Crawlers

11:34pm

The glass doors were designed to be soundproof: the noise of the fight in the Barbican foyer was cut off as they closed, plunging the four of them into silence. In the limited light that came through from the foyer behind them, Jasmine looked at the others. 

Ben's, Samantha's and Lauren's reddened eyes were wide, and they were all breathing hard - gulping greedily at what was the closest to clean air they'd had to breathe in what had felt like for ever. Wide eyes; fast breathing, Jasmine thought: classic panic symptoms. But she was starting to feel something else. The night's pattern of constant, gnawing dread interspersed with blind terror had pushed Jasmine beyond basic fear now, into strange new territory. She felt a kind of hyper-awareness, dreamlike but intense. She was walking an emotional knife-edge from which she could fall in any direction: part of her felt like screaming or crying, sure, but another part worryingly felt like... laughing. It was exhausting, but also weirdly, dangerously exhilarating. 

Samantha was fiddling with her phone again. 

'Got a signal yet?' asked Ben. 

'No, but I have got this.' She showed him the phone's screen. She had turned on the backlight: the screen was lit up white, as bright as she could get it. 'It's not a torch, but...' 

'That's good thinking,' said Jasmine. 

Samantha sniffed. 'Don't sound so surprised.' 

'Why didn't you think of this before?' asked Ben. 'I could've used that getting out of the security room.' 

'What?' Samantha snorted. 'I was supposed to give you my phone?' She waited while Lauren tinkered with hers. Once that was lit too, she said: 'OK. Everyone follow me.' 

There was a short carpeted landing, then a flight of wide steps that curved gently to the left. At the end of each of those steps, touched by the dim glow of the phones, was a row of empty seats. 

Someone must have turned the lights off after the evacuation: deserted and dark, the theatre auditorium was very different to how Ben remembered it from the start of the evening. In the dark he felt the emptiness, like the silence, seem to swell around him - as if the room was alive, breathing. The theatre was much warmer than he remembered too, almost like a hothouse. 

Why's there nobody here? Ben wondered. Of course it was a relief not being attacked or chased, but he felt an immediate and definite sense that coming into the theatre might have been a mistake. 

The steps finished almost at the stage itself. 'All right!' said Samantha, immediately scrambling up onto it. 'Check me out!' She turned to face the darkness, and bowed. 'Thank you!' she said, acknowledging thunderous imaginary applause. 'You've been a beautiful audience! I love you all! Goodnight! God bless!' 

There, thought Jasmine, gaping at her in astonishment. That's why Samantha's the way she is. Her mind flashed to the conversation on the bus, all the way back at the start of the evening: like Jasmine, Samantha hadn't answered Ms Gresham's question about what she wanted to be. But unlike Jasmine, who simply didn't like talking about her plans in front of others, Samantha hadn't answered because she'd presumed it was obvious: she wanted to be famous. Even in the middle of everything that was happening, Samantha lived her whole life like it was a performance. And she couldn't stand to be ignored. 

'You're a star, babes,' said Lauren, standing at Samantha's feet. 'The world may not know it yet, but you're going to be a real celebrity, I'm telling you.' 

Her face lit eerily from below by her phone, Samantha smiled. 

'What's that?' asked Ben, pointing.