In the end, however, we just walked perfectly normally towards them.
Ordinarily, light illuminates pretty much everything in its path, but this seemed more selective in its illumination. It clumped around objects and highlighted them, while leaving empty areas relatively dark.
Intelligent light? I remember thinking. How is that even possible?
"Look," Lilly said, and showed me her arm. "Look at this."
I could see Lilly’s bare arm, but I could see more than that. The particles of light had clustered around her limb and I could see dark lines running along the skin, branching off, connecting to other lines, filling Lilly’s arm.
Then it became clear to me exactly what the light was showing me and I felt a little sick.
I was seeing through Lilly’s skin to the veins and arteries beneath. I looked closer and could even see the blood pumping through her.
"You have to admit," Lilly said, "that this is pretty damned cool."
I nodded, suddenly mute.
"I reckon we’re in the right place," she said. "Let’s go get a look inside those silos."
Chapter 32
We were about twenty meters from the first of the silos when a group of people appeared around the corner in front of us, heading the same way. I gestured for Lilly to get out of sight and jogged for cover at the side of the yard.
As the group drew closer to us I realized that I knew most of them. Five members of the Naylor family, including old man Naylor himself, were leading a young woman towards the silo.
Lilly was pointing at the young woman, mouthing something, but there was a rushing sound in my ears and a cold, leaden feeling moving swiftly down my spine.
I recognized her.
I recognized her all too well.
I’d lived next door to her my whole life.
It was Annette Birnie, Danny’s sister.
She didn’t look like she was doing too well. Her hair, normally straight and neat and perfectly arranged, was a wild tangled mess, and the face it framed was pale and drawn. Dark skin ringed her eyes. She was moving in a halting fashion, as if she were in shock, and every few steps one of the Naylor family would push her forwards to hurry her up.
"She’s one of us," Lilly whispered, with horror in her voice. "She’s one of the 0.4 and she’s been alone since it happened. We had each other, Kate O’Donnell, Mr Peterson. She had no one. No one at all."
I knew that Lilly was right and felt a horrible pang of sympathy. To have been completely alone through all of this, I couldn’t even begin to think how that must have felt. She must have thought she was losing her mind.
"We should have found her, helped her," Lilly said.
"We didn’t know," I said. "We just didn’t know."
"Danny hypnotized her too," Lilly said crossly. "We should have known."
"He hypnotized her days ago," I countered. "Why would that have affected her today?"
Lilly shook her head.
"We have to help her now," she said, and there was a steely tone to her voice that told me she wasn’t taking no for an answer.
"If you’ve got a plan, I’m all ears," I said.
"I distract them, you save Annette," she said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world she was laying out. "Just like in one of your comic books."
"You read comic books?"
"No, but when we’re out of this I’ll let you show me a couple of comic books to convince me they’re worth my time. Deal?"
"Deal."
"Now stay here. I’ll get them looking the other way."
"I should be doing that part of the plan."
She shook her head.
"Annette knows and trusts you." She smiled wickedly. "She has a lower opinion of me."
"Sounds like there’s some history between you."
"There’s always history. You know that. Now let’s do this."
"You take care of yourself," I said, but it didn’t seem like enough, and then I was leaning forwards, taking her face in my hands, and kissing her on the lips.
She kissed back and then it was over and we were both standing there, wondering what had just happened.
"A kiss for luck?" she said.
"We’ll call it that for now," I said. "Now go. Distract. We’ve got a friend to rescue."
Chapter 33
Lilly clung to the shadows and made her way quickly up the side of the yard, past a row of dilapidated barns, while I just stood there waiting for a chance to get to Annette. I could still feel the ghost impression of Lilly’s lips upon mine.
The Naylor family procession had paused next to the closest silo and old man Naylor was standing in front of the structure. He extended his arms before him and a whole load of those weird filaments tore loose from his hands and adhered to the front of the silo. Suddenly, the surface of the structure started to glow, then peel back, creating an opening, then a door.
Hell of a way to make an entrance, I thought, and then the new door swished aside.
The alphabet of hooks and eyes that we saw on Kate O’Donnell’s computer was floating in the air inside the silo, as if the symbols were being projected on to the air itself. They twisted and curled and looked sort of brownish to my eyes. But, even as I said the word "brownish" to myself, I realized that was about a million miles away from describing the actual color.
I watched in fascination as the characters of that alphabet changed and mutated before my eyes. I was wondering how it was possible that there could be a language written across the air, and I felt myself taking a step forwards, towards the silo, without meaning to, as if my body had suddenly broken free of my mind’s control.
I felt my foot rising up to take another step. I couldn’t stop it.
And I couldn’t take my eyes off the symbols in the silo.
My foot took another step.
I knew that I would be in the sightline of the Naylor family any second, but my body still wasn’t listening. I felt my foot readying itself for another step.
No. No. No, I tried to tell my foot.
The foot started moving again.
"HEY!" I heard Lilly’s voice and it snapped me out of it. I managed to drag my eyes away from the silo and my foot back from its forwards course.
I saw the Naylors turn to find the source of the interruption and there she was, Lilly, standing about fifty meters away in the middle of the yard, hands on her hips. I actually smiled when I saw her, she looked so composed and . . . well, heroic, I guess.
I saw the Naylor clan react to her arrival with surprise and old man Naylor even stepped away from the silo towards her. His… filaments retracted so fast that their movement was a blur.
Annette just stood there, looking dazed and lost.
"HEY!" Lilly shouted again. "Any of you weirdos know where a zero-point-four can get a bed for the night?"
The Naylors looked at her and seemed to confer, although I’m not convinced any of them actually spoke. Then old man Naylor nodded his head at Lilly.
I sucked in a deep breath and readied myself.
The Naylors started towards her but she stood her ground. I felt proud and sick and scared. The Naylors kept moving forwards, and for a horrible couple of seconds I thought the old man was going to stay behind to guard Annette, but then he followed the rest of his clan, and together they moved in on Lilly.
They were thirty meters away.
Then they were twenty-five.
Then twenty.
It was show time.
I broke from the shadows, hunched down, and hurried over to Annette Birnie. She was staring into the silo, her eyes filled with the uncanny alphabet within, and I had to physically touch her, on the shoulder, to get her to notice me.
"Annette," I said calmly. "It’s me. Kyle. I’m here to help you. To get you away from here."
She looked at me blankly. For a moment I thought she didn’t even recognize me. Then her eyes seemed to show a sudden awareness and her brow furrowed with confusion.
"Kyle?" she asked, almo
st robotically. "What are you doing here?"
"We have to get out of here," I said. "There’s no time to explain. But there are more of us. There’s me and Lilly and Mrs O’Donnell and Mr Peterson. We know what’s happened. We want to help you."
"Help me?" Annette’s gaze met mine and I saw that there were tears in her eyes. "No. There’s no help. There is only… in there." She pointed at the silo.
"I really don’t think you want to go in there, Annette," I said.
I sneaked a quick look over to where the Naylors had almost reached Lilly.
"You want me?" I heard her yell. "Then you’re going to have to catch me!"
She turned and ran away from them, deeper into the darkness of the farm.
Time was running out.
"Please," I said. "Come with me."
Annette shook her head. Her eyes were wide and all pupils. She looked helpless and defeated.
"In there I can become one of them," she said slowly, as if explaining something very simple to a rather dull child. "In there it all ends."
"You don’t want to be one of them," I said.
"Yes. Yes, I do." Annette Birnie looked at me and I saw all the fear that was running through her head, through the dark windows of her eyes. "I don’t want to be alone."
I was aware that I was using up all the time Lilly had bought me, but I really hadn’t planned for the contingency of Annette not wanting to come with us. I’d thought that she’d be looking for a way to escape, not looking forward to joining them.
Another glance told me that the Naylors weren’t going to give chase. They were standing, looking into the distance, but they weren’t following Lilly.
"You won’t be alone," I said, in what I thought was a soothing voice. "Come on, we can help you."
"Help me?" she said in a puzzled voice. "How do you know what I want?"
The question baffled me.
"Look," I said, taking her arm and trying to drag her away from the silo. "Just come with me…"
She didn’t let me finish.
"NO!" she said, and she said it very loudly.
So loudly it attracted the attention of the Naylors.
Time had completely run out.
The Naylors had spotted me now and were making their way back towards us.
"You want to be like them?" I asked, a cruel note in my voice.
Annette’s tears came thick and fast now.
"That’s all I ever wanted," she said, and turned on her heel. Before I could stop her she moved into the silo.
The moment she entered, the alphabet seemed to sense she was there.
I watched, terrified, as the characters started to twist and flex through the air towards her, the hooks extending to reach her with something that looked like hunger.
"ANNETTE!" I screamed, but she didn’t appear to hear me.
Instead, she threw her arms apart and made a cross shape of her body—like a sacrifice—and then the hooks and eyes and squiggles and lines closed in around her, superimposing their alien message over her. At first they fizzed and skated across her skin, and then they stopped moving and seemed to sink into her flesh.
There was a smile on her face as her body absorbed the letters of that terrible language, and I think that scared me more than anything else I was seeing.
Her smile.
I turned and ran, back the way Lilly and I had come.
Chapter 34
Lilly caught up with me before I made it back to the road. She wasn’t even out of breath.
"Where’s Annette?" she asked.
I shook my head.
"She wouldn’t come," I said. "She actually wanted to become one of them."
I thought Lilly would be angry that I couldn’t persuade Annette, but instead she just nodded.
"I guess she finally found a way to fit in…"
I looked at her blankly.
"A few years ago me and Annette were at camp together. Girl Guides, if you must know, but tell anyone else and you’re dead.
"Anyway, long story short and all that, we kind of paired up while we were there. We were talking one night, out under the stars, and it was probably because we weren’t really friends that she confided in me.
"She told me about how she had never felt like she fitted in, that there was this huge weight of expectation that everyone put on her, but that no matter how hard she tried she always felt like an outsider, an impostor, a fake. She’d even thought about killing herself because she couldn’t bear the idea of going through life alone.
"Nothing I said helped, and after camp she never spoke to me again. She showed me a part of herself that was secret, and it would have got in the way if I’d been the one to approach her."
Lilly took a deep breath and continued.
"You did your best, Kyle. You’re a nice guy, you know that?"
She gave me a smile, but I didn’t feel like a nice guy.
A nice guy would have found a way to save Annette.
"So the silo can turn us into one of them?" Lilly said. "Are you tempted?"
I shook my head.
"Not even hardly," I said.
Lilly raised an eyebrow.
"My parents were barely getting along," I explained. "Now it’s like nothing ever happened to disturb their happiness."
"Is that so bad?"
"Not if you like lies so much you want to live one," I snapped. "My dad ran off, and I don’t see why we should forget it. Forgive it? Sure, we could do that. But forget? Forget the sadness he caused? That would be plain wrong."
"You think that sadness is better than happiness?"
"No. But it is important."
"Because we learn from it?" Lilly asked.
I nodded.
"The real question is do we tell the others?" I said.
"Tell them what?"
"That they just have to go to Naylor’s farm and the nightmare’s over for them."
"There are few enough of us around as it is," Lilly said. "Why on earth would we want to tell them that?"
A secret then.
Shared between Lilly and me.
I liked that.
We walked down the road to meet the other two.
Chapter 35
We joined up with the others and we told our lie.
Nothing happened, we said.
It almost made me want to retract the lie when Kate O’Donnell gave us a triumphant I told you so look, but Lilly and I had made our pact of silence, so we just fell into step with her and Mr Peterson and carried on down the road.
My stomach felt empty and hollow and I wished one of us had had the foresight to bring some kind of provisions along. It had been a long time since I had last eaten.
That made me think of the second can of Red Bull, and I put my hand in my pocket to pull it out. There was a dull, metallic sound as if the can had hit against something in my pocket, but I didn’t think about it at the time, because I was already greedily pulling the ring pull and taking a couple of sips. I handed the can to Lilly and she smiled, drank a bit, handed it back.
I offered the can to the adults—Mr Peterson took a drink, Kate just frowned at the can and shook her head—and we kept on walking.
It was Mr Peterson who heard it first.
I turned around and saw that he had stopped in the middle of the road behind us. He had his head cocked to the left and was cupping his ear with his hand. I motioned to Lilly and Kate and walked back to where he was standing.
"You OK there, Mr P?" I asked.
He looked exhausted, his face red and blotchy, dark shadows under his eyes, and his graying hair was sticking out at strange angles.
"Can you hear it?" He asked in a breathless voice and he sounded so earnest and . . . and afraid, I guess, and it contrasted with the silly cupped ear thing so that I almost burst out laughing.
Almost.
But then I heard it too.
Lilly and Kate had joined us but I hardly noticed them arrive.
I was listening t
o the sound.
That is if "sound" is the right word for it. Because it seemed like it was made up of a lot of sounds: a high-pitched hiss like gas escaping at pressure from a ruptured pipe; an insectile chitter like a locust swarm; that deep, bass vibration we’d heard in the village; a high, keening wail.
It sounded distant.
But not that distant.
Certainly not distant enough.
And I realized that I had heard the sound before, back at Kate O’Donnell’s house, just before she shut her computer down.
"What is that?" Kate asked.
"Nothing good," I said.
The noise drew closer.
***
I’m not exaggerating, my skin bristled with gooseflesh.
There was something about the sound that hit me at a primal level. A bit like how the sound of a Tyrannosaur would have affected a tiny mammal that stumbled into its killing grounds.
Closer, the sound was terrifying.
It sounded like something was out there in the half-light, getting closer and closer to us with every passing second. Something awful, something dangerous, something that we could not even begin to imagine the shape or size of.
We started walking, moving away from the sound. It was the only thing to do. Whatever was out there was coming after us, I was certain.
Lilly’s walking pace speeded up, and we all matched her speed.
Everyone’s face reflected their fear.
Fear of whatever was making that sound.
Getting closer with every second.
Chapter 36
We ran.
A jog became a run became a sprint and still that sound was close on our heels.
My eyes were squeezed shut and I had stopped thinking of anything except that noise behind us.
Suddenly I realized: the noise was no longer behind us.
It was to the side of us.
Running parallel to the road, across the fields, shadowing us.
Running parallel to us.
Running to overtake us.
Except, of course, running isn’t the right word for it at all. Sure, I could hear it crashing through the undergrowth at great speed, but there were no footsteps. Just this weird phasing static that was more like some stereo-panning effect from a video game than an actual sound in the real world.
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