Shadow Creatures

by Andrew Lane

  The rope would be invisible to the infra-red cameras, but Rhino wouldn’t. He waited while Gecko moved to one corner, reached down to put black cardboard covers over the infra-red CCTV lenses, then moved to the other corner and did the same thing. If they left the covers there for too long, then whoever was watching the screens would notice something, but a few minutes would probably be OK.

  Rhino reached down and picked up the bag that was by his side. It contained two items they were going to need inside the warehouse. He sprinted for where the rope hung down, then stopped and quickly attached the bag to his belt. He grabbed the rope and scrambled up it to the roof: feet gaining purchase on the metal wall while he pulled himself up with his arms. He had already wrapped torn strips of the bed sheet from his hotel room around his boots to make them quieter when hitting the metal of the walls. It was just like being back in training.

  He pulled himself over the edge, hands burning at the roughness of the rope, and lay flat as Gecko removed the cardboard covers from first one and then the other IR camera. Rhino indicated the expanse of fiat roof, punctuated with occasional skylights and labouring air-conditioning systems, with a quick wave of his hand. Gecko shook his head. There were no other cameras up there.

  Rhino half stood and pulled the rope back up. No point leaving it for someone else to find and, besides, they were going to need it again in a moment. He coiled it up, and then followed Gecko across to a skylight. The glass was grimy, and had metal wire wound into it in a grid, but a corner of it was broken. Rhino could smell a faint hint of the zoo-odour of the warehouse drifting up through the hole. Gecko reached in through it and fished around, shoulder pressed hard against the glass. Rhino heard a click as Gecko disengaged a catch. The skylight moved inwards under the pressure of Gecko’s shoulder. He quickly withdrew before he fell into the dark space beneath.

  The two of them paused for a full minute, waiting to make sure that they hadn’t been heard. While they were waiting, Rhino detached the bag from his belt and took out the contents – two sets of night-vision goggles that he had brought with him from England.

  He handed Gecko one set of goggles and slipped the other set over his head and turned them on. Rather than seeing heat as the infra-red cameras around the warehouse did, they amplified low levels of light into something much brighter. Suddenly the world was filled with a ghostly green glow – almost too bright, given the reflections of the neon advertising signs on Hong Kong Island from the low clouds.

  Gecko switched his goggles on, flinched slightly at the sudden brightness, then gave Rhino a ‘thumbs up’ sign.

  Confident that they hadn’t been seen, Rhino tied one end of the rope round a ventilation duct and fed the other end through the open skylight. He was sweating now in the oppressive heat.

  They had already worked out the rough area of the warehouse that they wanted to enter, based on where they had been earlier in the day, and chosen a skylight close to that location. There was no point getting in all the way across the warehouse, away from the coypu and hopefully the giant centipedes, if it meant increasing their chances of being spotted, even if the entry turned out to be easier that way.

  Rhino turned round and dangled his legs through the open skylight, holding on to the roof with his hands and making sure that he was on top of the rope. He squirmed backwards and clasped his legs, vice-like, on the rope, then slid further inside the warehouse. When his shoulders reached the edge he reached down with one hand to find the rope, and then lowered himself fully down, finally bringing his other hand inside the skylight. Now he had two hands and his legs clamped on the rope. He lowered himself slowly down.

  The night-vision goggles allowed him to see all the way to the far side of the warehouse. Everything was flooded with green light. He couldn’t see any of Xi Lang’s guards – as far as he could tell, the warehouse was empty, although he had to work on the assumption that there were people around somewhere.

  The skylight they had used as their entry point was near to one of the columns holding the roof up – and he used the column as cover while he slid down the rope. The problem was that directly underneath the skylight was a row of crates and cages, rather than one of the aisles, and Rhino’s feet touched down on a crate. The slack of the rope – the bit that would have hung down to the ground had the skylight been above an aisle, was curled loosely on top of the cage. The zoo-smell was almost overpowering, overlaid with an acrid scent that stung Rhino’s nose, like bleach.

  Rhino glanced down, trying to make out through the narrow gaps between the bars what was inside the cage, but he could see only a shadowy mass curled up in a corner. Maybe it was just a pile of hay, or something. Maybe the crate was currently empty.

  Gecko landed beside Rhino. His foot caught the rope and pushed it sideways. The end fell between the bars, into the cage.

  And it touched the dark mass that was curled up below.

  The shadowy shape lunged explosively upward. A massive paw tipped with scalpel-sharp claws hit the bars. It was too large to go through, but the cage shook and two of the creature’s claws managed to get through the gap and rake at Rhino and Gecko. Somewhere below them Rhino heard a growl so deep that it was only part sound. The rest of it was a deep vibration that he could feel through his boots.

  Rhino jumped backwards one way, Gecko another. Gecko was agile enough to make sure that his jump took him to the nearby column. He grabbed it, lifted his feet up, swung round the column and jumped lightly to the ground.

  Rhino wasn’t as agile, or as lucky. He jumped badly. One of the claws caught the heel of his boot, and he toppled sideways, hip banging against the top edge of the crate. His momentum carried him over, into one of the aisles between the crates and cages, and he started to fall towards the ground, head first.

  Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. He could see grit on the floor and footprints in the dust, as well as the seams on the cage where the bars had been welded together. He hoped desperately, in that long eternity of falling, that whoever had soldered those bars had done a good job.

  Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed hold of the bars as he fell. His fingers bent backwards and he thought for a terrible moment that they were going to break, but he twisted his body, clenched them against the metal and pulled himself closer, allowing himself to pivot so that his legs came past his head and he was falling the right way up.

  Something massive and dark hurtled towards him from inside the cage. He released the bars just as a mouth big enough to crush his head, lined with dagger-like teeth and wet with saliva, crashed into them. A wet fetid wave of hot air crashed against his face. Inches away from his face a huge yellow eye glared at him, full of hatred.

  His legs connected with the ground, absorbing the impact of the fall. He sprang backwards just before a paw the size of his head raked its claws downward, slicing the air inches away from him.

  He ended up sitting on the ground and staring at the cage. He still didn’t know what was inside; he just knew it was incredibly dangerous. Even with the night-vision goggles – which, thank heavens, still worked despite the fall – all he could see was a black shape that was curling itself up again, somehow knowing that its prey was out of reach.

  Gecko appeared round a corner. He looked like some kind of strange insect-human hybrid with the goggles over his eyes. He reached out a hand and pulled Rhino to his feet.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t want to know,’ Rhino replied. ‘But I can’t imagine who would want it as a pet!’

  ‘It might be a tiger,’ Gecko said, gazing at the cage in awe. ‘In Chinese medicine, powdered tiger bones are highly prized for their supposed medicinal properties. Chinese healers make something called “tiger wine” out of them.’

  ‘Great,’ Rhino said breathlessly. ‘I’d hate to have to be the guy who does the powdering.’

  Gecko’s mouth was set into an unpleasant line. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of ways to
kill a tiger in a cage,’ he said bleakly. ‘Anything from a rifle to a long stick with a knife on the end. They are magnificent creatures. They deserve better than that.’

  Rhino clapped him on the shoulder. ‘It’s an unfortunate situation,’ he said, ‘but we can’t let it distract us. We have a job to do.’

  ‘It’s a good thing Natalie isn’t here,’ Gecko murmured. ‘She’s taking this whole thing surprisingly hard.’ He led the way back to the corner where the aisles crossed. Rhino glanced around, trying to orientate himself, based on what he remembered from earlier on. If the main door was over there, and the skylight they had entered through was up there, then the place where Gecko had discovered the moulted centipede skin was over . . .

  ‘There,’ said Gecko, pointing. ‘That’s where the coypu was.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I am sure. Now all we have to do is find the crate with the centipede in, get a sample of its DNA and get out unobserved. How hard can it be?’

  A sudden loud crash echoed through the warehouse. It was followed by two more crashes from different directions.

  ‘You had to ask, didn’t you?’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘That was the sound of doors being smashed in,’ Rhino answered grimly. He’d heard that noise before. He’d caused it more than a few times.

  Lights flared as the overhead illumination suddenly came on. Rhino and Gecko pulled the night-vision goggles from their eyes before they were blinded. A heavily amplified voice announced something harsh in Mandarin. Rhino translated it roughly as ‘This is the police! Stay where you are! Do not move or run!’

  The noise level in the warehouse suddenly rose as the various creatures protested in whatever way they could at the sudden intrusion. Growls, barks, snarls and screeches filled the air. There was also panicked shouting in Mandarin from Xi Lang’s various employees who had been taken by surprise.

  ‘It’s a raid!’ Rhino told Gecko grimly. ‘What are the chances that the police would choose to raid this place just as we get here?’

  ‘That depends on how they knew about it,’ Gecko answered, thinking of Natalie. There was a strange tone in his voice.

  Rhino sprinted down the aisle to the place that Gecko had indicated earlier. He saw the coypu straight away: it was pressed against the far side of its cage, shivering. Looking at it now, head on, Rhino could see that it was very different from a rat – its legs were longer, and its head was squarer.

  ‘You check that way,’ he said to Gecko, pointing right, ‘and I’ll look this way.’

  Separately the two of them went from crate to crate, cage to cage, trying to work out what shadowy creature was in each one. The animals were on edge and wary now, bothered by the sudden activity, and most of them were easy to see. Within the space of thirty seconds Rhino spotted hyenas, crocodiles, a brown bear and a tangle of pythons as thick as his arm.

  He passed a crate where the wooden slats were closer together, and moved in for a better look. A big, black eye was looking back at him, at the same level as his own eyes. The creature inside screeched at him; the eye blurring as the creature whipped its head forward, and something hard hit the wood by Rhino’s face. A beak, maybe? Was it an ostrich? He wasn’t sure, but he knew that it wasn’t a centipede, so he moved on.

  The air was suddenly filled with noise as another harshly amplified announcement came over the tannoy – in English this time, and spoken by a different voice – American. ‘This raid is being carried out by the Hong Kong Police on behalf of the United Nations Office on Exotic Animal Trafficking,’ the voice said. ‘My name is Evan Chan. Please stay exactly where you are. If your paperwork is in order and you are not dealing in the illegal sale of protected species, then you have nothing to fear.’ The announcement was repeated in Mandarin by the same voice that had spoken earlier.

  There was a pause, filled only by the sounds of the various animals in the warehouse protesting, and then Rhino heard gunfire. Semi-automatic weapons, he thought. Probably Israeli Uzis or Ingram MAC-10s, judging by the sound. He’d been on both ends of those weapons before in Special Forces. Nasty little things.

  Single shots responded to the gunfire – probably Heckler & Koch pistols. That would be the police.

  Xi Lang’s people were fighting back. Presumably the announcement had not reassured them.

  ‘Over here!’ Gecko called, not bothering to be quiet now that the warehouse was filled with noise. His voice sounded strange. If Rhino hadn’t known better, he would have said that Gecko was frightened, but he’d never known anything to scare the plucky Brazilian boy before.

  Rhino moved to join him, passing the coypu again. Gecko was crouching beside a crate and shining a small flashlight inside. He turned his head towards Rhino, and his eyes were wide. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I may have found them.’

  ‘Them?’ Rhino echoed. Over to one side, another speckle of gunfire punctuated the warehouse air, along with more shouting in Chinese.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Gecko said softly. ‘I mean, who would want just one of these things?’

  Rhino knelt beside the boy and glanced through the wooden slats of the crate.

  And saw something straight out of hell.

  At first sight it was a tangle of vivid red cable, wet and glistening. It was about as thick as a loaf of bread and as long as a car. It was writhing, apparently unknotting itself from the tangle that it had got into. As the smell hit him – something unpleasantly vinegary – he realized three things: firstly, that the thing he’d thought was a cable was actually flattened rather than rounded, and made of numerous segments that were wider in the middle than at the places where they were joined; secondly, that a row of bright red legs ran along each ‘edge’, one leg to each segment and each leg terminating in a claw that looked as if it could cut through metal; and thirdly, that there were two of the things, wound around each other. They separated as he watched. One of them reared up towards the top of the crate, exploring it with long twitching feelers that emerged from its head. Now that he had a better look at it, Rhino saw that there were blue rings marring the vivid crimson of the creature’s hard exoskeleton. The other one, also ringed with blue, wove its way across the crate’s floor, moving like a snake, from side to side, right towards where Rhino and Gecko were crouched. Its head was blunt, with two feelers emerging from the top that twitched as if with a life of their own, and a pair of pincer-like jaws on the bottom. In between was a symmetrical scattering of hard black spots that Rhino assumed were primitive eyes. They glittered in the light, and there was something about that glitter that almost suggested a malign intelligence.

  Rhino shook himself. This thing was a monster, but there was no need to get carried away. It was just a centipede – big, yes, but not housing some bizarre intelligence.

  ‘I tell you what,’ Gecko muttered. ‘You hold it and I’ll take the DNA sample.’

  ‘Can we toss a coin?’ Rhino whispered back.

  The creature’s feelers waved at them – first at Rhino and then at Gecko. It could see them, and it knew that they were interesting. Perhaps even edible. A sudden explosion from the direction of the front of the warehouse didn’t faze it at all. Maybe centipedes were deaf.

  Which reminded him . . .

  ‘You did say that centipedes are carnivorous, didn’t you?’ Rhino asked.

  ‘And poisonous,’ Gecko reminded him.

  ‘Great.’ He reached into a pocket of his lightweight anorak and pulled out the DNA sampler – a metal probe with a handle at one end and a rounded section at the other. Pulling a trigger on the handle opened up the rounded part to reveal a small, sharp-edged circle. The idea was to push that into the skin of whatever creature you wanted to sample, cut out a very small plug of flesh, and then close the end to protect the sample.

  That was fine if you were dealing with an animal that had soft skin – like a giant rat. It wasn’t so useful if the creature had a hard exoskeleton, like a centipede.

  ‘It’s possib
le that we didn’t think this through properly,’ Gecko pointed out.

  ‘You think?’ Rhino rejoined.

  A sudden burst of semi-automatic fire sounded close by. Several single shots from an automatic pistol followed it.

  ‘That’s too close,’ Gecko hissed.

  Rhino glanced from the centipede to where the gunfire had come from, and back again. They didn’t have enough time to work out what to do.

  ‘I’m going to try to pull off one of those legs,’ he announced. ‘It’s not like it’ll miss one. Let me know if you hear anyone coming.’

  The centipede’s head was still weaving hypnotically back and forth in front of him, its feelers caressing the wooden slats. He glanced down to where a couple of the legs were waving through the gaps in the wood. The claws on the ends of the legs snapped open and shut with little snick, snick, snick noises. He should, he thought, just be able to grab one and twist it off. It probably couldn’t even feel pain. Did any insect feel pain?

  Somewhere off in the distance Rhino could hear a crackling, like flames. He glanced in that direction. A red glow was reflecting from the roof. Something was on fire.

  Not much time. He turned back to the centipede and braced himself, feeling vaguely sick.

  Before he could close his fingers on one of the legs, Gecko grabbed his shoulder.

  ‘People coming!’ he hissed.

  Rhino retreated to the other side of the aisle, pulling Gecko with him. Most of the cages and crates were separated by narrow alleys, and the two of them sheltered in one that was just wide enough to take them. The cage on one side held a trio of red pandas – small, furry creatures with black circles round their eyes who cowered in a corner, hugging each other. On the other side, the cage was lined with glass and was half filled with an object that looked like a small mountain and which Rhino thought might be an anthill, although he couldn’t see any ants.

  Moments after they got out of the aisle, two men raced down from the direction of the front of the warehouse. Behind them was Tsai Chen. The men were holding guns, while the Chinese woman grasped a removable computer hard drive to her chest. It took Rhino less than a second to work out what was going on – the explosion he had heard a few moments before was probably Tsai Chen trashing Xi Lang’s computer files and written records – probably with a thermite grenade chucked into the office – and now she was running off with the only back-up copies. Without records, all the police and the UN would have was a warehouse full of animals. No names, nobody to track down. Xi Lang, Tsai Chen and everyone else who didn’t get caught would just relocate somewhere else and start again.