Crawlers (23 page)

I set off after her.

Five minutes. It was going to be close.

Three minutes after passing through the door to the Pit Theatre, Ben, Robert and Josh were standing in an office. Ben was blinking, and now feeling unsure how much more weirdness he could take.

The office was built into the wall of a
secret underground chamber
. He and Robert and Josh had just discovered this chamber at the bottom of a tunnel that led down from the theatre's backstage area. And as well as the office's extraordinary location, there were other weird things about it, too. The room was dominated by a massive desk, the work surface of which was a large panel of sheer black glass. The glass worked as a flat screen. Like a flashier version of the monitor room, hundreds of camera feeds from all over the Barbican – and beyond – were displayed in a grid across the desktop. The walls of the office were covered in expensively framed photographs, and one man was present in all of them. Ben didn't recognize the man but he recognized some of the people with whom he was shown shaking hands: he counted
two prime ministers, several presidents and even – in one – a pope.

‘Who
is
this guy?' Ben asked, with feeling.

‘That's Lionel Steadman,' said Josh. ‘He's Alderman-in-Chief of the Corporation of London. An extremely powerful and influential man.'

‘And how do
you
know who he is?' Ben asked.

‘Didn't I tell you?' said Josh airily. ‘My dad works for the Corporation. Strange, isn't it? I wonder what Mr Steadman's doing with an office down
here
of all places . . . What?' he added, when he noticed the way Ben was still looking at him.

Ben didn't answer.

‘No,' said Josh firmly, shaking his head for extra emphasis. ‘You don't think . . .? No! The Corporation couldn't
possibly
be responsible!' He started blinking rapidly. ‘My . . . my
dad
works for them!'

‘Um, guys?' Robert interrupted, pointing at one corner of Mr Steadman's desk. ‘I think you should take a look at this.'

The area of screen/desk Robert was indicating showed a digital countdown, with (when Ben first saw it) four minutes and thirty-eight seconds left to run.

TIME REMAINING UNTIL BARBICAN'S TOTAL DESTRUCTION, said the title above it, helpfully.

Josh pointed and gulped. ‘Th-that doesn't actually mean what it
says
it does. Does it?'

The boys stared at the countdown. Then they stared at each other.

The silence was broken by a sudden thump on the reinforced glass of the office's front wall. Ben jumped. Then he gaped.

‘Jasmine?' he asked.

She was standing outside the office, panting slightly, her hands pressed against the glass, peering in. Ben ran round the desk, through the office door, and out into the pit chamber to meet her . . .

But Jasmine recoiled from him. For a long moment she stayed in a half crouch, ready to run again, her eyes wide, assessing him.

Ben froze, feeling sick. ‘It's me,' he said sadly. ‘Jasmine, I—'

Then she did something else he found totally unexpected. She lunged, grabbed him, wrapped her arms around him – and kissed him on the lips!

Ben was so astonished that he almost didn't know what to do. Feeling awkward, foolish, physically sore, but at the same time utterly delighted, he kissed Jasmine right back.

After only a second or two she pulled away. ‘Ben!' she said, pressing her face to his chest. ‘Oh God, Ben!'

Then . . .

Raaaaaaaasp
.

Jasmine blinked, took a step back, but kept one hand on Ben's chest – as if she needed to be certain he was still really there.

‘We need to get out of here,' she said.

‘Um, absolutely,' said Ben, wrenching his mind back to thinking about the countdown.

‘No,
seriously
,' said Jasmine. ‘We need to start running. Right now.'

‘Are you OK, Jasmine?' asked Robert, emerging from the office with Josh.

‘No,' said Jasmine again. ‘I am very, very far from OK. I've seen what's behind all this. I've seen what we're up against. And she's coming.'

RAAAAAAASP
.

‘Jasmine?' said another voice. ‘
I see you!
'

Ben stared past Jasmine, past the empty pit, to the giant steel door on the other side of the chamber. Lauren was there. She was smiling – so widely that the pit chamber lights picked out the spittle strings glinting between her open jaws. And behind her, forcing her bulk back through the door into the chamber, was the Queen.

Ben knew her straight away. He had never seen the Queen but the aura she gave off was unmistakable: he recognized her presence at the back of his mind, remembered the dark and
abject love he'd felt for her. The contrast between that and Jasmine's kiss a moment ago made him dizzy with revulsion.

‘Stay where you are, all of you!' shouted the voice from Lauren's mouth.

Ben swore. Robert gulped. Josh's mouth fell open. Then they all took Jasmine's advice, and ran.

All four sprinted out of the other vault door and up the tunnel, back the way they'd come. To Ben it felt like he'd been running all night. He hurt all over. He was tired, he was hungry and he was scared. As he laboured up the steep concrete tube that led back up to the Pit Theatre he wondered how much running he had left in him.
When is it going to end?
he asked himself.

The answer came quicker than he expected. Jasmine reached the Pit Theatre's doors first, just ahead of the boys. She pulled the doors open: Ben saw past her, and realized they had already run as far as they could.

The room outside the theatre – the empty space with the doors to the toilets, the stairs, the lifts – had vanished. The concrete walls, the patterned carpet, even the ceiling: all had been smothered under a tumult of tiny, pale bodies.

Mr Steadman's cocoon had not been the only one to hatch, Jasmine saw: so, apparently, had all the ones in the Main Theatre. The newborn crawlers – millions of them by the look
of it – had made their way down here, presumably intending to use the same escape route as the Queen.

Jasmine and the boys were cut off.

At least a dozen of the giant-size crawlers strode across the surrounding mass. Noticing Jasmine, four of them reared up, beaklike mouth-parts open and poised to snap. The nearest was barely half a metre away: the mass of creatures had reached the doors almost at the same time Jasmine had.

She flung the doors shut uselessly and backed away.

‘Don't tell me,' said Josh with a humourless grin. ‘We're trapped again, aren't we? Well that's brilliant. That's just brilliant. What are we going to do now? That . . . thing behind us, those things out there, and this time – oh, yeah –
the building's about to explode
!' He turned on Robert. ‘What did you make me come down here for? Why didn't you just leave me alone? At least in the security room I wouldn't have known what was coming!'

‘It's true,' said Ben to Jasmine. ‘We found a timer in that office – some sort of countdown. It said that in just a few minutes the whole building's going to blow up.'

‘The Queen said this place was no longer safe,' Jasmine murmured, almost to herself. She looked at her feet.

All night she had hidden her fear. All night she had stifled the urge to bury her head and start screaming. She had held
herself together – always analysing, always working out what to do next, and whenever everyone had looked to her, which they had, almost constantly, she had always come up with answers. Even when she'd been alone, she had
still
come up with an answer to escape the Queen's clutches. But after finding Ben again – after kissing him and feeling so glad to be with him, to be alive – knowing now that they stood no chance . . . it was too much.

Jasmine had no more answers.

‘That's it, then,' she said, nodding dully. ‘We're done. Game over.'

Ben looked at Jasmine – her downcast eyes, the slump in her shoulders. For the four hours since everything had started Jasmine had been a pillar of strength – keeping her head in the midst of horror, chivvying the rest of the group – not least himself – into action instead of despair. Now, at last, it had happened: Jasmine had given up.

It twisted Ben's heart to see her like this. He wanted to say something: he wanted to come up with a brilliant plan that would get them all out of there, something that would make Jasmine smile at him again. But though he racked his brains, all he could think of was zombie films.

His love of horror films and games had helped keep him sane all night. Their logic, the way that characters in them reacted,
had given him clues about what to do. Now, all they told him was that the situation was hopeless.

The classic zombie movies all had unhappy endings. There was always a point where all the characters' efforts failed: the defences cracked, the horde broke through, all was lost. Ben had loved that about them. It seemed more truthful to him, more satisfying, than any superficial and lame attempt to impose a ‘happy ever after'. So now, at what felt like the same point in his own story, Ben had nothing to say.

‘Weapons,' said Robert.

‘What?' said Jasmine.

‘We need
weapons
,' Robert repeated.

Ben, and everyone else, stared at him.

‘We need to find some way we can fight,' said Robert. ‘Let's face it, it's either that or we just let them get us. And I want to do something. I don't care much what. Just as long as I know we
tried
.'

Josh snorted. ‘That's it. Now I know you've gone mental. How do you think you're going to fight with your arm broken?'

‘I don't know, Josh,' said Robert, gritting his teeth. ‘But I'm open to suggestions.'

For another whole second Ben gaped at Robert. He would never underestimate him again. He closed his mouth.

‘Robert's right,' he said, nodding at him coolly – or trying to. ‘Let's look around. There's got to be some way to fight back.'

‘Like what?' asked Jasmine.

BLAM!
The theatre doors sprang back on their hinges.

‘I don't know!' said Ben, his pretence at outward calm evaporating under a blowtorch of panic. ‘Something! Anything!'

He turned and started hunting.

The Pit Theatre's backstage area didn't look promising. In fact it looked worse than the broom cupboard had been. Ben swore. It was so unfair!

If this had been a game, a first person shooter, there would have been weapons. The game's designers, knowing that a final ‘boss' fight was coming up, would have left useful things strewn around the place – guns, ammo, extra health, stuff like that. But here, there were no grenades or rocket launchers. There weren't even any medical kits to magically restore his battered body to capacity. There was just him, and Jasmine, and Robert, and Josh . . .

And, he noticed, some scaffolding.

‘There,' he said, pointing. ‘What's that?'

Jasmine looked and saw a stack of painted wooden boards. She'd seen them before when she'd first come through here. ‘What, the scenery?' she asked.

‘No, these,' said Ben, moving towards the pile of steel poles that had been laid out in readiness for their job of
supporting
the scenery. He grabbed one of the short ones from the top of the pile and hefted it like a club.

The pole was about a metre long and slightly rusted – hollow, but heavy. Near the opposite end to where Ben was holding it a clamp was still attached, making it heavier still and very unwieldy, but if he could get in a couple of good swings with it maybe he could do some damage. He looked at Jasmine.

But she wasn't looking at him.

Jasmine gave the pile a kick, dislodging the smaller poles stacked on top: they tumbled all over the floor with an unmusical clanking sound – attracting the attention of Robert, who'd been fiddling vainly with a fire extinguisher he'd found attached to a nearby wall. He gave up, and came over to see what the noise was about.

At the bottom of the pile were half a dozen scaffolding poles that were much longer than the others. The longest was perhaps three metres.

‘Ben,' said Jasmine, ‘I think you've found it.'

Ben frowned, still grasping his makeshift club. ‘I have?'

‘Drop that,' said Jasmine, kneeling. She didn't smile, but a hard glint had entered her eyes. ‘Josh? Robert? We need to work together now. This is going to take all of us . . .'

RAAAAASP
. The sound of my body reverberated up the tunnel. The snort and wheeze of my breath had become a catarrhal gasping as I heaved myself after my prey. I am not accustomed to moving at speed. Nor to doing things for myself.

‘You mean nothing to me, Jasmine,' I lied, through Lauren's mouth. ‘Soon I will have this whole world from which to choose a companion. But I promise you, when my hand is upon you again, you will love me –
for the rest of your short but painful little life!
'

I stopped, breathing hard. At the top of the tunnel, just inside the entrance, stood a figure.

‘Jasmine?' I asked, straining Lauren's eyes. ‘Is that you?'

The figure didn't move.

‘So . . . you came back,' I said. ‘Changed your mind, have you?' I shaped Lauren's mouth into a sneer. ‘What if it's
too late
, Jasmine? What if I'm not interested in you any more? What's a last-minute change of heart going to be worth
then
? Hmmm?'

The figure at the top of the tunnel didn't answer.

My own vocal organs were good for one thing: I laughed, making Lauren laugh with me – the human girl's cackling treble a counterpoint to the boom of my bass.

‘I am jesting with you, Jasmine,' I said. ‘Of course you can
still be my companion.' I held out Lauren's arms. ‘I forgive you.