Snarling, the monster took a step toward us.
‘This better be good,’ Pitt said, ‘because in five seconds that thing’s going to chew us to mush.’
‘Turn the sign round,’ I told him.
When he saw the other side of the danger sign was bare, silvery metal — as bright as a mirror — he whooped. ‘Bingo! Naz, you’re a genius!’
The Voggron homed in on our voices. It ran across the grass. Jaws opened wide. Teeth! So many, sharp murderous teeth.
We used the metal sheet like a giant reflector. Sunlight bounced off of it into the face of the Voggron. It must have known that it had been blasted by an even brighter light than the June sunshine because with a roar it stopped running toward us. Then, like a dog chasing its own tail, it began to spin. Round and round. Faster and faster. It spun until the green tentacles, mane, whip-tail, and red body became a blur of colours. What happened next caught us all by surprise.
The colours vanished. They were replaced by black… deep, deep black.
‘It’s gone,’ Pitt uttered in amazement.
‘Keep the light on it,’ I told him. ‘We’ve got to be sure.’ So we held the metal sheet so it reflected intense, blinding sunlight on the monster. Seconds later I realised that the spinning blackness was a swirling dust cloud. Just black particles. A twister made from dark grains.
‘Okay, we can stop now.’ We let the danger sign fall down into the grass. After that we all gathered round where the monster had done its last mad dance. All that remained of the Voggron was a pile of black dust.
Jenny heaved a sigh of relief. ‘The sunlight you reflected onto the creature killed it.’
‘Like I said,’ I managed a smile, ‘I don’t think it was ever alive. Not properly anyway.’ At that moment, I realised my smile was a false one. Because a sudden doubt smacked into me. Listen, the Voggron affected me in a way that was completely different to what the other three experienced. Briefly, I’d seen through their eyes, knew their thoughts, felt what they were feeling. Why me? What made me different to them? Had the Voggron infected me in some way? Or did it go further back than today? Am I different to them because of what happened when I was younger?
The truth is, I’m adopted. The man and woman who became my parents found me in a cardboard box when I was baby. That box had been in the lane just outside the bunker fence. Both tell me they remember that night well. The moon shone bright.
And for the first time in their lives they’d seen that the bunker door was open. Wide open. A ghostly blue light shone inside. In the morning the steel door was locked shut again.
The shiver that ran up my spine made my back itch. A squirmy itch that made the skin on my back so sensitive I couldn’t bear the pressure of even my T-shirt against it. If anyone else noticed I was troubled they didn’t mention it.
Adam looked into the distance. ‘Army helicopters. See? Four of them. They must have received an alarm call from computers in the bunker.’
With an effort I made that false smile on my face even bigger. ‘We’ll leave the experts to clear up the mess.’
Jenny noticed Brian still gawped in shock at the wreckage of his bike. Before we headed home, she said to Pitt. ‘You saved Brian’s life.’ She grinned. ‘Something tells me he’s never going to even think of bullying you again.
They were laughing with relief that the danger was over. I laughed, too, though I found myself thinking hard about the Voggron. For a while back there in the tunnels, my mind had evolved into an uncannily powerful instrument. One that could reach into other people’s minds — just as the Voggron had done. When my back gave that itchy squirm again I asked myself the question:
Is this story really over?
Or, for me, had it only just begun?
