Dedication
For me old mucker, Tommy Donbavand, aka Wobblebottom.
Sorry for nailing you to that ceiling in the last book.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
PROLOGUE
THREE DAYS EARLIER...
Chapter One - The Night Bus
Chapter Two - This Old House
Chapter Three - The Stakeout
Chapter Four - Cop Out
Chapter Five - Toes in the Sugar
Chapter Six - Cop Killers?
Chapter Seven - The Screechers
Chapter Eight - Trapped in the Maze
Chapter Nine - Blame it on Baby
Chapter Ten - The Not-So-Supermarket
Chapter Eleven - Damsel in Distress
Chapter Twelve - Rosieâs Story
Chapter Thirteen - Taking Stock
Chapter Fourteen - Lily the Pink
Chapter Fifteen - A Moment Like This
Chapter Sixteen - Surrounded
Chapter Seventeen - Facing the Beast
Chapter Eighteen - Alone Together
Chapter Nineteen - Battle of the Beasts
Chapter Twenty - The Final Straw
Also available in the Invisible Fiends series:
Copyright
About the Publisher
hat had I expected to see? I wasnât sure. An empty street. One or two late-night wanderers, maybe.
But not this. Never this.
There were hundreds of them. Thousands. They scuttled and scurried through the darkness, swarming over the village like an infection; relentless and unstoppable.
I leaned closer to the window and looked down at the front of the hospital. One of the larger creatures was tearing through the fence, its claws slicing through the wrought-iron bars as if they were cardboard. My breath fogged the glass and the monster vanished behind a cloud of condensation. By the time the pane cleared the thing would be inside the hospital. It would be up the stairs in moments. Everyone in here was as good as dead.
The distant thunder of gunfire ricocheted from somewhere near the village centre. A scream followed â short and sharp, then suddenly silenced. There were no more gunshots after that, just the triumphant roar of something sickening and grotesque.
I heard Ameena take a step closer behind me. I didnât need to look at her reflection in the window to know how terrified she was. The crack in her voice said it all.
âItâs the same everywhere,â she whispered.
I nodded, slowly. âThe town as well?â
She hesitated long enough for me to realise what she meant. I turned away from the devastation outside. âWait... You really mean everywhere, donât you?â
Her only reply was a single nod of her head.
âLiar!â I snapped. It couldnât be true. This couldnât be happening.
She stooped and picked up the TV remote from the day-room coffee table. It shook in her hand as she held it out to me.
âSee for yourself.â
Hesitantly, I took the remote. âWhat channel?â
She glanced at the ceiling, steadying her voice. âAny of them.â
The old television set gave a faint clunk as I switched it on. In a few seconds, an all-too-familiar scene appeared.
Hundreds of the creatures. Cars and buildings ablaze. People screaming. People running. People dying.
Hell on Earth.
âThatâs New York,â she said.
Click. Another channel, but the footage was almost identical.
âLondon.â
Click.
âIâm... Iâm not sure. Somewhere in Japan. Tokyo, maybe?â
It could have been Tokyo, but then again it could have been anywhere. I clicked through half a dozen more channels, but the images were always the same.
âIt happened,â I gasped. âIt actually happened.â
I turned back to the window and gazed out. The clouds above the next town were tinged with orange and red. It was already burning. They were destroying everything, just like heâd told me they would.
This was it.
The world was ending.
Armageddon.
And it was all my fault.
woke up screaming. This, of late, was not unusual. The seats beneath me creaked in complaint as I sat upright and tried to shake away the memories of the nightmares before they could fully take hold. No such luck.
The faces of the fiends Iâd fought leered at me â vague, half-formed shapes tormenting me from the deepest recesses of my own mind:
Caddie, make-up smeared across her bone-white skin.
The Crowmaster, his empty eye sockets alive with maggots.
Doc Mortis, scalpel in hand, blood spattered across his filthy white coat.
Other images, too. The blubbery remains of the dead man on the train; Marionâs flesh-stripped skeleton; my mum, unconscious on a hospital bed.
For a long time Iâd tried to resist them, to fill my brain with other thoughts until there was no room left for monsters and horror. It never worked. If anything, it just prolonged the whole ordeal. Iâd eventually learned not to fight them, to let them wash over me instead, paying them as little attention as possible.
So there, in the darkness, I closed my eyes, sat still, pulled the collar of my stolen coat tighter around my neck, and let the monsters do their worst.
Several minutes later, I blinked my eyes open. I spent a few more seconds steadying my breath, watching it roll from my mouth as shaky white clouds. Only then did I begin to pay attention to my surroundings.
It was dark, but then it was January and it was early. I never slept late any more. I was on the back seat of a bus that was parked up at the depot. Weâd been sleeping here for the last few nights. Not the same bus every time, but the same depot, sneaking through a hole in the fence long after the place had been locked up for the night.