Spores (11 page)

It grabbed Alistair’s face and pulled his mouth down. The creature’s jaw yawned wide and a thick, wet, green pipe slid out and pushed into Alistair’s mouth. Miles watched a bulge appear in the pipe that flowed along the length before stopping at the boy’s mouth. The boy swallowed. It didn’t take him long to realise what was happening, that grotesque thing was feeding the boy like a mother starling fed its chick. By the look of terror and pleading showing in Alistair’s eyes, he wasn’t a willing participant.

After three more bulges, the creature withdrew its feeder and dropped into Alistair’s lap. Miles could hear it still purring.

The boy licked his lips then wiped his hand across his chin, removing a dribble of bright pink glutinous fluid. Miles didn’t even want to imagine where that stuff had come from.

“There’s a fire exit down by the children’s books. Take the stairs to the roof. It’s how I got in here before mother managed to trap me.” He brushed his hand across the thing’s scales then bent down and lifted the other one onto the table.

“I’ll keep my mother’s sentinels secured whilst you make your escape. Please hurry though, if these do catch you, I’m afraid we’ll be meeting again.” Alistair smiled. “The next time though, this one will be feeding me with you.”

Chapter Ten

There is was again! She stopped crawling, sat back on her knees and placed her ear against the cold metal wall. Amber could definitely hear something scraping; the noise was audible even over the constant hum of the generators.

It reminded her of a swarm of insects, thousands of legs crawling across the floor at high speed. Amber shivered, probably not the best of comparisons to use in her current situation. She noticed a small grille set into the floor, a bit further along the ventilation shaft. Amber slowly crawled towards it, hoping to God that the images flowing through her head were totally off course.

Amber silently groaned as she stared through one of the narrow gaps. Her imagination was wrong, this was even worse. Hundreds of cat-sized creatures hurtled along the corridor below her. Each one was subtly different from its neighbour. It was like a sea of multicoloured death flowing across the carpet. She silently crawled over the grille, thanking the Gods that she remembered just how large these shafts were and trying not to imagine what would have happened to her if she’d stayed down there.

Amber pulled herself along, heading for the three-way junction, further down the shaft. She hoped the shaft leading up would eventually take her to the departure lounge and freedom.

“Please, let it be so,” she murmured.

As Amber approached the junction, she discovered that her plans to reach the surface had effectively been scuppered. The two shafts leading off were half the diameter. Her world had just collapsed.

“Oh, this is so fucking unfair. I’m not that thin. Haven’t you put me through enough shit today, fate?”

Amber assessed her options, not that she had a vast amount to choose from. She definitely couldn’t go back the way she came, those things would still be in there. She closed her eyes, remembering her frantic climb up through that hole. When she dropped out of the hole and spilled onto a soft, blue carpet, Amber had actually thought she was in the clear until she saw the state of the corridor. Dozens of similar sized holes honeycombed the walls. It didn’t take her long to realise that if she didn’t get out of here, she’d be dead. Amber got to her knees and peered down the hole she’d just climbed up, the creature wasn’t there. That didn’t make sense, Amber was sure that it was right behind her.

There were two doors at either side of the corridor.

“Where am I now?” this was another part of the complex that she hadn’t been to before. Just how large was this place? One thing was certain, wherever she was now; they had more money to splash out on a more expensive decorator. Carpeting down, framed prints of landscapes hung from the wall, even oak wood-effect doors. Amber hadn’t seen this anywhere else in the Institute.

It looked rather homely, well, it would have done before the creatures hadn’t swiss-cheesed the walls.

Amber ran to the nearest door. Predictably enough, the bloody door was locked. She sighed and ran in the opposite direction. As she attempted not to stumble over chunks of fallen masonry, she heard the unmistakable sound of the creatures sliding along the tunnels, she glanced behind and saw two heads poking through a couple of tunnel mouths, beside that locked door.

She put on an extra burst of speed, relieved to see the other door standing wide open. Amber raced forward, desperate to get away from those monsters.

“Oh, Jesus!” she cried, as she entered the darkened room. The place resembled an abattoir. There were bits of bodies, in various stages of decomposition, arranged in neat piles across the floor.

Those things were following her in here, she could hear their progress as they slid along the carpet. She’d stumbled into another of their larders. What the hell was she going to do now? There didn’t appear to be any way out, until she spotted the metal grille hanging down, held onto the wall by a single screw. Beyond the grille was a ventilation shaft, large enough for her to climb into.

She crawled past the two smaller shafts. Amber gave them both the middle finger then cursed the builders for making her journey so damn hard. It seemed ironic that she’d discovered more of this building’s hidden places in the last few hours than in all the time she’d spent exploring.

As Amber moved slowly forward, she wondered who the unfortunate souls in the plush area of the Institute were. At first, she thought that they were bits of bodies the creatures had found and just deposited them there. But it seemed more likely that those people were down there all along.

People with money and power perhaps? The local movers and shakers. Amber got the impression that she’d just stumbled into what was left of the new headquarters of the new government for the north of England. Odd that, considering that’s what Amber thought they were trying to achieve.

If that renegade army hadn’t turned up and if those people hadn’t been killed by the tunnel monsters, would that crowd of high flyers have stomped up into the upper levels in a few weeks time?

Hello, riff-raff. You’ve done a splendid job in getting things back up and running. Now we’re in charge. Was she being too cynical?

“Not cynical enough,” she muttered.

From what she’d witnessed, the sudden death of everyone over the age of forty hadn’t exactly brought the younger generation together in harmony. Amber froze as an inhuman shriek echoed down the maintenance shaft. Was one of those things in here with her?

Oh, Jesus. She strained her eyes, trying to see anything moving further down the shaft. This was just terrific, even if there was something there, it’s not as if she could outrun it, Amber couldn’t even turn around.

She took a couple of cautious steps; there was something ahead, an orange glow, but she didn’t think that it was anything malevolent. Not unless the monsters now had glowing eyes.

Encouraged by the fact that the blood-freezing scream hadn’t been repeated, she carried on crawling through the shaft. Amber quickened her pace; the urge to get out of here became ever more urgent.

That glow gained in intensity; she almost whooped with joy when it turned out to be an access panel, large enough to allow her to escape.

“Calm down, lass.” She muttered.

She wasn’t going anywhere if it was locked, considering the shaft narrowed a few metres past that panel.

Amber resisted the urge to wrench open the panel, at least for the moment, she wanted to see what was down there first. She peered through the slats, seeing nobody down there moving about, not that this piece of information was all that surprising. Amber gazed down into a laboratory but had no idea which one, the Institute had several. She wasn’t used to looking at the Institute from this perspective.

She didn’t even know which floor this was. Crawling through all those shafts had buggered up her sense of direction.

“Like it really bloody matters, lass?”

She pushed her fingers through the holes, gripped the metal and pulled. The grille came up easily, Amber should have been more prepared and not assuming the worst. She would have grinned in triumph if it hadn’t been for the fact that she’d just slammed the back of her head against the metal shaft. Amber pushed the grille out of the way and poked her head through the opening.

Now she knew where this was. Unbelievable, she’d come full circle. This was where Patsy worked. Amber was near enough back to where she initially started.

There was still nobody around, not that she expected to find a friendly face, but after what she’d just experienced, any face would be welcome, as long as the owner was still alive and human.

She dropped down and wandered along the narrow aisle, gazing into the rows of glass jars full of milky fluid. This laboratory shouldn’t be this empty. Could they have all gone? Amber stopped by a glass jar larger than her, what if the creatures had rampaged up here too? No, she ruled that thought out, she’d have heard gunfire whilst she was still crawling through that shaft.

Amber gazed defiantly into his piercing, blue eyes and kept her mouth shut tight. She braced herself for the inevitable sneering blast of insults, no doubt followed by a couple of slaps. Instead, he giggled like a naughty schoolboy. The sound was so unexpected that at first Amber thought she’d imagined it, until he did it again.

Amber choked back a horrified scream when a mutilated face pressed up against the inside of the jar. Despite every cell in a body telling her to flee from this abomination, Amber stayed still and stared into the jar, she needed to know who it was.

His cheeks, chin, and forehead looked pitted, like a golf ball. Tufts of bright, green wisps of sponge covered the rest of the man’s face. The eyes then snapped open.

Jackson growled, his face contorted, Amber resisted the urge to shrink back as the man’s jolly facemask slipped to reveal the man’s true mind-set. “I didn’t do this,” he snapped back. “This wasn’t my fucking doing.”

He dragged her down the aisle, “It’s those scientists, they just can’t fucking help themselves. They aren’t happy unless they’re messing about with stuff. Experimenting, they call it. Bullshit, they’re like kids with new toys.”

Jackson suddenly stopped, turned and waved at the thing in the glass jar. “Those goggle-eyed goons have had their fun fucking about with test-tubes and Bunsen burners. It’s time to fly out of here.”

Amber tried to escape from his grasp. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

He laughed. “Too fucking right you’re not, me and my men now have a bountiful supply of hot chicks. You’re superfluous to requirements. I’ve decided to fuck females that are a bit more pliant, a little more accommodating than a frigid bitch like you.”

He pulled her out into the open and toward a huge cage. “Don’t you worry though, love. I’ve found the perfect match for you.” Jackson pulled back the latch and opened the cage door. “Someone who’ll appreciate your fiery temper.”

Jackson threw her inside and locked the door, “Adios, bitch,” he shouted as he ran toward the laboratory door.

Amber pressed her face against the cold metal bars and watched him shut the door behind him. Something behind her shuffled towards her, something very big.

Chapter Eleven

The glare from the sun cut into his eyes like knives. Miles cried out, slammed his eyelids down and staggered back. When his heel slipped off the top step, Miles instinctively reached out with both hands.

He managed to grab the metal rail bolted to the wall.

“Fuck me” he uttered.

Miles turned, sat down on the top step and blinked the tears out of his eyes. How close had he been to tumbling down those fifty-six hard concrete steps? He knew there were fifty-six because he’d counted them on the way up.

“I’d have broken every bone in my body.”

Miles sighed; he brushed the dirt off his knees then looked over his shoulder. That spore cloud had just gone, leaving no trace.