by Mark Morris
"And?" Sue said, her expression unreadable. "You think you need one?"
"Well... it might come in useful."
"Don't you trust us to protect you?"
"It's not that I don't trust you," Adam replied, "it's just that I'd prefer my destiny to be in my own hands."
Sue regarded him, eyes narrowed, as if weighing up her options. Adam bore her scrutiny with apparent good humor for maybe fifteen seconds; then he laughed and raised his hands. "Listen," he said, "I don't want to get confrontational here-it's not my style. If you're not prepared to trust me with one of your guns, then okay-I understand your reasoning and I respect where you're coming from. But the thing is, I'm a businessman, which, contrary to my easygoing manner, makes me a bit of a pigheaded bugger. I've spent my whole working life negotiating deals, and one thing I've discovered is that for a relationship to work there has to be give and take on both sides. But at the moment, Sue, you're doing all the taking and none of the giving, and if that's going to remain the case, then maybe we ought to cut our losses now and say toodle-oo."
He tilted his head and smiled at Sue to let her know the ball was back in her court.
It wasn't Sue who replied, however; it was Libby. "Well, of course you should have a gun," she said. "Don't you think Adam should have a gun, Steve?"
Steve pursed his lips, but nodded almost immediately. "Yeah," he said, "I think he should. I know what you said after Mabel died, Sue, about not trusting anybody, but sometimes I think you have to take a leap of faith. I mean, if we never trusted anybody ever again, the monsters would win, wouldn't they?"
"Divide and conquer," said Libby.
"Exactly."
Sue said nothing for a moment, simply stared at Steve without expression. Then she abruptly turned to Adam. "Have you ever fired a gun before?"
Adam couldn't have looked more put out had she asked him whether he had ever kissed a lady before. "Of course I have," he replied. "I'll have you know I was vice president of the South Cambridge Clay Pigeon Shooting Society. I've even bagged the odd grouse on occasion."
"So I take it you'd rather have a rifle than a handgun?" she said dryly.
"Oh, I think so. A real gun is a two-handed weapon, isn't it? Handguns are for hoodies and the like. No offense, Max."
Max looked so comically surprised that Abby whooped with laughter. "What's that supposed to mean?" he said to Adam. "You think I'm a gangsta rapper or somethin'?"
"Well, aren't you?" Steve said innocently. "We all thought you were."
"Swivel on it," Max said, flipping him the finger, and sud-denly they were all laughing.
Adam was given his gun and they made their plans. They would head off in pairs to look around. Because Abby knew the school inside out, and because Steve had been here a few tines (it had been a hell of a journey from London to Castle Morton even in the good old days, but he liked to keep in the loop of his kids' lives as much as possible) and had a rough idea of the layout, it was decided that Abby would accompany Sue, and Adam would go with Steve. That left Max and Libby as the only couple with no prior knowledge of the place, but Abby did her best to give them directions.
"Okay," Sue said, "we'll have a ten-minute poke around and then meet back here. Any trouble, fire your gun and the rest of us'll come running. Keep your wits about you and trust no one. Steve and Abby, even if you see the people you've come looking for, remember it might not be them, so don't drop your guard. Okay?"
Abby nodded, though the thought of having to point her gun at Muni and Dyl instead of throwing her arms around them made her feel sick. Then again, if Muni and Dyl were aware of what was going on-which she was sure they would be-they would probably be just as cautious. And at least, if it did come to that, it would mean that they were alive and well, which, at the end of the day, was all that really mattered, wasn't it?
"Okay," Sue said, "let's go." She and Abby stepped out from the shelter of the rotor blades and headed across the courtyard towards the main building, which contained the bulk of the dormitories and classrooms; Steve and Adam peeled off right, towards a walkway sheltered beneath a series of small arches, at the end of which was a door leading to the dining hall and kitchens; and Max and Libby headed left, where a larger archway led to the main administration offices, including the head's study and staff quarters.
It was not yet four o'clock, but just enough daylight had leeched from the sky to rime the hard angles of walls, roofs and windows in solid black lines of shadow. Similarly, the rotor blades of the helicopter threw long black streamers of shadow across the cobbled ground.
Abby was trailing Sue, and still brooding about how she might react were she to come face-to-face with Muni or Dyl, when the sound of breaking glass yanked her back to full alertness. For a moment she thought one of the others must have dropped a bottle of water or a jar of food-but then there came another crash, followed rapidly by another, and another. Within seconds these individual crashes had escalated into an overlapping cacophony, appallingly strident after the previous cathedral-like hush. It took a moment or two of dis-orientation before Abby was able to even think about reacting, and by then it was too late.
Attempting to haul her senses back to some sort of equilibrium, she became aware of several things happening in quick succession. First she saw what appeared to be giant raindrops falling from the sky before realizing they were bottles or jars, flashing in what remained of the failing light. As each of these jars (or bottles) hit the ground, they shattered on the cobbles, spitting glass splinters over a wide area (and Abby was glad of her thick trousers), and releasing some kind of pungent yellow smoke.
At the same time Abby was vaguely aware of upper-floor windows all around the courtyard opening and just as quickly closing.
Additionally she was aware of Sue's movements, first out of the corner of her eye (the ex-policewoman spinning around, pointing her gun, then apparently changing her mind and lowering it again), and then directly, as Abby shifted her glance from the windows and turned towards her (Sue starting to run back through the smoke towards the helicopter, but only managing to get about halfway before clutching her throat and dropping to her knees).
After that, as she herself started to choke, Abby was aware of nothing but her own discomfort. The yellow smoke rose all around her, seizing her lungs so tightly that a bright, juicy spark of panic leaped into jittering life in her brain, threatening to obliterate her ability to think.
And then she could no longer see anything at all because her eyes were streaming and stinging, and the yellowish smoke from the broken jars and bottles was billowing around her in ever-thickening clouds. Mustard gas, she thought feverishly, even though she had no idea what mustard gas was or how it worked. What she did know, however, was that the smoke was like mustardyellow, acrid and pungent, burning her sinuses and her eyes.
A few seconds later-and maybe fifteen since the first jar had smashed on the ground-Abby found she could no longer breathe. Her lungs had locked, become inoperative; her throat, which had shrunk to the size of a pinhead, had now closed up completely. She began to flail in panic, her arms moving instinctively, spasmodically, as if the gas were an assailant that her beleaguered body was trying to fight off. She felt her legs going, turning to needles and water, collapsing under her weight.
I'm going to die! she thought, and the thought was a terrible final flare in her dwindling consciousness. She was receding from her body, yet was simultaneously aware that she was clawing and scrapping for life.
Then the blackness closed in, like a wave-like the wavesilent and deathly, annihilating everything before it. And now, at the end, she was not even aware that she needed to breathe, was aware of nothing but a fading sense of disappointment.
Is this it? she thought. Her last thought. Her last words.
Is this really...
... it?
The world rushed back at her, and with it came the pain. Her lungs felt full of wet cement and broken glass; her throat felt raw, bloody, scoured.
She groped at the pain, as if it were something she could remove with her hands-and then from somewhere above her an infinitely kind and gentle voice said, "Here. Drink this."
Her head was lifted and something was pressed between her lips. Something that was pottery-hard but not sharp. Thin and rounded, like...
The rim of a cup.
The cup was tipped, and liquid sloshed gently against her upper lip. Abby drew it in, let it trickle down her barbed-wire throat, and oh, it was good. Cool and smooth and sweet. Manna from heaven. The balm of the gods.
Maybe I'm dead, she thought suddenly. Maybe I'm dead and in heaven and an angel's looking after me....
"There you go. Is that better? Don't answer, just nod." An angel with a voice like Dylan!
She tried to open her eyes, and felt more pain, sharp and stinging. Her eyelids didn't cone apart like eyelids; they came apart like a wound which hadn't yet knit together. And her eyeballs were all nerves and raw flesh, and this time she couldn't help crying out. And the cry was rusty and birdlike, not human at all. And it hurt like she was swallowing broken glass and stinging nettles. And it wasn't just a cry of pain, but also of fear, because she could feel hot blood running out of her eyes and down her cheeks. And blood was not supposed to come out of her eyes, was it? And that was scary because it meant she might be blind, here in heaven, forever and ever amen. And then she saw light, flickering light, somewhere beyond the swimming, stinging pain. And she realized it wasn't blood running down her cheeks: it was just water, just tears. Just tears.
She sank back. She hadn't even realized she'd raised her head until the weight of it dragged her back down and the soft plumpness of a pillow cradled her skull. As she settled, the pain still throbbing in her eyes and throat, like a triangle of red lights narking out the battleground of her face, she heard her hair rustle against her ears as someone bent down to speak to her, and then her angel (her angel with Dylan's voice) said, "It's okay, Abs. I know it hurts, but you'll be fine. I promise."
She felt a cool, rough hand on her sizzling cheek (Weird that angels should have rough hands, she thought), and the cup being pressed to her lips. She drank again (the sweet balm, the nectar), and then the angel said, "I need you to open your eyes for nee again, Abs. Just a tiny bit. I know it hurts, but I need to put some drops in then. They'll sting for a second, and then they'll feel better. I promise."
Angel drops, she thought, and she made herself open her eyes. For the tiniest fraction of a second (which was still much too long) she felt fire pouring into the slit between her lids (or maybe it was the tip of a red hot poker being pushed into her socket). She arched her back, her fingertips clawing at the mattress, her barbed-wire throat getting ready to scream. But before she could dredge up a sound her hot eye was turning deliciously cold, the pain extinguished like a camp fire doused by a bucket of crushed ice. She heard a long exhalation of breath whistling through her throat-the throat which still hurt, but not as much as before; the throat which had been soothed by the balm of the gods.
"Good girl," her angel said. "That's one. Now the other. You ready?"
She wasn't, but within seconds it was over, and it wasn't as bad the second time.
"Okay," her angel said, "there we go. You rest now for a bit." She drifted. Time passed. Her angel came back and poured more nectar down her throat and into her eyes. She got out of bed and ran round the school, looking for her dad's Jimi Hendrix guitar string, knowing it was vital she find it before the wave came. She didn't realize that was a dream until she opened her eyes and became aware of two things: one, that she was still in bed, and two, that her eyes no longer felt full of hot coals, but were now merely sore in a manageable way, as if she had been standing too close to a bonfire.
From her prone position she looked around, taking in her surroundings. Her vision was still a little blurred, but clearing all the time. The first thing she registered was that it was night. The room was illuminated by the soft, honey-colored glow of candlelight. From the profusion of toast brown shadows, Abby guessed that there was probably only one candle burning in the room, two at the most. The flickering flame made the walls and high ceiling appear to sway and shift, as if the room were breathing.
The candle itself was somewhere to her left, and quite close by. For the first time she realized that she was lying in a proper bed, which, after weeks of hard, damp floors cushioned only by the thickness of her sleeping bag, seemed impossibly soft, impossibly comfortable. As she looked from side to side, she saw the tops of various items of furniture-a wardrobe, a bookcase (with proper, undamaged books on it!), and a mirror in a wooden frame, which presumably crowned a dressing table or a chest of drawers.
Her thoughts turned to her angel-and suddenly it was as if she had had a shot of adrenaline to her system. She sat up, feeling ridiculously weak, and peeled the duvet away from her bare legs. She noticed, with some consternation, that someone had removed her boots, walking socks and waterproof trousers (but thankfully not her underwear) before putting her to bed, and then she swung her feet to the floor.
She looked around the room in the light of its one flickering candle, and although she didn't recognize it, she realized there was something in here she did recognize. She recognized the trio of windows in the far wall-or at least their shape. They were not regular windows, but deep-set slits, arched at the top, and they were designed like that to reduce the risk of enemy arrows entering the room and causing injury to its occupants. So she was still in the castle, and during the day these windows must look out over the grounds or the slope of pine forest that marched down to the town below.
Still looking about, it suddenly occurred to her what kind of room this was, and she felt a curling sense of disorientation and, oddly, guilt in her belly. It was a staff member's bedroom, and back in the old world it would have been forbidden for her to have set so much as a foot in here, never mind crawled under the duvet and caught a few z's. In fact, a matter of weeks ago, just being found in this part of the school would have been punishable by suspension.
How times change, she thought, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Then she thought of her angel again, and suddenly, as if just thinking about him was akin to summoning hinm, the door opened and there he was.
Dylan's hair was longer than she'd ever seen it, beginning to curl at the edges. He looked thin, almost gaunt, and his cheeks were coated with a scruffy fuzz of beard. But he was grinning in that slightly crooked way that Abby always told him looked goofy, but that, for some reason, made most of her friends go giggly and stupid.
"Hey, stinky," he said softly (he had called her that since she had proclaimed it her favorite word at the age of three), "how's it going?"
She tried to reply, but a bubble of emotion rushed into her throat and burst, taking her by surprise. What emerged instead of words was a wailing cry and a sudden flood of tears. Forgetting Sue's warning entirely, Abby stumbled forward and wrapped her arms around her brother's neck. She dragged his face down to hers and, still crying, planted dozens of slobbery, snotty kisses all over his face.
Dylan laughed beneath her onslaught, and hugged her back hard enough to make her ribs ache. As the first wave-the first tsunami-of her tears subsided, she re-discovered her croaky, tear-laden voice.
"It's so good to see you," she said. "I thought I'd never see you again."
"Can't get rid of nee that easily," he said jovially; then his own voice dropped to a wavery murmur. "I've really missed you, Abs."
Eventually they broke apart, though continued to stare into each other's flushed faces, into each other's bloodshot eyes, as if barely able to believe what they were seeing. Too late, Abby remembered Sue's warning.
"It is you, Dyl, isn't it?" she asked.
He gave a throaty huh of mirth. "'Course it is. Who do you think I am? Bob Geldof?"
She responded with a shriek of laughter, which she immediately smothered with her hand. Forcing herself to calm down, she said, "You know what I mean. You do know what I mean, don'
t you?"
"You mean am I a slug?" he said.
"Slug?"
"It's what we call them."
She nodded. It was a pretty good name. "We just call them aliens."
"How retro," he said, complete with snooty expression and raised eyebrow. Then he became serious again. "I'm not one, by the way. Or I wasn't last time I looked."
"But how do I know you're telling the truth?"
"You don't. Though you could always gas me-but I don't really fancy that"
"Gas you?" said Abby.
"It's how we knew none of you lot were slugs. If slugs are disguised as humans, and they get attacked, they turn back into slugs again. Dead giveaway"
"Do they?" said Abby.
"W ell... duh," he said. "Haven't you found that out?"
Abby thought of the times they had engaged the aliens (or slugs, as Dylan called them) in combat. There had been the Marco one that had killed Mabel-though that had already been in its alien form when Dad, Sue and Max had started shooting at it. Then there had been the dogs-and certainly the one Sue had shot had changed back into an alien before scooting off. Then there had been the eggs they'd firebombed in Edinburgh-and she still shuddered as she recalled how the people below had run around, shrieking in pain and anguish, before (in some cases, but not all) transforming into the monsters they really were.
She shrugged and said, "I suppose. We hadn't really made the connection."
"I don't think we did until Mr. West pointed it out."
"Mr. West? You don't mean-"
"Your old chemistry teacher, yeah."
"Oh, God," Abby said, "he's not here, is he?"
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she felt ashamed of them. Was she actually bemoaning the fact that Mr. West (Fred, the girls called him, though his grouchiness probably didn't quite warrant being named after a sexually depraved serial killer) had survived the flood?Would she honestly wish him drowned in favor of a teacher she liked better?Kindhearted Mrs. Pagett, say, or the ever-cheerful Miss Cheever, who had been only a decade or so older than Abby herself?