The Beast on P3.

My wife woke me as she readied herself for her Pilates class and reminded me we had people coming over and we were short on supplies. I was hungover and she made a fuss of not being happy about it, slamming the wardrobe doors, roughly tugging the bedclothes into place, kicking my clothes that lay crumpled on the floor into a corner.

I’d spent the latter part of last night in my office on my laptop, headphones in, drinking scotch, one window open on European football as I lay bets on my phone, another window open on porn. Around two a.m. the scotch ran out and I took a Xanax and fell asleep in my reclining chair, the sound of a Russian gang-bang in my ears. Then at some point my wife came in and shook me awake and ordered me to bed.

I waited until she left, then got out of bed, washed down a couple of painkillers, pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, slipped into my Crocs and left the house. Both the girls were still in their rooms. They wouldn’t emerge until at least sometime after midday.

It’s a ten-minute drive from our house to the shopping centre. I went the back way to avoid the traffic - right at the first set of lights, under the overpass, then down the ramp into the underground carpark. At the bottom of the ramp I turned left, as I always did, then took the second ramp down to P2. It was barely ten-thirty and the carpark was already nearly full.

I followed the lane, scanning either side for a space. Another car approached, a large black four-wheel drive taking up the whole lane, heading straight for me. I tapped my horn but they ignored it, and I yanked down on the steering wheel, only just avoiding a collision. The four-wheel drive slid past, oblivious. I yelled an expletive, reached the end of the lane, turned left onto another slip ramp which corkscrewed down to the level below.

I slowed to a crawl and checked the fisheye mirror on the wall, then pulled out and went down a lane until finally an empty space opened up on the left. Just as I bent the car towards it, another car swept around the corner and cut me off and slid into the space. I leaned on the horn, then wound down the window and shouted at the driver, a young woman in activewear. She got out of her car without even looking at me, locked it with a beep, then disappeared behind a pylon.

Rage tore through me. I was vibrating like a ringing bell, every cell exploding. All-consuming, total, and absolute. My jaw clamped down so hard I thought my teeth would crack, my fists wringing the steering wheel like a wet rag. I was just present enough to close my eyes and start the breathing exercise my wife had told me to do when this kind of thing happened. Box breathing. Five seconds in, hold for five seconds, five seconds out. Repeat. It was something Marines did to calm their nerves before going into battle. She’d seen it on Instagram.

It worked. Slowly, I dropped back into myself. I opened my eyes and drove to the next level down.

It was darker here. Some of the fluorescent lights were out or misfiring, and at first glance, it also appeared to be full, but eventually, I found an empty spot. Usually, I take a photo, making sure to include the level and space number (my phone was full of them), but this time I didn’t. I was too distracted, too busy thinking about what had happened the previous afternoon. A Zoom meeting with my boss and the new head of Human Resources. There had been a consolidation. A realignment. Efficiencies had been made. The outcome of which, I was out of a job.

I got out of the car and walked to the central escalator lobby, my boss’s face playing on a loop in my mind. Her simpering expression, one eyebrow half-cocked as she offered her bullshit condolences. I was furious with myself for not seeing it coming. I knew she hated me. I once overheard her describe me to a co-worker as a ‘big swinging dick’. I decided to take it as a compliment. At least I wasn’t a post-menopausal mediocrity with a laugh like a tubercular hyena. No wonder her husband left her.

I could have made a complaint, caused a fuss, got her fired, reprimanded at the very least. I should have. God knows she would have. But now it was too late. Now I was an unemployed middle-aged white man, the bottom of the barrel. An untouchable.

All I’d needed was ten more years. Ten more years to pay down the mortgage, get the kids through school, build up enough money to retire on. All of that was impossible now. My wife didn’t earn enough. She hadn’t had a proper job since the kids were born. Who was going to pay for the private schools, the yearly overseas holidays, the ski trips?

And the debt. We had so much debt. And now we had no way to service it. We’d have to sell the house. Downsize a full decade earlier than planned. But downsize to what? And to where? This city was impossible, unlivable, out of reach except for the top ten percent. Once we sold the house and paid off all the debt, we’d hardly have enough for a studio. And the shoddy off-plan one-bedroom investment unit we bought in the suburbs five years ago had so many faults it had gone backwards in value. We were screwed.

How the hell was I going to tell my wife?

I was so lost in thought I didn’t notice the escalator end beneath my feet. I stumbled forward and found myself on the first floor landing of the shopping centre, staring at the morning crowd, everyone on a mission, everyone single-mindedly pursuing their shopping centre goals. My mind went blank. Why had I come here? Then I remembered. People coming over. More supplies. I took a moment to think it over. We had steaks marinating in the fridge and she’d thrown together a couple of salads, but we could probably do with more cheese, dips, biscuits, maybe those little fruit crackers with some jammy quince paste. And booze. We could always do with more booze. You could never have too much.

I wound my way up to the expensive boutique grocers on the third floor we could no longer afford, and an hour and two hundred bucks later, I was headed back down with a bag of groceries cutting into each hand.

I got off on P2. It was dark. I stared into the gloom. Rows of cars alongside concrete pillars. I started walking, felt a drip on my shoulder, glanced up at the mess of sweating pipes fixed to the low concrete slab just above my head. I followed the yellow markings on the floor that hugged the wall. Everything looked the same.

I had a growing feeling that maybe I hadn’t parked on this level after all. I stopped at row D, put down my groceries and took out my phone and checked the map to see if it had made note of where the car was but it wouldn’t load. There was no reception. I picked up the bags and kept moving. I turned onto a walkway that ran through the middle of the parking bays. I shifted the shopping to one hand and dug out my keys. I pressed the lock button and listened. Nothing.

I reached the end of the walkway. I was only at row E. I looked back towards the escalator lobby, but all I could see were cars spread out amongst the forest of concrete pylons, stretching away into shadow. I had a strange tingling sensation in the back of my skull. My arm holding the shopping bags ached. It struck me that I had absolutely no idea where my car was.

I set the groceries down and studied my keys. The horn button. I’d never pressed it before, never had any reason to. I pressed it. A faint sound echoed in reply. My shoulders dropped an inch, and my body eased back into shape. I’d been clenched up tighter than a fist. I pressed the button again. The horn was coming from a tunnel just to my left. I picked up the shopping and followed it down, keeping close to the wall in case a car came up behind me.

This level was even darker than the one above. I pressed the horn button again, and it reverberated back from somewhere deep inside, but the echo made it hard to pinpoint the exact direction, so I decided to follow the first lane I came across. I walked about a minute or so, then stopped and pressed the button again.

I heard the horn, but it sounded no closer.

I kept walking. The cars looked abandoned. Some had clearly been broken into. Windscreens smashed, headlights shattered, rear mirrors snapped off. It looked more like a junkyard than a car park. I had an image of a gang of delinquent youth racing around the car park, throwing bricks, swinging rusty pipes. I stopped, peered into the gloom ahead, but the lane just melted away into darkness. I couldn’t see the end. I took out my keys and pressed the horn button again. This time, only silence. I stabbed the button repeatedly with my thumb, but still nothing happened.

I turned around and hurried back to the tunnel. But when I got to where it should have been, it was gone. In its place was a solid concrete wall with four large words spray-painted in red:

DEATH TO THE BEAST.

What the hell was it supposed to mean? And where the fuck had the tunnel gone?

It was a joke. It had to be. Someone was playing some kind of elaborate practical joke on me. How else could the tunnel have just disappeared? I heard footsteps, someone running. I spun around.

Nothing.

‘Hello? Is somebody there?’

Silence.

Then a low, drawn-out growl echoed from somewhere close by. Too close. I dropped the groceries and ran.

I angled behind a pylon, pressed my back against it. My head throbbed, an unlucky combination of hangover and adrenaline. My heart fluttered like a frog on a hotplate.

I peered around the side. There was nothing, no one.

I saw a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye and looked around to see a figure running between two cars about twenty metres away.

‘Hey!’

The figure disappeared behind a pylon. I ran after them, calling out. I came around the pylon just in time to see them disappear through another access tunnel. I followed.

I emerged from the tunnel. Torn wires and cables hung from the ceiling, the floor was covered in shattered glass and debris. I heard a growl echo down the tunnel behind me, low and deep, and the concrete beneath my feet shook. Whatever it was, it was coming.

I sprinted down the nearest lane then caught sight of a concrete escalator lobby; blue cinder-block walls, large yellow letters stencilled on the side: SHOPS. I slid through a narrow gap between two wrecks and ran for it. Glancing over my shoulder, my foot clipped a shredded tyre on the ground and I went down hard, the breath knocked out of me.

I lay there gulping for air. Then the ground shook again, and another growl echoed through the car park. I forced myself up onto my hands and knees, crawled behind a beaten-up Volkswagen, and looked back the way I’d come. Through a narrow gap between the car and a pylon, I saw a huge man standing at the end of the lane, just beyond the reach of a flickering fluorescent light. He was naked, a mass of bulging, sinewy muscle, his entire body slick, wet, and painted white. He was wearing an enormous wooden mask that looked like a bull’s head, the eyes pitch black, two giant horns protruding from its forehead.

The man stepped into the light, then the jaws beneath the mask opened up, revealing a gaping maw of jagged teeth, and he let loose a deafening roar. That’s when I realised it wasn’t a mask…

I got to my feet and ran as fast as I could towards the escalator lobby. There was a metallic crunch, and I looked back to see the creature crouched on top of a car, the roof buckling under its weight, its black eyes fixed upon me. It roared, then sprang from the car. I reached the sliding doors of the lobby. The safety glass was shattered. I ducked through the frame and ran straight into an upturned soda machine.

‘Up here!’

I looked up the stalled escalator to see a young woman standing near the top.

‘Move!’

I ran up the escalator towards her as she turned and disappeared. A split second later, I heard the screech of metal on concrete and turned to see the soda machine tumbling like a dice. It exploded against the wall in a shower of glass and twisted metal. The creature looked at me and raced up the escalator, and I knew in that moment there was no escaping it. It leapt over my head and landed in front of me, then turned.

I couldn’t move. I was standing outside of myself, looking in, a total out-of-body experience— and not in a good way. The creature was at least eight feet tall. Its glistening white skin was slick and almost translucent. Patches of bloodied hide hung from its limbs like it had been half-skinned with a blunt knife. Its head was a rotting bull’s skull, dead except for the black eyes which were alive with menace. It reached out a massive hand and took hold of my throat, lifting me off my feet. Its jaws opened wide, its teeth green and diseased. It drew me closer, and the stink of its hot breath wrapped around my head. I gagged and threw up. A wet purple tongue flopped out and licked the sick from my face. I closed my eyes. I was going to die.

Just then, a song started playing over the public address system. I recognised it instantly. It was the 2000 cover version of ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ by Toploader.

I hated it. As much as it was possible to hate anything, I hated that song.

The year it came out, it was inescapable. Every bar you walked into, every shop, every café, every cab, it would be playing. I was travelling solo around Europe at the time and had eaten the four-cheese pasta at Palermo airport before a three-hour flight to London. An hour into the flight, I was struck down with food poisoning so severe that we were met at the terminal by an ambulance. I was hospitalised for three days, roiling in a sweat-soaked delirium. I threw up and shat so much that I lost ten kilos. And the whole time, ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ played on a loop in my head. To this day, I can’t hear that song without wanting to be sick. And now it was going to be the theme song of my death. It made perfect sense.

I landed painfully on the escalator. The creature had let me go. It moved its head from side to side as if listening to the music, then jumped over me, down the escalator, and out the door of the lobby.

I lay there catching my breath. The song— that fucking song— was still playing. What the hell had just happened? What was that thing? Why was it trying to kill me? Why hadn’t it killed me?

Then the song finished.

I stood up. My legs were shaking. I was halfway up the escalator between two floors. I decided to go up, away from where that thing had disappeared.

I walked as fast as I could up the escalator and came out into the next lobby. It looked exactly the same as the lobby below. Same blue-coloured walls, same drink machine lying smashed against the wall. I entered the carpark through the broken sliding doors and it also looked the same— dark and claustrophobic, broken lights flickering in the ceiling, the cars all wrecked. I saw the smashed-up Volkswagen I’d hidden behind. Until I realised it couldn’t be the same Volkswagen because that Volkswagen was on the level below. I went back into the lobby and up to the next level. Again, it looked exactly the same. Same blue walls, same crumpled drink machine. I stepped into the carpark. And there was the exact same Volkswagen. I checked the licence plate— EYD625. I hurried back down a level, out into the carpark, located the Volkswagen, checked the plate— EYD625. What was going on?! I must be crazy. I must be losing my mind.

‘You’re not crazy,’ a voice said.

I spun around. The young woman I’d seen before at the top of the escalator was standing behind me. ‘Every level is the same.’

She looked to be in her twenties, small and thin, a stud in her nose, hair pulled back in a bun, wearing grey sweatpants and a red hoodie, carrying a plastic bag of shopping.

‘What are you talking about?’ I said.

‘Every level. Is the same,’ she said.

I stared at her, unsure of what to do. Then I walked past her back into the lobby. She followed after me.

‘Where are you going?’ she said.

‘Out,’ I said, and started up the escalator.

‘There is no out. It’s the same all the way up. It doesn’t end.’

‘What do you mean, it doesn’t end?’

‘I mean it goes on forever.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘That’s crazy? What about the monster that was about to eat your face?’

I stopped walking, looked at her.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ she said. ‘That thing will be back soon.’

‘Then all the more reason to get the fuck out of here.’

I ran up the escalator.

‘Have it your way,’ she called out after me.

I reached the top of the escalator and stepped into the lobby. And there she was.

It took me a moment to register what I was seeing. ‘How did you do that?’ I said.

‘I told you. It’s the same. All the way up.’

I turned and ran down the escalator. She was waiting for me at the bottom.

‘And all the way down.’

I pushed past her and ran down the escalator to the next level.

She was sitting on the battered drink machine, arms crossed. ‘You’re wasting your time!’

‘What is happening?!’

‘You’re trapped! We all are!’

‘We?’

I followed her through the carpark as she weaved between the vehicles.

‘What about that thing?’

‘We haven’t got long,’ she said. ‘When the song starts playing, that’s when it’s time to hide.’

‘What the hell is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

She reached a small parking bay tucked into a space where the ceiling slanted down at a sharp angle into the wall. It was taken up by a white delivery van. Hidden behind the van was a door. She knocked, and seconds later a small man peered out. He looked to be in his early thirties, dark skin, long black hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a thin, scruffy beard. He was wearing a crumpled grey uniform that looked two sizes too big and a high-vis vest.

He held the door wider and we entered. We were in some kind of maintenance room. The wall to the left was fitted out floor to ceiling with various control panels and switchboards, and the far end was lined with shelves stacked with boxes of different sizes, cans of paint, and cleaning equipment. The room was lit by a work light on a stand in the corner, aimed at the ceiling, casting weird shadows across our faces.

‘This is Kiran. He works here. And my name’s Celeste.’

I told them mine.

She turned to Kiran. ‘Where are the others?’

‘Looking for food,’ he said.

‘There are others?’ I said. ‘How many of us are there?’

‘Including you? Five. That we know of.’

Then she told me how she ended up trapped.

When she pulled into the car park, she’d been fighting with her mother on the phone and, like me, hadn’t taken note of where she’d parked. She wandered the mall mindlessly for an hour or so before getting her nails done, then she went back to the car park.

‘I’d been looking for my car for ages. I tried going back up to the shopping centre but it just kept going up and up. Then I tried all the emergency intercoms around the place but none of them worked. They just rang out. I was losing my mind. I was just walking around the car park, screaming for help. If Kiran hadn’t found me, I don’t know what would have happened.’

Kiran had been working at the centre for three days. He’d been sent down to collect stray shopping trolleys and had wandered onto the level through the same access tunnel I had. Then the song started playing and the creature appeared.

‘It chased me. Like it was playing with me. I’ve never run so hard in my life. But then I think it found someone else.’

‘You think?’ I said.

Kiran nodded. ‘A woman. I could hear her screaming. It was the worst thing I’ve ever heard.’

He hid inside a dumpster - and that’s when the creature found him.

‘I was sure I was going to die. It ripped the lid off like it was made of cardboard. And then the song started playing again and it ran away.’

Soon after that, he heard Celeste calling for help. They went back to the escalator lobby and Kiran tried going down to see if he could reach the car wash and that’s when they discovered the levels were exactly the same. ‘We just kept passing each other, over and over…’

Soon after that, the song started playing again and they escaped to the maintenance room.

There was a knock at the door. Kiran opened it, and a tall young man and a middle-aged woman stepped in, pushing a shopping trolley half-filled with groceries. Celeste introduced them as Martin and Yael. Martin was wearing a tight-fitting green tee-shirt that hugged his muscles and a number three buzzcut. Yael was like so many mums I see at the school gates— yoga-thin with a silky forehead. She was wearing jeans and an oversized button-up blue shirt. They were both flushed and sweating.

‘This is all the food we could find,’ Yael said. ‘We didn’t want to stay out there any longer than we had to.’

‘And I found this,’ said Martin. He reached into the trolley and pulled out a baseball bat.

‘Seriously, what are you going to do with that?’ said Yael.

‘I’m going to bash its fucking brains in.’

‘That thing will snap it like a matchstick, then tear you to pieces,’ said Kiran. ‘You need a bazooka, not a baseball bat.’

‘We can’t fight it,’ said Yael. ‘We just have to stay hidden until help arrives.’

‘If help was coming, it would have turned up by now,’ said Celeste. ‘We’re on our own.’

Yael turned on her. ‘Stop saying that! You don’t know that!’

Everyone began yelling over the top of each other.

Just then, the gentle, opening Wurlitzer keyboard chords of ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ echoed around the car park outside. Everyone went quiet. My stomach churned.

‘I hate this song,’ I said.

‘Same,’ said everyone else.

We stood there in silence as the song played, listening for any sign of the creature. It faded out.

‘Did anyone hear it?’ said Martin.

Everyone shook their heads.

‘Maybe it’s not coming. Maybe it’s gone,’ said Yael.

‘Anyone want to go and find out?’ I said.

No one did.

Then a voice rang out. ‘Hello! Anyone there?!’

‘There’s someone outside,’ said Celeste.

Gripping the baseball bat, Martin pushed past me and opened the door.

‘Don’t go out there!’ said Yael.

He ignored her and stepped into the parking bay, and I followed after him.

He crept along between the wall and the van and peered around the corner.

‘What is it? What do you see?’

He didn’t answer, just stepped out into the lane and waved.

‘Over here!’

I looked around the corner. In the dim light, I could make out a man in a blue Hawaiian shirt about fifty metres away pushing a trolley down the middle of the lane.

Yael stuck her head out the door and hissed, ‘Stop shouting! It’ll hear you!’

‘Thank god!’ the man said. ‘I’m completely lost. I can’t find my car anywhere. Do you know how to get out of here?’

Martin walked towards him. ‘You need to leave the trolley and come with me.’

The man stopped. ‘What?’

‘Leave the trolley and run!’

I heard movement and turned. Celeste and Kiran were behind me, watching over my shoulder.

‘I just want to get outta here,’ said the man.

Celeste pushed past me and stepped out beside Martin. ‘Listen to us. You’re in danger. You need to come with us and hide.’

The man stared at the sweaty, muscle-bound man with the baseball bat and the woman with the nose ring in sweatpants.

‘You know what? I’m good,’ he said. ‘I’m actually fine. But thank you!’

He began turning his trolley around. Then the ground shook.

Kiran gripped my shoulder. ‘Over there!’

I looked to where he was pointing and saw the unmistakable silhouette of the creature stalking down a lane deep within the car park. It was moving parallel to us, but it wouldn’t be long until it saw us.

I turned to Martin and Celeste. ‘It’s coming! Get inside!’

Kiran ran out, grabbed Celeste by the arm, and dragged her back into the parking bay.

Martin stepped towards the man who was cowering behind his trolley.

‘I’m trying to save your life!’

‘Stay the fuck away from me! I know muay-Thai, motherfucker!’

He scissor-kicked the air, then pushed the trolley at Martin, who swiped it away, tipping it over with a loud clatter. The creature spun around, zeroed in on the noise. It leapt on top of a car and leapfrogged from one to the other on all fours, straight towards them.

Martin watched it coming. He took a wide stance and held up the baseball bat, ready to strike. The man’s body went slack. ‘What the fuck is that?!’

The creature leapt from a car and landed in front of Martin, stood to its full height, and roared. He swung the bat and connected with its head with a sharp crack. It didn’t even flinch.

Martin swung again. The creature caught the bat in its hand and tore it from his grip. It fell uselessly to the ground. Martin turned to run, but it caught him by the shoulder and dragged him back, then with its other hand took him by the leg and lifted him over its head. Then it arched its back and speared him headfirst into the concrete floor. A loud, sickening crunch. Then it took hold of his ankles and hammered him into the wall. It sounded like a walnut being crushed under a brick. He slid down the wall and hit the floor with a wet slap, a loose skin bag of shattered bones.

The man in the Hawaiian shirt screamed and ran down the lane, and the creature lumbered after him just as Kiran hauled me back into the maintenance room.

We crouched on the floor, listening to the man’s screams.

Then silence.

Yael sobbed. Celeste placed a hand on her arm. Kiran hissed at her to keep quiet. She curled into a ball on her side, buried her face in her knees.

Outside, we could hear the creature stalking about the car park, growling, the thud of footsteps. The van by the door shook, once, twice. We held our breath. Then the song started playing, and it moved on. After the song finished, we sat in silence. No one moved.

Yael sat up, wiped her eyes. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘There has to be a way out of here,’ said Celeste. ‘We have to keep looking.’

Kiran took a vape from his pocket. ‘We’ve looked everywhere. There is no way out.’ He sucked deeply, but it was empty. He threw it into the corner in disgust.

‘There has to be,’ said Yael. ‘There has to be something we can do.’

And then it came to me.

‘The writing on the wall,’ I said.

‘What writing?’ said Kiran.

‘Death to the beast.’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s not a declaration,’ I said. ‘It’s an instruction. We have to kill it.’

Kiran laughed. ‘And how the fuck are we supposed to do that? You saw what it did to Martin.’

‘He’s right,’ said Celeste. ‘We need to find weapons. Search all of the cars.’

‘How long will that take?’ said Kiran. ‘We’ve already been through dozens of them.’

‘There are hundreds of cars out there. There’s got to be a gun in one of them.’

‘Martin had the same idea,’ said Yael. ‘All he found was a baseball bat. And some use that was.’

I stood up. ‘The cars are our weapons.’

The three of them stared at me.

‘We drive into it. Run it over. Crush it.’

Celeste got to her feet.

‘That’s a good idea,’ she said, ‘but we don’t have the keys. How do we start them? Unless you know how to hot-wire a car…’

I shook my head.

‘The valet parking,’ said Kiran. ‘At the end of row F. There are keys behind the desk on the wall.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ said Celeste. ‘Let’s go get them and kill this fucking thing.’

‘Even if we do kill it,’ said Yael, ‘we still don’t know if that means we get out of here. I mean, what if we’re still trapped and then another one comes along?’

Celeste shrugged. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’ She moved towards the door.

Kiran went to the back wall and started rifling through the boxes on the shelves. He picked one up and tipped it onto the floor, and out fell a couple of rolls of plastic tubing.

‘What are you doing?’ I said.

‘We can siphon petrol.’

’What for?’ said Yael.

‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘You and Yael do that. Me and Celeste will get the keys. Let’s go.’

We ran out the door. Kiran yelled after us. ‘The biggest ones you can! No bullshit sports cars!’

We found the valet parking lobby at the end of row F and followed the red carpet inside. Leather couches, mirrored walls, marble flooring, a two-metre-high dried-out water feature. Celeste scanned the two dozen or so keys hanging from the board behind the desk. ’How do we know which ones are which?’

‘Easy,’ I said, ‘The numbers on the tags will match the plates. Let’s take a look at the cars.’

We hurried back out and began inspecting the vehicles parked in the valet spaces. BMWs, Porsches, Mercedes, a couple of Bentleys, more than a few Teslas. A black Range Rover caught my eye, large enough to cause some serious damage— to a human being at least. I made a note of the plate, then turned to go back inside when Celeste called out.

‘What about this one?’

I looked across to see her leaning against a vehicle parked at the end of the row in a charging bay. ‘Big enough for ya?’

It was a Hummer EV. Decked out with a bull bar.

Perfect. As long as it had enough charge.

I checked the plates again, then ran back inside to find the matching keys. I found the key to the Range Rover easily enough but couldn’t find the key to the Hummer. I searched through the drawers in the desk, found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, but no key. We’d have to pick a different vehicle. I pocketed the lighter, then I stepped out the doors just as the Hummer pulled up at speed right in front of me. I hadn’t even heard it coming.

Celeste leaned out the window, dangled the key with a smile. ’Silent but deadly,’ she said.

It took a few tries to start the Range Rover, but I eventually got it going. We drove back to the maintenance room.

I parked the Range Rover in the middle of the lane just down from the escalator lobby, killed the engine, and waited. I leaned the seat back and, out of curiosity, turned on the ignition and switched on the radio. I scanned the band. Static, as expected, until I reached the end. Here, the static shifted. It pulsed, slowly, rhythmically, like breathing. I listened for a moment, then reached to switch it off, but my finger hovered over the button. It was hypnotic. Calming. My eyes grew heavy, and I felt myself drifting off to sleep. Then a voice faded in. Low, barely audible. Repeating the same phrase over and over in a strange, archaic-sounding language I couldn’t understand.

The opening chords of ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ cut in from the PA outside like a shot of electricity. I stabbed the radio off, slammed the seat forward, and scanned the car park, looking for any sign of the creature.

I felt it before I heard it. The car trembled. Then a growl from the darkness deep at the end of the lane. I saw the creature emerge into a cold pool of flickering fluorescent light. Stooped over, stalking down the lane, its horned head moving from side to side, searching.

I hit the start button. Nothing. I tried again. Still nothing. The creature drew closer. I looked down, saw the shifter was in neutral. I jammed it into park and hit the button again. The engine came to life. I found the accelerator and revved the engine. The creature looked up and froze. I switched on the lights to high beam. It reared away, blinded, then stood to its full height and roared. Everything shook. I slammed the car into drive and drove straight for it. The creature stood still, arms outstretched, jaws open wide, rushing towards me. And then it was gone and I was still hurtling down the lane.

The windscreen exploded and I was showered in glass. It was on the roof. Its massive head appeared in front of me upside down, its horns gouging the bonnet. It reached out a clawed hand, took hold of my head and squeezed. Hot light exploded behind my eyes. My ears filled with the sound of my skull plates grinding together. I pulled down hard on the steering wheel. The car swerved left, tyres squealing, leaning so hard I thought it would tip over. I heard a loud crack, the car bucked like a horse, and I was peppered with chunks of concrete. My vision cleared. I’d turned into an adjoining lane and was headed straight for a pylon. I spun the wheel right and the pylon tore along the side of the car. Screeching metal, ripping the passenger door off in a shower of sparks. I was heading straight for the wall. I slammed the brakes and the car shuddered to a stop, inches from impact.

I looked around for the creature. It was behind me, splayed on its back in the middle of the lane, bathed in the red glow of the brake lights. A few metres behind was a shattered concrete support beam running along the ceiling, a ragged hole in the middle where its body had punched through, knocking it from the car.

Then it sat up, shook its head, and roared. I slid into reverse, backed up from the wall, then bent the car straight down the lane. The front suspension howled, the steering wheel shook in my hands. Something under the car was grinding itself to pieces.

My head was pounding. I felt wet on the side of my head and touched it. There was blood coming out of my ears. I glanced into the rear vision mirror. The creature was back on its feet, running full pelt after me. It dropped to all fours, began bounding, metres at a time. It would be on top of me in seconds. I was racing towards an intersection. Just ahead to my left, an open lane lined with cars. To my right, an empty recessed turning bay. I leaned on the horn and pushed the accelerator to the floor, the car vibrating so hard my vision blurred, shaking itself to pieces. The creature roared. Its hulking form filled the entire back windscreen. I reached the intersection, glanced left — the Hummer, headed straight for me. It passed right behind me and t-boned into the creature, driving it straight into the turning bay. I hit the brakes, the car fishtailed wildly, then ground to a halt.

I opened the door, looked back to see the Hummer reverse out of the bay at speed. Celeste was driving. Kiran tore open the passenger door and leapt out, rag in one hand, lighter in the other. He ran around to the front of the Hummer, lit the rag, and lobbed it into the mouth of the turning bay. Instantly, the ground erupted in flames, and a ball of fire belched from the bay.

The force of the explosion lifted the Hummer off its front tires. Kiran burst alight and flew backwards through the air like a pinecone exploding from a bonfire. I don’t know how much petrol he’d poured on the ground, but it was too much. Then a wall of thick, black smoke burst forth and rolled down the lane towards me. I took a deep breath, slammed the door shut, and everything went dark. With the passenger door gone, the car instantly filled with hot smoke. Then everything was heat and noise, screaming metal, exploding glass, flashes of orange hellfire as more cars went up in flames. The car park was exploding and burning around me.

I felt for where the ignition button should be and stabbed it. The engine started. My hand found the shifter and dragged it into drive. I hit the gas. The car lurched forward. I was completely blind. There was a thud, the car bounced, then smashed into something, and the airbags deployed, pinning me to my seat.

I tore at the bag, opened the door, and fell out, got to my feet, and ran straight into the wall. I was still holding my breath. I stumbled along the wall, hoping to reach the parking bay where the maintenance room was, my only hope of survival. My lungs felt like they were going to explode. My legs turned to jelly. Every step felt like my last. And then the wall disappeared, and I fell to the ground. I was lying beside the van parked in front of the maintenance room door. The smoke on the ground was thinner, and I gulped a pocket of air and crawled to the back of the van. I got back to my feet, felt for the door in the wall. My ears were ringing, screaming like a dentist’s drill, my heart pounding in my chest, every beat sending a shockwave of pain through my brain. Then my hand fell upon the door handle, I wrenched it down, and fell into the maintenance room. I kicked the door shut and passed out.

I woke up lying on my back, soaking wet, a chemical taste in my mouth, a siren echoing in my head. I had no idea where I was.

It was pitch dark like a coffin. I sat up— too quickly— my brain slammed against the inside of my skull. I was going to be sick. I took a moment to ride the nausea, then I held a hand in front of my face. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything.

I was blind.

Panic shot through me. I felt around on the floor. I was sitting in a pool of water inches deep. I got to my hands and knees and began to crawl, and my head rattled into something hard and metallic. I took hold of it and it rolled away from me, then clanged to a stop. I explored it with my hands. Solid wire mesh. A shopping trolley. I pushed it and it held firm. I braced against it and got to my feet, then reached out and felt a cold metal plate, raised buttons, switches.

A control panel. Then I remembered where I was. The maintenance room.

Below the siren in my head, I could hear a soft trickle of water coming from somewhere nearby. I focused on its direction, then splashed towards it, arms outstretched in front of me. My hands hit something solid. The door. I felt around, found the handle, then jammed it open. Red light washed over me as a surge of water rushed around my feet. The siren grew louder. Not in my head after all.

I stepped out from behind the van into the carpark. It was like stepping out from a bunker after a nuclear strike. The ground flooded, water spraying from sprinkler heads jutting from the pipes that snaked along the ceiling, everything bathed in a deep red light, the wailing siren echoing from every direction. Every car a burnt and blackened frame. Melted tires like pools of lava under charred and twisted wrecks. The air heavy with dirty clouds of steam and gas and burnt plastic fumes, everything awash with water that in the red light looked like blood.

I walked along the lane back towards the escalator lobby, soaked to the skin. I passed the burnt-out shell of the Range Rover resting against the wreck of another car. Further along, I saw a figure lying on the ground in the shallow water, as if curled up asleep. As I drew closer, I saw it was Yael. Covered in wet black soot, eyes open, tongue hanging out. Her clothes shredded, limbs torn and mangled. Maybe that was the thud I’d heard just before I crashed the Range Rover…

Then I came upon the shell of the Hummer sitting before the mouth of the turning bay. Celeste was still in the driver’s seat. Her flesh incinerated. A charred skeleton, hands fused into the melted figure-eight of the steering wheel. She looked like she was one with the skeletal frame of the Hummer. There was no sign of Kiran. I guess he was nothing more than ash.

I looked into the cave-like mouth of the turning bay. I thought I could see a black mound of some kind just within the entrance, but I didn’t dare go any closer to investigate. I could only hope that we’d killed it. But I had no way of knowing for sure.

I turned up the lane that led to the escalator lobby. Halfway along, I saw the silhouette of a hulking figure moving slowly through a billowing cloud of steam, its large head moving from side to side, searching. I froze. There was no escaping it. There was nowhere left to run. And in that moment, I resigned myself to death.

Then the cloud parted, and a firefighter emerged, and I could see his eyes behind his mask staring at me in amazement.

Horror at Highgate

‘People were screaming, running… like a scene from a horror movie.’

What we know so far:

At least six people are dead, and a car park is gutted by fire with police declaring the entire Highgate shopping centre a crime scene. A forty-eight-year-old man has been taken into police custody on suspicion of multiple counts of murder. Authorities say the suspect is not known to police, and it’s too early to speculate on a motive, but it appears he was acting alone.

Police were called to the Highgate Shopping Centre following reports of a man deliberately targeting pedestrians with a four-wheel drive in an underground car park. One eyewitness, who asked for his name to be withheld, described what he saw.

‘I heard an engine rev and then a bang, and I looked over and I saw this woman just lying in the middle of the lane, and the car just sitting there. She looked like she’d been run over. And then the car just backed over her. I couldn’t believe it.

‘I yelled at him, but then he drove straight at me. I ran into where the escalators are, and he smashed right through the doors and knocked the vending machine over. He only barely missed me. Then he was just sitting in the car screaming. He looked insane, like he was possessed or something. The window of the car was open, and there was really loud music playing. Then he backed out, and I saw him run another man over. People were screaming, running. It was like a scene from a horror movie. Then I just ran up the escalators.’

Asked to describe the music, the eyewitness said it was, ‘that song, Dancing in the Moonlight. It’s a banger.’

It’s understood moments after police arrived on the scene, a massive explosion tore through the car park. At this time, police are uncertain of the source of the explosion but are treating it as a possible terrorist attack.

More to come.