He coughed, he spat, he cried a little. The floor felt cool and clean against his cheek. The acoustics had changed. Every spluttering noise he made sounded wider here, resonant, different to the claustrophobic hell above.
He’d made it. He was out. He was alive.
Blinking, he realised he could see. Only just, but there was light. He rolled onto his back, panting, shivering. He was in a room. Not a cave, or a tunnel, or a cavern. This was a room. It had proper smooth walls that rose up around him. It had a ceiling with an empty light cord hanging from it. Up there he saw the source of the light: narrow windows, like a basement has up at street level.
‘You total legend,’ he smiled. ‘You’ve only gone and done it,’ then sang, ‘“I see a bad moon risin’ …”,’ as he pulled himself to his feet. Sure enough, the dim grey light across the ceiling was moonlight, which meant one thing: he was all but free.
Around him was dusty chaos. The floor was strewn with crates and boxes, many of them split and spewing long-forgotten paperwork. A grey map of Europe hung on the wall. A crooked, torn picture of an old army general hung in a frame opposite. He saw a door at the end of the room and flew at it, but it held fast, bouncing him back into the dumping ground. He tried the light switch but it was dead. Not dead: lacking a bulb, he corrected, looking up at the empty cord. Scanning his surroundings more closely he realized that most of these boxes were from a house clearance, nothing to do with the original use of the room, which was some sort of military office from decades ago. Some of the crates were labelled in scrawled marker pen ‘Bedroom 1’, ‘Living Room’, once relevant to a long-lost home. In one called ‘Kitchen’ he rummaged for a tool to attack the door, finding spatulas, spoons, mouldy tea-towels and innumerable other useless tools never required by a locksmith. But he did find a box of light bulbs.
Pulling a crate underneath the light cord, he stood aloft to screw in the bulb. With a splintering crack the crate submitted to defeat and spilled him back to the floor, a sheaf of papers at his feet. He could make out in the darkness a newspaper staring up at him. He picked it up expecting it to be historically significant, declaring some military victory or ‘peace in our time’. The headline wasn’t memorable in global history: ‘Two dead in mystery blaze.’ He turned on his night-vision camera, which revealed the text in pin-sharp, green, high-definition.
It was a local paper, the Chronicle & Echo, from years ago. A faded photograph showed a gutted country house, blackened smears above its windows, a gaping, jagged scoop bitten from its roof. Under it Krishna read, ‘Couple die in Pilkington Manor fire.’
‘Pilkington …’ he murmured; a flicker of recognition.
Moving his phone across the text, certain details caught his eye: ‘Chief fire officer reports the inferno appears to have been started with chemicals’, ‘police have not ruled out foul play’, and ‘they leave behind two teenage children’. He tossed it back to the pile of papers at his feet and moved to the door. Pushing it again, he examined the edges with his camera.
‘Totally sealed,’ he sighed. ‘Impenetrable.’
Then as an afterthought he pulled on the handle. The door swung open. An unstoppable instinct made him check behind him in case anyone had seen his stupidity.
He stepped through into a completely dark room. Only the tiniest smear of depleted moonlight leaked in from the room behind, slowly extinguished by the closing door. Immediately, he stumbled into something that crashed with a metallic clatter like metal saucepans being knocked from a shelf. He swore, and reaching back to the edge of the door, his sweeping hand found a metal toggle light switch. Click, click – nothing.
He tapped his phone into life and cursed the battery indicator, now amber in colour and showing eleven per cent. He tried the torch one more time but the button still refused to activate it. Holding it aloft, peering at the night-vision image on the screen, he stood fast, bewildered by what he saw. The thing he’d bumped into was a gurney, a small hospital bed on a trolley, on which were piled metal trays of medical instruments. This was a laboratory or clinic of some sort. He was struggling to take it all in through his palm-sized screen; everywhere he held the phone, the image was a clutter of competing eras. It felt like a 1950s doctor’s surgery, tatty, paint-peeled steel cabinets, a dusty clock hanging crooked on the wall, an antique-looking blood-pressure strap among the clutter on a vintage wooden desk. Yet among all this was modern medical paraphernalia: intravenous drip stands, discarded masks and latex gloves. And this was just in the metre or two around him.
‘Christ,’ he uttered, stepping into the eerie darkness. Then a thought struck him. He swiped his screen to select the normal camera. The room looked completely black without the night-vision setting, but the flash might still work. This spectacle was too weird not to share. Moving slowly, further into the centre of the lab, he held the phone up, unable to see anything but the icons around the black screen, and tapped the shutter circle. A bright flash filled the space, dazzling him for a second. For a moment the image of a blood-spattered steel table lay before him, before it reduced to a tiny box in the corner of the phone leaving the black screen ready for the next shot.
He tapped, flash, tapped again, flash. He was no longer looking at the screen, he was holding his breath, staring wide-eyed at the strobing horrors around him: large jars on shelves contained body parts, rows and rows of them, floating in yellow liquid, some decomposed husks, some fresh. One contained the dark-haired leg of an ape, its pink foot plump and waxy. A monkey’s twisted arm filled another.
He kept tapping the screen, turned to the gurney and saw in the flashing white light that it was draped in polythene, caked with smears of dry blood. A gammy handsaw lay on it, the teeth holding chunks of flesh darkened by dried blood. Tangled in the blade was a wad of hair.
He spun around, adrenaline surging; another flash. His phone battery showed eight per cent. Flash, flash, panic rising. Flash – a chaotic storm of silhouettes swam in his blinking eyes, too many shapes for him to comprehend and then he saw it, on the far side of the laboratory, past IV stands and cabinets and endless clutter. One more flash of the camera clearly illuminated a pair of double doors.
Chapter 14
Petra was witnessing a deep, hard-wired animal instinct. She’d seen it before. Gorillas carrying their floppy, lifeless baby for days. Whales refusing to let their dead calf sink, nudging it to the surface of the ocean again and again, sometimes for weeks. This was a new level of heartbreak. Tears poured down her cheeks as Dane knelt over Carly’s corpse, frantically trying to save her.
‘Carly! Carly, I’m here! Hang on!’ He tried to lift the massive rock off her head but couldn’t get a decent grip and looked to the others. ‘Help me! C’mon, help me move this!’
Ed and Mary didn’t move. Petra put her hand on Dane’s shoulder, trying to console him. ‘Dane …’
But he pulled her hand towards the boulder. ‘C’mon Petra, help me.’ She felt blood on her fingers. Carly’s blood. Dane crouched at the rock and strapped his arms around it, straightening his back and heaving. ‘Carly! I’m here.’ With a grunt the stone rose a few centimetres. Petra saw a curl of blonde hair underneath it before the boulder slipped from Dane’s blood-wet hands and dropped with a sickening wet crunch. Ed winced and Mary looked away.
Petra leaned forward, putting her arm around Dane’s shoulders. ‘Leave her, Dane. It’s too late.’
‘No! No … I …’ He broke down, hopeless, gasping sobs echoing from the walls around them. ‘Who’d do something like this?’
Petra looked at Ed. He was looking at Mary. ‘Smugglers,’ he said. ‘They’ll stop at nothing.’
Petra said, ‘Dane, we’ve got to go.’
‘I’m not leaving her. No way.’
Mary stepped forward. ‘Dane, we can’t do anything for her. We must leave.’
Her instruction was met with anger. ‘I’m not leaving Carly to rot in this hole!’
Krishna was panicking. He barged his way towards the door
s in complete darkness, bumping against cabinets, tangling in an old office chair, clattering his way to freedom. Pushing hopelessly at cold walls, he ran his hands wide looking for a door to swing open. His fingers felt the frame, then painted wood, but nothing moved as he shoved. He stepped across and felt further over, searching for a bolt or handle when the back of his hand touched something soft and cool at hip height. He jerked it back. Sparing his phone’s battery, he allowed himself one more camera flash. He just had to find the bolt securing these double doors. He raised the phone, pointed and tapped. A bright white light filled the room, less than a second but long enough. Long enough to burn an image on his retina. Slumped against the corner, he glimpsed what his hand had touched: a mutilated corpse gazed up at him from black, hollow eye sockets. Both its legs had been dismembered at the knee, stubby limbs splayed wide, ragged wounds turned to blackened crusts, the hands lying peacefully at its crotch, the head lolling back, jaw twisted.
Krishna heaved, his abdomen cramping, then he roared and threw himself at the doors, which rattled but held fast. Sweeping his hand in front of him, he found cold metal, a latch at eye level. Trembling fingers found the fat lever; he yanked it but it didn’t budge. He pushed it with his palm and the door swung wide, tumbling him into grey light.
Stumbling forwards, he dodged and spun, adrenaline twitching his every nerve. The clack of the heavy door latching shut behind him made him jump with fright. Panting, sweating, he was alone. Gulping dry air in his clammy mouth, he quickly took in his surroundings. This was a corridor, a short, windowless passage with a couple of dirty plastic domed skylights in the ceiling. The brick walls had dark grey, peeling paint up to waist height, then a single filthy white line, and a lighter grubby grey paint above that, the two-tone hallmark of a 1960s municipal building.
He lunged forwards towards the opposite end of the passage. In the gloom his hands found a large, rusting steel door. He recognised it immediately as a blast-trap door like those Ed had explained that afternoon. He pulled at its thick, corroded handle, like a slug of scaffold pipe welded to an impenetrable steel slab. The door didn’t even creak. He bounced his shoulder against it but the harder he barged the harder it hit back. Furious, he hollered, ‘AAAAARGH’ and kicked the metal door until his scream turned into a yell of pain, each deafening impact sounding like the banging of a wartime field gun.
Petra froze. They all did. Even Dane hushed his sobs at the echoing BOOM, BOOM, BOOM rolling around the tunnels. ‘Shit, they’re still here,’ she said. ‘We’ve gotta go!’
‘I’m bringing Carly.’
‘What?’ Mary exclaimed. ‘We haven’t got time! They could be on us at any moment!’
Ed attempted to reason with him. ‘Dane, we can’t stay here. It’s not safe. We’ll come back for her.’
A moan of agony came from deep within Dane as he flopped onto Carly’s lifeless belly and sobbed. He hugged her around the waist and whispered through choking coughs, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you.’
‘Dane! Move!’ Ed ordered.
‘NO!’ shouted Dane spinning round. It happened in the blink of an eye, almost too fast and too grotesque for Petra to take in. Dane’s strength was such that as he rounded on Ed, a snagging, crunching sound came from the floor – a sickening, sinew-snapping tear, like wrenching a stubborn leg from a roast chicken. Carly’s immovable head had almost detached from her corpse.
‘Oh God,’ Petra gulped, clasping her hand to mouth. Dane dropped the body in shock at what he’d done and Mary reeled backwards.
The only person remaining cool was Ed. ‘Dane. We need to go.’
Coughing, retching, spit dribbling from his drooping mouth, he quietly asked, ‘Go where?’ His quiet whine chilled Petra. She knew that voice. The empty croak of lost hope. Dane was resigned to give up and die right there.
Chapter 15
Breathless, stinking, and with the rancid smell of that blind, hacked-up, composting corpse still clinging to the back of his throat, Krishna was trapped. He leaned his back against the old blast-trap door and cast his eyes to the ceiling. The two grey rectangles of the dirty plastic skylights were the only shapes visible in the darkness. Slowly, his brain realised that, like the slotted windows in the dump room he’d broken into, they must be lit by the moon. He was in a brick corridor linking some sort of decrepit military bunker with the Rock. What the hell had gone on here? And where were his friends?
That was when he saw it: something irregular in the painted line along the middle of the corridor wall. ‘You’re joking,’ he sighed. He’d blundered right past it. A fire exit in the side of the corridor, painted exactly like the walls, a push bar across its middle. He placed his hands gently on the bar, unable to truly believe it would open. He leaned his forehead on the door, mouthed a silent prayer, and pushed.
A click, a creak, and a gust of fresh air hit his face.
‘Thank you, God.’
He stepped into moonlight, a gentle warm breeze and the heavy scent of honeysuckle and wild jasmine. He was free.
Looking around, he saw that the building behind him was literally a bunker – he could barely see its edges under a thick wilderness of shrubs. Ahead of him the mountainous Rock rose steeply from his feet. He checked his phone for a signal. Five per cent battery. He held it high, squinting at the screen. Zero bars.
‘Piece of shit.’
He started climbing. He would get altitude, get a signal, get help. The grassy bank on this undisturbed face of the Rock was steady but rising fast. In less than a minute he was doubled over, panting for breath, his cut knee zinging with pain. Looking up at the pale grey outline, he could see high above him the path that led around to the tunnel entrance where he’d seen the police car, where just hours ago he and his friends had laughed at stupid selfies and at the weird old guy checking their passports.
There was no way he could climb up to there from here. Even in the dim light a sudden absence of grass and shrubs showed that a steep, rocky cliff blocked his route. Up to his right, though, there was hope. A ledge, higher up this grassy slope, would surely give him the height to get a phone signal.
He lifted his throbbing leg, planted it in the damp grass and pushed. Soon he was grabbing at bushes, feet slipping on shale. The climb was too hard, too much. What looked like an achievable trek from below had become perilous. He glanced back down and a whimper slipped from his lips. He checked the phone screen: four per cent; no signal. He blew his cheeks out a couple of times, steeling himself.
‘C’mon, big man. You’ve got this.’
The giddying height he’d already achieved boosted his resolve. He looked up at the ledge. ‘Just there! Just – up – there!’ Scraping, sliding, grasping and groaning, he hauled his weight through brambles and bushes, steeper up the incline, occasionally sending showers of grit and shale rattling off the rocks below.
Mud, blood and sweat smeared his face, legs and belly as he reached the protruding ledge. He flung his arms over the top, grabbed fistfuls of thick, wiry weeds, and pulled himself to safety.
For a minute or so he just lay there, sprawled, his gasping lungs like a slowing steam engine, his face squashed against the dark moist ground. It smelled of earth, of life. He felt an overwhelming peace.
Gathering himself for his task, he opened his eyes and tentatively got to his knees. With a steadying hand against the rising slab of limestone beside him, he carefully stood up. He chanced a look down over the lip of the ledge but the drop was so dizzying he lurched back against the cold rock face.
Then a thought occurred. How the hell am I gonna get down?
He shook his head, emptying it of doubt. Maybe they’ll send a helicopter. But only if …
He extended his hand toward the heavens and squeezed the phone into life. The screen lit. ‘Still four per cent,’ he murmured. ‘Please. You can do this.’ He was looking at the dormant corner of the screen, which showed his network provider but no signal. He waited.
Bing. One slender bar
of signal. He was saved.
Petra was helping Dane to his feet. He was unable to look at Carly now, his eyes scrunched up, squeezed tears tracking down his cheeks. ‘That’s it,’ she gently reassured him. ‘Come with me. Let’s get to safety and then the police can sort this out. There’s nothing you can do now.’ To her surprise he hugged her, burying his face in her shoulder. She squeezed him hard. He was taut. He was broken.
Mary seemed immune to the grotesque mess at her feet and was squinting ahead, past Carly and down the passage. ‘Let’s just get to the next crossroads because then we’ve got options.’
She stepped past Petra and Dane, ignored Carly’s splintered, blood-sodden remains, cracked a glow-stick and walked. Ed trod past them in her tow. Petra released her grip on Dane, who sniffled and gave her arm a squeeze. She led him onwards, after the others, away from the girl he had loved.
Almost immediately, the four of them were at a crossroads. Ed quickly surveyed the options and said, ‘Forwards. This way.’ They strode on but as Petra and Dane crossed the junction she put her arm across his chest, slowing him down. A gap grew between the green glow of Ed and Mary and their own dim torchlight. Dane shrugged at her, wondering why she was holding him up.
She glanced ahead then looked into his wet eyes and said, ‘Dane, I don’t think we’re lost.’
He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his T-shirt. ‘What?’
She shushed him.
‘Petra, we’re very fucking lost!’ He started to walk but Petra grabbed his arm.
‘Wait. If we’re lost, why would she say “Let’s go to the crossroads” and then immediately there’s a crossroads? What if they’re fucking with us?’
He strolled on. The green light of their leaders’ glow-stick was getting smaller. ‘There are crossroads everywhere,’ he said.
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