Dark Side of the Moon

by Les Wood

  ‘Come on, come on!’ Kyle shouted from behind him. ‘Get a move on!’

  Campbell placed the box back in the rear of the safe and closed the door. The LED on the door changed from green to red again. Campbell tugged on the handle. It was locked. He turned to Kyle. ‘Okay, Ah’ve got it. Let’s go.’

  ‘Hurry up, get in,’ Kyle yelled above the howling of the alarms.

  ‘What? Me first?’ said Campbell.

  ‘Too right, you first.You and yer brother are the kinda guys who can’t wipe their arse without getting shite on their thumb. So it’s just gonnae be the same as on the way up, Ah’m no having you panicking and losing yer grip when ye’re above me, come crashin down on top of me.’ Kyle grabbed Campbell’s sleeve, pulled him towards the opening. ‘So shift yourself and get in.’

  Campbell gripped the edge of the hatch and hoisted himself through, reaching across to grab the rungs of the ladder. Kyle followed with the hatch door held in his right hand. They struggled with the door, manipulating it onto its hinges and slotting the latches into position. More explosions shook the building, sending loose masonry and flakes of brickwork tinkling down through the riser shaft.

  ‘What in the name of holy fuck is happening?’ Kyle said.

  Campbell shrugged. ‘Whatever it is,’ he said, ‘we need to get out of here.’

  ‘Ye’re a master of the understatement,’ Kyle said, fiddling with the last of the latches which was refusing to fit properly into its slot. ‘Look, you make a start. Ah’ll catch ye up when Ah get this done.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Aye, just get going. Ah’ll be quicker getting down than you anyway. If we go at the same time ye’ll just be holdin me up.’

  Campbell could see the logic in this. ‘Okay,’ he said, and started to descend the ladder, leaving Kyle grunting with the effort of trying to secure the final latch.

  Going down on his own, in the dark, with nothing but the glow from his head torch casting a tiny cone of light, was unnerving. Campbell, trying not to think of the drop below, edged down, inch by inch, rung by rung, setting as fast a pace as he dared. A faint smell of smoke drifted up from the depths of the riser. Above him, he could make out the yellow circle of Kyle’s torch bobbing and dancing in the darkness. He turned back to the wall in front of him, concentrating on placing his hands and feet in the right place.

  As he worked his way down he thought at first he was losing his sight; the rungs and the bricks seemed to be fading, he had to make more of an effort to locate his hands in the correct position. He looked down and realised he could no longer see his feet.

  Then it dawned on him.

  It wasn’t his vision. It was the head torch.

  The batteries were running out.

  ‘Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuck!’ Campbell reached up and tapped the side of the torch. It was the worst thing he could have done. The torch flickered briefly and blinked out, leaving him in complete darkness.

  Campbell froze. Christ, this was all he needed. He thought briefly of waiting for Kyle to make his way down to join him but knew that wasn’t the best idea; Kyle already thought he was a dickhead without Campbell acting like a big wean; scared of the dark and frightened to move, waiting for someone to come and hold his hand. Plus there was the small matter of getting out of the store without being caught. In other words, getting out as quickly as possible. On top of that, the smell of smoke was stronger now; something, somewhere, was definitely burning.

  He took a deep breath and tentatively lowered his foot to the next rung down, finally exhaling when his foot made contact. Okay, okay, he could do this. It wasn’t so bad. He carried on for another few rungs and let out a sigh of relief. It was going to be fine, there couldn’t be too far to go now. He looked up to see Kyle had also started to descend, the light from his headtorch getting closer, and this increased Campbell’s confidence further. He began to go down a little quicker, finding a rhythm between hands and feet. He even managed a smile to himself, and was about to shout up to Kyle, kid him to get a move on, when his foot slid off the next rung, slipping through the narrow gap between the ladder and the wall.

  He started to fall and scrabbled for purchase on the rungs in front of him. It was no use. His momentum carried him backwards and his outstretched hand missed the metal bars. His head collided with the wall behind him and he began to drop down the riser. His leg, trapped in the space behind the ladder, twisted impossibly as he fell.

  Campbell felt something snap below his knee and a white-hot shard of pain speared up through his body, exiting in a piercing scream of agony as he came to rest hanging upside down in the shaft, his leg still wedged in the ladder.

  Kyle came scurrying down the ladder towards him. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said. ‘What the fuck happened?’

  Campbell continued to scream, flailing wildly, trying to lift himself up to relieve the weight on his trapped leg. ‘Help me!’ he finally managed to get out, his voice cracking. ‘Pull me up!’

  Kyle hooked his arm through a rung and stretched down, making a grab for Campbell’s hand. He couldn’t reach, only managing to brush Campbell’s fingertips with his own. ‘Wait a minute,’ he shouted and edged down a little further. He could see Campbell’s leg, the raw edge of bone protruding from his ripped trousers like a splintered stick. ‘Give me your hand,’ he said. ‘Reach up.’

  Campbell tried to raise his body to stretch towards Kyle, but the movement only caused him to slip further down the shaft, his leg shifting and grating against the rung. Campbell screamed again, a long tortured howl which ended in a series of burbled choking gasps as he vomited.

  Kyle looked for a way to get down to Campbell. It was hopeless. There was no way he could manoeuvre past Campbell’s shattered leg.

  That realisation brought him up short.

  If he couldn’t manage to get Campbell upright there was no way Kyle was going to be able to get out of the shaft. Kyle was stuck above him.

  He was trapped.

  Unless…

  Campbell started howling again and Kyle had to shout to make himself heard. ‘Hey! Listen! There’s only one way Ah can help ye.’ Campbell quieted to a series of low moans. ‘Ah can’t reach ye from here. Ah’ll need to go back up, get out through one of the other hatches up above.’ He could vaguely make out the pasty oval of Campbell’s face staring up at him through the gloom. ‘Ah’ll find a way back down to the Arrow and climb back and get ye from below.’

  ‘No!’ Campbell screamed. ‘No, ye won’t! Ye’re gonnae leave me here.’

  ‘Ah’ll come back for ye, Ah promise,’ Kyle replied, knowing as he said it that it was a lie.

  ‘Ye don’t have time. Ye’ll just save yourself and to hell with me. Ye’ll let me die here.’

  ‘Ye’re not gonnae die, get a grip of yourself.’

  ‘Ah will,’ Campbell said. ‘Can ye not smell that smoke?’

  Kyle hadn’t noticed, but now that Campbell mentioned it, there was a burning smell in the shaft. ‘It’s nothin,’ he said. ‘Boag said there’d be wee fires. That was the point of the explosives.’ ‘Aye, and wee fires can get out of control. Ah’m tellin ye, don’t leave me here.’

  Kyle had had enough. It was time to act. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘This isn’t going to work. Ah’ll come back. Climb up and get you from below.’

  ‘Ya prick,’ Campbell yelled. ‘Ye’re gonnae do it, aren’t ye? Ye’re actually gonnae desert me.’

  Kyle started to make his way back up the ladder. ‘Ah’ll be back,’ he shouted down. ‘Ah promise. Ah’m no gonnae let ye down.’ The words rang hollow, even to his own ears, and he knew as soon as he was out of the riser he would be looking for the nearest exit.

  Campbell began to struggle, pushing his back against the wall in an attempt to lever himself upwards. ‘Come back ya scumbag,’ he shouted. ‘Come back!’ His squirming contorted his leg further and another brilliant blaze of pain scorched through him.

  This time he fainted.

  ***

&nbs
p; John ran through the debris of the lower sales area, pulling aside toppled mannequins and climbing over broken display cabinets. Panic constricted his throat. A serious fire had taken hold in the far corner of the room, black smoke billowing thickly towards the ceiling far above. Other, smaller fires were crackling and flickering around the expanse of the shop floor.

  Where the fuck were the others?

  John negotiated a pile of lifesize golden dogs which had been thrown together by the blast and strewn across the floor. He vaguely recalled they were part of a ‘pampered pooches’ display, advertising jewelled collars and fur-lined coats. Now, they lay across each other in various attitudes and postures, like some weird canine orgy. To his right was an aisle relatively clear of rubble and wreckage. It led to the grand staircase. He could get up to the second floor that way. If, as he hoped, the others had made it to the fire escape he could catch up with them there. If not, he would carry on up to the Bubble, see if they were still there.

  The water on the floor lay half an inch deep and it splashed about his feet as he sprinted towards the stairs. He began calling for Campbell as he ran, but it was useless – his voice was drowned in the clamour of the alarm sirens. As he got to the stairs, a small movement to his left caught his eye.

  A bloodied figure crawled along the floor towards him, and as John skidded to a halt it lifted its head to look at him. John frowned. Was that Boag? Good God what on earth had happened to him? His face was mashed to a blood-spattered ruin, his nose flattened and crushed. Boag rolled onto his side and sat up, leaning against the base of a perfume counter.

  John knelt beside him. ‘Fuck’s sake man, you been getting some plastic surgery? Cos Ah’ll tell ye, it hasn’t worked.’

  Boag managed a smile. ‘Bad as that is it?’ He wiped a string of clotted blood from above his lip and examined it. ‘It was Leggett,’ he said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Leggett?’ John asked, wide-eyed. Boag waved away an answer.

  ‘What about Campbell?’ John asked. ‘Where is he?’

  Boag pointed up to the hatch at the top of the Arrow.

  ‘You’re pullin my plonker. What in the name of Christ is he doing up there? What about the Bubble?’

  Boag shook his head. ‘No time to explain. But that’s where he is. Him and Kyle.’

  ‘The two of them?’

  ‘Up there,’ Boag said. ‘They climbed.’ He pointed to the arrow, then to the ceiling.

  John swallowed hard. ‘Jesus Christ… okay, if you say so, but look, Ah can’t explain it, but Ah’ve got a feeling something’s wrong, something bad’s happened.’

  Boag made a show of looking at the chaos surrounding them. ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

  ‘Aye, very good,’ John said. ‘But there’s something else, call it instinct if ye like. Ah think they’re in trouble.’

  He stood, walked over to the base of the Arrow and hoisted himself on top, grasping the recessed rungs. He sucked his teeth, inspecting the length of the Arrow. ‘Okay,’ he said to himself. ‘Ah think Ah see how this is done.’ He turned to Boag. ‘You wait here,’ he said. ‘Ah’m gonnae see what the score is up there.’

  ‘But you might slip,’ said Boag. ‘They had harnesses and stuff.’

  John laughed. ‘Harnesses are for wimps. Just watch this.’ He gave Boag a thumbs-up and began to climb.

  ***

  Kyle made his way up the ladder, leaving Campbell behind in the inky blackness of the riser shaft. He would make better progress now he didn’t have that fool to nanny any more.

  The twin had been right about one thing though – the smell of smoke was pretty strong. Too strong to be just the result of the small fires Boag had been intending.

  When he finally got to the next access panel he reached out to undo the first of the latches, ready to get out of this pit. He drew his hand back in surprise. He’d burned himself. ‘What the fu—?’ he said aloud, his voice deadened in the confined space of the shaft.

  He licked his forefinger and placed it on the flat surface of the hatch. Again, he had to pull back. It was hot. Very hot. He felt around the brickwork surrounding the panel – it too was warm. This wasn’t good. There shouldn’t be any fire this high up – Boag was only supposed to set them on the lower floors. If a fire had spread this far…

  He began climbing again, picking up the tempo. Each footfall on the rungs clanged with a dull, metronomic regularity which pushed him harder. At the next floor he stretched out his hand to test the panel, breathing a sigh of relief as he encountered only cool metal.

  He quickly undid the latches and pushed the hatch open, letting it fall to the floor on the other side. He climbed through into a storeroom filled with box files and stationery. A faint rumble from the fire on the level below came through the floor. Kyle opened the door and went out into the corridor beyond. He ran to a stairwell at the far end – a utility, staff-only, concrete-and-steel affair. Wisps of smoke curled up and around the spars of the handrail but he could see no flames or flickering below. He had no option but to risk it – down was the only choice.

  He vaulted the stairs, taking a whole flight at a time. A sign on each level announced the relevant floor and he made it as far as Level 4 before he was stopped in his tracks. The smoke had been getting thicker and the temperature higher the further he descended and now he saw the source: a wall of flame flared from the door leading to the main corridor, cutting across his path on the stairs. The heat from the fire seared his face, and he could feel the tear film on his eyes evaporating. The smoke was overpowering and Kyle doubled over in a hacking convulsion of coughing, forcing him to retreat back up the stairs to the floor above. There had to be another way down; it couldn’t just be this.

  He slammed through a doorway marked Level 5, and ran down the corridor pushing open random doors as he passed, hoping for access to some other passageway which might lead out. They all led to offices and store cupboards, one even to a room which was empty but for a single champagne glass standing in the middle of the floor.

  Kyle let out a yell of frustration. This was hopeless. He stopped, tried to think it through. Maybe the next floor up would provide a route. It was the wrong direction, he couldn’t keep going up all the time, but he didn’t see what else he could do. He ran back and opened the door to the stairwell. Immediately a sheet of flame burst into the corridor, throwing him to the floor. He forced the door closed with his feet and scrambled across the floor on his hands and knees. Kyle rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling which now had little curls and licks of flame slinking along its underside.

  ‘Aw man,’ he said. ‘Not this, please not this.’ He got to his feet and stumbled to the end of the corridor, as far away as he could get from the flames. Looking back, he saw small drips of thick molten material dropping from the ceiling onto the carpet which now began to smoulder.

  Kyle considered going back and trying to stamp it out, but the stuff from the ceiling, whatever it was, was now coming down so fast it would be impossible. He looked round and spotted the final door in the corridor. It was a proper fire door and, if nothing else, it would provide a temporary refuge from the blaze and from the smoke which was now advancing along the ceiling with a slow creeping menace. It didn’t escape his consciousness that the room would also serve as a trap – once inside there would be nothing left for him to try. This was the last resort. His only chance was that the fire brigade would get to him in time. But even that was a forlorn hope – as far as the emergency services were concerned there was no-one in the building; why would they bother to search some obscure corridor on an upper floor?

  Fuck it, there was no choice now. He took one last look at the flames which were steadily progressing towards him, tried to estimate how much time he had left, and pushed the door.

  It opened into a large open plan office. The air inside was cool and clear, the only light coming from a small window set in a door at the opposite end.

  He did a double-take.

  Kyle start
ed laughing hysterically. It was true. There was another door. Another fucking door, a way out. ‘Ya beauty!’ he shouted, punching the air. ‘Oh, ya dancer!’ Tears came to his eyes.

  He ran to the door and squinted through the window. The passageway on the other side was clear – no smoke, no fire. He pulled on the handle. The door didn’t budge. Kyle could hardly believe it. The bastard was locked. No, this was too much. Not now he was so close.

  Kyle yanked on the door again, braced his feet against the jamb, strained with all his might.

  It didn’t move.

  Frantically he searched the room for a key, throwing open desk drawers and filing cabinets, tossing paperwork and books aside. There was nothing.

  Fuck.

  He checked the window; that wasn’t a possibility either – it was too small and, besides, it was wired security glass. He’d never manage to smash it.

  He was about to sink to the floor in despair, resign himself to the fact that this was finally it, when he spotted movement in the passage beyond the door.

  His heart leapt. Someone was there.

  He began pummelling on the door, yelling for help.

  The figure in the corridor halted and walked slowly back towards him through the gloom.

  ‘Hey, pal!’ Kyle shouted. ‘In here! Ah’m in here! Get me out. Hurry!’

  Kyle took a step back from the window, slackjawed, as the figure came closer and he saw Leggett’s leering face materialise on the other side of the glass.

  ‘Oh mama, mama,’ breathed Leggett, shaking his head. ‘Whoop-de-doo and shag me sideways, but this is just fuckin perfect.’ He broke into a wide smile. ‘Kyle, my man. Kyle, Kyle, Kyle. Don’t ye just love it?’

  ***

  Campbell came to in the pitch black of the shaft, the blood pounding in his head as he hung upside down. The pain from his leg was like a razor-edged corkscrew slicing and twisting into his spinal cord. He let out a weak moan.