Crawlers

by Sam Enthoven

  His love of horror films and games had helped keep him sane all night. Their logic, the way that characters in them reacted, had given him clues about what to do. Now, all they told him was that the situation was hopeless.

  The classic zombie movies all had unhappy endings. There was always a point where all the characters’ efforts failed: the defences cracked, the horde broke through, all was lost. Ben had loved that about them. It seemed more truthful to him, more satisfying, than any superficial and lame attempt to impose a ‘happy ever after’. So now, at what felt like the same point in his own story, Ben had nothing to say.

  ‘Weapons,’ said Robert.

  ‘What?’ said Jasmine.

  ‘We need weapons,’ Robert repeated.

  Ben, and everyone else, stared at him.

  ‘We need to find some way we can fight,’ said Robert. ‘Let’s face it, it’s either that or we just let them get us. And I want to do something. I don’t care much what. Just as long as I know we tried.’

  Josh snorted. ‘That’s it. Now I know you’ve gone mental. How do you think you’re going to fight with your arm broken?’

  ‘I don’t know, Josh,’ said Robert, gritting his teeth. ‘But I’m open to suggestions.’

  For another whole second Ben gaped at Robert. He would never underestimate him again. He closed his mouth.

  ‘Robert’s right,’ he said, nodding at him coolly – or trying to. ‘Let’s look around. There’s got to be some way to fight back.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Jasmine.

  BLAM! The theatre doors sprang back on their hinges.

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Ben, his pretence at outward calm evaporating under a blowtorch of panic. ‘Something! Anything!’

  He turned and started hunting.

  The Pit Theatre’s backstage area didn’t look promising. In fact it looked worse than the broom cupboard had been. Ben swore. It was so unfair!

  If this had been a game, a first person shooter, there would have been weapons. The game’s designers, knowing that a final ‘boss’ fight was coming up, would have left useful things strewn around the place – guns, ammo, extra health, stuff like that. But here, there were no grenades or rocket launchers. There weren’t even any medical kits to magically restore his battered body to capacity. There was just him, and Jasmine, and Robert, and Josh . . .

  And, he noticed, some scaffolding.

  ‘There,’ he said, pointing. ‘What’s that?’

  Jasmine looked and saw a stack of painted wooden boards. She’d seen them before when she’d first come through here. ‘What, the scenery?’ she asked.

  ‘No, these,’ said Ben, moving towards the pile of steel poles that had been laid out in readiness for their job of supporting the scenery. He grabbed one of the short ones from the top of the pile and hefted it like a club.

  The pole was about a metre long and slightly rusted – hollow, but heavy. Near the opposite end to where Ben was holding it a clamp was still attached, making it heavier still and very unwieldy, but if he could get in a couple of good swings with it maybe he could do some damage. He looked at Jasmine.

  But she wasn’t looking at him.

  Jasmine gave the pile a kick, dislodging the smaller poles stacked on top: they tumbled all over the floor with an unmusical clanking sound – attracting the attention of Robert, who’d been fiddling vainly with a fire extinguisher he’d found attached to a nearby wall. He gave up, and came over to see what the noise was about.

  At the bottom of the pile were half a dozen scaffolding poles that were much longer than the others. The longest was perhaps three metres.

  ‘Ben,’ said Jasmine, ‘I think you’ve found it.’

  Ben frowned, still grasping his makeshift club. ‘I have?’

  ‘Drop that,’ said Jasmine, kneeling. She didn’t smile, but a hard glint had entered her eyes. ‘Josh? Robert? We need to work together now. This is going to take all of us . . .’

  11:57 PM.

  RAAAAASP. The sound of my body reverberated up the tunnel. The snort and wheeze of my breath had become a catarrhal gasping as I heaved myself after my prey. I am not accustomed to moving at speed. Nor to doing things for myself.

  ‘You mean nothing to me, Jasmine,’ I lied, through Lauren’s mouth. ‘Soon I will have this whole world from which to choose a companion. But I promise you, when my hand is upon you again, you will love me – for the rest of your short but painful little life!’

  I stopped, breathing hard. At the top of the tunnel, just inside the entrance, stood a figure.

  ‘Jasmine?’ I asked, straining Lauren’s eyes. ‘Is that you?’

  The figure didn’t move.

  ‘So . . . you came back,’ I said. ‘Changed your mind, have you?’ I shaped Lauren’s mouth into a sneer. ‘What if it’s too late, Jasmine? What if I’m not interested in you any more? What’s a last-minute change of heart going to be worth then? Hmmm?’

  The figure at the top of the tunnel didn’t answer.

  My own vocal organs were good for one thing: I laughed, making Lauren laugh with me – the human girl’s cackling treble a counterpoint to the boom of my bass.

  ‘I am jesting with you, Jasmine,’ I said. ‘Of course you can still be my companion.’ I held out Lauren’s arms. ‘I forgive you.

  Come to me.’

  The figure started running down the tunnel.

  There was something odd about the way Jasmine was moving: her right hand was level with her hip, and her left arm was across her body. As I watched through Lauren’s eyes Jasmine was joined by three more figures following along behind her: they too held their hands to one side, as if they were all . . . carrying something.

  ‘Jasmine?’ I asked uncertainly. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Aaaaaaaah!’ Jasmine, Ben, Robert and Josh screamed at the top of their voices as they reached the target of their charge.

  Then, like a harpoon, the tip of the three-metre-long scaffolding pole plunged past Lauren, straight into the Queen.

  The pole was hollow. The circular edge of rusty steel at its tip wasn’t particularly sharp, but with the weight of the pole itself plus that of four young people running down a slope with it, it was sharp enough. With a horrible, wet, puncturing sound it stabbed the Queen, driving almost a full two metres into her soft body.

  ‘YEEEEEEEEEE!’ A terrible, rending shriek pierced the air. The Queen bucked and thrashed. Instantly Ben and everyone else were knocked off balance, flung to the ground by the movement of the pole.

  Ben stared upward in awe at what they had done.

  Their spear had penetrated the Queen’s tongue at its thickest point, where it jutted out of her mouth. Now the dirty-white meat of the tongue was stained by a runnel of greenish-grey ichor. This rapidly swelled to a stream as the tongue lashed from side to side, opening and spreading the wound.

  The Queen’s blood, if that’s what it was, was welling up inside the hollow pole: it poured out of the end like a tap at first, but the pressure seemed to be increasing. Soon the foul-smelling fluid was jetting out with the force of a fire hose, spattering great swathes of thick gunge across the tunnel walls and ceiling while Lauren, still shrieking, was flung back and forth in the air.

  Ben numbly wiped the goop from his eyes and just lay there, aghast.

  After what seemed like an age, the shriek died down; the Queen’s movements became less frantic. Lauren’s side-to-side movements gradually slowed and the tongue dipped, losing strength, lowering its burden to the sloping tunnel floor. The torrent from the pole slowed to a trickle.

  Both the Queen and Lauren were now still. Lauren was standing perhaps half a metre from where Jasmine had fallen. Her head was bowed, her face covered by her hair.

  ‘Lauren?’ Jasmine asked.

  Slowly Lauren’s head lifted. The eyes fixed on Jasmine, and when she saw what was in them she went cold.

  Lauren’s lips parted in a snarl.

  ‘How . . . DARE you?’ roared the Queen.

>   Lauren swung into the air once more. Her arms lifted from her sides. Then the Queen’s new hands, which had entered the Pit Theatre and snuck into the tunnel behind, swarmed down on their prey.

  Ben felt them all over him, climbing his chest under his shirt, wriggling in his hair. He leaped to his feet again, slapping and swatting at himself. Jasmine! he thought desperately. By the time he found her she was almost invisible under a clinging mound of crawlers but Ben dug in and grabbed her, hauling her upright, while, with his good hand, Robert did the same for Josh. Then the four of them stood there for a moment, quaking.

  Ben held his breath, waiting for the bite, the hot needles sensation that would mean he was a slave again.

  ‘You have . . . hurt me,’ said the Queen slowly, disbelievingly. ‘Me,’ she repeated, through Lauren’s mouth. ‘Your Queen.’

  ‘What can I say?’ said a voice. ‘I guess some people just don’t like being told what to do.’

  Ben turned.

  ‘One last try?’ added Josh. ‘All together?’

  ‘All together,’ said Jasmine.

  With that, the four of them grabbed the protruding end of the pole, and shoved.

  The first person to fall again was Robert: his school shoes slipped on slime and he slammed to the floor on his back. Josh went next, as a fresh gout fountained out of the end of the pole and caught him square in the chest. Then Jasmine felt her knees buckling. The last person standing was Ben, his face a mask of determination, then he too sank to the ground, finally exhausted.

  It was a desperate effort. Even with all four of them pushing the pressure on the pole was nothing compared to what they had managed to build up on their charge down the tunnel. Their improvised harpoon sank home about another ten centimetres, then stopped.

  But it was enough.

  Hugo felt a disgusting internal shifting sensation at the back of his head, then everything changed.

  He was in the Barbican foyer. He seemed to be kneeling on the chest of a wide-eyed man that he was sure he’d never seen before, but his left hand was grasping the man’s face, pinning the man’s head to one side so his neck was bared. In Hugo’s right hand, he was holding a crawler.

  He stared at the man. Then he stared at the creature. The crawler’s legs twitched once, then drooped. Hugo hurled it away with a spasm of disgust. He stood up, releasing the man, and looked around.

  Between the feet of the surrounding crowd the Barbican carpet was dotted all over with inert crawler bodies, lying where they’d dropped. There were over a thousand people in the foyer, including assorted police, members of the armed forces, and other specialists. For another moment there was silence. Everyone was looking at each other. Everyone, like Hugo, was trying to assess what had happened, what they were doing there. Then the silence was broken by a rising clamour of confused voices.

  The Queen gave a last, agonized, rippling shudder, then stopped moving. Supported only by the jutting pole, the wounded tongue lolled slackly. Released, Lauren toppled forward, landing face-down in the slime with a smack.

  ‘We can’t just leave her,’ said Jasmine. ‘Help her, someone!’

  Ben and Josh did as she asked: they heaved Lauren up, supporting her between them. Every movement dislodged more of the tiny crawlers still caught on their clothes and hair. The creatures fell to the tunnel floor, legs upturned, lifeless.

  ‘Right,’ said Jasmine. ‘Let’s go.’

  Lisa woke on the floor of the security room, alone. She had been dreaming. Or at least, she thought she’d been dreaming, but the dream had been about this room, the security room, so now she wasn’t so sure. She had memories too: the memories were strange and blurry and frightening. The bruises on her arms, however, were very real. Lisa’s mousey hair swung forward over her face as she stood up. She touched her stomach, and shivered. Then she saw that the door was open.

  ‘This way to the exits, ladies and gentlemen!’ said a megaphoned voice. ‘Please proceed in an orderly fashion. Medical staff are on standby. The crisis is over. There’s no cause for alar—’

  There was a distant BOOM, then a shuddering rumble that travelled through the whole building.

  Samantha felt it in the soles of her shoes. Plenty of the adults in the foyer crowd obviously felt it too, because the crush around the Silk Street entrance suddenly intensified and, once again, the air filled with screams.

  Sod this, thought Samantha, digging through with her elbows and hacking the shins of anyone who got in her way, I’m out of here.

  ‘The countdown was . . . serious, then,’ noted Josh as he and Ben heaved Lauren up to the first landing of the stairs from the Barbican’s Pit level. ‘How long . . . d’you think . . . we’ve got?’

  ‘How . . . should I know?’ Ben gasped back.

  Crawlers crunched under his soles with every step. It was hard to keep his footing without slipping, and Lauren was a lot heavier than she looked. Ben had reached the end of his string: his mind was numb. He had noticed the vibration in the floor, and knew what it meant: any second now the whole building was going to collapse around them all. He was so tired, he almost couldn’t bring himself to care.

  ‘Huh? Wossat?’ said a voice from beside his ear. Then: ‘Gerroff!’

  Lauren was regaining consciousness.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ asked Jasmine. ‘Can you stand?’

  ‘Better yet,’ said Josh, ‘can you run?’

  Lauren frowned groggily, then nodded. ‘Think so. Yeah.’

  ‘Then let’s go,’ Jasmine said again, not very calmly. ‘Quick as you can, please, Lauren, because otherwise we’re all going to die.’

  But Ben was distracted.

  When he set off up the stairs again, he would be around a corner; from where he was standing now, he could look back and take a last glance at the doors to the Pit Theatre, and the carpet of bodies.

  Somewhere in the mass, past the upturned legs of a giant-size crawler at the bottom of the stairs, he saw movement.

  BOOM. The rumbling under his feet became more pronounced.

  ‘Ben!’ said Jasmine.

  Josh, Robert, even Lauren, had all gone ahead. But Jasmine was waiting for him.

  Jasmine was awesome, Ben thought, again.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. Must have imagined it, he told himself. He started off up the stairs behind her.

  By the time they reached the upper foyer level it was empty. There was nothing between Ben and Jasmine and the Barbican’s main entrance but the same straight stretch of carpet they’d failed to cross earlier. Lauren, Robert and Josh were already halfway there. Ben slogged on out into the deserted foyer behind Jasmine.

  He wasn’t too sure why they weren’t dead already. Maybe blowing up a building was harder in real life than it was in the movies. He’d seen YouTube clips of demolitions so he had a rough idea of how they worked: if you wanted to knock down a building without damaging the surrounding area too much you set charges at different points, so that everything collapsed steadily inward on top of itself.

  Rumble. When Ben and Jasmine reached the halfway point the foyer’s lights flickered and went out. The air in Ben’s labouring lungs took on a hot, smoky tang, thick with disturbed dust. He could still make out the revolving lights of the army and medical vehicles beyond the glass outside, so he pushed himself on towards them.

  Now adults in protective gear just inside the entrance were grabbing Josh, Lauren and Robert, bundling them out to safety. Now they had Jasmine – and a last, brave rescuer was beckoning frantically at him.

  Just a few more steps, Ben thought with hysterical glee. They were actually going to get out of there! He could hardly believe it. They’d survived! They’d done it! They’d made it! They’d—!

  Something massive swatted Ben in the back, knocking him flying. He heard no explosion but felt a sudden intense heat, then the world dissolved in a golden bloom of light.

  Just a few more steps, Ben thought with hysterical glee. They were actually going to get out of there!
He could hardly believe it. They’d survived! They’d done it! They’d made it! They’d—!

  Something massive swatted Ben in the back, knocking him flying. He heard no explosion but felt a sudden intense heat, then the world dissolved in a golden bloom of light.

  GREAT ORMOND STREET HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN.

  The Barrie Wing.

  6:22 PM.

  ‘SO LET ME get this straight,’ said the smartly dressed lady. ‘You “harpooned” the alien queen with a scaffolding pole’ – she grimaced – ‘then you ran out of the Barbican Centre just before it exploded.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ said Ben, crossing his arms. ‘Yeah.’

  There were more details of course: after the amount of times he’d been over his statement Ben thought the lady should have known them as well as he did. But it had been a long night and he was starting to feel defensive. Not to mention frustrated and angry.

  ‘Ben . . .’ The lady pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘I’ll be straight with you. That’s just about the most unlikely story I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘What?’ said Ben.

  ‘It’s true that the Barbican was destroyed, of course. And I suppose it’s true, too, that we haven’t completely ruled out all the possibilities as to why. But I’ll tell you right now, I don’t think anyone is considering . . . aliens.’

  ‘What about the others?’ asked Ben. ‘What do they say?’

  ‘You mean the other children who were with you?’ The lady checked her notes. ‘Yes, at first they corroborated your account. And the earlier parts of it, about “crawlers”, and so forth’ – she sneered – ‘do seem to match up with the first statements we took from the adult witnesses – those who initially claimed to remember anything, of course.’

  ‘Well?’ said Ben.

  ‘But everyone else but you has since retracted these statements,’ the lady continued, with a small smile. ‘After further questioning they admitted that this business with your “queen” creature just . . . wasn’t how it happened. Ben,’ she added, leaning forward on her chair, ‘I think it’s time you thought about doing the same.’