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