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Expectantly you reach for the handle but, as your hand closes around the steel lever, you hear something that makes you stop dead in your tracks. A scuttling, scratching sound is coming from inside the storage room. Gently you depress the handle and open the door an inch or two, only to pull it shut quickly when you get a glimpse of what lurks inside. Thousands of cockroaches cover every surface in the store room, seething and undulating like some grotesque living carpet.
It takes you several minutes to muster enough courage to open the door a second time, but before you do, you take off your jacket and tuck your jeans into your boots to prevent the insects from crawling up your legs. As the door opens and your light floods into the room, the insects panic and come rushing towards you like a torrent of vile brown water. Determinedly you meet this tidal wave and beat a path towards a table in the middle of the room. Using your jacket to clear the surface, you climb onto it and wait there—a tiny island in the middle of a stormy brown sea—until the cockroaches have dispersed into the corridor outside. When eventually the loathsome tide ebbs, you jump down from the table and begin your search for Atropine.
