Pandaemonium (36 page)

‘There!’ Deso whispers, and points towards the outline of a small, one-storey structure only twenty or thirty yards away. It’s a storage shed on the gravel path that skirts the boundaries of the compound, which means they’ve come around two hundred and seventy degrees.

They maintain a cautious pace through the last of the trees, then can’t hold back from sprinting the last dozen yards across open ground. It is indeed a shed: a reassuringly sturdy-looking concrete-and-aluminium affair. It is also, less reassuringly, padlocked shut.

‘Oh God, it’s locked,’ Rosemary whimpers, threatening to lose it.

‘Shhh.’

They hear more movement in the trees: that low rumbling again, and the sound of heavy footfalls.

‘You got a hairpin on you?’ Deso whispers. ‘A kirby grip?’

She shakes her head.

‘Fuck.’

He is clutching his naked torso against the cold, delicately fingering the shallow gouges where the demon’s claw dug in. He enviously eyes Rosemary’s top, which gives him an idea.

‘Take your bra off.’

‘What? Listen, if this is the “don’t want to die a virgin” routine, you picked the wrong girl.’

‘Fuck’s sake, I need the wire. I’m working on the “not dying” problem rather than the “not dying a virgin” one. Take it off. It’s not like you need it anyway.’

Rosemary lets out a tut of indignation but complies nonetheless, pulling her bra out through her sleeves. Deso bites into the material to tear it, slides out one of the underwires and begins attempting to pick the lock.

‘Have you done this before?’ she asks him anxiously.

‘Yeah. Just don’t tell Big Kirk in case he works out who it was stole his bike that time in second year.’

They hear the guttural growl again, sense more movement. Rosemary sees Deso’s face betray growing desperation, not conducive to the task at hand.

‘Mother of God, please, hurry.’

‘Hurry? I’ve a regulation tea-break to take yet. Fuck’s sake, what do you think I’m doing here?’

‘I don’t care, but do it faster.’

Deso bites back another retort, realises he’s getting himself in a state. He pulls the wire out of the lock for a moment and takes a breath. As he does so, he glances at Rosemary, who is anxiously scanning their surroundings. He catches sight of her chest, the material of her top now clinging tightly to the outline of her breasts. When he said she didn’t need the bra, he’d meant to imply she’d no tits, but having seen the results of her taking it off, he realises it was an accurate, if unintentional compliment. Talk about a way to find your centre. He’s calmer now, the moment of fluster passed. He passes the wire delicately back into the slot and a few seconds later, the padlock pops.

They slip quickly in and close the door. It’s dark inside, almost completely so, with only a few slivers of light admitted through a single transparent plastic window that is largely obscured by the contents of a shelving unit. Rosemary pads her palm around the wall until she finds a light switch. She is about to turn it on when Deso’s hand intercepts hers and stops it. With his other hand, he puts a finger to her lips.

Outside, they hear the sound of footsteps on the gravel.

His eyes adjusting to what little light there is inside the shed, Deso gets a grip on the shelving unit and drags it against the door as quietly as he can. The footsteps continue their approach. Their gait is irregular, broken, unsyncopated. It makes Deso think of a lizard on hot stone: quick bursts, pauses, scuttling: definitely not human.

He hears more moving gravel, then another, growing silence. Has it stopped again? No. It’s on grass. Closer.

Fuck’s sake. It’s right outside. He can hear it breathing.

The door moves, given a trial push. It comes in only a centimetre before being blocked by the shelving unit. A second push follows, this time with greater intent. It opens a fraction further: enough to betray that there is something blocking it: something that can be shifted. He holds himself steady against the shelves, keeping his centre of gravity low. Rosemary crouches alongside, also leaning into the blockade. The outside pressure on the door relents: he worries it’s ahead of a more determined charge. Then a scream carries through the air from not so far away: a human scream of pain.

The third push never comes. There are more footsteps on the gravel, hurried this time, retreating. Deso breathes out, his long sigh rendered vibrato by his shivering and the tremulous chattering of his teeth.

Rosemary stands up straight again next to him and places a hand on his shoulder, getting a guide on where he is in the near-darkness. He can barely see her, but her face is only inches away, close enough for her breath to feel warm.

‘You’re freezing,’ she gasps.

‘Least of my worries, I’d have thought,’ he whispers.

‘But one I can do something about. Just don’t take this the wrong way.’

With which she presses herself against him and puts her arms around his back.

It’s like stepping into a bath. Deso feels warmth envelop him immediately, but after a few seconds he’s afraid he’s sapped the lot and transferred the problem, as he can feel Rosemary begin to tremble. Then he feels a wetness against his bare shoulder and understands that she’s crying. Instinctively, he puts a hand to the back of her head and strokes her hair as a gesture of comfort. Her shudders continue, near-silently, as she lets out just some of her grief, and Deso is strangely grateful, because the role of consoler serves to dam his own straining reservoir.

He says nothing, knows there’s nothing he
can
say: just strokes her hair and holds his other arm against the small of her back, keeping her pressed against him. He can feel it when the sobbing subsides, the last of the shudders replaced with quiet sniffs. He just hopes she doesn’t break apart now, and not merely for the sake of staying warm. When she pulls her head back from his shoulder, he feels a surprisingly deep moment of loss and regret, but it only lasts for the half a second it takes for her to turn her face upwards and kiss him.

‘No,’ Adnan corrects him. ‘At least you knew where
one
of them was.’

‘Aye, true enough. Cheers for the thought. How’s that atheism hanging, by the way?’

‘Tell you the truth, I’m shitting it in case I die and it turns out the Muslims were right. I think I could take dying, but I couldn’t face an eternity with all my relatives smugly saying they told me so. I’d rather be in Hell.’

‘We
are
in Hell,’ says a voice: low, convinced, dreadful, resigned.

It’s Gillian, raising her head to speak for the first time since they arrived in the games hall.

‘We’re going to get through this,’ Deborah tells her. She’s trying to sound reassuring but one look at Gillian tells her it’s an impossible sell. Her eyes are hollow, like something inside her is already dead.

‘No,’ Gillian says flatly. ‘I’ve worked it out: the bus crash. We didn’t survive it. We only think we did.’

‘Stop upsetting yourself,’ says Miss Ross softly, but it’s clear that Gillian’s words are having more of an effect on her than hers are on Gillian.

‘I know the truth,’ Gillian insists. ‘I know what I saw. We died but somehow we’ve not accepted it, we’ve created this dream world for ourselves, but now the demons are coming for us and the dream is over.’

Deborah wishes Marianne was here, sure that she’d have some better vision of this: turn it into myth and poetry, shine a light on a simpler path of truth. In the event, Adnan proves an adequate substitute.

‘Bollocks,’ he says. ‘Fuck all this
Sixth Sense
crap. My five senses are telling me I’m still alive, and listening to them - and only them - is what’s going to keep me that way.’

Heather bids herself a smile. It’s laughter in the dark, and it has to be pretty dark before you are needing buoyed up by the defiance of your teenage charges, but it’s welcome nonetheless. The effect lasts for about a second, up until the hall is shaken by another scream from outside, one that this time sounds all too human.

‘God almighty,’ Heather asks. ‘What was that?’

She hurries to the emergency doors and peers through one of the windows, several of the kids at her back.

‘Jesus,’ declares Radar, more appositely than he could have possibly intended.

About twenty-five yards away, to the north-west, they can see one side of the two-storey barn where Sendak stables his horses. There are three demons in view, one of them standing over a figure cowering on the grass; the other two busy with a second human upright against the wall. Another scream pierces the night as one of the demons raises an arm and strikes a blow with what Heather deduces must be a hammer. Further strikes follow, then the two demons step away, clearing the view to reveal Marianne nailed to the wall through her hands in crucified pose.

Deborah splutters, unable to cry, unable to speak, barely able to breathe.

‘Crucifixion. They really are demons,’ says Maria.

‘Fuckin’ bastards,’ Adnan declares. ‘We’ve got to do something. ’

Heather changes her grip on the shotgun. It feels different now: no longer alien and cold, but an instrument of singular purpose.

‘Open the door,’ she tells Adnan.

‘No!’ screams Gillian, getting to her feet. ‘That’s what they want. They’ll get in here. That’s why they’re doing it. Can’t you see?’

Heather looks at the assembled survivors: safe so far, gathered where Sendak told them they could hold out.

‘They’re doing this because they can’t get through these doors,’ adds Jason. ‘They’re not wild animals: they know what they’re doing.’

‘And I guess that’s just too fucking bad for Marianne and whoever else is out there?’ challenges Adnan.

‘If we open those doors, we
all
die,’ Gillian counters.

Over at the barn, the demons begin dragging the cowering figure towards the wall, evidently so weak as to require propping up.

‘Fuck, it’s Cameron.’

One of them holds out Cam’s left arm at the shoulder in preparation to be nailed. It flops unnaturally, bending where it shouldn’t. It’s hanging off, a compound fracture having sent the bone through muscle and skin. A second demon straightens the arm against the wooden wall and drives a nail through the palm. It’s too high. Cameron struggles against the grip of the first demon and loses his footing. He slips, his weight consequently suspended from the nailed arm, which rips free somewhere between wrist and elbow. He drops to his knees screaming, leaving the nailed hand and forearm in place.

Adnan moves for the doors and Jason steps in front of him, at which point Deborah kicks Jason full-force in the balls, yelling: ‘Open the fucking door!’

Adnan and Radar take hold of a net-stand each, hauling them clear of the handles.

‘You close these as soon as I’m through,’ Heather tells them. ‘And don’t open them again until I’m on the steps. No sooner. Got it?’

‘Got it, miss. Just remember, you pump to reload. And don’t forget to turn off the safety.’

Heather checks the weapon again, resting her thumb against the catch now in case she can’t see it so well outside.

‘On go,’ she says. ‘Three, two, one, GO!’

Adnan and Radar each push the unlocking bar on their doors, Heather rushing through between them.

‘Now fucking close it again,’ growls Jason, grabbing one of the net-stands. Adnan and Radar grip the handles above the unlocking bars and pull the doors back into place.

Heather runs towards the barn, shouting to get the demons’ attention. One of them is already looking her way, having heard the doors opening. The others immediately turn away from Cameron. There is no question but that Gillian and Jason were right. All that remains to be resolved is whether Heather could make the risk worth it.

The first demon begins marching towards her, the other two taking up flanking positions. Smart tactics if she was carrying anything other than a gun. She steadies herself, holds it at waist height and pulls the trigger.

Heather is immediately knocked backwards by the recoil, losing grip on the gun as she falls. The demon flinches in fright and surprise, but is otherwise unscathed. She scrambles to her feet and picks up the weapon again, this time holding the stock against her shoulder and bracing herself for the kick. She pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. The demon resumes its approach. She pulls the trigger again: no resistance; it’s just sliding freely back and forth.

Then she remembers: pump to reload. She pumps the slide. The action is stiffer than she anticipates, and it takes a second attempt, by which time the demon is yards away, its fellows also closing in. She feels the trigger lock forward, knows the shell is primed. She blasts again. Once more the demon flinches; once more the sound and the flash are the only things to impact.

‘Oh Jesus fucking Christ.’

She pumps it again, by which time the demon is now running towards her. The gun reports once more, but in this instance not even the bang halts the demon’s charge. A second later it is upon her, the last thing she sees a gnarled claw sweeping towards her face.

‘What the fuck?’ asks Radar.

Adnan just keeps staring through the window, watching as Heather is dragged by her feet towards the barn. Her arms start to thrash. She’s coming around, dazed but not unconscious. They’re going to nail her up now too.

Jason lifts the second net-stand and prepares to thread it between the handles, content that the ill-advised rescue mission is over.

Adnan puts a hand on one of the metal shafts and prevents its progress.

‘Open it again.’

‘Are you suicidal?’

‘They left the gun. They don’t know what it is. I can get it.’

‘They left it because it’s no threat,’ Jason argues, almost yelling. ‘Jesus Christ, were you not watching? Guns don’t fucking
work
on them. What the fuck is that all about? How can that be?’

‘Because they’re not of this world,’ says Gillian.