Crawlers (19 page)

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 Ben, 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.'

‘Jasmine!' yelled Samantha, starting to struggle, but the grip that held her was inescapable. One finger at a time, a crawler came into view over her shoulder. ‘
Help me!
'

The creature positioned itself on Samantha's neck, then struck. Lauren's hands released their grip. As Samantha dropped to the floor like a rag doll the lights flicked off again.

Until this moment Jasmine had stood rooted to the spot, barely believing what she was hearing and seeing. Now, at last, she launched herself out of the cubicle and lunged for the door, flailing blindly for its handle in the darkness. Of course she was too late.

‘No, Jasmine,' she heard. ‘I've something special planned for you.'

She felt a hand on the back of her neck.

Then, when Jasmine understood what it really was, she screamed.

Ben was already up off the floor and running.

‘Ben!' he heard. ‘Help! Quick!
Ben!
'

The lift doors closed behind him but he didn't even notice. His eyes were only on the girl who had just staggered into view.

‘Lauren?' he asked. ‘What is it? What's the problem? What's going on in there?'

‘It's
Jasmine
,' Lauren wailed. ‘She . . . changed. Then crawlers came out of the ceiling, and they got Samantha, and . . .' she choked and fell against him heavily. ‘Oh,
Ben
!'

‘Take it easy,' said Ben, putting his arms around her awkwardly. ‘Um, what are you saying? Tell me again slowly.'

‘It was true, Ben!' said Lauren, staring into his eyes. ‘Samantha was right: there
was
a traitor. She was bitten right at the beginning. She's had a crawler on her the whole time: Ben, it was
Jasmine
!'

‘
What?
' asked Ben, horrified, looking past Lauren at the door to the Ladies. ‘Really?'

‘No,' said Lauren, in a deeper voice. She produced the fresh crawler she'd been holding at her side and put it on the back of Ben's neck. ‘Not really.'

Ben felt its bite, like two hot needles being shoved under the base of his skull. He went rigid, helpless.

‘I had thought that tricking you into mistrusting Jasmine
would be harder, Ben,' said Lauren's mouth, making a
moue
of disappointment. ‘Perhaps the two of you aren't becoming as fond as you seem.'

‘I . . .' Ben croaked, staring up at the camera on the ceiling.

Then everything went black.

Jasmine returned to consciousness in darkness, but the first

thing she noticed was that she was standing up.

OK
, she thought,
that's kind of odd
.

Her eyes felt dry, so she blinked – or rather her brain sent the message to her eyelids, but nothing happened. The same thing occurred when she tried to lift her hands to rub her eyes: the hands remained at her sides without even so much as moving a finger. She tried to open her mouth – even to twitch her tongue: nothing. Jasmine was just standing there, like a mannequin waiting to be positioned.

Her body was no longer her own. She began to panic.

The lights flickered on overhead, revealing Lauren's face, just centimetres from hers.

‘Yes,' said Lauren – or rather what was controlling her. ‘This is exactly why I never allow my subjects as much awareness as this. It's too distressing for them. But you, Jasmine, you're not like the others, are you?'

They were in the toilets, but Jasmine didn't care about her surroundings. Inside, she was screaming. She was utterly helpless. She still had sensations – hunger, fatigue, a persistent itch at the sides and back of her neck – but her mind was only
receiving
these signals. She was incapable of sending anything back. Her body was a prison. Jasmine was locked inside her head, every bit as securely as if she'd been locked in a cage.

‘Are you as strong and clever as I'm hoping, Jasmine?' said Lauren's mouth. It smiled. ‘This is where we find out. Let me explain . . .'

Lauren turned, untucking and lifting the back of her grimy white school uniform shirt to expose the clinging creature that lay nestled at the base of her spine.

With a mental spasm of revulsion, Jasmine realized why her neck itched so much.

‘That's right. My hand is upon you. So now you, like this one' – Lauren's hand gestured at herself – ‘are almost completely under my control. Where it becomes interesting, of course, is the “almost”.'

Lauren's face loomed in Jasmine's vision. Lauren's eyes, and what looked out of them, stared into Jasmine's.

‘You are resisting,' the voice stated. ‘I would expect no less from you. If you were like the others – if there was a part of you that
wanted
to give up – then I would not be so
interested in you. You see, I've been watching you over the course of the evening. You have intrigued me, Jasmine.'

The voice was deeper than Lauren's, slightly husky, with an easy, velvet musicality to it. But Jasmine was barely listening. Her mind battered against its limits like a prisoner hurling herself against the bars, screaming, crying, until she was dizzy with pain. Of course, it all happened in silence. Any outward sign of her struggle was impossible.