Strangers in the Night
Page 15
He looked up, to the creatures again.
They loomed large in the mist.
He took in their faces—their expressions—for the first time.
In the Autopsy room, back at the Compound, the specimen’s face had been bloated.
Almost comical in appearance.
Now, though, there was nothing comical about their wide, beady black eyes.
Or their spiderlike fangs.
Or the spittle which hung down from them.
Either side of their torsos, stubby, whale-blubber growths hung off them like obese human arms.
Sulphur filled the air.
The bitter scent of urine.
He glanced back to the man.
His leg stuck in the hole beneath him.
His eyeballs swivelled about their sockets.
Mitts grasped hold of his rifle.
He stared along the sight.
But there were too many.
He knew there were too many.
It would be a worthless attempt.
As his finger rested against the trigger, Mitts felt something swill through him.
It reached his gut.
He felt the strength in his trigger finger give in a touch.
He knew that he must fire . . . that he had to put up some sort of a fight . . . and yet, he just couldn’t.
Already, it was too late.
He was surrounded.
An unbroken chain.
Mitts breathed in the sulphuric air.
He took it down into his lungs.
He thought back seven years, to when he had been in the Restricted Area.
Heard the rain pattering.
The sound of it carrying along the air vents.
He thought about the scent of disinfectant:
The room with the overalls.
He thought about the looks on his parents’ faces when he had found them:
Dead.
When he’d found his little sister, Floo:
Dead.
And dead was just how Mitts was going to end up.
He strained his eyes to look into the mist as it closed in on the two of them.
Could he see their faces?
His family?
His mother . . . his father . . . Floo . . .
Mitts breathed the sulphuric smell right down to his bones.
His knees buckled.
His mind ebbed free of consciousness.
He landed with a distant, damp thud on the sodden earth.
Sam America stood on the fringe of the little, tumble-down village. He cast his glance over the place another time. As he had walked out, to the edge of town, the clouds had bundled up into blackened cotton wool.
The rain had started to fall.
It fell heavily now.
Sam America knew he should find shelter.
What good was a superhero with a head cold?
He turned his back on the village for a final time, putting the place to rest within his mind, never to be thought of again except—perhaps—in unexpected dreams.
Then he heard it again.
Cough.
Cough.
Cough-cough.
Sam America cast a glance back over his shoulder. He took in the rubble, the fallen cottages. He attempted to string together just where the sound had come from.
Cough.
Cough.
Sam America shifted from his spot, now certain of where he had heard the coughing. He strode hard, through the rubble. Over the broken cobblestones.
As he drew closer, he heard heavy, bothered breathing.
The kind of breathing—Sam America knew; from experience—led to a speedy death.
He crouched down and worked quickly at the rubble. He grabbed hold of the chunks in his muscular grip. He tossed them away.
Sam America tore another couple of rocks free. And he found himself staring into a pair of eyes—eyes which caught what remained of the daylight.
Hazel-brown.
Blond hair.
Pale—pale—skin.
A boy.
A MIRACLE
Mitts thought he might be suffering from déjà vu when he awoke.
Once more, he heard those whispering voices.
And—once more—he had had those strange dreams.
The ones with that superhero.
With Sam America.
Mitts could see the redness of the sunlight up against the backs of his eyelids. He pried open one eye, and then the other. He was back in the room he had been taken to after he’d been ‘relocated’ from the holding cell.
On instinct, he glanced to the armchair beside his bed.
It was empty.
For some reason, he felt his heart sink a touch.
He had expected Samantha to be there, of course, but she wasn’t.
Still, he supposed he should’ve been glad to find himself not in the holding cell.
He turned on his side, pushing the duvet away. He realised he was dressed in only his boxer shorts.
In addition to those whispering voices, Mitts could smell coffee.
Its odour wafting about.
The door flew open.
Luca, bearing a tray of steaming scrambled eggs, appeared in the gap.
She smiled lightly at him as she trod inside.
She didn’t bother to close the door behind her.
He looked out into the corridor.
A white-washed wall. Smudged with marks.
“Good morning,” Luca said, with a smile.
She seemed more carefree than she had in their last meeting.
Maybe it had to do with the milieu, with the fact that he wasn’t in the holding cell this time.
Or perhaps it had been their impromptu bonding session over the drawings.
The ones which’d shown Mitts he wasn’t alone . . .
Luca set the tray down on the bedside table. He eyed the cup of coffee he’d smelled from before. Her lilac perfume had replaced the odour of coffee now.
Mitts thought about the bitter taste of coffee. Back in the Restricted Area, it had made him want to puke. Now, though, his body needed the caffeine to survive.
The eggs were white and fluffy—heavy on milk and black pepper—just how he liked them.
How had she known?
Had she . . . read his thoughts somehow?
Luca leaned over him, kissed him on the forehead. She blushed a little.
Mitts blushed too.
She rounded the foot of his bed and sat on the armchair. “Hero’s breakfast,” she said.
Mitts sat up, propping himself on his elbows. He felt somewhat exposed to only be in his boxer shorts. To be here, in the bedroom with Luca—bare-chested.
He felt a pair of stabbing pains in his skull.
He screwed up his eyes and reached up to his temples.
Laid his fingers over the pain.
Massaged.
“Don’t remember?” Luca said, still smiling.
Her lilac perfume caused Mitts’s nostril hair to tingle.
Breathing it in made the inside of his chest itch.
He strained his mind. Tried to dreg up the memories.
That only made the pain in his skull all the more intense.
He shook his head.
Luca combed her fingers through her smooth, sable hair.
She wore a pink ribbon in her hair. It brought out the colour in her cheeks.
“When the mist cleared Dag sent men out there,” Luca said, dialling her smile down. “Thought that it’d be an expedition to bring back a pair of bodies—we all thought that.”
The pain in his skull grew so intense that he began to shake. He had to do something. So he reached out for his coffee. Took hold of the warm cup. Sipped at the bitter liquid within.
He glanced back to Luca.
She continued.
“Dag said you’d both passed out; that you were lying on top of Yuvna.”
“ ‘Yuvna’?” Mitts said, taking another sip of cof
fee and then feeling another pair of stabbing pains at his temples.
Luca nodded. “The chef—works here, in the Station. Portly guy.”
Here she puffed out her cheeks and made a waddling motion with her arms down by her sides.
Despite his headache, Mitts couldn’t help but laugh.
He pulled himself back from his giddy outburst. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine,” she said. “A little shook up, but who isn’t shook up these days?” She smiled faintly, then went on. “I guess the two of you had quite some introduction.”
Feeling the pains come on harder now, Mitts placed his coffee back down.
He breathed deeply.
Lay back in bed.
“Don’t want your eggs?” Luca said.
“Later.”
“Not feeling too good?”
“It’s just this”—another stab at both temples. Mitts winced—“headache.”
Luca leaned into him.
Placed her pleasantly cool palm across his forehead.
“When they brought you back this morning there wasn’t a scratch on either of you. But you were both burning up. Like you’d got some sort of fever.” Luca jerked her thumb in the direction of the door. “You should’ve seen Samantha, she had her med supplies out, and everything. She was even talking about sticking you with a drip. To give you back some of the fluids you were sweating out.”
“Yeah,” Mitts said, feeling his heart give a slight jump, “I’m feeling pretty dehydrated.”
Luca got up from the armchair and then disappeared through the door to the en-suite bathroom.
She returned bearing a jug of water and a glass.
She poured then handed the glass over to Mitts.
He took it with extreme gratitude.
He touched the glass to his lips. The water felt like an elixir.
He drank the whole glass down in a single gulp.
Luca poured him out another one.
He drank that one down too.
She poured a third, adding, in admonishment, that he ‘take it easy, this time’.
Mitts did.
He took a sip and replaced the glass on the bedside table.
When he looked to Luca, he saw she was gazing out through the window.
Out to the rolling hills beyond the Village.
“What happened to the creatures?” Mitts said. “Did they . . . just go?”
Luca breathed in deeply.
Her chest puffed up.
Then deflated.
She glanced to the door.
Perhaps she was under instruction to leave out certain details.
“Luca?” Mitts pushed. “Please?”
Luca’s smile faded completely now.
She met Mitts’s eye briefly. Then her gaze shifted out the window again.
When she spoke once more, her tone was steady, almost robotic.
“The creatures,” she said, “they were surrounding you—you and Yuvna. When Dag and the others saw them, they . . . they opened fire.”
Inexplicably, Mitts felt a rising heat within his chest.
It pounded at his cheeks.
At his temples.
Although the migraine remained, it became only background noise in his skull.
Mitts hoiked himself upright in bed, leaned against the headboard. “They did what?”
Luca shook her head. She clutched her hands, laid them in her lap and then stared.
“There was no choice.”
“No choice?” Mitts said. “What’d you mean? Of course there was a choice. You said it yourself, we were still alive, they weren’t doing anything.”
Luca wouldn’t meet his eye now. “You have to understand, Mitts,” she said, “what they’ve done before.”
“What did they do before?”
Luca held herself very still.
She was breathing in deep, apparently trying to get her head together.
Trying to work out the best way to put what she had to say next.
She took so long to respond that Mitts convinced himself he would have to prod her into an answer once again.
But then, finally, she did reply.
A film of tears made the surface of her eyes appear glassy. “You don’t understand. They kill . . . they’ve killed everyone they’ve come across.”
Mitts felt the headache scale back a little.
His brain felt like mush.
As if it’d been kneaded over and over again.
He felt almost as if a void opened in his chest.
“You called me a hero when you came in.” He paused for a moment, and then added, “Why?”
Luca didn’t look away from Mitts this time.
“Anybody out there—anybody who’s ended up facing those creatures—they’ve been killed . . . you, though. You and Yuvna . . . you survived.”
Mitts felt himself sinking down into the mattress.
He closed his eyes.
Tried to see off the wave upon wave of pain which afflicted his tired mind.
* * *
Although Mitts sincerely dreaded it, he decided that he couldn’t stay inside his room for the rest of his life. That he would have to face the others eventually.
As he dressed—in the dark-green tank top, the black jeans—he heard muttering outside the door. He’d only just got himself dressed when there was a pair of short, sharp knocks.
He didn’t have a chance to tell them to come in.
They just barged right through.
Mitts surveyed the figure standing in the doorway.
The man from last night.
The man he had ‘saved’.
The chef, Yuvna.
He took in his large frame. His stomach sagged over the waistband of his jeans. His bald head was buffed to a shine. A chef’s hat balanced precariously on his scalp.
He wore a well-stained apron over his dark-green tank top.
The straps of the apron were almost lost to the mass of his neck.
Just like the night before, a scent of roast chicken clung to him.
For several seconds, Yuvna fixed Mitts with a stern glance.
Mitts was half expected Yuvna to take a swing at him.
But then, all of a sudden, Yuvna broke into a wide, toothy smile.
He tromped toward Mitts. Something jangled in his pockets as he threw his enormous arms about him. “My hero!” he said, sounding genuine enough.
Not knowing what to do, Mitts waited for Yuvna to get through with the hugging.
After about ten seconds, Yuvna pulled back.
He continued to beam at Mitts.
His blue-grey eyes swivelled about in their sockets.
“I never believed,” Yuvna said, speaking with a foreign accent, as he had the night before, “that someone would come to help me. I thought that I was dead.”
“Well,” Mitts replied, “I didn’t really do anything . . .”
Yuvna pinched his lips together into a pout.
Frown lines wrinkled his forehead.
He tilted his head slightly. Waggled his finger at Mitts.
“No, no, no! You saved me. There should be no doubt about that.”
“Okay,” Mitts said, with a slight smile, feeling a touch beleaguered by this whole experience.
“Tonight,” Yuvna said, taking a pair of steps back, toward the door, “tonight I shall cook up a feast that you shall never—ever—forget.” He grinned at Mitts. “Tell me, tell me, what is your very favourite dish?”
“I haven’t had hamburger and chips for a while.”
“Hamburger,” Yuvna replied, grinning all over, “and chips.”
Yuvna clapped his hands together, like a court jester tickled by an especially witty joke.
As he stomped out of the room, hands clasped, he muttered quietly, under his breath, “Yes, hamburger and chips. Hamburger and chips.”
And then, without another word, he was gone.
Only when Mitts heard the large man’s footsteps disappear off do
wn the hall did he allow himself to relax.
Before he left the room himself, he glanced both ways to ensure Yuvna was really gone.
He couldn’t be too careful.
* * *
The Village gates were open.
As Mitts passed through, he expected the guards standing by to stop him.
But they only gave him a knowing nod.
Once he was out of the Village, and treading along the rolling, green hills, feeling the gentle suckle of the damp earth beneath him, and breathing in the cool breeze, he could almost imagine that he was back to the time before.
To the time he recalled from childhood.
Before everything had changed.
Mitts glanced to the large, concrete structure up on the hillside.
As he walked, he couldn’t take his eyes off it.
As if the spotlight might blink on at any second.
As if Heinmein might not really be dead.
Although he hadn’t taken the time to plan his route, he found himself soon walking toward the stretch of water. He thought about what Samantha had said—about how they were on a peninsula.
He wondered if he could really believe her.
Could he trust her?
Would she trust him?
He thought back to the meeting with Luca.
She had mentioned that Samantha had been looking in on him.
Making sure that he was doing okay.
Luca had said this attention wasn’t personal.
That Samantha would’ve done it for anybody.
He was nothing special.
And yet . . . and yet, the night before . . . however much he wanted to fight it, it was apparent that something had happened.
Something which Mitts could never have anticipated.
Judging by all the reactions, the feast coming that evening, he had achieved something which, quite simply, had never been achieved before.
Mitts walked along the water for a long while.
He stared off across the glassy, grey surface.
When it got dark, Mitts decided he’d better be getting back to the Village.
He might not be able to find his way home if he went too much further.