by Ryan Casey
Jonny pondered what Donna was saying—or thinking. Turnstone obviously had powers way beyond TCorps’s understanding. But still, even if those who had the infection could be communicated with, how was that helping him and Donna?
“We tell them exactly who it was that caused them to become the bloodthirsty monsters they are. We tell them exactly who caused it. We lead them right to us.”
Donna’s thought was in direct response to Jonny’s pondering. Shit—he really had to get used to this shared thought thing. It seemed like the communication came from the “hunger” part of his body and mind. Normal thoughts… he’d have to learn to separate those if he ever wanted any privacy again.
“I don’t know,” Jonny thought. “I’m still not sure how well it will work. Besides, don’t you want to… Don’t you want them to try and cure us? And help us?”
“Don’t be naive, Jonny,” Donna said. “I worked here. They don’t want to help us. They want to use us. And I know you feel it too. The hunger. I know it’s building and building and building inside you too. We need to get out of here. Nothing good can come of this.”
Jonny couldn’t deny that a meal—a feast—was top of his list of priorities right now. He didn’t want it to be, but that was the truth. The hunger was growing stronger. He needed to feed soon, whether he liked it or not. And no artificial bullshit—no flap of flesh—was going to suffice.
Nothing beats the real thing.
“We can take them down,” Donna said. “We’re stronger together. Two minds are better than one. We can take them down for what they’ve done. It’s not ideal for me, Jonny. I don’t want this either. But I can see things differently now. All of a sudden, I see things differently. Flesh is my priority. I don’t want it to be, but it is. I can’t deny it. And I know it is yours too.”
He opened his eyes. He could still feel her, as he half-concentrated on the hunger. The hunger that gnawed at him. Begged him to break out of these belts and smash through the walls and suck the blood from the rich veins on Sarah’s neck, feasting on whatever other body parts he could find of the others.
He wanted to make them pay for what they’d done to him, what they’d done to the people he cared about.
But mostly, he wanted to feast.
He closed his eyes. Concentrated harder on his thoughts and his hunger. Heard the slight buzzing sound he’d heard before when Donna first started communicating with him.
“I’ll do it,” he thought.
“I know,” Donna said.
38.
It was just three hours after Mr. Belmont had left the Quarantine Zone and returned to his office that the first news report came in.
Two girls down by a park in Preston. Apparently, somebody had come at them out of nowhere and bitten into their necks. Bitten so deep that they’d reached the spine on one of the girls. A horrible murder. Inexplicable. Unforgivable.
Only the girl wasn’t dead. Neither of them were dead. And both of them were showing signs of extreme, uncharacteristic violence and anger.
Mr. Belmont sat back in his leather office chair and stared at the 42-inch television wall-mounted above his desk. It was dark outside. The middle of the night. The first night of the rest of humanity’s life. The first night of Turnstone.
He switched the channel. Another report, this time of an unidentified man who’d lashed out at his work colleague as they sat in the car park at McDonalds. The man he’d bitten, who was also unidentified, had gone on to enter McDonalds and attack three members of staff.
Like dominos, they fell.
And like dominos, they rose again.
Mr. Belmont flicked off the television with his remote control and leaned forward against his light-wood desk. He had nothing on his desk other than a 22-inch Benq monitor, a MacBook Pro hooked up to it, and a coffee table book on the solar system. Something to make him look interesting. A fragment of personality, even though he couldn’t give a shit about the stars.
He’d left Miss Appleton with Mrs. Carter and Mr. Ainsthwaite. Doctor Ermenstein was still there too, not to mention Doctor Harvey, locked away behind that medical room door, growing in hunger by the second. He had Turnstone, right here. He’d been realistic from the start, too. The second he heard that Turnstone was out in the wild, he knew it was too late. All Miss Appleton could do was work on a way of nourishing the hunger that Turnstone caused. A cure came second.
But they needed nourishment. Fast.
That was before he’d seen the news reports. He knew that Turnstone would spread, but seeing it like this, moving faster than even he had predicted, out in the open, public knowledge… something clicked in his mind. All of a sudden, Turnstone was real. People would want answers. The media would demand answers. They’d trace it back to TCorps. Somebody, somewhere, would speak about Turnstone and they’d find it, right here. They’d blame his company for the spread. TCorps would be the villains of the generation. But they were only trying to help. Only trying to create something that would ultimately help people.
And they’d failed, so now they might as well create a few extra revenue streams with whatever artificial nourishment they could concoct.
Mr. Belmont reached into the cupboard on the bottom left of his desk. Inside, his favourite whisky, a Macallan 1947. Almost $7,000, it had set him back. Well, set TCorps back, which was a drop in the ocean. He had a stressful job, looking over one of the largest pharmaceutical companies on the planet. He deserved a little bit of relief from time to time.
He poured half a glass and swirled it around, then took a large sip. He moved it around his mouth, letting its rare earthy taste open up his tastebuds. So damn good. Nothing a few sips of Macallan couldn’t cure. Nothing at all.
After finishing his glass, he poured another. Not something he liked doing. He didn’t like speeding through his whisky too fast. One $7,000 purchase was forgivable. Two in the space of a couple of months… that would look suspicious.
As he sipped on his second glass, he figured he might not be buying a bottle of Macallan on TCorps money any time soon.
He finished the second glass and leaned back with his eyes closed. His mind was easing, his busy thoughts clearing up and growing in lucidity. What was he doing? Nourishment. Idealistic, that’s what it was. Idealistic bullshit. Desperation. Because he’d seen it. He’d seen how Turnstone worked with his own eyes, and no doubt hundreds and thousands and even millions would soon see it too. It was spreading, and it would continue to spread. Nourishment was a faint hope. Even if Miss Appleton did manage to find a way to create some kind of nourishment, how many months would that take? Six? Twelve? Fuck—it might have everyone by then. At the rate it was spreading, it most probably would.
Nourishment. No. He had to do the right thing. The right thing by everyone. The right thing by the company and the right thing by himself.
He burped a whisky belch, swallowing back down the alcohol-laced saliva, and opened his eyes. His warm, cream ceiling stared down at him, as he rubbed his bare toes against his soft office carpet.
Nourishment.
No. That would point back to TCorps. The world might be going to shit outside these walls, but he had to make sure TCorps didn’t pay for this. They could work on some kind of cure. Nourishment would just point right to them. They had to bide their time, like the rest of the pharmaceutical companies had to. They had to avoid suspicion.
It was like sending out a taster, only with much higher stakes.
He slipped on his black loafers and walked across his office towards the imitation wood door. He took a look out into the thick, perfect darkness of night through the window that took up the whole right-hand wall of his office.
Nourishment wasn’t going to work; Miss Appleton was right.
TCorps had to cover its tracks. They couldn’t be blamed for causing this outbreak. They couldn’t be blamed for all the deaths and all the chaos that Turnstone would cause. He couldn’t put his career on the line. He’d worked so, so hard to get here. He could
n’t throw all that away because of some fucking arse-headed decision from a dim-witted employee of his.
No. He had to lie low. He had to cover his tracks. He had to eliminate all evidence that TCorps had ever had anything to do with Turnstone.
And that started with the four infected in Turnstone’s Quarantine Zone.
39.
Jonny held his eyelids tightly together. The medicinal smell of the room surrounding him was strong in his nostrils. The hunger was growing, too, clawing through his body, intensifying by the second. He clenched his hands simultaneously as he tried to stay “connected” to Donna. Because that’s what this was, wasn’t it? A mental connection of some sort. Something else that the hunger had done to him. A telepathic change.
Way more than Sarah Appleton’s supposed HIV cure. No wonder they wanted him alive.
And now here he was, planning with Donna Carter to try and reach out to the other Turnstone infected somehow. She had a point—if they were speaking to one another (or thinking to one another, rather) then wouldn’t those same rules apply for every other Turnstone infected? Or was it just because they were close by? The whole plan was mad. What did he want, after all? Revenge for what these cunts had done to his parents, sure. Blood, sure.
But mostly, he just wanted to get away. He just wanted to be free.
He could start again. He didn’t need to feed.
He knew that was bullshit, but he had to try and fight it. It was the only thing he had left to fight for.
“So how do you propose we reach out?” Jonny thought, from the area of his mind where the hunger seemed most prominent.
A few seconds’ wait, then there she was again.
“I guess we do what we did to speak to one another in the first place.”
“Well, you started the conversation. You know better than me.”
Donna, who was also in pain as the hunger seared and pulsated through her body, closed her eyes tighter. She could still see Jonny Ainsthwaite when she focused, but the clarity seemed to have clouded. “I guess I’ll try to look… look outside the doors. Look beyond you.”
She could sense the doubt in Jonny’s mind. “Good luck with that,” he said.
She floated her imagined field of vision out and away from Jonny Ainsthwaite’s bed and through the door. As she did, a tense, bulging feeling built in her mind. The image of the Quarantine room that Jonny was lying in was blurring and fading away. She couldn’t do this alone. She needed him. If they were going to get out of here, they were going to have to do it together.
Before she could ask Jonny to work with her, he had already responded.
“I’ll try to focus too. I’ll do what I can.”
Approval flickered through Donna’s mind. Jonny felt it right away.
Jonny took a deep breath, right to the bottom of his stomach, then out again. He kept as still as he could. A buzzing sensation burned through his head and his body as he pictured the room he was in, pictured the room Donna Carter was in. They were next to each other. So close, but separated by such thick walls. He felt his mind’s eye floating towards the large, silver metallic door at the opposite end of his room. Or was it Donna’s room? Whichever room it was, it didn’t matter, just as long as he focused, just as long as they got out.
As he got closer to the door, a tensing sensation wrapped around his head. It was as if somebody had tied a belt around his head and were tying it tighter and tighter. The door was blurring out of focus. Darkness dripped into the corners of his mind’s eye, and then the vision was gone.
“Fuck,” he thought.
“That door. It’s not easy, is it? But we’re getting closer. I can feel it.”
Donna had felt a small bit of progress after linking up with this man she’d never met before and yet knew so much about. Her head didn’t ache as much this time she’d reached the door. She sensed they were so close. If they could just pass this first hurdle, then who knows what they could achieve?
“We just need to try again,” Donna thought. “We need to do exactly what we did last time, only… well—”
“Only better,” Jonny thought. It was the only thing he could think of, and it was sarcastic. What they were trying was pointless. They were never going to get through that door. And if they did, what the fuck then? If they were struggling to get through a fucking door, then how the hell were they going to float on out of TCorps and go on a wild goose hunt for some missing infected?
“I don’t know,” Donna responded. Fuck. This connected thought thing was something he’d really have to get the hang of. “I don’t know. But we have to try. What else do we have?”
Jonny took another deep breath. More medicinal-smelling air. The bumpy, uncomfortable bed beneath him had faded away from his consciousness now. He knew exactly why it was. The hunger. It was at a tipping point now. He was losing sight of his physical body. All he had was his mind. His thoughts.
And this one big push to get through that silver metallic door.
“On three?”
“On three.”
“One… two… three!”
Jonny imagined the room. Only this time, he was definitely in Donna’s room, together with her. There was more clarity about the place. The shiny reflective tiles on the walls. The heart rate monitor, bleeping away as it was connected to Donna’s arm. Beside her, a man. He couldn’t make out his face—he didn’t want to make out his face, not now, couldn’t be distracted—but he was wearing a white coat and fiddling around with some syringes and doctor’s equipment. He was Donna’s “Sarah.” The one who watched over her.
The metallic door got closer. He could hear sounds this time. Footsteps outside. Voices. The gentle hum of a generator somewhere overhead. The door was so close. Just stay calm. Stay focused. You can make it. You can do it.
As he got to the door, he felt the tightness gripping his head, only this time, he let it happen. It wasn’t quite as intense, but perhaps that’s just because he’d been prepared for it. He let it tighten around his head, allowed the pressure to build, maintained his focus as he reached the door.
Keep focused. Keep calm.
In what seemed like a fade-out and fade-in in a movie, Jonny saw a new location. A corridor. Dimly lit. Quiet. Down the corridor, there were windows—windows the size of the reflective glass in his and Donna’s rooms. Further down the corridor, he saw an elevator door.
“Fuck,” Jonny thought, the pressure changing to a vibrating feeling. “We’ve done it. We’re out—”
The pressure burst. An explosion in his head. Blackness.
He panted. His eyes opened. His heart pounded as he tensed his fists and lurched his body as upright as he could, pulling a muscle in his neck in the process. He was back in his bed again. He’d been in the corridor, now he was back in his bed.
Alone.
He planted his head back on his pillows and closed his eyes. His breathing was fast. His heart was still pounding.
“Donna?” he thought. “Donna—what just happened? Are you there?”
That’s when he saw it again. The lorry. The little boy—Paul, he was called—slipping from the pavement just as the lorry passed.
The blue face of the lorry crashing into little Paul from behind.
Blood splattering against its blue paint job.
Little Paul’s brains popping out of his head and spilling out onto the road, joining his intestines, his liver, his kidneys, in a soupy mess.
“Sorry,” Donna said. He felt her sadness. Her transfixion. Her attachment. “I… I’m not strong enough. I can’t do this. I want to do this, but I can’t. Every time I get close, the images. The memories. They come back to me. I can’t do this. We’re trapped. We’re not strong enough, not the two of us.”
Jonny’s thoughts froze. She’d been the one to suggest getting out of here. He’d resigned himself to his fate, but she’d given him hope. He couldn’t lie down and give up, not now he’d tasted a way out.
The hunger stirred.
&nbs
p; Blood. Flesh. Bones cracking between his teeth.
Before he could respond to Donna, somebody else spoke.
“Maybe I can help you out.”
Jonny opened his eyes. It was a man’s voice. But there was no man in the room with him. And besides, hadn’t he heard it in his head? Heard it in the same place that he heard Donna’s thoughts?
He closed his eyes again. Tried to focus on that silent area. Tried to focus on the centre of the hunger, vibrating gently. “Did somebody speak? Who is that?”
Silence. Nothing.
And then, “You aren’t the only ones with Turnstone in this place.”
40.
“Who are you?” Jonny thought. He focused. Opened his eyes and closed them again when he saw nothing but bright lights and white, tiled walls. Nobody else in the room with him.
And yet, somebody was speaking. Somebody else was… thinking.
More silence.
“I thought it was just me,” Donna said. “You heard him too—”
“I don’t… I don’t understand what’s happening to me. Or why it’s happening to me. But I… I can hear you.”
Hearing the thoughts again sent shivers across Jonny’s arms. It was a male voice. A deep, shaky voice. It came from his left somewhere. The other side of the wall…
“Who are you?” Donna repeated. “And how are you—”
“I’m Doctor Harvey and I’m so hungry. I’m so hungry and I—I need to… I need something. I need it.”
Jonny gulped. Fear built up inside him. There was another—a doctor—who had Turnstone. And it wasn’t just he and Donna who could communicate with one another. It was all of them. Fuck. If it wasn’t for the hunger—and granted, that played a pretty shitting big part—this whole infection thing might not have been so bad after all.
“I have to get out I have to feed I have to—”
“Stop,” Jonny said. This guy—Doctor Harvey—his thoughts were fast, loud, sharp. He was clearly panicked. No idea what was happening to himself. Jonny wasn’t sure he even wanted to know. “What… How are you talking to us? Turnstone. The… the hunger. How did it happen to you?”