Shadow Creatures

by Andrew Lane

  The woman bowed her head momentarily. Natalie thought she saw a flash of anger on her face. ‘As you wish,’ she said calmly. ‘The customer is always correct.’

  Natalie clapped her hands together. ‘Wonderful!’ she said brightly. ‘I will still recommend you to all my friends, of course.’

  ‘You are very kind.’ The woman gestured to the large man by her side. ‘Cho will escort you to the door. I presume I do not have to remind you that our service here is . . . very exclusive. We would not wish it to become public knowledge. Mr Lang would be . . . most upset.’

  ‘Of course,’ Natalie said as she turned to leave. ‘The whole point about an exclusive service is that so few people have access to it.’

  The three of them were silent as they were led back, but once they were outside in the oppressive heat and sunshine, and once Cho had shut the door behind them, Natalie felt strangely alone and sad. The warehouse had depressed her – all those animals that had been taken from the wild and were now destined for people’s ornamental gardens or tanks in their massive living rooms. It was wrong.

  She felt shivery, and she looked around. She had the distinct impression that they were being watched. For a moment she couldn’t see anything, and then she noticed a security camera on the side of the warehouse. It was pointed at them. Having spotted it, she quickly made out three other security cameras on the warehouse and other buildings around. They were all pointed at Natalie, Rhino and Gecko. They may have got out of the warehouse, but they were still the object of interest. Natalie caught Rhino’s eye and glanced towards the nearest camera. He nodded slightly. He had seen them too.

  Rhino turned towards Gecko. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong? You don’t look happy.’

  ‘It was not a rat,’ the boy replied quietly.

  ‘It’s pretty giant,’ Rhino countered.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not a rat. It’s a coypu.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘They are also called “river rats”. They are rodents, but they are semi-aquatic and they are vegetarians. They originated in South America, but they can be found all over the world now.’

  ‘Can you be sure this is a . . . what did you call it . . . a coypu?’ Rhino asked.

  ‘I am. The tail is shorter than a rat’s, and the front teeth are orange, and made for tearing at vegetation rather than ripping things. Those orange teeth are a distinctive feature of coypu.’ Gecko hesitated, frowning. ‘The large ear threw me for a minute, but I think maybe that was scarring due to a fight rather than a natural thing. The ear on the other side of the head was smaller, much more like I would expect on a coypu.’

  ‘So,’ Rhino said heavily, ‘a wasted trip, then.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Gecko replied. He patted the bulge beneath his jacket. ‘I have something to show you, but we need to get away from here.’

  Rhino nodded, and turned to head towards the car, but he noticed that Natalie was still standing there, not moving. He walked across to her. ‘That was great work back there. I believed you myself.’

  She just stood there, not looking at him. Thoughts of the creatures in the warehouse were still weighing on her mind.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ Rhino asked gently.

  She nodded. ‘That place . . .’ she said quietly, and trailed off, then: ‘All those animals . . . shoved together and waiting to be drugged and shipped out, just so someone can show them off to their friends. So they can boast about having something that nobody else has. It’s . . . wrong. Those animals deserve to be in rivers and forests and plains, or wherever they live, not stuck in a warehouse.’

  ‘What about your friend, Savannah?’ Rhino asked gently. ‘Did she really have meerkats?’

  Natalie remembered how cute those meerkats had been, and how she hadn’t even bothered to ask where they had come from or how healthy or happy they were. ‘She did. But then, one day, she didn’t. I asked her about them, but she just said she got bored with them. I never found out what happened to them. I never bothered to ask.’

  ‘It’s OK. We’re out of there now.’

  She looked up at him, and she could feel that her eyes were bleary with tears. ‘But they’re not.’

  Gecko coughed. ‘We have to go.’

  Rhino pulled Natalie towards the car. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it,’ he said. ‘It’s just one of those things in life that you have to accept.’

  Natalie didn’t say anything, but she could feel her jaw clench.

  The three of them got back into the car – Rhino driving, Gecko beside him and Natalie in the back. Rhino drove quickly to the end of the warehouse and started to turn the corner.

  Glancing out of the rear-view mirror, Natalie noticed a black car come round the corner of the warehouse and speed after them.

  ‘I think we’re being followed!’ she announced to the rest of the car.

  ‘How is it that you can spot a car following us so quickly?’ Gecko asked.

  ‘Hey, I live in Los Angeles,’ she replied tartly. ‘It’s an occupational hazard.’ She paused, thinking about what she had said. ‘Not that I really have an occupation, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Rhino said from the driver’s seat. He accelerated the car, pressing the three of them back into their seats as they raced through the deserted warehouse district. ‘It’s Xi Lang’s people – they must have got suspicious, and they want to see where we go.’

  Natalie felt the panic in her chest expand to a point where it threatened to suffocate her. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Do?’ Rhino sounded grimly amused. ‘We’re going to get away from them, of course.’ He glanced over his shoulder reassuringly – at least, it would have been reassuring if he hadn’t taken his eyes off the road ahead. ‘Trust me,’ he said, ‘I’ve done all the Special Forces driving courses. Twice.’

  ‘Why twice?’ Gecko asked.

  Rhino smiled. ‘Because I failed them the first time.’

  Natalie looked over her shoulder again. The black car was keeping pace with them.

  ‘It could be a coincidence,’ she said, although she wasn’t convinced.

  Rhino wasn’t convinced either. He suddenly swung the car right, into a side road, tyres squealing. The car behind them slewed round to follow. He did the same at the next junction, skidding the car to the left at the last moment. Again, the car behind them did the same, leaning precariously over as its driver only just managed to copy Rhino’s manoeuvre.

  ‘They know we’re on to them,’ Gecko pointed out.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Natalie asked.

  ‘It means,’ Rhino muttered, ‘that they know that we know that they are following us, and, more importantly, that we care enough to do something about it. So rather than follow us back to the hotel, I think they’re going to try to intercept us, and then ask us in some rather impolite manner involving guns who we are and what exactly we think we’re doing.’

  Even as Rhino spoke, the car behind them began to accelerate to overtake. Rhino sped up as well, keeping as much distance as he could between them.

  Ahead, Natalie could see taller buildings in the gap between the warehouses. They were getting closer to the main areas of Kowloon. People began appearing on the pavements. Shops came into view, replacing the industrial buildings. Other cars beeped furiously as Rhino sped past them, weaving from side to side to avoid slowing down.

  ‘If you’re not careful, the police will stop us,’ Gecko cautioned.

  ‘Isn’t that a good thing?’ Natalie asked.

  Rhino shook his head. ‘Not if we don’t want to spend the next few weeks in a prison cell while this thing gets sorted out. We have more important things to do.’

  Without warning, he reached down and pulled the handbrake up, jerking the steering wheel right at the same time. The car slid for a few seconds, the back end coming round until they had rotated through ninety degrees and the car was pointed sideways. Natalie gasped, convinced that Rhino was goi
ng to drive straight into a shop front, but an alleyway appeared directly ahead of them and he accelerated into it.

  ‘Market!’ Gecko yelled, and indeed the alleyway ahead of them was filled with stalls, Chinese shoppers and tourists. Rhino swerved. The left-hand wheels came up on to a narrow pavement, and Rhino kept driving, beeping his horn. Shoppers jumped out of the way as he pushed on through the market, steering close to the stalls in the road, but just missing them.

  Natalie looked over her shoulder. Their pursuers had made the same turn, but people were gathering on the pavement behind Rhino’s car, cursing and shaking their fists, and their pursuers were finding it difficult to get through. Natalie could hear shouts and curses in a variety of languages, and the sound of their pursuers frantically beeping their horn.

  Miraculously, Rhino managed to get to the other end of the alley without hitting anyone or anything. As he pulled alongside the final stall, where dead snakes were hanging from pegs, he skidded to a halt, opened the window, held some cash out and yelled something. A Chinese youth ran forward to take the money. Rhino accelerated again, out of the alleyway. As he turned right again, into a wider road, Natalie saw the youth and some friends grab the final stall and push it towards the kerb, blocking the way for the pursuing car.

  Rhino slowed to a more sedate pace and kept driving, looking at his rear-view mirror repeatedly for any sign of pursuit. Eventually he said: ‘I think we’re clear. Everyone OK?’

  ‘If there was a motor-vehicle equivalent of free-running,’ Gecko said, his voice too controlled for comfort, ‘then you would get some kind of award.’

  ‘Where to now?’ Natalie asked. ‘Back to the hotel?’

  ‘No – I want to find somewhere quiet and stop for a while, just to check that we’ve shaken them off. And I want to look at whatever it is that Gecko picked up.’

  Rhino kept going for a mile or so, until they were back in a more residential neighbourhood, then he pulled off into a side road and stopped. There was nobody around. Natalie turned to see if any cars passed by, following them, but the road was clear.

  ‘OK,’ Rhino said, turning to Gecko. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Not in the car. You’ll see why. Let’s get out.’

  Once they were out of the car, Gecko glanced around, then opened his jacket and pulled something out. It looked like a spiral mass of crumpled yellow cellophane. He straightened it with a rustling sound and laid it across the bonnet of the car while Natalie and Rhino tried to work out what it was.

  ‘It was curled up on the floor,’ Gecko explained. ‘It had been kicked half beneath a crate. I wondered what it was, so I pulled it out to take a look. When I realized, I knew that I had to bring it with us to show Calum.’

  The thing that Gecko had taken was about two metres long and a double-handspan wide. It drooped over the car’s bonnet. It was hollow and cylindrical with a gap running from end to end. A kind of fringe ran along both sides, a little way from the split along its middle.

  That fringe looked like legs.

  They were legs. Hundreds of little legs, but hollow.

  Natalie realized with a shock what it was – what it had to be – just as Gecko continued: ‘This is a centipede’s skin. It has been shed and left behind so that the centipede can grow larger.’

  ‘Larger . . . ?’ Rhino breathed.

  ‘Yes,’ Gecko agreed. ‘Judging by this skin, it is already perhaps ten times as large as the largest centipede in the world. It is, I believe, an unknown species of giant centipede.’

  There was a long pause as they all thought about the implications of what Gecko had said.

  ‘And I thought giant rats were icky,’ Natalie said, summing up everyone’s thoughts perfectly.

  CHAPTER ten

  Standing there with the hot sun shining down on him, Gecko hefted the centipede skin in his hands. It was weightless, but it crinkled in his hands as it moved. He tried to imagine what the real creature – the one that had shed the skin – would be like, but it was almost impossible. Centipedes to him were things barely the width of his hand that scuttled out from beneath tables and out of cracks in walls, not things that were big enough to eat a cat whole.

  ‘The question is,’ he said, ‘are we going to go back to Xi Lang’s and change our order from a giant rat to a giant centipede?’

  ‘I think,’ Rhino answered carefully, ‘that we’ve probably outstayed our welcome. A rich American girl buying a giant rat is unlikely enough, but just about plausible. A rich American girl buying a giant centipede on a whim is something else entirely. That Chinese girl will smell a rat – if you’ll excuse the pun.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I need to talk to Calum, update him on what the situation is.’

  Rhino reached into his pocket and took out his new mobile phone. While he dialled the number for Calum’s phone, Gecko turned to Natalie. She was standing, hands crossed over her chest, holding on to her upper arms as if she needed comfort.

  ‘Are you all right?’ She looked up at him, and jerked nervously when she saw the centipede skin. He quickly held it behind his back. ‘Sorry.’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s OK. I think I’ve decided that keeping wild animals is wrong, which is not what I was expecting to happen here.’

  ‘You are having an epiphany,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No,’ she replied, frowning, ‘Epiphany is one of my best friends, but she’s in St Tropez at the moment. Why did you mention her?’

  Gecko stared blankly at her for a moment. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘What I meant was, you’re having a life-changing moment.’

  She nodded. ‘I’m not used to thinking this way. I don’t do “serious”. I used to think that having a fur coat was the height of fashion, and if my boyfriends didn’t have at least one pair of crocodile-skin boots in their wardrobe then they weren’t my kind of person, but now? Now I can’t stop thinking about the suffering that these animals endure, just so we can have something exotic to own – and if it’s alive then all the better.’ She paused. ‘Something needs to be done,’ she said as if the thought had only just occurred to her – which Gecko thought it probably had.

  Behind Gecko, Rhino cursed. ‘No answer,’ he said. ‘Gone straight to voicemail.’ He thought for a moment, brow furrowed in concentration. ‘I think we should go to the hotel and rethink our approach,’ he said eventually.

  They got back into the car – putting the centipede skin carefully into the boot – and drove out of Sham Shui Po and towards the hotel. None of them said anything.

  Gecko felt the skin of his hands prickling as they sped through the Hong Kong streets. He glanced down at his palms. They were red and slightly blistered, as if he had a bad case of sunburn, but just in that area. It was probably the centipede skin. There could be some kind of toxin on it to deter predators – although he did wonder with some foreboding what kind of predators a giant centipede might have.

  He took a tissue out of his pocket and wiped his hands carefully. The burning sensation eased slightly. He made a mental note to wash his hands and spread an antiseptic cream on them when he got to the hotel.

  It started to rain just as they got back. Rhino let Gecko and Natalie out while he drove off to the underground garage. Natalie ran for the hotel lobby, but Gecko just stood there, entranced. The raindrops were hot, and it looked as if they actually began to evaporate before they hit the pavement. At least, there was a layer of steam rising up from the pavement to about waist height, and Gecko couldn’t see any water on the pavement itself.

  While Rhino parked, Gecko and Natalie headed to their rooms to freshen up. There was something about the climate in Hong Kong that made Gecko feel sticky and grimy all the time. They met back together in the air-conditioned hotel lobby, away from any other groups. Rhino ordered cold drinks for everyone. While they were waiting for their drinks to arrive, he tried to call Calum again, but there was still no answer. Gecko tried to call Tara, just in case she was with Calum, but she wasn’t answering either.
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br />   ‘OK,’ Rhino said, ‘let’s take stock. The giant rat turns out to be an ordinary-sized coypu, and so we don’t need a sample of its DNA. We think, however, that there may be a previously undiscovered species of giant centipede in the warehouse which Calum would want a DNA sample from. The question is: how do we get it?’

  ‘Can’t we get DNA from the skin that Gecko took?’ Natalie asked.

  Gecko shook his head. ‘It is not likely: From what I know, insect and arthropod exoskeletons are made of chitin, and there is no DNA in chitin.’

  ‘As I said earlier,’ Rhino continued, ‘I don’t think that we can attempt to buy a giant centipede in the same way we would buy an ordinary animal. It’s just not credible that Natalie would want one.’

  ‘For a start,’ Gecko pointed out, ‘centipedes are carnivorous – they eat other creatures. I hate to think what animals a centipede that size would eat. Puppies, maybe? And most of them are venomous too – they have poisonous bites, and often they can excrete poison from their skin.’ He held his hands up, showing the blistering and the burn. It was better than it had been – the pain and the redness were receding – but Natalie winced anyway. ‘They do not make good house pets. Nobody in their right mind would want a giant centipede as a pet except for a villain in a James Bond film, perhaps.’

  ‘Why would this Xi Lang be selling giant centipedes in the first place?’ Natalie asked. ‘What is in it for him? Who would buy them?’

  ‘Maybe the people who supply him just happened to pick them up, and he’s trying to work out what to do with them,’ Rhino suggested.

  Natalie frowned. ‘Maybe they can be used in Chinese herbal remedies. I remember reading somewhere that a lot of animal parts go into those remedies – rhino horns, bear gall bladders, all kinds of icky stuff.’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Rhino nodded. ‘The trouble is that we’ve shot our bolt. We can’t go back and ask to see any giant centipedes he happens to have lying around.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I think there’s only one answer – I’m going to have to break into the warehouse and find those centipedes myself.’