by Ryan Casey
Of course, “pleased you could make it” was the kind way of putting it. Of course he’d made it. It wasn’t like he could truly turn down a meeting with Peter Hillson. He’d got a knock first thing this morning and told to be ready for eleven a.m., and now here he was.
He just feared what this might be about. Especially after the proposal he’d received yesterday. Especially after the interest in him taking up a leadership role on the outside; a scouting position.
He knew that Melissa would probably be well on her way by now. He knew he’d probably not had the required training to go out scouting, not yet.
But he feared that this was all just a ploy to get him to go along.
Except he couldn’t. Not now. Especially not now Anna was expecting.
“Can I get you a drink?” Peter asked.
Riley raised a hand. “I’m fine.”
“Oh, come on,” Peter said, pouring a rather generous glass of whisky for himself. “Don’t leave a man to drink alone at eleven in the morning. You know what they say about solo drinkers, right?”
Riley wanted to push back. He wanted to protest. But that smile, that charm about Peter… he had a way with his words and his persuasiveness, that was for sure.
Peter sipped back some of his whisky, closed his eyes as he swirled it around his mouth. “Scotch. Real vintage stuff. Delectable.”
Riley brought the glass to his face, took a sniff. Way too strong. Especially for eleven in the morning. But he took a polite sip of it anyway. It tasted ghastly.
Peter smirked like he’d noticed the turn in Riley’s expression right away. “Not a whisky man?”
“I prefer water.”
“The health-conscious answer. I like that. Part of why I asked you here, that responsibility.” He put down the whisky glass and leaned forward. “Let’s not beat around the bush, Riley. I know about your interview yesterday. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about it. If you don’t mind.”
Riley’s stomach sank. “I don’t know what more there is to say.”
“How about ‘I’ll consider training as a scout’?”
Riley smiled. “Respectfully, it isn’t going to happen.”
“I thought you might say that. But I… I just wanted you to know that it was me personally who requested you train up as a scout.”
Riley frowned. He couldn’t speak, not for a few seconds. It was a big deal that Peter even knew who he was, let alone that he’d requested him to train. “I… I’m flattered. Truly.”
“And so you should be. I’ve seen it in you for a long time, Riley. Seen what you’re like. Read about your past experiences. I’ve seen the way you make decisions. And honestly, it intrigues me about you. I just can’t help but feel like your skillset is wasted here.”
Riley looked away from Peter. He looked around his office. Looked at the minimal decor, then out of the window at the vast beyond.
“So I have another offer for you,” Peter said. “I know you’re into your writing. And that’s good. It really is. But in this world, where there are so many other valuable services, writing is a fool’s game.”
“Not a nice way to talk about my trade.”
“Ah. We can say what we want these days. But anyway. If I can’t convince you to scout… I have another offer for you. Now I can’t guarantee it’ll be something that you’ll be immediately interested in on first billing. But bear with me.”
He leaned forward, pressed the tips of his fingers against one another.
“The man you watched get shot yesterday. Harry. He wasn’t just a cleaner.”
Riley frowned. He sensed a frostiness to Peter’s voice. Like he was about to tell him something momentous. “What’re you saying?”
Peter’s smile dropped. Total seriousness on his face now. “Harry wasn’t a cleaner. He was a guard.”
Riley’s skin began to turn. He didn’t know where this was going. It felt like a scab that had been covering up reality was being slowly pulled away, and he wanted to plaster it down before he could see what was underneath. “A guard for what?”
Peter opened his mouth. He was about to say something. About to speak.
Then the phone on his desk rang.
A red light flashed.
He looked at it. They both looked at it.
And Riley could tell from Peter’s face that this phone ringing at all was serious.
He glanced back up at Riley. “Can you bear with me for just a moment, please?”
Riley nodded. “Sure.”
He watched Peter lift the phone.
“Yes. Yes, it is. How…”
The colour dropped from his face.
His eyes widened.
“Okay. Then initiate protocol 9384. Yes. 9384. There’s no other way about it. It’s… it’s what we have to do. Okay. God bless.”
He put the phone down.
Silence followed.
Then, somewhere in the distance, a screeching alarm.
Riley looked around. Then back at Peter. Dread creeping up his body. “What was that call about? What is that alarm?”
Peter stood up. He had gone completely pale. Looked like he’d gone even greyer in the space of a few seconds. “I don’t know how to explain this to you, Riley,” he said. “But something’s happened. Something bad.”
“How bad?”
Peter glared at Riley, tears building in his eyes. “Very bad.”
Chapter Four
Anna looked at Kesha’s cheeky little grin, and she couldn’t help but get excited about the thought of bringing a life of her own into this world.
It was late morning, the middle of the month, and it was time for Kesha to go for her regular check-ups. It was just one of those things that she had to have often, especially as she’d been bitten. While the people of the island were adamant that adults who had been bitten were cured—people like Riley—the children’s case was a bit different as Kesha clearly had been born resistant to the virus. And she could cure the virus. Or at least, one particular strain of it.
They liked to keep track of Kesha. Liked to study her. But while they were morally uncertain about the idea of Kesha becoming some kind of human test tube, Anna was pleased with how she’d been treated on the whole by the people who ran the island. They let her live her own life. They didn’t keep her strapped up to some scientific system or other. They let her do her own thing, and she couldn’t really have hoped for anything more.
She knew Riley was happy about the arrangement too. He’d always been resistant to the idea of Kesha’s blood being used as some sort of mass cure. But he’d come round to the idea when he saw how well they treated her here, how normal a life she had.
Of course, things were different. Kesha didn’t live with any of the others. She lived on site. But there were some fantastic carers here, as well as plenty of other children.
Really, it was just like a live-in nursery school. It was nice that Kesha was able to grow up with other kids. Nice that she wasn’t being forced to live a life of some abnormal outcast.
“Okie dokes,” Beth said. “Just need to take one more set of bloods then I think we’ll be done and dusted for another month.”
Beth smiled at Anna. She was a nice woman, with long blonde hair and clear-framed glasses. She was one of the lab technicians who always took Kesha’s bloods. Anna always came along for the blood takings, mostly because she couldn’t dream to think of Kesha having to go through a whole load of needle poking all alone—even if she was so young that she didn’t seem to care.
But even though Anna had seen just how fine Kesha was, and how well she was treated… she still chose to come along. Put her at ease, that was for sure.
“She’s going to grow into a right little soldier, you know?” Beth said, her northern accent breaking through.
Anna smiled as she looked down at Kesha, who was blabbering a few curious words here and there, wandering around now, light brown hair down to her shoulders. “You think?”
“Well,”
Beth said. “If being a soldier involves throwing toys from one end of the room to the other, then she’s already first in line as far as I’m concerned.”
Anna smiled. She smiled to see Kesha so happy. She smiled to see Beth so caring of her. She smiled about all of it, especially after what this poor kid had been through in her short life already.
“Still amazes me,” Beth said, staring on glassily at Kesha.
“What does?”
She looked back at Anna and smiled. “The resilience. The resilience of kids. No matter what they go through, they can always come back. It’s never too late for them to come back. I find that remarkable. Anyway. I’ll just go get another vial.”
Anna thought about Beth’s words as she walked away. She kept her focus on Kesha, kept her attention on her as she sat on her knees now, started whacking at a LEGO structure with a teddy bear, looking up at Anna with joy in her little blue eyes as if she was trying to impress her.
“Chloë would be proud,” Anna said. Even though she hadn’t been reunited with Chloë, she knew from the way Riley spoke about their relationship just how damned much she cared about her; just how extreme the lengths were she’d gone to in order to get this girl to safety.
Chloë might have shot Anna. But one thing was for sure. She’d more than undone the crimes of her past in simply getting Kesha here to where she was today.
In a way, it was down to Chloë that the future of humanity had hope.
Chloë was living on through Kesha; living on through so damned many other people who had been cured of the infection; who would be cured of the infection.
If that wasn’t a legacy, Anna didn’t know what was.
She crouched down at Kesha’s side. “What’re you doing there? Being destructive?”
Kesha said something back to her. “Playing.” She could speak, but perhaps not quite as well as the average toddler. She hadn’t exactly had a conventional upbringing, after all.
Then she said another word.
“Mummy.”
Anna might’ve misheard her. But hearing that word knocked her back a bit. Because was that how she would see her? No. She hadn’t been close enough to Kesha to be her mum.
But as she played with her, there on the floor, she thought ahead to the time when she would have a child of her own, and how special it was going to be.
She smiled at Kesha. “You’ll have a new friend,” she said. “A new friend that you can play w—”
The lights went out.
An alarm rang out, screeching.
Anna froze.
She didn’t move. Not for a while.
Not as the lights came back on, only this time, red. Bright red.
She felt her mouth turn dry. Felt her whole body on alert.
She waited for it to pass. Waited for the indication that this was just some sort of security test.
But when it didn’t pass, she knew she was going to have to investigate.
She couldn’t just stay here.
She picked Kesha up. “Come on,” she said. “Better figure out what’s going on here.”
She stepped out of the lab. Looked up and down the corridor. The lights were red in here too. The alarm was ringing out so loudly.
“Beth?”
No response.
She stepped out of the lab and made her way to the exit door. ’Cause she might not know what this was, might not know what was happening, but she’d be damned if she didn’t find out fast.
She got to the door and tried to open it, the alarm still blaring, the red lights still flashing.
And she realised something.
The door was shut.
Jammed shut.
She frowned. Tried to open it. Tried to push it further.
Then she moved on to the next door—the fire door.
But that was stuck too.
She made her way back to that first door, tension building up, confusion and uncertainty surging through her body.
She tried the door, again and again.
But she realised it wasn’t moving.
Nothing was budging it.
She was about to give up and head back to the lab, to wait in there for Beth, when she heard something.
Shuffling.
Shuffling footsteps.
Then, a cough.
When she turned around, Kesha in her arms, hairs standing on the back of the neck, she saw her.
Standing there.
Hair dangling down.
Eyes wide.
A look of total terror on her face.
And she knew right then, in the glow of the right light, in the blare of the alarm, something was wrong.
Something was desperately wrong.
Chapter Five
Carly pushed open Marie’s front door and held her breath.
Because deep down, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was going to find something bad.
Very bad.
It was the blood that did it. The blood trail right outside the door. And the door itself, ajar. Why would it be like that? Why would there be blood? Why would the door be open?
All kinds of thoughts and scenarios spiralled around her mind. What if someone had been in there and done something to Marie? What if something had happened to her in the night, so she’d crept outside, left a trail of blood in the process?
She couldn’t be sure. She wouldn’t know until she went in there, until she saw it for herself.
But part of her didn’t want to.
Part of her didn’t want to at all.
Mostly because she didn’t want to face up to the reality that something might’ve happened to Marie.
Something devastating.
She stepped in through Marie’s front door and stood there for a few seconds, just listening for a sound, any sound; a sign that there was some life in this place, that there was some presence.
“Hello?” she called.
Her voice echoed against the walls. And it sent a shiver up her spine. Mostly because she was used to this place being so homely; she was used to there being a presence inside it.
It didn’t feel like anyone was home.
And that sent fear and apprehension right through Carly’s body.
She looked over her shoulder, back outside, back onto the street. She knew it’d make sense to call someone else to help. To let someone know something wasn’t right.
But at the same time, she was urgent to just know. To know for herself what was happening, what had happened.
So that’s what she had to do.
That’s what she had to find out.
She took a deep breath and walked further into Marie’s house, footsteps creaking against the floorboards.
She walked past the cute little pictures of sheep and rabbits. She walked past the framed photo of Marie’s mum—the last one she had left, the only one she had with her. She walked past her handbag, which she never left without. And that’s when she reached the bedroom and started to wonder whether she was going to find something in there. Something she didn’t want to witness. Something she didn’t want to see.
She swallowed a lump in her throat. Took a few more deep, steadying breaths, trying to compose herself, trying to hold it together.
“I’ve got to look,” she whispered to herself, knowing she couldn’t hold off any longer. “I have to know.”
She reached for the handle.
Held it tightly.
Then, in a swift move, she opened Marie’s bedroom door.
She expected to find overturned bedsheets. She expected to find blood. She expected to find gore and chaos.
But Carly didn’t find any of those things.
There were signs that Marie had slept on the bed. A slight scruffiness to the quilt.
But there were no traces of blood. No evidence of a struggle.
And besides. The weirdest part about everything?
The bloody footprints didn’t seem to have gone into the bedroom.
Carly started to step ou
t of the bedroom when she heard a clang in the kitchen area.
She froze. Heart pounding. Looked to her left, over towards the open kitchen.
“Marie?” she called, fear creeping into her voice.
No response.
Just silence.
She took a few breaths as the fear built up. She knew now for sure that she was being stupid even staying here. That the intelligent, normal thing to do right now would be to get out of this place, to lock it down and to alert someone that something was wrong.
But Marie…
Marie…
She swallowed a lump in her throat and walked further down the corridor, right towards the open kitchen area. She saw that there weren’t any pots on the side, which meant that Marie hadn’t made herself any breakfast—something that was weird in itself, especially considering Marie’s insistence on three square meals a day.
But then she started to feel even more uneasy when she saw the bloodied footprints resume right ahead of her.
Her breathing grew quicker. Her dread intensified.
The footprints. They led right around to the left.
Right behind the breakfast bar.
Right to somewhere she couldn’t see right now.
She cleared her dry throat; she knew this was it. She was going to have to walk around there. She was going to have to find Marie, however she was, whatever had happened to her, whatever state she was in. She had to be confident. She couldn’t be fearful. She had to brace herself for whatever was in front of her.
She stepped slowly around the breakfast bar.
Aware of her every step.
Aware of every little sound.
Right until she got to the other side.
But there was nobody at the other side.
There was a pool of blood. Bits of… of purple flesh inside it.
Then nothing.
No one.
That’s when Carly heard the voice, right behind her.
“Carly?”
She spun around, almost jumping out of her skin.