‘What is it?’ he said when he saw her. Relaxed a little.
‘You’re sleeping on the job, Cam.’
‘Was I? Sorry. How long have I been asleep?’
‘Not long. I was going to let you sleep a bit longer.’
‘Yeah?’ Cameron scratched his head and sniffed. ‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Go on then.’ Even though he was in the wrong, Cameron had that grumpy, feeling-sorry-for-himself attitude of someone who’d just been woken up.
‘It’s about Paul,’ said Maxie.
Cameron grunted.
‘What was he like?’ Maxie went on.
‘Paul?’ Cameron sniffed again, rolled his neck, which was obviously hurting him. ‘Never really thought about him that much. He was quite quiet. Pretty smart, I think, always reading. He was well into all the stuff here, you know, the animals and the exhibits and that. I never had much to do with him, as it goes. And then he got sick. I don’t know, I guess it was flu or something. You know when you get a fever and you start acting all weird? He was like that. Got quite edgy and aggressive. Lost it big time when his little sister got killed by a sicko. Went absolutely berserk. Started accusing us all of not caring. As if it was our fault somehow. It was quite funny really.’
‘Funny? His sister had died.’
‘Yeah.’ Cameron looked down, gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Not really funny, I suppose, as such. But you know what it’s like when a quiet kid suddenly loses it? A wimpy kid? That was the first time anyone really noticed him, when he started trying to attack everyone.’
‘Was it serious? Like a problem?’
‘Not really.’
‘So he’s not that big? Not a fighter?’
‘Paul? No way. I mean, he was big, but, you know, like, tall. Tall and skinny, not muscly. Never saw him fight. Must have done something early on, to survive long enough to get in here and stay safe. But most of us, once we got in here, we never had anything to do with sickos. Until the other night. When they got in.’
‘So if he did pop up somewhere you guys could deal with him fairly easily?’
‘Of course. I mean, no offence, but Samira was just a girl. Paul wouldn’t never have stood a chance against one of us boys.’
‘And me?’ said Maxie. ‘I’m a girl.’
‘Yeah …’ Cameron grinned at her. ‘But don’t worry. I’m here to protect you, babe.’
70
It was drizzling and thin clouds covered the moon, so that the area around the warehouse was washed with a thin, watery-grey light. Just enough to show that there were people down there. Grown-ups – too many to count. They were hard to see in the gloom, but definitely there. The warehouse was surrounded. Blue and Skinner were huddled together on the roof under an umbrella that Skinner had produced. It was green with a white Promithios logo on it. Achilleus was too cool to take shelter under a brolly. He stood out in the open. Getting wet.
‘They come every night,’ said Skinner. He was holding the cat inside his jacket. It peered out nervously at the rain. ‘We go round every few days to repair the fences, but they always get back in again.’
‘They ever get in the building?’
‘Sometimes. One or two. We deal with them pretty quick.’
‘How?’
‘Oh, you know. We have our ways. It’s always the cleverest get in, the least diseased.’
‘Like Seamus and his mates?’
‘Yeah. Like them.’
Blue wondered why it didn’t feel stranger up here. On the roof of a medical supplies warehouse, under this umbrella with a short, hunched-over kid whose skin was ten sizes too big for him, talking about an army of cannibal adults.
‘Seamus and the others had been trying to get in for ages,’ Skinner went on. ‘Eventually we let them. TV Boy wanted them for his trap. His little game.’
‘But what do they want?’ Blue asked. ‘Why do they come here night after night?’
‘Same as you,’ said Skinner. ‘They want what we’ve got. But also, mainly I think, they want us. They’re kind of attracted to us.’
‘Is it worse after dark?’ said Blue.
‘Oh yeah. Much. There’s only ever usually one or two during the day. They hide in the other buildings around here. Sleep while it’s light. They’ll come out and attack if they think it’s worth it.’
‘Was a whole load of them down there when we turned up,’ said Blue, remembering the fight at the gates.
‘They must have sensed you coming. There’s twice as many tonight as usual. Lately they’ve been changing, getting more organized. The signal’s different.’
‘What signal? What do you mean?’
‘You can’t go out there now,’ said Skinner, changing the subject. ‘You’ll have to wait till morning. They’ll go back to their dens when the sun comes up. We can help you find what you need here and then you’re clear.’
‘We left some friends behind,’ said Blue. ‘Nearby. They’ll be waiting for us.’
‘Are they safe?’
‘I hope so. They’re in a church.’
‘They should be fine then, so long as they stay inside.’
‘Oh, they’ll stay inside all right. Too scared to come out. We didn’t bring much food, though. We were expecting to be back home by now.’
‘They got water?’
‘Yeah, plenty of water.’
‘Then they’ll be fine.’
‘Hope so. This whole journey hasn’t quite gone like I expected.’
‘If the Warehouse Queen lets you take all you want it’ll have been worth it, though, won’t it?’
‘Guess so. I don’t know about drugs and chemicals and all that. That’s Einstein’s territory. Can I ask you something, though?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is there a cure? For the disease? Is there a cure here?’
‘If there was do you think all those creeps would be down there? Do you think we wouldn’t have fixed them up?’
‘I guess so.’
Skinner was silent for a while. They stared at the adults milling about, barely making a sound. Achilleus picked up something from the roof and threw it down. Laughed.
‘I like it up here,’ said Skinner after a while. ‘I come up here all the time. Day and night. For me this is the whole world. Our parents never let us go out when we were growing up. Never in public. When the disease struck they brought us in here. This is all I’ve ever seen, the view from up here. I wonder all the time what it’s like, the rest of the world.’
‘It’s pretty crap at the moment, to be honest with you,’ said Blue.
‘I want to see it, though.’
The cat shifted inside Skinner’s jacket and Skinner soothed her. ‘She doesn’t like it out here.’
‘Can’t say as I’m enjoying it much either,’ said Blue as the wind switched direction and directed a spray of rain down his neck. ‘Come on. Let’s go down. I’ve seen enough.’
As Blue went to move off, though, Skinner held him back with a hand on his sleeve.
‘There might be a cure,’ he said. ‘There might be stuff here you could use. But we wouldn’t know where to start. We’re not scientists. Our parents were either scientists or doctors, but we were too young to learn anything and they all died before they could work anything out; they were trying, they were trying real hard. They felt guilty, you see.’
‘Of spreading the disease, of bringing it here to England?’
‘That would have happened anyway. As soon as the Inmathger came out of the forest and met other humans.’
‘What then?’
‘The thing is,’ said Skinner, ‘it was clear even before we were born that there was something wrong. That we weren’t growing normally. But, like I said, they kept it secret, covered it up. They hid us away from the other people they worked with. Didn’t tell anyone. All of them who had children. And when we were born we never mixed with other kids. Nobody knew about us at all.’
&
nbsp; ‘But why?’
‘Have you ever heard of toxoplasmosis?’
‘What’s that?’
Skinner tickled his cat under the chin and lifted its head slightly.
‘You can tell us all about it, can’t you, kitty?’ he said.
‘Inside,’ said Blue. They called over to Achilleus and headed for the door. Once they were safely back in the dry Skinner fastened the door shut and, as they walked along the metal walkway high above the warehouse floor, he explained.
‘Toxoplasmosis,’ he said, ‘is a parasitic disease that used to kill thousands of people every year, and its main host is cats.’
‘Never knew that,’ said Blue. ‘I ain’t going nowhere near Mister Tiddles there.’
‘It’s Mrs actually,’ said Skinner. ‘Mrs Jones. But chances are you already have it.’
‘What? Toxic Plodmosis?’
‘Toxoplasmosis. Yeah. They used to reckon that up to half the human population was infected with it. Most people never know they’ve got it inside them, but if you’re weak, with a bad immune system, or, like, a baby, it can kill you, or make you blind, or give you brain damage.’
‘You saying I could have it and not know?’
‘Yeah. Some people never have any symptoms, or they might just think they’ve got, like, flu, or something.’
They reached the stairway that led down to the ground.
‘You trying to tell me that’s what the disease is?’ said Blue, starting down the stairs. ‘It’s a kind of toxoplasmosis?’
‘Come on, we ain’t got all night.’ Achilleus pushed past the two of them, impatient with the slow progress that Skinner was making as he waddled along, limping slightly. Blue noticed that he was wearing no shoes and that his feet were covered in thick layers of leathery skin.
Skinner waited for Achilleus to get ahead and then carried on explaining things to Blue.
‘Not toxoplasmosis,’ he said. ‘Something similar. We call it the Nightmare Bug. The way it works, though, is just like toxoplasmosis. So you can get infected without knowing it; you can carry it for years without any symptoms, and it can affect your brain, change you completely.’
‘Can toxoplasmosis do that?’ asked Blue, getting worried that there was one more thing in the world to stress about.
‘You can catch toxoplasmosis from touching cat crap,’ said Skinner. ‘Or soil where a cat crapped, the parasite can live there. Then if you don’t wash your hands it can get inside you, where it’ll breed. The thing is, once it’s in you, it can cause you to behave differently. If mice get it, for instance, they’re not scared of cats any more.’
‘You’re joking me?’
‘No. It’s true. A mouse with toxoplasmosis will go looking for cats. They’re attracted to their wee, I think, and they’ll go up to them without any fear.’
‘What? It makes mice become supermice and attack cats?’
‘Kind of. The parasite controls their brains. So they go up to cats and … and, well, they get eaten. So the parasite gets into its main host. The cat.’
Blue stopped and Skinner turned to him.
‘And people that have the toxo?’ Blue said, looking suspiciously at Mrs Jones, who was still tucked up inside Skinner’s jacket. ‘Are they attracted to cats too?’
‘Not as far as I know,’ said Skinner. ‘But it can cause depression, mental disorders, even suicide.’
‘That is bad news,’ said Blue. ‘I wished you hadn’t told me that.’
‘Sorry. I was only trying to explain.’
Mrs Jones suddenly meowed and struggled free from Skinner. She jumped on to the handrail and then on to the steps. She was so skinny she looked more like a squirrel than a cat. Blue watched her slink down the stairs.
‘But toxoplasmosis isn’t what caused the sickness in grown-ups?’ he said, carrying on down after the cat.
‘No. It’s a different parasite,’ said Skinner. ‘And once it got in people it altered their brains. So our mums and dads, they protected us, they protected the disease by not talking. They had the parasite growing inside them all the time.’
‘They didn’t know it, though,’ said Blue.
‘No. The parasite was making sure it wasn’t found out, or it would have been wiped out before it had a chance to multiply. You see, we were the only signs that something was wrong. Otherwise the parasite was undetectable; it’s very good at hiding. It meant our parents didn’t behave rationally. We are a secret that has only now been told.’
They reached the bottom of the stairs and caught up with Achilleus, who had stopped to play with the cat. He was squatting down, scratching her behind her ear as she arched her back and rubbed against his knee. Finally he picked her up and held her under his chin. Blue winced, remembering what Skinner had just told him. It was weird seeing Achilleus like this. Blue didn’t have him down as a cat person.
Blue smiled. Must have the toxo in him.
They walked over to where Jackson and Paddy were waiting for them.
‘What’s going on?’ Jackson asked. ‘What have you found out?’
‘We’ve found out that we ain’t going nowhere tonight,’ said Achilleus. ‘This place is, like, under siege.’
‘And I found out that you need to keep away from cats,’ said Blue.
71
Maxie was dreaming of pear drops. She always bought pear drops when they went to visit her nan in Wales. There was an old-fashioned sweet shop on the high street. It was always really busy, especially in the summer when all the holidaymakers were there. In the shop they had these shelves with every kind of sweet you could think of. Cough drops, sherbet bonbons, pineapple cubes, aniseed twists, Parma violets … and pear drops. The hard crystals of sugar on them dug into the top of your mouth, but if you sucked them long enough they became all smooth and slippery. Nothing else tasted like pear drops. Not even pears. She’d buy a little white paper bag, with a selection of sweets, carefully weighed. The smell of the pear drops was the strongest, always reminded her of Nan. Of being in Wales with the family.
And here she was. Up at the counter with her mum and her nan. The woman who ran the shop was struggling to open a jar, but it wouldn’t budge. She was sweating, grunting. Maxie could see the pear drops inside, could smell them; the smell was so strong it was overpowering. They rattled and tumbled around in there, pink and yellow, frosted and glittering with sugar …
She wanted those pear drops so badly. Open it, open the jar, you silly old witch.
And then the top turned, spinning round really fast, and it came off and the shopkeeper held the jar out to her …
But there was something wrong. The sweets stank. Of something rotten. Maxie looked in the jar. There weren’t any sweets in there, just a pile of rotting meat, bits of body, heart and lungs and intestines, mouldy and putrefying, and over it …
The smell of pear drops.
Nan. Wales. Sweets.
Only she wasn’t in Wales, was she? She couldn’t be. Nan was dead. Her mum was dead. Her whole family was dead. It was just a dream. Sod it. She’d been enjoying it. A nice trip to Wales. Her brain was teasing her, playing tricks. And that final nasty trick with the jar. Full of rotting meat. What was that all about?
And that smell …
It wasn’t in her dream. She wasn’t imagining it. It was too strong. Too real. Her sleeping mind was struggling to make sense of it. This foul mix of pear drops and rotten meat.
Only one thing smelt like that.
Grown-ups.
She had to wake up. There was danger. She had to be ready.
She forced her eyes open, gave a little shudder and for a moment sat there, suspended between awake and asleep, asleep and awake …
Now she couldn’t tell if she was dreaming still. The great Gothic bulk of the museum rising above her, brick upon brick, falling away to shadows, a flickering light from the candle at her feet.
That was real.
Yeah …
Cameron sat there, slumped in his seat, dribblin
g, and someone was standing over him. Someone tall. Dressed in black. Shoulders hunched. Up around his ears. Elbows tucked into his sides. Holding himself as if he was in pain. Swaying slightly, moving his head with little jerky movements, like a lizard.
Long, spindly arms and legs. Very thin.
A spider. That’s what Ella had said. A spider walking in the museum at night. He had a blade in his hand, its sharp edge glinting in the candlelight.
Maxie couldn’t move, like she was still in the dream, frozen, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t save Cameron.
Why did a boy smell of pear drops and rotting meat?
Her tongue felt too big for her mouth.
But she had to do something.
‘Wait,’ she said at last, the sound of her voice surprising her. The boy stopped still, tensed and then slowly, slowly turned. His face was a face drawn on a sheet of paper, so white, making his eyes look yellow, his teeth …
Yellow.
Spider.
Paul.
Maxie was fully awake now, no doubt about that, her throat dry, the blood throbbing in her temples, her legs shaking. All she could hear was her own breath, rasping through her nose. Cameron slept on in his chair. Either that or Paul had killed him already.
Paul had a look in his eyes that wasn’t human. He seemed possessed by the spirit of some animal. He had the cold, pitiless eyes of a shark, or a snake.
Lizard, shark, snake, spider …
No. She had it now.
Dinosaur.
Maxie hated dinosaurs.
He looked like a raptor out of a Jurassic Park film. One of those nasty, clever, skinny ones. It was the museum that had possessed him.
‘Wait,’ she said again. He tilted his head to one side. Licked his lips and his tongue was shockingly pink. God, he stank.
Maxie tried to fix on her surroundings without taking her eyes off Paul. Her new samurai sword was propped against her chair, still in its scabbard. Cameron had his own weapon, a short sword, in his lap. He was supposed to be awake, it was his watch, but he’d fallen asleep again. Stupid bastard. And where was the patrol? Had Paul done something to them? He was a lot more dangerous-looking in the flesh than she’d imagined. Because he was no longer human. He was this dinosaur thing.
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