‘Sorry to wake you up, Atul,’ I say. ‘Despite what this looks like, I was not watching you sleep.’
Atul’s on a bottom bunk. She doesn’t say anything, just swings her legs around and stands up.
‘There’s all kinds of stuff going on,’ I say. ‘Someone – maybe Digger – has been locking us all in our rooms.’
Atul walks towards me, still not saying anything. It’s dark so I can’t see her clearly, but her silence is making me uncomfortable. I’m worried she’s going to sucker punch me in the face or something. I back out of the room.
‘So I was just checking if you guys were OK, cos, you know, there might be a maniac on the loose.’
I’m in the corridor now, and Atul is still calmly walking towards me. Finally, she steps into the light.
‘Argh!’ I shout, cos I can see her eyes, and they are another world of crazy. ‘What the hell, Atul? What’s the matter with you?’
She says nothing, just carries on walking out of the room. All I can look at is her eyes. The parts of them that are usually … brown? Are Atul’s eyes brown? I think they’re usually brown. Anyway, the coloured part and the pupil are all one colour – black with a kind of metallic blue sheen. But they’re not smooth and shiny like eyes usually are – they have a strange texture, like the speaker part on headphones. I wonder for a second if Atul has some kind of eye condition that means she has to wear funny contact lenses at night, but something tells me there’s more to it than that. She keeps coming, not fast or slow, but purposefully, if that’s a word. I think she’s going to grab me, or push me, but she just walks straight past me and heads down the corridor like she’s got somewhere to be.
‘Miss Hoche’s room is locked,’ Adrianne says as she and Trent return from their recon mission. ‘So is Mr Tomkins’ and Miss Rani’s.’
‘Should we wake them up?’
‘Did you see that?’ I say. ‘Did you see Atul?’
‘She’s asleep, isn’t she?’ Adrianne says.
‘No, no.’ I shake my head. ‘She’s awake and suffering from a major case of crazy eye.’
‘What do you mean? Where is she?’ Adrianne turns round, but Atul has already disappeared down the corridor.
‘She woke up. And there was something the matter with her. Her eyes were all buggy and she acted as if I didn’t exist. Like a sleepwalking wasp person.’ I know I sound insane.
‘This has all been you, hasn’t it, Fangs?’ Trent looks angry and happy at the same time. Being offensive and ripping people apart are his favourite things, after all. ‘You set this whole thing up to prank us.’
‘I did not,’ I say. ‘Whatever this is, it’s way bigger than anything I could pull off.’
‘Liar,’ Trent shouts, and shoves me into the wall.
‘Lance isn’t a liar.’ Chets comes running from the dorm room, shoving handfuls of sweets into his pocket. ‘He always tells the truth.’
As much as I appreciate Chets sticking up for me, I feel a bit guilty because technically I don’t always tell the truth.
‘If he says Atul had buggy eyes then she did,’ Chets says.
‘Find her and prove it then,’ says Trent.
The noise from our argument has woken the other girls from Atul’s dorm. Over Trent’s shoulder, I see them sit up, swing their legs round and get out of bed, at exactly the same time. And I’m kind of happy and scared simultaneously cos I know everyone is going to believe what I’ve been saying about Atul, but also there are now six bug-eyed girls zombing around the centre.
‘What the hell?’ Adrianne says. I’ve never heard her swear before. She flattens herself against the wall next to me. Chets’ mouth drops open and a pink chewed-up blob of sweet falls out on to the floor.
‘What’s wrong with you freaks now?’ Trent glares at us just as Katja and Big Mak come into the corridor with the rest of the boys from Trent’s room.
Adrianne grabs Trent’s shoulders and turns him around to face Lily, Simran, Tallulah, Midge and Ela as they emerge from the dark room and walk in single file down the corridor.
‘What the heck is wrong with their eyes?’ Trent spits as he talks.
‘Like I said, they’ve gone buggy,’ I say.
‘Their irises and pupils are like wasps’ eyes,’ Adrianne says. Irises – that’s what the coloured bits are called. I knew that.
‘What are they doing?’ Trent says.
‘Why don’t we just ask them.’ Katja runs up behind Ela and taps her shoulder. ‘Hey, Ela – are you OK?’
Ela completely ignores her.
‘Where are you going?’ asks Katja, walking alongside her. ‘What are you doing?’
Ela turns her head to look at Katja with her insect eyes, and says one word only: ‘Work.’ Then she turns her head again and follows the others.
‘Did she say “work”?’ Adrianne asks, as Katja jogs back to where we’re still standing, glued to the spot.
Katja nods.
‘Well, this situation seems to be escalating quickly,’ I say.
‘We need a crisis meeting – to discuss what we know and what we need to know,’ Mak says. ‘We need a plan.’
‘I think we’d better wake the teachers,’ Adrianne says, turning towards their rooms.
‘Wait!’ I say. ‘Whatever happened to the girls happened to them while they were asleep. The teachers are asleep – what if they’ve gone buggy too? What if whoever locked us in our rooms wanted this to happen? We need to be prepared.’
‘What will we do without the teachers to help? We’ll be alone and in danger!’ Chets says. ‘We’re just kids – we don’t know how to deal with a situation like this.’
‘Just calm down, Chetan. Look, the worst-case scenario is that the teachers have also, you know, bugged out,’ Adrianne says. ‘Although not ideal, it isn’t the end of the world. They’re not harmful, are they? Just aesthetically peculiar and focused on some job they have to do.’
‘That’s true,’ I say. ‘And “just kids” is a bunch of trash that adults spout to make us think we can’t manage without them. It’s all about keeping themselves at the top of the chain, Chets. We’re actually faster, braver and smarter than they are, especially in situations like this.’
‘Well, some of us are,’ Mak says, wiggling his eyebrows at Trent.
‘We’ll be fine if we think logically,’ says Adrianne.
‘And stick together.’ Katja puts her arm through Chets’. She’s always kind like that.
‘So we’ll go, as a group, to the teachers’ rooms and be ready for whatever is waiting for us. Agreed?’ I look round at the others.
Chets, Mak, Katja and Adrianne nod. Trent and the others huff and look away but don’t argue so I’m taking that as agreement.
As a unit, we move down the corridor towards the teachers’ rooms. Our first stop is Mr Tomkins – he’s the nicest so it’ll ease us in gently. I unlock his door, think about entering, but decide to knock loudly instead.
‘Mr Tomkins?’ Adrianne calls. ‘We’re sorry to disturb you, but we appear to have a situation on our hands.’
I raise my knuckles to knock again, but I hear movement in the room, so I take a step back and watch as the door handle moves downward and the door swings slowly open.
‘Oh dear,’ Katja says, as Mr Tomkins walks towards us, his man bun wonky and his eyes extremely buggy.
Big Mak, who is Mr Tomkins’ favourite and almost as tall as him, grabs Tomkins’ arm and shakes him. ‘We need your help, Mr Tomkins.’
Mr Tomkins gently but firmly removes Mak’s hand and walks past us down the corridor. ‘Work,’ he says.
‘Someone should follow,’ I say. ‘We need to know where they’re going.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ Trent says. ‘I’m too young to die.’
‘How team-spirited of you, Trent,’ Adrianne says. ‘I’ll go.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ says Big Mak.
‘Report back to Trent’s dorm in ten minutes?’ I say.
‘R
oger that.’ Big Mak smiles, and he and Adrianne run after Mr Tomkins.
‘I think Maksym has a crush,’ Katja whispers to me. Honestly, girls do think about the strangest things – I can’t believe that Mak would potentially jeopardise a scouting mission with flirting.
‘Miss Rani next,’ I say and we knock on her door.
‘Miss Rani?’ I call, but there’s no reply.
‘We’ll have to go in,’ Katja says.
‘You’d better go, then. I don’t feel comfortable seeing Miss Rani in her night clothes.’
Katja takes a deep breath, opens the door and goes into the room.
‘Miss Rani? Wake up, please.’ In the dim light I see her gently shake the shape nestled under a sheet on the bed. Then she gasps and runs back out. ‘Abort,’ she says. ‘She’s one of them.’
Miss Rani does the same thing as all the other bugs. For a situation that had been shocking ten minutes earlier, I was finding myself growing rather bored of all the stare-y walking.
On to Hoche. My arch-nemesis.
We move along the hall to Hoche’s room, expecting a repetition of the knock, wait, be confronted by a bug-eyed space-cadet sequence.
‘Hoche’s door isn’t locked,’ I say. In fact it’s wide open.
‘But it was a few minutes ago – Adrianne said so.’ Katja looks at me nervously. We both peer into the room. Everything’s where it should be, except for Hoche. Hoche is gone.
5
Preparing for Action
‘This is new,’ I say.
‘Do you think she’s gone to get help?’ Katja looks around the empty room.
‘Maybe,’ I say, but the twisting in my gut says different.
‘Oh my God,’ Katja says, as she’s looking under the bed.
‘What? What’s down there?’ I’m expecting horror – Dale’s dead body, Hoche hiding with her claws out, a cauldron full of tomato soup.
‘Look at all her shoes!’ Katja says. ‘Six pairs of heels for three days at an activity centre. I don’t know if that’s stupid or impressive.’
The sound of the speaker system squeaking on again almost gives me a heart attack.
‘Attention, Crater Lake.’ A familiar voice echoes through the rooms. ‘This is Miss Hoche. Please listen carefully to this important information. Some people in the centre, including a handful of Montmorency pupils, are suffering the negative effects of inhaling paint fumes. These people may appear to be out of sorts. They could be displaying some discolouration to the eyes. Do not be alarmed – they are all making their way to the medical centre. It has come to my attention that there are children not suffering from these symptoms out of bed. This is unacceptable. Please return to your rooms and try to get some sleep. Everything will look different in the morning. Hoche out.’
The speakers click off.
Every ‘symptom-free’ kid steps into the main dorm corridor, as another bunch of bug-eyes (people formerly known as Khalil, Chips, Dennis, Dylan and Emily-Rose) do the whole ‘out-of-sorts’ walk towards the ‘medical centre’. The kids who haven’t seen this before are horrified. To the rest of us, it’s become like ketchup on a burger. Standard. Adrianne and Big Mak run past them on their way back to join us and barely give them a glance.
‘We heard Miss Hoche on the tannoy system,’ Adrianne says between gasps for breath. Adrianne is fit, so she must have been running either really fast or really far to be in this shape. ‘You can hear it for a long way out of the building.’
‘What do you mean out of the building?’ I say.
‘Surely the medical room is inside.’ Chets frowns.
‘The medical room is inside,’ Adrianne says. ‘I’ve seen it on the centre map. Mr Tomkins didn’t go to the medical room, and neither did the others. They went out of the building, across the lawn and started climbing up the river side of the crater. We were deciding whether to carry on after them…’
‘…But Hoche’s speech came out of the air like the voice of doom and we stopped for a second to listen,’ says Mak. ‘The bug-eyes disappeared into the trees, didn’t even flinch. We thought we’d better come back to regroup.’
‘So Hoche was lying?’ Chets says. ‘That doesn’t seem right.’
‘Of course she was lying – none of what she said makes any sense at all. Why would some people be affected by paint fumes, and not others? And more importantly, since when did paint fumes turn people into bug-eyed zombies with a compulsion to work rather than eat brains?’
‘So what’s happened to them, then?’ Katja says.
‘We know we were locked in, right? Maybe Digger pumped some kind of bio-weapon gas in through the vents to our rooms,’ Mak says.
‘Even if that were true,’ Adrianne has already recovered her composure, while Mak is still bent over trying to catch his breath, ‘why did it only affect half the class? We’re all fine, right?’ She looks around to shrugs and nods. ‘What was different about the others – the ones who bugged out?’
‘They were asleep,’ I say.
‘Damn, you’re right,’ says Mak.
‘And Miss Hoche said that thing about how we should all try to get some sleep and everything would look different in the morning.’ Katja’s eyes are wide, and turquoise like a tropical ocean. She looks afraid.
‘Everything probably does look different if you suddenly have eyes like a wasp.’ Adrianne was right, that’s what they looked like – the wasp eyes from the documentary.
‘But Miss Hoche wouldn’t want to hurt us, would she?’ Chets asks the question everyone else is thinking. Everyone except me, that is. I’ve seen that side of her – the nasty, bullying side. The side that enjoys the power she has over people.
‘She was locked in her room and magically got out. She didn’t go the way the bug-eyes went, or we would have seen her. She apparently has control of the tannoy’ (yeah, I say it like I always knew what it was called – thanks, Adrianne) ‘system and is using it to tell us what to do. If she was worried about the others like we are, she would have come and spoken to us about it face-to-face.’
‘She does love to get in our faces,’ Mak says.
‘I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I think we have to assume that she’s involved somehow.’ They all look at me and I can see how confused they all are – confused and scared. The funny thing is, I’m not. There’s a puzzle that needs solving, and people who need assurance and protection. And I’m tingly excited cos I know I’m the best person to get us all through it. To me, it feels like the start of an adventure.
‘So we’re not going back to our rooms to get some sleep, then?’ Chets says.
‘No, we’re definitely not doing that.’
‘Then what are we going to do?’ Katja says.
‘First, we’ll quickly go back to our rooms,’ I say.
‘Are you completely dense, Fangs? We have to go somewhere and hide.’ Trent has been quiet for a bit but I think he senses that people are listening to me, and he really hates it.
I turn and start running down the corridor, back to my little cubby-hole bedroom.
‘What are you doing?’ Adrianne calls.
‘We have a bit of time while they think we’re going back to bed,’ I shout back. ‘We need to get everything out of our rooms that we can use.’
‘Like what?’ Chets shouts. ‘What can we use?’
‘Food, water, anything we can carry. And, most importantly, this is not the type of situation in which we want to be wearing pyjamas,’ I say. ‘If we’re preparing for some kind of battle, we need to put some clothes on.’
‘Good idea,’ says Adrianne. ‘We’ll all get changed and meet back at Lance’s room in five minutes.’
Fourteen of us gather outside my room: me, Chets, Big Mak, Katja, Adrianne, Trent, Trent’s friends – Noah, Krish, Luca, Jayden and Rav – and three other girls from Katja’s dorm – Celine, Prit and Gracie. There aren’t as many of us as I’d hoped, but I’m thinking we’re lucky that any of us survived the lock-in. If it w
asn’t for me being in that out-of-the-way, ‘special’ basement room, I would have been locked in, too. I can only think that whoever locked us in – and I’m thinking Digger, Hoche or some as-yet-unseen baddy (cos let’s face it, there always is one) – must have forgotten about my door.
We’re dressed and ready to go, with full pockets and backpacks.
‘I feel like I should be wearing heavy-duty combat gear,’ I say. ‘Maybe with a bullet-proof vest and a really large weapon.’
‘And some kind of helmet,’ says Katja.
‘In this weather, you’d dehydrate and die in hours,’ says Mak. ‘What you need is versatile, lightweight coverage, preferably something in a camouflage print.’
‘Or layers,’ says Adrianne. ‘I have my cag-in-a-bag in my backpack. You never know when you might need a waterproof.’
‘Maybe I should go back and get my hoody,’ Chets says. ‘I don’t want to get cold.’
‘Chets, buddy, there’s not going to be a sudden blizzard.’ I’m aware that time is passing quickly, we don’t know where Hoche or Digger are, and we’re losing focus. ‘We’re moving now. Whatever we’ve got, we’ve got. Anything else we need we’ll have to find as we go.’
‘Go where exactly?’ Trent says.
‘We need to gather information and stay undetected. To do that, we need to keep moving around the centre.’
‘Why do we need information? Kids have turned into wasp-faces, our teacher is trying to make us turn, too. What more do we need to know? We find a central place where we can all hang out and wait for help to arrive.’
Crater Lake Page 4