by Robin Jarvis
Marcus was about to rip into him for being mental when he caught the expression on the younger lad’s face.
“What you on about?” he asked, wandering over.
Spencer turned away hurriedly. “Nothing,” he said.
“Don’t sound like nothing. What’s the matter with you? You’ve been moping about with a long face for days.”
“I’ve always got a long face.”
“Well, it’s even longer than normal. You’ll get carpet burns on your chin, mate. That is so not the place for them.”
Spencer stared up at the sentry tower. “Doesn’t it bother you?” he asked. “This is it for us. We’ll never get to be anyone. We’ve got no life, nothing to look forward to. We’ll never get to be good or bad at anything. We’re just going to rot here and be forgotten.”
“Don’t worry, Herr Spenzer,” Marcus told him. “You’ll be just as mediocre here as you would have been on the outside.”
“Is that supposed to help?”
“Oh, come on – so a guard pinched your hat. There’s worse going on!”
“It’s not just that, but that’s all part of it. We’re non-people here. We’ve got no rights, nothing. We’re going to die, bit by bit, and nobody out there will know or care.”
“I’ll kick your backside if you don’t stop feeling sorry for yourself. We’re all in this. Whining isn’t going to solve anything.”
“A bullet would.”
“What?”
“I can’t stand any more,” Spencer said emptily. “I really can’t. I’ve had it. I’m thinking, after lights out, all I have to do is open this door and step outside. The guards are desperate to shoot someone – might as well be me. There’s a scene in Cheyenne Autumn, great movie, when what’s left of the Cheyenne Nation are at their lowest. They’d walked over eight hundred miles, through desert and snow, to get home. They were starving and freezing to death and had to seek shelter in an army fort. The army locked them up, without food, water or firewood, and told them they were going to be sent back, to the reservation they had escaped from, in the dead of winter. They wouldn’t have survived the journey. They had no hope left and said they would rather kill themselves right there. I never really understood that bit before, but I get it now. I know exactly how they felt. I really don’t mind, about being shot – if it’s quick.”
Marcus stared at him, speechless. Then he spun the lad round and shook him violently.
“Don’t you dare think that!” he yelled at him. “Don’t you ever, ever dare! You hear me?”
“It’s my life!”
“That doesn’t mean you can chuck it away! Have you forgotten Jim? That poor mad kid out there in the grave I helped dig? I haven’t! He didn’t live long enough to get full of self-pity. Those monsters out there butchered him and here you are telling me you’re thinking about giving them free target practice. Don’t you bloody dare, sunshine!”
“But why would it matter? No one would miss me.”
“I would – you stupid apeth!” Marcus shouted. “You’re a mate!”
“A mate? You barely tolerate me. That Garrugaska is the only thing who even notices I’m here most of the time.”
Marcus let go of him and sat on the nearest bed.
“You’re right – I’m sorry,” he began, gazing at the floor. “I’ve said and done lots of things I’m not proud of. I know it sounds lame and namby, but I’m only just starting to understand all sorts of stuff. Before this place, I never really liked myself. Thought I did, but I was a total joke. The mates I had, before DJ, wouldn’t do for me what Charm did for Maggie today – and they wouldn’t have risked their lives to bring water to nobody, like Maggie did the other night. I wouldn’t have done it for them neither. They were a shallow crew of jerks and, if everything went back to normal tomorrow, I’d have nothing to do with any of them.”
He raised his face. “We are going to get out of here alive,” he promised, looking Spencer in the eyes. “We’re not going to give up. We owe it to Jim and all the other kids who didn’t make it, the ones we’ll never hear about. We can’t give up, ever. If you’ve got a problem, anything – you come talk to me about it. Yeah?”
Spencer shifted awkwardly. It was then that Maggie arrived, splashing through the rain, barefoot, to show off her nails.
“What do you think, lads?” she asked. “Does this match my hair or what? You should come next door and let us do yours.”
Marcus exchanged glances with the other boy. They’d continue the conversation afterwards and he promised himself he’d make more time for the kid.
Then he jumped up. “No time for girly stuff!” he exclaimed. “We’re doing man things in this hut! Grrrr!”
“You what?” she laughed.
“Come here,” he said, leading her to the area below the stairs.
“Where’s he taking me?” she asked Spencer in mock alarm.
“I’m going to show you something that only me, Herr Spenzer and Lee know about so far,” he said, becoming serious for a moment. “This is how much I trust you. Now don’t say a word to anyone else.”
“As if!” she answered. “Those days are long gone.”
Marcus knelt down and peeled the carpet back, revealing a section of the plywood floor that had been scored right through. He lifted it clear and a rush of cold air blew up into their faces. Taking out a torch, he shone it down. Beneath the cabin, a sizeable hole had been dug. The boy lowered himself in. It came up to his chest. Then he grimaced.
“Ugh!” he declared. “It’s wet at the bottom!”
“It’s been raining all day,” she said. “What did you expect? And how are you going to wash that mud off without any water in the taps? You twerp!”
“Er… pay attention to the humungous hole I’m standing in, if you please!”
“All right, so you’re digging a tunnel?”
“No, I’m fitting a sunken hot tub! Of course I’m digging a tunnel! I’ve only been at it a few nights. Not bad progress, eh? These muscles aren’t just for show you know.”
He shouted to Spencer to begin whistling “the tune”. Slouched against the door, the boy half-heartedly gave him a few bars of the theme to The Great Escape, while Marcus explained how far he’d go before beginning to dig horizontally and what to do with the excavated soil.
“Up to now I’ve just chucked it under the cabin, but I can’t keep doing that. There’ll be too much. I’ll have to come up with a better way of getting rid.”
He realised Maggie had grown silent.
“What’s up?” he asked. “It’s stereo long faces in here tonight. Don’t you say I’m going to die as well. That’s all Lee ever tells me!”
The girl shook her head. “No, I wish you luck. I hope you’ll make it.”
“We’ll make it!” he told her. “I’m not going nowhere without you, you daft bugger.”
Maggie looked down at herself. “You havin’ a laugh? There’s no way I can fit in any rabbit hole.”
“It’s not going to be ready for months!” he said. “And just look at how much you’ve lost already, at least five kilos I’d say. By the time this tunnel’s finished, you’ll be skinnier than the finger a supermodel sticks down her throat to upchuck her Ryvitas.”
“You think I’ve lost that much? Really?”
“Could be more. We’re on starvation rations here. That’s a drastic change to what you were used to.”
“I can’t believe the amount I had to eat to keep this weight on,” she said. “It was a lot! And I used to wash everything down with litres of Coke every day – the full-fat variety. It’s a miracle I’ve got any teeth left. All to spite my stepmother; that’s seriously messed up. Makes me feel ill to think about it – what a freak.”
“We do weird things when we’re not happy. I was a scumbag. I was just telling Herr Spenzer how it’s taken this horrible place to open my eyes to what a git I was. Pass me a cup, there’s one over there. I need to bail this out, or I really will have made a sunken hot
tub, minus the hot bit.”
“I’m going to have a load of spare saggy skin,” she muttered. “Stretch marks too – very attractive.”
“Nah,” he said. “You’re young – your skin’s elastic enough to shrink back. I can show you some exercises for it anyway if you want. As for stretch marks, I’ve got them on my pec-delt tie-ins. Besides, that sort of thing, it really doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously, it doesn’t.”
“Who are you?” she demanded with a baffled stare. “What’ve you done with the real Marcus?”
The boy winced. “OK, I know, I know. I’ve been a massive prat. But I’m trying to change. I think you’re amazing. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. What you did the other night, and the way you put up with the crap that’s thrown at you, what you said to Christina this morning instead of whacking her one. I bet Jody put her up to it.”
He scooped as much of the muddy water out as he could and reached for the trowel that he stowed at the hole’s edge.
“What makes her so twisted anyway? It’s not just this place – she was like that when she got here. Face like a squeezed lemon sucking vinegar through a straw, that’s her.”
“Jody weren’t that bad,” Maggie told him. “I liked her. But look what she’s been through. How would you be after getting whipped and locked up without food or water for three days? No one’d be the same after that.”
“See, you’re a better person than me – best in this camp.”
“Stop it,” she said, embarrassed.
“I mean it. If things ever get back to what they were…”
“Like that’s ever going to happen!”
“But if they do, I’ll ask you on a date and show you Manchester.”
“Get lost.”
“Honest! Though you’d have to wear a hat over your radioactive hair!”
“That’ll grow out,” she laughed.
Marcus winked at her and pushed the trowel deep into the soft earth at his feet. The rain had made it strangely squishy and bouncy. It was like standing on an inflated dinghy. He threw a squelchy scoopful under the cabin. Then he dug the blade in again.
“Whay!” he said. “What was that?”
“What?”
“Weird. The hole just gave a little wobble. Not an earthquake, more an earth hiccough. Didn’t you feel it up there?”
“No.”
He dismissed it and flung the next lump of soil over his shoulder.
“Sick!!” Maggie cried. “What’s down there?”
“Why?”
“That mud, look at the colour of it!”
Marcus shone the torch again. The slimy ground beneath his feet was streaked with purple swirls.
“I think I’ve just dug the world’s first Ribena well!” he declared, not sure what to make of it and trying to sound less unnerved than he really was.
“Get out of there,” Maggie urged.
The boy crouched down and brought the torch beam closer. He ran the trowel blade through the sludge and more purple fluid came percolating up.
“Marcus!” Maggie shouted. “Get out. Now!”
He pushed the trowel a little deeper. A second tremor juddered the hole around him. This one was stronger. It was time to go. He tried to pull the trowel from the mud, but it wouldn’t budge. Then it was torn violently from his hand and disappeared down into the bubbling ground.
For an instant, the boy stared in shock at the empty space where it had been. Then he scrambled to get out. It was too late.
The soft mud exploded. Three fat, boneless tentacles of pallid, pink, worm-like muscle punched up from the bottom of the pit. It was so fast, so sudden. They reared into the air, reaching through the cabin floor, dragging him back. His fingers gouged deep trenches through the mud as he slithered down among them and they whipped about him tightly. Marcus had no chance to yell or struggle. They snatched him down, underground, and he was gone.
There was a brief, stunned silence. Then Maggie screamed. Spencer came running to see what was happening. Before he reached her, the cabin tipped and tilted. The pair of them were flung off their feet and thrown across the bucking floor. Cupboards toppled and the beds slid about the room. The whole chalet lurched as it was lifted off its concrete blocks. The two beds on the mezzanine came crashing through the banister. Maggie and Spencer rolled out of the way just in time. Then Lee and Marcus’s belongings came spilling down on top of them.
The cabin continued to heave and pitch. Something was hammering against the floor. Somehow they managed to crawl and stagger between and over the shifting beds and made for the door. As they kicked it open, there was a deafening crunch of splintering wood. Behind them, the floor was punched through. Maggie turned to see the carpet rise to the ceiling. Then it was torn clear and suddenly the room was filled with a forest of writhing, fleshy tentacles, like a gigantic sea anemone.
She screamed again. Spencer dragged her through the door and out into the rain.
“Marcus!” she yelled in horror. “Marcus!”
The beam of the new searchlight dazzled them as it swept over the juddering cabin. The night was filled with noise and voices. Hearing the din, the other children had come running and stared in disbelief at what they saw. Lee and Charm hurried over to Maggie who was now shaking with shock and inconsolable. Jody clasped Christina’s hand tightly. How was it possible? How could it be real? Wiping the rain from his eyes, Alasdair stumbled into the crowd and looked on that fearful sight and was struck silent.
The cabin was hoisted to a steep angle and the huge worm-like limbs within were flailing around blindly. They groped and slapped at the walls and dragged against the ceiling. One came smashing through the skylight. Others curled under the beds, lifting and flicking them over. Then one found the door and came snaking out.
The children fled towards the wire fence. Then the Punchinellos came scampering from their hut, followed by Jangler from his.
“What is it?” the old man cried, wiping his glasses. “What is going on? Captain? What is that? What is it?”
The Captain was too busy to answer. Swazzle bawled an order to the other guards and Yikker came haring from the skelter tower to join them. Lining up, side by side, they raised their guns and opened fire. Bullets sprayed into the shuddering building. Peppered with lead, the tentacle that had come wriggling through the door withdrew sharply, drizzling the step with purple blood. The guards jiggled excitedly and hopped closer, their beady eyes brimming with enjoyment and intoxication.
The massive creature within twitched and quivered – stung by every searing bullet. The Punchinellos hooted, revelling in this fabulous new sport. Then the ground rumbled. There was a splitting of wood and plaster and the cabin burst apart. The roof was hurled backwards into the night and the side walls fell against the neighbouring chalets as more tentacles came crashing and spilling up through the shattered floor.
While Garrugaska and Anchu reloaded, Captain Swazzle’s machine gun spat a steady, stuttering stream into the centre of that lashing forest. The tentacles rose up, wide as tree trunks at their bases, and towered high above them. Then four of the tallest came swiping down. The Punchinellos leaped away, but Anchu was not nimble enough. One fat, wormy tendril smacked the guard to the ground then grabbed at a wriggling leg. Anchu was plucked, foot first, into the air. The Punchinello screeched and squawked, the gun in his hand firing wildly, until the tentacle curled tightly around, squeezing the guard’s squat body and shaking it violently.
The others focused their fire at the root of that glistening pink limb, but their bullets only maddened it. Anchu was slammed against the broken walls then cast, crushed and lifeless, through the air. The guard landed with a heavy, crunching thud by the gate.
Mopping the rain from his bald head with a handkerchief, Jangler gibbered fretfully.
“Your guns are no good, Captain!” he called. “They can’t stop it!”
The Punchinellos were not listening. They w
ere darting to and fro beneath the swaying tentacles, shooting into them and jumping out of reach when they came grabbing.
Lee stared up at the monstrous, slippery shapes, wriggling and squirming high into the teeming night. When they passed into the searchlight’s fixed beam, the brilliant white glare made them glow fierce and lilac and every threading vein and branching artery stood out starkly.
There wasn’t time to even guess what new breed of nightmare this was, but he did wonder how much of it was still beneath the ground. How much was yet unseen?
Leaving Charm to take care of the distraught Maggie, he ran to Jangler and spun the old man around.
“The guards’ hut!” he yelled. “Them spears! We need them spears!”
Jangler stared at him a moment, flustered and confused. Then he found himself being dragged towards the Punchinellos’ cabin. The door was still open and Lee barged inside. The volume of one of the three large TVs in there was turned up full. A woman was screaming as a rusty hacksaw, wielded by a man in a rubber mask, cut through her neck. Lee didn’t look twice at the screen, it was a lame-ass comedy compared to this.
The cabin was an unholy tip and it stank of stale cigars, sweat, urine and vomit. Liquor bottles, cigarette ends and minchet pulp littered the floor and filth was smeared up the walls. MP3 players and magazines were scattered about the dirty beds and half-eaten Doggy-Long-Leg bones festered in the corners, but there, by the stairs, were the spears.
The boy rushed over and snatched them up.
“Yes!” Jangler said behind him. “They might prevail where bullets do not. Hurry!”
Lee dashed out and hurried to the ruins of his cabin, where he threw the weapons down, keeping one for himself. Then he lunged at the nearest rippling column of sinew and drove the spear blade deep inside and twisted it around. The enormous pillar of flesh jerked back and tore the weapon from his grasp. Then it came battering down. Lee dived out of the way and reached for another. When they saw what he was doing, the guards scampered across and seized the remaining three spears. Gunfire continued to rage and sharp blades went stabbing.
Alasdair ran up, half-empty bottles from the Punchinello cabin clamped under his arms. He had got Nicholas and Drew to tear strips from a magazine and tie them around the necks. Using a lighter taken from Swazzle’s bedside table, he set one of the strips burning and, with his one good hand, lobbed the whisky bottle into the destroyed building. The bottle smashed but the contents did not catch fire.