Humpty's bones

Eleven

Run? But fleeing will do no good. You can’t outrun this.

The breeze became a hurricane. Plastic sheets went crazy. Flapping, snapping, pieces ripped off. They shot down the tunnel like speeding phantoms. Lights dipped. Winked out. Darkness.

Utter darkness.

By touch alone I found one of the trucks. The cover whipped my face. Torrents of ice cold air roared. A charge of menace filled the place. There was the sense of something approaching.

You can’t out-run it, I told myself. Gotta hide!

The light flickered on in this section of tunnel. To my left and right, the tunnel was drowned in blackness. I couldn’t see a thing there. But I knew the monster charged toward me. Yes! I screamed the word inside my mind: monster! It couldn’t be anything else but a monster. I’d seen the gouge marks in the steel door. Then those helmets with holes bitten into them. Now — down in this maze of tunnels a monster ran as fast as a train. It was fierce and crazy — and hungry. A blazing hunger for human flesh. Instinct told me the brutal truth.

In three seconds flat I ducked under the plastic, opened the door to the truck’s cab, then hauled myself inside. There I sat behind the huge black ring of the steering wheel. I saw nothing much through the windows, only plastic rippling against glass.

Once again, the light went out. Dark. So dark I couldn’t see my own hands. No way would I be crazy enough to switch on the cab light, even if the battery still worked. A light, a movement, just a tiny, little sound from me would tell the monster where I hid. What followed then… good grief, I didn’t even want to think about it.

But what did happen then was so strange. For a moment I wondered if I imagined it… so weird… disturbing… unpleasant…

As I sat there in the cab of the truck I tried not to move. All of sudden it went quiet. The blast of air stopped. All those plastic sheets stopped their flapping. I could see nothing… way too dark for that. But from the soft, rustling noise I could picture the truck covers settling back down to hang limp… just like shrouds that cover the deceased. My heart beat with a dull rhythm. Time seemed to stand still. A pain started in my head. A thin, sharp one. A bit like an ice-cream headache. Brain freeze.

Strange.

I tried to rub my head but could hardly lift my arms. Why had I gone so weak? A dizziness made my head droop. All of a sudden I felt half-asleep. My head tilted again. Kinda woozy. My arms were peculiar. Floppy. All strength gone.

At that moment the light returned. Only much dimmer than before. A grey radiance seeped through the plastic. I gazed down almost dreamily at my hands; they sagged limp as dead birds on my legs. The headache got worse. It should have made me wake up, only I became even more drowsy. This was like being in bed and hovering in that floaty borderland between being awake and sleep. I gazed at the dashboard with its big speedometer and rev counter staring back like round eyes.

Then… a sound…

With a huge effort I turned my head. I looked out through the door window at the plastic sheet. This time I realised that it was semi-transparent. Through the milky grey material I saw a shape.

A shape that hadn’t been there before.

One that moved slowly… very slowly. I couldn’t say how big it was. But it must have been far bigger than a man. Colours were impossible to distinguish. All I could make out were patches of light and dark. It moved slowly. Yet an altogether different aspect of the massive body troubled me more than words could say. And it was this. When the thing stopped moving there was something on its back that continued to move. My heart thumped. My blood became ice. Because it was this strange effect that disturbed me most. Objects were in motion at the top of the shape. I couldn’t see what they were because the plastic wasn’t properly transparent. All I could make out were blurred patches. They moved fast. A kind of scrambling motion. Then came a growling voice: ‘Neefer-ratt-saaar.’

At that time I could barely move. Dizziness gripped me. A pain still shot through my head.

‘You’re doing this to me,’ I murmured. ‘You’re affecting my brain. You’re causing the pain in my head.’ Drowsily, I continued to stare.

In that weird state of mind I didn’t worry about being found. At any moment, I expected the plastic to be ripped aside. I’d be face-to-face with this creature. This monster of the labyrinth.