Doc Mortis by Barry Hutchison

Author:Barry Hutchison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter Eleven

A TASTE OF HIS OWN MEDICINE

The thin metal floor of the air duct sagged as I crawled inside. Cold air – colder, even, than the air in the freezing store cupboard we’d just left – swept towards me, ruffling my hair and making it difficult to keep my eyes open.

Not that my eyes were of much use. Just a few metres into the vent, the darkness began to tighten around me, and I.C. became nothing more than a vague moving shape up ahead.

Once again, his size helped him. He raced along the duct, the sounds of his hands and knees on the floor becoming further away with each passing moment.

I was too big to be able to crawl on my knees. Instead, I lay flat, dragging myself along, commando-style, with my elbows. I kicked out with my feet, trying to give myself some extra speed, but my toes slipped on the cold steel, and I had to leave it to my arms to do all the work.

The duct was filthy, the metal ragged in places. It tore through my clothes and ripped at my skin as I hauled myself onwards into the beckoning dark.

I must’ve travelled eight or nine metres before I dared look back. The entrance to the crawl-space was a rectangle of light, with nothing to be seen but the wall directly across from the opening.

I.C. crawled on at top speed, the crashing of his movements becoming ever more distant as he left me behind. I stopped, my muscles already cramping painfully, my breath already rasping in my chest. I didn’t take my eyes off the rectangle of wall, waiting for something to appear, but praying that nothing did.

I stretched my arms out, trying to ease the cramp that burned my muscles from the inside out.

Five seconds passed. Seven. Ten. Nothing moved in I.C.’s hideout. I couldn’t hear the boy himself now. Maybe he’d stopped, or maybe he was just too far away for me to hear him. I’d find out soon enough. The pain in my arms had eased and I prepared to move again.

Then I saw it, the vague blur of a shadow on the wall inside the store room. My limbs became rigid. My splayed fingers gripped the floor.

Another few seconds passed in silence, before four long, scarred fingers wrapped round the edge of the rectangular hole. A head ducked slowly down into view. Most of its features were lost to silhouette, but the light picked out the edge of a dirty yellow button stitched over an eye socket, and the mass of scar tissue across his bald head. A tingling heat crept up from my toes, finishing in my chest and making my heart contract and my lungs swell.

Stupid. Stupid. I turned away, cursing myself, and scrambled along the duct as fast as my aching arms could pull me. I shouldn’t have stopped, should’ve kept going, kept moving, kept crawling. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Every movement I made along the metal passageway boomed like thunder. It drowned out the sound of the thing behind me, making it impossible to tell how close it was.

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