Risk Assessment (10 page)

Behind her, Nina could hear the grandmother saying firmly, ‘Well, Anita, if you can’t decide this time, I’m sure we can come back another day,’ to outraged squeals.

Nina slotted a box back onto a shelf, and wandered to the exit. If it was starting to rain, then she wanted to get home before she got soaked. As she stepped towards the automatic door, it sliced open, and two figures marched in, both of them in fancy dress.

Nina paused, watching them. He was in army uniform, and looked very familiar. The woman appeared to be Jane Austen or something. Only she couldn’t remember any Jane Austen character carrying a gun. Not even in
Sense and Sensibility
.

They swept past her, the man waving his phone up and down self-importantly. ‘There’s no sign of it,’ he yelled to the woman.

She shrugged. ‘You’re just being impatient.’

‘And you’re still drunk.’

She barked at him with bitter laughter and hoisted the giant toy rocket launcher onto her shoulder.

Nina watched them, fascinated. This had all the makings of a top-class row. They were oblivious to the staff member heading towards them until she was standing next to them.

‘We’re closed,’ the checkout woman growled. ‘Please make your way to the nearest exit.’

‘Hi!’ beamed the man. ‘We’re just looking. Honestly – won’t be a minute. Lego castle for our youngster, Ianto. We’ll be in and out in a second.’ And he widened the grin.

The woman was impassive and folded her arms. ‘We’re closed.’

Jane Austen glared at her, and belched slightly. ‘Captain, I don’t have time for shopkeepers,’ she sighed and strode off down the aisle, looking for all the world as though she expected it to attack her.

The man shrugged helplessly, and lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘The missus – well, she’s an unbearable cow at the best of times and a mean drunk. I’ll just humour her and we’ll be out from under your toes in a jiffy.’ He paused and looked the woman up and down slowly. ‘Not that I’m in a hurry.’ And he grinned, a big cheesy grin.

Nina was horrified to see the checkout woman blush. Not only was Captain Cheese total sleaze – making a pass while out shopping with his wife for their kid, but he was just so. . . unreal. Convinced she’d seen him before, Nina carried on watching.

And then she noticed something. The kid and his dad were standing patiently by the automatic doors. Clearly, the staff had locked them. Someone slouched over from one of the tills, and reached out with a key to let them out into the dark. But the doors didn’t budge. The kid from the tills kicked the door and then tried sliding it manually.

The noise alerted Captain Cheese. He glanced over, his face fell and he yelled: ‘No! Leave the door. It’ll—’

Nina never knew what ‘it’ll’ meant. Instead, she watched, surprised and alarmed, as the door slid apart just slightly, and the night poured in, rolling over the screaming man.

The dad leapt back, dragging his son with him. There were cries. As Nina watched, Cheese swept forward, barking into his wristwatch. Jane Austen came thundering down the aisle.

‘No! Down!’ yelled Cheese.

Nina threw herself onto the floor and realised that the woman’s rocket launcher was actually real. Or at least, it fired. But it didn’t go off. It just vanished into the strange, shimmering black lump of night with a wet plop and was gone.

Captain Cheese and Jane Austen raced over to the door and dragged it shut, Jane using the butt of her gun to squeeze the black thing back out as the man slid the door shut. They both collapsed against it, panting with exhaustion. They glared at each other with a mixture of relief and fury, and then turned to face the small handful of shocked shoppers and staff.

‘You will remain calm!’ barked Jane Austen. ‘There is nothing to concern you. Please continue to purchase your haberdashery without another thought.’ The man winced. ‘Kindly move away from this porch while my colleague and I contain the situation.’

‘What bloody situation?’ screamed the manager who’d confronted them earlier. ‘And where’s Colin?’

‘Dead,’ Jane Austen pointed at the floor. ‘His name badge is there if you’re interested.’

Captain Cheese looked pained. ‘Hey!’ he said, with a desperate air of bonhomie. ‘There’s a situation. But we can probably get through this together.’

The girl who was with her grandmother started to cry.

‘Is it aliens?’ the young boy asked, eyes wide.

Captain Cheese knelt down. ‘Might be. Might be, you know. Ever met one before?’

The boy shook his head, seriously.

‘Well, they’re not all bad. But this one is. If it is an alien.’

Jane Austen snorted. ‘Of course it’s an alien, you posturing oaf.’ She gestured to the back of the store and squinted at the manager’s name badge. ‘You! Janice – is there a secure room backstairs?’

‘Well, there’s the staff room but we’re not allowed to let—’

‘That door is not going to hold for long.’ Jane Austen huffed with disdain. ‘Just take them to it, and do it now.’

‘. . .  health and safety,’ finished Janice, weakly.

Jane Austen turned to Captain Cheese and said, much to Nina’s surprise, ‘Are all the people of this time so feeble? I blame central heating, I really do.’

So, there they all were in the staff room. Nina, Anita and her gran, the young boy and his dad, and, over in a corner, quacking like mother and her ducklings, was Janice the manager and the half-dozen staff. They clearly resented the intrusion, but Nina didn’t think they had that much to crow about. The staff room was a corner of breeze blocks, with some laminated notices, a yellowing plastic kettle and some battle-weary pieces of office furniture.

Captain Cheese pulled a blind over the small window set into the door then surveyed the room sharply. ‘Good,’ he said. His eyes were drawn by an air vent at ground level. It was rattling slightly. ‘Bad,’ he said. ‘It’ll try and get through that.’ He pushed a sofa across the vent.

‘Thank you, dear,’ sighed Gran, and sat down, looking oddly complacent.

‘Right,’ said Captain Cheese. A silence had settled over the room, and everyone was staring at him. Clearly expecting an explanation. Even Jane Austen.

Oh
, thought Nina,
this’ll be good
.

‘Right,’ said Captain Cheese again.

Janice the manager leapt into the silence. ‘Well, my mobile isn’t working. What is going on?’

Cheese breathed in. ‘So, your toy shop is surrounded by a giant alien parasite intent on consuming everything inside it. Which will be your stock, and then you. But it’s not picky. We’re here to stop that.’

‘And you are?’ asked Gran sharply.

Janice glanced at her. Clearly she’d wanted to say that.

Cheese looked as though he was about to tell them, but was silenced by a glare from Jane Austen, who stepped forward.

You know what,
thought Nina,
I’m going out on a limb. They’re not married – they work together. And hate each other. In fancy dress. Neat.

Jane Austen looked around the room, freezing any opposition with a tight smile. ‘So. We are authorised to contain extraterrestrial menace. Help is on the way. Remain here. Stay calm. You may rely on us to deal with the situation.’

‘My colleague has a very big gun,’ said Cheese with a grin.

In the distance came the groaning tinkle of the entry doors being forced open.

‘Oh dear,’ tutted Jane Austen, swaying slightly. ‘As he said. Stay here. Remain calm. Captain, we have work to do.’ And, priming her rocket launcher, she swept out.

The Captain stood on the threshold for an instant and looked apologetic. With his voice lowered he whispered, ‘Seriously, we’re good at this. And she means well. You’ll be fine. Don’t open the door to anything with tentacles.’ And then, with a large grin and a wink, he vanished.

For a minute, there was an uncomfortable silence. And then Janice tried to reassert her authority.

You’re a nasty piece of work,
thought Nina, watching Janice bully her staff.
How come someone so joyless gets to run a toy shop? Still, at least she’s doing something reasonably harmless. Not in charge of cancer research or anything.

Janice picked up the landline, intent on reaching the outside world and normality. She pushed a few buttons and then put the handset down. Almost sadly.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘We’re cut off. Does anyone have a mobile signal?’

Everyone shook their heads. Even Anita had a phone, Nina noticed. It was pink and had buttons. Bless. Nina stared at her own. It said ‘Emergency Calls Only’ which turned out to be a bit of a lie. She wondered about sending a text, and who she’d send it to, and what it would say. She started picking out a few keys, figuring she could just keep pressing Send and maybe it would go through. ‘Am in toy shop eaten by alien. Byeeeee’? ‘Mum, I’m on BBC News’? Although Nina’s mum had never sent or received a text message. She had her mobile glued to her ear like a radio, but she never got into ‘the writing side of things’, as she put it. Would she be startled when it suddenly seemed her phone was talking to her? She shrugged.
I am avoiding thinking about what’s going on. Should I be more scared?

If little Anita was sullenly quiet, the young boy wasn’t. Impatiently swinging his legs backwards and forwards he started to ask his dad questions to which he couldn’t possibly know the answer in a piercing whine.

Dad was clearly a bit freaked by the whole situation, but then, who wouldn’t be? All he could do was reply, ‘I dunno, Scott,’ or other variants.

Scott retreated to comforting ground. ‘Dad,’ he asked, ‘have you got any chocolate?’

Again, Dad shook his head, miserable at having failed even this test.

‘Hey,’ said Nina, rootling around in her shoulder bag, and pulling out a large slab of chocolate. ‘I got this at the newsagents. You know how it is,’ she was babbling, ‘you buy a newspaper, they throw sweets at you.’ She handed it over, and, noticing the avaricious eyes of Anita, said sweetly to the room, ‘There’s plenty – help yourselves, everyone.’

With the sharing of little squares of not very nice chocolate, everyone bonded a little. Gran piped up from the sofa, ‘Janice, dear, why don’t you make us all a lovely cup of tea?’

Janice, mouth full of three squares of chocolate, looked sharply at the kettle, the little stack of plastic cups and the pathetic pile of teabags in a chipped old mug and honestly, thoroughly, visibly wished they weren’t there, but instead squeezed out a watery smile. ‘It’s not usual procedure,’ she said, her voice a little sticky with chocolate, ‘But why not, eh?’ She performed an ugly swallow, like a snake devouring an egg. ‘Kevin, put the kettle on for the customers, why don’t you?’

Nina slouched back against the wall and listened to the sounds of gunfire.
Odd day,
she thought.

The Vam poured into the building exultantly. ‘This is the feast of the Vam!’ it roared to itself. It was a complicated biological cry that echoed through every one of its cells, a thrill at a genetic level that spurred it on, forcing it to divide and multiply, to surge and devour. The Vam was alive. The Vam was filled with delight.

(The Vam was also vaguely aware that the last time it had uttered this cry had been as it wrapped itself around an entire solar system, squeezing planets into the sun until they’d popped like a fistful of songbirds. But here it was, squeezing into an ugly warehouse next to a tile factory off the Penarth Road. Ah well. It was aware of the concept of bathos. Those had been the glory days. And there would be new glory days ahead. But first, the feast of the Vam!)

This feast was not without interest. For the first time it was aware of resistance. The Vam had always treated resistance like a spice. It enjoyed it. The stronger the better, the greater the savour. It thrilled to sense that the doomed creatures of this planet knew it was a threat and were marshalling their puny failures of weapons against it. This was, it knew, just the first wave. A couple of soldiers armed with projectile weapons. Soon they would be replaced with battalions, with armies, with fearsome engines of death, with desperate final measures, as entire continents were destroyed in the futile hope of halting the progress of the Vam. But Ha! Ha! You cannot stop the Vam. The Vam is a universal force. The Vam is a scientific process. The Vam surges and devours!

That said, the Vam possessed a mild curiosity. It sensed a captive audience, and reached out to learn a little more.

Jack and Agnes thundered down the aisle as shelves toppled around them like dominoes. They hurled themselves behind a girder as a sea of sundered metal and toys spilled around them. Agnes leaned around the corner and fired off another rocket into the giant, black mass that poured relentlessly into the building.

Agnes watched the trail of the rocket as it soared through the air and vanished into the blackness with a quiet little plop. There was no explosion. Just a tiny little
phut
and a little puff of air. That was it. As there hadn’t been on any of the previous times before.

‘I’m sure you’re wearing it down,’ said Jack drily.