“Some kind of door, I guess,” Kieran explained. “All I know is that Jackson got in this way.”
“And you never bothered to look for it before?”
“There wasn’t any need. No one was trying to get out of the castle until your lot turned up in your bloody helicopter.”
“Fair point.”
They split up and scoured the walls of the cluttered room. In the months since the castle had first been used as a base by survivors, the gift shop had been used for a variety of reasons. Bayliss and Melanie’s love nest apart, people had dumped rubbish here, used it to store less useful items which had been scavenged (Michael noticed a couple of flat-screen TVs) and, judging from the smell, someone had used this place in favor of the chemical toilets too.
“There are catacombs and dungeons here, you know,” Caron said suddenly.
“What?” Michael asked.
“Ignore her,” Howard said, “she’s half-pissed.”
“I might well be,” she continued, “but I’m not stupid. I tell you, there are dungeons and all sorts under this place.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I’ve spent hours and hours pretending to clean the museum, remember? I saw some displays.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this?” Lorna said in disbelief.
“I didn’t think it mattered. Like Kieran said, we weren’t planning on leaving until a couple of days ago.”
“Wait,” Michael said, “this guy Jackson. You said he came
“Yes,” Kieran replied. “Why?”
“Because if that’s the case he probably got in this way.”
Michael flashed his torch at a door he was standing next to. It had a large NO EXIT sign in the middle of it. They’d all glanced at it, but the penny hadn’t dropped. They’d been looking for a way out, not a way in. Jackson had been coming the other way. His entrance was their “no exit.”
“Must be it,” Kieran said, reaching for the emergency access bar right across the middle of the door. He pushed it down and the latches opened. Mchael slipped his fingers around the edges and between them they pulled the door open. A blast of cold, musty air hit them. Michael shone his torch into a small room which looked like it had been carved out of rock.
“We need to get moving,” Howard said nervously. “I think they’re coming this way.”
“Go for it,” Michael suggested. “Even if we just end up hiding in here for a couple of hours, it’ll do.”
He led them down into the confined space; Harte and Kieran close behind, Howard, Lorna, and Caron bringing up the rear. The temperature felt ice-cold.
“Fuck me!” Harte cursed. “Jesus!”
Michael turned around quickly to see what it was that Harte had seen. It made him catch his breath too. A painfully thin, ghostly white body was shackled to the wall. Lorna sighed.
“Harte, you’re bloody useless,” she said. “It’s a bloody dummy.”
“How was I supposed to know? Christ, what kind of place has fake dead bodies chained to the walls?”
“Castles with dungeons,” Caron said. “I told you I saw displays. It was part of some kind of ‘be a smuggler’ attraction, I think.”
“Be quiet and keep moving,” Michael said, leading them toward another door.
“Go through?” Kieran asked, pointlessly.
“Unless you’ve got a better idea?”
Kieran tried the door and it opened. He cautiously entered a narrow passageway which sloped downward and which curved away to the left. He kept walking, suddenly a reluctant leader, shuffling his feet along the ground, unsure of the slope. This passage too appeared to have been carved out of the rock and supported with rudimentary brickwork. The miserable light from their torches now illuminated only a fraction of the narrow space around them, just a patch of the walls and the low ceiling. It felt almost unbearably claustrophobic; even sound felt restricted and trapped here, echoing quickly, unable to escape. Kieran’s already slow pace slowed further as nerves set in. He held his torch in one hand and groped his way forward with the other.
“Shh…” Harte said suddenly, grabbing Michael’s shoulder. “Stop!”
They immediately froze, walking into each other and bunching up in the narrow confines. They all became completely still, their collective breathing the only sound.
“What is it?” Lorna asked anxiously. He shone his torch into her face.
“I thought I heard something.”
“You think Jas is following us?”
“I thought I heard it too,” Kieran said. “It wasn’t behind us, it was up ahead.”
“Just keep moving,” Michael said, squeezing through and taking the lead. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
Kieran was about to follow when he stopped. There it was again. A definite noise.
“Wait…” he said.
“He’s trying it on,” Howard said. “Fucker’s brought us down here and told Jas to follow. I’m betting it’s a bloody dead end up ahead.”
“And do you think I’d want to get myself trapped too? Get real, Howard. No, I swear, there’s something down here.”
“I’m going back,” Caron started to moan, trying to get past Howard and get back up the slope. “We never should have come here.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Michael told her, the tone of his voice immediately silencing her. “Whatever’s down here can’t be any worse than your friends back in the castle.”
“You reckon?” Harte mumbled.
“It’s probably just rats or something like that,” Howard said, doing his best to find a rational explanation for the noise but causing more panic in the process. At the mention of rats Caron began to wail with fear. Lorna felt her starting to move again and she grabbed hold of her.
“Get off me!” she screamed, trying to beat her off.
“Leave it out, you silly cow,” Lorna cursed, pushing Caron up against the damp, cold wall and preventing her from getting out.
“Will you two keep it down,” Michael ordered from the front. He started moving again, following the curve of the passage around until it opened out into another, much larger space. He paused in the entrance to the chamber. There were colorful displays hanging on the walls, and another dummy had been chained to the rock for its sins. Harte and Kieran stood on either side of him. Harte took another couple of steps forward, then froze.
“Fucking hell!” he yelled. “Bodies!”
“It’s all right,” Michael said quickly, loud enough for those behind to hear him. “It’s just another dummy.”
“No, it isn’t,” Kieran said, grabbing his arm and turning him around. “Look.”
Harte’s torch had picked out a single corpse which began walking toward him. Keeping the light focused on the creature’s grotesque face, he desperately searched his pockets for anything he could use as a weapon.
“There are more of them,” Kieran said. “Oh fuck, there are loads of them.”
Michael watched in abject terror as more and more bodies emerged into the light. Drawn like moths to the torchlight, they staggered ever closer.
“What do we do?” Caron asked anxiously, sandwiched between Michael, Kieran and Harte on one side, Howard and Lorna on the other.
“Go back,” Harte said, already trying to move away. “We need to get ourselves back behind one of those doors we came through.”
“But they’re just going to keep coming,” Lorna said, stating the obvious. “Fuck this, we might as well head all the way back out and take our chances with Jas and the others.”
The dead continued their approach. There were at least five of them now that Michael could see, maybe even more behind. He didn’t want to look, but at the same time he wished their torches were brighter. The thought of
