by Seth Patrick
He turned back. “Who?”
“Adèle.”
Thomas stared. “What do you mean? Adèle’s not like you.”
“She has to come with us,” said Lucy. Beside her stood Simon, the smile on his face terrible to see, vindictive and triumphant. “If she doesn’t, we’ll take her.”
Thomas looked at them both for a few seconds. Nothing would make him hand over the woman he loved to these creatures. He turned and started to walk back to the building. “Close the gate,” he told the officers. For what good it will do, he thought.
• • •
Adèle was at the doorway of the Helping Hand. She wanted to run to her daughter, but the officer at the door shook his head. She waited and let Chloé run to her.
She held her daughter, unable to speak, hugging her with overwhelming relief. She looked up at Thomas, smiling through tears.
“Get inside,” Thomas told her.
She nodded, but then realized that Thomas was staying where he was, that there was something wrong.
“What is it?” she asked. “Aren’t they going to leave?”
Thomas stepped closer and hugged her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll keep them away.”
“I love you,” she told him. She led Chloé inside the building, not taking her eyes off Thomas. She still didn’t know if she would stay with him, even after all this, but she knew the most important difference now between him and Simon. There was real fear in Thomas’s eyes but a determination to see things through. Everything Simon had ever done, it had ultimately been for himself. This kind of selfless act would always be beyond him.
• • •
Thomas ordered the remaining few civilians to get inside the building and his officers to remain outside. As the last people filed in, Laure approached him.
“You abandoned your position, Laure,” said Thomas.
“Not this time, sir,” she said.
He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “Welcome back, Inspector.” With all the civilians inside, he closed the door and gathered his officers together.
“We can’t know what they’ll do,” he said, looking down to where the dead stood. “But these people only have us to defend them. Are you all with me?”
“Sir,” said his officers.
He sent Bruno and Michael to check that all the weapons had been removed from the convoy vehicles and, once everything had been distributed, that every officer had a sidearm and either a shotgun or a rifle.
Alcide was looking at his pistol as if it were a spider preparing to bite him. “Will these stop them?” he said, terror plain on his face.
“It stopped the man in the Lake Pub,” said Thomas. “It’ll stop them long enough. They have to know that.” He looked to the front door. Adèle and Chloé were there, looking at him. He smiled at them, seeing the fear in their eyes. They needed someone in there with them. “Alcide,” he said. “Laure. You two stay indoors. Keep everyone calm.”
Alcide went to the door and opened it, waiting for Laure; she stood where she was.
“If it’s all the same, sir,” she said, “I’ll stay out here.”
Thomas nodded and turned to Alcide. “Pierre Tissier has the keys. Take them and lock the doors. Then close the shutters. Don’t let anyone inside. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Alcide said nervously. He went inside. After a few moments, all around the building, the metal shutters started to slowly rumble down into place.
“Everyone else take positions,” said Thomas. He locked eyes with Adèle as the shutters descended. The moment he lost eye contact, he felt a terrible foreboding.
Laure caught his attention and nodded toward the gate, where the dead had been holding their line. Not anymore. Now, slowly, they were making their way toward the Helping Hand building.
“They’re coming,” said Laure.
• • •
Once the shutters had fully closed, Adèle looked at Chloé and brushed the hair from her eyes. “It’s OK, my love,” she said. “We’re safe in here.”
Chloé leaned over and whispered in Adèle’s ear. “They want to come get you,” she said. “They want your baby.”
Adèle felt the blood drain from her face.
They could hear some of the officers take their places on the roof above them. Two minutes passed. There were shouts, short orders barked by Thomas. Gunfire began.
Above them, they heard a loud thump, as if something had hit the roof hard. Suddenly all the gunfire was cut short, replaced by total silence.
Everyone in the room strained to listen, moving closer to the windows, trying to hear what was going on out there.
The lights in the Helping Hand went out. There was a cry of anguish from everyone. Flashlights came on, a patchwork of light on the walls and windows.
They all stood, tensing. Another minute passed before the first impact on the shutters, the sound of a hand hitting metal. Regular and slow at first, the strength and number of impacts grew inexorably. People huddled together, faces pale and frightened.
From the middle of the room, Pierre looked to the shuttered windows. “I don’t understand,” he wailed, despairing. “This wasn’t how it was meant to be.”
Chloé was trembling. “Close your eyes, my love,” Adèle told the girl. She covered Chloé’s ears with her own hands to block out the cacophony. Unable to do the same for herself, she was forced to listen as the noise became overwhelming.
As the dead showed their anger.
92
Anton stood in the lower gallery of the dam.
The mist had finally cleared before dark fell. He’d still been weighing up his options when the first of the gallery sensor arrays had gone quiet. Within minutes, much of the lower gallery was effectively unmonitored. It had been known to happen before, just a breaker at the central junction, but if it wasn’t resolved soon, there was a chance that the automatic systems would trigger the acoustic warning themselves, as they were designed to do if enough of the monitoring capability failed. Panic and terror in the town, all for the want of a simple switch.
Easy to fix. Quick to deal with.
He’d come this far. He just had to go down there.
Just this, he promised himself. Just this, and the next time he left the control room would be to get the hell out and drive.
When he reached the lower gallery, the lighting strips were dimming repeatedly. Regularly, he thought. Rhythmically.
Sure enough, the breaker had tripped. He flipped it back and waited a few seconds in case it immediately tripped again. While he waited, he cast his bright flashlight beam along the gallery.
He saw something and ran farther along to make sure of what he was seeing.
Water was dripping from the ceiling. Not much, just a steady drip, forming a small, circular dark patch above him. He wiped it away. The drip stopped and he tried to work out where it had been coming from. There was no sign of a crack, the concrete seemingly sound. He waited for the drip to reappear, but nothing came. He wiped at the damp with his hand, confused. Then he saw it again, four yards farther up. Another circular patch, dripping incessantly. He walked to it, and the moment he reached the drip, it stopped. Anton looked farther along the gallery, and there it was, another four yards on, where he was certain it had been dry seconds before.
Nothing about this suggested any kind of structural failure. The water just seemed to be passing right through the fabric of the dam itself.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling his pulse quicken, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Then he followed it, the path being set out for him, followed it as the drips ahead of him appeared, with a steadily increasing rate to match his own pace. And each time, the flow of water ceased as he reached it.
Leave, he thought. Run.
But he had to see where he was being led.
; The beam of his flashlight picked out the end of the gallery, where there had always been a rough cap of concrete terminating the tunnel. Now, all he could see was a dark hole. By the time he reached it, the flow of water from the ceiling was a steady stream, falling to the ground at his feet.
And in front of him, where the concrete tunnel should have ended, the walls instead continued, becoming rock, opening out into a deep, dark cave extending into the side of the valley.
He walked on, taking care on the uneven floor. The only light was the beam of his flashlight. He put his hand on the bare rock, finding it curiously warm.
Sounds came from the darkness ahead. The same animal noises he’d heard the last time he’d come down here. Slowly, he raised his light. Fifty feet ahead stood a figure. Human, filthy, head bowed, face covered by its hands. Clothed only in dirt.
The hands fell to its sides. The head came up. Seeing its face, Anton retreated, crying out, retreated from the cave until his hand touched concrete again.
He turned, ready to run without looking back. He felt air on his face, a breeze. He heard mournful sirens start to sound far above him. The automated systems had set off the acoustic warnings, taking over the one action he’d stayed to perform.
Then Anton saw the dark wall of water rushing toward him. Icy and vengeful, as he’d always imagined it would be.
93
The assault on the Helping Hand stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
As the terrible noise grew, Alcide kept a watchful eye on those people close to panic, stepping in to reassure, telling them that the building was secure, that those outside couldn’t breach their defenses.
He didn’t believe it, of course. The moment he’d heard the gunfire from his colleagues suddenly silenced, without a single cry for help, he had known the forces outside were powerful beyond reason. The crescendo of fists against metal grew to a peak, and Alcide thought it was only a matter of time before the dead would be upon them.
And then it stopped.
It had lasted less than an hour, but it had felt like years. He looked around the faces of the people there, pale and scared, as the warning sirens at the dam began to howl.
The sirens stopped just before dawn, and Alcide insisted on waiting until daylight before he would consider looking outside. The thin lines of sunlight coming between the joints in the shutters were comforting, he thought, yet oddly made the building feel more claustrophobic.
He sought out Pierre Tissier. “Is there a way to see what’s out there before we open the shutters?” asked Alcide.
Pierre seemed like an empty shell, moving in a stupor. He shook his head.
“A way for me to get out alone then?”
Pierre thought, then nodded, talking slowly. “There’s a doorway in the basement,” he said. “It leads to another locked door, then to the outside stairs at the side of the building. I could let you out and lock the basement door behind you.”
The bundle of keys Alcide had taken the night before were clipped to his belt. He took them off and handed them to Pierre, who hunted for the key that would unlock the outer door. Pierre worked it off the key ring and handed it to Alcide.
They went down to the dark basement, flashlights in hand. Pierre unlocked the inner door and opened it. Alcide stepped out into the corridor, clenching the key as Pierre locked the door behind him.
His mouth was dry. He played the beam of the flashlight along to the end of the corridor and saw there was a doorway gaping wide, darkness beyond. The door had been forced open, the jamb splintered. He pocketed the key, took his pistol from its holster, and approached slowly.
“Hello?” he called. He thought back to the man in the Lake Pub rushing the captain and tensed. He moved through the doorway, noting just how powerful the blows must have been to force the door.
Force it from within, he realized.
Inside was some kind of medical room. He’d heard that an injured man had arrived at the Helping Hand shortly before the police had come; he’d also heard that the man hadn’t made it. This must be where he’d been brought. Bloody cotton swabs and towels lay on a padded treatment table, which itself was covered in blood, but there was nobody in the room. The man’s corpse wasn’t here either.
With gun and flashlight raised, Alcide left the room and headed for the other end of the corridor. The key was in his pocket, but the suspicions he’d had since seeing the broken medical room door were confirmed as he approached the exit.
Although the exit door was closed, he could see that the lock had been forced here too. With no need for the key, Alcide pushed the door open, wincing as the daylight hit his dark-adapted eyes.
Carefully, he went up the steps. When he reached the top, he could only stare at what he saw in the distance, stare in horror, but he had a task to get on with. He tore his eyes away from the town and slowly circled the building.
There was no sign, no sign of anything. His colleagues had gone; the dead horde was nowhere to be seen. There were no guns lying on the ground, and no blood. The metal shutters showed small dents in places, but other than that, there was no clue that anything had even happened here, in the dark of the night.
When he was certain there was no threat, Alcide returned to the basement door. Pierre let him back in, and Alcide raised the shutters. Questions came, especially from the captain’s fiancée, but he had little to tell them. No trace. No trace at all.
He unlocked the door and led the way outside. All he could do was stare again at the sight before him in the valley. Alcide looked to his right, and in the distance he could see the dam. Impossible, he thought. Despite the sirens that had sounded, it was intact.
One by one, the others joined him. One by one, they all stared.
At the drowned buildings.
The drowned buildings, in the flooded town below.
About the Author
Seth Patrick was born in Northern Ireland. An Oxford mathematics graduate, he spent thirteen years working as a games programmer on the award-winning Total War series before becoming a full-time author. He lives in England with his wife and two children. The Returned is his second novel.
You can follow him on Twitter: @SethPatrickUK.