‘Hate to admit it, but knuckle-head might be right,’ said Fish.
‘Piss off of my side, you pasty-faced tosser,’ growled Royce.
‘Royce has a point,’ said Leon. ‘It’s something we need to consider.’
‘We may need our trucks again,’ Royce added. ‘If we just abandon our trucks when we get stuck and walk the rest of the way in, someone else might nick ’em.’
‘So, if we decide we can’t drive any further,’ said Leon, ‘let’s just send a scouting party forward to look-see first. Check out the situation?’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ replied Naga.
‘I mean it’s not a plan as such.’ Leon shrugged. ‘It just seems like the sensible way forward.’
Leon sensed that no one else had anything to add to that. Heads nodded and cramped legs uncrossed and stretched out. Naga’s Big Planning Meeting had ended up with nothing more than: ‘We’ll keep going till we’re stuck, then go take a sneak peek ahead.’
‘All right, then – I suppose it’s bedtime, everybody,’ said Naga. ‘Big day tomorrow.’
‘One other point!’
Naga looked around and saw Fish had raised his hand as if this were a school assembly.
‘Miss?’ he added with a sarcastic grin.
‘What is it?’
‘Call me Mr Paranoid, but, uh . . . I’m just wondering when we were planning to get around to salt-testing our new friends?’
‘The little ones?’ said Danielle. She gestured at them – they were sitting on the hard floor like primary school kids waiting patiently for story time. ‘Seriously? You want to jab needles into all of them?’
Some of the children whimpered unhappily at the thought of that.
‘They may look sweet and cute an’ all that, and we may all be feeling sorry for everything they’ve been through, but any one of them could be a carrier,’ said Fish.
Naga looked like this wasn’t something she wanted to deal with right now.
‘N-none of them are infected,’ said Jerry. ‘I know all about the s-salt thing. We d-did that.’
‘How? Blood samples? Did you do that?’ asked Fish.
Jerry shook his head. ‘Just salt . . . on our f-fingers. Then rubbing our gums.’ He mimed as if he were brushing his teeth.
‘So when? When did you last test this lot?’ demanded Fish.
Jerry looked taken aback. His nervous blinking made him look fragile, but he surprised Leon with his curt reply. ‘S-so when did they last test you?’
‘Well, we all did it . . . what? Eight, nine days ago?’
‘Ten,’ answered Royce.
Jerry scratched his temple. ‘So . . . ten days? Anything could have happened in t-ten days.’
‘We’re not doing this,’ said Naga. ‘We’re not turning on each other.’
‘We were all spooned up together last night, and the night before that,’ cut in Freya, ‘and as far as I’m aware no one’s been turned into a slime monster yet.’
Danielle chuckled at that, a raucous laugh that made some of the children smile. ‘Look, we’re one day out from Southampton. We might even get there in the afternoon. They’ll have doctors and medical teams and probably much better, more thorough screening tests than we can do. And a much better way of dealing with anyone they catch who’s infected.’
‘Well, I’m not happy with that,’ said Fish. ‘I raised this yesterday and the day before.’ He looked warily at the children.
‘Weren’t you against testing back at the castle?’ said Freya.
‘Yeah, so? That was before I knew for certain I was OK. We don’t know about these kids.’
‘Fish, if any of them were virals, we’d know by now,’ said Naga.
‘Well, I’m keeping my distance tonight . . . again.’
‘Fine, you do that,’ said Naga.
‘Tomorrow, though – we’re testing everyone before we set off. I insist . . . a salt drink for breakfast.’
CHAPTER 45
Fish hugged himself in his sleeping bag, balling up inside it as best he could to generate a critical mass of body warmth. He was lying on the floor of the truck, looking out at the night sky. It was clear tonight, the stars flickering faintly, and without the low ceiling of clouds the temperature had dropped. His breath was producing a faint plume.
He was beginning to regret his stubborn bravado.
Naga had tried to persuade him that sleeping inside the store would be perfectly safe and certainly warmer. And, as Freya had said, no one had dissolved during the night so far.
He consoled himself with the fact that, paranoia aside, the little buggers were simply annoying. Night-times had become disrupted by their whimpering, their mewling cries from nightmares, their snotty rasping breaths. The endless bloody fidgeting and toilet trips.
Even attempting to sleep away from them these last few nights, Fish’s rest had been repeatedly broken by one or another of them.
So he was outside, curled up in the back of the truck in an empty car park, alone.
Admittedly, he was only three metres away from the shop’s glass front, but far enough away that if one of those crab things snuck into the back of the truck with him . . .
He had a gun, which helped. Naga had let him take one with him. Although she said he was probably more at risk of blowing his own head off than being devoured.
He was beginning to feel horribly vulnerable and exposed out here. He pulled himself along the floor until his head was poking out of the back of the truck, and turned towards the camping store. The window had cracked in several places, frosted with granules of glass and a radiating spider’s web of fractures, but through it he could just about see the reassuring glow of a couple of the solar-powered lamps casting light across a floor that heaved like a restless ocean surface with twitching bodies in rustling vinyl sleeping bags.
Those kids were probably no more likely to be infected than any of them. They would have been dosed to the gills in hospital. If a simple paracetamol every other day could scare the virals away, he imagined chemotherapy, or whatever else they were being blasted with, would be a permanent turn-off.
All the same, salt worked. It had flushed out the one bogeyman lurking in their midst, Corkie of all people. Fish tried his best not to replay that moment in the grand hall.
My God. Corkie had actually vomited up his guts. Almost literally turned himself inside out.
Uncomfortable with his head exposed in the open for any nearby scuttler to see, he wiggled like a caterpillar all the way inside to the far end, resting his back against the partition and the small slide-hatch to the driver’s compartment.
Tomorrow this would all be over. Tomorrow they were going to come across navy ships and buzzing helicopters and soldiers in biohazard suits and medical staff ready to check them out and inject them with some miraculous vaccine that was going to keep them immune forever. And there’d be electricity and generators, hot-water showers, even.
A taste of the old life again. A return to civilization.
A silhouette appeared at the end of the truck.
Fish lurched. ‘Who’s that?’ Stupidly, his arms were deep down inside the bag by his side. He started wriggling frantically to free them and reach for his gun.
‘Me! Fish, it’s me, Grace.’
He heaved out a fluttering sigh. ‘Shit, you scared me!’
‘Sorry. Can I come up?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
She clambered in and picked her way down the truck, sitting on one of the benches beside him.
‘The brats keeping you awake?’
He heard her huff wearily. ‘They are so noisy, aren’t they?’
‘I didn’t sign up to be a childminder. I’m hoping tomorrow we can hand them over to someone else to look after.’
‘You really suspicious of them?’
‘Only in so far as I don’t know for sure if your friend, Jerry, has really actually tested any of them.’
Grace leaned in towards him. ‘Do you think
he was lying earlier?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m thinking the smart thing to do first thing tomorrow is give them all a spoonful of salt each. We’ll all do it before we set off. Thing is, if we turn up at Southampton and there are soldiers and stuff . . . and one or more of us gets flagged as infected, maybe they’ll think the lot of us are. That’ll be it, then. No evacuation for any of us.’
‘Yeah . . . maybe.’
‘And it has been over a week. I think we should be testing ourselves at least every other day and frying anyone who starts puking bloo—’
‘No one wants to end up like Corkie. I guess if I was secretly infected and I didn’t know it yet, I wouldn’t want to find out the way he did.’
‘True.’ Fish suddenly felt bad about this conversation. Leon had explained those burn scars on Grace’s face and body – a childhood accident – and here he was casually saying ‘frying’.
‘Sorry, Grace. That was insensitive of me.’
‘’S OK.’
‘But I am concerned. If they do find one or more of us is carrying the virus, what are they going to do with us? Makes sense to do a quick check tomorrow before we set off. I’m sure Leon and Freya will back me up. And you?’
‘Sure.’
‘If we all just insist, then Naga’ll go along with it. Won’t take us long to do anyway. Ten, twenty minutes and we’d all be done.’
‘And will you be the one to burn those children? If any of them are infected? Will you do it?’
He hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. He was kind of assuming that Royce or one of his knuckle-dragging mates would do the honours. ‘If there was no one else, I suppose. If it came to it. Yeah, I suppose if—’
He flinched instinctively as he heard the rustle of movement. Something sharp and jagged was suddenly there on his face, clinging to his cheek and digging into his flesh. He opened his mouth to scream but Grace’s hand slapped down heavily over it. Behind his back, he heard the hatch to the driver’s compartment slide quickly aside and something nudged him forward, pushing through the gap like a python sliding into the back of the truck.
‘I’m sorry, Fish,’ she whispered.
Fish squirmed to free his arms from the bag, shook his head from side to side to shake her hand off his mouth and dislodge the thing that was clinging to his cheek.
The ‘python’ pushing at him from behind was an arm. It reached round the bag and clamped tightly across his chest, holding him firmly against the partition. A very strong arm. He wondered if it was Royce.
He was pinned, his arms uselessly trapped, and the assault rifle sitting by the side of his sleeping bag.
‘Fish,’ whispered Grace, ‘we have to do this. We can’t do that salt test. I can’t do that salt test . . . not again.’
We? Grace? Grace is infected?
He fought to stay calm, to appear calm, to assure her he wasn’t about to scream out. Then mumbled softly against the palm clamped over his lips, a sound reassuring her that it wasn’t going to turn into a cry for help the moment she lifted her hand. He did it again and he felt the weight of her hand lessen as she eased the pressure from his lips.
‘Grace . . .’ he whispered. ‘You’re . . . you . . . ?’
‘Yes, I’m infected.’
Stay calm, Fish. Stay calm. Talk. Reason. Discuss. He desperately needed to find his way into a conversation with her, a conversation that would keep her talking, hopefully lead to some sort of negotiation.
‘Since when?’
‘Since a long time ago.’
He looked down at the arm crooked round his chest. ‘And who else? Is Leon?’
She shook her head. ‘Jerry – he’s infected. All the children are too.’
‘The children?’ He managed to nod calmly. ‘Then, shit, I was right. I . . . I thought so.’
‘The thing is, if you convince Naga to do those tests, we know how it’s going to end up, don’t we? It’ll be horrific. There’ll be flames, and burning, and screaming, and . . . those poor children—’
‘But they’re not real children, Grace. They—’
‘They’re more real than they’ve ever been. I know you don’t see this yet. But you will.’
‘See what?’
‘Shhh . . . Keep your voice down.’
The arm round him flexed and tightened. Through the material of the sleeping bag he could feel lumps and bumps stirring along the arm.
He nodded. Keep calm, fool. Keep her talking. Say anything . . . Just keep her talking.
‘Grace, look, I’m not going to ask her to test everyone tomorrow. I’ll say she’s right. I’ll say we should just let the rescue people do the—’
‘Fish, I can’t risk letting you go. I can’t trust you won’t go straight in there right now and warn everyone about us.’
‘I won’t! I promise!’
‘You will.’
‘Oh God . . . Please don’t h-hurt me, Grace.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you. I really like you.’
Fish smiled; he tried to make the moment seem funny. Once before, a long time ago, he’d managed to joke his way out of a knife-point mugging. Made the mugger laugh . . . and in that moment he’d been released, allowed to go on his way again, along with his wallet.
Make her laugh. Make her laugh.
‘Didn’t your mum ever tell you, good friends don’t dissolve each other?’
Grace smiled. ‘I want to give you something . . . a gift. I know you don’t want it now, but once you’ve got it you’ll understand.’
‘Grace, please – come on . . .’
She covered his mouth again with her hand. ‘You have to be very quiet now, Fish. I promise this won’t take long.’
He felt the deadweight on his left cheek stirring to life again. He’d almost forgotten it was there, but now it moved carefully. He could feel tiny prick after tiny prick as something with miniature legs scaled the cliff of his cheek up to the wet rim of his eye.
‘I want you to join us as quickly as possible,’ Grace said quietly. ‘There’s a fast way and a slow way. It got me really slowly. It took weeks and weeks before I realized I was one of them.’
Oh, Jesus . . . He could feel the creature’s tiny limbs exploring, testing the rim of his eyelid. He began to struggle again.
‘My first visitors had to fight hard to survive in my bloodstream. They had to conquer my body gradually, bit by bit, and, even though I didn’t realize it, there was a battle going on inside me. My body did all it could to resist, to fight back. It didn’t understand they were only there to help. My body was just plain stupid. Just billions of dumb cells that didn’t know anything.’
He felt her other hand stroking his cheek gently, wiping away the tears that were streaming down from his aggravated eye.
‘The sooner they get into your head, the sooner they can explain themselves, and then you’ll see for yourself that they’re not our enemy – they’re our friends.’
He felt a tiny, sharp, tugging sensation. He felt the small creature lifting his eyelid, pulling it out just a fraction, a few millimetres, then squeezing itself into the gap.
‘And the quickest way to get to you, Fish, I’m so sorry, is this way. It’s through your eye.’
He screamed against her hand and she pushed down harder to muffle the sound.
He felt the creature working its way downwards, burrowing around his eyeball. At first it felt like a large bit of grit, or a dislodged contact lens, but as it progressed it felt bigger and bigger, like a jagged shard of flint, scraping and wriggling to get behind his eye.
Suddenly, he felt a sharp, searing pain, like a white-hot stiletto blade plunged deep into his ocular cavity, deep into the tender cluster of nerves leading to his brain.
He lurched in his sleeping bag, legs kicking out and drumming against the floor of the truck as he fought against the agony. Grace was saying something, but he wasn’t listening. He was far too busy experiencing the most excruciating pain he’d ever encountered in
his life.
‘That pain, Fish, it’s just a crawler – just like a little taxi – but he’s carrying very important passengers. I want you to listen to them.’
Blinding agony.
CHAPTER 46
Do you hear?
The impossible discomfort, the searing agony was a distant memory now. Someone else’s memory, someone else’s problem. Fish was in a different place now. Somewhere calm, dark and quiet, and mercifully free of pain.
Do you hear?
He had no idea how he felt. There were no words to describe it. ‘Disembodied’ was a close one. But then disembodied implied a sense of nothingness, no substance, like being some disconnected ethereal spirit. He didn’t feel like that. On the contrary, he felt connected to everything. To something vast, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was yet.
Do you hear?
The voice that had been repeatedly, patiently, asking that question sounded genderless. He was vaguely aware that it didn’t actually sound like anything. That he wasn’t hearing a sound so much as sensing the question in another way.
‘I hear you,’ he replied.
That is good.
The voice sounded reasonable. Like someone he could talk to, get some answers from.
‘Who are you?’
What you hear is *thought*. Who we/I are/is . . . . . .
The next word became a taste on his tongue. The nearest comparison he could come up with was that it reminded him of the taste of Bovril. Fish understood the ‘name’ had become a flavour, because using a word he didn’t understand would have been pointless. It was a form of synaesthesia: the brain reinterpreting stimuli from other senses, like bats ‘seeing’ sound.
‘You’re the virus, aren’t you?’
A collective representative entity. Yes.
‘In my mind?’
I/We am/are a supercluster – that word came with the Bovril taste on his tongue again – connected with your linguistic processing. Conscious reasoning.
‘I’m infected now?’