People say they remember where they were when the twin towers fell. Well, it was the same for me when the Pyramids were destroyed. I was at work, listening to Tony Angelos talking about his new slow cooker while wondering which of life’s wrong turns had screwed me this badly. The soul-sapping discussion drew to a close when Laura from IT blurted the news out across the office. Trust her to hear it first; she never does any bloody work.

When we weren’t being interrupted by anything as mundane as our actual day jobs, everyone spent the afternoon glued to whatever screen they could lay their hands on. Footage was plastered across every news and social media outlet on the planet, so people could vicariously experience the shocking violence of the initial blasts, and gawp at the heart-wrenching stories of human casualties.

Television commentators filled the days that followed discussing and dissecting the blurry images. The advanced nature of the missiles meant fingers were pointed at powerful governments. Some people thought it was a secret test launch gone tragically wrong; others that it was a deliberate attack on the Egyptian State. But if anyone knew the real answer, they were choosing to remain silent.

Chapter 1

Two a.m. in the hotel bar and sleep wasn’t on the agenda. We were on day four of an eventful team-building week in the Cotswolds. The day’s highlights included our poorly constructed raft mirroring the Titanic’s maiden voyage and Denzil shouting at Mike during the balloon debate to, ‘Get out before I push you out, you bellend!’

We were staying at an old stone manor house called the Naysmere Hotel. Nestled in the heart of the idyllic English countryside, it had looked amazing on the website. In reality, it was a complete dump. With hindsight, our suspicions should have been raised by the number of flares and kipper ties in the hotel photos. Denzil ranted about suing the scumbags for false advertising, but as they still had the same interior furnishings from the pictures, I told him they were probably safe.

We were the last men standing in the hotel bar that Thursday morning. Actually, we were sitting, on account of us being so drunk. The barman was multitasking, glued to a TV report about the previous week’s missile attacks in Egypt, and attempting to extricate the contents of his left nostril. My grandad once said a refusal to give in no matter the odds was the mark of a great man. Credit where credit’s due, the guy persisted with a range of fingers and techniques before securing his quarry.

‘I’m going to bed,’ I announced, causing Denzil to look at me like I’d just morphed into the barman’s bogey.

‘What’s your problem?’ he replied. ‘There’s free alcohol and no work tomorrow.’

‘We’ve got to be up soon,’ I said.

‘We’ve got to be up soon,’ he repeated in a baby voice. ‘You’re twenty- four, not eighty-four!’

I rested my head on my folded arms. ‘I’m tired and I’m drunk.’

‘Gibby, Gibby, Gibby. Going to bed early still won’t get you into Lucy’s knickers.’

‘Piss off.’

‘So, you do fancy the boss then,’ he said, laughing.

‘I don’t,’ I protested. But it was true. I liked her so much it hurt.

After singing tunelessly about me wanting to both kiss and marry her,

Denzil gave me a sympathetic look. ‘You need to let that one go, my friend,’ he said. ‘She’s too professional to cross that line.’

I knew he was right, but hearing it still made me feel hollow inside.

‘Besides, you’d need to grow a pair first and tell her how you feel. And let’s be honest, mate, that’s not really your style.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘In life’s great game of chess, some of us move the pieces and some of us are the pieces.’

‘Charming.’

Denzil patted me on the shoulder. ‘We’re in the midst of a crisis here, my friend. And I’m not talking about that cover-up in Cairo.’

‘Not this again,’ I mumbled.

‘You’re ignoring the signs.’

‘I’m ignoring you.’

‘Incinerating the Pyramids of Giza was no accident. You can’t tell me the

work experience kid at the Pentagon accidently pressed the wrong button. I’m telling you mate, dark forces are at work as we speak.’

‘Yeah, they’re called rum and coke.’

Denzil turned to the barman. ‘Hey mate? Can you look after our drinks, please?’ The man grunted in response as Denzil put an arm around my shoulder and guided me towards the door.

‘Where are we going?’ I was struggling to walk in a straight line.

‘Shh.’ Denzil glanced at the disinterested barman, then squeezed me tighter. ‘I’ve got a little something to give you in the toilets,’ he said with a creepy wink. It was a disturbing moment.

As we stumbled past the front desk I noticed the receptionist was staring at me. I smiled back in an attempt to disarm her and received a deathly glare for my troubles.

Denzil laughed. ‘If looks could kill, Jack Gibson, you’d be six feet under.’

I glanced back and was irritated to see she was still watching me, like a nosey Miss Marple. Once safely inside the sanctity of the men’s toilets, Denzil ushered me into a cubicle and locked the door. He wasn’t the thinnest guy around, so it was a bit of a squeeze.

‘Well, that’s rather delightful,’ he said, clocking the previous occupant’s deposit. Denzil dropped the loo seat, opened his wallet and removed something small. He started swinging it backwards and forwards in front of my face like the world’s worst hypnotist. Following his hand made me want to barf, which forced me to grab his wrist. That’s when my brain registered the small plastic bag filled with white powder.

‘So, amigo,’ he said in a rubbish foreign accent, ‘are you ready for a little Colombian adventure?’

‘Nice accent, dickwad. I didn’t know Colombia was in Sweden.’

Denzil pulled out a bank card and chopped up two lines of coke on top of the cistern. ‘Give me a note,’ he said, and I passed him a twenty, which he rolled into a neat tube and used to snort one of the lines. He handed it to me as he tilted his head back and sniffed. ‘Whoa! Now that is good stuff, Gibby.’

I inserted the note into my nose, pressed a finger over my left nostril and tried to inhale the powder. I was swaying from the copious amount of alcohol I’d consumed, so it was a struggle to line up the tube with the charlie. However, after several failed attempts and a few choice insults from Denzil, I managed to hoover it up. I sniffed several times as I unrolled the banknote, then used my finger to wipe off the residue before shoving it back into my pocket.

Denzil laughed and patted me on the shoulder as I rubbed the chemicals from my finger onto my gums. ‘That gear is definitely going to sort you out,’ he said.

‘What gear would that be then, fellas?’ came an authoritative voice from somewhere above our heads.

We looked up and saw a man peering over the top of the cubicle.

‘It’s the police, lads,’ he said. ‘Open the door and keep your hands where I can see them.’

My heart sank into my shoes. Mum and Dad were going to bloody kill me.

When my brother died my parents kindly decided to hang the combined weight of their hopes and dreams on the coat hook of my life. They’d expected big things from their decidedly average son and had experienced regular and profound disappointment ever since. Now this moment of stupidity was going to ruin my life once and for all, and the worst thing about it was that I had no one to blame but my pathetic, idiotic self. I was spared from further self-loathing when Denzil bent over and his backside slammed me face first into the toilet door. This resulted in a small nosebleed for me and a loud ‘You idiot!’ for him. My friend lifted the loo seat and threw the drugs into the pan.

As he reached for the handle, the policeman made a heroic leap into the cubicle. ‘Get away from that flush!’

But Denzil was a man possessed.

I’d known Denzil Reid for nineteen years. Yes, that’s right, since the very first day of school. Okay, the second, because Jamaica’s finest—his words, not mine—wet his pants on the first morning and it put me off going anywhere near him. Neither of us had the best of childhoods and as the years slid by, our damaged souls were pulled together like lost magnets. Now we were inseparable. The guy had even helped me get a job at the same company as him when I left university. Given the length of time we’d spent in each other’s company, you might be surprised to learn I’d never seen him in a fight. I mean, I’d watched him run away a few times. I’d even seen him hide in a Grundon bin when Dean Lacey wanted to beat him up for hitting on his sister, Carley. But actually going mano-a-mano? Never.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t see a great deal that morning either. This was mainly because my eyes were streaming like Niagara Falls because that moron almost broke my nose on the door. I’m happy to report, however, that the boy gave a pretty solid account of himself while trying to flush the evidence away. Well, he did alright until the officer pulled Denzil’s hoodie up over his head. As my friend was plunged into darkness and for reasons best known to himself, he started screaming, ‘Auntie Cedella! Help!’ at the top of his voice.

Heavily outgunned, Denzil stopped struggling and the melee drew to a close. That’s when I noticed a second police officer shouting and banging on the door. It turns out the average toilet cubicle isn’t made for three. You can fit one person in there comfortably, two if you’re a parent with a small child, or if you’re consuming cocaine with your bestie like my good self. But three? That’s too much of a squeeze. I tried to comply with the second crime fighter’s request to exit the stall. The issue I faced was the lack of space to actually open the door. This left an unsatisfactory gap to try and wriggle through, a manoeuvre made even more challenging by the eager second officer yanking on my left arm. I was formally introduced to fears for future fatherhood as my bits made contact with the edge of the door. The officer kept on tugging with the persistence of a yappy little dog. When it started to hurt I let out an involuntary ‘Ouch’, followed by a rather desperate, ‘Hang on’, and finally a panicked, ‘My nuts!’

I was free. I froze as I found myself staring into the face of a female police officer. Then I found myself staring at the wall as she set about throwing me against it. Fortunately, the woman was quite small. If the six-foot-four monster hauling Denzil out of the cubicle had done it, I would have lost most of my front teeth. With her it was more like when your mum gives you a slap for bad behaviour when you’re a teenager. I mean the will was certainly there; she just lacked some of the power. Bless her.

By now the line of charlie mixed with a healthy dose of adrenaline had sobered me up and I longed to be back in my drunken haze. Maybe that way I could escape the feeling of being totally and utterly screwed. I watched as Big D was hauled unceremoniously out of the cubicle with his hoodie still over his head. His jeans had slipped down in the ruckus, so he had an offensive portion of arse candy on display.

The police officers ordered us to hold our hands out in front of us as we were presented with every criminal’s must-have fashion accessary: a set of handcuffs. I’ve always believed it’s important for one to be on trend. I felt a bit like a delinquent from a cheap reality police show, but without the terrible tracksuit and trainers.

‘Right lads,’ said the woman. ‘What drugs were you taking? Coke? Speed? MDMA?’

I stared at the floor like my eyes had been glued to it and prayed for the grubby tiles to swallow me up.

‘We’ve just caught you in the act,’ said the male officer. ‘Stop wasting everybody’s time and tell us what it is.’

Denzil managed to say ‘It wasn’t drugs,’ but his voice came out like a wimpy five-year-old’s. Man, we must have looked like a right pair of wieners. ‘So, was it you two gentleman that vandalised the Mercedes?’ The female officer’s distaste was written all over her judgy face.

‘What Mercedes?’ replied Denzil.

‘The black one in the car park with “Kevin’s a cockhead” keyed down one side.’ She was standing a little too close for comfort and I was defi- nitely getting guilty-until-proven innocent vibes. ‘The receptionist saw someone fitting your description running away,’ she continued, turning her condescending gaze on me. Now it made more sense why the receptionist had been staring at me like I was off to murder the entire population of the local village.

I was overtaken by a feeling of immense injustice.

High Tower turned to his partner. ‘Are you alright here for a moment? I need to search the stalls.’

‘Yeah, no problem,’ she replied, turning her attention right back to me. ‘You could have done this the easy way,’ she said in a patronizing tone. ‘You’re just making it worse for yourself.’

I was really starting to dislike her, so I decided to focus on the copper heading back into the cubicle to hunt for evidence. I wondered if he’d imagined when signing up for a life of crime-fighting that he’d be fishing for drugs at two-thirty in the morning in a turd-infested fudge pot. When I heard, ‘For God’s sake!’ emanating from the stall, I guessed he’d spied the gargantuan brownie gracing the bottom of the lavatory. I hoped that vision would be enough to deter him from his planned itinerary of jobbie-bobbing, but the sound of a splash indicated Britain’s finest must have dived right on in. I had a vision of his crap-covered hand triumphantly raising a bag of coke aloft, like King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone. But if the bag had been open when it hit the water, the evidence could already have been washed away.

My mind switched to an image of me in a courtroom with my mum in tears and my dad looking like he wanted to castrate me. I began bargaining with God, promising to be a better person if he’d just let me get away with my misdemeanour. The fact I hadn’t seen the inside of a church since I was seven was irrelevant. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

There was a scream. And it was one of the worst I’d ever heard. Even worse than my dad’s when Mum accidentally reversed his brand-new car into our garden wall. It was so high-pitched and so full of shock that it sent a shiver racing down my spine. I made eye contact with Denzil, who at least had the decency to look as aghast as I did. Then came a series of loud crashing and banging sounds as the plastic cubicle walls shook like they were in the midst of an earthquake.

‘Are you alright in there, Greg?’ The policewoman looked spooked, but then I imagined PC Greg was normally the one causing the screams, not making them.

The male officer came flying out of the cubicle and crashed into the wall, forcing Denzil to leap sideways to avoid being flattened. The screaming continued as he did a strange, frantic jig around the interior of the men’s toilets. I watched, mesmerised, as he leapt about, screaming, shouting and slapping at his clothes.

Now, while my substance-fuddled brain wasn’t fully operational at this point, it was still functioning enough to detect that something was seriously wrong. And that’s when I noticed he’d done more than get the foot-long mess on his fingers. It was stuck to his clothes.

How the hell did that happen, I wondered, with no small amount of disgust. Until I saw them, that is. Them being the hundreds of tiny brown legs and the two ruby-red eyes. That was the moment the proverbial penny dropped like a smokestack treated with dynamite. I was looking at a giant brown insect and it was one of the ugliest, creepiest things I had ever laid eyes on.

I stood there frozen, like a guy paired with Medusa at a speed-dating event. The creature writhed about on Greg’s clothes, emitting high-pitched squeaking sounds. I winced when it started burrowing down the top of the policeman’s trousers. Greg tried grabbing hold of the monstrosity, but whatever the thing was, it was strong enough to fend off a being that was a hundred times its size. The officer’s howls roused his partner from her trance and she ran towards him, pulling out her mace spray. I rated the chances of that plan working out as somewhere between overly optimistic and no sodding way.

‘Help me,’ he shouted, over and over.

The female police officer sprayed the giant bug, but it was already too late and the abomination slipped down the top of his trousers like a child slurping spaghetti. Her next move was to try and undo his belt, but the man was rolling around too much for her to get anywhere near his crotch. I watched in horror as the creature moved around to the back of his trousers.

Greg was grabbing his rear end by this stage, screaming, ‘No!’ His eyes went as wide as the coffee coasters my Nanny Bertie brought back from Greece last year, and for the briefest of moments he stared right at me, before his eyes glazed over. I watched with mounting alarm as bright red blood flew from his mouth and covered the floor. Then Greg went limp.

‘What in the name of God was that?’ I shouted at no one in particular.

The second officer threw herself down next to her partner. ‘Greg! Hang in there buddy,’ she cried, while fighting to undo the man’s trousers. Unfortunately, performing this task meant she was too preoccupied to notice the sounds of cracking ceramic toilet bowls and splashing that were coming from the direction of the stalls.

‘Er, what’s that noise?’ Denzil didn’t have to wait long for an answer. From under, over and around the cubicle walls, more of the brown creatures appeared. Except this time there were thousands of them.