The rage had come then. The rage that filled her with an overwhelming urge to bite and scratch and kill, made her dizzy with bloodlust. It filled her, tormented her, twisted her thoughts to murder.
Erika. Erika. Erika.
And she went out to find her.
“Caitlyn,” Erika said, her voice trembling a little. “Caitlyn, don’t.”
But the thing that looked like Caitlyn didn’t seem to hear her. She came closer, slowly, creeping toward her like a predator. There was an animal savagery on her face, a wild hate in her eye.
Erika backed away, but Caitlyn kept on coming.
“Hey!” Carson called. He was standing to the side, propping himself up with one hand on the raised benches, hopping backward on his good leg. In his other hand was the fire extinguisher. “Hey! Not her! Me!”
Caitlyn paid no attention. It was like he wasn’t even there.
Erika’s mind raced. She wants to kill me. She’s going to try and kill me. If she so much as scratches me, I’ll turn into one of them.
The flash bomb. It was the only weapon she had. She dared not turn to look at it, for fear of giving her plan away, but she knew where it lay. Near the edge of the pool. Not far, but too far to get to before Caitlyn was upon her. The cigarette lighter was still clutched in her hand. What if it didn’t light the first time? What if the fuse of the flash bomb was wet? What if, what if?
“Hey, you ugly heap of scrap! Here!”
At the word ugly, Caitlyn’s head snapped around to face the pilot. She glared at him balefully, a snarl on her face. Carson blanched and hopped back another step.
The moment Caitlyn’s attention was drawn away, Erika leaped for the flash bomb. Caitlyn’s head snapped back toward her, and she screeched. But Erika had already gone down to her knees, scooping the flash bomb up from the tiles, bringing the lighter up to the fuse with her other hand.
Snik!
The flame caught the first time, the fuse fizzed into life, and Caitlyn sprang at her with a howl. Erika threw herself sideways, trying to dodge. She only half managed it, and was off-balance when Caitlyn caught her a glancing blow with her shoulder. She staggered and crashed painfully into the bleachers that faced the pool. The flash bomb was knocked from her hand and skittered away. Caitlyn skidded, turned, and came at Erika again, not giving her even a moment to recover. Erika saw her coming, but by then it was too late to do anything about it. She braced herself and —
An explosive hiss sounded by her ear. Caitlyn screeched as Carson unleashed the fire extinguisher in her face, a pressurized blast of carbon dioxide that sent her flailing back. In moments they were all consumed by a cloud of white gas that swelled to surround them. By the time Carson let his hand off the trigger, Erika could barely see.
She cast around frantically, searching through the fog. Where was Caitlyn? Where was the flash bomb, its fuse still burning? But Carson grabbed her arm and tugged her, and she went with him, heading for the door on the far side of the swim hall. The cloud was dissipating fast, fading into the moonlit dark, but when it disappeared they saw that Caitlyn had disappeared with it. As they fled, they looked frantically this way and that, desperate to catch sight of her before she came at them again.
They didn’t look the right way.
Caitlyn leaped off the top tier of the bleachers, and dropped, catlike, in front of them. Erika had time only to scream as Caitlyn swung a clawed metal hand at her face.
BANG! The world went white again, but this time it was the dazzling white of the flash bomb. For an instant, Erika was blind. She blinked frantically to clear her eyes, crushed them closed, opened them again.
Caitlyn was frozen in front of her, jaws agape, sharp fingers inches from Erika’s face.
Then there was a loud ring of metal as Carson swung the fire extinguisher into Caitlyn’s ribs with all his might, swatting her aside. She smashed limply into the bleachers. Erika screamed again, a small scream, because there was still enough of Caitlyn in that creature to make her balk at hurting her.
Carson had no such attachment. He slung his arm over Erika’s shoulder and propelled her onward toward the exit. They ran-hopped-dragged themselves as fast as they could, the door coming closer and closer until they shoved it open and were through, into the corridor, and —
They were suddenly thrown forward as Caitlyn leaped through the open door and smashed into Carson from behind. Shoved across the corridor, they collided with the far wall. Carson hit headfirst, and went limp. Erika staggered away, barely keeping her feet as the weight of Carson slid off her. She whirled, trying to find Caitlyn; but Caitlyn found her instead. Erika was seized by the throat and slammed against the wall hard enough to drive the breath from her body.
She hung there, gasping, feet scrabbling uselessly against the floor. She couldn’t get any air into her lungs. The impact had winded her, and Caitlyn’s metal hand was around her neck, her long, sharp fingers driven into the wall on either side. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, and what if Caitlyn had scratched her, what if she’d made even the tiniest scratch?
Caitlyn brought her face closer to Erika’s. In the corridor it was almost pitch-dark, but the moonlight from the swim hall limned her Infected features. Erika’s vision blurred with tears of fright. This mechanical parody, this vile fusion of metal and flesh, this patchwork monster — she couldn’t bear to look at it, but she couldn’t turn away.
Carson was not stirring. He was out cold, or worse. There was only Erika and Caitlyn. The world had shrunk to the distance between their faces.
Caitlyn bared her teeth.
“Caitlyn,” Erika tried to say, but she still couldn’t draw in the air, and it just came out as a whooping sound. “Caitlyn.”
Caitlyn hissed, tilting her head slowly from side to side as if examining every angle of Erika’s face. So this is you. You’re not much.
Erika tried again, and this time the breath came, and she sucked it in and screamed, “Caitlyn! It’s Erika! I’m your friend!”
The creature’s human eye tightened a little, the brow twitched. Puzzlement. Recognition, perhaps.
“Caitlyn!” Erika panted desperately. “You remember? You remember how we used to hang out at breaktime? You remember how I’d always pick you for my team at netball? When you, me, and Soraya used to go into town and laugh ourselves sick?”
And there was something in Caitlyn’s face now, she saw it. Something like regret. Whatever this creature was, there was still some of Caitlyn in there.
“Please,” Erika begged through her tears. “Please, I’m your friend. I was always your friend, no matter what you thought of me.” She swallowed. “What did I ever do to make you hate me so much?”
Caitlyn’s face fell. Her mottled gaze flicked from one of Erika’s eyes to the other, as if trying to see inside her head. And then the eye began to swim, and a single tear spilled free from the lid, and raced down her cheek.
“Caitlyn …,” Erika whispered.
Then the hand was gone from her throat, wrenched violently from the wall. There was a fast movement in the darkness, and Caitlyn crashed through the swing doors, back into the swim hall, and was gone.
Erika stood dazed in the silence that was left in her wake. Automatically, her fingers went to her throat, searching for blood, a scratch, a graze even.
Nothing. There was nothing. The skin was unbroken. She was not infected.
She slid down the wall and hugged her knees, and began to cry like she’d never cried before.
Paul pushed open the door to the basement, and saw only darkness inside.
Last time he’d been through here, the stairs down had been brightly lit. Now, the moonlight seemed to stop at the threshold, showing nothing of what was within.
From below, he heard a faint screech, muffled and made distant by the stone.
He felt in his satchel. His fingers found a flash bomb, a Molotov cocktail, a lighter, and a flashlight. They were his only weapons apart from the iron bar in his hand.
What are you doing, Paul? he asked himself. You don’t need to go down there.
He heard the clank-clank-clank again, resonating through the pipes. Adam’s cry for help. SOS. Paul thought about clanking back, but he didn’t dare. If it wasn’t Adam making those sounds, he didn’t want to warn them he was coming.
He took a deep breath, let it out, and headed down.
The dark closed in around him. The only sound now was the scuff of his shoes on the steps, too loud in his ears. He knew he couldn’t use his flashlight in case the Infected saw its glow. Instead, he was forced to go by feel and memory. But memory brought up more than he wanted.
What if the janitor’s still down here somewhere?
Paul felt a fresh chill run through him at the thought. Was the janitor still walking these corridors, or had he found his way out through the tunnels? And along with the janitor and the rats, it was hard not to think about Billy McCarthy, the boy who’d died down here. The janitor had told him about Billy, trying to give him a fright. At the time it had been a bit of fun at Paul’s expense, and Paul had scoffed at it. But in the dark, Paul’s imagination threw up visions of Billy’s ghost. Would he be down here, his eyes glittering from his hiding place in the air ducts, waiting to reach out a hand and snatch him as he passed? Paul had to stop and take more deep breaths to calm himself. The urge to turn on the flashlight was almost overwhelming.
It’s just a story, that’s all. A stupid school legend. There are worse things to worry about than ghosts.
Once he had himself under control again, he headed to the bottom of the stairs, feeling his way down, step by uncertain step. His hand found the corner of a corridor; it led both ways, he remembered. He craned his head out, hoping to see something he could fixate on, but the small orange guide lights had gone out when the electricity had died. How long was the corridor, anyway? Hard to say. In this total blackness, he’d lost his sense of where things were.
You have to risk it, he told himself. He took out his flashlight, muffled the end with his hand, and turned it on. His palm glowed pink-red and white where the light shone into it. In the faint glow that spilled out, he could see.
Empty. Bare brick walls, plastic warning signs, thick pipes along the wall. It seemed smaller and narrower than he’d pictured, less threatening somehow.
Once Paul had the dimensions fixed in his mind, he switched off the light again. In the dark, he made his way down the corridor, his fingertips brushing over rough brick and smooth doors that led to rooms he’d never been to. He walked to the corner, looked around, listened.
Another shriek, the cry of one of the Infected, echoing through the basement maze. But it didn’t sound like it was nearby. He listened again, and when there was no further sound he dared his light once more. Once he’d glimpsed the corridor, he turned it off again and crept forward.
In this manner Paul made his way deeper into the basement. Occasionally he heard the steady clank-clank-clank ringing through the pipes, but it was hard to tell where it was coming from. He wondered if the Infected had realized what it was, if they’d understood that this rhythmic noise was being made by a human. They’d shown animal cunning and problem-solving abilities, but he hoped they weren’t capable of that kind of subtlety.
Assuming it wasn’t the Infected making the noise themselves, of course.
With every step his journey seemed more hopeless. He had no idea where Adam was, and searching in the dark was virtually impossible. And yet, the knowledge that Adam could be nearby, just around the next corner, kept Paul going on.
And then, gradually, he became aware that he could see. Only a little, only the vaguest of outlines, but he could see. And that meant light was coming from somewhere. Paul stopped still and let his eyes adjust for a moment. In the gloom, he could just about make out a grate propped up against the wall, and a large, dark rectangular gap in the wall next to it.
“Billy,” the janitor had said, “I keep fixing it; he keeps taking it off.”
The air duct without a grate. Paul knew where he was now. This was where the janitor had begun winding him up about the ghost.
He headed onward, toward the source of the light. It was a faint blue glow, coming from around the corner. He crept up and looked.
The corridor beyond was empty, but from behind one of the doors, a cold blue light shone. The door was ajar, and the illumination leaked out through the gap between the door and the jamb. It was faint, but to Paul’s thirsty eyes it seemed bright in the darkness.
He knew that door. He remembered the janitor standing there, gleefully recounting the story of Billy McCarthy’s death. He remembered the old copper sign it bore: DANGER.
“Can’t go in there. That’s the boiler room. Behind that door is the whole heating system for the entire building. Great big Victorian gas-fired monster, takes up half the basement, pretty much.”
There came a great groaning, clashing sound from within, as if a junk heap had suddenly shifted and part of it had collapsed. Then silence, but for half-imagined noises of movement on the edge of his hearing.
Danger or not, Paul had to find out what was going on in there. He stepped out into the corridor.
Something screeched, terrifyingly close. He ran back into cover an instant before one of the Infected turned into the corridor at the far end. It walked awkwardly on its hands and feet, its limbs skinny and its body bulbous, like a spider. Six eyes shone from a tiny round head, above a fringe of waving metal filaments that took the place of its mouth.
Paul drew himself back behind the corner, horrified. The more time passed, the more the Infected changed, and the less human they were. It was like the nanomachines were experimenting with their hosts, trying different shapes to see what worked. That thing was a mistake, an abomination: He wanted to burn it with a Molotov cocktail on principle.
But the Infected was making its wobbling way up the corridor, and he had to retreat. He headed back into the dark as fast as he could, but he’d barely gone twenty yards when he heard another noise. The scuffing of footsteps. Slow, shambling footsteps, coming toward him from the other direction.
Panic seized him. He couldn’t go back, and he couldn’t go forward. He was trapped, and in seconds one of the Infected would come around the corner and see him. He tried the door next to him, and found it locked.
Don’t let them find me, he thought. Don’t let them find me. He fumbled in his satchel, but all his weapons seemed so inadequate now. Maybe if he lit a flash bomb he could try and run for it, maybe, but —
Something grabbed his leg. There was the soft scraping of a grate.
Billy McCarthy!
Paul looked down in terror, and just for a moment he saw two black eyes shining balefully in the dark, the face of a boy staring up at him from the open air duct. His heart leaped into his throat.
But there was nobody there. His trouser leg had snagged on the edge of the grate that was propped against the wall. And now he saw the way out, Billy McCarthy’s way, and ghost or not, it was better than the alternative. Paul quickly unhooked his trouser leg from the grate, crouched down, and scrambled into the air duct. Once inside, he held his breath and went still.
Footsteps in the corridor. The duct was uncomfortably cramped, but he could just about turn his head to see behind him. Warped metal legs passed before the duct entrance. Then another set of legs went by in the other direction, feet dragging. In the blue light, Paul saw janitor overalls.
He let out his breath quietly, then looked ahead. All that lay before him was darkness.
He swallowed down his fear and began to crawl.
Blind and confined, Paul forged onward, shuffling on his knees and feeling ahead with his hands. The metal sides of the duct bumped against his shoulders and back. He was not claustrophobic, but he was scared nonetheless. He couldn’t forget what he’d seen a moment ago, when he’d glimpsed the boy’s face looking up at him.
You didn’t see anything. You imagined it. You’re frightened and it
was dark and you imagined it.
But as he groped his way forward, he dreaded the moment when his hand would touch something other than metal. The cold flesh of a dead boy, eyes glittering, teeth bared.
Finally, when he’d turned a corner and then another, he could bear it no longer. He muffled the flashlight with his hand and prepared to turn it on.
And what if, when he did, the boy was there, crouching in the duct, mere inches from his face?
You. Didn’t. See. Anything.
He turned on the light. The empty expanse of the air duct stretched away before him. He let out a long, shaky breath.
Adam, you better be grateful when I find you, he thought.
He crawled along the duct until he came to a junction that split three ways. Choosing a direction at random, he set off down it.
Clank-clank-clank.
He stopped. Listened.
Clank … clank … clank …
“Other way,” he muttered to himself.
Clank-clank-clank.
He backed up to the junction and headed toward the sound. It was easier in the ducts to pinpoint the noise. Whenever he came to a junction he stopped and waited for Adam to send out his SOS again. Progress was slow, but at last it felt like progress. He was getting closer.
Paul shuffled around a corner and saw light up ahead. The glow of a flashlight. Quickly he turned off his own light.
Clank-clank-clank.
Much louder now. He crawled up to the next corner and saw a short length of duct that led to a sturdy iron grate at the end. The light was coming from the room beyond. He slid toward it on his belly, quiet as he could, and looked through.
Clank … clank … clank …
And there, in a small room with walls of bare brick and a metal door, was Adam. He was grubby and sweaty and disheveled, kneeling in the glow of a flashlight that lay on the floor. With the length of radiator pipe that he carried as a weapon, he was whacking at another, bigger pipe that ran through the room along the base of the wall before disappearing into the ceiling.