“Right,” said Johnny, and turned to go.
Paul closed his eyes in relief. If Johnny had noticed that Paul had avoided answering his question about Mr. Sutton, he didn’t show it. And that was good. Right now he needed everyone busy, everyone involved with a task. That way, they might not notice Mr. Sutton wasn’t around. He’d have to tell them the teacher was dead eventually, but he wanted to put it off for as long as he could. Hope was all they had at the moment.
Johnny stopped in the corridor, as if struck by a thought. He looked back over his shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “You might not have heard. You know that girl who got scratched? Caitlyn something?”
Paul felt his stomach sink. “What about her?”
Adam had locked her up in the staff room.
Paul hurried down the corridors, face flushed, skin hot. The world seemed to be closing in on him, pressing on his chest so it was hard to breathe, reducing his vision to a narrow tunnel. He didn’t know if he was furious or grief-stricken or both. He’d barely had time to register his own brush with death, and the loss of Mr. Sutton. Now there was this. The shocked numbness he felt a few moments ago had been swept aside by the news that Caitlyn was still infected.
His fault. His responsibility.
And Adam! Adam had suspected, the way he suspected everyone. He’d waited till Paul was out of the way, and then he’d gone after her.
How had he done it? Paul would bet money he hadn’t been gentle. Did he threaten her, drag her away down the corridor? Did he tie her hands? He thought of Caitlyn, scared and crying, and he wanted to drive his fist into Adam’s stupid ignorant face and beat him until … until …
Fury swamped him then, making him light-headed. He slammed himself up against the side of the corridor, drew his hand back into a fist, ready to smash his knuckles into the cold wall. He wanted to hit something, anything, everything. A cry of inarticulate rage forced its way out past gritted teeth.
I killed her. I led her down into that basement. I didn’t make her follow, but some part of me knew she would. I led her down, and she got infected, and all because I wouldn’t wait for the others. Because I wanted to do it all myself.
Something moved: a scuff of shoe on linoleum, a gasp of breath. He turned his head and saw an eleven-year-old boy in an oversize raincoat, standing transfixed and terrified in the doorway of a nearby classroom. It took Paul a moment to realize what he was frightened of.
Me. He’s frightened of me.
The rage drained out of him. He took in a long, shaky breath and let it out. Then he unclenched his fist and stood away from the wall.
The kid was still staring at him, wide-eyed. Paul opened his mouth to say something, to reassure him that he hadn’t gone psycho. But the boy turned tail and ran, the frantic clatter of his shoes echoing away up the corridor.
Paul stood there, amazed by the kid’s reaction. Frightened of him? Ridiculous. What, did that kid really think Paul was going to get violent? That was the kind of thing that Adam would do. And he wasn’t like Adam. He wasn’t anything like Adam.
Are you sure?
Paul caught himself. He remembered fighting with Adam down at the lake, and later when they were trying to treat Caitlyn’s infection. Both had been fights he himself started. He recalled his surly attitude with Mr. Sutton, when Mr. Sutton had asked whether he’d told anyone about his parents. He’d ignored Mr. Harrison’s instructions to stay in his dorm, and because of that, Mr. Harrison had followed him out into the rain and got clawed by the same dog that later took Mr. Sutton. He’d gone blundering down into the tunnels without thinking, and Caitlyn had paid the price for that.
All of those sounded like just the kind of things Adam would do.
He’d always thought of himself as better than Adam, smarter, more capable. But his efforts to do everything on his own had just gotten people hurt. Adam might have had a clumsy way of doing things, but he’d done a lot less harm than Paul since the Infected first appeared. He might be a loudmouthed bully, but he’d been out there working tirelessly to defend everybody this whole time, and he was certainly strong and brave.
Adam hadn’t changed. The world had changed. That morning he was a good-for-nothing thug; by evening he was something else. He didn’t fit into the old world, but he fit the new one. Perhaps better than Paul did.
You know what? You’re no better than him. And Mr. Sutton was right: He’s all you’ve got left. Him and Mark and Erika. You might not like it, but there it is. And we all need each other now.
Another confrontation with Adam was the last thing he wanted at that moment, but it needed to be done. He took a few deep, steady breaths. Then he pushed his hair back from his face, crushed all the grief and anger way down inside him, and composed himself.
Time to do this. And this time, I’m gonna do it right.
Adam was waiting for him.
He stood guard before the staff room door, radiator pipe clutched in one meaty hand. Paul could see he was geared up for a fight. His small eyes narrowed and his shoulders tensed the moment he caught sight of Paul approaching.
Of course he expects a fight. That’s all anybody ever gives him. The ones who aren’t afraid of him, anyway.
“Stay back. You ain’t letting her out,” said Adam, pointing the pipe at him.
Paul held up his hands. “I just want to talk to her.”
“Don’t think so.” Adam smirked. He held up a ring of keys. “Door stays locked.”
Paul felt anger rise in him again, boiling up like acid in his stomach. Didn’t Adam realize that his aggressive manner made others aggressive in response? He fought to hold it down.
“Listen,” he said. “I don’t want to let her out. I just want to say sorry to her, or … I don’t know, something.” He squeezed his eyes shut. It was almost physically painful to say the words he needed to, but he forced them out anyway. “Came to apologize to you, too. I’ve been acting like a … well, you know. We haven’t exactly seen eye to eye, have we?”
Adam didn’t say anything to that. He just watched him, suspecting a trick.
“You did the right thing,” Paul said, motioning toward the staff room door. Even if you did it in the wrong way, even if you probably scared her half to death. “None of us saw what was happening. Me … I just wanted to believe she was okay. We all wanted that. So we didn’t check on her, we just figured …” He shrugged. “But she’s infected. You spotted it. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t?”
Adam seemed confused. He wasn’t used to people being reasonable with him, or paying him compliments. “It’s too dangerous having her out with the others,” he said. “I mean, what if she turned suddenly? Can’t keep an eye on her every second. What if she scratched someone, like by accident or something?”
“Right,” said Paul. “Exactly.”
“It’s like in the movies, you know?” said Adam. “Someone gets infected, like a zombie or whatever, and everyone knows they’re gonna change, but they have to wait until just the moment they turn before they … you know … kill ’em.”
“Which we’re not gonna do to Caitlyn,” Paul said, chilled.
“Not as long as she stays in there,” Adam said offhandedly. “Anyway, you know how it is. They leave it till the last moment, then suddenly the infected one turns zombie and bites someone else, and then you’ve got two dead people instead of one.”
“This isn’t like the movies …,” Paul said, but it came out too quietly and Adam didn’t hear him.
“Problem in them films is that everyone’s too nice. Times like this … this is when being nice is being stupid.”
Paul felt like he ought to disagree, but when he tried, he found that he couldn’t. “Reckon that’s true,” he said. “This is life or death. Nice doesn’t come into it.”
Adam gave him a grudging nod. All the hostility had gone out of him. Is this all it took, all along? Paul thought. He just wanted someone to treat him like he wasn’t an idiot?
There was an
awkward moment when neither knew exactly how to proceed. Then Adam waved at him vaguely and said, “You get the people off the chopper?”
“Yeah.”
“What about Sutton?”
Paul’s expression told him everything he needed to know. Adam tutted.
“Liked him,” Adam said regretfully. He scratched the back of his neck and sized up Paul. “He left you in charge, right?”
Paul thought for a moment. Technically Mr. Sutton never actually said that, but Paul had the sense that the role was being offered to him. That Adam had decided not to oppose it. Maybe he liked to be the enforcer more than he liked to be in charge. Or maybe he just didn’t feel the need to fight Paul on everything anymore.
“Yeah,” Paul said. It was a small lie, but it was simpler that way. “You okay with that?”
Adam shrugged. “You act like an arsehole, I’ll bloody deck you.”
“I’ll do what I can. No promises, though.”
Adam thumbed at the door. “You want to talk to her?”
“I should.”
“I can go in with you if you want. Make sure she doesn’t try anything.”
Paul shook his head. “I’ll talk through the door.”
“I’ll get out of your way, then,” said Adam. “You want the keys in case?”
“Keep ’em,” he said. “I might be tempted to let her out otherwise.”
Adam nodded and pocketed them. “Sometimes being nice is being stupid,” he said again.
“Why don’t you go find Mark and the people we brought over from the chopper? See what they’re up to. I’ll be with you in a few minutes. Then we can find out if that pair were worth saving.”
“Gotcha,” said Adam. He gave Paul a comradely slap on the arm on his way by, then went walking off up the corridor, swinging the length of radiator pipe loosely in his hand. Paul watched him go.
What do you know, thought Paul. I think I just made a friend.
Then he turned back to the staff room door, and whatever was behind it.
“… don’t know what to do. He says he loves me, but he …”
“… stock markets had rallied by end of closing …”
“… rid of persistent animal smells with Carpet-Rite! …”
Mark moved the pencil another fraction along the razor blade, tuning his improvised radio. He found a late-night chat show.
“It’s like it isn’t happening,” he said, his voice heavy with despair.
“Oh, it’s happening,” Erika said. She wiped her reddened eyes and stared angrily across the lab, where the scientist and the pilot sat murmuring to each other. “And they know all about it.”
The scientist looked up at her momentarily, then resumed his conversation.
Erika brushed her hair back behind her ear, sniffed, and straightened. It annoyed her that she was crying; it made her anger less effective. Mr. Sutton had died for these two. Kind Mr. Sutton, replaced by two strangers who muttered between themselves, plotting. They were adults, used to being in charge. They didn’t answer to kids.
She could tell they knew about the Infected. By their secrecy, she could tell. And that meant they were part of what was happening to Caitlyn.
New tears threatened at the thought. Even after the cruel things Caitlyn had said to her, Erika couldn’t throw away their friendship. She had thought they were friends, even if Caitlyn hadn’t. And anyway, it was just something the other girl had said when she was upset. Just words, pitched to hurt. She didn’t mean them.
Probably.
Erika had gone to see Caitlyn after she found out what had happened. But when Caitlyn had heard her arguing with Adam outside the staff room door, she shrieked at Erika to go away.
It wasn’t what she said that made Erika leave. It was the sound of her voice. The thin, buzzing sound, like an overloaded microphone, barely detectable beneath the words. The machine voice of the Infected.
Erika had left then, overcome with horror. She dared not imagine what Caitlyn was going through behind that door, what transformations were occurring, but her mind kept returning to it like a tongue probing at a painful tooth.
Caitlyn. Oh, Caitlyn.
Erika was disgusted with herself. Where was her strength now? Where was the fortitude she’d promised? She’d tried to prove herself, to make herself useful, but what good had she done? Mark had given them weapons and inventions. Paul had saved them all when the Infected attacked the science block. Even Adam, standing silently in the corner, had shown more value than her.
She’d told herself that she was more than just a pretty face and a set of grades. But she hadn’t done a thing to justify it yet.
The door opened and Paul came in. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, head hung. He looked older than his years; she saw the weariness in him.
“How is she?” Erika asked.
“She wouldn’t speak to me,” Paul said quietly. “She just cried.”
Erika felt her throat tighten up again. She forced down the tears. No more crying.
Paul raised his head and surveyed the room. “Only we six know that Mr. Sutton is dead. I’d like to keep it that way.”
Mark looked down hard at the radio, and nodded. Mr. Sutton’s death had shaken him. Of all of them, he was the one who knew the teacher best.
Paul walked over to them. Adam fell into step with him. Mark sat dejectedly fiddling with the radio. Erika was perched on the edge of the desk.
She noticed how they gathered together, whether consciously or unconsciously. The four students on one side of the lab. The adults on the other. Wariness and distrust between them.
Us against them, she thought. Just like always.
“I think it’s time you told us what you were doing flying a helicopter down the valley in the middle of the night,” Paul told them.
Carson looked expectantly at Radley. Radley adjusted his glasses and coughed. After a moment, Carson gave the scientist a little shove. “If you ain’t gonna tell them, I will,” he said.
Radley threw up his hands in despair. “We came from the weather station!” he said.
“It ain’t no weather station,” Carson snarled. Radley glared at him. “What?” said Carson. “You think the Official Secrets Act is gonna help us now?”
“I knew it,” Erika said. “You’re part of this, aren’t you?”
“Whatever you’ve got, you need to tell us,” said Paul firmly. “We’re all in this together now. If we want to have any hope of getting out of here —”
“There is no hope!” Radley cried. He was up on his feet now, huffing and puffing round the lab. “It’s everywhere!”
His words fell into silence.
“What’s everywhere?” said Paul.
“Carson and I, we work for a company called Loriston Biotech,” Radley told them. “You won’t have heard of us. We’re one of several companies contracted by the Ministry of Defence to research certain technologies that the public are better off not knowing about. Public companies have to answer to ethics committees and all that palaver. A company like Loriston Biotech doesn’t answer to anyone.”
“And what were you making?” Paul prompted.
“Weapons,” said Radley. “Biological weapons.”
That hung in the air between them for a time.
“Have any of you ever heard of nanomachines?” Radley asked.
“I have,” said Mark, but he seemed too dejected to elaborate.
“In layman’s terms, nanomachines are minuscule robots, smaller than you can see. But as small as they are, they can be programmed to do miraculous things. They can seek out a cancer in the body and destroy it. They can detect wounds and heal them at an incredible rate. Some of us dreamed of a day when you could inject a patient with a serum full of nanomachines and they would repair internal injuries without the need for surgery, or rebuild an eye, or fix a damaged brain. That’s what they were meant to be used for.
“But the Ministry of Defence wanted a weapon, and Loriston Biotec
h wanted to give them one. It was meant to be a plague, a nanoplague, something we could drop on an enemy city and watch as the population turned against itself. We crossed the rabies virus with the nanomachines, made it more robust, more targeted. Instead of days, it took just minutes to turn a man into a maniac. And after twelve hours, once they’d bitten or killed everyone nearby, the infected would just drop dead. That was the idea.”
“The Infected,” said Adam. “That’s what we call ’em, too.”
Erika was glaring at Radley, her eyes full of scorn. “Jesus,” she breathed. “You people.”
Radley ignored her. “The nanos were designed to be able to communicate with each other, so as to coordinate the invasion of a body. An individual nanomachine is about as smart as a rock. A few million of them, all networked and acting together, they’re smart enough to make decisions. A few billion, they’re maybe as clever as a housefly. A few trillion …”
Mark looked up from his radio. “You crossed them with a virus and they replicated like a virus.”
Radley adjusted his glasses. Carson was looking down at the floor, past his newly splinted ankle, face scrunched up, shaking his head in disgust. The pilot was no friend to the scientist either, it seemed.
“We didn’t know what we had at first,” said Radley. “You see, the nanos aren’t capable of building a networked intelligence from scratch; it’s just too complex. They need a framework, which they then take over gradually. A brain. It wasn’t till we injected it into rabbits that we realized what the nanos could do.
“At first they simply fought each other, like we wanted. Killing or infecting the others. But the survivors didn’t die like they were supposed to. The nanos kept them alive instead. So we waited and watched to see what would happen. And the nanos began to evolve.”
The eager glimmer in his eye made Erika angry again. “And you didn’t think to stop it then?”
“We thought we were safe!” he snapped. “We’d built in a failsafe, a weak spot. We made them light-sensitive. Sudden bright light made the nanos overload, shut down the network, paralyzed them completely. We had strobe lights set up to take them out if it got out of hand.”