Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [97]
Before Surd could attack again, Sherlock grabbed the whip from the floor and pulled the metal tip from the wooden tray, disentangling the leather thong. As Surd, raging like a madman, surged out of the cloud of pollen towards Sherlock, he lashed out with it. He’d never used a whip before, but watching Surd had shown him how to do it. The whip curled out towards the bald thug, the metal tip slicing across his cheek. Surd was flung back by the impact.
Straight into one of the beehives.
It fell, and Surd fell with it, into it. The wooden slats burst apart as they hit the stone floor together, covering him in the gooey, waxy interior of the hive.
And bees. Thousands of bees.
They covered his face like a living hood, crawling into his nose and mouth and ears, stinging everywhere they went. He screamed; a thin, whistling sound that got louder and louder. And he rolled, trying to crush the bees but succeeding only in knocking another hive over.
Within moments, Mr Surd was invisible beneath a blanket of insects that were stinging every square inch of flesh they could find. His screams were muffled by the bees filling his mouth.
Sherlock backed away, horrified. He’d never seen anything like this before. He’d been fighting for his life, but what was happening to Surd was so terrible that he felt sick. He’d killed a man.
‘I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?’ Matty said from behind him.
‘You think I like getting into fights?’ Sherlock said, aware that his voice was trembling on the edge of hysteria. ‘They just seem to happen to me.’
‘Well, you seem to acquit yourself all right,’ Matty conceded.
‘I know what to do,’ Sherlock said, trying to get his voice under control. He indicated the clouds of yellow pollen dissipating through the cavernous space inside the fort. ‘There’s trays of pollen stacked up in those boxes. We need to spread that pollen through this place.’
‘Why?’ Matty asked.
‘Remember what you told me about the bakery in Farnham?’ Sherlock asked.
Matty’s eyes lit up with understanding. ‘Got you,’ he said. Then his face clouded over. ‘But what about us?’
‘We have to stop this, and stop it now. We’re less important than the hundreds, maybe thousands of people who will die if we don’t stop it.’
‘Even so . . .’ Matty said. He suddenly grinned at Sherlock’s shocked expression. ‘Only kidding. Let’s get on with it.’
Together they grabbed as many trays of cold yellow pollen from the ice boxes as they could and ran through the aisles between the hives, letting the powder spill out in expanding clouds behind them. Within ten minutes the air was full of floating motes, and they could hardly see ten feet ahead of them. It was hard to breathe without choking. Sherlock grabbed Matty by the shoulder.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Blinded by clouds of pollen, they groped their way towards the corridor to the stairs, fighting their way through the yellow clouds, trying not to knock over any of the hives.
Sherlock’s foot kicked against something soft, and he almost fell over. Looking down he saw a puffy mass of red-splotched flesh that he just about recognized as Mr Surd’s face. Surd’s eyes were invisible in swollen folds of skin, and his mouth was full of dead bees.
In spite of everything, Sherlock felt a powerful urge to help the dying man, but it was too late. Feeling cold and sick inside, he kept going.
He came up against a stone wall. Left or right? He chose left, and guided Matty after him by grabbing his shirt and pulling.
It seemed like hours but was probably less than a minute before they found the corridor. Sherlock turned and looked back. There was nothing behind him but a roiling wall of yellow powder hanging in the air.
He reached out and took an oil lantern from the stone wall of the corridor. Weighing it in his hand, he thought about the bees, innocent of anything apart from just being themselves.
He had no choice.
He threw the lantern. It arced away into the cloud of pollen, and vanished. Moments later he heard the shattering of glass as it hit the flagstones.
Followed by a