Corkie grabbed at his stomach with one hand and steadied himself against the top table with the other. He belched loudly.
‘Oh blimey, that’s coming right back up,’ he muttered.
He swallowed repeatedly, fighting with himself not to retch, but after a few seconds of stoic resistance he finally doubled over and vomited on to the stone floor at his feet.
‘Oh, see?’ crowed Naga. ‘After all that bullying and threatening, it’s you who ends up throwing up like a girl!’
The hall filled with a mixture of laughter and exclamations of relief that it hadn’t been them.
Corkie slumped down on the bench. He stared at the puddle between his boots. It was the same tea-brown liquid he’d just swallowed, mixed with the remnants of last night’s broth.
‘Bloody hell,’ he grunted. He looked up at everyone with a grin and a hint of shame and contrition on his ruddy face. ‘Well now, that caught me by—’
He convulsed again, a jarring muscle spasm that rolled up from his belly like a racing tidal wave. He quickly leaned forward on his elbows to make sure that whatever was coming out cleared his legs and boots.
A dark jet of vomit spurted out of his mouth in an arc that spattered the floor in front of his boots. Not just a thin brew of bile and moat water this time; it had bloody substance. The hall had gone deathly quiet again. The atmosphere of impish mirth had evaporated instantly and given way to a growing concern.
‘Sarge?’ Drissell stepped forward. ‘You all right, mate?’
Corkie wiped his chin as he stared at the thick puddle before him. ‘I don’t remember eating that.’ He laughed. ‘And where’s the bloody carrots, eh? There’s always—’
He convulsed again and another thick rope of vomit erupted from his mouth. The new addition was stained a deep crimson, almost black, and unlike the rest it didn’t spread into a pool, but remained as a solid chunk in the middle.
‘That doesn’t look good,’ said Drissell.
Corkie groaned in pain. ‘Shit!’
Leon felt Grace squeeze his hand. He looked down at her and she shook her head. Her expression matching what he was thinking.
He’s infected. He’s one of them too.
His groan became a sudden shrill bellow of agony as he threw up yet again, this time a freight train of bloody chunks.
‘Oh, shit!’ yelled Fish. ‘Those are his frikkin organs!’
‘OhmyGod!’ screamed Danielle.
‘It’s him,’ shouted Naga. ‘He’s infected!’
The silence in the hall was gone and everyone reacted, drawing back from him. Royce, closest to Corkie, looked at a loss as to what to do – comfort his sarge with a supportive pat on the back or run for his life?
‘Burn it!’ screamed someone. ‘BURN IT!’
Leon looked around. It? The poor bastard had gone from a him to an it in a heartbeat.
Drissell’s indecision ended. He gave his sergeant a wide berth, picked up the can of fuel and began unscrewing the cap. Corkie meanwhile had collapsed off the bench and rolled forward into the mess of his insides. He was crouched there on his hands and knees, bellowing in agony.
Drissell came round the table and stopped short, hesitating. Not quite so keen now to fulfil his role as diesel-thrower.
‘DO IT!’ shouted Naga.
‘Oh, God, don’t look!’ gasped Freya. She turned towards Leon and Grace and threw her arms round them, pulling them into a tight huddle with Grace in the middle.
Drissell swung the can and sloshed fuel over Corkie’s back.
The sergeant reacted instantly, sitting bolt upright. ‘No!’ he screamed. ‘Not like this!’
Drissell swun the can again.
‘No! No. No. No!’ Corkie’s hand flailed at his holster.
Drissell dropped the can at his feet and fumbled frantically to pull out a lighter. ‘Sorry, Sarge, sorry, sorry!’ he cried.
He had the lighter out now and was holding it to a twist of paper, clicking to get a spark. Just as he got a small blue flame, a shot rang out and Drissell’s legs buckled beneath him. He collapsed like a puppet cut from its strings, knocking the jerry can over . . .
. . . The twist of smouldering paper fluttered down to the ground, seemingly in slow motion.
It touched down, turning damp-dark as it slowly soaked up the diesel, finally turning damp at the end where the lighter had caught.
The diesel ignited with a soft thump.
The hall, which seconds ago had been a dim, gloomy, haunted-house grey, was now alive, bright with the orange of flickering flames.
Leon watched over Freya’s shaking shoulder as Corkie’s silhouette thrashed around in the middle of the flames, the hall filled with the harrowing sound of his screaming. He untangled himself from their three-way huddle, left Freya and Grace behind him and hurried forward.
His eyes had caught the reflective glint of Corkie’s gun, flung to one side. He ran over, scooped it up, and without a thought one way or the other, right or wrong, he aimed and fired.
And fired, and fired.
Until the gun clicked uselessly in his hands.
The figure finally, mercifully, collapsed amid the flames, which were now towering high enough to lick at the floorboards of the gallery above.
He found himself staring just like everyone else, transfixed with horror at the pyre. He was sure Corkie was dead, but there still seemed to be movement among the flickering flames. Silhouetted forms, shuddering, quivering instinctively trying to escape the searing heat. He thought he saw something the size of a fist pulling itself desperately towards the edge of the fire, one finger elongated, hastily grown into a spindly leg, struggling to pull itself out of the flames.
There was another percussive thump as the remaining fuel inside the jerry can erupted and a thick oily mushroom cloud billowed upwards and bathed the wooden planks above.
It’s all going to go up.
‘Everyone out!’ shouted Naga. ‘Out! Out! NOW!’
The slack-jawed inertia that had rooted everyone in the hall to the spot and rendered them passive, foolish observers, was suddenly dispelled and panic stirred them all into action.
There was a surge of movement towards the doors that led outside. The hall was beginning to thicken with black smoke. It had started pooling beneath the ceiling but was now descending down towards them like a blanket of fog.
Leon looked around for Freya and Grace. He saw several people stupidly hurrying up the stairs to the gallery floor, presumably to grab important keepsakes, and hoped they’d have more sense.
He felt a hand tug at his arm.
‘I’m here!’ said Freya. He turned to see her looking frantically around. ‘Grace . . . She was with me a second ago. She was just . . .’
Leon saw his sister, making her way towards them from the corner of the hall, stopping and starting as she dodged around others running across her path. He watched her pause to look at the flickering flames.
‘GRACE!’ he shouted above the roar and crackle of burning.
She seemed hypnotized by the sight.
Or in shock.
The first of the floorboards above cracked with a loud snap and clattered down on to one of the long tables, sending up a bonfire shower of sparks.
‘GRACE!’ He started towards her, but then someone grabbed her roughly by the arm. It was Danielle. She had an armful of things she’d managed to grab from the dormitory. She jerked Grace forward by the arm as she barged her way through people zigzagging across the hall.
‘Yours!’ she gasped as she pushed Grace towards Leon, then headed with the flow towards the main doors leading outside.
Another floorboard cracked and fell.
‘Shit . . . Let’s go, go, go!’ gasped Freya.
They joined the back of the chokepoint of people pressing through the main doors. Leon had always wondered how pile-ups like this happened with fires. Now he understood. These doors opened inwards and the press of bodies against them had hampered the opening of them.
One was now finally, fully open, but panic was tangling everyone up in the tight space, a squirming many-legged, many-armed beast struggling to squeeze its ungainly shape through the narrow gap.
The air behind them was thick, choking and lethal. Ahead, through the one open door, fresh air gusted in as if they were standing in a wind tunnel, pulled in hungrily by oxygen-starved flames.
‘Come on!’ Leon screamed hoarsely, along with everyone else.
They pushed and squirmed through the gap and finally found themselves emerging outside. They staggered away from the door towards the trucks, collapsing on to the ground in a choking, coughing sprawl.
Leon thought they were the last ones out. But a minute later he caught sight of a figure through the open door It was staggering around in the main hall, doubling over and zigzagging to avoid the sporadic crashing of falling floorboards.
He lost sight of it, then, a moment later, Fish appeared in the doorway and lurched out leaving a trail of smoke behind him.
He looked around, patting out embers that had settled on his hair and shirt, before hurrying over to join them. He had a tartan backpack slung over one shoulder. He collapsed on the ground beside Leon, coughing up sooty phlegm and gasping for air.
Leon wanted to ask him if there was anyone else stuck in there. But the question was rendered pointless as an enormous crash from within pushed a plume of flames and a cloud of sparks out through the open door.
Not any more.
The gallery floor had collapsed.
‘You . . . idiot . . .’ wheezed Leon. ‘What was so important you . . . nearly . . . got . . . ?’
Fish pulled out a Nintendo DS from his tartan bag and waved it at him, unable to say anything as he hacked up sooty phlegm on to the ground.