“Give me a hand,” he said, not even pausing to catch his breath. He ran over to a large box, over three feet high and full of reams of printer paper. She saw what he was trying to do and went to help him. Between them, they slid it across the floor — she was shocked by the weight of all that paper — and manhandled it on top of the hatch. Paul ran back and forth, piling on a few smaller boxes full of nails and screws, a box of vice clamps, anything heavy he could find. When he couldn’t pile anything else on it, he stepped back and dusted his hands. “Can’t see anything getting through that in a hurry.”
Caitlyn was trembling.
“Still, we’ll need to get some stuff to reinforce it,” he continued, oblivious. “No telling how big that’ll get. Did you see how it was absorbing all those other rats? It must be kind of sucking them in, like, adding them. What are these things?”
He seemed to realize he was babbling, and he looked over at her. “What’s up? Hey, don’t worry. We got away, right? You okay?”
She shook her head. The terror she’d felt in the tunnels was nothing compared to this. That had been sudden and sharp; this was an all-consuming, freezing dread that swallowed her whole.
“What’s wrong?” he asked again, coming over to her.
She couldn’t even speak. She just held out her arm to him. The sleeve of her thin woolen top was torn.
He looked down at it, took her hand, and slid the sleeve up her arm.
There were three tiny parallel slashes down her forearm. The marks left by a rat’s claw.
In those little lines of red were little specks of silver.
Paul hurried down the corridor, his arm around Caitlyn, shepherding her quickly along. She was pale, her arm clutched to her body. Such a tiny little scratch, barely worth a Band-Aid … but they both knew what it meant.
The other pupils were busily running this way and that, salvaging anything useful they could find and piling it up in the foyer, near the foot of a wide staircase. Some were hammering more planks over the windows. He took her past them, holding her protectively, as if he could somehow make up for not protecting her before.
And all he could think was: This is my fault.
Kids looked up at them as they went rushing by. One of them noticed the way Caitlyn was holding her arm.
“Hey, what’s up with her?” he asked as they passed. Then, in a burst of intuition, “Did she get bit by something?”
Paul halted. “You shut the hell up,” he snarled. The kid, who was two or three years younger than him, quailed at the tone in his voice.
On they went. But everyone had heard it now. Unease spread in their wake, carried on whispers.
Infected.
There was only one man who might know what to do. Paul took Caitlyn up the stairs, along the corridors with their faint antiseptic smell. The white lines of the fluorescents reflected unsteadily from the polished floor. They pushed their way through the door into the technology lab where Mr. Sutton and Mark worked. Both were wearing goggles. Big plastic jars of chemicals and powders were stacked around them, along with a small pile of plastic tubes and a length of fuse. They were busy making flash bombs. Huge ones, by the look of it.
“Help her,” he said.
They dropped what they were doing and hurried over. Caitlyn was trembling and frightened out of her wits, so Paul pulled back her sleeve and showed them the scratches. Already, little silver threads had clogged up the wounds and had crept a fraction of an inch out onto the skin.
“There was something down in the tunnels,” Paul said.
“The tunnels?” Mr. Sutton said. “What were you doing down the —”
“It doesn’t matter!” Paul snapped impatiently. “I’ve shut up the entrance, it can’t get into the science block. But you need to do something about this. You have to!”
He heard the desperation in his voice. If he hadn’t gone down that hatch, she’d never have come with him, and she’d never have been scratched. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t made her come. He hadn’t even wanted her to come, particularly. But she’d followed him anyway, and now she was paying for the stupid risk he’d taken.
You knew it might be dangerous. You should have told the others, made a plan, whatever. But you had to do it all on your own, didn’t you?
And now he was hoping against hope that someone could undo the thing he’d done.
“Ideas, Mark?” said Mr. Sutton. He was calmly studying the wound. If he was distressed by this new turn of events, he wasn’t showing it.
“I don’t know. It looks too deep in to dig out. Amputate?”
Caitlyn’s eyes flicked to him in horror.
“Sorry, sorry,” said Mark, holding his hands up. “I just … I don’t know….”
“We can’t, anyway,” said Mr. Sutton. “We don’t have the expertise or the equipment to deal with post-operation procedures. Nice try, though. What else?”
“Um … the camera!” said Mark suddenly. He snatched up his camera and shoved it into Paul’s hands. “Keep taking photos of the wound. Every ten seconds or so. The flash will drain the battery pretty soon, but it ought to stop the infection from spreading.”
Paul did as he was told, thankful to be given a job. He didn’t even look through the viewfinder, just pointed it at Caitlyn’s outstretched arm and took the shot. The flash flickered, filling the room with a backwash of light.
“Sir!” said Mark as another idea struck him. “Do we have a transformer? Something we can run off the mains to reduce the current?”
“In the cupboard,” said Mr. Sutton, and hurried off to get it.
The door swung open and Adam came storming into the lab. He looked around the room, eyes narrowed, until his gaze fixed on Caitlyn.
“You gotta get rid of her,” he said, thrusting out a finger.
Caitlyn began to hitch in her breath, like she was sobbing, except that no tears came.
“Get lost, Adam,” said Paul. “This isn’t your business.”
“She’s infected! She’ll turn into one of them!”
“I said get lost,” Paul told him, his voice hardening. Anger swirled in his gut. All the fear and tension and guilt he felt came bubbling up in a tide of heat. He put down the camera and turned to face Adam.
Adam strode across the room, between the tables, coming toward them. “Give her here, then. I’ll chuck her out myself, if you won’t.”
Paul lunged at him. He grabbed Adam by the collar, propelling him backward. He’d meant to slam him up against a table, but Adam tripped on a stool, fell over it, and went down. Paul almost went over with him, but he just managed to keep his balance.
“Stop it, both of you!” roared Mr. Sutton from the other side of the room. They’d barely heard him raise his voice before today; this was the first time they’d ever heard him really angry. “There’s enough to deal with without your bloody swaggering! Behave like adults for a change!”
That cut them both. Adam struggled to his feet, kicking the stool away, puce with rage. Paul wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, his blood up. He so dearly wanted to land a fist in that stupid, ugly face, to try and beat some of the ignorance out of him. But Mr. Sutton’s words held him back.
“You keep your hands off her,” he warned Adam.
“Adam,” said Mr. Sutton, his voice calm now. “Leave us, please. You’re not helping.”
Adam glared at Mr. Sutton, then back at Paul. For a moment, Paul thought Adam was really going to go for him. Then he spat — actually spat — at Paul’s feet, before stalking away toward the door.
“Paul!” warned Mr. Sutton, in case Paul had any thoughts of avenging the insult. He needn’t have bothered: Paul didn’t intend to rise to it. He just watched Adam go, until he’d left the lab. The tension departed with him.
“Camera,” Mark reminded him quietly.
Paul swore under his breath. He picked up the camera and flashed it at Caitlyn’s wound again. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, his hands were shaking a little
.
“You could have handled that better, Paul,” said Mr. Sutton as he returned to the table with a transformer. It was a small gray metal oblong with black plastic knobs on it. It looked like the controller for the train set Paul’s dad kept in the attic, back before everything went bad. Mark immediately began unscrewing the front of it.
“This might need a bit of rejigging,” he said.
Paul stood there, feeling helpless, flashing the camera every so often. The silver in the wound hadn’t gotten any worse, thankfully. He knew Caitlyn was trying to catch his eye but he couldn’t look at her. He felt ashamed. Everyone else was doing what they could to fix this; Paul had only been good for getting them into trouble in the first place.
Outside, the Infected were screeching, their cries echoing across the campus. It sounded like they were calling to each other. Night had fallen. There was no trace of the sun anymore.
Paul wondered if he’d ever see it again. If any of them would.
Mark had cracked open the case of the transformer and run some wires out from it. Mr. Sutton plugged it in.
“What are you going to do?” Paul asked.
“I’m going to pass a current through the wound,” said Mark.
“You’re going to electrocute me?” Caitlyn cried.
“Unless you want us to slice out a chunk of your arm, it’s the best I can do,” said Mark, his voice an irritated whine, as if he was ticked off at her for being ungrateful. He was a smart kid, but he didn’t like his intelligence being questioned. “This virus, or whatever it is, it turns people into machines, right? Well, delicate circuits don’t much like to be fried with electricity, do they?”
“Neither do people!” sobbed Caitlyn.
“Look, the transformer here controls the voltage. It’ll be a weak shock. It’ll only hurt a little.”
“It’ll kill me!”
“It won’t kill you. Just trust me, alright?” he said impatiently.
Caitlyn looked around at the others, frightened. Finally her gaze found Paul, and this time he met it.
“I’ll be holding on to you. If he fries you, he’ll fry me, too.” He took her free hand and squeezed it. “We have to trust him,” he said.
“Not gonna fry anyone,” Mark muttered resentfully under his breath, but Caitlyn didn’t seem to hear him. She was looking only at Paul. Paul was puzzled by what he saw there. Gratitude? Or something else? Before he could work it out, she turned her head and gave a little nod to Mark.
“Okay,” she said.
Mark put the two wires on either side of the scratches. “Ready?” he asked.
She sucked in her breath. “Ready.”
Mark nodded at Mr. Sutton, and he flicked the plug switch. Caitlyn’s arm seized up, the muscles standing out against the skin. She shrieked. Paul clutched her hand hard, but none of the shock reached him: It was passing between the two wires, through the silver threads. They kept the current up for only a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity. Finally, Mr. Sutton flicked off the switch again. Caitlyn sagged, but she kept her feet. Her face was red, and she was sweating.
“One more,” said Mark with the detached manner of a doctor. “Better be sure.”
Caitlyn nodded again. This time she didn’t make a noise as the current flowed. When it ended, she gasped in a breath.
Her arm had gone bright red. Mr. Sutton came over and studied the wound with a magnifying glass. He watched it for an agonizing minute before he drew himself to his full height and said, “It’s not spreading anymore. It’s melted. I think we might have killed it.”
“Really?” Mark said in the tone of someone who hadn’t actually expected it to work.
“I think so.”
Caitlyn stared in disbelief at Mr. Sutton. It was only just beginning to dawn on her: She was going to be alright. Paul felt a giddy flood of relief, and he slapped Mark on the shoulder, making him jump.
“Thank you,” he said to Mark. “I don’t know what to say, but … y’know. Thank you. Sincerely. That was amazing.”
Mark grinned back, ear to ear. It was a goofy sort of grin — he was an odd-looking kid — but it was the first time Paul could remember ever seeing him smile.
“No problem,” he said. “Anytime.”
Caitlyn burst into tears.
Paul found Erika on the roof.
She was at the northern edge of the science block, leaning against the waist-high railings, her back to him. Her parka was buttoned up against the night chill, and her long blonde hair blew around her shoulders restlessly. She didn’t turn as he emerged through the roof access door. Either she hadn’t heard him, or she didn’t care.
Paul headed over to the opposite side, and poked his head through the railings. Below him, Mr. Sutton’s upper body was visible, sticking out of a second-story window. The teacher twisted awkwardly so he could look up.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Throw it,” said Paul.
It took a few tries before Paul caught the end of the thin cable. Each time he missed, Mr. Sutton had to duck inside as it fell back toward him. When Paul finally grabbed it, he pulled it back through the railings and began walking across the roof toward the center. Mr. Sutton played out the slack, and kept doing so until Paul had made a little coiled heap.
“That’s enough!” Paul shouted, and the cable stopped coming.
He scanned the roof, but there was nothing to fix the cable to that would get it high enough to make a decent antenna for the receiver. He’d have to come back and attach a board to the side of the roof access door, and run the cable up that.
He supposed he ought to head back and get some tools, but his eye was drawn to Erika instead. She looked so alone over there. A girl like that, everyone wanted to be around her. It was somehow wrong to see her on her own.
She didn’t look at him as he joined her at the barrier. She was looking north, over the flat roof of the sports hall. The moon and stars had been extinguished by the lid of cloud that lay over the valley. The only light came from below, the eerie electric-yellow glow of the campus at night, which threw mysterious shadows across the Nordic planes of her face.
Content to share the silence, Paul watched the campus. To their left, his view was blocked by the flank of the school building, rising like a crag. There were only a dozen or so Infected in sight nearby, prowling across the lawns. He wondered where the rest were. How many were there, in all? A hundred? Two hundred? Difficult to say. He had no idea how many students had stayed at the academy this weekend, how many were hiding or how many were infected. He couldn’t detect any sign of life in the windows of the nearby buildings. The campus had gone disturbingly quiet.
He thought about what he’d seen down in the tunnels. That rat had been absorbing the other rats, assimilating them, remaking itself into something bigger. He remembered the rats he’d seen in the basement, with the janitor. They’d had their tails all twined together. The newly infected acted like zombies, but those rats had been smart enough to chew through a phone cable. Had they intended to cut them off, to prevent anyone from calling for help? That was a disturbing thought.
Paul wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but the Infected seemed to operate best in groups. The more of them there were, the more capable they seemed. And there were more of them all the time.
His thoughts were interrupted by the snick of a lighter. Erika was cradling a flame in a cupped hand, drawing on a cigarette. She blew out smoke and glanced over at him, as if noticing him for the first time. She took the cigarette from her mouth and offered it.
Paul didn’t even like cigarettes, but he wasn’t about to turn down an offer like that. It was the closest she’d gotten to being friendly since they’d met. There was a certain rueful camaraderie in it; two doomed soldiers in a trench, sharing what comforts they had.
“Didn’t know you smoked,” he said as he passed it back.
“No one does,” she said. “And no one was ever supposed to find out. Doesn’t seem to matter much now
, though, does it?”
“Those things’ll kill you,” he said with a grin.
She snorted a little laugh, but her smile lasted only a moment before it faded, and she was maudlin again. “You know what’s the worst thing?” she said. “The waste. There are kids down there who’ve been studying since they were old enough to think. Their whole lives, they did what they were told. Work hard, get good grades, all so you can go to university, get a degree, get a career, become a productive member of society. It all seems to pile on you so fast, you don’t even get a chance to think, Is this what I want? Is this what I need?” She flicked her ash over the railing and watched it come apart in the breeze as it tumbled earthward. “Now look at them. I bet that A in geography will come in handy next time they’re trying to rip somebody’s face off.”
Her voice wobbled as she reached the end of the sentence. She took another hard drag on the cigarette and passed it back to Paul.
“Hey, come on,” said Paul as he took it. “We’ll get out of this. It’s not the end of the world.”
“The end of the world is exactly what it is,” she snapped.
Paul sucked on the cigarette, offered it back, and when she declined, he sent it spinning away into the night. His mouth tasted like a fireplace and his throat hurt, but his face was warm and his head felt strangely light from the nicotine.
“I mean, it can’t have started here,” Erika said, brushing her hair away from her face. “It must have come from outside. We’ve seen beetles, rats, dogs … people. So how long before it infects the birds?”
“Maybe it won’t,” said Paul. “Maybe they’ll be too heavy to fly, being metal and all.”
“Fish, then. There’s a river that runs right by the wall that goes all the way out to sea.” She looked at him with a dull kind of acceptance in her eyes. “This isn’t going to go away. This isn’t something they can contain. By the time the government works out what’s happening, it’ll be out of their reach. You could quarantine the whole of the British Isles and it wouldn’t make any difference.”