‘What’s wrong?’ Will asked.
‘We’re going into this completely empty-handed. No weapons … that makes me very uncomfortable,’ Elliott whispered.
‘You stay here then. I’ll go in by myself,’ Will suggested. ‘They only need to take blood from one of us.’
‘No way! We stick together – at all times,’ she replied quickly, then sighed. ‘But we don’t need to put ourselves in this position in the first place. If we make a run for it, they’ll never catch us. And we can make sure they never find us again.’
‘Don’t we owe them?’ Will replied. ‘Whatever you say, we’re partly to blame for what’s happened. How long can they go on living like this until someone screws up and they get infected? Or they run out of power or water or something?’ As Elliott didn’t speak, Will added, ‘You’re not very trusting, are you? Don’t you think if Drake had been here, he’d have tried to help them? Help save the life of that little kid?’
Elliott seemed taken aback by this. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ she said, biting her lip as she thought. ‘I suppose so. But if we do this and it goes wrong, it was your call, and it’s on your head.’
‘Righty-ho,’ Will said, then added hesitantly. ‘Um … one thing though …’
Elliott was unbuckling her belt. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.
Will waved his hand at her side of the chamber. ‘No peeking, okay? You keep your eyes to your side, and I’ll do the same. Deal?’
‘Er … yes … deal,’ she confirmed, realising what he was saying.
They went through the decontamination procedure in bashful silence, stripping down and washing, then standing under the banks of ultraviolet light as they faced away from each other. And all the time fresh air was being pumped into the chamber – they could hear it rushing through the vents.
Then, at the very moment the banks of ultraviolet lights went out, a voice spoke to them over the intercom by the entrance to the second chamber. ‘Move through to the next area now, please,’ it directed.
‘Ladies first,’ Will said, keeping himself turned well away from Elliott.
They showered again in the cubicles on their respective sides, dried themselves down and then put on the gowns and masks Jürgen had provided for them.
‘Are you dressed now?’ Will asked.
‘Yes, all ready,’ Elliott replied, and only now did they make eye contact.
Still a little embarrassed by the situation, Will flexed his shoulders under the white gown. ‘Been a while since I washed in hot water like that. I feel all itchy.’
Elliott nodded, trying to hide a smile. ‘Yes, I noticed you’ve got a rash on your back.’
‘Huh!’ Will exclaimed, as the solenoids clunked on the door and they followed the order from the intercom to walk through into the quarantine ward itself.
‘How do you know that? You cheated – you bloody well looked, didn’t you?’ Will hissed at Elliott as they stepped into the corridor on the other side of the door. He knew his face was burning; the problem with his milky complexion was that even the slightest degree of embarrassment showed itself.
Elliott giggled. ‘And you’re really quite muscly, aren’t you?’
A man appeared from a doorway further down the corridor, and began striding towards them. Jürgen, Will assumed.
‘Yeah … well … you have great dimples,’ he whispered back at Elliott, grinning mischievously.
‘Dimples? Where? Wha—!’ Elliott burst out, but was forced into silence because the man was now close enough to hear.
‘So we meet in the flesh. I’m Jürgen,’ the man said, giving them each a formal bow, but not offering to shake hands with them again, maybe because he still had a concern about making physical contact despite the thorough cleansing they’d undergone.
Dressed in blue overalls, Jürgen was a slight man, not much taller than Will. His blond hair was still damp from his own decontamination procedure, his long fringe hanging lankly in front of his blue eyes. He now brushed it to one side self-consciously. ‘I hope your skin isn’t too sore after all the washing,’ he said, smelling the back of his hand. He indicated a rack of what resembled fire extinguishers by the base of the wall, but they were painted green with German lettering on them. ‘The showers you’ve just had contain germicide, same as in those tanks. It’s an added precaution against the virus, but it can cause a skin reaction.’
‘Yes, Elliott noticed I had a rash,’ Will muttered, giving her a pointed look.
Trying her best not to smile, Elliott asked, ‘So what do we do now?’
‘Werner’s waiting for us in the laboratory. Please come this way,’ Jürgen said, turning on his heels.
As they set off down the corridor, Karl ran up and threw his arms around his father, hiding his face against him. With his fair locks, the child resembled his father, although he had dark smudges under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept for a while. Still with his face pressed against his father, he was sneaking the occasional look at Will and Elliott.
‘Hi,’ Will said, but the boy didn’t reply.
Jürgen began to walk slowly, his son still hanging on to him. ‘Karl doesn’t speak. In fact, he hasn’t said a single word since the day of the plague. You see my wife, his mother, didn’t make it into this shelter in time. We know she was on the way here … but maybe the invaders picked her up for more brainwashing. They were in the habit of doing that to anyone who appeared to be in a hurry.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Will mumbled.
Jürgen continued to walk slowly, his voice unsteady at the memory. ‘Anyway, we couldn’t wait for her any longer. We had no choice. We had to close the main door … or we’d have been overwhelmed by all the other people in here.’
‘You said brainwashed? You mean the Styx Darklit her?’ Elliott asked gently.
‘Darklit?’ Jürgen said, repeating the unfamiliar word. ‘With the purple light?’ He squinted and pretended to shield his face from a bright light. ‘Yes, we all had that. The people you call the Styx went through the city quarter by quarter, forcing us out of the buildings. Then they made us look at the purple lights, even Karl here.’ He ruffled the boy’s hair.
Will exchanged a glance with Elliott, who was frowning.
‘That’s not good news. We need to deal with whatever they’ve implanted in you,’ she said, putting into words precisely what Will was thinking.
‘You can do that?’ Jürgen asked. ‘How? And why?’
‘I’ve got a piece of kit in my Bergen that was developed to neutralise the Dark Light,’ Will replied, referring to the Purger. ‘What they put in your head might be dangerous for you, or anyone with you. I was programmed to chuck myself off anything high enough to kill me.’
‘I see,’ Jürgen said with a nod. ‘Then we should deal with that later, but first there’s a more pressing matter to address.’ He steered Will and Elliott into a room crammed with medical equipment. A man looked up from his microscope. ‘Guten Tag,’ he said.
‘English, Werner, you need to speak in English,’ Jürgen reminded him.
Although Werner had his brother’s blue eyes and similar features, he was taller and far thinner. He was obviously the elder of the two, his blond hair very patchy on his scalp.
‘Okay, in English,’ he said.
‘You need some of our blood?’ Will asked.
‘That’s right. I’ve been working to identify the viral bodies so I can isolate them,’ Werner explained, inclining his head at the microscope. ‘So far I haven’t been successful.’ Then he got to his feet and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. ‘You see, this ward you’re in was established because there was always the spectre of a new bacterium or viral strain seeping into our world from the surface. And because we would lack any natural resistance to it, it was feared that it might rip through the population. This plague that struck us was too virulent for our doctors to do anything in time.’
‘But you know how to prepare a vaccine from our blood?’ Will asked.
&n
bsp; Werner nodded. ‘The antigens in you will mean that I have a ready-made vaccine to inoculate us, and any other survivors we find, against the plague.’ He asked Will and Elliott to sit down, then used syringes to extract samples of blood from each of them. He told them that once he’d prepared the vaccine, either he or his brother would test it out first because if it went wrong then they couldn’t both afford to be incapacitated at the same time.
‘That’ll be me then … the guineafowl,’ Jürgen said, nodding sanguinely.
‘I think it’s guinea pig,’ Will corrected him.
‘So you don’t need us any longer? Elliott asked.
‘No, but if you’re agreeable, would you mind staying until we know the vaccine is viable? I might need some more samples,’ Werner said. ‘What’s the English expression – better safe than sorry.’
‘Okay … but how long do you want us to stick around?’ Will asked, eager to leave the city and return to their base in the jungle.
‘Forty-eight hours maximum,’ Werner replied, already taking their blood samples over to a centrifuge as he began his work.
Jürgen escorted Will and Elliott from the laboratory and down a corridor, past several doors. ‘We have some rooms for you along here.’ He indicated the right-hand side of the corridor. ‘These are all isolation rooms, self-contained living quarters with their own distinct air filtration so you can remove your masks in them to eat and drink.’
They’d passed several of these isolation rooms when Will caught sight of something through the inspection window in one of the doors that made him pull up sharply.
‘I don’t believe it!’ he exclaimed as he saw the figure perched on the edge of the sleeping cot, its skin rough and whorled like the bark of an old tree. ‘That’s a bushman, isn’t it? How did you get him to come here?’
‘I’ve never seen one alive before,’ Elliott said, going to the window to peer in.
The bushman had his head towards her, his small brown eyes the only recognisable human feature until he opened his mouth and she saw his pink tongue. He appeared to be saying something.
‘But why is he here?’ Will pressed Jürgen.
‘I was one of a small team in the Institute of Antiquities that have been working with the indigenous population – or the tribespeople, as we refer to them – for the last decade,’ Jürgen replied. ‘We established contact on an expedition and kept it from the military, who had it in their minds that they were hostile. Actually they had no idea what was in that sector of the jungle, but if they had known, they would most likely have mounted an operation to round them up.’
Jürgen took a breath. ‘It was regrettable that several servicemen lost their lives when they were mistakenly considered to be a threat to the pyramids. We were able to prevent any further deaths by talking to the tribespeople and making them understand.’
Will was shaking his head as he realised something. ‘So that’s why they left me and my father alone,’ he said.
‘That’s correct,’ Jürgen confirmed. ‘As for this tribesman, he was smuggled into my institute several weeks before the plague hit, and I couldn’t just abandon him. I didn’t know if he was vulnerable to it too.’
‘We found a few of them dead in the jungle,’ Will said.
‘Werner thought that might be the case. Most vertebrates are susceptible. And the tribesmen’s physiology beneath those radically different epidermal layers is essentially the same as ours,’ Jürgen said.
Elliott didn’t seem convinced by this. ‘They’re human?’ she asked. ‘They don’t look it.’
But Will’s mind was teeming with questions. ‘You said that you’ve been working with them? On what, exactly?’
‘The origins of their civilisation, the pyramids and the ruined city,’ Jürgen replied. ‘Progress has been slow because communication with them is so rudimentary. You see those drawings on the table in front of him?’
Will and Elliott peered at the sheets of paper covered with pictures, similar to the pictograms carved on the exterior of the pyramids. ‘Hieroglyphs?’ Will asked.
‘Yes. Right from the start, we figured out that it was the best way to have any sort of meaningful exchange. You see, their language is very basic … very limited.’
‘My dad was able to talk to them, but it didn’t get us anywhere,’ Will said, remembering the moment inside the pyramid.
‘That’s why this tribesman was at the institute, to make recordings. We’d made the breakthrough that they communicate with each other using a whole other set of sounds which are barely audible to the human ear. It’s …’
‘It’s sort of high-pitched, like a buzzing noise,’ Will cut in.
Jürgen nodded. ‘That’s absolutely right.’
‘And it’s even more difficult to hear because they move at the same time … they rustle,’ Will said, then fell silent as he stared into the middle distance. He still felt bitterness towards the bushmen about the way they had treated him and Dr Burrows. ‘I picked up on it when they took us prisoner – just before they shopped us to the Styx.’
Jürgen turned to him. ‘You know, the bushmen weren’t … aren’t your enemy. They don’t want to get involved in anyone else’s conflicts. If they gave you up to the invaders, then it was because they believed they had to in order to protect their pyramid. That’s what they do. That’s all they do. They protect their pyramids. Endless generations have been the guardians … the caretakers of something they don’t seem to really understand.’ Jürgen went to the observation window and held up his hand to the bushman, who held up one of his, although it resembled a bundle of twigs.
Will noticed that there were pieces of his skin scattered all around where he was sitting, like shredded leaves. ‘What’s that by his feet?’ he asked.
‘Their epidermal layer – their thick skin – is an evolutionary adaptation. It’s both camouflage and a screen against the sun’s harmful rays. But in here, away from the sunlight, the outermost layer isn’t necessary, and some of it begins to dry up and slough off.’
Jürgen was obviously keen to show Will and Elliott to their rooms, and began to edge along the corridor, but Will was lost in his thoughts and oblivious to this. As Elliott took him by the arm to get him moving, he said, ‘I’d love to know what you’ve learnt from these people.’
‘I’d be very happy to take you through …’ Jürgen said, tailing off as his son appeared. The boy thrust something into Will’s hand before running off again. It was a brightly-65 coloured lollipop that rotated on its stick, like the ones Will had seen in the shop.
Jürgen smiled. ‘You are honoured indeed. Those Kriesel lollies are Karl’s absolute favourites. You can eat it in your room, where you can take your mask off.’
‘I certainly will,’ Will said, spinning the top of the lollipop with his finger and smiling after the boy.
Although the isolation rooms were small, the sleeping cots were comfortable enough, and the tinned food was a welcome change from Will and Elliott’s usual fare in the jungle. Jürgen was the first candidate for Werner’s vaccine, suffering nothing more than a slight headache after he was injected and his body began to produce antigens against the disease.
After twenty-four hours, Werner carried out tests on his brother’s blood to establish whether he’d acquired immunity against the virus. Even though the tests proved he had, Jürgen didn’t venture outside the quarantine ward, but instead kept Will and Elliott company, talking about his research on the bushmen and the ruins his team had found on expeditions into the jungle.
Werner then vaccinated himself, Karl and the bushman. The growing sense of excitement was almost palpable amongst the New Germanians, but then, halfway through the second day, there was an incident. Will was roused from his sleep by a crash and then voices in the corridor outside. Putting on his mask, he hurried from his room to find Elliott already there, with both of the New Germanian brothers. They were by the door to the bushman’s room, peering in through the observation port.
‘What is it?’ Will asked.
‘We don’t know yet,’ Werner mumbled. ‘We need to go in.’
Jürgen nodded in agreement.
Werner forced the door open, then quickly entered with his brother. That was when Will had the first glimpse.
The bushman had passed out against the door, blocking it. Whatever was wrong with him, it must have come on when he’d risen from his cot; he’d obviously knocked over a small table when he’d fallen, which accounted for the crash. He was breathing quickly and his skin was dripping with sweat.
And it was skin – every last scrap of the outer layer of bark-like hide had peeled off, and hunks of it were scattered over the cot and the floor around him.
There was no mistaking that he was human now – he was a wiry but fully grown man. But, at odds with this, his skin was very pink, like a newborn child’s. And all over his body there were spots of blood, similar to abrasions, where shedding of the whorls of tough outer hide had caused haemorrhaging.
Jürgen and Werner each took one of the bushman’s arms and carried him back to his cot.
Will saw then that he had absolutely no hair. Or eyebrows, for that matter.
‘But has this happened before?’ Will asked. ‘All the outer layers dropping off?’
‘No, not with any of the other tribesmen we had with us in the Institute,’ Jürgen replied, as his brother took hold of the bushman’s wrist.
‘His pulse seems strong enough, but the rate is very elevated,’ Werner said, as he timed it using his watch.
Jürgen looked concerned. ‘It must be a reaction to the vaccine.’
‘I can’t see why. I ran some in vitro tests on his blood beforehand, and there was nothing to sugg—’
‘Wait – look!’ Will said, as the bushman stirred, his eyes opening groggily. ‘He’s coming round!’