“Invaders!” he shouted. “Newniths!”
Suzy grinned at him and gave him the thumbs-up, thinking he was making a diversion. She glanced over the top of the desk, was almost hit by a small tin of chalk that exploded open and powdered Xagis with chalk dust, and saw that the Will had grown little legs and scurried into a drawer of the desk, where it was working away at something.
“Lots of Newniths!” shrieked Giac.
“Prepare to repel the enemy!” shouted someone else. The missiles stopped hitting the desk. Suzy took another look and saw the Denizens were all getting out from behind their desks and grabbing their umbrellas. Giac was still jumping up and down and pointing. Suzy looked where he indicated and saw that his diversion was not just a thing of words and invention. There were Newniths coming on to the floor – leather-winged Newniths, flying in on the western side of the tower. They wore flexible plates of dull red armour on their arms and legs, breast-plates of the same metal, and closed golden helmets that had narrow eyeslits and crosshatched mouthholes. Wielding electrically charged two-handed swords, they were more warlike and threatening than any Newniths Suzy had seen before, more than living up to her threatening description of them to Giac.
Xagis took his umbrella and rushed to join the ranks of sorcerers that were forming to oppose the Newniths. There were at least fifty of the invaders already on the western edge of the tower and they had hacked off the heads of the closest sorcerers, who had not been quick enough to get out from their desks or grab their umbrellas. But the Denizens were beginning to fight back, bolts of fire from their umbrellas sizzling across the Newniths’ armour. Suzy saw winged Denizens appear behind the attackers too, swooping down at the hovering Newniths that were waiting their turn to come in, an aerial battle commencing.
Suzy looked across at the elevator bank. There was still no sign of an actual elevator behind the grille door.
“How long?” she whispered to the desk. Part Six of the Will had disappeared completely into the drawer and she couldn’t see it.
There was no answer.
“How long?” Suzy repeated, much louder this time. There was a lot of noise now, with the Newniths and Denizens shouting and screaming, the zing of fire bolts, the squeal of umbrella spikes on armour, the clash and thud of the two-handed swords striking through desks, umbrellas and Denizens.
“Done,” said the Will. It came out of the drawer and jumped to her shoulder, becoming a raven once more. Which was unfortunate, as Xagis and a couple of the nearer Denizens happened to be looking back at that moment.
“Treachery!” shouted Xagis. He raised his umbrella, which spat a bolt of fire at Suzy. She dodged, but it would have hit her if Giac hadn’t sprung forward and opened his own black umbrella, the fire bolt splashing harmlessly across the stretched fabric.
“To the elevator!” shouted the Will. It launched itself off Suzy’s shoulder, bounced off the ceiling and ricocheted into Xagis, turning into something resembling a bowling ball just before it hit.
Suzy and Giac slowly walked backwards towards the elevator, with Giac holding his umbrella open in front of them both. The Will bounced off the floor and ceiling to cover their retreat, knocking more Denizens over like bowling pins. But there were many more rushing over to the elevators, hundreds of sorcerers baying, “Treachery!” with those closest and with a clear line of sight shooting out fire bolts from their umbrellas.
Suzy and Giac got to the grille door at the same time the Sorcerous Supernumerary’s umbrella collapsed, burning shreds of material hanging from its steel and ivory bones. Suzy wrenched open the grille and the door behind, but a fire bolt caught both of them as they dived in, and they rolled around on the floor, shrieking and smoking, until the Will flew in, slammed the door shut and turned itself into a blanket that smothered the flames.
“Ow! Ow! Double ow!” said Suzy as she slowly got to her feet. She was about to add another “ow” when the door shook, and through the window she saw the face of a Denizen who was trying to slide the outer grille door open again.
“Where’s the operator?” shouted Suzy. She looked round wildly, but apart from herself, Giac and Part Six of the Will, the elevator was empty. There was no operator and the small bandstand in the corner was also vacant.
Suzy looked at the tall panel of buttons to the right of the door. There were hundreds of small brass buttons arranged in rows of twelve that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, some four or five feet above Suzy’s head. From Suzy’s waist down, these brass buttons were green, blackened and covered in a rather nasty-looking verdigris. Some of the buttons in the middle were also affected by this blight and were generally dull. Only the top rows, above Suzy’s head, were bright and shiny, the way they were meant to be.
“Giac, hold the door shut!” ordered Suzy. She looked up at the Will, who was flapping near the ceiling. “Which button’s for the Great Maze?”
“This one,” said the raven, hitting a button a foot above Suzy’s head with its beak. “I hope,” it added as the elevator fell away and the window in the door instantly clouded over, becoming uniformly grey.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A fter her decontamination, Leaf was given new clothes to put on. Scratchy underwear and a desert-patterned camouflage tracksuit weren’t what she would have chosen, but it didn’t really matter, since she was going to wear a protective suit over the top. Unlike the military or FBA suits, it was bright yellow and had EVACUEE printed on the front and back. Ellen showed her how to put the suit on, which was to step backwards into the connected overboots and then pull up the front inner toothless zip and pull down the outer zip, before folding over the big Velcro tabs. The gas mask was next. It was a simpler version of the military ones, without a radio or other electronics, and it smelled rubbery and disgusting. Ellen demonstrated how to put it on and clear it, closing the intake valves and breathing out hard.
Leaf was trying it for herself for the third time when Ellen got a call from outside.
“Roger,” said Ellen. Then to Leaf, “OK, you’re good to go. Major Penhaligon is waiting for you outside.”
Leaf turned to go back out the way she had come in, but Ellen tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to another air-lock-style door. “One way in, one way out,” she said. “I’ll probably see you later for your next decontamination.”
“Ugh.” Leaf grimaced at the thought of being scrubbed again.
“At least your hair is cut now,” said Ellen. “And you might have to wait next time as I expect we’ll be busy getting refugees ready to ship out very soon. I bet you’ll be happy to get out of that suit by then. Even decontamination will be welcome.”
“I guess,” said Leaf. Her own voice sounded strange and dull, heard through the suit’s hood and the side panels of the mask. “Thanks, Ellen.”
“Just doing my job,” said the woman. “Good luck.”
Leaf waved and went into the air lock. She had to wait while it buzzed and hummed, before the outer door opened to let her into a pressurised tunnel of clear plastic that led to another portable air-lock structure. This one took several minutes to cycle through, the progress of pressure equalisation and door opening being indicated by a row of tiny LEDs that slowly changed from red to green, a process that Leaf found weirdly mesmerising.
Major Penhaligon was waiting outside the final air lock. Chen was with him, and another soldier whose name tag read WILLIAMS, who was carrying a large medical backpack marked with a red cross.
“Miss Leaf?” asked Major Penhaligon.
“Yes.”
“We have a vehicle waiting. Follow me, please.”
Leaf followed the three soldiers down the road to a waiting personnel carrier. The back ramp was down, and they trudged up and sat on the benches inside, the soldiers on the left and Leaf on the right. She felt a bit like it was an audition.
The ramp closed after them, and the personnel carrier rumbled off. Leaf couldn’t see the driver as the front compartment was separate and sealed.
“Your supposed hospital is here, right?” asked Major Penhaligon. He stretched out to show a folded map to Leaf. It was a detailed aerial and satellite composite map, and Leaf was easily able to pick out the large white building that was Friday’s hospital. It had been circled in red pencil with a question mark, and unlike nearly all the other buildings did not have its name or other information printed on the map.
Ominously, there was also a shaded circle drawn on the map. Centred on East Area Hospital, it was labelled INITIAL KILL ZONE and its outer circumference ran across the front of Friday’s building.
“That’s it,” confirmed Leaf, tapping the map.
Major Penhaligon nodded and sat back.
Leaf looked out through the small, very thick armour glass window. It made everything look blurry and it was initially hard to work out exactly where they were, but she soon recognised a building and got her bearings. Only a few minutes later, they pulled up in front of Friday’s hospital.
There were no signs outside that indicated the building was a hospital of any kind. It looked just like the other low-rise oldish office buildings on the street, sharing with them the hallmarks of the micronuke attack, as all the windows facing East Area Hospital were shattered and there were burn marks across the facade. There had been some trees out in front as well, but they were now only blackened stumps.
Leaf felt a momentary doubt as she climbed out the back of the personnel carrier. What if all the sleepers were gone, transported back to the House by yet another machination of a Trustee? Then Major Penhaligon would think she was a nutcase or a real troublemaker—
She was thinking about that when Martine suddenly burst out through the front doors. Though she was wearing a scarf over her head and a surgical mask, it was easy to tell just from her staring eyes that she was absolutely terrified.
“Help!” she screamed. She almost fell down the wheelchair ramp, towards Sergeant Chen, who rushed forward to catch her. “There’s a thing – it’s come from the—”
Martine didn’t have the breath to get out what she wanted to say, but Leaf at least was certain she knew. A thing from the House.
“What?” asked Major Penhaligon. “A what?”
Martine just pointed back behind her, her arm shaking. “It…it came out of the pool.”
“I don’t believe this!” snapped Major Penhaligon. “Williams! Take care of this woman.”
He brushed past Martine and stormed up to the front doors of the hospital. Leaf hurried after him, calling out, “Be careful! There’s…uh…weird stuff going on.”
Sergeant Chen, who was striding up the ramp next to Leaf, turned her masked head to the girl. “Weird, like winged guys?”
“Weirder,” said Leaf.
“Uh-huh.” Chen drew her pistol and racked the slide. “Wait up, Major! Could be real trouble.”
Major Penhaligon, who had been about to open the door, hesitated. Then he stepped back and readied his own pistol.
“This seems ridiculous,” he said. “But I suppose it could be the Greyspot virus or something, making someone go crazy. Chen, stay close. Miss Leaf, you wait here.”
He pushed open the door and went in slowly, turning his head so that he could scan the corridor despite the limited field of vision imposed by his mask. Chen followed, and Leaf, despite being told not to, followed Chen.
The lobby and administrative offices were empty, but as Major Penhaligon and Sergeant Chen advanced down the central corridor, with Leaf tagging along some distance behind, they heard someone screaming ahead, near where the ramp went down to the lower level.
A sleeper staggered out of the top of the ramp, took several steps and then was horrifyingly gripped by a long green tentacle. It wrapped around the old man, yanked him off his feet and dragged him back out of sight. There was another scream, and then silence.
“You see that?” asked Major Penhaligon unnecessarily.
“Sure did,” said Chen. “Twenty feet long at least, and as thick as my arm. I don’t want to see whatever it’s attached to—”
The tentacle reappeared as she spoke, questing around the corner. It was followed by another, and another, and then the main body of the creature rounded the corner. It was the size and shape of a small car, with dimpled, tough-looking hide that was bright green. It had hundreds of foot-long legs under this central torso, and three big tentacles in total, each of which was easily thirty feet long.
On top and in the middle of its main body, there was another shorter limb, perhaps a neck, about three feet long, which supported a sensory organ that resembled a daisy, hundreds of pale yellow anemone-like tendrils swirling around a central, darker yellow orb. As Major Penhaligon took a step forward, these anemone tendrils all turned towards him, as if it could sense his movement. He stopped, but most of the tendrils continued to point stiffly at him, with only a few still fluttering on the sides, as if they were watching for other potential enemies.
“Watch it, but hold your fire,” said Major Penhaligon. He then muttered something into his radio, which Leaf couldn’t catch.
“I don’t reckon shooting that with anything less than a fifty cal would be worthwhile,” said Chen, but she kept her pistol trained on the creature.
“It’s got a collar,” said Leaf, pointing to a thin band that was wound around the neck-limb. There was a slim braided lead attached to the collar, and the lead stretched back around the corner.
“You said weird and you were so right,” said Chen.
“I wonder who’s holding the lead,” said Leaf.
She was answered a moment later when a humanoid figure stepped out from behind the creature. He was green-skinned, seven feet tall, and wore a tailed coat made of autumn leaves and breeches apparently of green turf. Because he wasn’t wearing any shoes, Leaf had a clear view of his long, yellow-brown toes, which closely resembled the taproots of a willow.