Crawlers

  ‘She’s right,’ said Ben, stepping forward. ‘We should find ourselves somewhere safe, somewhere we can defend if we have to. We need time to regroup.’

  Josh raised his eyebrows. ‘“Regroup”?’ he echoed. ‘And what makes you an expert all of a sudden, Freeman?’

  Ben, to his annoyance, felt himself go red. ‘Zombie films,’ he admitted.

  ‘What?’ said Samantha, though everyone had heard him perfectly.

  ‘I got it from zombie films.’

  Ben wasn’t proud or anything. But at that point, thinking about horror films and games seemed like the only way to get a handle on the situation.

  ‘It’s good thinking,’ said Jasmine. ‘Look at us: we’re in shock, we don’t know what’s going on. If we keep moving without knowing where we’re going we just risk getting caught out in the open.’

  ‘No,’ said Josh. ‘Sorry, but I think that if we keep moving we’ll have the best chance of finding a way out of here before anything worse happens.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Samantha, ‘where exactly were you planning on taking us, Jasmine?’

  Jasmine sucked her teeth. Samantha had probably only chimed in to make herself look important. But now Jasmine was supposed to produce a plan out of thin air. While the rest of the group looked at her expectantly – the boys as well as the girls – her eyes flicked around the passageway.

  ‘There,’ she said, pointing. ‘That’s what we need: a bit of that, right there.’

  The rest of the group turned to see what she was seeing.

  Up the passage was a door to the right. It had a sign on it.

  SECURITY.

  Samantha sneered, but—

  ‘All right,’ said Josh. ‘Let’s check it out, at least.’

  8:21 PM

  The door wasn’t locked – that was their first piece of luck. And when the overhead strip lights flickered and blinked into action to reveal a room that was apparently empty of crawling things or any other horrors, that was their second.

  The room the group were standing in now was about four metres long by three wide. With all eight of them in there it was perhaps a little more crowded than it had been designed to be, but there were chairs and plenty of floor-space. One wall was covered by a row of metal lockers, presumably used by Barbican staff for their street clothes and personal items. Another wall held a small kitchen worktop with a sink, a kettle, and a cupboard that might contain tea and coffee and other supplies. On the right of where they’d come in was a second door, that led to . . .

  ‘Oh!’ said Josh.

  Flickering on the wall of the second, smaller room was a grid of monitor screens. It was a display of the feed from the closed circuit security cameras dotted throughout the whole of the Barbican complex.

  Josh reached forward and tapped a monitor. ‘That looks like a view of the passage outside. Hugo, are you all right to watch the screens?’

  ‘Er, sure, Josh,’ said Hugo, blinking but eager. ‘No worries, mate. Yeah.’

  Josh turned to Jasmine and unleashed one of his devastating smiles. ‘Then I think the rest of us could use a cup of tea.’

  Jasmine didn’t smile back. If this boy was expecting her to make tea, then what he was going to get was a slap. But a rising hiss from next door indicated that the kettle was already heating up. Josh turned and went back to the main room: the moment had passed, so Jasmine followed him.

  It was a grim scene that greeted her. Apart from the kettle, the security room was silent. No one was looking at anyone else. Everyone was just sitting or standing there. Even Samantha seemed lost in her own private head-space, vainly trying to process the events of the previous half-hour.

  ‘Right,’ Josh interrupted brightly. ‘It looks like we’re all in this together for now, so why don’t we introduce ourselves? My name’s Josh. Josh Compton-Smith. Let’s go round the room.’ He turned to Jasmine, smiling again in a prompting way.

  ‘Jasmine,’ said Jasmine, who was beginning to dislike Josh.

  ‘I’m Ben,’ put in Ben. He didn’t like Josh’s big ‘let’s be friends’ routine either, but he didn’t mind taking his turn now Jasmine had spoken. Nice name, he thought, looking at her.

  ‘R-Robert,’ stammered a voice from the chair beside him.

  ‘Lisa.’ Lisa’s voice was quiet and breathy. She’d been the last one into the lift, and now she sat hugging her knees, her long mousey hair like a curtain over her face.

  There was a pause. Everyone in the room look expectantly at the next person along, who sneered then shrugged. ‘Samantha.’

  ‘Lauren,’ said Lauren instantly.

  ‘The bloke watching the screens is called Hugo. Great,’ said Josh, nodding. ‘Great. Well, now we all know each other’s names, we can try and figure out what’s going on. Who wants to start?’

  The kettle, ignored, clicked off and sputtered back to silence. To Jasmine’s complete lack of surprise, it was Samantha who spoke first.

  ‘Is that some kind of trick question, or what?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Josh.

  ‘We know what’s going on. First we couldn’t get out. Then spiders came down from the ceiling and started biting everybody, and then, oh yeah, all the people they bit suddenly got up and started going mental – remember?’ Samantha rolled her eyes, then looked at Lauren to back her up.

  Lauren smirked nervously but obediently.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Josh. ‘But what we need to think about is why. Let’s start with your first point: why couldn’t we get out?’

  ‘The building staff locked the doors,’ said Jasmine.

  ‘You saw them do it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Josh. ‘And what does that suggest to you?’

  Jasmine blinked. ‘They knew what was going to happen. They wanted everyone to be stuck in one place.’

  ‘It was a trap,’ Ben put in. Everyone looked at him. ‘While I was out of the theatre, getting the ice cream off my jacket’ – he paused to give Samantha a look but he might as well not have bothered: she ignored him – ‘I saw those things crawling out of the air-vents in the walls.’ He shuddered. ‘There were thousands of them.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’ asked Josh, annoyed.

  ‘I tried,’ Ben shot back. ‘You didn’t listen. Besides, if you hadn’t seen it for yourself, would you have believed me? I mean,’ Ben went on, his voice rising, ‘can anyone believe this stuff is happening to us? It’s like a game or something!’

  ‘Come on, mate,’ said Josh. ‘Let’s try and keep calm about this, eh?’

  ‘Calm?’ echoed Samantha. ‘Calm? I don’t know if they teach you how to deal with situations like this at your school, Posh, but they didn’t tell us anything at ours. There are killer spiders coming out of the walls! What good is standing around talking about it going to do?’

  ‘It’s Josh,’ said Josh, ‘actually.’

  Samantha smirked. ‘Like I said: Posh. And who put you in charge, anyway?’

  ‘Where did the spider-things come from?’ asked Jasmine.

  ‘What’s the deal when they bite you?’ asked Ben.

  ‘How can we get help?’ asked Robert.

  ‘When do we get out?’ wailed Lauren.

  ‘Quiet!’ yelled Josh. ‘Hugo, what did you say?’

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Hugo from the doorway to the monitor room, ‘but I think they know we’re in here.’

  8:32 PM.

  Jasmine had to crane over to see past Hugo, but a glance at the screen showing the passage outside was all it took. Last time she’d seen it, it had been empty. Now it was full. While they’d been talking, a large group of adults had massed outside. Their eyes were open and staring. They advanced towards the door with an eerie sense of purpose, all at the same time: the fact that the image came without sound made it look like some nightmarish game of Grandmother’s Footsteps.

  The sudden silence in the room was broken by a low scratching sound.

&nb
sp; ‘The door,’ said Robert. ‘There’s someone at the door!’

  The doorknob was turning.

  ‘Use the lockers!’ yelled Jasmine.

  Ben was already moving. He had pulled one set of lockers away from the wall, and with Hugo’s help he was heaving them round to make a barricade. Not a moment too soon: the door was just opening as the lockers were shoved into place, slamming it shut.

  A thunderous pounding of fists and feet now came from behind the door and wall. Jasmine stared at the screen. Out there, a crowd of formerly polite, cultured adults were now frenziedly trying to punch and shove and kick their way in. A scrum of them had formed at the door, battering away at it. In response – with a ringing crash – Hugo and Ben shored up their first barricade with a second set of lockers. At this, as if on command, the crowd outside suddenly stopped their onslaught. Their hands fell to their sides, and they stood there, frozen.

  Silence.

  ‘What are they doing?’ whispered Josh.

  Nobody answered. As suddenly as it had started, the attack had apparently ceased. On the screen the group of adults outside remained immobile. But then a familiar figure pushed her way through to the front.

  It was Ms Gresham.

  ‘Children?’ she said. ‘Can you hear me, children?’

  They all looked at each other.

  ‘I know you’re listening,’ said Ms Gresham. ‘Open this door.’

  Jasmine watched her. On the monitor, viewed from the ceiling camera, the creature on the back of Ms Gresham’s neck looked like a shadow. The back of Jasmine’s own neck prickled as she looked from the screen to the pale, panicked faces of the rest of the group.

  ‘You don’t understand what’s happening here,’ said Ms Gresham, her voice sounding perfectly normal. ‘That’s all it is: a misunderstanding. We can sort everything out, get everyone taken care of. But you have to open this door.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Lauren murmured.

  ‘Nothing,’ Ben hissed. ‘You saw her in the lift. We can’t trust her.’

  ‘But,’ said Lauren, ‘she’s our teacher.’

  Jasmine’s mouth was dry.

  ‘Jasmine?’ said Ms Gresham, startling her. ‘You’re more sensible than the others. Listen to me. Tell everyone to stop this foolishness and open this door right now. I’m waiting.’

  Ben looked at Jasmine and shook his head.

  Jasmine gave him a nod back. Her being ‘sensible’ was precisely why there was no way she would do what Ms Gresham said – not any more.

  But she was thinking: Ms Gresham might be talking, but the way the other adults were still just standing out there had reminded Jasmine of something. It took her a whole, slow second to work out what, but then she got it: the Barbican staff.

  The people standing outside weren’t trying to get in any more; they were blocking the way out.

  On the screen, Ms Gresham sighed and crossed her arms. ‘You’re all being very silly,’ she said. ‘It hurts for a moment, it’s true. But then . . . she makes everything better.’ She paused then added: ‘You’ll find out.’

  Jasmine’s gaze snapped upward to the room’s ceiling.

  Ben looked up too. The ceiling was bare – just white plastic ceiling panels and strip lights. But—

  ‘There!’ said Jasmine.

  ‘What?’ said Samantha.

  ‘On the wall there! The air-vent! I think it’s—!’

  ‘Oh crap!’ said Ben.

  On the wall above the sink and worktop, the flimsy aluminium slats that led to the air-con ducts were moving. They were being bent and prodded and pushed aside by a number of powerful rubbery legs. The screws that held the duct cover to the wall suddenly came free. The whole thing popped off, dropping into the sink below with a clank.

  The first spider-creature dropped in after it. Followed by another, then another.

  Screams. Shouting. Chaos. Lauren was up on her chair, shrieking. Josh stood rooted to the spot. Robert shot to his feet and promptly crashed into Hugo, entangling him by the barricade. Jasmine watched helplessly as a creature climbed up the inside of the sink – and launched itself off onto the floor.

  ‘Stop them!’ she shouted – narrowly avoiding catching Hugo’s flailing elbow in her eye. ‘Block the hole, someone, before more of them get in!’

  On the wall beside where Ben happened to be standing he’d spotted something: a single board made of cork with a wooden frame, perhaps eighty centimetres wide by forty tall. It was dotted with notices that had been pinned to the cork – details of shifts for the staff, a laminated list of fire-drill procedures and a handwritten sign saying: WASH UP YOUR MUGS!

  Ben pulled it off the wall. His first step took him up onto the seat of the chair nearest the sink. His second launched him upwards to land with his feet in the sink itself, crushing one of the creatures that had landed there under the thick soles of his school shoes – but Ben wasn’t even looking at it. He was looking at the air-duct’s thirty-centimetre-wide hole and the wriggling things about to pour out of it.

  Ben slapped the wide notice board over the hole. He felt a sudden and shocking pain in the fingers of both his hands – in the rush of the moment he’d forgotten to make sure they were free of the edges of the board. Pulling his bruised fingers out, he turned and put his back against the board to keep it where it was.

  Then he saw what was going on in the room. He was standing in the sink, so he had a pretty good view.

  As well as the spider-thing he’d crushed, another already lay flattened and immobile in the centre of the floor. Ben’s eyes travelled from the foot that still stood on it, up the leg, and found to his surprise that the person who’d stomped on it was Robert. Robert’s eyes, still red from crying, were alight with a savage triumph Ben had never seen in him before.

  ‘There!’ screeched Lauren, pointing with a trembling hand at the third creature as it scuttled out from beneath a chair. ‘Oh, God! Kill it! Kill it!’

  Samantha’s foot came down: scrutch. Splayed out around her shoe, the thing’s pale legs gave a convulsive shudder, then went still.

  ‘Are there any others?’ asked Jasmine. Her eyes – like those of the rest of the group – were searching every millimetre of the floor.

  ‘Not any more,’ said Samantha. She lifted her shoe and gave it a dainty wipe on the carpet.

  ‘Um . . . help?’ said Ben. ‘A little help over here, please?’

  His moment of quick-thinking heroism had passed. He did not like standing in the sink on the squashed remains of a spider-thing while more of them eagerly burrowed and scrabbled at the thin layer of wood between them and his back. He could feel them behind him, the surprising strength of them, pushing and digging. The aluminium duct cover had been no match for them: it could only be moments now before they’d come through the notice board – and then through him.

  ‘The board’s not strong enough!’ he said. ‘I can’t hold them!’

  Jasmine looked at him. ‘Help him, someone!’

  Hugo scanned the room. ‘Here.’ Spotting a metal wastepaper bin in the corner, he grabbed it and tipped out its contents. ‘This should keep them out for a bit, at least.’

  ‘Good thinking, mate,’ said Josh – while (Ben noticed) taking a cautious step back.

  Hugo came on regardless. Ben looked down at him, surprised again. Until this moment he’d always thought of Hugo as just some kind of farting buffoon. But here he was, coming to Ben’s rescue without question.

  ‘You think that bin will do the trick?’ Ben asked him.

  ‘Get the board out of the way,’ said Hugo. ‘I’ll put this over the hole. Nothing to it.’

  ‘OK then,’ said Ben gratefully. ‘On three. But I warn you, these things really, really want to come in. Ready?’

  Hugo nodded.

  ‘One, two . . . three.’

  Lifting the board clear, Ben jumped past Hugo, landing on a clear spot on the floor and turning quickly. There was a clank as Hugo clapped the bin over the hole,
then a moment of expectant silence.

  Everyone in the room was focused on Hugo. He stood there, his back to the room. But then, still holding the bin in place, he turned and frowned at Ben.

  ‘What?’ Ben asked.

  In answer, Hugo took the bin off the wall.

  No spider-things came out of the hole. The vent was empty.

  The creatures had gone.

  8:47 PM.

  ‘There,’ said Josh, standing back from the bulging clump of maroon and charcoal-grey material he’d been wedging in the hole as best he could. ‘That looks solid enough.’

  ‘If those things want to come in again,’ said Samantha, ‘it’s going to take more than our blazers to stop them, don’t you think?’

  ‘I told you,’ said Josh, ‘it’s temporary. Just to give us a bit of warning so we can do something else.’

  ‘But what else?’ asked Samantha. ‘What do you think we’re going to do? I mean, do you even know?’

  Josh pursed his lips.

  Ben was still feeling slightly humiliated after the creatures’ sudden disappearance. But seeing how little Josh enjoyed having his leadership questioned cheered him up a bit.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Josh told Samantha, with a tight, fake smile that Ben knew meant he wasn’t sorry at all, ‘but I thought it was obvious. We’ll keep an eye on the hole in case the spiders come back, of course. If necessary, we’ll take shifts. But until they attack again, blocking that hole with anything bigger would mean we can’t get to the taps and the sink. And if we stay here much longer,’ he added, ‘we’re going to need those.’

  ‘What for, cups of tea?’ asked Samantha. ‘Oh yeah, I can see that’d be a big help.’

  ‘Tea,’ said Josh, eyes narrowing, ‘yes. Water too. But also . . . something else.’

  ‘What?’ Samantha asked.

  By way of a reply, Josh looked away from Samantha. ‘Hugo?’

  ‘Yes, mate?’

  ‘Are you still watching the screens? Are those people still outside the door?’

  ‘No change, mate,’ Hugo called back. ‘That teacher’s gone, but the rest of them are still out there, just . . . standing there. Like they’re waiting for something.’