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Cursing your luck, you return to the corridor. You find that the way ahead is now lit faintly by light from the room, enabling you to see that it is the next door along which is the entrance to the medicine storage facility.
Expectantly you reach out for the handle but, as your hand closes around the steel lever you hear another noise, which makes you stop dead in your tracks. Coming from inside the storage room is a scuttling, scratching sound. Gently you depress the handle and open the door an inch or two, only to pull it shut quickly when you get a faint 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 so, 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 the light trickles 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 the table in the middle of the room. Using your jacket to clear away the surface, you climb onto it—a tiny island in the middle of a stormy, brown sea—and wait there until the cockroaches have dispersed into the corridor. When eventually the loathsome tide ebbs, you jump down from the table and begin your urgent search for Atropine.
