Crawlers

8:21pm

The door wasn't locked - that was their first piece of luck. And when the overhead strip lights flickered and blinked into action to reveal a room that was apparently empty of crawling things or any other horrors, that was their second. 

The room the group were standing in now was about four metres long by three wide. With all eight of them in there it was perhaps a little more crowded than it had been designed to be, but there were chairs and plenty of floor-space. One wall was covered by a row of metal lockers, presumably used by Barbican staff for their street clothes and personal items. Another wall held a small kitchen worktop with a sink, a kettle, and a cupboard that might contain tea and coffee and other supplies. On the right of where they'd come in was a second door, that led to...

'Oh!' said Josh. 

Flickering on the wall of the second, smaller room was a grid of monitor screens. It was a display of the feed from the closed circuit security cameras dotted throughout the whole of the Barbican complex. 

Josh reached forward and tapped a monitor. 'That looks like a view of the passage outside. Hugo, are you all right to watch the screens?' 

'Er, sure, Josh,' said Hugo, blinking but eager. 'No worries, mate. Yeah.' 

Josh turned to Jasmine and unleashed one of his devastating smiles. 'Then I think the rest of us could use a cup of tea.' 

Jasmine didn't smile back. If this boy was expecting her to make tea, then what he was going to get was a slap. But a rising hiss from next door indicated that the kettle was already heating up. Josh turned and went back to the main room: the moment had passed, so Jasmine followed him. 

It was a grim scene that greeted her. Apart from the kettle the security room was silent. No one was looking at anyone else. Everyone was just sitting or standing there. Even Samantha seemed lost in her own private head-space, vainly trying to process the events of the previous half-hour. 

'Right,' Josh interrupted brightly. 'It looks like we're all in this together for now, so why don't we introduce ourselves? My name's Josh. Josh Compton-Smith. Let's go round the room.' He turned to Jasmine, smiling again in a prompting way. 

'Jasmine,' said Jasmine, who was beginning to dislike Josh. 

'I'm Ben,' put in Ben. He didn't like Josh's big 'let's be friends' routine either, but he didn't mind taking his turn now Jasmine had spoken. Nice name, he thought, looking at her. 

'R-Robert,' stammered a voice from the chair beside him. 

'Lisa.' Lisa's voice was quiet and breathy. She'd been the last one into the lift, and now she sat hugging her knees, her long mousey hair like a curtain over her face. 

There was a pause. Everyone in the room look expectantly at the next person along, who sneered then shrugged. 'Samantha.' 

'Lauren,' said Lauren instantly. 

'The bloke watching the screens is called Hugo. Great,' said Josh, nodding. 'Great. Well, now we all know each other's names, we can try and figure out what's going on. Who wants to start?' 

The kettle, ignored, clicked off and sputtered back to silence. To Jasmine's complete lack of surprise, it was Samantha who spoke first. 

'Is that some kind of trick question, or what?' 

'How do you mean?' asked Josh. 

'We know what's going on. First we couldn't get out. Then spiders came down from the ceiling and started biting everybody, and then, oh yeah, all the people they bit suddenly got up and started going mental - remember?' Samantha rolled her eyes, then looked at Lauren to back her up. 

Lauren smirked nervously but obediently. 

'That's true,' said Josh. 'But what we need to think about is why. Let's start with your first point: why couldn't we get out?' 

'The building staff locked the doors,' said Jasmine. 

'You saw them do it?' 

'Yeah.' 

'Interesting,' said Josh. 'And what does that suggest to you?' 

Jasmine blinked. 'They knew what was going to happen. They wanted everyone to be stuck in one place.' 

'It was a trap,' Ben put in. Everyone looked at him. 'While I was out of the theatre, getting the ice cream off my jacket' - he paused to give Samantha a look but he might as well not have bothered: she ignored him - 'I saw those things crawling out of the air-vents in the walls.' He shuddered. 'There were thousands of them.' 

'Why didn't you tell anyone?' asked Josh, annoyed. 

'I tried,' Ben shot back. 'You didn't listen. Besides, if you hadn't seen it for yourself, would you have believed me? I mean, ' Ben went on, his voice rising, 'can anyone believe this stuff is happening to us? It's like a game or something!' 

'Come on, mate,' said Josh. 'Let's try and keep calm about this, eh?' 

'Calm?' echoed Samantha. 'Calm? I don't know if they teach you how to deal with situations like this at your school, Posh, but they didn't tell us anything at ours. There are killer spiders coming out of the walls! What good is standing around talking about it going to do?' 

'It's Josh,' said Josh, 'actually.' 

Samantha smirked. 'Like I said: Posh. And who put you in charge, anyway?' 

'Where did the spider-things come from?' asked Jasmine. 

'What's the deal when they bite you?' asked Ben. 

'How can we get help?' asked Robert. 

'When do we get out?' wailed Lauren. 

'Quiet!' yelled Josh. 'Hugo, what did you say?' 

'Sorry, mate,' said Hugo from the doorway to the monitor room, 'but I think they know we're in here.'