Humpty's bones

TEMPERATURE. Worst of all: DO NOT TOUCH: DANGEROUS CONTENT. I shuddered. Were these nuclear weapons? I walked along the line of cylinders. Stencilled on each one, in fierce, spiky letters was: VOGGRON. And after that mystifying word, either an A or B or C or a D. So the first cylinder was labelled VOGGRON A.

When I reached VOGGRON C I groaned, ‘Oh, no.’

The third cylinder had been bashed hard. Dents covered it. Only the dents bulged outward not inward. One end of the cylinder had been torn away. The metal cap, which was six feet in diameter, lay on the tiled floor. The cylinder itself was clean inside. Completely empty.

VOGGRON. Now I knew what had smashed open the bunker door. What’s more, I knew EXACTLY what had chased us. As I stood there, a darkness fell over me. It spilled across the floor, growing bigger as some shape — one that cast a long, dark shadow — crept up behind me.

Even though I wanted to move I couldn’t. Like one of those dreams when you need to run but can’t move so much as a finger. Then came its touch on my shoulder.

‘Hey, Naz, what you found here?’

‘Jenny?’ I spun round. ‘Adam? Pitt? I thought it had got you.’

‘We thought it was you who’d been nabbed.’

Grimly, I said, ‘If we don’t get out of here fast we’re all done for.’ I nodded at the cylinder. ‘By what was in there. The Voggron.’

Adam saw the wrecked cylinder. ‘It broke out of that tank, didn’t it? It escaped from the bunker, now it’s back.’

I frowned. ‘But why would it come back?’

Pitt rubbed his jaw. ‘Maybe the Voggron doesn’t like being outdoors. Or it needs to return to its lair.’

‘But what is it?’ Jenny examined the cylinders.

I shrugged. ‘Earlier, I hid in a truck when it came along the tunnel. I didn’t see it exactly… ’

‘I did,’ Jenny said. It’s got masses of tentacles. Like a giant octopus.’

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Pitt grunted. ‘I saw it. It’s a big lizard.’

‘You didn’t see all of it.’ Jenny got angry. ‘I was fifteen feet up on a shelf. I saw tentacles, round suckers, green skin, the works.’

‘No, no.’ Adam seemed to pity them. ‘I was closest. I saw paws. With fur. The Voggron’s more like a lion.’

Jenny turned to me. ‘Naz, tell them what you saw.’

‘It’s weird. I saw… ’ Yes! I had seen through their eyes. A kind of telepathy had been at work. I wanted to tell them all about it. How I’d known their thoughts. But what if they think I’m crazy? Suddenly, telling them everything didn’t seem a good idea. At least not at that moment. Instead, I gave a baffled shrug. ‘The truck was covered in plastic. All I did see was a figure… just blurred through the sheet.’ But I now knew what those squirming shapes were on its back. Tentacles. Just the thought of them made my own back itch.

‘So… ’ Jenny slapped her forehead in exasperation. ‘We all saw it, but we all saw something different.’

‘A lizard,’ Pitt insisted.

Adam shook his head. ‘Big cat. Lion, maybe.’

I held up one hand. ‘But we can all agree that it came out of there.’ I tapped the empty cylinder with my knuckles. It made a gong sound that echoed away into the distance. A ghostly shimmer on the cold air.

‘And there’s another thing.’ Jenny was deadly serious. ‘Although we can’t agree on what we saw, we can agree on how we felt.’

Adam pointed to his forehead. ‘A headache. The worst I’ve had.’

We all nodded.

‘Like an ice cream headache, only multiplied a hundred times.’ Jenny rubbed the back of her neck as if it still ached. ‘And all the strength went out of me.’

I shuddered. ‘I don’t know if it was my eyes, or the power supply, but it went dark.’

Pitt became uneasy, too. ‘And when it came close, and the headache started, and you felt like crud, wasn’t that the moment that you didn’t care whether it found you or not?’

I agreed. ‘The Voggron did that to us. It can mess with our minds.’ Again, I nearly told them that, just for a few moment, I’d been able to see through their eyes. But I decided to wait until one of them mentioned it. I didn’t want them to think I’d gone nuts. So, I just added vaguely, ‘Brain control. It’s a psychic transmitter.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Jenny said. But from her expression you could tell she knew it was the truth. The Voggron had telepathic powers. Even so, she didn’t know the half of its unnatural talents.

‘Think about it,’ said Pitt. ‘Wouldn’t that be the perfect weapon? One that makes the enemy too sick and too weak to fight. Not only that, it can reach into your head and stop you even wanting to save your own life.’

And it can make you see through other people’s eyes. Why didn’t these three experience the same thing? I wondered. Why me… have I got something in common with the Voggron?

‘A secret weapon,’ Adam sounded panicky. ‘A Frankenstein soldier.’

‘But it didn’t know we were there,’ Jenny protested, ‘so how could it reprogram our brains?’

I stared at the cylinder. ‘It does it all the time, but only over a short range. And it’s only temporary. Otherwise it would affect those on its own side.’

Pitt whistled. ‘So the Voggron is a weapon. Just like the guns stored down here.’

‘Whatever it looks like,’ Jenny added, ‘it was kept frozen. When they needed it to fight the enemy it would be thawed out.’

‘Only it’s defrosted too soon. Maybe a circuit blew.’ Pitt whistled again. ‘That means there’s three more in these.’ He tapped an intact cylinder with his knuckles. Instantly a loud bang filled the vault. A sound like thunder. His eyes went wide. ‘Something just hit the cylinder wall from inside.’

Adam gulped. ‘It’s wanting to break out, too. Guys, we gotta find the exit.’

Pitt backed away from the cylinder as a rumbling came from it. ‘We could try going back to the lounge.’

In a very quiet voice, Jenny whispered, ‘Too late. It’s already here.’

Fifteen

There are times you think your eyes are cheating you. It must be imagination, you tell yourself. Or I’m not seeing properly, or it’s a dream. Only when I backed away I clunked into the wall. It hurt enough to prove this was no dream. Picture this: An animal that’s bigger than an adult lion. The creature prowls into the tunnel. It has a massive head with two fiery orange eyes, big jaws and a mane. Apart from the mane, and tufts of hair on its paws, it has no fur. The skin is yellow with blood-red patches. Pitt was right, it does resemble the skin of a lizard. It walks on all fours. From its back swarm green tentacles. At least fifty of them, like the tentacles of an octopus. These don’t sag but writhe in the air. They move with a quick, muscular strength. Each one is perhaps ten feet long. They reach out to touch objects: the light fittings, the cable ducts, the plumbing pipes. It must be using a refined sense of touch to map its environment. That and its eyes and other senses must create a perfect understanding of where it is. And it’s not just how monstrous the Voggron looks, it’s that nasty trick it can do — to hurt you without even touching. The headache started in my head. My shoulders sagged as the strength seeped from my body. All of a sudden I found it hard to stand on my own two feet.

Despite his fear, Pitt was in awe. ‘Folks. Meet the Voggron.’

Adam gaped. ‘Earlier we all saw parts of it. Me, paws. Jenny, tentacles… ’

Jenny shouted, ‘RUN!’

The lion-like creature, with octopus tentacles writhing from its back, leapt forward. Its jaws opened wide to reveal huge teeth, sharp as steak knives. Slashing behind it, a long bullwhip of a tail. It lashed this flailing appendage in our direction. In absolute horror I saw that the tail ended in claws. Huge curving claws. The tail