Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

It turned out that the answer was “just fast enough.” The primary explosion happened just about the time we reached the boundary fence and were heading out into the field. It was big enough to take the roof off the building behind us, and send us all tumbling, head over heels, across the grass. For an instant, night became day; you could see all the subtle greens and yellows of every weed and grass blade picked out in 3-D detail. Then the first bits of metal began raining down around us, and any interest in botany was over.

We kept on running. A few minutes later, we reached the comparative safety of the hillside. We collapsed at the top of the slope, beneath the birch trees, watching the institute facility burn.

When he’d gotten his breath back, Lockwood looked over at where George, Kipps, and Holly were sprawled in various attitudes of exhaustion. “Thank you for saving us,” he said. “Lucy and I have never been so pleased to see anyone. We thought you’d all gone home.”

“We nearly had,” Holly said.

George nodded. “After you left us in the weapons room, we had an argument about what we should do. Kipps was all for leaving, like you ordered. But I couldn’t do it. I wanted to go after you, and Holly backed me up. So then Kipps said that if he was going to jump off a cliff he’d do it with a gun in his hand, and he started loading us up with all the weapons we could carry. We were delayed by those two scientists coming through again, but we followed pretty quickly after that. You should have seen the three of us, marching down that corridor, armed to the teeth.” He gave a chuckle. “Anyway, when we got to that big room, we slipped in behind the crates, and then things got really bad for us, because we were just in time to see you head into the circle.”

“So it was you we heard?” My jaw dropped. “Lockwood and I thought you were more Rotwell agents on the way! That’s why we ended up going inside!”

“Ah, well,” George said, “sorry about that. But you can’t blame us for coming back, can you? Anyway, seeing you disappearing in among the ghosts…That stunned us. Spirit-capes or no spirit-capes, we thought you were dead. And a moment later Rotwell and his gang all trooped back in, and that guy was there in his stupid armor, marching up the chain, ready to go inside.”

“You were looking at the Creeping Shadow,” I said. “No, don’t ask. We’ve a lot to tell you, but we can do it later. So what happened next?”

“What happened,” Kipps said from the grass, “was that George went mad.”

George took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t know that bloke was the Shadow,” he said, “but I knew full well what that circle was. And I thought you’d died there. So my numbness went away and I just felt…angry. Next thing I knew, I was setting fire to a perfectly good research facility.” He gave a heavy sigh. “Hey, ho, that’s how things go. It worked out all right in the end.”

“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” Lockwood said. The inferno had spread along the covered passageways and now reached the weapons room, with its stockpiles of flares and bombs.

“Well, we thought you were dead, didn’t we?” George said. “We were upset.”

Just then there was a colossal multi-plumed explosion. The remaining buildings of the Rotwell Institute facility vanished, to be replaced by successive pluming cauliflowers of white fire.

“Lucy,” Lockwood said, “next time we’re at home and George wants the last biscuit, remind me to let him have it.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, “he can have the whole barrel.”

We sat on the slope, the five of us, watching the destruction. Beyond the far hills, the first signs of dawn stained the eastern sky. Pretty soon, ash began glittering in the fields like frost.

For more than a thousand years, probably ever since the last raven had finished picking at the skeletons left by the Vikings and the Saxons on their ancient battleground, Aldbury Castle had been a backwater, forgotten and ignored. Centuries of action and incident had passed it by. Even its recent epidemic of ghosts had earned it no attention. Yet the “Rotwell Incident” (which was how the newspapers subsequently named the disaster at the institute facility) changed all that overnight. At a stroke it became the most famous location in England.

The response started early. At eight thirty a.m., roughly three hours after explosions had lit up the sky behind the hills, and with the column of black smoke still funneling up above the trees, the first vehicles began rolling through the village. And they didn’t stop coming. All that day a convoy of cars, trucks, and windowless vans, filled to the brim with DEPRAC personnel, Rotwell agents, and armed police, went racing grimly eastward through the woods. Before long, with word spreading and the first journalists arriving on the scene, DEPRAC cordoned off the village altogether. A barrier was erected at the bridge west of the green, and another on the lane, just inside the entrance to the eastern woods. Guards were posted, and no one was allowed in or out.

That suited us fine. We weren’t in shape to go anywhere. We rose late and spent the day in the taproom of the Old Sun Inn, keeping out of sight.

From time to time, word came of activities out on the fields. Members of DEPRAC teams called in for sandwiches and refreshments, and from the tidbits of information they let slip to Danny Skinner and his father, we got a fair idea of what was going on.

Clean-up squads were wading through the wreckage of the Rotwell Institute site. Most of the facility had been destroyed, and what areas remained had been quickly sealed off from all but the most specialized operatives. The ruins of the central building in particular were out of bounds, but it was common knowledge that certain “unauthorized” weapons had been found in neighboring hangars, and that this was the probable cause of the explosion and the fire. Even more sensational was the news that Steve Rotwell himself was missing. He had been at the facility the previous day and had not been located. So far, he was the only presumed casualty. Several surviving scientists, found wandering in the surrounding countryside, had been taken in for questioning.

“And it won’t be long before we’re rounded up, too, I suppose.” This was Kipps, speaking from his seat near the fire. His turtleneck was pulled high, and his face had a bruised and swollen look. All our faces did. We were like a selection of old fruit, dropped too often and left in the bowl to go soft.

Lockwood was playing cards with Holly. He shook his head, an action that made him wince and rub the back of his neck. “I think we’ll be fine,” he said. “What Rotwell was doing in that site counts as major criminal activity—all those secret weapons, for a start, not to mention the ghost-bombs that were used in the carnival assassination attempt last year. And then there’s the iron circle. I’d be very surprised if Johnson and the others talk openly about what happened last night—at least at first. A lot depends on what the fires have actually left behind.”

“I was wondering,” Holly said. “Shouldn’t we tell DEPRAC ourselves?” She had spent even longer than usual in our shared bathroom that morning, and by some magic was almost restored to her pristine self, despite flare burns on her brow and chin. But the gun-toting, wild-haired madwoman of the night before was in there somewhere, I knew. It made me look upon her with fond affection.