Kane was the only person to ever accuse him of being a s.h.i.tebag: the only person to recognise he was scared of something. That was when he realised Kane had his number.

He had done better in his exams than anybody expected: did it to shut a few folk up, particularly some of the sarky f.u.c.kers among the staff. He thought it would buy him some slack, keep them off his case if they were content he had bagged a few qualifications. Then one day Kane asked him to stay behind after cla.s.s. Kirk thought it was just the usual kind of b.o.l.l.o.c.king about his att.i.tude or not paying attention.

Wrong.

'I learned something quite surprising about you when I saw your exam results,' Kane said. So not a b.o.l.l.o.c.king: a wee bit of humble pie maybe, washed down with a helping of congratulations.

Very wrong.

'You're a s.h.i.tebag and a waster,' Kane went on. 'That's what I learned. You've sat here in my cla.s.s, in every cla.s.s, doing the bare minimum, and I'm sure when it came to your exams, you did the bare minimum of studying for those too, if any.'

'Aye, and yet despite that, I did okay,' Kirk replied, trying to sound c.o.c.ky.

Kane wasn't impressed.

'When you could, it turns out, have done brilliantly, which is what makes you a waster. But wasters can change their ways. It's being a s.h.i.tebag that's a greater obstacle.'

'And what am I meant to be s.h.i.ting it from?'

'Being who you really are.'

That got his attention. What came next was almost a relief.

'Do you know how many bright Scottish boys from places like Gleniston end up making the least of themselves, just because they're afraid getting the head down and scoring good grades would clash with their hard-man image? Too f.u.c.king many. And our unis end up full of overprivileged mediocrities from Fettes and f.u.c.king Hutchie Grammar and the like, who rise way above their abilities because they're not afraid someone's going to call them a poof for getting their sums right.'

Kirk looked up at that point, involuntarily telling Kane he'd scored a point, and hoping to f.u.c.k he didn't realise which one.

'In your year, there's some bright kids: there's Matt, there's Adnan, there's Caitlin, and it turns out that Kirk Burns could be the smartest of the lot. Even if you're not, you've got other qualities that could take you further than any of them. You could have it all, son. You could do anything. But you'd rather pish it away in exchange for acting the big man for a few short years, in front of a bunch of folk who will never respect you for that; the most they'll give you is fear. You could could have people's respect, though, if you wanted it. You're a born leader. And if you start shining in the cla.s.sroom, who's going to dare give Kirk Burns any s.h.i.te for it? But that's not what you're afraid of, is it?' have people's respect, though, if you wanted it. You're a born leader. And if you start shining in the cla.s.sroom, who's going to dare give Kirk Burns any s.h.i.te for it? But that's not what you're afraid of, is it?'

Kirk found it hard to look him in the eye, worried about what he'd give away, worried about what Kane already knew, and aware that everything he'd said so far was true.

'It's a scary prospect, taking on a new mantle. Owning up to what you really are, and admitting you've been deceiving everybody for so long. We both know the easy option would be to keep up the pretence, keep being Big Kirk. But this is your notice, Big Man: you can hide what you are from your pals and your cla.s.smates, but you can't hide it from me any more. If I see you trying to, I'll know it's because you're a s.h.i.tebag. But worse than that: you'll you'll know it's because you're a s.h.i.tebag.' know it's because you're a s.h.i.tebag.'

He is is a s.h.i.tebag. He's f.u.c.king pathetic. a s.h.i.tebag. He's f.u.c.king pathetic.

He's not been hiding this as long as Kane thinks. He didn't realise he was good at his subjects until late in third year. It didn't seem important back then, though - not as important as being the big man, having a laugh, causing a bit of mayhem. By fourth year, he'd started to realise he was limiting his options if he didn't screw the nut, but old habits died hard, and it felt like certain behaviour was expected of him. So not hiding from it, but definitely running from it. Kane got that right.

w.a.n.ker.

s.h.i.tebag.

Scared.

Scared of Barker. Scared of dying. Scared of what he is. Scared of living.

He's about the only person here tonight who wasn't tanning drink. He'll do a bit of hash, but he has to watch the booze: it disinhibits. Threatens to reveal the aspect of him he prefers to keep hidden. He told Dazza that once, when he was nagging him to get jaked. Dazza thought he meant it brought out his violent side.

Quite the opposite, Daniel, dear boy.

Dazza. Poor f.u.c.king Dazza. Pals since they were nine. He wants to cry some more, wants to totally lose it in weeping, but he hears the slap-slap of footsteps nearby and he knows the crying is over for now.

The grief leaves him in an instant as he feels a quickening within. He'd say it's a survival instinct, a reflex, but it feels like something greater.

He's not the big man any more, and he's not scared either.

'Come on. You want to do something for Dunnsy? Let's party for Dunnsy.'

Aye.

For Dunnsy. For Dazza. For Ewan, and for whoever else this Howson-looking f.u.c.ker has killed.

Let's f.u.c.king party.

It is Kane's first look at what wrought the sight he witnessed behind that closed bedroom door, and by simple deduction he understands what it is wielding in its hand. Disbelief is drowned in more compelling reactions: instincts telling him that, however little he can make sense of it, this apparition represents greater danger than he has ever faced in his lifetime. A tiny part of him wants to stand and stare, conditioned by a thousand movies, TV shows and video games to pa.s.sively admire a gruesome spectacle that will safely pa.s.s before his field of vision but never break the fourth wall.

Rebecca, Beansy and Yvonne, perhaps having been through this process the first time around, engage less nuanced responses upon their second viewings. The latter two take off instantly, fleeing headlong down the corridor, while Rebecca simply loses the place. She starts screaming 'no, no, no', staring fixedly beyond the departing Rocks and Caitlin at their pursuer, her legs buckling as she attempts to a.s.sume a despairing, hopeless crouch.

Blake, understanding that this is hardly the time for counselling, drops a shoulder, slams into her and picks her up in a fireman's lift, carrying her off in time to see Beansy and Yvonne turn the corner out of sight.

Kane, by dint of that moment's aghast fascination, has faced the rear long enough to witness Rocks tumble to the deck. He's courageously trying to keep himself between the monster and Caitlin, but in attempting to check his pace and not run into the back of her, his feet have kicked together and brought him down.

Caitlin stops and turns, aware of him tumbling at her heels. She bends down to help him, but from Kane's lengthened perspective, he can tell the creature is going to get there either before Rocks is vertical again or only a couple of paces later.

Almost everything inside Kane is telling him to flee. Maybe it's only the spark of disbelief that presents an alternative course; from a lifetime's experience, he knows it can't be courage. He hefts the fire extinguisher again and runs in the opposite direction to the one his survival instincts are dictating.

'Caitlin - get clear,' he calls, just as all four of them are about to converge. Caitlin throws herself to one side and Kane drives the cylinder forward with all of his momentum, smashing it into the creature's face. He feels it in his shoulders, in his abdominals, and in his own rattling teeth as something crunches, something breaks on the end of the metal.

The creature reels, staggering backwards, then collapses against a wall before dropping to the floor. Kane turns to a.s.sist Rocks, but he is already up and running, Caitlin a couple of paces ahead.

Kane glances back as he reaches the corner. The creature is climbing to its feet, black blood and what looks like teeth pouring from jaws that don't appear to connect properly any more. He can still feel an echo of the impact in his hands. It is the only act of violence he has committed in his adult life, and despite what he committed it upon upon, the memory of the sensation makes him feel sick. Nonetheless, he knows the whole guilt and self-disgust package would have been a worthwhile price to pay if the f.u.c.ker was actually dead.

He turns the corner into the corridor leading to reception, and is dismayed to find his fellow fugitives heading towards him, rather than away with all possible haste. He can't see beyond the fire doors behind the rearmost figure of Beansy, but he's guessing that this means the mystery guest didn't come stag.

With Blake burdened by the weeping weight of Rebecca, it is Rocks who is leading the retreat. He and Kane soon converge, midway along the pa.s.sage, upon the door to the executive dining room. This has been unused and out of bounds during their stay, so they have no idea what is in there or where it leads. All they know is that it is their only option.

Kane grabs the handle. It jerks down freely enough but the door itself fails to budge.

'f.u.c.k's sake.'

He tries the handle again, pulling back against the door in case it's just an awkward catch, but there is no way this thing is shifting. The rest of the group has gathered behind him.

'It's locked,' he reports. 'It's f.u.c.king locked.'

He looks to either side, finds a creature filling the corridor to left and to right. The one with the sore face doesn't look inclined to sit licking its wounds, nor to forgive and forget, while its counterpart lets out an ear-splitting roar, preparatory to a charge.

Einstein said that 'religion is an attempt to find an out where there is no door'. Kane has never understood this quite so acutely as now. There are no more fire extinguishers, no weapons to be improvised.

Rocks shoulders it, stepping back to the opposite wall and hurling himself against the solid wood. It doesn't give. Kane reflects bitterly on how rea.s.suring that would be if they were safely locked on the other other side, when suddenly it swings open twenty degrees. side, when suddenly it swings open twenty degrees.

They all pile into the narrow gap, Kane shoving Blake and Rebecca through it with the creatures flanking him mere yards away. The door slams to, the second Kane is clear. He sprawls on the carpet, looking up to see the key being turned by the determined figure of Sendak, who then slides a formidably heavy sideboard back into place as a barrier.

Breathless and choking with the sheer impossibility of what has transpired over the past two minutes, Kane stands up, turns to Sendak and tries to speak.

'It was, it was . . .' is as far as he can get. He points back at the door, eyes wild, unable to articulate.

Sendak, grim but calm, silently puts his fists to his temples and extends his index fingers.

Kane nods in frantic affirmation.

XXIII Adnan feels like he has simply materialised in the games hall. Though it was only seconds ago, he has barely any memory of the journey through the corridors to get here, and his recall of the dining room feels like it's been censored. He has a vague recollection of his hand on Deborah's arm as she hurried along beside him, but beyond that, no details. By contrast, his awareness of his current surroundings seems heightened, extra sharp. It is as though his mind has diverted all resources to processing the present, non-essential peripheral systems temporarily shut down.

He was in this room briefly yesterday, saw only a games hall: various court lines on the floor, blank walls, high ceiling. Right now he sees something else: a s.p.a.ce they can control, can fortify, the place Sendak knew they could best hold out. Three doorways, only two of them exits, the third a storeroom. One set of double doors opening inward on to the corridor they entered through; the other pair comprising the emergency exit, opening outward on to a short staircase and disabled access ramp. No windows on any of the walls for the creatures to break through, just a small mesh-reinforced pane of gla.s.s in each of the emergency doors.

The only article of non-functional decor is a yellowed and tattered head shot of George W Bush taped about seven feet up on one wall. That the gormless f.u.c.ker is smiling down upon a scene of chaos and total disaster is almost rea.s.suringly familiar.

There's a clock a few feet along from George. Adnan reads that it's dead on eleven, then realises that the second hand isn't moving. WTF? That's what his watch read when it died on him this morning. He checks his mobile, as he has been doing since: the only thing it's good for, the paltry signal it achieved yesterday but a memory in the face of today's flatline. The phone tells him it's ten past ten. It feels much later, and he fears it's going to be a very long night.

Everyone is just standing around, some dazed, some hysterical, all of them waiting for someone to tell them what to do. The only adult, Mrs McKenzie, seems fully occupied by tending to the quivering wreck that is Gillian, slumped on the floor against a wall with her arms clutched around her knees. Anxious glances are directed towards the corridor, searching for Sendak, or at least for one of the teachers.

Those doors have to be closed, Adnan thinks. He understands this with a primal need, like they're letting in poison gas. They have to be closed, and now, but he feels as though he doesn't have a voice to demand it, like if he opened his mouth to speak, nothing would emerge. He's just waiting, they're all just waiting, helpless children, crying for the grown-ups to come. He sees Maria with her hands clasped and her lips moving, recognises that she's saying Hail Marys. That's the first thing to jolt him out of stasis: G.o.ds or grown-ups, they would die if they kept waiting for either to show up and save them.

The second jolt is more physical: a reverberating thump against the emergency doors, accompanied by a slap of feet and a low growl of frustration. The doors hold, but the whole frame is shaken. They open outwards, which makes them all the harder to breach, but this also means they're only as good as the hinges holding them up and the wood those hinges are screwed on to.

Adnan takes hold of a badminton net-stand and carries it to the emergency exit, where he slides it through the handles for further reinforcement.

'We need to barricade this f.u.c.ker, right now,' he announces. 'And get those other doors shut as well.'

One or two of them look at him like he's raving incoherently, but for most, the message gets through and the spell is broken. Maria unclasps her hands and helps Deborah in putting a shoulder to a set of five-a-side goals, looking almost grateful to be taking action. Radar arrives at the emergency exit with a second net-stand. There is another wallop at the outside doors as he and Adnan pa.s.s the shaft between the handles, but it's duller, the added metalwork absorbing part of the blow. It will hold.

Satisfied, Adnan glances towards the corridor doors and sees that one side is still open, Jason Mitch.e.l.l stood beside it. Adnan is about to ask what's causing the hold-up when he sees Miss Ross hurry through the gap. She has a shotgun in her hands, but she's holding it out in front, palms up, like it's covered in slime and she can't bear to touch the thing.

She places it on the floor, alongside a box which she had been cradling between her upper arm and her side. A second, larger box is suspended from her shoulder by a strap. She places this down also, then pulls a piece of paper from a pocket and hands it to Deborah.

'I want a list of who's missing and a list of who's here.'

'Yes, miss,' Deborah responds.

'Now,' she says, very gingerly lifting the shotgun. 'I don't suppose any of you lot knows anything about . . .'

Adnan grips it by the barrel and takes it from Miss Ross' hand. 'Tannhauser twelve-gauge. Combined gas-ejection and pump-action. Ghost-ring sights.' He bends down to retrieve the box of sh.e.l.ls and begins loading them into the gun. 'Takes eight in the breech, one in the tube. Gas ejects the spent sh.e.l.l and the pump chambers the next.'

He pumps the gun to chamber the first sh.e.l.l, inserts the ninth round and hands the weapon back to the slightly awestruck teacher.

'Who says you learn nothing from video games?' he adds.

Deborah leans on the side of a ping-pong table and quickly scribbles down her list of who is present. She scans the hall, counting heads, checking the figure tallies with the number of names, then starts a new column headed by the word 'Missing'. The tears come on as she begins to write. Despite what she saw in the dining room, it's only as she puts names on paper that the truth of it seeps through. Philip O'Dowd. Dan Guthrie. Liam Donnelly. Julie Meiklejohn.

This last makes her shiver, sends something through her that starts as terror and ends as ice, stemming the tears and putting emotions on hold. She glances at Gillian, or rather at the blank-eyed husk that remains of Gillian, and glimpses another reality, not so far away. In that parallel world, it was she who went off with Gillian during the party, back to their their bedroom, where it was she, not Julie, who died at the hands of a demon. bedroom, where it was she, not Julie, who died at the hands of a demon.

In this reality, however, she is still alive, and a very different person, all because thirty-odd hours ago, a bag slid a few feet inside a luggage hold. And why did it slide? Because the bus swerved. The bus swerved because the driver turned to look at the fire, the fire started by a hastily discarded f.a.g, the f.a.g discarded because Guthrie was on the warpath, the deputy on the warpath because Cameron's music was too loud, his music having been turned up because Deborah had turned up her own . . .

'You okay?' asks a voice, hauling her out of this vortex. It's Adnan. She wipes her eyes and nods in accompaniment to a breathy 'yeah'. Then she clears her throat and feels a cold sense of determination take hold. These parallel worlds could regress infinitely behind the present reality for every one of them. They are not lucky, they simply are are, and the only thing that matters is keeping it that way.

'I'm compiling a list of who's missing,' she announces to the group. 'Everyone who's not here, I need their names.'

Adnan and Radar have a look at who's already on the sheet. Marianne and Cameron are the first to be listed below the ones they know to be dead.

'Rosemary and Bernie,' says Maria. 'And Caitlin.'

'Ewan,' states Adnan. 'Matt.'

'Rocks,' offers Radar. 'Dazza too. And Kirk Kirk,' he adds pointedly.

'At least that makes me feel a bit better,' Adnan mutters, almost but not quite under his breath. Deborah gapes at him, can't believe he said this.

'No, I just mean it's some comfort to think these monsters aren't the scariest thing out there.'

Kirk is moving steadily and deliberately now: slower than before, picking his steps, taking care over his balance, mindful of the weight of the large and formidably solid stick he's carrying. Got a bead on the f.u.c.ker. Aye. Changes everything when you're the one doing the stalking and it's your prey that's unmindful of your approach.

Silent. Picking out each step. Steadying his breath, letting each exhale come gently from an open mouth to minimise its sound. Clouds overhead are on the move. The moon breaks through again, bringing hard edges to the greys and shadow shapes, picking out the figure of Matt Wilson crouched beneath a tree like it's some celestial spotlight.

This is it. He has to move now, strike before his approach is detected. He alters his grip on the stick, scans the forest floor, chooses his path, takes a breath and begins to accelerate.

Matt senses the movement, turns in time to see Kirk emerge from cover. His face is a picture of hate, his mouth wide to issue a roar, a battle-cry. Matt knows he has no time, Kirk is moving too fast. He covers his head with his arms, the sight of the swinging stick the last thing he sees before closing his eyes. There is a crunch of contact, a howl of pain, but he feels nothing except the vibration of falling weight upon the ground nearby, followed by scrambling sounds and urgent breath. Matt opens his eyes and removes his arms from view, in time to watch Kirk circle around, placing himself between Matt and the demon that had been about to pounce upon him.

Kirk has lost the stick. He got a good crack in there, but couldn't keep hold of it as they tangled on the deck in the after-math. He touches his face, feels warm dampness, glances down at his shoulder where it is stinging. Claw marks. He looks across at his foe: crouched, circling, keenly returning his scrutiny, its tail moving with each step, clearly an aid to balance.

A phrase leaps to mind, something from a wildlife doc.u.mentary: ambush predator. Aye. That's what he's looking at. Something that likes to surprise its prey: less c.o.c.ksure when it finds itself facing a square go. It doesn't look as big as he remembers. Either his fear had blown the creature up in his mind or he's not looking at the same thing as killed Dazza.

He checks the horns. They're small: not truncated like h.e.l.lboy's, but wee, budding, trainer-bra efforts. Definitely not the thing that killed Dazza. In demon terms, he's looking at a midget or a wean. He recalls the ten-second rule, and though they only clashed for a moment, it was more than enough. He understands. He has the measure. There will be no paralysis by fear. There will be no subconscious surrender to superior mental force and aggression.

In short, he can take this c.u.n.t.

Kirk touches the wound on his shoulder, glances at the blood on his fingers, then stares back at the demon.

'You fight like a f.u.c.kin' la.s.sie la.s.sie,' he shouts.

The demon charges in response, as much in panic as in anger, and hurls itself towards him with an inhumanly impressive leap. Kirk stands his ground and sends the head in. He can feel as well as hear the crunch of breaking bone as his forehead connects with the demon's face.