by Kevin Brooks
‘Top man, Len,’ Mason said, patting Lenny’s arm as he headed for the open door.
Lenny just nodded.
Mason stepped through the doorway and paused for a moment, looking around. A wide corridor stretched out in front of him, a pale light glowing at the far end. In the shadowy light I could make out a bare concrete floor, metal cupboards lined against the wall, and another corridor immediately to the right of the door.
‘Come on, then,’ Mason whispered, beckoning us to join him. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Inside the warehouse it was all breezeblock walls, plywood roofing, and plasterboard partitions. It looked to me as if someone had started converting the building into offices or a small business or something, but either they’d never got round to finishing it or they’d just done a really bad job.
The main corridor in front of us led to the front of the building, while the one to our right – which was much narrower, and unlit – headed along the rear wall at a right angle to the central corridor. There were doors along both corridors. All of them shut.
‘Which way do you want to go, Trav?’ Mason asked, keeping his voice low.
I looked to my right, then straight ahead.
‘Maybe we should split up,’ Evie suggested. ‘Two of us take one corridor, the other two take the other one.’
‘No,’ I whispered firmly. ‘We all stick together.’
‘But it’d be quicker—’
‘Splitting up is a bad idea,’ I said. ‘I mean, they always do it in thrillers and horror films, don’t they? And it never works out very well.’
‘That’s true,’ she agreed.
‘OK,’ I said, heading off towards the narrower corridor. ‘Let’s start with this one.’
‘Why this one?’ Evie asked, following along beside me.
‘I don’t know. I’ve just got a feeling about it . . .’
A few minutes later we were back where we’d started from. After checking out one room, and finding it empty, we’d then discovered that the corridor was a dead end. We hadn’t realised it before because it had been too dark to see, but the corridor was sealed off about twenty metres along by a breezeblock wall.
‘That’s the trouble with having a “feeling” about something,’ Evie said quietly to me as we trudged back the way we’d come. ‘It’s fine if it turns out to be right, but you look kind of stupid if it doesn’t.’
I looked at her.
She was grinning.
‘Thanks for pointing that out,’ I said.
‘You’re welcome.’
As we started searching again – moving cautiously along the central corridor, checking every room we came to, keeping our eyes and ears open all the time – I found myself wondering why we hadn’t come across any Omega men yet. Why hadn’t there been anyone guarding the back door? Even with all the mayhem going on outside – and I could hear that it was still going strong – why hadn’t they put someone on the back door, just in case? I mean, they were professionals – ex-army, ex-security services. They were supposed to know what they were doing, weren’t they? So how come the four of us had got in so easily? It was almost as if . . .
Shu up, Travis , I told myself. You’re over-thinking everything again. Worrying about this, fretting about that. Why don’t you take a leaf out of Lenny’s book and just get on with it?
‘Hey, Travis,’ I heard Mason say.
I looked over at him. He’d stopped beside a pair of swing doors on the right of the corridor. The doors had small plastic windows in them, and Mason was peering through one of the windows to see what was on the other side.
‘There’s another corridor through here,’ he said. ‘Do you want to take a look?’
We were about halfway along the main corridor now. All the rooms we’d checked out so far had either been empty or so stacked full of stuff you could barely get into them. One room had been piled to the roof with office furniture – desks, chairs, tables – another had been jam-packed with cardboard boxes full of files and papers and stationery. The rooms themselves were as badly built as the rest of the building – cheap fittings, bare flooring, wafer-thin plasterboard walls.
There’d been no sign of Bashir anywhere, no evidence to suggest that he’d ever been here at all.
‘Travis?’ Mason said. ‘What do you want to do?’
I looked back at him, suddenly feeling incredibly tired. I don’t know what to do, I felt like saying. I don’t know anything. I’m beginning to think that this whole idea was a big mistake.
And then, just to make things worse, Evie tugged at my shirt and said, ‘We’ve got company.’
I looked round at her. She was staring straight ahead, her eyes hard and cold. I followed her gaze and saw two suited figures standing together at the far end of the corridor. One of them was the gaunt-faced man, the other one was Goatee.
They weren’t moving, just standing there staring at us.
‘What do you reckon, Evie?’ Mason said. ‘Two of them, four of us . . . do you fancy our chances?’
‘Piece of cake,’ she replied, without taking her eyes off Goatee and Gaunt Face.
Then Goatee reached inside his jacket and pulled out a pistol, and a moment later Gaunt Face did the same.
‘Ah,’ Evie said calmly. ‘That evens things up a bit.’
The two men began walking towards us, holding their guns down at their sides.
‘Uh-oh,’ Mason said, looking back down the corridor. ‘Here comes another one.’
I turned round and saw the muscle-bound guy lumbering towards us from the other direction. He had a gun in his hand too. His eyes were even nastier-looking than I remembered.
‘Where the hell did he come from?’ I muttered.
‘Who cares?’ Mason said, shoving open one of the swing doors and ushering Lenny through. ‘Come on, quick,’ he said to Evie and me. ‘Come on, let’s go!’
Evie grabbed my hand and we ran for the doors.
49
The corridor on the other side of the swing doors had whitewashed walls and a white stone floor. Fluorescent strip lights hummed and flickered, and as we ran along the corridor, our distorted shadows circled weirdly around our feet. Everything was beginning to feel oddly unreal now, as if it wasn’t really happening, or it was happening to someone else. At the same time I was acutely aware that it was happening, it was real, and it was happening to me. I was running. I was scared. I could feel my heart hammering.
‘Which way, Travis?’ Mason called out. ‘You want to keep going or should we try one of these doors?’
I studied the corridor up ahead. We were approaching two doors – one on the right of the corridor, one on the left – both of them closed. The one on the right was marked STORES, the other one said OFFICE. Twenty metres further along the corridor was another pair of swing doors. There were no windows in these doors, so I couldn’t see what was behind them, but if the corridor continued on the other side, there was a chance it might lead us to another exit. And that’s all I was thinking about now. Finding an exit, getting us all out in one piece. That’s all I cared about.
‘Keep going!’ I called out. ‘Head for the swing doors!’
The words were barely out of my mouth when the swing doors crashed open and Shaved Head came striding through with a pistol in his hand. We all stopped suddenly at the sight of him, and then almost immediately we all looked round as the swing doors behind us flapped open and Goatee and Gaunt Face appeared at the other end of the corridor.
Mason cursed.
‘This way!’ I said quickly, stepping over and opening the door marked STORES.
I went inside and turned on the light, and as the other three hurried in after me, I rapidly checked out the room. There were no windows, no other exits. It was just another shabby little room full of discarded office furniture and cardboard boxes.
‘There’s no lock on here!’ Mason said as he slammed the door shut behind him. ‘We need to block it with something.’ He looked around, sear
ching the room. ‘Lenny, get that cabinet. Trav, Evie, give me a hand with this desk.’
As Lenny went over and grabbed hold of a big metal storage cabinet and began heaving it across the room, the rest of us manhandled a heavy old desk away from the wall and jammed it up against the door.
Lenny lumbered over with the storage cabinet.
‘On top of the desk, Len,’ Mason told him.
Lenny dropped the cabinet on top of the desk and started manoeuvring it into position against the door.
‘Leave it, Len,’ Mason told him. ‘We’ll do that.’ He pointed across the room. ‘You go and get that other cabinet.’
As Lenny strode off, I helped Mason and Evie push the cabinet against the door. Just as we got it nice and tight, the door handle rattled and someone gave the door a shove. It gave a little at the top, but the lower part didn’t move at all.
‘Mind your backs,’ someone said in a big soft voice, and I turned round to see Lenny looming over us with the other storage cabinet cradled in his arms. It’d been so long since I’d heard him say anything that I’d almost forgotten he could speak. But I didn’t have time to be surprised. One of the Omega men was trying the door again now, only this time he was really trying, slamming his hands against it. Thump! Thump! Thump!
‘Now, Lenny!’ Mason yelled, and we all got out of the way as Lenny lurched forward and heaved the metal cabinet on top of the other one.
The barricade covered the whole door now, making it much more solid, and when the Omega man gave the door another hard thump, it not only barely moved at all, but we also heard a satisfying grunt of pain from the other side.
‘Nice work, Len,’ Mason said. ‘That should hold them for a while.’
‘It won’t hold them for ever though, will it?’ I said.
Mason looked at me.
The door went thump again, much harder this time.
‘That’s probably the muscleman,’ I said to Mason. ‘You know they’re going to get in eventually, don’t you?’
‘We’d better hurry up and think of something then, hadn’t we?’
‘We’re trapped, Mason,’ I said, sighing. ‘There’s no way out.’
Mason smiled. ‘There’s always a way out, Trav. You’ve just got to find it.’
As Mason began pacing around the room, searching for any possible way out – glancing up at the ceiling, stamping on the floor – I went over to Evie and asked her how she was doing.
‘I’m all right, thanks,’ she said, looking at the door as it took another big thump.
‘Listen,’ I started to say, ‘I’m really sorry I got you into all this—’
‘You didn’t get me into anything. I wanted to come along.’
‘Yeah, I know. But—’
‘Hey, lighten up,’ she said, giving me a playful punch on the arm. ‘I’m glad I came. I haven’t had so much fun in ages.’
I frowned at her. ‘You’re enjoying this?’
‘It’s better than hanging around the estate all night, bored out of my mind.’
Another shuddering thump rang out then, and this time part of the door frame splintered off.
‘It’s not going to last much longer,’ Evie said, looking at the door again. ‘It’s too cheap and flimsy, that’s the trouble.’ She glanced around, shaking her head. ‘It’s like this whole place was made on the cheap . . .’
I heard a tapping sound from across the room then, and even as I turned round to see what it was, I was struck by a sudden thought. And when I saw Mason rapping his knuckles against the far wall, I knew that he was thinking the same. The front and side walls were solid breezeblock, but the far wall . . .
‘It’s just plasterboard, isn’t it?’ I said to Mason.
He looked over at me, a glint of realisation in his eyes, and then – grinning to himself – he turned round and hammered his fist into the wall. It went straight through, the thin plasterboard giving way as easily as cardboard. He withdrew his fist and big chunks of bare plasterboard broke off, leaving a football-sized hole in the wall. Mason peered through the hole.
‘Looks like another empty room,’ he said, beckoning us over.
A massive thump hit the door. The frame cracked and one of the hinges flew off.
Mason started attacking the wall, ripping away at the hole, kicking big lumps out of the plasterboard, and we all ran over and joined him. It took us about five seconds to smash out a hole big enough for us to get through. As we squeezed through into the darkened room next door,
I could already hear the door behind us beginning to give way.
Once we were all safely through, we didn’t waste any time. There was enough light coming in through the hole to see the door in the opposite wall, and as the sound of splintering wood and crashing metal grew louder behind us, we just ran for the door and yanked it open.
It brought us out into another corridor. More whitewashed walls, more flickering fluorescent lights. The corridor led off to our left, and to our right was another breezeblock wall.
We turned left and ran.
50
As we raced along the corridor I began to think that maybe we were going to make it after all. It was hard to be sure which way we were going now, but I got the feeling we were heading away from the main corridor towards the far side of the building. There was a junction up ahead, and if my feeling was correct, a right turn would take us back towards the rear of the warehouse, and a left turn would take us up to the front. More importantly, either way might lead us to an exit door. And even if we didn’t find a door, we were bound to find a window.
We were nearly at the junction now. Evie was out in front, with Lenny just behind her – he was surprisingly quick on his feet – and Mason and me bringing up the rear.
‘Left or right, Trav?’ Evie called out.
She was glancing over her shoulder as she spoke, so just for a moment she wasn’t looking where she was going, which is why she didn’t see the three men coming round the corner in front of her. I recognised them instantly: the gunman from the BMW, the pale-skinned man with reddish hair, and Winston, the man with the steely grey eyes.
‘EVIE! ’ I yelled. ‘LOOK OUT! ’
But I was too late, and before she could do anything about it she’d run straight into them. Red Hair immediately made a lunge for her, and although she managed to get away from him, she couldn’t get away from the Gunman. As he grabbed her from behind and clamped her arms to her sides, Lenny charged head first into Red Hair, knocking him off his feet. As he went down, and Mason launched himself at Winston, I went after the Gunman.
He’d backed up against the wall now and was struggling to hold on to Evie. She was lashing out at him like a crazy thing – twisting and writhing, stomping on his feet, flinging her head back into his face. When he saw me coming, he suddenly let go of her and pushed her away and started reaching into his jacket for his gun. But instead of moving away from him when he shoved her, Evie quickly spun round and hammered her fist into his chin. It was a perfect left hook, and it caught him right on the sweet spot. His eyes rolled, he staggered to one side, then his legs turned to rubber and he toppled over and slumped to the floor.
I watched him for a second to make sure he wasn’t getting up, then I looked up at Evie.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked her.
‘Fine,’ she said, smiling.
I held her gaze for a second, then turned round to see how Mason and Lenny were getting on.
I was just in time to see Lenny finishing off Red Hair, effortlessly slamming his head into the wall. But when I looked over at Mason I could see that he was in trouble. He was still on his feet, and still squaring up to Winston, but he’d obviously taken a bit of a beating. His mouth was bleeding, he was swaying a bit, and his left arm was hanging down at his side. He lurched towards Winston and threw a punch at him, but there was no power or speed in it, and as Winston stepped back, the punch missed him by a mile and Mason stumbled forward and almost fell over.
Winston
could easily have finished him off then, but he seemed reluctant to do anything. He just stood there, calmly watching Mason stagger around. I started running then, and as Winston glanced over and saw me coming, he didn’t hesitate for a second. He moved so fast that I wasn’t even sure he’d hit Mason until I saw Mason double over and drop to his knees, grimacing with pain and clutching at his side. And by the time I’d reached Winston, he was already moving towards me, holding his hands up, as if trying to strike a truce.
‘Hold on, Travis,’ he said quickly. ‘Just listen to me—’
I launched myself at him, swinging a right hook at his head, but he saw it coming and batted my fist away.
‘For God’s sake, Travis,’ he spat. ‘I just want to—’
I went for him with another right hook, only this time, as he went to fend it off, I ducked down and hit him in the belly with a shuddering left uppercut. He groaned and doubled over, and I hammered my fist into the back of his head and then brought my knee up into his face.
It was a vicious combination, and he should have gone down. But he didn’t. He staggered back a couple of steps, holding his face in his hands, then he straightened up, wiped a stream of blood from his nose, and smiled at me. His lips were all smashed up and bloody.
‘Not bad,’ he spluttered, nodding his approval. ‘Not bad at all.’
I glanced quickly at Mason. He was trying to get up now, but he was clearly in a lot of pain. From the way he was leaning awkwardly to one side, I guessed he had a broken rib or two.
I looked round, wondering where Lenny and Evie were, and when I saw them standing side by side, staring back down the corridor, I knew it could only mean one thing. With a sinking heart I looked down the corridor and saw Shaved Head, Gaunt Face and Muscleman moving rapidly towards us.
As Lenny and Evie stood there waiting for them, I turned back to Winston.
I’d only been looking away from him for a moment or two, but I’d forgotten how fast he could move. And when I turned back he was standing right in front of me, his bloodied face staring right into my eyes.
