recoiled for a moment.
He turned and ran through the wake of overturned stools and tables doing his best not to tangle with the upended legs as he followed the bobbing glow of Jacob’s torch ahead. Dropping down off the far side of the stand’s courtesy platform, he sprinted twenty yards down a broad concourse, flanked on either side by dark silhouettes of gaming mascots and cardboard cut-out superheroes and supervillains.
‘Wait for me!’ he shouted after him.
Jacob stopped, turned and beckoned him on. ‘This way!’ he shouted.
Nathan quickly caught up with him. Looking back into the darkness behind him he could hear the smack of hundreds of feet on the stand’s floor, the clatter of metal tables and stools being kicked aside and a growing cacophony of shrill voices clamouring for them to stop.
‘What about Leona?’ gasped Jacob.
He shook his head. ‘Dunno, I dunno. We got to run right now!’ He looked at Jacob. ‘Jay, which way do we go?’
The drumming of feet grew louder, coming up the concourse towards them. There was only one way they could go. They resumed running up the concourse, Jacob leading the way, dodging an increasing amount of clutter across the carpet; computers pulled out and smashed; wires and circuit boards splayed across the floor like eviscerated organs. This end of the main hall, more than the other, appeared to be the children’s playground. A life-size fake potted palm tree had been kicked over and lay across their path. Jacob vaulted over the trunk. Nathan joined him a moment later, his big feet tangling with the stiff plastic fronds.
‘Hurry!’ hissed Jacob, pumping his torch trigger and turning the beam back down the concourse. Thirty yards back he could see them.
Nathan fired another shot back in their direction. The children ducked and froze for the briefest moment, like a game of grandmother’s footsteps, then resumed.
‘Go! Jay! Go! GO!!’ urged Nathan as he yanked his feet clear of the palm tree’s leaves.
Jacob swung his torch back up the concourse to pick out the way ahead. The pallid wide-eyed face of a child loomed out of the darkness in front of him.
‘Whuh—’
A blur of movement and a dull crack, like willow on leather. The torch danced into the air, spun and bounced on the ground. Jacob flopped down lifelessly beside it, blood already spilling out of his long scruffy hair and across his forehead.
Nathan fired a shot into the darkness sending the flailing child - boy or girl, he had no idea - into a spinning rack of DVD cases.
He stepped forward, dropped down to his knees and picked up the torch.
‘Jake?’
He shone the light down at his friend’s face, now almost entirely smothered with blood.
‘Oh, shit. Jake?’
He pushed a blood-soaked tress of hair out of his face to see that his eyes were open but glassy, fluttering and rolling. Nathan could hear the sound of approaching feet, shrill-pitched screams.
‘Jake!! Get up, man! GET UP!!’
He remained still.
Leaving Jacob was the—
No.
He grabbed one of Jacob’s hands and began dragging him along the carpet, away from the torch left lying on the floor, leaving a smeared trail of blood behind.
‘Come on. Come on!!’ he hissed. ‘GET UP!!’
The plastic palm tree creaked and rustled. The children were clambering over it and coming.
No. No. No . . . Too fucking slow.
Nathan let his friend’s hand flop to the floor and grasped the assault rifle in both hands. The thundering of pounding feet suddenly ceased and the darkness around him was filled with the wheeze and rattle of their laboured breathing.
A pair of tattered trainers stepped into the pool of torch light on the floor. The light rose, spun round and flashed blindingly into his eyes.
Nathan screwed his face up, aiming down the length of the rifle at it. ‘Fuck off and leave us alone!!’ he screamed.
‘Foo . . . foo . . .’ a young child’s voice implored. ‘You give foo . . .’
He pulled the trigger and the gun clacked uselessly. A child behind him giggled mischievously.
Oh, please, no.
A whimper escaped Nathan’s throat. ‘Please . . . please . . .’
Leona saw it; a faint grey outline. She realised it had to be the doorway leading back out onto the service bay - the way they’d come in. Dark forms fluttered through it like bats into a cave; children, more of them.
She heard gunshots again, echoing across the hall’s roof.
Dozens of them flitting past her. She could hear barked voices and shrill girlish screams, excited caterwauling and boisterous jeering; like Dante’s