Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

Lohan turned to her, examining her as if for the first time. Even now he seemed undisturbed, refusing to panic.

“Have they found us?” Scarlett blurted out the question.

Lohan nodded slowly. “They’re outside. The building is surrounded.”

“But how…?”

“We seem to have missed a trick.” Lohan’s eyes were still fixed on her. For a few seconds, he didn’t speak. Then he worked it out. “You have something with you,” he said. “The woman – Mrs Cheng or someone at Nightrise – gave you something to wear.”

“No…” Scarlett began. But then she remembered. Her hands went to her throat. “The chairman gave me this…”

She was still wearing the jade pendant. Now, with trembling fingers, she unhooked it and took it off. The little green stone with the carved insect hung at the end of the chain. She handed it over. “It can’t be bugged,” she said, weakly. “It can’t…”

Lohan examined it with cold anger. Then he turned it round and dangled it in front of her face.

Scarlett gasped. The creature inside the pendant – the lizard or the locust or whatever it was – was moving. She saw it blink and shift position. Its legs curled up underneath it. One of its wings fluttered. Scarlett cried out in revulsion. The thing was alive. And all this time it had been around her neck…

Lohan laughed briefly and without humour, then closed his fist over the pendant, winding the chain around his wrist.

“What are we going to do?” Scarlett asked.

Before anyone could reply, there was an explosion in the street. It sounded soft and far away but it was followed at once by screaming and the sound of falling glass. There was the wail of police sirens – not one car but any number of them, closing in from all sides.

Lohan produced an automatic pistol, drawing it out of his back pocket. It was sleek and black and he handled it expertly, loading it with a clip of ammunition, releasing the safety catch and briefly checking the firing mechanism. “You must do whatever we tell you,” he said. “No questions. No hesitation. Do you understand?”

Scarlett nodded.

From somewhere in the building came the first burst of machine-gun fire. Lohan threw the door open, signalled and together they began to move.

Lohan was the first out into the corridor, then Draco and Scarlett with Red behind. They were all armed apart from her. The man outside the lift had unhooked his machine gun and was cradling it in his arms. He didn’t look scared. In fact, he was completely relaxed, as if this was all in a day’s work.

Scarlett was feeling sick with anger. This was her fault. The jade pendant that she had been given was bugged in every sense of the word – and it had told the chairman exactly where she was. Why had she even worn it? She should have left it beside the bed. But it was too late to think about it now. The Hong Kong police had arrived. They were already on their way up.

Her every instinct would have been to get out of there as quickly as they could but they were moving slowly, taking it one step at a time. Lohan was listening out for any sound, his head tilted sideways, his gun level with his shoulder. Scarlett saw him signal to the man at the lift, pointing with two fingers, ordering him to stay where he was, and she knew that it was probably a death sentence. These people had some sort of code among themselves. They did exactly what they were told no matter what it might cost.

For a brief moment, everything was silent. The police cars had turned off their sirens and the gunfire had stopped. The corridor was empty. But then, with a surge of alarm, Scarlett saw a blinking light. There were two arrows next to the lift doors, one pointing up, the other down. One of them was flashing. The lift was on its way up.

Lohan gestured with the gun. “You follow me. This way…”

They set off down the corridor but it seemed to Scarlett that he was leading them the wrong way. It would obviously have been crazy to have tried taking the lift, but wouldn’t the emergency stairs be somewhere near by? Lohan was taking them ever further into the building and away from what was surely the only way out.

But nobody argued. Scarlett still had no idea who Lohan was or what authority he had over the others. He had said that he belonged to an organization and one that had been looking out for her from the day she had been born, but he hadn’t told her what it was called, who ran it or anything like that. It seemed that he and his people were some sort of resistance, fighting against the Old Ones, the last survivors in a city that had been attacked from within. But they weren’t the police. They weren’t the army. What did that leave?

It was too late for any more questions now. Lohan was moving a little faster but still on tiptoe, making no noise, as if he expected one of the many doors to spring open and someone to jump out. How high up were they? How long did they have before the lift arrived? The end of the corridor was about thirty metres away with ten doors on either side. A row of light bulbs hanging from the ceiling on wires lit the way ahead. Scarlett heard a loud, metallic click and risked a glance back. The man with the machine gun had released the safety catch. Lohan muttered something under his breath.

There was the ping of a bell.

The lift had arrived.

Scarlett was still watching as the lift doors opened and yellow light flooded out. The man with the machine gun had positioned himself directly opposite with his shoulders planted against the wall. Without any warning, he opened fire, sending a firestorm of bullets into the lift. The noise in the confined space was shocking. She could actually feel it, hammering into her ears. But she couldn’t see what the man was shooting at. The entire corridor blazed white and red and she heard a high-pitched scream like nothing she had ever heard before, as whatever was inside the lift was pulverized.

Then something appeared, stretching out of the open doorway. It was impossible to make it out clearly between the gloom of the corridor and the brilliance of the gunfire, the two of them strobing – black, white, black, white – turning everything into slow motion chaos. Some sort of tentacles, extending themselves into the corridor. They reached the man. One slammed into his face. Another curled around his throat. But it was the third that killed him, punching right through his stomach and dragging him up the wall, a great streak of blood following up behind him. The man was screaming, his legs writhing in agony. But his finger was clenched around the trigger and he was still firing. His last bullets went wild, tearing into the ceiling and floor.

Something spilled out of the lift. It seemed to be partly human, but there was smoke everywhere now, adding to the confusion. A second creature followed it. The two had come up together. A huge pincer snapped open and shut. Black eyes on stalks. Straight out of a nightmare. It saw Scarlett and the others and began to move with frightening speed.

“Hurry!”

It was the first time that Lohan had raised his voice. He broke into a run. Scarlett followed him, convinced that they didn’t have a chance. There was no emergency exit, nowhere for them to go and the things from the lift must already be closing in on them. Red turned round and fired twice. The bullets had no effect. Then Draco dragged something out of his pocket, brought it to his mouth and threw it. A hand grenade! The pin was still between his teeth. A door to one of the other flats opened and Lohan threw himself in, pulling Scarlett with him, just as there was a deafening explosion and an orange ball of flame in the corridor behind.

Scarlett leant against the wall on the other side of the door. She was choking and there were tears streaming down her face. She wasn’t crying. It was the dust and the plaster which had cascaded down, almost blinding her. She wiped a sleeve across her eyes. Red slammed the door shut. It had about half a dozen locks, chains and bolts which he fastened, one after another. Lohan snapped out another command. Draco muttered something in reply.