‘I don’t think he meant us,’ I said. ‘I think he was talking about something else.’
‘Have you ever played Resident Evil?’ Dermot asked me, edging towards the relative safety of a wall.
‘No.’
‘Well fucking don’t, this is bad enough already. How much worse can things get, I ask myself?’
The lights went out.
‘Jumping fuck,’ said Dermot. ‘It was a rhetorical question.’
The corridor filled with a subdued red light that accentuated the shadows, of which there were far too many. Dermot tried to aim his gun at everything that looked suspicious. He was outnumbered, and soon gave up.
‘We still need to find the stairs,’ I said. ‘Look on the bright side, there are no more guards. They’ve been told to clear the area.’
‘Terrific. Good for them. Lead on.’
I tried to walk quietly, but the floor was covered in something that made my footfalls loud and crisp. I sounded like a carthorse tap-dancing on concrete. Dermot sounded louder still.
‘All units clear,’ said the laid-back voice from the radio. ‘Exits sealed. Emergency power engaged. Cutting comms.’
The radio fell silent. I dropped it. I wanted both hands on the gun. I’d never fired one before, and I wanted to keep it under control.
We passed through another set of double doors, and were suddenly in a large square room with a low ceiling. Lockers surrounded it, and a couple of low benches stood between them. Doors led off in all directions. Dermot tried a few of the lockers, but they wouldn’t open.
‘Which way?’ he asked. I opened one of the doors. It led to a shower room with no other exits. A second door was locked. That left the one we’d come in through and one we hadn’t tried.
That one opened. It led to a long rectangular room lined on both sides with rows of wire cages stacked six deep. The light didn’t reach as far as the cages. Humped shapes stirred in them. Dermot shot at one of the cages; bullets ricocheted back at us. He stopped shooting.
The humped shapes emitted growls and evil squeals. Claws rattled the cages.
‘Good work,’ I told Dermot. ‘Now they hate us.’
There was a door at the far end of the room, which now seemed very long.
I tried the door behind us, which had swung shut.
It wouldn’t open.
‘What are they?’ asked Dermot. He was trying to look into the cages without getting too close to them. Bulky forms shifted in the dark, accompanied by clicks and squeals.
We began to walk through the room. On either side of us the indistinct creatures stirred angrily. They looked to be head-sized, perhaps larger. There were six rows of cages on each side of us, and at least twenty cages to a row.
I could hear myself breathing. Whatever they were, if they got out, they’d be all over us. Automatic weapons wouldn’t do us any good, and neither would cans of restorative soda. I trod on a piece of paper. Something was written on it:
IN CASE OF BITES, IMMEDIATE AMPUTATION OF THE AFFECTED AREA IS ADVISED. UNTREATED BITES WILL RESULT IN DEATH.
I turned it over. On the other side was written:
FEEDING TIME FOR SPECIMENS: 11.30 AM. NO PERSONNEL MAY ENTER DURING FEEDING TIME. THIS IS FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY.
I looked at my watch. It clicked from 11.29 to 11.30.
The rattling grew louder as the beasts became more agitated. I put the piece of paper in my pocket. I didn’t want to upset Dermot with it. He had enough to worry about.
The door still seemed a long way away. The atmosphere felt increasingly hostile. The clatter of claws and the ongoing click of teeth or mandibles grew more frenzied.
I looked back. We were more than halfway through the room. Something else caught my eye, something out of place.
One of the cage doors didn’t look properly shut.
I trod on a second piece of paper, and obediently picked it up. One side was blank. On the other side was written:
CAGES OPEN AUTOMATICALLY AT FEEDING TIME. LEAVE FOOD IN PLAIN VIEW. BE SURE TO LEAVE THE AREA IN PLENTY OF TIME.
‘Dermot?’
‘What?’
‘We’re going to have to go faster. Things are going to get worse.’
‘How? What the fuck else can happen?’
There was a loud, clear click from the end of the room we’d first entered. A cage door sprang open. There was another click; another door opened.
Dermot passed me, on his way to the far door. I ran after him. Behind me, there was the sound of cage doors clicking open, and then the sound of long claws hitting the floor and scrabbling for purchase.
Dermot flew against the door and pushed it open. I jumped after him and he slammed it shut. Something hit the other side, and the door moved, looking as though it might open. Dermot put his weight against it.
‘Block it,’ he said in a voice that sounded close to panic. ‘There are some crates over there.’
We were in a small store room. Cubical unmarked crates were stacked against a wall. I dragged some of them to the door and pushed them against it. They were quite heavy, but I slid a few more next to them just in case. I wasn’t sure that a couple would be enough to keep the door closed.
The door shook in its frame, but didn’t open. There were angry screeches and clicks from the other side of it.
There was also the sound of splintering wood.
‘This is fun,’ said Dermot. ‘We must go to yours next time. Oh, this is yours. Well fucking done.’
I looked around the room. There wasn’t another door, but there was a grille set into one of the walls. I pushed it and of course it swung open.
‘This way,’ I said. Dermot considered the sounds coming from behind the door and climbed into the opening. I followed him. I noted that he hadn’t asked me to go first this time.
This vent was shorter. After sliding along for a few metres Dermot came to another grille, which he pushed open. That led us into another corridor. A pair of double doors in the opposite wall had inset windows. Looking through them, I saw the stairwell.
The sound of clattering claws came from several directions. The sounds all seemed to be coming our way.
We went through the doors and began to run down the stairs. The stairwell was square and deep, and apparently bottomless. At each landing was a numbered door. We were between nine and ten when we heard the doors open above us.
The sound of many claws on the stairs fell around us. There were squeals and shrieks.
A furry shape dropped past us, hissing. Some more of them threw themselves down into the shadows.
‘That’s a few less of the bastards,’ said Dermot.
There were noises from further down. There were the sounds of triumphant squeals, and the clatter of claws on the way back up. They’d landed safely after all. I was sure the demonstrators outside would have been delighted.
‘Oh, this gets better all the fucking time,’ said Dermot. ‘You want to take this up for a living.’
We reached the eleventh landing, one flight of stairs away from safety. If there was any safety, which was beginning to seem unlikely.
The sounds from above were gaining on us. We were heading towards the ones below.
As we reached the twelfth landing I looked back. The stairs were carpeted with humped forms, their red eyes glinting, their fanged mouths agape.
We ran through the doors marked ‘12’ and shut them behind us. There was a large and convenient key to turn. Dermot turned it, locking the doors. There were a lot of thuds, as the creatures failed to stop in time, and then the familiar sound of claws, joined by the sound of splintering wood.
Dermot hared off down the latest corridor. I ran after him.
He was looking at the doors on both sides of us. Windows displayed views of rooms full of benches and racked test tubes, flasks and gas taps. Lasers fired beams at targets. A roomful of mirrors surrounded a panicked man.
There were no scientists or technicians. At last Dermot saw someone.
> ‘In there,’ he said.
There was a loud crack from the corridor. Looking around, I saw the doors – now unhinged, like everything else – being carried our way on the backs of ranks of scurrying bodies. We threw ourselves into the lab Dermot had discovered and shouted at the occupant, who was looking at the floor. He turned to look at us.
‘Is that Mick Aston?’ asked the scientist, who was recognizable as Betts even in a video-game version. He looked amazed to see us.
Beasts forced their way into the room.
I let the real world back in. The laboratory became a small prep room. The more arcane equipment vanished. Betts became Betts, and our weapons evaporated.
I hadn’t quite got it right, I thought.
A handful of those creatures had followed us through.
EIGHTEEN
I
‘Can you help me with these?’ Betts asked, scooping up one of the beasts. It was now a guinea pig. It looked myopically at us. It was the least threatening animal I’d ever seen. Another three were wandering around the lab.
‘They’ve got out. I called reception, they shouldn’t have allowed anyone in here. They certainly shouldn’t have allowed you two in here. Here, hold this one.’
He passed the guinea pig to me. It sat in my hands and nibbled sleepily at my fingers. He caught another one and passed it to Dermot, who held it as though it might explode. Betts cornered the last two and picked up the pair of them.
‘In here,’ he said, popping them into a cage. ‘Little buggers, aren’t we?’
The guinea pigs, re-housed, looked at him bemused. One looked closely at their water bottle, another scratched itself and fell over, and the other two took it in turns to hide under one another.
Betts closed the cage door.
‘There. You fellows can stay in there now, can’t you? Introductions, I think. This is Mick Aston, who has an unfortunate effect on mirrors. Or perhaps vice versa. This will no doubt be a friend of his. And these four are Bob, Greg, Grant and Spot. Which tells you what I was listening to back when you were a student and I was a mere lab technician at good old Borth college.’
We looked blank.
‘Or not,’ he continued. ‘It doesn’t matter which one you call by which name. They forget everything. We have a maze for them to run through, but it’s hopeless. They aren’t the brightest fellows in the world. Are you?’
The guinea pigs ignored the derogatory comments. One of them managed to get some water out of the water bottle, and was so startled that it had to take cover under one of its companions. This startled the companion, and soon the cage was full of small startled beasts until they all forgot that they were startled and went back to being round and docile.
‘Can you believe there’s a country where these things live in the wild?’ asked Betts. ‘In Peru, they live outdoors. Can you imagine it? What on earth do they do?’
‘Give a kick-start to the food-chain,’ said Dermot, getting his composure back. ‘They’d be step one.’
The four guinea pigs settled into a huddle and emitted squeaks. They peered in Dermot’s direction.
‘I noticed you were carrying guns when you came in,’ said Betts. ‘Can I take it that you’re getting the hang of your manifestations?’
‘I think I am,’ I said. ‘Would you like to see one?’
‘I can live without it. We didn’t expect to see anything during the experiment, to be honest. We were just trying to wake you up. Your young lady-friend Tina came up with it all. She got us to go along with it. She was only trying to help, you know.’
Betts had changed. He was no longer nervous; he’d developed an irritating and artificial persona as a shield. He wore black clothes with high-street designer labels. He’d shaved off the small amount of hair he’d had. He had a thin silver ring on the little finger of his left hand. He looked me in the eye as he spoke.
His fingernails were still ragged, though. The skin around them was still red and torn.
‘What did they do?’ I asked.
‘Ask them,’ he suggested. ‘But I think you know. There was that business with the car, and then you weren’t yourself. You were shut down. So Tina persuaded Dr Morrison to set up the experiment. They’d read about it in one of their periodicals. They were seeing each other at the time. Still are, as far as I know. We keep in touch from time to time. Keeping an eye on your progress, if you see what I mean.’
I wasn’t sure that I did.
‘They were keeping an eye on me?’
‘Oh yes. After that first manifestation they thought it was best. As I say, we didn’t expect anything like that. It was a first. I wish we’d been filming it. I moved jobs just to be closer to you all in case you needed me. Plus the pay was better, of course. And I got to work with these chaps. Didn’t I, chaps?’ he added, addressing the guinea pigs, who paid no attention.
‘Do you experiment on them?’ Dermot asked, looking as though he wouldn’t much mind if they did.
‘A little,’ said Betts. ‘We send them through mazes, that sort of thing. We don’t test anything on them. This place isn’t even involved in pharmaceuticals, you know. We do experimental psychology for a shady branch of the government. Behaviour patterns for crowd control, that sort of thing. All very hush-hush. The animal experimentation is all a cover. It’s a good cover, though. It helps to explain away the security. Not that it’s all that effective, if you two managed to walk in.’
‘We didn’t use the front door,’ said Dermot. ‘Plus we had fucking great guns.’
‘I saw them. So, you came in through a manifestation, then?’
‘We did. A bloody big one,’ said Dermot. ‘I lost my fingers on the way here and got them back again later on. We were chased by guards, gassed, and attacked by loads of mad rodents. It was a blast. You’ll have to get in one of them yourself some time.’
‘I think I’ll pass on that,’ smiled Betts. ‘I saw what he dredged up in Wales. It looked like something out of Buffy.’
Dermot turned his attention to the guinea pigs. He wiggled his fingers at them. They chirruped uncertainly.
A thought struck me.
‘You said Tina was still seeing Morrison?’ I asked.
‘Married, really,’ he said. ‘They have a place in Bewdley. Of course, you’ve been there.’
‘Roger?’ I asked. ‘You mean that Roger is Dr Morrison?’
‘You didn’t know? Surely you realized. Wasn’t his name a bit of a giveaway?’
‘Our Mick never asked what Roger’s other name was,’ said Dermot, looking away from the guinea pigs. ‘He doesn’t take a proper interest in people. He barely even notices them, most of the time.’
‘Does he know who you are?’
Dermot looked at me, with his most evil expression. There was a good amount of glee in those dark eyes.
‘Well?’ he asked, head to one side. ‘Do you know who I am?’
II
In the dingy toilets of a nightclub in Birmingham in the middle of a weekday afternoon, Dermot had forced me to look into a mirror. I’d seen myself, and him, reflected. I’d been afraid of mirrors, and he’d already known that.
Drunk, I’d thought that I must have mentioned it before. But Dermot had talked about it in the van, when we first met, when I was sober. I hadn’t told him anything then. Being drunk is hopeless for insights, you miss all of the details and just home in on the big noises. Dermot had known about my fear of mirrors, therefore I must have told him about it, QED.
Except that I hadn’t mentioned it. It’s not the sort of thing you mention.
When I was very young, I had any number of strange fears. None of them were phobias, I couldn’t be bothered to work them up that far. They were only fears. I was afraid of the dark, of the thing under the bed, of going to school wearing nothing but my vest. I was afraid of ducks.
All of those fears had gone. One of them hadn’t gone very far.
Dermot winked.
‘You’ve got me,’ he said. ‘Yo
u made me. I wasn’t, and then you invented me, and bang! There I fucking was. I bummed around for a while and then I got a job. In a burger van on a business park. And then who comes up looking for lunch? Only you. And you don’t even recognize me. Which is par for the fucking course with you.’
‘So what happened? What happened to Trish? Patricia Newton?’
‘I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you until you know the rest.’
‘Why not?’
‘You made me like that. You made me with rules. You’ve got to find things out for yourself. You didn’t want me to tell you. I can only do hints. I’m really not a hinting sort of person,’ he added, looking slightly downcast.
‘So how do I find out?’
‘I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know,’ said Betts. ‘I’m pretty much in the dark. I know he’s one of yours, but that’s as much as I know. Tina and Dr Morrison know about him too. They spotted it the first time they met him.’
‘Bless the pair of them,’ said Dermot. ‘They have all the theories down. Don’t know what to do with them, but they know them.’
‘Are you part of me?’ I asked.
‘Not any more I’m not. What’s your problem with Trish Newton anyway? She’s gone, move on.’
‘I think I might be to blame.’
‘I can only do hints,’ said Dermot. ‘You’ll have to sort that one out for yourself.’
III
Les Herbie had a number of things to say about blame, in a number of columns. This was one of them:
We blame people. We stub our toe because we don’t look where we’re going – we blame the bed, or our significant other. It’s not our fault. The bed was in the wrong place.
It isn’t our fault. It never will be.
Which is why we have video games.
I waste my time on them. It’s not my fault. They’re designed to waste my time. It’s not my fault that I’m too lazy to put in the hours writing a decent column.
I don’t need to put in the hours. I’m good at it.
So I play video games and think: I’ll do the column later on.
Execution Plan Page 20