Chapter 38
10 years AC
Excel Centre - Docklands, London
Along the bottom of the rear wall was a
large sliding delivery-bay door that rattled loudly as they pulled
it to one side; a delivery entrance that opened onto a storage bay.
The dark space inside was filled with crates and boxes.
Leona pulled a wind-up torch out of her rucksack
and quickly cranked the dynamo. The others followed suit. Between
their glowing and fading bulbs they had enough light to step
further into the gloom.
A quick examination of the nearest crate revealed
nothing edible, nothing to drink; just a container of plywood and
fibreglass display plinths. Leona pulled open another box and found
it filled with the components of a lighting rig and endless loops
of electrical flex. They pulled open several more crates and
cardboard boxes to find a number of PCs, ethernet cards and network
connection cables.
They moved through the storage bays, finding
nothing of use to them until her torch picked out a door marked
‘main hall entrance’.
‘Let’s try inside. Maybe there was a cafe or
restaurant set up.’ She looked at the others and shrugged. ‘We
might get lucky.’
Jacob stepped forward and pushed the door gently.
It clicked open - a cavernous reverberating click echoed back. ‘The
Mines of Moria,’ he whispered.
Nathan’s deep voice chuckled nervously. ‘This isn’t
a mine, it’s a tomb.’
It was almost pitch black. The last faint glow of
daylight struggled to reach down from several skylight windows in
the roof high above. Jacob swung his torch ahead of them, picking
out faded corporate-blue cord carpeting on the floor, damp in
patches and stained where it appeared to be dry, and the smooth
plastic walls of cubicles and display stands coated in a fine layer
of dust.
‘Shit,’ whispered Nathan.
‘What?’
‘I remember now.’
‘What?’ Jacob repeated impatiently.
Nathan smiled. ‘Computer and Video Game Expo! I
remember it was on in London the week of the crash. I wanted me dad
to take me along.’ His quiet whisper bounced and hissed across the
enormity of the central hall. ‘They was launching the new Wii
controller thing an’ the new games an’ stuff. And the new
PlayStation. It was going to be well-props ! ’ He flicked
his wrist and clacked his fingers.
Jacob grinned in the dark. He loved it when Nathan
did that finger-flick thing - all hip-hop street and cool. Back on
the rigs Martha told him off every time she saw him do that; said
his wrist would snap one day and his hand fly off into the
sea.
‘It was goin’ to be well solid,’ Nathan continued,
muttering to himself. ‘The crash could of waited another fucking
week.’
Jacob’s torch suddenly played across large
plastic-moulded faces grinning down at them. Side by side, gurning
cheerfully, Super Mario and Luigi, both ten feet tall, emerged from
the gloom, standing guard either side of a Nintendo display
stand.
‘Shit, man! Jay, you recognise?’ Nathan
asked.
‘Yeah! Oh crap,’ he replied. ‘Mar-i-i-i-o-o-o!’ he
chirruped in a squeaky singsong voice.
‘Lui-i-i-g-i-i-i!’ Nathan’s voice squeaked
back.
‘Come on, you morons,’ said Leona, ‘we’re not here
to geek out.’
Jacob cast a sidelong glance at his sister, struck
by the fact that she seemed to be coming back to them, rejoining
them from the dark place she’d been for the past few weeks. The
last two days he’d noticed her change. She seemed to be less
withdrawn, bossy again just like she used to be. Not that he’d ever
tell her this, but the sound of her haughtily issuing orders was a
reassuring sound.
‘Right, let’s be quick about this,’ she announced.
‘We’ll also need to find somewhere to camp tonight before it gets
too dark.’
He grinned proudly at her; so proud of her
strength, her confidence. But glad, too, that it was dark enough
that she couldn’t see him and ask why the hell he was smiling like
a twit.
She wound her torch again as the bulb began to
fade. ‘The time Mum and Dad took me here I remember there were
cafés and restaurants off along the sides of the main hall. Let’s
try down the left side first, okay?’ Her hushed voice echoed
through the cavernous darkness.
Both boys nodded.
Leona led the way, her torch beam picking out the
still bright colours of exhibition placards, fantastic-looking
characters, spacemen, monsters, aliens, demons. Although some rain
and damp had found a way inside and soiled the cord carpet in dark
patches, everything else looked almost pristine.
‘I bet you’re loving this, aren’t you, Jake?’ said
Leona softly.
He nodded. ‘It would have been good.’
She panned her torch around. ‘I can’t believe how
untouched it all looks. As if this was all set up just, like,
yesterday.’
‘I remember some of the games,’ he replied. ‘I
remember the ads on the TV.’ He looked at her. ‘Did you watch much
TV at college?’
‘University.’ She shrugged. ‘A little. I remember
it being mostly rubbish.’
Jacob stroked the tuft of bristles on his chin
thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, mostly rubbish.’
Their torches picked out different things
simultaneously. Jacob’s eyes were drawn to an elaborate and
enormous dungeon diorama; ten-foot-high walls of fibreglass stone
blocks, dripping with paint-blood, dangling chains and
stocks.
‘Nate, look!’
‘Oh, man, cool!’
It reminded Jacob of a picture-book story he’d
flipped through. One of the books they kept in the classroom’s
modest library back on the rigs; an ogre, a princess and a
talk-too-much donkey. He loved that story.
Leona’s torch was pointed the other way, lighting
up a coffee and bagel bar.
‘Ahh, maybe there’s some bottled water over
there?’
Jacob tapped her arm. ‘Can I go look at that?’ he
asked, jabbing a finger at the dungeon diorama across ten yards of
carpeted walkway.
She sighed. ‘Fine, don’t wander off, though.’
‘Me, too?’ asked Nathan.
She sighed. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake . . . go on.’
They jogged across, stepping inside through a
‘stone’ archway and into an enclosed area. They panned their
torches around. The walls inside were more dripping stone, more
blood, more chains. Across the vaulted roof were large plastic
wooden beams that stretched from one side to the other from which
goofy-looking plastic skeletons dangled with cartoon grins.
Jacob shook his head at the illogicality of
it.
Duh. As if skellys can actually smile.
There was a smell in here, too, not unlike Walter’s
stinky rooms. No, in fact the odour was more like the one that came
out of the composters they kept on the tomato deck - rotting food.
He nodded with approving admiration at the guys who’d made this
set; the stink cleverly added to the spooky atmosphere, the realism
of the place.
Here and there set into the dungeon walls were
large TV screens that reflected back his torch beam. He smiled. He
liked the idea of that - modern-times TVs sunk into an
ancient-times stone wall.
‘Fucking super-coolio,’ he whispered admiringly.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘True.’
Not for the first time he wished he’d been just a
few years older before the world had decided to go and destroy
itself; to have been able to play a few more of these games, to
have been more familiar with them, the characters, the
worlds.
He panned his torch across the floor of the
interior; more of that ubiquitous blue cord carpet, but in here it
was scuffed and splattered with dark pools of dried blood, smear,
splatter and drag marks across it that fitted so cleverly with the
dungeon theme. He smiled at that . . . although it would have been
cooler if the floor had been like the walls; made to look like
ancient worn flagstones.
Ahead of him, in the middle of the floor, was a
realistic pile of bones; a waist-high pyramid of skulls, and long
arm and leg bones, with nice detailing, like tattered pink strands
of flesh and dark clots of almost black blood in the creases and
cracks of bone.
‘Check out the bones,’ he said.
‘Just a sec.’ Nathan was across the room, admiring
a life-sized plastic mould of an orc, leering out of the
darkness.
Jacob took several steps towards the pile of bones
and squatted down in front of it. There were skulls in there that
ranged from what he guessed were rat-sized to skulls that could
have belonged to a large dog. He noticed a human skull nestled in
the pile and nodded with admiration at how realistic the detailing
was. He reached out to touch the plastic. His finger traced along
the top of the cranium and it shifted with a heavy creak.
Dislodged, it rolled down from the pile and clattered on to the
floor with a thump.
Heavier than he’d expected.
He leaned over to inspect it more closely. Placing
his torch on the floor he picked the skull up with both hands. That
smell, the clever realistic smell, was so much stronger. As he drew
the skull closer to his face, he realised where the odour was
coming from. He could feel tickling tufts of hair on the top. He
felt the cool flap of a tatter of skin flop from the lower jaw
across his wrist.
His stomach suddenly lurched and a sense of
disorienting dizziness enfolded him at the same moment that it
occurred to him that he wasn’t holding a plastic prop . . . instead
he was holding the real thing.
Leona squatted down behind the small counter in
what had once aspired to call itself the Quayside Breeze
Restaurant. It was little more than a partitioned-off seating area
of two dozen tables and bucket chairs, and a long glass counter
which presumably had once held pastries and sandwiches. Her torch
beam probed an empty refrigeration unit and several empty storage
cupboards beneath the counter. Nothing. Not that she’d held out
much hope. But since the exhibition hall appeared to be
surprisingly untouched, she’d thought perhaps they might find a few
sealed bottles of water.
It was then she heard Jacob’s voice calling.
She rushed out from behind the counter, picking her
way quickly through the tables and chairs before jogging across the
open area towards that dungeon-like display both boys had seemed so
taken by.
She heard his voice again, coming from
inside.
‘Lee!!’
‘Coming!’
She stepped in through the stone archway and
immediately caught sight of him and Nathan standing over the mound
in the middle of the floor. ‘What the hell is it?’ she
snapped.
He pointed silently at the mound.
‘Jake? What?’
‘Th-they’re . . . real.’
She didn’t understand what he meant by that, nor
the significance of the mound his shaking finger was pointing at.
She took a dozen steps towards him.
‘What’s real?’
She was now close enough to see quite clearly; the
light of her torch picking out long femurs, curled ribs, the
instantly recognisable oyster-shell outline of several pelvis bones
. . . and the human skull, lying on the floor beside the
pile.
Oh, Christ.
Jacob nodded silently, as if reading her mind.
‘They’re real. I . . . I touched one. I touched one of the—’
She instantly put her fingers to her lips to hush
his too-loud voice.
‘Shit,’ hissed Nathan. ‘Does that mean there’s some
canni—?’
Leona didn’t want to say the word out loud. Somehow
that would make it more real if she did. ‘We should leave,’ she
whispered, ‘leave right now.’
Both of them nodded.
‘Whoever did this could be—’ She clamped her mouth
shut. She didn’t want to think about who or what had stacked these
bones carefully into a pile. She stepped cautiously back the way
she’d come, wildly panning the fading beam of her torch across the
faux stone walls and the dangling plastic skeletons above.
They were approaching the arched doorway when they
heard the sound of movement; shuffling of feet, whispering of
lowered voices. She pumped the dynamo trigger several times, and
the faint glow from her torch pulsed brightly, picking out a
startled wall of pale faces glaring back at them.
‘Oh shit!’ she gasped. She turned to the other two.
‘Run!’
They stumbled out of the dungeon and turned right,
running along a broad strip of uncluttered carpet. She turned to
look over her shoulder to see only darkness. There were noises
coming from back there; the slapping of feet.
Oh shit, oh shit.
‘Fuck!!’ bellowed Nathan.
She glanced forward to see more pale faces blocking
the way ahead. She jabbed her hand right. ‘This way!’ They
scrambled up onto a Microsoft display plinth and across a cluttered
press-only marquee, weaving their way through rows of plastic
chairs arranged in front of a large projector screen.
‘Come on!’ she screamed after the other two, deftly
and quickly picking her way through and exiting the marquee on the
far side. A moment later she was clambering over a length of velvet
rope and stepping down off a plinth onto cord carpet again. Her
torch faded to darkness and she decided to leave it that way,
rather than attract attention.
She could hear Jacob and Nathan stumbling and
cursing in the marquee. Not far behind her. They must have got
tangled in the chairs. They were making too much fucking
noise.
‘Come on!’ she called out.
‘Which way did you go?’ she heard Jacob’s muted
voice. Further away now. The morons were heading the wrong
way.
‘Over here!’ she called.
Chairs clattered. She could also hear the growing
noise of footfalls, and an awful keening cry, like a host of
mewling babies all teething.
‘Jacob! Nathan! Over here!’ she hissed as loud as
she dared to. Those things - children, that’s what they’d looked
like, children in rags, with long hair and dirty faces - they were
very close . . . closer than the other two.
Don’t call out again, stupid.
In the darkness she could just make out her
immediate environment and found a dark nook behind a tall placard
and a rubbish bin. She hunched down between the two as quietly as
she could. A moment later the darkness in front of her was full of
the sound of feet and plimsolls on carpet, gasping laboured breath,
mewling and crying. She even heard slurred baby-words uttered
between them. And the smell: an awful smell of human faeces and
stale urine.
A moment later it was quiet. Her eyes, accustomed
now to the dark, picked out the last small silhouettes passing her
by; shambling little forms that could have been nursery-aged
children.
The last of them gone, she eased herself out of the
nook. It was then that she noticed the cold of her damp trousers
against her legs and realised she’d pissed herself.
The hall echoed with the sounds of the chase still
going on; the clattering of things knocked over; that mewling
raised in pitch to a frustrated howling that sent a shiver down her
back.
Oh fuck.
She had no idea at all which way was out now. She’d
completely lost her bearings in the panic. She couldn’t even tell
from which direction the echoing noises of pursuit were coming. All
she knew was that the pack of feral kids that had just rushed past
her were to her left.
She turned right.