from getting past him, giving the girls the crucial seconds they needed to catch up, get the doors open and get through. It wasn't the most sophisticated plan in the world: it was expediency, pure and simple, with no thought for anything beyond the next few moments. But, as before, it was all he had.

He grasped his mop in both hands and tensed his arms out in front of him. Then Hugo barrelled into him.

Ben's legs were braced for the first impact but he didn't stand a chance. As three, four, five adults joined forces with Hugo against the mop handle the soles of Ben's shoes lost their grip, and now he was staggering backwards.

Ben's vision was a mass of snarling mouths. Suddenly something grabbed at his back and waist and pulled him sideways. He swung round helplessly, struggling to keep his feet, and—

Crack!

The ends of the mop met the doorway to either side of him.

The last second or two had been so fast, Ben had lost track of what was going on. It seemed he was now standing just inside the double doors, still facing outwards. And the girls were behind him.

‘We need the stick!' someone yelled, right next to his ear. ‘
Push!
'

Ben felt hands shove at his back. He wasn't ready. He fell forward, his elbows bent and he met the hard wooden pole with his unprotected ribs. But he kept his footing, tensed his legs and shoved, adding his strength to that of whoever was pushing him. To his astonishment it actually worked. Taken by surprise, Hugo and the adults fell back for a moment, but it was enough. The pole twisted Ben's wrists, came free from the doorway, was snatched from his hands. Then, while Ben fell back, Jasmine and Lauren slammed the doors shut and Samantha jammed the pole through the handles.

Crunch.
The doors opened less than five centimetres, then stopped. For a moment Hugo's face smeared against the shatterproof glass, grimacing in frustration.

To Ben's amazement, the humble mop-stick had saved the day: it had held off the sentries and now it was barring the doors.

Hugo and the adults stood back, allowing the doors to swing fully closed again. Hugo's eyes locked onto Ben's, unblinking.

Ben's ribs were sore from where they'd made contact with
the pole. He stepped back and leaned against a railing to catch his breath. A big part of him didn't seem to want to take his eyes off Hugo, but he tore his gaze away to look at Jasmine, Lauren and Samantha. The girls must have already dropped the hammer and screwdrivers because now they were empty-handed, and breathing as hard as he was.

‘We . . . did it,' he managed, more in surprise than triumph.

‘Think . . . that'll hold them?' gasped Jasmine, pointing at the mop handle.

‘Sure,' answered Hugo from the other side of the glass. ‘For a while.'

As Ben and the three girls turned to stare at him again, Hugo smiled.

‘You still don't get it, do you?' he said. ‘We're not zombies. And nothing's “eating our brains”.' He made little quote marks with his fingers around his own words from earlier.

Ben felt his skin crawl.

Still smiling, Hugo said: ‘The Queen wants you to know she's impressed. But you won't get far. In fact you might as well give up right now.'

‘And if we don't,' said Samantha, ‘what are you going to do about it?'

Hugo's smile vanished. As one, he and the adults piled against the doors in a brutal shoulder-charge.
Crunch.
Black
metal door handles bit into dark wood. The sentries reared back for another assault; released from their pressure the mop turned, exposing white splinter-marks.

But Ben, Jasmine, Lauren and Samantha had not hung around to see. They were already running downstairs.

‘They made it!' said Robert, grinning delightedly at Josh.

The two boys were standing in the monitor room. After a lot of fiddling and tinkering with the console they had at last managed to find the view of the corridor again in time to witness the escape.

Robert was ecstatic. ‘They did it! They really did it!' he said. Then he noticed Josh's expression. ‘What?'

In answer, Josh just pointed numbly at another of the screens. This one was currently showing the Barbican foyer – and what was going on there.

‘Oh,' said Robert. ‘Oh,
no
. . .'

The stairs were encased in a sort of giant glass tube, ribbed with black metal struts and built into the side of the building. Through the glass, above the artificial pond and empty courtyard café outside, Ben could see a patch of open night sky.