cinema-scope screen. He was bored with the film, partly because the big, craggy cowboy on the screen was now too old to act like superman, and partly because he wasn’t wearing his glasses. Vikki didn’t know he wore glasses sometimes and he thought it might spoil their relationship if she did. She’d probably go off him too if she ever found out about his two false front teeth; he had to be so careful in their ‘snogging’ sessions that her probing tongue didn’t dislodge the plate. She was very fussy. And she deserved to be, with her looks! Best looking bird in the club.
He had another problem too - he wanted to go to the toilet. He wasn’t desperate yet, but the thought of not being able to go was steadily making it worse. And he couldn’t go because he didn’t have his glasses and without them he’d never find his way back to the seat. It had happened to him once before; he’d wandered up and down the aisle in the dark until his embarrassed girlfriend had waved to him. And that was the last time he’d dated her.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His arm reached around her shoulders and she snuggled against him, one of her hands resting on his thigh. The area under her hand became the centre of his feelings until the weight caused stirrings elsewhere. He kissed her cheek softly and then her lips hard as she turned her head towards him, her fingers increasing the pressure on his leg. Well, he’d bided his time for two weeks now so as not to spoil things; maybe now was the time to make his move. His heart thumping, his head filled with concentrated love and the desire to urinate overpowered by a stronger desire, he put his free hand on her wrist and stroked the silky material of her blouse. He drew his trembling and cautious fingers to the centre buttons and poked a finger through an opening, giddy at the feel of the warm flesh of her tummy. After a few moments of making circling motions with his exploratory finger and waiting for the rebuttal, he withdrew it and moved his hand upwards towards her breasts. He found the gentle swelling and cupped it tremblingly. Her restraining hand rested on his and weakly, without conviction, tried to pull it away.
Instead he moved it along and slid it inside the opening of her blouse, getting it stuck between the buttons.
He wriggled it loose and undid one of them, hearing her gasp as his hand reached inside again for her.
My first one, he thought. My first proper good-looking bird! After all those fat ones, skinny ones, ones with big noses, ones with big teeth - at last a good-looking one! Ooh, I’m in love. Wait till I tell the boys she lets me have a feel!
His hand crept inside her lacy bra and felt her hard little nipple, squeezing it between his fingers, pressing it as though it were a button.
Suddenly she screamed and leapt to her feet, pulling his arm up with her.
‘I didn’t mean anything,’ he began to bluster, his face reddening as people turned to look at them.
‘Something bit me!’ Vikki cried. ‘There’s something there on the floor! It bit me leg!’
He looked downward but failed to see anything in the dark. He bent down, more to escape the accusing eyes of the cinema crowd than to discover the offending ‘something’.
‘There’s nothing there,’ he said miserably.
’There is, there is!’ She began to cry, backing away on to the lap of the person sitting next to her.
Someone in the next row flicked on a lighter and leaned over the back of his seat with it, holding a small flame towards the floor.
A large dark shape scuttled underneath the seat.
As Vikki screamed, a woman behind in the next row leapt to her feet and screamed also. Then pandemonium broke loose throughout the theatre. People jumped ,up and kicked out at or leapt away from something at their feet.
‘Rats!’ a terror-stricken voice echoed around the cinema, the cry being taken up by others equally frightened.
Vikki began to pound her feet hysterically up and down on the floor, as though contact with it would make her more vulnerable to the vermin. Stephen grabbed her shoulders and tried to calm her just as the house-lights came on. Then the terror really took grip as the people saw the horror between the seats.
Rats were flowing down the aisles, branching off through the rows of seats, pouring over the tops; leaping on to the panicking crowd. Women and men screamed as they fought each other to get free of seats, blocked in on either side by stumbling bodies. The exit doors became jammed, people falling over one another in their bids to escape the death behind them. The big cowboy in the film began his final shoot-out with the villains.
Stephen pulled a rat from Vikki’s hair and hurled it away from him, his hands torn by the creature’s gnashing teeth.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her along the row, pushing at the people ahead of him. Inexplicably, the house-lights dimmed and finally faded leaving the confused scene lit only by the light reflected from the huge screen. Something was biting into the boy’s leg and he tried to kick it against the back of a seat, but because of lack of space the rat was able to hang on. He bent down to pull it away and his hands were nipped at by another rat. In desperation, he sat on top of a seat back and painfully raised his leg on to the back of the seat in front, lifting the great black rat with it. Vikki ran from him and stumbled over a man in his last death struggles with three rats. She fell heavily, and was immediately en-gulfed in bristling bodies, her screams unheard amongst the screams of others.
Stephen grabbed the rat’s throat with his hands and squeezed with all his strength but still it clung to him.
He felt another as it landed on his back and bit into his coat which he quickly shed without thinking, dropping it and the rat into the row behind him. A man in front saw his plight and bravely grabbed at the rat clinging to his leg and pulled.
Abruptly, the creature released its grip and turned on the man, biting into his face.
He went down screaming in agony.
The boy looked over the seats and saw there was nothing he could do to save his rescuer. He looked around but seeing no clear line of exit, he jumped up on to the back of a seat and carefully began to walk along the rows, using peoples’ shoulders where he could, but mostly depending on luck to keep his balance, He slipped a few times but managed to spring upright again, the fear inside him giving him the extra strength he needed to keep going. The holocaust around him became unreal. It was a nightmare, the strange light from the screen heightening the unearthly effect.
A man in front lifted a rat above his head and threw it away from him, hitting the boy with its long body and causing him to slip between the rows again. He landed heavily on his back and lay there stunned for a few moments. Someone stumbled and fell across him, struggling with something in his arms. The rat was pushed into Stephen’s chest causing him to shout out in anguish. He beat at both rodent and man with his fists, cursing and crying at the same time. The weight was lifted from him as the man regained his feet and staggered on, the rat still clinging to his arms, another around his shoulders, chewing at his neck.
The boy got to his feet and climbed on to the seats again, continuing his hazardous journey across the sea of helpless people. Many were in the aisles now, their panic pressing them together in the confined space, preventing the use of speed as a means of escape. The doors were blocked with scrambling bodies and those that managed to get through were being chased into the foyer by the vermin.
An elderly couple near him clung together in a last desperate embrace, the vermin biting at their legs and buttocks, finally bringing them down to their .knees.
Another man sat rigid in his seat, eyes still on the screen as though watching the film, hands clenching the seat-arms.
A rat sat on his lap gnawing a hole into his stomach.
A group of teenage boys had formed a circle, back to back, and were slowly making their way up the aisle, kicking out at the vermin with their heavy boots. Unfortunately they could get no further than the thronging mass of people around the exit.
The people in the balcony above were no better off; they only had two exits of retreat and rats were pouring through these. They were forced back by the bodies of others and many were toppling over the rail into the theatre below.
Stephen went on, sobbing with fright, and at last reached the front stalls. It was comparatively empty of people and vermin, the sides and the exits of the cinema now being the main points of disorder. He leapt on to the floor and headed towards the stage. He managed to get one leg on to it, quickly finding his feet again. A stream of black, furry bodies emerged from the curtains at one side making straight towards him. He turned to run in the
