Ellie Quin - 04 - Ellie Quin in WonderLand Read Online Free Page B

lights flickered and winked on as the girls looked back through the thick glass of the door at their barge as the ramp sealed shut with a heavy clang.
    ‘There goes our lift,’ said Jez sombrely.
    The roof of the cargo bay hissed clouds of gas as large pneumatic pistons pulled open the inner bulkheads. The barge lifted up slowly with roaring thrusters pummelling the floor. Ellie could feel the vibration of that drumming through the floor, through her platform boots, tickling her toes. She craned her neck to watch it gently rise into an outer bay. Another hiss and cloud of gas as the bulkhead swung down again and she finally lost sight of the barge that had brought them here.
    Muted now, they heard the faint cranking of outer doors opening and the roar of decompression. The rumble of the barge's thrusters was suddenly gone, swallowed up by the vacuum beyond. She felt the slightest vibration once more as the outer doors closed.
    It was deathly quiet and unnervingly still.
    ‘We have been totally fregged-over,’ said Jez. ‘The captain, that fat rat-face dill-head took the money and totally humped us.' She growled. 'We should be at Gateway not at this dump!' She swung a limp kick at the wall beside her. ‘Two minutes…that’s all I’d want; two minutes with my fist and his fat flabby arse…’
    What if this place really is derelict?
Ellie began to feel the tremulous start of claustrophobic panic.
We're gonna die in here!
    Just then they heard a
thunk
. It came from beyond the small hatch at the other end of the airlock. They heard a mechanical whine and Ellie guessed it must be the door on another connected airlock, opening.
    Okay. Maybe it's not totally derelict
.
    Then another sound, a light
tap-tap-tap
of approaching footsteps. The girls looked at each other anxiously.
    ‘At least it’s not
totally
abandoned.’ Ellie forced a look of relief onto her face. ‘At least there's someone else here. That’s good. Right?’
    Jez cocked a brow. ‘Just our luck, it’ll be some lonely psycho axe murderer.’ Her bravado seemed to falter for a moment as her dark eyes rounded. ‘Just like that perv-slasher holodram we watched a while back? Remember? What was it called?’
    Ellie remembered watching it, and still rather wished she hadn’t. ‘Uh…
Lonely Psycho Axe Murderer
, wasn’t it?’ She bit her lip. ‘Or something like that.’
    The footsteps were getting louder, clearer, closer. Slow, ominous footsteps approaching them. She fancied she could just about hear the rasping breath and insane gibbering of some Total Crazy.
    ‘Oh crud,’ she whispered. ‘Cruddy-crud-crud.’
    They stared at the grime encrusted window of the inner hatch and saw an indistinct movement of shadow. Some figure right outside, close to the scuffed foggy glass, something swaying, bobbing creepily. The figure seemed short to Ellie. Shorter than either of them; perhaps it was just the foreshortening angle of the shadow cast by an overhead light beyond.
    Please make him short. Make him short and puny and harmless. And not a psycho
.
    They heard a soft click followed by the gentle electronic hum of the door’s servo. The inner door slid slowly upwards revealing a pair of odd-looking, hand-like, hairy feet. Then, slowly, revealing the rest.
    Jez let out a small strangled cry. ‘OhMyGod!’
    Ellie gasped.
    ‘OHMYGOD!’ cried Jez again, ‘that’s….that’s so freggin’
cute!
’
    Ellie gazed round-eyed and slack-jawed at the creature slouching in the doorway. She recognized it for what it was; a creature from Old Earth. One of the many species that went extinct many hundreds of years ago in the late twenty-first century. She trawled her mind for the word. Then she had it.
    A monkey
.
    To be more precise; a monkey wearing a smart, burgundy coloured stewards’ jacket with gold buttons and braiding, and a bellboy’s cap tilted back at a jaunty angle.
    ‘It's a…a
monkey
?’ gasped Ellie.
    ‘Oh, good grief,’ it sighed patronisingly.