Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [84]
'Are you all right?' asked the woman who had helped her.
Zambia didn't answer; she was searching the concourse for the nearest transit station.
'Hold still,' said the woman, 'medical will be here soon.'
Zambia twisted in the woman's grip. The adjacent lift was showing an emergency light as well, the LCD floor indicator spinning down through the digits. Zamina turned back to the woman.
'Run away,' said Zamina, 'there's monsters in the lift.'
She could see the woman thinking 'blitzed for sure', but she let go of Zambia's shoulders. Her feet skidded in the foam as she broke away from the woman. Behind her the floor indicator chimed softly. It was the most sinister sound Zamina had ever heard.
There were screams from the crowd as the door opened and the dull boom of guns firing. Ahead across the breadth of the concourse Zambia could see the red double arrow of the STS Logo hanging in the air.
The concourse crowd was mostly shoppers browsing on their way home. People dressed in the sombre middle-class colours. They were just beginning to react to the commotion as Zamina ran past them. She remembered the technician in the corridor upstairs but she was past guilt. Every girl for herself. You want help now, she thought, where were you when I was born?
There were more shooting sounds from behind and a police drone whined overhead. The people ahead were beginning to look anxious, the psychological wavefront of panic outstripping Zambia's best speed. She realized that running to get ahead of the inevitable surge for the exits was going to be more important than outdistancing the cake monsters.
A stuttering sound that she recognized from the riots as a police-drone's minigun broke through the screaming. It was answered by more shots from the cake monsters. People were beginning to run now and Zamina tried to push her legs faster.
A wave of intense heat rolled over her back. She felt the hair on the back of her head crisping. Terrified that it might catch fire, she raised her hands to beat out any flames.
The blast wave flung her ten metres and she skidded another twenty on her front. There was a terrible pain in her breasts as the implants were squashed violently against her ribs.
Please God, she thought, don't let them burst. She'd heard somewhere that the silicon could leak out and give you cancer.
Cancer, she thought. You wish.
They were jammed solid at the escalator bank but at least the shooting had stopped. Zamina had to climb over a man to get on the central reservoir between the escalators. A hand grabbed at her ankle and she lashed out with her foot until it let go. She got friction burns on the palms of her hands sliding down. Contorted faces and struggling bodies on the escalator, either side.
At the bottom in the booking hall she found she was ahead of the crowd again.
She made the mistake of looking back. A single cake monster was coming down one of the escalators, either smashing aside or trampling the people in its way.
Someone, probably a computer, had the sense at least to lock the ticket gates open. Zamina ran through them, checking the train indicators. She saw one marked 'Train at Platform'. The destination was unimportant, any destination was away from the cake monsters.
Passengers coming towards her swerved out of her way. Crazy woman, they were thinking. Wait until they get a load of what's coming after her.
A commuter train was standing at the platform, four carriages strung together with squat little pushme-pullyous at either end. Zamina dived through the doors just as they were closing. The surviving cake monster came in through the door window and got stuck two thirds in.
Zamina's breath came in short burning gasps. Her legs were too heavy to move. She just hung on the handstrap and watched the monster thrashing silently in the window frame. She wondered why it was so quiet until she saw a passenger screaming and realized that she'd gone deaf.
The cake monster kicked violently and managed