Even Erika caught the fever, and soon her initial skepticism was forgotten. “Should we go see?” she asked, her blue eyes shining.
“Out in the storm? It’s just some stupid fight,” said Caitlyn.
“Oh, come on, it could be fun!” said Erika, in that oh-so-bloody-perky way she had.
Then the shrilling of the fire alarm sounded through the building. Caitlyn swore. Now they had to leave, like it or not. Dinner would be late, and they’d have to stand out in the rain, and all because some idiot pulled the alarm. Probably Robert Yates. It was the sort of thing he’d do.
Their minds made up by the bell, most kids in the line rushed toward the exit. Caitlyn and Erika followed, pulling on their coats as they went.
The moment they got outside, they knew something was badly wrong.
A small crowd of students had gathered at the entrance to the dining hall. They’d sensed it, too. Terror was in the air, as real as the rain that lashed at them. There were screams on the wind. In the distance, kids went running this way and that, frantic.
Mr. Johnson, who taught PE, came sprinting by. He yelled at them to get back inside and stay there, then he ran off without waiting to see if they obeyed.
Most of them did, fleeing back into the dining hall, their curiosity overtaken by fright. The girls started squealing as they crammed themselves through the door.
Erika tugged at Caitlyn’s arm. Her pretty face was a pale picture of distress. “We should do what he said.”
Caitlyn ignored her. Her mind was already on somebody else. Someone who might be out there in the storm, out there in unknown danger. She had to be sure he was safe.
Paul.
“Caitlyn!” Erika called after her as she headed off into the dark. A moment later, she heard Erika come splashing after her along the gravel path. Her fear of being left alone was clearly stronger than her fear of what was happening out here.
You can follow me for once, Caitlyn thought.
The dining hall was around the back of the school building. They hurried through the storm, passing the sports hall on their left. Caitlyn saw a girl lumbering along a short way away. She walked as if shell-shocked or wounded, her movements clumsy, swaying as she went, long hair sodden and hanging. Caitlyn wondered if she needed help, but something about the way the girl moved made her instincts jangle.
Lightning flashed and thunder hit at the same moment. The girl froze in place, stock-still. Caitlyn stared. The girl stayed that way for a few seconds, and then started to move again, as if she’d never been interrupted.
Caitlyn didn’t go over to help.
They rounded the front of the school. Figures pelted through the rain. Thin screams and shrieks, as if from a flock of birds, blew about with the changing wind. Caitlyn wiped water from her eyes and looked for signs of Paul, but she couldn’t see him.
“Caitlyn.” Erika patted her arm and pointed.
Ahead of them was the staff garage, an old converted stable block that sprawled along the east side of the main drive. Lying on the grass nearby, curled up in a fetal position, was a young student. He was wearing a muddied raincoat with the hood pulled up. He twitched and shivered violently.
Erika went straight toward him, heading off the path and onto the lawn. Caitlyn fretted for a moment — she wanted to concentrate on locating Paul — but in the end, she couldn’t ignore that little boy. In fact, she felt a stab of anger at Erika, for the immediate and unquestioning way she went to offer aid. It made her feel like a bad person for having to think about it first.
Other kids were nearby. Teachers were shouting. Nobody paid attention to the fallen student.
Why is everybody ignoring him?
Erika had crouched down at the boy’s side by the time Caitlyn caught up. The boy was lying with his back to her, the hood obscuring his face. “Hey,” Erika was saying. “Are you alright?” She reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder. He jerked at her touch, and then began slowly getting up, dragging his feet underneath him, as if it was a great effort to even rise to a crouch.
There was something about the way he moved. Something that reminded Caitlyn of the girl she’d just seen wandering in the storm, the girl who froze when the lightning flashed.
“Are you alright?” Erika said again, holding out her hand to him.
The boy turned his head toward them, and Erika gasped. The face beneath the hood was a webwork of silver threads crawling across the boy’s skin. His mouth was open, and his lips and tongue and teeth were veined in the same color. His irises were a bright electric blue, and the whites of his eyes were mottled with tiny, irregular silver plates.
Caitlyn sensed the lunge an instant before it came. She grabbed Erika’s other arm and pulled her roughly aside just as the boy leaped toward her outstretched hand. His teeth clicked shut on the spot where Erika’s fingers had been half a second earlier, and he toppled forward and fell onto the muddy lawn. He began struggling to get up again with the shaking limbs and clumsy movements of something newly born.
Erika screamed and ran. Caitlyn shouted her name and ran after her. She caught her twenty yards later and pulled her to a stop. Erika was out of her mind. She was mouthing words as if she wanted to say something, but no sound was coming out.
“Erika! Erika, you need to calm down,” Caitlyn was saying. Her voice seemed to be coming from someone else. It sounded strong and reassuring, which was not at all how she felt. Calm down? Calm down? What on earth happened to that boy?
“Oi!” someone shouted. It only took Caitlyn an instant to place the thuggish bellow. Adam Wojcik. He came running over, wet through, his shirt plastered to his bulky body by the rain.
“Wh-wh-wh — ?” Erika began, juddering out the beginnings of a question. Adam didn’t wait for her to finish.
“Get to the science block!” he told them. “Sutton says. Everyone’s going there. Science block, got it?” He pointed through the rain. “Tell anyone else you see.”
“Is Paul there?” Caitlyn asked, but Adam had already run off, shouting the same message to some other kids. “Is Paul there?” she called after him.
Erika swallowed and pulled herself together. “Science block …,” she said. “Come on.”
“You go. I need to look for someone.”
“Paul will be in the science block,” said Erika. “Everyone’s going there. You heard him.”
Caitlyn felt a flash of anger at the sound of his name on Erika’s lips, and then felt guilty for it. She had a point. Caitlyn didn’t have much of a chance of finding Paul in the storm. Likely he’d headed for the science block himself.
“Science block,” she agreed reluctantly, then gave Erika a measured look. “You’d better be right.”
“Oi! You!”
The kid turned to Adam, frightened. Adam collared him roughly. “Science block! Everyone’s going to the science block! Get going!”
He shoved the kid off in that direction. The kid stumbled a few steps and looked back at him, his face slack with that same blank rabbit-in-the-headlights expression that Adam was used to seeing on his victims.
“Go!” he snapped, and the kid bolted.
What was wrong with everybody? They were all acting so dumb. Standing there terrified or running about like headless chickens. Even some of the teachers were staggering around stupidly, dazed by the chaos and the storm, shocked by what they were seeing. So many people came apart at the seams as soon as something messed-up happened.
For Adam, fear and anger were the same thing. He responded to intimidation with fury. When faced with something he couldn’t comprehend, he got mad.
The other kids weren’t used to conflict and threat, that was their problem. Adam had barely lived a day without it. At school, at home, violence lay round every corner. Fear was your friend when your whole life was a fight.
He looked around, trying to spot any other kids he could steer toward the science block. The only figures he saw were the ones who moved funny, the changing and the changed.
There were more of them every minute.
No wonder, really. He’d seen what happened to that kid Mr. Sutton had tried to save. He’d seen how fast he changed.
After Mr. Harrison went mental in the medical block, Adam had found himself holding his sweatshirt to some kid’s bleeding throat while Mr. Sutton carried him to his car. By the time they’d reached the staff garage, that silver stuff had branched out all over the boy’s skin. They entered through a small door in the side, which Adam opened with the key Mr. Sutton had given him. Adam didn’t bother putting his sweatshirt back on the wound. It wasn’t even bleeding anymore. Instead, it was clotted with fine silver filaments, like thread.
The boy’s breath was wheezing in and out of his body as Mr. Sutton bundled him in the back of his car. It hadn’t been long since he was bitten, but his eyes had already started to change. Adam didn’t know what was happening, but he knew that kid wouldn’t make it to any hospital, that was for sure. Mr. Sutton knew it, too, but he didn’t give up trying. Not till the kid lunged at him and tried to take a bite out of his arm.
Sutton was lucky: The kid only got the sleeve of his tweed jacket. He pulled himself back out of the car and Adam slammed the door in the kid’s face. The kid started pawing at the window and snarling. All he had to do was reach down and pull the handle to open the door, but it was like he’d forgotten how. Mr. Sutton fumbled out his remote and locked the car.
“We have to save the others,” Mr. Sutton said, his eyes fixed on the boy, who was dragging his fingertips down the glass. His voice was slow and all the feeling had gone out of it. “We need to get everyone to the science block.”
Well, Adam had done what he could on that score, now. It was getting too dangerous out here. Time to head back.
It was easy enough to avoid the kids who were turning. He’d seen a dog running about, which moved pretty quick, but most of them were clumsy, slow, and uncoordinated. Most of the kids who got caught had been taken by surprise, or had been too stupid to recognize the danger in time. You could run around them easily enough, if you were careful.
Other people were losing it in the confusion, but not Adam. He wasn’t one for deep thought. He fought when he had to, and sometimes when he didn’t. He faced tonight’s events with the same blank acceptance with which he faced everything else. It just was. He didn’t need to understand it, he just had to deal with it.
When he got to the doors of the science block, Mr. Sutton let him inside. There were a half dozen kids there with him, piling up planks and nails from the workshops where they did woodwork and metalwork. Everyone was soaked, and the floor was slippery wet.
Adam looked at the stack of planks. This was why Mr. Sutton had picked the science block to gather everyone. It was small enough to defend, there was only one entrance, and there were all kinds of materials on hand. Adam had to admit, it was a smart move. For a teacher.
“Couldn’t find any more,” Adam grunted, a little out of breath. “There’s a lot more of them others out there now.”
Mr. Sutton looked anxiously out through the science block doors. A pair of kids and a teacher — or at least, what was left of them — were staggering along the path in Adam’s wake.
He dithered for a moment. Adam knew what he was thinking. It was the same instinct that had almost gotten him bitten in the garage. He was too soft: He didn’t want to leave a single kid behind. He wanted to leave the door unlocked till the very last moment in case anyone else turned up. But by doing so he was endangering everyone inside.
“Sir …,” Adam said, a warning in his voice.
Mr. Sutton shook his head angrily at himself. “Yes, you’re right,” he said. Then, to the others: “Let’s board this up.”
They got to work immediately. Someone jammed a bar through the handles and they started nailing planks across the swing doors.
“Adam, can you —” Mr. Sutton began, but Adam already knew what to do.
“I’ll go check on the others, make sure they’re boarding up all the windows.”
“Good man, Adam. Good man,” said Mr. Sutton, and then turned back to the task of securing the door.
Good man? Adam thought as he headed off down the corridor. He couldn’t remember anyone ever saying that to him. He wasn’t sure he deserved it. All he was doing right now was pushing people around. He’d done that all his life.
Still, though — it was kind of nice to be given a pat on the back like that. Not something he was used to at all.
Yeah. Kind of nice.
The science block echoed with the sound of hammers. It came from everywhere, vibrating through the walls, causing ripples in the puddles on the corridor floors. Mark wasn’t sure how many kids had made it inside, but almost every one of them was occupied with boarding up windows, working with feverish and frightened enthusiasm.
Mark was kneeling on a workbench that ran beneath a row of three large windows. Two were boarded up tight; they were working on the third. He was holding up one side of a heavy plank, pressing it flat against the wall. Holding the other side was Caitlyn Stross, a sharp-featured girl with black hair whom he’d never spoken to before. Paul was hammering the nails in with reckless force. Also in the room, hugging herself and looking at the floor, was Erika Robinson.
Paul had barely said a word since they’d returned from the gate. He moved with purpose now, but his face was hard, his expression dark. Mark had no idea what he was thinking. For his part, Mark was just concentrating on getting the next thing done, and then the next, following his mental flowchart of tasks. Anything else was just too complicated to handle.
It was like a computer. Computers could do things that seemed to be nothing short of miraculous, but when you broke them down, they were just a lot of individual components, each doing a job. Ones and zeroes. On and off. Mark was a component, that was all.
There were things moving out there in the storm, beyond the windows. He tried not to think about them.
Mark glanced over at Caitlyn, and caught her looking at Paul, who was occupied with banging in more nails. Mark figured she probably had a crush on him; that was why she kept looking. Hard to tell, though. Girls were in a different orbit these days. It was like they reached a certain age and started speaking another language. The words were the same, but the meaning was all different, full of hints and suggestions he couldn’t understand.
Paul finished hammering in the plank. There was one more to do, right across the center.
“Pass us up that last plank, Erika,” said Caitlyn, reaching back for it.
“Let me help nail it up,” said Erika. Mark thought he heard anger in her voice, and wondered at its cause. “I feel useless.”
“We’ve got it under control,” said Caitlyn.
“I need to do something!” Erika said. “I can’t take just standing around like this!” She climbed up onto the workbench with them, the plank under her arm, pushing in between Caitlyn and Paul. Caitlyn had to move to make way, which caused her to knock a Bunsen burner into a sink, and to hit her ankle on a gas tap.
“For God’s sake, Erika!” Caitlyn cried. “How many people does it take to hold a plank?”
Erika stared at her friend, shocked and hurt by the tone in her voice. Caitlyn drew in a breath to say something, perhaps to apologize, perhaps not. They never found out. Through the gap in the planks, Mark saw something loom close to the window outside. Two small, bright circles of blue shone through the rain-streaked glass.
Eyes.
The glass smashed as a thick arm was driven through it, and through the gap in the planks. Below the shredded sleeve, Mark saw plates of silver, veins replaced by cables, circuitry everywhere. It grabbed for Erika. She tried to pull away, but she wasn’t fast enough. The hand caught the sleeve of her coat and yanked her against the boarded-up window.
Suddenly everyone was yelling and screaming at once. “Paul!” Erika shrieked. “Paul, get it off me!”
The thing beyond the window screeched as Paul tried to drag Erika away f
rom it. Caitlyn whacked at its arm with a metal tripod, which was the only thing she had at hand. Mark was knocked back in the struggle and slipped off the workbench to the floor. He landed on his feet in a crouch, looked up — and saw his satchel poking over the edge of a nearby table.
In an instant, he knew what he had to do. He pulled it open and tugged out his broken camera. The lens was cracked, but that didn’t matter. He clambered up onto the workbench again. Erika was screaming fit to burst. She was trying to work her arms out of her coat, desperately fighting to keep away from the creature outside, but she was stuck inside the sleeves. Paul was losing the tug-of-war, and Caitlyn’s attacks were ineffective.
“Paul!” Erika shrieked again.
Mark wedged himself in between Caitlyn and Erika, thrust the camera up to the window, and pressed the shutter release. The flash flickered, lighting up the thing outside, stunning it with brightness. A horrible mechanical mockery of a human face, more metal than flesh. He recognized it anyway.
Mr. Harrison.
Erika’s arm came free, and she went tumbling backward into Paul, and the two of them went off the side of the workbench and landed on the floor in a heap. Mark put the camera aside and snatched up the last plank, shoving it into place in the gap, shutting out Mr. Harrison’s face. Caitlyn caught on quickly, and held up the other end.
“Paul! Nails!” she cried.
Paul was up on his feet in a second, clambering back onto the workbench. He picked up a hammer and started driving in nails.
There was a shuddering impact on the other side of the plank. Mark and Caitlyn held firm. Paul hammered in another nail, working with desperate speed.
Another impact, weaker this time. Paul hammered in another nail.
There were no more impacts after that. Mark and Caitlyn held on as Paul beat the last nails into the wood, making the window secure. Now there were only narrow gaps between the planks, less than a finger’s width. The wind got through, but nothing else. Paul peered through, but Mr. Harrison — the thing that had been Mr. Harrison — was gone now.