Crawlers

by Sam Enthoven

  As he watched them come Ben’s thoughts ran something like this:

  He had to hold them off until Jasmine, Samantha and Lauren were through the doors. He had to do this because he had the mop. Ben was no martial artist, but if he held the stick crosswise, just above waist height, he might temporarily be able to stop the sentries from getting past him, giving the girls the crucial seconds they needed to catch up, get the doors open and get through. It wasn’t the most sophisticated plan in the world: it was expediency, pure and simple, with no thought for anything beyond the next few moments. But, as before, it was all he had.

  He grasped his mop in both hands and tensed his arms out in front of him. Then Hugo barrelled into him.

  Ben’s legs were braced for the first impact but he didn’t stand a chance. As three, four, five adults joined forces with Hugo against the mop handle the soles of Ben’s shoes lost their grip, and now he was staggering backwards.

  Ben’s vision was a mass of snarling mouths. Suddenly something grabbed at his back and waist and pulled him sideways. He swung round helplessly, struggling to keep his feet, and—

  Crack!

  The ends of the mop met the doorway to either side of him.

  The last second or two had been so fast, Ben had lost track of what was going on. It seemed he was now standing just inside the double doors, still facing outwards. And the girls were behind him.

  ‘We need the stick!’ someone yelled, right next to his ear. ‘Push!’

  Ben felt hands shove at his back. He wasn’t ready. He fell forward, his elbows bent and he met the hard wooden pole with his unprotected ribs. But he kept his footing, tensed his legs and shoved, adding his strength to that of whoever was pushing him. To his astonishment it actually worked. Taken by surprise, Hugo and the adults fell back for a moment, but it was enough. The pole twisted Ben’s wrists, came free from the doorway, was snatched from his hands. Then, while Ben fell back, Jasmine and Lauren slammed the doors shut and Samantha jammed the pole through the handles.

  Crunch. The doors opened less than five centimetres, then stopped. For a moment Hugo’s face smeared against the shatterproof glass, grimacing in frustration.

  To Ben’s amazement, the humble mop-stick had saved the day: it had held off the sentries and now it was barring the doors.

  Hugo and the adults stood back, allowing the doors to swing fully closed again. Hugo’s eyes locked onto Ben’s, unblinking.

  Ben’s ribs were sore from where they’d made contact with the pole. He stepped back and leaned against a railing to catch his breath. A big part of him didn’t seem to want to take his eyes off Hugo, but he tore his gaze away to look at Jasmine, Lauren and Samantha. The girls must have already dropped the hammer and screwdrivers because now they were empty-handed, and breathing as hard as he was.

  ‘We . . . did it,’ he managed, more in surprise than triumph.

  ‘Think . . . that’ll hold them?’ gasped Jasmine, pointing at the mop handle.

  ‘Sure,’ answered Hugo from the other side of the glass. ‘For a while.’

  As Ben and the three girls turned to stare at him again, Hugo smiled.

  ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ he said. ‘We’re not zombies. And nothing’s “eating our brains”.’ He made little quote marks with his fingers around his own words from earlier.

  Ben felt his skin crawl.

  Still smiling, Hugo said: ‘The Queen wants you to know she’s impressed. But you won’t get far. In fact you might as well give up right now.’

  ‘And if we don’t,’ said Samantha, ‘what are you going to do about it?’

  Hugo’s smile vanished. As one, he and the adults piled against the doors in a brutal shoulder-charge. Crunch. Black metal door handles bit into dark wood. The sentries reared back for another assault; released from their pressure the mop turned, exposing white splinter-marks.

  But Ben, Jasmine, Lauren and Samantha had not hung around to see. They were already running downstairs.

  ‘They made it!’ said Robert, grinning delightedly at Josh.

  The two boys were standing in the monitor room. After a lot of fiddling and tinkering with the console they had at last managed to find the view of the corridor again in time to witness the escape.

  Robert was ecstatic. ‘They did it! They really did it!’ he said. Then he noticed Josh’s expression. ‘What?’

  In answer, Josh just pointed numbly at another of the screens. This one was currently showing the Barbican foyer – and what was going on there.

  ‘Oh,’ said Robert. ‘Oh, no . . .’

  11:23 PM.

  The stairs were encased in a sort of giant glass tube, ribbed with black metal struts and built into the side of the building. Through the glass, above the artificial pond and empty courtyard café outside, Ben could see a patch of open night sky.

  Like all night skies in London it was stained yellowish-purple with light pollution. It was hemmed in by buildings: skyscrapers jabbed up into it like pointing black fingers, but the moon was bright. This was the first time Ben had seen outside the Barbican for a while, and the effect the sight had on him was surprisingly strong. Maybe he was just high on adrenaline, but as he ran down the grey-carpeted stairs after the girls it seemed like they had a chance. They were on their way! They might actually get out of there! Then he turned a corner, saw the doors to the next floor, and stopped.

  1: HALL BALCONY, said the sign by the glass doors, but what Ben was seeing didn’t seem to make any sense. He could see the balcony – a carpeted walkway, open from waist height on one side, heading out from the doors at an angle to the left – but it was obscured by some sort of mist. Beyond the balcony, where he expected to see the foyer’s lights, its giant concrete walls, the open space of the room itself, there was nothing but a bank of stained whiteness – a thick fog of some kind. Wisps of it were drifting through the gaps around the doors, out into the landing. As Ben stood there his nose twitched, his eyes prickled and he began to register something harsh and strange about the air he was breathing.

  ‘What is this, now?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s gas,’ said Jasmine, as if she hardly believed it.

  ‘Gas don’t smell like that,’ said Lauren firmly.

  ‘Not the kind in pipes at home,’ said Jasmine patiently. ‘I think it’s tear gas.’ She looked at Ben. ‘Maybe the police are about to have another go at storming the building.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ said Samantha.

  ‘We saw it on the monitors, remember?’ said Jasmine. ‘The police keep trying to get in, but the bitten people and the crawlers keep catching them. Maybe now they’ve decided to get serious.’

  ‘But . . . we’re in here,’ whined Lauren. ‘What about us?’

  ‘What about us?’ said Ben bleakly.

  ‘No one outside knows anything about us,’ said Jasmine. ‘We’ve got no way to contact them. And after what’s happened whenever they’ve tried to get in so far, I bet they’ll be assuming that everyone in the building has been bitten. Us included.’

  ‘Maybe they’re not completely wrong,’ said Samantha, looking hard at Jasmine.

  ‘But we’re in here,’ Lauren repeated, louder, dismissing what she obviously saw as side issues to her main point. ‘How are we going to get out?’

  ‘Sshhh,’ said Jasmine. ‘Hold on a second. Just listen.’

  Ben waited, holding his breath. All he could hear was the distant rhythm of Hugo and the sentries upstairs still trying to get through the doors. Crunch. CRUNCH.

  ‘I don’t know how much longer that mop handle’s going to hold,’ said Samantha, voicing Ben’s thoughts.

  ‘Shh!’ Jasmine repeated, annoyed.

  ‘What?’ snapped Samantha. ‘I can’t hear anything else! Can you?’

  ‘No,’ said Jasmine grimly. ‘I can’t. And that means now’s the best time.’

  ‘For what?’ said Ben.

  ‘For us to go out there,’ said Jasmine. ‘Now, before anything else happens. It
might be our only chance.’

  With that, she stripped off her school tie, undid its knot, and began bundling it up in her hands.

  ‘The main entrance is on the other side of the foyer,’ she explained, nodding at the fog beyond the balcony railing. ‘That’s where the police keep trying to get in, so that’s got to be the closest place we can find people to help us. All we’ve got to do is get there.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Samantha, noticing what Jasmine was doing with her tie. ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding!’

  ‘We breathe through these,’ said Jasmine, holding the bundled material up to her nose and mouth. ‘It’s going to be horrible, but it’s all we’ve got.’

  The girls’ school ties were thicker than Ben’s – more like short scarves, really. The extra width of their material meant that, folded, a good two or three layers could be held over both nose and mouth at the same time.

  Ben’s tie, by contrast, was narrow – an ungenerous six centimetres across even at its widest point. No matter how he scrunched its rough red polyester to his face, it felt alarmingly loose and useless – nothing like airtight. He grimaced.

  The expression was only for himself, but Samantha caught his eye and gave him a significant look. Ben deliberately didn’t react, just looked at Jasmine.

  Samantha’s wrong, he told himself. Jasmine couldn’t possibly have a crawler on her – could she? But her apparent utter certainty about what their next step should be did suddenly seem a bit weird.

  ‘I . . . don’t know,’ he said. ‘Do you think we maybe ought to see if there’s another way out first?’

  Jasmine frowned. For a second Ben thought she looked disappointed in him – which, he realized, was something he didn’t like one bit.

  ‘They locked us in, Ben,’ she said. ‘Remember? The staff shut all the doors when this thing started. We might search the whole building and never find a way out – assuming, of course, that we don’t get caught in the meantime. But this . . .’ She gestured at the fog again. ‘This is close! From the doors below us, it’s just a straight run across the foyer. We’ve got to take the chance.’

  Lauren looked to her mistress for guidance. ‘Babes?’

  ‘Well . . . OK,’ said Samantha. ‘But if this gas is poisonous or something, you’re in so much trouble, Jasmine.’

  ‘We’ll all be,’ said Ben. He shrugged and shook his head. ‘All right.’

  They turned to set off down the stairs again – and two things happened at once.

  There was a splintering crack, a crash of doors thrown back on their hinges, and a terrible discordant shriek as eleven voices rose in triumph. On the floor above, Hugo and the adults had broken through.

  The second thing was that Ben, Jasmine, Samantha and Lauren caught sight of another group of adults who had been sneaking up the stairs behind them, from below.

  Their approach had been silent. They had already reached the half-landing between the floors, just six steps down. If Ben and the girls had turned just seconds later they would have had no chance. As it was, a precious chunk of what little warning they got was wasted on Ben, because all he could do was stand and gape.

  The adults stood four abreast, their formation snaking round the curve of the stairs and out of sight. In the front row, mouth opening in a wide grin of triumph, was Ben’s tutor, Mr Clissold.

  ‘Follow me!’ yelled Jasmine. She clamped her tie to her face, yanked the balcony door open and set off into the fog at a run. Lauren followed her, then Samantha.

  For another slow second Ben watched in horror as Mr Clissold abandoned stealth and sprang up the stairs, hands poised to grab him. At last Ben turned, the sign by the door saying 1: HALL BALCONY blurring in his vision. Then, holding his school tie over his mouth, he plunged out into the mist.

  11:25 PM.

  It was like someone had dashed acid in Jasmine’s face. Her visibility, fogged to start with, instantly dropped almost to zero as her eyes wept furiously to protect themselves. Though she was pressing her school tie to her mouth and nose with both hands, the gas still sent what felt like sparks to the back of her throat, scorching down into her lungs. But she kept running.

  It was impossible to tell exactly how many pairs of feet were pounding the Barbican carpet behind her – it sounded like a lot of them. She hoped Samantha and Lauren and Ben were still with her (If anyone got caught, she told herself, they would have made a noise – wouldn’t they?) But even if they were, they definitely weren’t alone. The multiple clumps of closing footsteps were the only sounds Jasmine could hear.

  Her heart juddered in her chest; panic jangled in her mind. The way those adults had snuck up on them was like something out of a nightmare. The silence now also grated at her nerves: Jasmine would have preferred shouts and noise, even the screams that had come from Hugo and the sentries, but there was nothing but footsteps.

  Ahead of her in the mist and a little off to the left, a row of yellow lights appeared. The lights had black markings that resolved themselves into stick figures, male and female. Jasmine had just identified them as toilet signs when the grey concrete wall they were attached to abruptly loomed out behind them, forcing Jasmine to swerve left. The pursuing footsteps followed her, getting closer.

  Jasmine hoped it was Ben and Samantha and Lauren back there, but she was so scared it wasn’t, she didn’t dare look round to find out.

  As she ran, she tried to keep the position of the main entrance and her relationship to it anchored in her mind. By setting out at an angle from the doors, the balcony walkway had taken her off at a tangent, and this wall Jasmine was following had turned her even further. At some point, she hoped, there would be another way down to the foyer: if there wasn’t, she was taking Ben, Samantha and Lauren into a dead end. But if she did find a way down, she would then have to find her way back to the main entrance from wherever she’d ended up – and the Barbican was hard enough to navigate even when it wasn’t filled with tear gas and enemies.

  She needn’t have worried about finding the stairs, at least: to Jasmine’s horror, with her next step her left foot dropped further than she’d expected. She lurched forward, barely keeping her balance, feet clattering, pain jarring through her ankles and knees. But the flight was mercifully short: twelve steps later she was on flat floor again. As footsteps thundered down the stairs behind her Jasmine took a chance. She pulled the tie from her mouth, yelled ‘Left!’ and swerved again, hard.

  Instantly one of the foyer’s giant concrete pillars seemed to lunge at her out of the thickening fog. Jasmine managed not to run straight into it: instead she used it to orient herself, running around it. She was now moving parallel with the wall she’d followed earlier past the toilets. Now, however, she was one floor down, and running in the opposite direction – or so she hoped.

  Jasmine was now on the foyer’s upper level – where the main entrance was. She was conscious of the space opening out around her but the gas was thicker down here: it seemed to claw at her eyes. Denied the senses of sight and smell she concentrated on sound, but what she heard was strange and frightening. Gasps and hisses came out of the fog all around her. She heard sudden movements: their origins and direction were impossible to identify, but her heart was gripped with a sudden, icy certainty that there were living things in the mist with her, reacting to her, aware of where she was. At any second, she was sure, someone or something was about to leap out and grab her. But still the pursuing footsteps continued to pound at her heels, driving her on.

  Was she going the right way? Were the others even still with her?

  11:27 PM.

  Acid ate his lungs; his eyes felt like they were melting – but Ben was keeping up. With both hands pressing his tie to his face he had made it down the stairs without breaking his legs. He had followed Jasmine’s voice around the corner without smacking into the concrete pillar. He had kept Samantha or Lauren’s back in sight (the fog was so thick and his eyes so raw, he couldn’t tell which of them it was), and so far – though
there had been a nasty moment near the start of the chase when he had felt fingertips actually touch the back of his shirt – he had managed to avoid being caught. But then his left foot got tangled round the leg of some piece of furniture.

  Ben spun. His right knee buckled painfully as his weight hit it at the unexpected angle. Then he was on the floor.

  His breath flew out in a rush. Black spots burst in his vision against the surrounding yellow-white of the fog. He lay there, winded, utterly helpless, certain that his pursuers were about to get him.

  Nothing happened.

  Hands still at his sides, Ben snatched a breath. Mistake. The tie had been an intolerable hindrance, but the price of trying to breathe without it was one he paid in pain: it felt like his insides were being scoured out with bleach. He hawked and wheezed, rolling on the carpet, still expecting hands (or worse) to descend on him at any moment. Where are they? he thought dazedly. Why hadn’t they caught him? What was going on?

  Ben brought the tie back to his mouth and gradually brought his breathing under some sort of control. As he did so he noticed that, apart from the noise he himself was making, the room around him seemed to have become unnervingly silent.

  Slowly, carefully, aching, he got to his feet.

  Was it really the police who had released the gas, like Jasmine had said? If so, Ben wasn’t sure what good it was supposed to do. Maybe it had stopped the bitten people, maybe not. But for him it was a nightmare.

  There was no way to tell which way he was facing. Deciding that whichever way it was would have to do, he shuffled forward. With one hand he kept the tie over his nose and mouth. With the other he stretched out, eyes streaming, blindly groping at the air ahead of him.

  After ten slow paces his right foot came to the edge of a drop: he realized it was the top of another flight of stairs. Ben concentrated, trying to visualize what he remembered of the foyer’s layout. He shuffled to his left, following the line of the stair, and decided that there were two possibilities. He was either on the central walkway of the foyer, which would be absolutely amazing, because it would mean he was now perhaps twenty metres or so from the main entrance. Or, of course, he was completely lost, in which case he was just stuffed.