"Is it on?" Lori"s voice echoed all around us. "Sorry Clint."
I waved my hand in the air like it was nothing.
"Ray," I said, an idea popping into my head. "Can I borrow your mobile for a second?"
"Haven"t got one. Now p.i.s.s off and leave me alone."
He stomped safely around the tigerless corner. I took my own phone out and pushed the redial b.u.t.ton. Somehow there was a signal here and somehow Ray knew that.
Agatha picked up instantly.
"Everything okay?" she said.
"Course. Listen I need you to do something for me. There"s a caretaker here called Ray. Can you find out who the last person was he phoned. On his mobile. Is that the sort of thing you do?"
"Exactly the sort of thing. Is that it?"
"Well, yeah. For now. Signal"s c.r.a.p here so just see what you can do."
And she hung up.
Chapter 9.
"Right, people," I said as I strode into the security office and slammed the door behind me."Have we got a key?Can we lock that?"
"Erm, probably not," said Jacob, pointing at the monitor.
"Oh never mind Ray, he"s off on his own mission.Reckon he"ll probably hole up in his office til this is all over."
"Not him, it"s Lori."
I glanced around and found that Jacob was right.Lori had gone, it was just me and him and Erin left in the office.
"Where"s she gone?"
"Look," said Jacob, pointing at the monitors.There was Lori, back to the wall tottering on her heels towards a corner and on the adjacent monitor was the tiger.Waiting.
"These two corridors, they aren"t actually joined, are they?"
Jacob nodded.
"But before... "
Jacob"s eye"s flicked towards Erin.
"Mistakes were made," he said."She"s in trouble Clint, but really, you should lock the door."
Jacob held up the key.
I shook my head.
"Brilliant. How do I get to her?"
"Left out the door, second left, then first right."
"Left.Second Left.Right.Lock the door after me."
"Hang on a minute," Jacob began.
But I didn"t wait for the rest, I just started running.The sort of running you do when you"re a kid and you are going to miss the ice cream van if you don"t absolutely floor it right then and there.Left out the door, slamming it behind me and up to full speed hurtling down the corridor, hoping the shoes I was wearing had sufficient grips on the bottom to...
Stop.
Flat palms slammed into the wall, took the second left and I was already shouting her name as I started to pick up speed again and nearly missed the final...
Right.
Banged into the wall and stared down the corridor.And she wasn"t there.
Left, second left, right?Was that right?
I jogged forward.Which way was she walking on the monitor?And where was the camera?I shouted her name again, looking up and down, listening for a response but there was none.I imagined that I would be able to hear something if the tiger was eating her and here for me?"
My left leg kicked out and my eyes juddered open to see an upside down version of Lori"s pale visage.I blinked and she came into focus.She was bleeding from her forehead but she was alive.
I rolled left then sat up, narrowly missing head-b.u.t.ting Lori in the process.A couple of seconds pa.s.sed and then she reacted, flinching away from where I"d been.
"What happened?"
"What?" she said, her hand darting up and swatting some imaginary fly.
I stood up and moved quickly towards her. She was just standing there swaying as blood trickled from a deep gash on her forehead.
"Are you alright?" I reached out to turn her towards me, my hand touching her upper arm.
She let out a scream worthy of a 1930"s horror movie and I recoiled, trying to see what the damage was.
"It"s okay," I said softly."Do you know what happened?"
She nodded then jumped again as first Jacob and then Erin came around the corner and into view.
"We couldn"t just leave you to do this on your own," Jacob slowed to a jog, stopping in front of me.
"I- it... Lori," Erin panted and pointed at something then doubled over, her hands on her knees and wheezed heavily.
Jacob and I both looked in the direction Erin had pointed.There was a door with a plaque on it.
"Store Room" it proclaimed.
"The store room?" Jacob and I very nearly chorused.It was like trying to get a message from Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
Erin didn"t look up, just raised her right hand and wafted it away from her then pointed to the door again.
Jacob walked forward and tentatively unlocked then opened the door.He poked his head into the darkness it contained then reached inside and whipped out a foldable chair.He immediately unfolded it and took it to Erin who had finally manage to drag herself into an upright position.
"Not for me, you idiot.For Lori."
Not without some degree of trepidation Jacob and I tilted Lori backwards onto the chair.She may have been an expert at moving around in heels that high but, frankly, I was not and the last thing we needed right now was to injure her further. Erin stalked into the store room shaking her head at our antics and somehow found a blanket to wrap Lori in.
"We saw it on the monitor," said Jacob."It whacked her.The tiger ran past and hit her with its paw."
Lori was sobbing, hiding her head in the blanket as Erin fussed around her.
"How come she"s not, well, you know... in shreds?" I asked, trying to put it together in my head."Are you alright, Lori?"
Lori looked up from her crying and sniffed.
"I need the loo," she managed through the snot.Jacob"s handkerchief now looked like it had been tie-dyed with mascara and fake tan but Erin handed it over and Lori promptly cleared her sinuses into it.I wouldn"t have touched the thing."And then I was going to get my bag and get out of here."
"What did you want your bag for?" I asked, trying to sound a bit more concerned and not stare at the snot-rag.
"It"s got my laptop in. My dissertation.The rest of my life.I can"t die in here," she was starting to lose it, starting to rant.Maybe she was going into shock or something."And your d.a.m.n stupid idea of catching the tiger, that was it.I just thought, I don"t know, I only work in this s.h.i.t hole to pay for going to university and the thought of losing it all, the thought of dying a make up girl.I... I... "
"I understand," I said.
Erin coughed and stopped fussing.
We all stared at each other.
"The problem is," I broke the silence first."That all the doors are locked.We"re locked in."
Lori nodded, a calmness descending upon her.
"That"s the reason I said we needed to trap the thing," I moved a little closer to her."So we can stop anything likethishappening."
Lori"s eyes had been staring at some imagined spot in the middle distance but suddenly snapped into focus on me.
"It ran at me," she whispered."Ran past me.And as it ran it hit me with its paw or its shoulder or, I dunno."
Her hand reached up and touched the gash on her head.
"Knocked her into the wall," said Jacob.
"It hurts," said Lori."I think... my arm hurts and my ribs might be broken because theyreallyhurt."
"Erin, can you see what you can do?Painkillers, bandages, anything can find that might work."
There was a noise somewhere down the corridor.
"Jacob, Erin, get Lori in the cupboard now."
"Err, what do you mean Mr Barnum?" Jacob began fumbling with Lori, trying to encourage her to her feet without actually touching her and possibly toppling her forward.
There was a deep, low-pitched noise, barely audible but emanating from somewhere close by.
"Come on darling," Erin managed where Jacob failed, shoving the blanket into his arms as she and Lori shuffled into the store cupboard.The lights inside blinked on.
I stood by the door looking up and down the corridor, trying to see where the noise might be coming from.Jacob grabbed the chair and snapped it loudly closed.I imagined a glimpse of movement somewhere to the right and stared as Jacob brushed past.
"Jacob, for G.o.d"s sake, try to keep quiet.It might hear you."
There was a clink as something metallic hit the concrete floor.Jacob turned and somehow managed to kick the something, sending it sliding a few metres down the corridor.
The key.
My eyes flashed up and down once more.I couldn"t quite see but I could hear, the deep thrum of the noise turning into a fully fledged growl.We needed to be able to lock the door.I darted forward and grabbed the key from the floor, turning around to lift it and show it to Jacob.
He"d turned to face me, presumably to see what I was doing, and I held up the key. He grinned for a second and then his face fell in slow motion, the colour draining from it and he started to shout, dropping the blanket and the chair as my name came slowly out of his mouth.
I turned around to see
Chapter 10.
It was the smell of rotting flesh that permeated the sleep first. Hitting my face in bursts. Then something slightly damp touching my hair and the strange puffs of air that came from whatever it was. When what felt like heavy bacon Velcro made contact with my chin and dragged all the way to my eyebrows, I finally made the connection to the tiger.
It wasn"t a conscious decision not to open my eyes, there was something deep inside,primalwas what they called it in doc.u.mentaries. I concentrated on my breathing. Trying to make each breath shallow. Motionless. Noiseless. Everythingless.
The sniffing stopped and a roar rose up all around me. I no longer had any sense of where the tiger was, it was as if I"d been dropped in the deep end of a swimming pool filled with big cat rage.
Usually this was the point the b.a.s.t.a.r.d narcolepsy kicked in. But not this time. Oh no. It wouldn"t do for me to be mauled by a tiger in my sleep. My subconscious clearly hated me enough to want me to witness the event first hand.
And then there was a banging noise. Not a feline banging but a people banging. On a door and I tried opening my right eye the tiniest of tiny amounts.
I couldn"t see anything so I chanced the same with my left.
Again, nothing.