Nurse Wan fumbled uncertainly with the keys. Paul watched as if in a dream, feeling powerless to intervene.
She unlocked the door and stepped back to let Mr. Sutton take the lead. He ushered Mark and Paul back against the wall and put his hand on the handle.
“Malcolm? We’re coming in, alright?” he called.
He waited for a response. There was none.
“You shouldn’t …,” Paul said quietly. Mr. Sutton pushed the door open anyway.
The room beyond was dark. The fluorescent light had been smashed. The only illumination was the orange glow from the campus lights, seeping through the slats of the venetian blind.
“Malcolm?” Mr. Sutton called. He stepped into the room, hands raised warily. Nurse Wan stayed close to him, ready to help. They peered into the darkness. Inside, there was silence, only the hiss and splatter of rain on glass.
Behind them, the door slammed shut.
Chaos erupted inside. The furious roar of Mr. Harrison, a raw-throated scream from Nurse Wan, Mr. Sutton shouting, the crash of toppling furniture. Paul and Mark exchanged a terrified glance. Neither of them knew what to do. Neither of them did anything.
And then, seconds later, the door was wrenched open, with Mr. Sutton on the other side. He staggered backward, still looking into the room. Nurse Wan was screaming, screaming, screaming. The light from the corridor fell on a writhing, shadowy shape on the floor. Paul stared at it, horrified. It didn’t look like a person.
It wasn’t. It was two people. Mr. Harrison was on top of Nurse Wan, who was thrashing wildly beneath him. He had his head bent down close to her throat. Then there was a wet tearing sound, and Mr. Harrison’s head came up, and Nurse Wan went suddenly rigid. Her legs juddered, heels tapping spasmodically against the floor.
The light from the doorway fell across Mr. Harrison’s face then. At least, Paul thought it was Mr. Harrison.
Half his face was silver. Thin metal tendrils slid in and out of his skin, spreading up one side of his neck from beneath his shirt collar. They’d encircled his eye socket and crept across the bridge of his nose. The surface of his right eye was mottled with patches of the same color. His mouth and chin were red with blood; a flap of muscle and skin hung from his teeth; his face was twisted in a snarl of animal savagery.
Mr. Sutton tripped over his heels as he backed into the corridor. He grabbed for the door handle to support himself, but only succeeded in pulling the door shut as he fell into Paul.
“What was … ? What … ?” Mr. Sutton looked stunned. Suddenly his expression cleared and he picked himself up, clambering to his feet. “Nurse Wan!”
“You can’t help her!” Paul cried, grabbing him as he reached for the door. “If she’s not dead, she’s like him now. It’s infectious! Don’t you get it? He was bitten, and now he’s like them. Like the dog!”
Mr. Sutton stared at him blankly. “What dog?”
There was a high-pitched squeal from down the corridor, quickly joined by several more. Girls, shrieking. Mr. Sutton raced back toward the waiting room. Paul hesitated a moment, caught between the need to keep Mr. Harrison inside the treatment room and the need to get away from him. But Nurse Wan had the key, and she was inside. Mark ran off after Mr. Sutton, and that made up Paul’s mind for him. He wasn’t going to be left standing here when Mr. Harrison came out.
When they got to the waiting room, they saw what had happened. Jason White, the kid who’d been bitten by a beetle down by the lake, was up and about.
He was standing there in his school uniform, swaying and looking dazed. He seemed puzzled by the sight of all the other children gathered together in wet raincoats, squealing in fright.
Thin tendrils had spread across his face, too, like a webwork of shining silver veins. His irises were a hard blue, glowing faintly, like the sharp light of a computer monitor in a dark room.
Then, as if he’d solved the puzzle that had been troubling him, his expression changed. His eyes narrowed. His lips drew back to reveal teeth clad in silver. And he ran at the cluster of children, a thin screech coming from his throat, a whine like feedback from a microphone.
The children screamed and scattered, but he was like a fox among chickens. He pounced on a boy his own age and sank his teeth into the base of his target’s neck, biting through the coat to the flesh beneath.
“Out! Out! Everybody out!” Mr. Sutton shouted, but the others needed no telling. Hysteria had taken hold. They flooded out the door, shoving each other aside in their haste to escape. Mr. Sutton grabbed Jason White by the shoulders and pulled him roughly away from his victim. He came up snarling, teeth bloodied. Mr. Sutton flung him away, sending him stumbling across the room. He tripped over and fell in a heap. Mr. Sutton scooped up the wailing child on the ground.
“Go! Go!” he urged Mark and Paul. Down the corridor, they heard the sound of a door being thrown open, and another bellow of rage from Mr. Harrison. They needed no further prompting to run for their lives.
The world had turned upside down.
It had to be a joke, Mark thought. Some kind of elaborate hoax, special effects, something like that. Any moment now, the storm would shut off like magic, and a presenter with a face like a ventriloquist’s dummy would emerge to tell everyone they’d been suckered for the cruel amusement of millions of dead-eyed viewers. His brain was racing, flitting from theory to theory, trying to figure out the trick. How was it all being done? There had to be a logical answer. There was always a logical answer.
They poured out of the medical block like blood gushing from a wound (the nurse! the blood!). Rain swept against them, driven by a fierce wind, and thunder boomed all around. Mr. Sutton was shouting “Back to your dorms! Everyone, go back to your dorm halls and stay there!” but hardly anyone was listening. They fled in all directions, spreading their fear to other students who’d come to investigate the commotion.
Why do people run toward trouble instead of away from it? Mark asked himself, then remembered that he’d done the same thing. It was Mr. Harrison’s roaring that had drawn him to the medical block. He’d been passing by on his way to be the first in line at the dining hall. With Andrew and Graham gone for the weekend, he knew he’d be eating alone, so he wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. He’d brought his camera along, so he could scan through the pictures he’d taken of the beetle that morning. The lens might have been cracked, but he could still use the screen.
Now he knew. The beetles had only been the start of it.
Mr. Sutton ran up to him, the wounded boy in his arms. He put the boy down on the drive. Mark saw a white, frightened face inside the hood. He glanced up at the door of the medical block. They’d only gone a dozen yards down the drive. Shouldn’t they be running, like everyone else?
Mr. Sutton tore open the boy’s raincoat. He clamped his hands down on the wound. “Mark, come here. Bring that umbrella.”
Mark had forgotten he was carrying it. He opened it up and held it over Mr. Sutton and the kid.
“Put pressure on this,” Mr. Sutton instructed him.
Mark stared at the blood welling through Mr. Sutton’s fingers. He backed off, his stomach clenching, and thought he was going to be sick.
“Paul! You do it! I need you to stanch the wound while I carry him!” Mr. Sutton said, and Mark realized that Paul was standing by his shoulder, a sodden ghost in the storm.
“It’s infectious …,” Paul said weakly. Mark was shocked to see Paul’s jaw quiver, as if he was about to burst into tears. Then Paul turned away, and his face was hidden by his hood.
“Give him here,” said a voice behind them, and Adam Wojcik appeared, pushing them impatiently out the way. He threw his coat aside as he crouched down next to Mr. Sutton, then tugged his sweatshirt over his head. He wadded it up and handed it to Mr. Sutton, who pressed it against the wound. Adam took over and held it there.
“Keep the pressure on,” said Mr. Sutton. “We’re going to take him to my car. Mark, Paul, run to the groundskee
per and get him to open the gate. We need to get this boy to a hospital.”
“Hey, what’s up with this kid?” said Adam, staring down at the wound. Mark looked. Around the edges of the wadded sweatshirt Adam was holding, little silver lines were creeping out, branching and dividing across the skin.
How are they doing that? It has to be a trick!
“It’s too late,” Paul said quietly.
Mr. Sutton ignored him. “Adam, keep your sweatshirt where it is!” He scooped up the boy and stood, with Adam still keeping the wound covered. “Mark! Paul! I meant now!”
They’d never heard Mr. Sutton raise his voice before, and it made both of them jump. Together, they ran down the drive toward the gate.
Mark’s umbrella caught the wind and turned inside out. He let it go, and it blew off across the lawn. A moment later, he remembered the satchel bumping against his hip. The camera was wrapped up inside, secure in a plastic bag. He’d wanted to keep it protected from the elements, but now the satchel was getting soaked. He wished he’d never brought it now.
What are you worried about a camera for? he thought. What about what happened to Mr. Harrison? But that was his way. He wasn’t the kind of person who got caught up in the big picture. Even in a crisis, he put things in little compartments in his mind, and looked at them one by one. He organized tasks like a flowchart. He did things piece by piece.
Paul was freaking out, he could see that. Paul couldn’t take it all in. But Mark wasn’t thinking about everything at once, like Paul was. Mark was just thinking about the next task he had to do.
He wondered if freaking out was the more normal thing to do right now, but he just didn’t feel it. Even after seeing Mr. Harrison ripping Nurse Wan’s throat out with his teeth. Yes, he’d been scared out of his wits. Yes, he suspected that later he’d turn to jelly and cry his eyes out. But right now, he felt surprisingly under control.
Despite the lashing rain, students were coming out of their dorm halls. Teachers, too. They tried to herd everyone back inside, but it was already getting out of control. The students had seen kids running from the medical block, heard their shrieks. They couldn’t just sit still and wait to be told what danger they might be in. They had to go and find out for themselves.
Off to their right was Beswick Hall, the dorm that stood nearest the lake and the old chapel. Paul slowed suddenly and moaned in horror. Mark looked and saw a dog, a big silver dog, racing across the slick, muddy grass toward a group of kids who’d just come hurrying out of the dorm.
“Hey! Watch out!” Mark hollered at the top of his voice, but if anyone heard him, it was too late. The dog crashed into the group, knocking several to the ground. It pounced on one, bit and scratched, and then leaped off and began savaging another kid.
Paul just stood there, paralyzed. Mark grabbed his arm. Paul jerked away, and stared at Mark as if it were the first time he’d ever seen him.
“Mr. Sutton needs our help,” said Mark.
The main gate was locked when they got there. It always was, after six. You couldn’t have students wandering about in the valley unsupervised. If you wanted to be let out, you had to knock on the door of the groundskeeper’s cottage by the gate, or press a buzzer if you wanted to be let in. The groundskeeper or his wife would always be there to open the gate for you.
Paul didn’t go to the house. He ran up to the gate and clamped his hands around the bars, looking out to the valley beyond. Mark regarded him uncertainly. He couldn’t imagine what Paul hoped to see out there. Even if he could penetrate the darkness and the rain, all he’d find were green slopes and a winding road, and the white, angular buildings of the weather-monitoring station, perched up there on the ridge.
Paul was acting strange; he wouldn’t be much help at the moment. Mark turned his attention to the groundskeeper’s cottage.
It was a tiny dwelling, with walls of glistening stone, deep-set windows of latticed glass, and a small picket-fenced garden patch surrounding it.
It was also dark.
Mark slowed as he approached. The groundskeeper’s house was always occupied by someone, from six at night till seven in the morning. It was part of the job. Otherwise, people wouldn’t be able to get in or out of the campus. But no lights were on, despite the gloom of the storm.
He went up and rapped on the door with the knocker. When there was no answer, he pressed the doorbell. There was a loud buzz from inside the house. Mark held it down for as long as he dared.
Nobody came.
Mark looked over his shoulder nervously, as if Paul might provide him with a suggestion for what to do next. But Paul was still staring out past the gate, at the world outside Mortingham Boarding Academy. Lightning flared, freezing the campus in shocking white. Farther up the drive, toward the center of the campus, Mark saw a snapshot of children running. Their cries were carried down on the wind to him. Somewhere, a fire alarm was shrilling.
Mr. Sutton would be here in his car at any minute. He’d pick them up and take them all away from this madness. But first, Mark had to get the gate open.
Even if nobody was in, Mark reasoned that they might have at least left the key to the gate inside. He hurried along the path that led around the side of the cottage. He didn’t think he’d have the nerve to break in, but maybe if he could see the key, he could get Paul to smash a window or something. Paul seemed like the kind of guy who didn’t care too much about being disciplined. Mark felt uneasy just trespassing in the garden. He knew it was ridiculous — kids could be dying back there near the school! — but he had a deeply ingrained fear of getting into trouble, and even now it was hard to shake.
He pressed his face against the glass of the nearest window. The lights were out in the small sitting room, but he could see through to the kitchen on the other side of the cottage, where he could make out the dreary gray rectangle of another window. He wiped away rain and squinted, waiting for his eyes to adjust.
Something moved inside. A figure shuffled slowly across the kitchen, passing in front of the window, blocking its dull light. The squat, burly figure of the groundskeeper.
So he was in! How had he not heard the doorbell?
Mark raised his hand to rap on the window, but something stopped him. Something about the way the groundskeeper was moving. Aimless, lost, as if he were searching for something but he wasn’t sure what it was.
Then the groundskeeper tilted his head toward Mark, and the meager light fell on his face. Even distorted by the rain on the glass, Mark could see how the shining veins of silver caught the light.
He backed away quickly, afraid of being spotted. His legs hit the picket fence and he tumbled over it backward, landing in a heap on the muddy bank that led down to the drive. He scrambled to his feet, clutching his satchel to his body, his precious camera inside.
Paul had turned away from the gate and was staring at him.
“The groundskeeper …,” Mark said. “I don’t think he’s the groundskeeper anymore. And he’s got the key in there with him.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Paul. “They’re out there, too.”
Mark gazed at him dumbly. “In the valley?”
Paul nodded. “Dogs. I saw them out there in the pastures. They’re after the sheep. If we try to run for it on foot, they’ll take us down.”
Mark felt helpless. “We can’t get out!” he cried.
Paul was no longer blank-faced and vague, but grim as flint. “We can’t get out,” he agreed.
“Hey! There’s something kicking off outside!”
His yell silenced the dinner line. The boy — his name was Robert Yates — was a troublemaker by reputation. After he delivered his breathless message, he ran off again, heading for whatever disturbance he’d warned them of.
Murmurs ran up and down the line of students waiting to be let into the dining hall. Tricks like that had been played before. If they left the line to find out what was going on, they’d lose their place. But the draw of conflict was strong, especially f
or the boys. If there was something that would liven up the routine of their boarding school lives, they had to be in on it. They gathered like iron filings to a magnet, just like they had when Paul and Adam had been scrapping down by the lake that morning.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Some of the boys hurried off after Robert. Caitlyn exchanged a skeptical glance with Erika, who stood next to her in the line.
They’d gone to dinner together, naturally. After Caitlyn’s frosty behavior at lunchtime, Erika had begun to suspect that something was up. But Caitlyn didn’t want to talk about it, so she thought she’d better ask Erika to sit with her at dinner, to disguise the fact that she was secretly mad. It was all pretty complicated. But she’d had a lot of practice at it.
Growing up as the youngest of four girls was no picnic. At times there was love and happiness and friendship, but at others there was teasing and cattiness and vicious emotional bullying. She was always the weakest, never smart or witty enough to hold her own against her more experienced siblings. To avoid getting picked on, she learned to make allies of her enemies. She was nice to those who could best defend her. In a squabble, she decided who she thought would win and came in on their side. It was survival, and she was good at it.
And yet somehow she was still in the shadows. She was free of her sisters but not of being second best. She should have known it would happen when she chose to be Erika’s friend. But the lure of the in-crowd was too strong. School was easier when you looked down from the top; everyone knew that. But who ever really looked at Caitlyn? Who ever really saw her?
Unless she broke away, she’d always be second best to Erika. But she just didn’t know if she could make it on her own.
More and more people were leaving the line now. Whispers had turned to excited speculation. Had someone been hit by lightning? Had the storm blown down the old chapel?