Leon panned his torch around. ‘What’s that?’
His beam of light picked out movement among the racks of sweets, other packets fidgeting and swinging from the hooks. Mum’s beam joined his. ‘Oh my God, there’s another one!’
‘And another . . .’ said Mohammed. His torch was aimed opposite, running along the magazine shelf.
Leon could see them emerging into the stark light – small, pale forms – some of them larger than the crushed one, fist-sized, some even smaller; every one slightly different. The numbers of legs varied, their thickness and articulation methods varied, the size and shape of their bodies and the way they moved varied. Dozens of them, no, more . . . hundreds of them emerging from the darkness beneath the base plinths of the store’s shelving units.
‘They’re everywhere!’ screamed Grace.
Hundreds . . . ? No, maybe even thousands of them, each one like a different failed experiment on how a particular ocean-bottom crustacean should look: God creating life forms on a bad day when nothing seems to go quite right. These were his screwed-up balls of paper spilling out of the waste basket. Leon was certain that, somehow, they had something to do with the virus. Products of it? The next stage beyond those clouds of floating spores?
The creatures began to swarm out from the racks, dislodging packets of sweets that dropped to the floor like ripened fruit. They swarmed across the floor towards them. Not quickly, though, walking pace at best, each creature seemingly struggling to understand how its limbs should work. Their clunky, clumsy movements reminded Leon of the YouTube videos he’d watched of various micro-robots’ faltering first steps.
‘Get out!’ screamed Mum. ‘Everyone out!’ She yanked on Grace’s hand and pulled her daughter after her, running down the aisle towards the front of the store. Leon followed after them and Mohammed took the rear, panning his torch backwards and keeping an eye on the creatures’ sluggish pursuit.
Mum emerged from the front of WHSmith into the service station’s foyer, intending to head for the glass front of the building and the smashed-in panel through which they’d entered, but she could see that the floor, glistening with granules of glass, was moving.
More of them.
‘It’s blocked!’ she yelled.
Leon caught up with them and saw that the floor was alive with creatures. They could try for it – run over them, crushing a path through them towards the battered front of the Mondeo – but what did that mean? Contact with them, with their gooey insides? If these were virus-linked, creations of the plague, they had to be infectious. Just a touch, a droplet on their skin . . . ?
He tried to close his mind to the next thought. If so, that meant Grace was already infected. He’d had his arm wrapped round her . . . he was already infected. Mum was infected too.
Are we already dying?
‘The other way!’ barked Mum. She headed right, pulling Grace with her again, away from the front of the service station, towards the even darker rear. Leon followed her.
Ahead of them was a small cave of arcade and slot machines that promised generous wins. Further along the back were the toilets: male, female, baby changing. No rear exit from the building, though.
Mum pulled Grace towards the toilets. ‘Leon! Come on!’
‘No!’ called out Mohammed. ‘We will get trapped in there!’
She didn’t listen. She pushed the door to the ladies toilets inwards and shoved Grace inside. She reached out her hands towards Leon. ‘Come on!’
‘Mo’s right! We’ll get—’
She wasn’t listening. She wrapped her fingers round his forearm and pulled him towards the open swing door. ‘Get in . . . get in! GET IN!’
The creatures emerged from WHSmith and merged with the others from the foyer; even more were spilling out from the Tesco Express. Thousands . . . tens of thousands of them. The floor of the building seemed to be a living carpet of pale, glistening shellac forms.
Mohammed was looking for alternative escape routes, panning his torch left and right. But their only option now seemed to be the toilets. That, or dashing across the seething carpet of creatures towards the front of the building.
Leon followed Grace inside, followed by Mum, then Mohammed. Mohammed tried to pull the door quickly shut behind him, but the pneumatic anti-slam brace at the top allowed the door to close at its own unhurried pace.
‘Come on! Come on!’ he snarled as he yanked repeatedly on the handle, jerking the door, fighting with it to close. Leon caught one more glimpse of the creatures beyond through the narrowing gap: a churning mass scuttling towards them, a carpet growing deeper as the better ‘designed’ and faster-moving versions clambered over the slower-moving backs of others to reach them.
With a hiss of resignation, the door gave in to Mohammed’s muscle and it thunked shut.
‘Is it closed? Is it properly closed?’
He nodded.
‘Any gaps? Are there any gaps?’
He shone his torch down at the bottom of the door. Mercifully, there was a thick rubber lip filling the two-centimetre space between the bottom of the door and the floor.
‘They’re going to squeeze under that,’ said Leon.
They had a moment, a few moments of silence, the tiled bathroom echoing with their rasping breaths, before they heard the soft scratching at the door. Like fingernails drawn lightly across plywood.
Mum turned to Grace. ‘How are you, honey?’
She nodded. ‘I’m OK . . . OK.’ She looked pale. Her forehead was damp with sweat.
Leon looked at Mohammed. ‘We’re not immune, are we?’
‘I do not know. Perhaps.’
Over his shoulders, Leon spotted a small window above the washbasin. Frosted glass with a wire mesh. A metre wide and maybe forty centimetres tall. There just for a splash of natural light in the bathroom, never intended to be opened or closed. It was firmly sealed.
‘We can break that glass,’ said Leon. ‘We can get out that way!’
They all followed his gaze.
‘It is too small,’ said Mohammed. Certainly too small for him.
‘Maybe it’s not,’ said Mum. She looked around for something they could use to smash through it and spotted a mop and plastic bucket. She hurried over, grabbed the mop and jabbed the wooden handle at the glass. It banged and slid into the corner of the window frame.
She tried again and left a scuff on the glass.
‘I’ll do it!’ said Leon. He grabbed the mop from her, climbed on to one of the washbasins, braced himself and then speared the window. A hairline crack arced across it.
‘That’s it!’ cried Mum. ‘Again!’
Leon braced his feet once more, and jabbed at the window. The crack began to widen and spread.
‘Hurry! Hurry!’ cried Mohammed. Leon turned to see him aiming his torch along the bottom of the door before slamming his foot down on something. ‘They are getting under the door!’
Leon smacked at the window again. This time several shards of glass clattered down into the basin. The wire mesh remained, though. He slammed at the same spot again and again, more shards tumbling down as the mesh began to surrender and buckle outwards.
‘Hurry, Leon! Hurry!’ Grace whimpered from below. ‘They’re getting in!’
He didn’t turn to look. He could hear Mohammed’s shoes slapping against the floor. Mum’s too as she screamed angrily with each stamp. He aimed the broom handle and thrust hard. This time the very first wire snapped under the impact.
‘It’s going!’ he shouted over his shoulder. He went at it again and again, bludgeoning a small hole through the mesh.
‘Leon!’ pleaded Grace. ‘Come on!’
He could hear both Mum and Mohammed, stamping and stamping, calling out to each other. ‘There! Get that one!’ ‘There’s another!’ ‘Get it! . . . GET IT!’
He pushed the broom halfway through the hole and now started levering it frantically backwards and forwards, bending the loose-end wires back on themselves.
&
nbsp; Grace screamed. He turned and looked down to see her stamping the floor around her.
Shit-shit-shit.
He levered the broom savagely against the widening hole and it broke in half. ‘BASTARD!’ He tossed it aside and grabbed the sharp prongs of metal with his hands, bending them back one at a time.
Mum could feel the creatures clinging on to the side of her trainers, digging their little spear-like claws into the nylon webbing and hanging on. Learning, learning fast, holding tight and waiting for a fleeting break in the jarring motion of her legs, then pulling themselves just a tiny bit further up, anchoring themselves again more firmly.
She felt something needle-sharp pricking at her ankle.
She looked down and saw three of them clinging to the cuff of her jeans. She swiped at them with her hand, knocking two of them to the floor. The remaining one burrowed down into the narrow space between the arch of her foot and the lip of her trainer. She stamped down hard and felt it frantically wriggling beneath the sole of her foot.
‘Leon!’ she screamed. ‘Hurry up!’
‘There’s a hole, Mum!’ he gasped. ‘There’s a hole!’
She kicked her trainer off. The creature clung to her sock, dangling persistently from the heel. She slammed the ball of her foot into the tiled wall and crushed it.
The floor beneath the door was now heaving with the creatures, one after the other squeezing under the rubber rim, clambering over the crushed bodies in front of them.
‘Mo! We can’t stop them!’
She glanced at him and saw several were pulling themselves slowly up the backs of his thighs. She swiped at them with her hands, dislodging a couple. A third clung to her thumb and started digging into her flesh with a jagged blade as fine as a surgeon’s scalpel. She flicked her hand and it flew off into a toilet cubicle.
‘Mum! I made a gap!’
She glanced up and saw that Leon had managed to create a narrow gap in the mesh, framed by jagged little wires that were going to cut viciously at anyone struggling to wriggle through. But he was right – it was just about big enough for Grace. Maybe even Leon too.
‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Get out of here now!’
‘I need to make it bigger so—’
‘Get out!’
‘Mum! It’s not big enough for you and—!’
‘DO IT!’
Leon reached his hands down for Grace. She was busy fighting her own battle, stamping bugs one after the other as they scurried across the floor towards her feet.
‘Grace! Give me your hand!’
She couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. He bent down and snatched at her arm and pulled her up on to the sink. She sat in the basin, her legs dangling.
‘Come on!’ He dug his hands under her armpits and hefted her up on to her feet. The basin shifted and creaked alarmingly beneath their combined weight.
‘Climb through!’
She stared round-eyed at the jagged wires around the hole. Then nodded mutely. The alternative, staying here, was unthinkably worse. She thrust her arms through the gap then twisted her head sideways and into the hole, feeling one of the sharp wires digging at her left ear. She wriggled through the gap until she felt the wires stabbing and scratching at her belly and found herself staring down the brick wall of the back of the building at a two-metre drop down on to weed-tufted tarmac.
She was going to drop head first, with only the strength in her weak arms to break the impact. She felt Leon pushing her butt with one hand and grabbing her right foot with the other.
‘No! Leon! No, I’m going to fall . . . I’m going to—’
He gave her a firm shove and she tumbled out.
Leon looked back at Mum. She was stamping frantically and swinging her arms. Mohammed’s lower legs appeared to be covered in the creatures, like mother-of-pearl studs, just like a Cockney Pearly King. Only those pearl-coloured studs were spotted with crimson; his blood spilling from a hundred delicate surgeon’s incisions.
‘Mum! You next!’
‘GET OUT!’ she screamed as she flicked her hands at her hair. Leon could see some of them were dangling from loose tresses of her hair like oversized money-spiders. He looked down at the floor of the toilets. A number of the creatures were converging around the bottom of the basin. He couldn’t see beyond the porcelain rim whether they were figuring out how to get up it. But they were going to do it, they were going to figure it out . . . he was certain.
She staggered over towards him, pulling the creatures out of her hair as they tried to burrow out of sight and hide in her thick locks. ‘Get out! Make it bigger from outside!’
‘Mum?’
‘Just do it!’ She turned away again, screaming angrily as she foraged at the back of her head with both hands trying to locate something digging into her scalp there.
Leon tore off his hoody, bunched it up and draped it over the lower wires, pulled himself up, then stuck his head and shoulders through the narrow gap. Grace was outside, flapping her good hand at him to hurry up.
‘Come on! Come on!’
He wriggled and pushed and felt wires stab and scrape his shoulders and back and finally, with more of his weight outside, he toppled out and fell, taking the impact on his upper back.
He lay there for a few seconds, winded. Gasping to get some air back in his lungs.
Grace’s face appeared above him, her long, matted hair dangling down and tickling his nose. She was screaming at him to get up.
‘HELP MOM! HELP MOM!’
Still wheezing, dazed, his head spinning, he let Grace pull him to his feet. She couldn’t reach the window. He just about could. He could hear Mohammed’s deep voice screaming with pain. Mum’s too.
He grabbed at several of the bent wires, braced his feet against the brick wall and tugged ferociously at them. They bent further, more granules of glass clattering down on to him. He fell to the ground, a twist of rusting mesh wire clasped in each hand.
He got to his feet and was about to pull himself up and look inside when Mum’s hands emerged through the ragged hole. Her forearms and elbows wriggled through, then finally she managed to push her head out through the narrow gap.
Grace screamed.
Mum’s hair seemed to be moving with a life of its own, like Medusa’s snakes, churning, swaying, shifting. The creatures were swarming up over her shoulders, clambering over each other like greedy prospectors to stake a claim on a spare part of her bare flesh. Probing skeletal legs and scalpels emerged from her hair line and cautiously explored her temples, her eyebrows, looking for another handhold on which to grasp to complete their advance over her.
Blood was trickling down her face from hundreds of cuts. She blinked bloody tears and her eyes, round, terrified and bloodshot settled on them.
‘Go!’ she whimpered. ‘Go . . .’
‘Mom! Come on!’ screamed Grace.
Mum struggled to pull herself through the narrow gap, managed to squeeze a shoulder through, but the top of her chest was pinned by the barbs of wire. Creatures scuttled out of the window past her and dropped down on to the tarmac, sensing fresh prey to pursue.
‘Oh God . . . They’re digging into me!’ she screamed. A long string of blood spilled from her mouth. ‘Oh God . . . Oh God . . .’
She stared at them both before slowly slipping back inside. ‘Oh God . . . they’re inside . . .’
She slid back out of view. The last visible part of her was her left hand holding stubbornly on to some of the wire mesh for a few seconds more, then her fingers slackened and her hand dropped from sight.
PART II
CHAPTER 32
‘Settle down. Everyone . . . please just stop talking and listen.’
What was now the community meeting space used to be the staff room. It was still lined with lockers along one wall, a whiteboard with a duty roster and magnetized ‘performance smileys’ stuck along one end of it.
Ron Carnegie stood at the front, wearing his dark green Emerald Parks sweatshirt
and a bright green plastic nametag that reminded everyone, just in case they’d forgotten, that he was called Ron Carnegie and he was in charge here. Site Manager, still, even if the world outside had changed beyond all recognition.
‘Come along now, people. Let’s not waste any more time – let’s get this morning’s briefing underway.’
Ron looked around at those present in the staff room. Thirty-seven of them in total, including himself. Twenty-five of whom he knew reasonably well, or, as well as a manager could get to know his own staff, though the majority of them were twenty years younger than him. Kids really. The others were an assortment of waifs and strays who’d happened across the park, or had been found on a foraging run: the Lin family – mum, dad, their three small kids and the mother-in-law; Freya, the gobby goth girl with a limp and a lisp; Erik, the poor chap who’d been on chemo when the plague hit – his hair was beginning to grow back now, but so, presumably, was his tumour; Christof, a Swedish graduate student with an almost unintelligible accent who had been over here studying forestry; Dorris, a book store manager who’d driven into the park somehow believing it was a government virus-research centre.
Mixed all-sorts, and every one of them now his responsibility until help eventually arrived.
‘Karl? What have you been seeing out there?’
Karl Mullen was the Emerald Parks engineering manager, known as ‘Spanners’. The nickname had arrived with him from the merchant navy. It’s what every ship’s engineer is called, he’d explained on his first day at work. Nautical tradition an’ all that. Spanners had stopped wearing the Emerald Parks uniform since the end of the world, claiming it was pointless since no one was now employing him. He got up off the end of the table on which he’d been perched.
‘Not much to report again, Ron. No signs of life, I’m afraid. No aeroplane trails, no smoke anywhere. No car engines. Nothing.’ This was how his daily contribution always began. The same nothing to report report.
Ron nodded. ‘Well, let’s not give up hoping, people. We can’t be the only ones left. What about snarks?’