and spotted your vehicle.” He hurried forward, speaking urgently into his radio. Though Sharon fancied she heard a fizzing of static, she didn’t hear anyone at Comms respond. He tried again as he knelt beside the casualty.
She halted a few yards away and held her breath.
Wasn’t there a lack of blood? She’d stabbed McKellan deeply, and yet there was no blood spattered across the footway. How much of what she’d penetrated was McKellan, and how much was monster suit?
And where was the shard she’d used?
That last question struck her like a mallet.
She’d left it jutting from beneath the killer’s collarbone. Yet it wasn’t there now – because it was in his left hand.
Sharon watched as, in seeming slow-motion, that long bayonet of glass plunged up and around, striking Sergeant Pugh in the left eye. By the time the steel blade appeared and sheared into the side of Pugh’s neck, she was already running again. She only looked back once – but this was sufficient to show her supervisor’s limp corpse being whirled around like a rag doll and launched into the Mirror Maze through its demolished window. It was also sufficient to distract her so that she blundered headlong into a low barrier, fell over it and landed upside down in a litter-filled concrete channel.
The blow to her already-wounded cranium was dizzying, but her adrenalin kept flowing, pumping her full of energy. As awareness seeped quickly back into her head, she sighted the costumed horror approaching the other side of the barrier. She lurched to her feet and staggered along the channel, following it through an arched entrance into another indistinguishable building. She ran blindly again, hands out in front. A single backwards glance showed an ungainly silhouette coming relentlessly in pursuit.
From the next corner, she spied a downward shaft of moonlight. She tottered towards it – only to be stopped short by a fearsome face apparently suspended about twelve feet in the air. Heart-pounding moments followed before she recognised it as the face of an Aztec god, and realised that she was in the River Caves. What was more, now that her eyes were attuning, she saw a framework of scaffolding standing alongside the statue. At the top of this, some kind of trapdoor hung open. Without thinking, she climbed. He would know where she’d gone – the hollow bars rang and echoed – but would he be able to follow her in his monster get-up?
At the top, Sharon hauled herself through the aperture, which in fact was an old skylight, and found herself on a sloped roof greasy with moss. She slipped as she tried to turn around, landing heavily on her bruised side. As she lay winded, she peered down into the darkened interior. His twisted form was already ascending the scaffolding with no discernible difficulty. Just like he’d ridden the Crazy Train. Just like he’d survived a deep stab wound in the chest. It was impossible, it made no sense – but it was happening.
Weeping at the unfairness of it, Sharon tried to scrabble down the roof on her buttocks and ankles, but gravity took over and she began to slide, rocketing over the edge and dropping a considerable distance before hitting another, lower roof. This one, apparently consisting of plywood and tar-paper, simply collapsed underneath her, jarring her left ankle and turning her upright again as she fell through it. Some seven feet below, her injured ankle blazed with even more pain as she hit a solid, cage-like frame, which possibly had once contained a motor or generator.
The collision flung her sideways onto an old mattress made sodden with decay – at least, she thought it was due to decay.
She sat bolt-upright as she realised that she wasn’t in this dingy place alone. The moonlight shining through the shattered roof revealed a figure seated on the floor against the wall opposite – though the destruction wrought on this poor soul made even the combined agonies of her lacerated scalp and sprained ankle dwindle. Whoever he had been, someone had hacked and slashed his face and throat to a ghastly ruin. Sharon scampered away crablike, hands sliding in pools of clotted gore, clattering through empty bottles and cans, only to slam into a second figure slumped against the other wall. This one had been propped up in a musty sleeping bag; as it now fell over her, its head detached and bounced into the shadows.
Whining and weeping, scrabbling through newspapers and rags all slimy and foul, she wriggled free and had to use a wall of rubble-cluttered shelves to drag herself to her feet. Dust and cobwebs plumed into her face, clogging her nose and mouth. There was a thunderous impact on the roof, and splinters erupted downward. A black shadow blotted out the moonlight.
Gasping, she flung herself around the walls, trying to find the door, hammering into more obstructions, jolting her injured ankle, barking her shins. She twisted as she tripped, grabbing at another shelf. It tore away from the wall, showering her with bric-a-brac, which she wildly rummaged through, seeking any kind of weapon she could find. But all that came to hand was something like a stiff tube of plastic with a grip on one end. The idea struck her that, if all else failed, she could jab this at her tormentor, maybe take out his eyes the way he had taken out Slater’s.
Dear God, Dear Christ … Geoff!
There was another heavy impact, this time on the floor behind her. She spun, hefting the ridiculous tube as though it were a knife – and only then, in the better light, realising what it actually was. Even as she did this, the interloper rose to his feet and turned his crazy, crumpled face towards her – and lunged.
More by luck than design, Sharon fell to one side, the blade bypassing her and striking a large plastic object in the recess behind. Whatever this was, it burst apart, gouts of fluid exploding over Sharon, but also drenching McKellan, sloshing not just down his costume but around his feet. The chemical stench of it brought immediate tears to her eyes – diesel. The maniac had ripped into some kind of fuel container.
She scrambled back across the room on all fours, now through a slurry of mingled blood and oil. The blade slashed over her head as McKellan twirled, gashing a huge chunk from the wall.
The door, where was the fucking door?
Clambering over a corpse, she saw it: an upright crack of light. She jumped up and threw her shoulder against it. It shuddered in its frame, but resisted. With hoarse screams, she scrabbled for a lock, sensing the presence turning around behind her. She found the latch, lifted it and yanked the door open. As she did, she spun back, pumping her thumb on the plunger built into the handgrip of the butane candle lighter.
It had to work, it had to work …
But it wasn’t doing.
Until a tiny flame suddenly spurted to life at the end of the tube.
Sharon flung it at the monstrous vision – which in less than one second was engulfed in a curtain of roaring flames.
She tottered outside, still whimpering, still weeping, beating down on herself, imagining that she too had caught alight. Only by a miracle, it seemed, had she avoided this, but still she wasn’t safe – she expected a fiery figure to come surging out. But if McKellan tried to do that, he failed, perhaps stumbling against the inside of the door, which now banged closed, entrapping what looked like a raging inferno inside the small outbuilding. Its grimy windows quickly blackened and shattered. Its wood and tarpaper exterior was already smouldering, flames licking out through every crevice.
Sharon continued to back away, not quite believing that her ordeal was over. As the fire spread over the hut’s exterior, it burned so fiercely that the heat of it dried her tears, seared her sweat-sodden cheeks. And then a hand landed on her shoulder.
She squealed as she spun around – only to see the brutish, baffled features of Mike Lewton, with Rob Ellis standing a few feet to one side. Their patrol vehicle was parked behind them. Lewton still held the bolt croppers with which he’d managed to secure access through the front gates, but he almost dropped them with shock when he saw the state Sharon was in: her hair a tangled mop of gluey blood, her face equally stained but also dirty, wild-eyed.
“He’s … he’s in there,” she stammered shrilly, gesturing at the hut.
“What? Who is, Shaz?”
She