Part 3 (1/2)

A vehicle pulled up under the arc lights. A couple of figures got out and then it drove off. A door opened and a red light appeared briefly. The sound changed, as if the treble had suddenly been turned up on a hi-fi. Music: fast, tinkly synths. The door closed again and it had gone.

'It's a rave,' said Hex.

Paulo groaned. 'Don't say we've got to haul her out. I'm too young to be a party p.o.o.per.'

'Let's look at this logically,' said Amber. 'She's fourteen. What would her parents say if they knew she was going to a rave?'

Alex took out a small torch and they began to walk towards the entrance.

'You know those horrible prefects who are always spoiling your fun, telling you off for running in corridors?' said Li. 'I feel like that.'

'We've got to get her out,' said Alex. 'She's not even old enough to go into pubs and buy drinks. We're supposed to be looking after her.' He grimaced. 'I sound so square.'

At the entrance was a circle of people waiting to pay. Their faces were painted with glitter and they wore strings of fluorescent beads around their necks and backpacks with cartoon characters. One by one they put their hands to their mouths and swallowed, then pa.s.sed around a bottle of water. Amber caught a glimpse of lips closing around a white pill.

She leaned across to the others. 'There are drugs here we've got to get her out.'

Hex looked at her. 'Stop jigging like that.'

Amber hadn't realized she was moving in time to the music. She nudged him. 'Go on, loosen up a bit.' He glared at her.

The group in front of them was now being searched by a pair of burly figures in black. Li looked down at her cut-off jeans and hiking boots. 'I think we're a bit underdressed. Do you think they'll let us in?'

Alex felt the urge to laugh. After all the dangerous things he'd done this was the first time he'd been searched for a weapon on the way into a party. He was glad he'd left his knife at the hostel.

The music was cras.h.i.+ngly loud, like overhead thunder. A strobe light threw blue-white flashes around the cavernous room. The air smelled of sweat and warm bodies. The ravers carried glow sticks fluorescent tubes swinging them in patterns as they danced.

Paulo stopped and stared. The last time he'd seen so many glow sticks was when they had been trapped by an earthquake in Belize during a night of dust, rubble and death. Seeing a ma.s.s of writhing bodies drawing circles with them in a darkened railway tunnel was like an eerie flashback. He looked at Li and caught her eye.

She mouthed at him. 'Deja vu.'

He nodded.

It was impossible to talk. Alex turned to the others and they used hand signals. They'd split up and search the room.

Hex and Amber made for the crowd of gyrating bodies. Amber was definitely grooving, an enormous smile on her face. Any moment, thought Hex, she would explode like a dervish and be lost in the ma.s.s of bodies. He followed, and before he knew it he was taking steps in the same rhythm. Everywhere were these glow sticks, like radioactive bars of candy. He looked at the girls carefully, at the swinging ponytails, the glittery faces.

Alex picked his way to a quieter area, where people sat cross-legged on the floor, drinking water, sucking lollipops. He saw a pet.i.te figure sitting with her back towards him and touched her on the shoulder. She turned round and offered him a bracelet made of Dolly Mixtures. It wasn't Tiff. Alex shook his head and moved on.

At the other end of the room he ran into Li. She looked back and pointed at Paulo, who was moving with a kind of speeded-up salsa step around a group of girls.

Li had attracted some attention. A guy in baggy jeans with a chain hanging out of his pocket was offering her a bottle of water and putting his arm around her. She was clearly rejecting him but the guy persisted. If he went much further, thought Alex, Li might have to do something rather unfriendly.

Alex went up to her and grabbed the bottle. Li put her arm around him and gave his waist a squeeze. Alex nodded at the guy and took a swig of water. The guy looked annoyed. Still, he got the message and went away.

Li mouthed a word at Alex. 'Tiff?'

Alex shook his head.

A wave of artificial smoke began to creep through the crowd, lit up in spots by the glow sticks and strobes. That would make it even more difficult to see who was there. Paulo emerged from the glowing fog like an apparition. He was closely followed by an emphatically grooving Amber and a jigging Hex.

Alex looked at them enquiringly. They shook their heads. He gave another hand signal: go round again; split up.

Again they disappeared into the flas.h.i.+ng fog. Through the throng of bodies, in a strict search pattern, pus.h.i.+ng past girls wearing b.u.t.terfly wings, inspecting their glittery faces.

So many people; how long would they have to search?

Alex suddenly felt as if he'd closed his eyes for a minute and been rebooted, like a computer. What was he doing? He looked at the people dancing around him, their eyes half-closed. He'd spoken to that girl with the pigtails, the girl next to her with the gla.s.ses... Had he been there for days? No, it felt like he'd just arrived.

It was all familiar, but nothing was the same. With all these glow sticks it was like being back in Belize. All these bodies... but here there were far more of them. The faces around him turned into a group of schoolchildren and teachers, the people they'd been trapped with during the earthquake. Some of them were dead before he even found them; some of them died before he could get them out. Hex had been lost for hours that night. The relentless pulse of the music became like a sinister countdown. And yet all these people were staying here, dancing, the strobe picking out one after another like a hand of fate. Get out Get out, he wanted to scream to them. It's not safe. You're all going to die It's not safe. You're all going to die.

Alex leaned against the rough brick walls and breathed deeply. What was happening to him?

Hex came towards him, a pink glow stick in his hand. It was so good to see him alive. Alex wanted to hug him, but then Paulo appeared with Tiff. She was trudging along as usual, a white circular glow stick pulled down over her head like a fallen halo.

Get a grip, Alex told himself. Get some air Get some air. Gratefully, he led the way to the exit. As the door closed and cut off the music the cold air hit him like a shower and he saw that the others were out there too.

'Are you OK, Alex?' asked Li. 'You look a bit weird.'

Alex nodded. 'It was hot in there. I'm fine.'

Tiff was sticking next to Paulo, her mouth chewing. Aside from that her expression was blank, as though she was trying to mentally withdraw. With the glitter on her face and the pink streaks in her hair, she looked like a mannequin. Paulo looked closely at her did she seem normal? Had she taken something? She stared back at him. He decided she was just her usual sulky self. He had been intending to give her a piece of his mind but if he said anything he'd just get that stony stare. At least she was coming without an argument.

At last the hostel was quiet. Tiff had gone to her room in silence. That was the only time she made any kind of noise when she slammed the door. She refused to answer their questions about where she had found out about the rave.

The others went to bed but Alex's nerves were like live wires. He got dressed and went outside, but instead of absorbing the stillness of the moors, he couldn't keep still.

He patted his belt for his survival tin, which he carried everywhere. It contained an a.s.sortment of useful kit such as dry kindling and waterproof matches. What he was looking for was the tiny torch and the b.u.t.ton compa.s.s. He replaced the lid and fastened it with waterproof tape. In his other pocket was his mobile. Now he could get moving.

He jogged down the drive and onto the moors. He could hear so many sounds: the wind blowing in the heather like a mini-gale; a lone car in the distance, its engine impossibly loud; the piercing cries of owls out hunting. His breathing deepened into his running rhythm and he felt better. Underfoot he felt rocks and springy turf and rocks. He ran, on and on.

A freak gust of wind brought a sound to him like the deep booming ba.s.s of the music in the rave. With it came images of smoke and glow sticks. The smoke turned into falling rubble, then rock dust, the glow sticks scattered like broken toys. The faces became still and stared at him, their dead eyes saying, Why did I die? Why did I die?

Alex slowed to a walk. He put his hands over his eyes, but the images were inside his head; they wouldn't go away. 'We couldn't save you all,' he whispered. 'We did all we could.'

Ahead of him was a lighted window. He had come to a building. It was golden and welcoming, a normal-looking thing. Maybe the light would chase these demons away. He stumbled towards it and peered in.

Two men were inside. Their mouths and noses were covered by green surgical masks. Their hands were bleached to corpse paleness by rubber gloves. One of the masks was moving, talking quietly to the other. There was blood spattered on them, and on the gloves. It was like the masks had taken over their faces, dissolved their lips. The other mask talked. It sounded like a low rumble, like gurgling blood. When the man took the mask off his mouth would be a bloodied hole.

Alex gasped and flattened himself against the wall, looking out into the night, breathing hard. By his feet, in the pool of light from the window, was something dark and quivering. He looked at it. Grey-pink snakes glistened in the shadows. They slithered in a heap, tying themselves in endless knots. Suddenly they made a high, piercing noise like a squeal of feedback. Beside them, a heart the size of a baby's fist beat on the rocky ground with a deep, heavy throb. As the snakes writhed and squealed Alex saw other fleshy items the missing lips of the men inside. He glimpsed something round with an edging of white. It was worse than he thought. The men's eyes were starting to dissolve too and were being discarded out here.

Once the men had been absorbed, the masks might come and get him too. Alex stumbled away.

6.

LONG N NIGHT.