The Poison Factory (2 page)

T
he smell was thicker on the other side of the wall. Gaz was always the first one in the gang to take risks – he was more afraid of being seen as a chicken than getting hurt. He led the way under the wall, squeezing through the small hole, dragging himself under and finally pulling himself out the other side, carefully brushing the dirt from his beloved trainers.

The air had a chemical feel to it; it felt damp against his face, and he could feel the stink soaking into his skin and his clothes. Damo crawled out behind him, nodding his head like he was listening to music, as he did whenever he was nervous. Then Hayley appeared, chewing on her fingernails as she looked around. The pink blotches on her cheeks always got bigger when she was scared. Now they
were covering most of her face. They all stood and stared.

There were wooden crates and stacks of barrels and plastic containers on pallets, lines and lines of them stretching out before them.

‘How are we going to find the little guy in here?’ Damo groaned softly, his hands waving in front of him. ‘This is freaking me out. I think we should get out of here, and call in the cops.’

‘They’d never believe us. They know what we’re like,’ Gaz replied. ‘We’re going to have to find him ourselves. We’re going to get him out of here, and then I’m going to give him a right kick up the bum for scaring us. Now, come on.’

They walked past the stacks of containers until they came to the wall of a building. The sound of an engine made them duck behind a pile of metal barrels, and a forklift drove past. It had driven out of a large door off to one side. Gaz waved at the others to follow him, and they crept inside the building.

There were more pallets inside, with thousands
of small bottles and packages stacked up and bound with plastic sheeting.

‘Hey guys!’ Damo whispered. ‘Check it out! There’s pirates here!’

He was pointing at a label that had a skull-and-crossbones on it. Hayley thumped his arm.

‘That’s the sign for
poison
, you tur nip!’ she 
sneered. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

‘They’ve all got that label,’ Gaz said. ‘Everything in here’s poisonous. I wonder what it is?’

‘Oh, all sorts of useful things,’ a voice said from behind them.

They all spun round, and then froze. Standing right there, right in front of them, was a tall, spindly man
with a sticking-out belly, large, bony hands and feet, and a face that looked like it had never seen a good night’s sleep. Dressed in a white coat, he was smiling, showing teeth that barely clung to his gums.

‘It’s alright, there’s no need to be afraid,’ he reassured them. ‘I just work here, I’m nobody. My name’s Cornelius. Welcome to the factory! Are you here to inquire about our poisons?’

‘We’re looking for–’ Gaz began.

‘We have whatever you need!’ Cornelius cut him off. ‘And this year our range is bigger and more exciting than ever! Our customers come from all over the world, and from every walk of life. From secret agents to evil queens; from wicked witches to sinister sorcerors …’

‘We’re trying to–’ Gaz tried to interrupt.

‘… from alien invaders to desperate babysitters; from pygmies to politicians, gangsters to grandmothers, mad scientists to– eh?’

He stopped short when Gaz poked him in the belly.

‘We’re looking for my little brother,’ Gaz said, folding his arms and sticking his chin out to hide his nervousness. ‘He came in here a few minutes ago, and then we heard him screaming. Now he’s gone missing. If you know where he is, you’d better tell us, right?’

The man lifted one hand to tap a long fingernail against his teeth. The teeth r attled with each tap.

‘Screaming, you say? Hmmmm. Missing?’, he muttered, looking more and more worried as he tapped. ‘Hmmmmmm. Not good. Not good at all.’

He threw a fearful glance towards the dark shadows of the warehouse. Then he bent down and spoke to the children in a careful whisper.

‘It sounds as if your young friend has fallen into the hands of our Head Of Security, Molars. An ogre of a man; over-large and ever-so-slightly monstrous. I’m sure he wouldn’t hurt your young friend, but his appearance alone can be a cause for alarm. It’s the extra eye, you understand, and the nose covered in warts. And the teeth sticking out of his chin …
I
sometimes feel like screaming when I look at him – and I’ve known him for years.’

‘What … what do we do?’ Hayley asked, her teeth gnawing away at the last of her thumbnail. ‘How do we get Joey back?’

‘You’ll need to bribe Molars,’ the man told them. ‘He’s a terror for kidnapping people, but he’s got a real sweet tooth. Now, let me see here …’

He fumbled around inside his coat, searching for something.

‘Ah! Here we are!’

Pulling a bag from his pocket, he held it out to
the children.

‘I was keeping these sweets for my break, but you can have them. I’m trying to cut down anyway. Just give him these, and I’m sure he’ll let your friend go.’

Cornelius leaned in closer.

‘And if you want to take one or two for yourselves … well, who’s going to know? Just make sure you leave plenty for him. There you are now. He’ll be on the top floor, in the security office. Run along now, I won’t tell a soul that I’ve seen you. Good luck!’

Gaz looked at the bag Cornelius had given him with some suspicion. But the man pushed him gently towards the stairs at the back of the warehouse.

‘Hurry!’ he urged them. ‘Before somebody comes! You can bribe Molars, but you don’t want to run into the boss, or those cooks! Then you’d be in real trouble. Hurry, now!’

Clutching the bag, Gaz nodded to the other two, and they took off at a run, being careful to keep behind the piles of boxes until they reached the
stairs. At the top of the steps, there was a door, standing ajar. Gazing up at the door, the remaining three members of the Root Street Gang hesitated, frightened of what lay beyond it.

‘For Joey,’ Gaz said softly.

‘For Joey,’ the other two repeated, nodding.

Creeping up the stairs, they pushed through the door, and into the dimly-lit corridor beyond. There came the sound of machinery, and the insect-like buzz of a hundred voices. The only other door in the corridor was at the end – and it led out into a room full of people. And something about those voices did not sound right.

T
he three children tiptoed to the end of the corridor and peered round the door. They were looking down on a factory floor; what looked like a packing plant. Bottles of all shapes and sizes travelled through the plant on conveyor belts, and were being packed up in boxes, which were then carried by more conveyors out through wide hatches at the far end of the huge room. It would all have been fairly normal, if not for the zombies.

‘Holy Moses–’ Damo blurted out, before Hayley clapped a hand over his mouth.

They had to be zombies, the living dead – there was no way they were still alive, with their flesh all rotting like that, bits of bone sticking out, and expressions on their faces like they’d drunk too much seawater. They walked with arms stretched out in front of them, and they talked constantly. Mostly, they just repeated words like ‘Food’, or ‘Meat’, or even just ‘Grarrr’. They all wore overalls, and each zombie had a name badge.

There were dozens of them, all in different stages of rotting. They were working along the conveyor belts, packing pills, capsules and liquids into the bottles. The decomposing workers at the ends of the belts shovelled the bottles into boxes. They all looked as if they were in a bad mood, and most of them had hungry expressions on their faces.

There was a different smell in this part of the factory; a stale, vinegary odour, as if all the zombies had been pickled. The Root Street Gang looked down on them in horror.

‘How do we get past the dead dudes?’ Damo whined. ‘There’s no way!’

‘Ssh!’ Gaz hushed him. ‘Look, there’s a door over there. That must be the way through. If we can get down the stairs, we can sneak along under that conveyor belt there and get out that way.’

The other two looked to where he was pointing, and then stared at him as if he was mad. But it appeared to be the only way, and neither of them wanted to leave Joey trapped in this horrible place. There was nothing for it but to take the chance.

Gaz put a hand on each of their shoulders and gave them a grim nod, like he had seen the commanders do in war films. Then he waited until all of the zombies were looking away and darted down the metal steps and across to the conveyor belt by the wall. Once she was sure he’d made it, Hayley followed, almost tripping near the bottom of the steps. Her pink-blotched cheeks glowing like a traffic light, she ran across and slid in behind Gaz. Damo skidded in beside them a moment later.

‘Right,’ Gaz panted. ‘I think … eh, let’s go, then.’

The conveyor belt rattled over their heads as they crawled quickly along the floor. A zombie lurched past them and something suddenly dropped onto the floor and bounced under the belt – right beside Hayley. It was a half-rotten ear. She jammed her mouth into Gaz’s back to muffle her scream, and
grabbed hold of his leg so tightly he nearly let out a yelp. It was a good thing she had hardly any fingernails. The zombie grunted and bent down, fumbling around in the shadows under the belt. Hayley’s grip on Gaz’s calf muscle tightened and he winced at the pain. The zombie’s clawing hand came closer to her knees. She shuffled back as far as she could go, but they were right up against the wall. The hand was inches from her.

Gaz reached back with the toe of his trainer and pushed the zombie’s ear into the path of its searching fingers. The hand came upon the missing body part and grabbed at it. There was a moan of relief, the arm disappeared, and the zombie continued on its way.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ Hayley gulped.

‘You can’t,’ Gaz told her. ‘They’ll hear you.’

She decided she’d be all right after all. They crawled on, reaching the door on the other side of the factory room. In a frantic dash, they sprinted through the open door. Jets of gas hit them as they rushed in and they had to hold their noses as they stumbled through a tiled room filled with clouds of steam and into the corridor beyond. They were in a long, narrow hallway with big lockers against the walls. Their skin and clothes were damp from the gas, which smelled like disinfectant.

‘S’like the stuff Momma uses to clean the toilet,’ Damo sniffed. ‘Suppose with all the zombies rotting like that, there must be loads of germs around.’

‘Well, I think it’s stained my trainers,’ Gaz complained. ‘Mam’ll kill me. These were almost brand new. I was at her for weeks to buy them!’

Hayley bent down and picked something up off a bench by the side of the lockers. It was a remote control for a television.

‘What’s that doing here?’ Damo asked.

She didn’t have time to reply. A siren was going off out on the factory floor. Staggering through the clouds of disinfectant steam was a huge, groaning zombie. The three children froze. There was nowhere to run. They would never make it to the other end of the corridor before it saw them. Gaz did the only thing he could; there was an open locker right next to him, and he jumped into it. No sooner was he inside, than Damo and Hayley piled in beside him. They pulled the door over just as the undead creature lurched out of the clouds of gas. They cowered in the tight space, watching through the
slits in the metal door as it waddled down the corridor, followed by a second lumbering figure and then another.

‘Must be break-time,’ Gaz muttered.

One by one, all the zombies trudged past. None of them were coming near the lockers. There was nothing for the Root Street Gang to do but stay in hiding and wait.