Crawlers

11:50pm

Robert backed away, holding his good hand palm out to ward Ben off. His foot caught on the bottom step: he tripped and fell flat on his back up the stairs. 

Howling, Ben pounced. His knees were either side of Robert's chest. His hands closed eagerly around Robert's throat. 

Robert's pudgy features, pocked with sweat, loomed up in Ben's vision. Disgust engorging his fury, Ben dug his thumbs into the loose flesh under Robert's jaw: he felt little rolls of neck-fat swell out between his fingers as he began to squeeze. 

Robert's cheeks reddened quickly. His eyes bulged and turned bloodshot. His neck was hot under Ben's crushing hands, and Ben imagined the breath and the life that were trapped there. Robert's lips were moving, mouthing something. Ben stared into Robert's eyes, at the pleading in them. 

He hesitated again. 

Ben's orders were clear. The love of the Queen depended on him carrying them out. But while he had been more than happy to fight for her against Josh, fighting Robert was a different story. All his certainty was gone. In its place was churning nausea. Something inside himself was... resisting. 

Ben didn't understand it. Until a moment before, everything had been simple: no decisions, no consequences. All he had to do was obey, and obedience was joy. Kill him, said his brain. Kill him now, and make things simple again. 

But somehow Ben just wouldn't do what he was told. Following all orders unquestioningly, like a good subject, just... wasn't in Ben's nature. 

He frowned, and in that moment Robert reached up with his good hand and yanked the crawler from Ben's neck. 

Ben's eyes rolled back in his head. His hands went slack and he sank forward, insensible.

...

For several seconds there was silence. Robert just lay there breathing. Pain was like a grinding white light in his skull and something was wrong with his eyes. The bare concrete ceiling above him was only visible at the wrong end of a telescope full of darkness that juddered with the pulse of his blood. 

Ben's head lolled with grotesque intimacy over Robert's left shoulder: Robert was trapped. Worse still, Ben was lying on Robert's broken arm, which Robert had been holding across his chest when he'd fallen. When he foolishly tried to use the arm to shift Ben, the pain flared and the darkness in his eyes threatened to swamp him. If it hadn't been for what he was holding in his good hand, he might have passed out. 

Robert's hand was at his side, palm up, so the crawler was upside-down. It was twitching madly, thrashing its legs as it tried to right itself and find another victim - which, if he didn't keep a good grip on the vile thing, would certainly be Robert himself. 

He took some more deep breaths. He counted to ten. Then he got going. Wriggling and twisting his hips, he managed to get himself out from under Ben, who rolled over, arms flopping. Then, still holding the crawler, Robert sat up on the steps. 

Oof. The telescope effect in his eyes screwed inward and an ominous wave of sweaty cold ran through his body. But he still didn't pass out, so carefully, deliberately, he put his wriggling burden under one of his thick-soled shoes and pressed down, hard. 

The creature gave a satisfying scrunch, but Robert had stomped one of these things before: he wasn't going to be tricked a second time. Keeping pressure on his foot, he grasped one of the crawler's finger-like legs - and pulled. He had to tug quite hard, twisting it and bending it back and forth, but eventually, with a snap, it came free and Robert tossed it into a far corner. With a lot of effort, he proceeded to do the same to the other four. Then he lifted his shoe off the squashed, legless body, swung his foot back, and booted the creature's remains away as far as he could. 

All this time, Ben lay on the stairs beside him. Josh still lay where he'd been felled by Ben's punch. Wiping his hand on his school trousers, Robert looked from one to the other. 

It's just you now, he told himself. You're the only one left. Whatever you do, don't pass out. Mustn't pass out...