Crawlers

11:27pm

Acid ate his lungs; his eyes felt like they were melting - but Ben was keeping up. With both hands pressing his tie to his face he had made it down the stairs without breaking his legs. He had followed Jasmine's voice around the corner without smacking into the concrete pillar. He had kept Samantha or Lauren's back in sight (the fog was so thick and his eyes so raw, he couldn't tell which of them it was), and so far - though there had been a nasty moment near the start of the chase when he had felt fingertips actually touch the back of his shirt - he had managed to avoid being caught. But then his left foot got tangled round the leg of some piece of furniture. 

Ben spun. His right knee buckled painfully as his weight hit it at the unexpected angle. Then he was on the floor. 

His breath flew out in a rush. Black spots burst in his vision against the surrounding yellow-white of the fog. He lay there, winded, utterly helpless, certain that his pursuers were about to get him. 

Nothing happened. 

Hands still at his sides, Ben snatched a breath. Mistake. The tie had been an intolerable hindrance, but the price of trying to breathe without it was one he paid in pain: it felt like his insides were being scoured out with bleach. He hawked and wheezed, rolling on the carpet, still expecting hands (or worse) to descend on him at any moment. Where are they? he thought dazedly. Why hadn't they caught him? What was going on? 

Ben brought the tie back to his mouth and gradually brought his breathing under some sort of control. As he did so he noticed that, apart from the noise he himself was making, the room around him seemed to have become unnervingly silent. 

Slowly, carefully, aching, he got to his feet. 

Was it really the police who had released the gas, like Jasmine had said? If so, Ben wasn't sure what good it was supposed to do. Maybe it had stopped the bitten people, maybe not. But for him it was a nightmare. 

There was no way to tell which way he was facing. Deciding that whichever way it was would have to do, he shuffled forward. With one hand he kept the tie over his nose and mouth. With the other he stretched out, eyes streaming, blindly groping at the air ahead of him. 

After ten slow paces his right foot came to the edge of a drop: he realized it was the top of another flight of stairs. Ben concentrated, trying to visualize what he remembered of the foyer's layout. He shuffled to his left, following the line of the stair, and decided that there were two possibilities. He was either on the central walkway of the foyer, which would be absolutely amazing, because it would mean he was now perhaps twenty metres or so from the main entrance. Or, of course, he was completely lost, in which case he was just stuffed. 

Where were the girls? Had they gone on ahead? Why was everything so quiet all of a sudden? Ben took his tie from his mouth. 

'Jasmine?' he croaked. 'Samantha? Lauren?' Then he waited, uncomfortably aware that he had just given away his position in the fog to anyone else who might be able to hear him. 

'Ben?' 

His heart jumped. 'Jasmine?' 

'Ben? Are you OK?' 

'I'm fine!' said Ben, absurdly relieved. 'Where are you?' 

Three figures holding ties over their faces materialized around him. 

'I heard you fall,' said Jasmine. 'Are you OK?' 

'Tripped,' said Ben. 'A real face-plant. But they didn't get me.' 

'That's what you'd say if they did get you,' said Samantha. 'What?' she added, when everyone looked at her. 'We lost sight of him. Anything could've happened.'