by Darren Shan
‘Hmm,’ Awnya says, pretending to think hard. ‘Who should I trust? A genius who’s been working for decades to try and save mankind, or a girl with a chip on her shoulder?’
‘What chip?’ I grunt.
‘I don’t know,’ Awnya says. ‘But you must have one, otherwise why are you saying nasty things about Dr Oystein? You’ve only been here five minutes, yet you’re telling us we’re stupid, that we should listen to you instead of the man who loves and protects us.’
‘I’m just saying it’s madness,’ I whisper.
‘Dr Oystein’s maybe the only person in this world who isn’t mad,’ Cian huffs. ‘God spoke to him, touched him, changed him. He’s the best of us all.’
‘You really believe that?’
‘Yes,’ Cian says.
‘Absolutely,’ Awnya says.
‘One hundred per cent,’ Cian adds, in case there’s any doubt.
‘Fine,’ I shrug and get to my feet. ‘I wish I could believe it too. I’m not trying to stir things up. I just can’t see it. I want to but I can’t.’
‘Then you’re in an even worse state than us,’ Awnya says and there’s genuine sympathy in her tone.
‘Yeah,’ I say hollowly. ‘I guess I am.’
I start for the door but Awnya stops me. ‘B?’ I look back at her questioningly. ‘If it’s any comfort, we’re jealous of you.’
‘Why?’ I frown.
‘Dr Oystein and Master Zhang chose you to fight,’ she says.
‘They didn’t pick us,’ Cian says glumly.
‘Dr Oystein loves us all,’ Awnya says, ‘but even though I’m sure he’d deny it, he’s got to love his warriors more than the likes of Cian and me. You’re the ones who are going to defeat Mr Dowling and save the world.’
‘We’re just the guys who find things for the rest of you,’ Cian says.
‘If we could swap places with you, we would,’ Awnya says.
I scratch my head while I think that over. ‘You two are a couple of freaks,’ I finally mumble. We all laugh — they know I meant it in a nice way. Cian and Awnya wave politely at me. I flip them a friendly finger then let myself out.
FIVE
All of my room-mates are present when I get to my bedroom, including Rage, who’s studying Ashtat’s model of the Houses of Parliament.
‘It’s all matchsticks?’ he’s asking.
‘Yes,’ Ashtat says.
‘There isn’t a ready-made frame underneath that you’ve stuck them on to?’
‘No, it is all my own work.’
‘Cool.’
Ashtat smiles sappily and tugs shyly at her white headscarf.
‘You want to be careful,’ I call to her, ‘or he’ll burn the bugger down.’
Rage grins. ‘Don’t say such nasty things about me, Becky. I want to make a good impression on my new friends.’
‘You don’t have any friends here,’ I snort.
‘Isn’t that for us to decide?’ Ashtat snaps.
‘She’s got a point,’ Carl says. ‘We know you don’t like this guy, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to hate him.’
‘Yeah,’ Shane grunts. ‘He seems all right to me.’
‘He’s a killer,’ I growl. ‘I saw him murder a man.’
‘She’s got me bang to rights,’ Rage says chirpily as the others stare at him. ‘I can’t deny it. Guilty as charged, officer.’
Rage swaggers over to his bed and sits on it, testing the springs.
‘What Miss Smith might have failed to mention,’ he adds, ‘was that I’d been kept captive and denied brains for several days, which meant I was close to reverting and becoming a mindless revived. The man I killed had imprisoned and starved me. In my eyes that made him fair game.’
‘The rest of us had been starved too,’ I snarl. ‘We didn’t turn into killers.’
‘As I recall, you were quite keen to tuck into Dr Cerveris’s brain once I’d cut open his skull,’ Rage notes. ‘If I hadn’t stopped you, you’d have torn in like a pig at feeding time.’
‘Maybe,’ I concede. ‘But I didn’t kill him. You were the only one of us who killed.’
‘Really?’ Rage starts looking around as if searching for something. He even bends and peers under the bed. ‘Where’s Mark?’ he finally asks.
‘Bastard,’ I sneer.
‘Reilly told me what happened,’ Rage chuckles. ‘Your lot found out Mark was alive and you tore the poor sod apart. True or false?’
‘The others did. Not me.’
‘You abstained?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then you have my respect,’ Rage says quietly, his smile fading. ‘You were able to control yourself. You’re a better person than I am. Better than any of the zom heads were. But will you look down your nose at those of us who are made of weaker material?’
I stare at Rage uncomfortably. I didn’t expect the argument to go like this. He was supposed to fight his corner, not praise me and make me feel bad for insulting him.
‘I’m not proud of what I did in that hellhole,’ Rage says. ‘But I was in bad shape. I needed brains. If it hadn’t been Dr Cerveris, if it had been someone good and decent, would I have killed them anyway? I like to think not, but I can’t say for sure.’
I gulp – old habits die hard – and try to think of something to say, but I can’t.
‘All this honesty,’ Rage says, grinning again. ‘I never knew how invigorating it would make me feel to tell the truth all the time. You should try it, Becky. A bit of honesty’s good for the soul.’
‘I can be as honest as anyone,’ I shout. ‘I hate your guts and always will, no matter what you say or do. How honest is that?’
‘Good enough for me,’ Rage laughs, cocking his head swiftly to the side, the closest any of us living dead can get to a wink.
I stomp to my bed, throw myself down and glare at the ceiling. A few minutes later, Carl comes and sits beside me. He’s changed his clothes again, choosing an old-fashioned suit that looks plain wrong on a guy his age. He’s brushed his dark hair back too, gelling it flat the way businessmen used to in old movies that I sometimes watched with my dad on a lazy Sunday. All he needs is a bowler hat and a fancy umbrella and he could be a fresh-faced banker from fifty or sixty years ago.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asks softly.
‘Sick to my back teeth at having to share a room with him,’ I snap.
‘I meant about the rest of it, what Dr Oystein told you.’
I prop myself on one elbow and squint at Carl, who looks a bit sheepish.
‘It can be hard to take it all in when he first tells you,’ Carl continues. ‘I was in shock for a few days. There’s so much to think about and process.’
‘You don’t believe either,’ I whisper. ‘You think he’s mad.’
‘Who’s that?’ Rage pipes up. ‘The doc? You can bet your sorry excuse for a life that he is. Mad as a hatter.’
‘You shouldn’t say things like that,’ Shane barks.
‘Why not?’ Rage shrugs. ‘It’s what I think, how I feel. The doc won’t mind. He has bigger things to worry about than whether or not the likes of us think he’s the Messiah or a howling maniac.’ He looks around at everyone. ‘Come on, how many of you really believe that he speaks with God?’
Ashtat and Shane stick up their hands immediately. Jakob starts to raise his, wincing at the pain as he lifts his thin, skeletal arm, but then he stops and shakes his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he croaks.
Carl keeps his hands on his knees. He looks troubled.
‘Three against three,’ Rage beams. ‘Sounds about right to me. This world has always split down the middle when it comes to gurus. One man’s prophet is another man’s crackpot.’
‘The difference here,’ I mutter, ‘is that those who doubt don’t usually throw themselves behind the lunatics.’
‘Of course they do,’ Rage says. ‘People pick their religion for all sorts of selfish, unspiritual reasons. We don’t choose our holy me
n just because we think they’ll sort us out when we die and our souls move on — we like to get some benefit from them in this life too.’
‘I can see now why B doesn’t like you,’ Carl sniffs. ‘You’re a real cynic.’
‘It’s my best quality,’ Rage smirks. ‘But you’re the same. Why are you trailing around after the doc if you don’t believe he speaks with God? No need to answer. I know already. He’s good for you. He set you up in this swanky spot, provides you with brains, trains you to fight. You’d have to be crazy to walk away from a cushy number like this. If the only downside of that is having to swallow his I am the Right Hand of God rubbish, well, that’s an easy enough sacrifice to make. Am I right or am I right?’
‘You think you’re clever, don’t you?’ Carl growls.
‘I do, actually, yeah,’ Rage chuckles, then gets up and walks over to the foot of my bed. He stares down at me as I glare up at him. ‘What’s your problem?’ Rage asks and he sounds genuinely curious. ‘You’ve a face like a slapped arse. Why can’t you just take the doc’s out-there beliefs with a pinch of salt and go along for the ride like everyone else?’
‘It’s not that simple,’ I mumble.
‘Of course it is,’ Rage says. ‘All you have to do is hold your tongue when the doc’s warbling on about heavenly missions. How hard can that be? In fact I bet he doesn’t mention it that often. Am I right, Clay?’
Carl nods. ‘He’s barely mentioned religion to me since that first time. In fact he even apologises on the rare occasions when he namechecks God, since he knows that makes some people feel uncomfortable.’
‘See?’ Rage beams. ‘Simple, like I told you.’
‘It’s not!’ I shout, pushing Carl away and getting to my feet. I think about picking a fight with Rage but I don’t. And it’s not just because I know he’d wipe the floor with me. He’s trying to help. He deserves an answer, not an angry retort.
‘It’s because of my dad,’ I say sadly, sinking back on to my bed. ‘He wasn’t a nice guy. He used to beat me and my mum, and he was a racist. He made me do something even worse than what Rage and the other zom heads did underground …’
I spill my guts, telling them everything, about Dad, how he campaigned to keep England white, the way he pressured me to copy his lead, how I went along with him for the sake of a quiet life. I end with what happened to Tyler Bayor, Dad screaming at me to throw him to the zombies, obeying because it was what I’d become accustomed to.
I choke up towards the end. I’d cry if I could, but of course the tears aren’t there and never will be again. Still, my chest heaves and my voice shakes. I even let rip with a few involuntary moans, like Cian a while earlier.
There’s a long silence when I finish. Everyone’s looking at me, but I don’t glance up to check whether they’re staring with sympathy or loathing.
‘I knew my dad for what he was,’ I moan. ‘A nasty sod, a bully, a manipulator. In the end, a monster. But I loved him anyway. I still do. If he walked in now, I’d hug him and tell him how much I’ve missed him, and it would be true. He was my father, whatever his faults.’
I get up and wander across the room to the model of the Houses of Parliament which Ashtat has been working on. I stare at it, gathering my thoughts.
‘People complained about politicians in the old days, called them self-serving, greedy, power-hungry gits. But hardly anyone tried to change the system. They were our elected leaders and we felt like we had to go along with them because there was no other way.
‘I did that with my dad and it was wrong, just as people were wrong to put up with the political creeps. There’s always another way. If it’s not clear-cut, we have to work hard to find it. We shouldn’t trudge along, putting our faith in people who don’t deserve it, accepting things because we’re afraid of what will happen if we break ranks and try to build something better.
‘Dad was a good man in certain ways. He was loyal to his friends. I don’t think he ever cheated on Mum. He was brave — he risked his life to try and save me when the zombies attacked. But he thought that whites were superior to other races. It was a huge flaw in him. I could see it, but I put up with it because I didn’t dare confront him.’
I turn away from the model and face the others. ‘Dr Oystein’s like my dad. A good man in many ways, but too sure of himself and the way the world should be ordered. I can’t believe that God spoke to him. That doesn’t seem to be an issue for Rage and Carl, but it is for me. Because I’ve seen what happens when you put your trust in people like that. They break your heart.’ I tug at the material of my T-shirt and grimace. ‘Some of the buggers even rip it from your chest.’
Then I go and lie down and stare at the ceiling and don’t say anything else for the rest of the night.
SIX
I train hard for the next week. Now that Master Zhang has started practising proper moves with me, I learn new things every day. It’s a real mix — karate, judo, boxing. We also focus a lot on fighting with knives, steel bars, hammers, screwdrivers, things like that.
‘This is all about practical application,’ he tells me. ‘Apart from some knives, we will not send you out armed. You will fight mostly with your hands, but if you ever need a weapon, you must know how to make use of whatever you can find.’
I ask him why we don’t use guns. ‘The zombies don’t have any. Surely we could just go out with rifles and mow them down.’
‘There would be no honour in that,’ he replies.
‘But isn’t this all about winning?’ I press.
‘Not at any cost,’ he says. ‘Oystein is adamant about that. If we are to build a better world, we cannot do so by relying on the barbaric ways of the past.’
‘Reilly has a taser,’ I note.
‘Reilly is human,’ Zhang says calmly. ‘We are not. We have a choice — we can be less than we were or we can try to be more.’
‘It would be a lot easier if we had guns,’ I mutter.
‘The easy way is not always the better way,’ he says. ‘If we wish to rise above our foul situation, we must work harder to be honourable in death than we ever had to in life.’
Zhang shows me how to most effectively sharpen the bones sticking out of my fingers and toes. He says they’re our best weapons and he teaches me how to incorporate them into the moves, how to dig and slice and gouge.
He also trains me to file my teeth in a different way. ‘You never know when you might have to rip out someone’s throat or chew through to their brain in a hurry.’
‘Is there honour in biting open a person’s throat?’ I ask innocently.
‘Less of your backchat,’ he growls but I know he’s smirking inside. We get along all right. We’re similar in many ways. Tough nuts.
I don’t discuss Dr Oystein with the other Angels. In fact I don’t talk to them much at all. I’ve been brooding ever since that day in the aquarium. No matter which way I look at it, I can’t accept what the doc told me. And being unable to accept that he’s on a mission from God, I find it hard to accept anything else about him, his offer of refuge or a role in the war he’s waging. Rage and Carl are able to sweep their misgivings under the carpet. I can’t.
Rage is fitting in better than me. He’s in his element, training hard with Master Zhang, messing about with our room-mates, getting to know other Angels. He’s taken to this with ease.
That pisses me off. I was sure that Rage would be the outcast here, the one that the others would be wary of. I was almost looking forward to the day when he betrayed us, so I could say, ‘Told you so!’ But, as things stand, I’m the one who doesn’t belong, who’s falling adrift a little further every day. It’s not that the others aren’t trying to be nice to me. They are. But I see them as stooges who are playing along with Dr Oystein for all the wrong reasons, so I feel awkward around them and keep pushing them away.
The worst thing is, there’s no one for me to confide in. I’ve seen Dr Oystein a few times over the week, in corridors, the dining room and gym.
He’s always smiled at me, made small talk a few times. I’m sure he’d be happy to discuss my concerns if I approached him, but what could I say? ‘Sorry, doc, I think you’re crazy and dangerous. Other than that you’re OK.’
Mr Burke is the only person I’d feel comfortable chatting about this with, but he’s gone off again on a mission, to infiltrate another complex like the one where I was held captive, or to spy on Mr Dowling, or …
Actually, I don’t know what Burke, Dr Oystein and the others get up to. There hasn’t been much talk of how we’re supposed to take the fight to Mr Dowling and his mutants. Things seem to operate on a need-to-know basis around here. Or maybe it’s on an if-we-can-trust-her basis. Perhaps they’re withholding information from me because they sense that I’m not fully committed.
I suppose that’s logical. You don’t want to share all your secrets with someone who might walk out the door at any given moment. In their position I wouldn’t be too forthcoming with someone like me either. Still, that doesn’t make life any easier, just increases my belief that it’s me against the rest of them. Roll on full-blown paranoia!
‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ I snap and push myself away from the table.
I’m in the dining room, having just tucked into a bowl of Ciara’s latest batch of cranial stew. The others are still chewing. They stare at me uncertainly, surprised by my outburst.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ciara asks, having stayed to chat with Reilly, who’s munching a hamburger that I’d give my left ear to be able to taste. ‘Is it too hot? Too cold? Lumpy?’
‘I wasn’t talking about the food.’ I force a smile, not wanting to offend the sweet, fashionably-dressed dinner lady. ‘The food’s great. Honest. I just … I can’t deal with this any more. I’ve got to get some air. I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back later.’
I storm away. I don’t know why things should have come to a head here, now, but they have. Something inside me snapped when I was sitting at the table, thinking about Dr Oystein and his claim to have a link to a higher power, and how everyone is happy to go along with whatever the doc says. I’ve been playing the good little girl, saying nothing, but I can’t do it any more.