The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

lying on the floor. It was nearly five years since electricity had powered these icons of Western decadence, inducing them, improbably, to produce ice from water in tropical temperatures. In a fit of temper he kicked out at one of them, then thumped into it with his shoulder, rocking it back and forth till it crashed on to its side, rupturing the network of pipes at the back of it to release a trickle of milky white chemical on to the floor.

The noise of the crash still reverberating in his ears, Hau turned away in disgust and stumbled over a small round metal object beneath his feet. He stooped to pick it up and found himself holding a tin little larger than a hand grenade, its label blackened by time and dust. He wiped it furiously on his sleeve then crossed to the door to examine it in the light. A faded blue-lettered Nestlé Milk was just discernible. The words themselves had no meaning for Hau, but there was something vaguely familiar about them, evoking a misty childhood memory of his mother’s kitchen and something sweet. With a rising excitement, he realized that it was food, and he turned the tin round and round in his hands, staring with sparkling eyes. He ran his tongue across parched lips and squatted on the floor, drawing his knife from his belt. He stood the tin in front of him, took the knife in both hands and drove it several times into the lid, causing a thick white substance to ooze from the punctures. He collected a little on the tip of a finger and raised it tentatively to his tongue. The sweet taste almost burned his mouth, and in an instant he had snatched the tin from the floor and lifted it to eager lips that sucked fiercely at the cloying sweetness. When the tin would yield no more, he placed it once again on the floor and stabbed at it repeatedly with his knife until he could force the jagged lid out and dip fingers inside. Again and again he ran them around the inside of the tin and sucked at them hungrily until he had cleaned out every last drop. Then he threw the tin away and turned back into the kitchen, eyes probing each dark corner in search of more.

For half an hour he tore the kitchen apart, ripping units from the wall, searching on hands and knees among the debris on the floor, before slumping, unrewarded and sweating, against an upturned table in the centre of the room.

He sat in the semi-darkness for a long time until his breathing and his disappointment had subsided, and he realized that he was thirstier than ever. But now he felt weak again too, the sweet taste of the Nestlé milk already a distant memory, almost as though he had dreamt it. He closed his eyes and felt himself swimming backwards through space. Faces ballooned at him through the darkness and he saw his own hands reaching out to pull plastic bags tight over their heads, holding them in place, ignoring the frantic fight for breath that came from within. Hands reached out towards him like claws, fingers grotesquely curled in a last desperate attempt to hold on to life. He felt them tug at his trousers, at his tunic and, finally, at his face, sharp nails drawing blood.

He awoke with a yell and felt scurries of movement all around him. His cheek still hurt where the nails of the hand in his dream had scratched him. When he put his hand to his face he drew back bloodied fingers. The floor had come alive and seemed to be moving beneath him. He drew in his knees and found himself staring into hundreds of tiny black eyes, twinkling with pinpoints of light. For a moment he thought he must still be asleep before he realized that the floor around him was indeed alive – with rats. He heard himself scream as he leapt to his feet, swinging the Kalashnikov from his back and firing wildly at the floor around him, raising clouds of choking dust and sending splinters of tile and crockery spanging off in all directions. The rodents scattered in a squealing panic, several exploding in a bloody mush, caught in the spray of bullets as they fled.

Hau stopped screaming as he stopped firing and found himself breathless and shaking uncontrollably. He didn’t wait to count the rats he had killed, but turned and ran from the kitchen, through the dining room, crashing into tables and chairs as he went, oblivious of the pain. Into the gloom of the lobby, back past the elevator to stumble over the rubble in the doorway and out on to the street, where the heat and glare of the afternoon sun hit him like a wall. He screwed his smarting eyes against the light and snatched his bike from the wall, mounting it and pedalling blindly away along the boulevard.

When, finally, Hau became aware that his progress had slowed almost to a halt, he had no idea where he was. He had pedalled furiously through a dozen or more deserted streets, unseeing, uncaring, driven only by the desperate desire to escape the nightmare presence of the rats that had crawled over his sleeping body to tear at his face in the dark empty kitchen of the Monorom Hotel. He swung his leg over the saddle and staggered to a halt, the hot pavement burning the leathery soles of his feet. His fitful gasps for air seemed to scorch his lungs.

He glanced around at the crumbling buildings with all their broken windows, the trees and bushes that grew in thick profusion in deserted yards. And his eyes came to rest, across the street, on the high walls and open gates of the deserted Phnom Penh High School. Beyond the walls, and the desolation of the empty playground, stood three plain buildings built in the early Sixties