They checked the coast was clear, then left their hiding place, sneaking across the aisle to the V42 container.
“Someone’s going to see us,” Krish panted as they crouched by the container and looked around. “What if they have security cameras?”
“Stop worrying,” Pete said. “It’s fine.”
Nancy ignored them and put her ear to the metal wall of the container. Something was rustling and tapping inside. There was the odd crackle and pop of electricity. And there was a smell of flowers mixed with the tang of burning leaves. Something else too – something sickly sweet.
“Look,” Krish said. He pointed to a sticky amber liquid dripping from beneath the door-hatch. It ran down onto the concrete floor and pooled in a puddle of gunk.
“Like the stuff in Sophie’s photo,” Pete said, reaching out.
“Don’t touch it!” Nancy grabbed his hand. “It could be dangerous.”
“Like … poisonous?” Pete asked.
“Maybe,” Nancy said. She took a photo of the gunk, then they checked for any sign of the guards before climbing the steps up to the walkway.
At the top, they edged closer and looked inside.
The top of the container was covered in a wire mesh. Half a metre below that was a canopy of dark green leaves and huge flowers that were so purple they were almost black. The flowers were as wide as Nancy was tall, and shaped like bats with wide wings. In the centre of each one was a ring of red buds the size of fists. The buds opened and closed like tiny mouths. From beneath the flowers, fleshy tendrils hung down. They swayed like the stingers of jellyfish around a thick stem that disappeared into the mass of leaves and vines below.
“They’re kind of pretty,” Krish said.
“They’re really not,” Pete replied as an eerie whispering sound started drifting from the buds in the centre of the flowers. “They’re horrible.”
“There’s something moving down there,” Nancy said. She leaned closer to the edge of the container. “Maybe that sheep is—”
BAM!
Something shot upwards, bursting past the canopy of flowers. It smashed on the wire mesh, sending sparks showering in all directions. Nancy jumped back against the walkway barrier as the air filled with the bitter taste of electricity and burning.
Pete and Krish flinched away from the sparks, shocked by the sudden commotion from the container.
Something inside was banging and thumping against the walls. The wire mesh was rattling and sparking. The whole walkway was rocking with the force of whatever was moving inside.
“What the hell is that?” Pete said, daring to move closer and look down. What he saw made him stop and stare. “Oh my god,” he said without taking his eyes off it. “You’ve got to see this.”
Nancy and Krish edged closer to see.
Everything was moving inside the container. The purple flowers were swaying from side to side. The bright red buds at the centre of them opened and closed like terrifying mouths, making that horrifying whispering sound.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The scariest things were the thick and muscular creepers that reached towards the wire mesh like tentacles. The dark green leaves growing along them were lined with orange veins and covered in orange spikes.
Nancy couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The leaves were opening and closing like hands. But every time they grabbed at the mesh, the air was filled with showers of sparks and the creepers retracted. Then they’d come back harder, trying again.
“They’re going to break out!” Krish said.
As soon as he said it, Pete looked over at the place in the far wall where they had sneaked inside the building. He remembered what Krish had said when they first saw the broken wall panel: More like something tried to smash its way out.
But Pete spotted movement before he could say anything to the others. He turned to see two soldiers hurrying towards them.
“Oi!” one of them shouted. “What are you doing in here?!”