‘It’s in the system,’ the doctor said, leaning against the wall as if he might collapse at any moment. Control of his body had been returned to him, but his limbs were now racked with pins and needles as sensation slowly returned.
‘Mrs Rees is in there,’ he said, pointing behind him. ‘She’s fine – she just locked herself in the cubicle when I… I don’t blame her. I must look awful.’
‘I guess you must be Dr Morrow,’ Waites said. ‘What the hell happened?’ He put his hand over his mouth at the smell that came from Phoenix’s body.
‘His body broke down,’ Morrow replied, staring at the mess on the floor between them. ‘I think the specimen carries an infection that remains even after it leaves its host. Now I’ve got it too.’
‘What sort of infection?’
Until now Sean and his brother had been standing quietly in the doorway, still trying to take everything in. Morrow turned to look at them.
‘James, did you tell Mr, er…’
‘Mr Waites. Dan,’ Waites said.
‘Did you tell Dan what it is we’re up against?’
‘Yes, I did. I think he might believe us now,’ James replied.
‘The specimen got into the water system. It could be anywhere.’
‘Specimen?’ Waites asked, perplexed. ‘Just what exactly is it?’
‘It’s an unknown species with aggressive tendencies and is… poisonous and apparently fatal if it infects you.’
‘How do we kill it?’
‘While it’s in the pipe-work there’s no way we can. But if we do manage to get hold of it… I don’t know.’ Morrow shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
‘What did it do to Nigel?’
‘I think it secretes something that attacks the body of the host, making the organs turn to mush and bleed out.’
‘Jesus, shouldn’t we be phoning someone? Isn’t there some government agency for dealing with this sort of thing?’ Waites asked.
‘Yes, but they wouldn’t get here fast enough, especially in this weather.’ Morrow’s breathing was now growing laboured, and the colour had drained from his flesh. ‘Do you understand what I’ve told you?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Right, well, we need to think about possible strategies.’
‘Strategies?’
‘While it was in me I heard its thoughts, just as it could hear mine. If I concentrate I might be able to remember something that could help us stop it.’ Morrow coughed painfully. ‘It’s more dangerous than you think… It used my body in ways I couldn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sean asked.
‘The strength… it wasn’t my own. It seems capable of doing things the body isn’t used to, or isn’t normally prepared to do. Sometimes we don’t attempt things because we feel we haven’t the strength, but usually it’s our body telling us we might come to harm. When that thing was in me it was able to override those safety measures and do as it wished.’
‘Like overclocking,’ James said. The other three turned to him, confused. ‘It’s when you push your computer, or specifically the CPU, to operate at a higher speed than the manufacturer recommends in order to get more performance out of it. Risky, but most of the time effective if you know what you’re doing – a bit like this creature.’
‘Ha.’ Morrow laughed, despite the situation. ‘Yes… Ignoring manufacturers’ recommendations. Perhaps that accelerates the process of destruction set in motion when the creature enters a host.’
‘Yeah,’ James said, ‘and when you push a computer too hard it either shuts itself down… or burns out.’
Emily could hear voices from the direction of the staff room. No one was screaming, so perhaps things were under control. She stood up and moved closer to the door in an attempt to hear more. Suddenly there was a strange sound behind her, apparently coming from the wall. She waited and heard the sound again, lower down this time; it was like twisting metal. What was it? She forgot about the voices from the staff room temporarily and nearly jumped as the sound came from behind the toilet itself. Something was moving about in there, but what? She didn’t want to open the door – but she didn’t want to stay in the cubicle now either. Something was now splashing about in the toilet bowl, and she panicked, opening the door and inching away from the cubicle towards one of the hand basins. She stood there, still listening, still wondering what was going on.
The creature had already mapped the pipe-work of this part of the building in its memory. It could sense the woman’s movement; could hear her breathing and could guess where she was now. Even as Emily Rees leaned against the basin in confused panic, the creature was working its way up around the system towards the tap; this time it moved soundlessly, its body squeezing smoothly along the pipes.
Emily stared at the cubicle door, waiting to see if anything emerged – unaware that something black and slimy was oozing out of the hot water tap behind her.
There was a splash, then another, and as Emily turned round to see what was going on, she was overcome by a feeling of dread. And then she saw it: a horrible, wriggling slug-like thing. She stared in disgust at it, then flinched as it coiled itself up and sprang towards her face. She stumbled backwards, slipped and fell to the floor, jarring her spine and banging her head against the cubicle partition. She blacked out.
Waites looked down at the floor, trying to process everything at once.
‘This is too much. It just doesn’t make any—’
‘Please,’ Morrow said. ‘Is there a toilet I could use?’
‘Yes, of course. Might be best to stay away from Mrs Rees if she’s scared of you. You can use the boys’ toilets downstairs.’
Waites ushered Morrow and the two brothers down the stairs. ‘I’ll go and check on Mrs Rees,’ he told them. ‘You boys wait here for me a second.’ He turned and went back up the stairs.
‘If I remember anything crucial I’ll come and find you and Mr Waites,’ Morrow said. ‘I really need to be on my own right now though.’
‘We understand,’ Sean said. They watched him go into the toilet, wondering how long the poor man had left to live.
Waites almost bumped into Mrs Rees as she came out of the staff-room toilets.
‘God, Emily, are you—?’
‘Ah, er, Dan…’
‘Come on, let’s get you to the hall with the others.’
‘Yes.’
‘We have a crisis – it’s best if you’re not on your own right now.’
‘Oh yes, of course. That doctor…’
‘Yes, I’ll explain it all, come on.’ He ushered her through the staff room and down the steps. ‘We all have to be very careful, Emily. There’s a creature here in the school, something from the study centre. It’s extremely dangerous. Nigel and Dr Morrow have already succumbed to its infection and we need to make sure it doesn’t infect anyone else.’
As they all headed towards the main hall, Sean wondered what awful thing would happen next. The whole town could be submerged, judging by the sheer volume of water that had fallen on it, and if this bizarre parasite kept jumping from person to person, then dozens of people might be dead by morning. That’s if they hadn’t all drowned first.
It was as they passed the entrance doors that the full extent of the deluge became clear. Water from higher up the hill had been streaming down the road for some time, but now it had spread out and was coming into the school. Dark tendrils of water streaked across the floor like tentacles seeking something to grab hold of. They all stopped to watch in shock as the wide, slow-moving wave saturated the carpet and spread round the corner out of sight.
‘Come on,’ Waites said. ‘Let’s go.’
CHAPTER 16
‘Headmaster,’ said Mrs Rees as she spotted Mr Titus in the hall. ‘Could I have a word please?’
‘Of course.’ From her expression it was clear that she needed to talk in private, so the headmaster took her off to the other side of the hall, away from the remaining pupils. ‘What’s wrong?�
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‘I didn’t want to tell you this in front of the students because it’s quite… distressing, but… Nigel is dead.’
Titus knew instantly that she wasn’t joking: there was a horrible earnestness in her eyes. But there was clearly more bad news to come.
‘I think it might have been something this odd doctor fellow did to him. He came in with a pupil and his brother earlier, behaving very oddly. All of a sudden, after speaking to this man, Nigel became very sick, and I’m worried that the doctor had something to do with it.’
‘Good Lord. Where is this man now?’
‘He’s in the boys’ toilets near the staff room. He looks extremely ill.’
‘And what did you do with… with Nigel?’ The headmaster glanced around at the pupils, who were still chatting idly; he wondered how his day could possibly get any worse.
‘He’s still in the staff room but he’s— Oh God, it’s horrible!’
‘We should call the police. Not that they’d be much good at the moment but… we’d better call them anyway.’ Titus went over to Waites and told him he would be in his office if there were any problems, then left with Mrs Rees.
As he closed his office door, he noticed that Mrs Rees had a rather strange expression on her face.
‘Are you quite all right, Emily?’
‘Yes, of course, headmaster,’ she said as she moved closer.
James had been watching Mrs Rees since they’d left the staff room; now he decided to follow her to the headmaster’s office to try and eavesdrop on their conversation. Something about her behaviour hadn’t been quite right, and although he knew he was probably being paranoid, he had to have peace of mind. He approached the door of the office and put his ear to it. The voices were muffled, but he could tell that something was wrong. After a second or two he heard Titus’s voice raised, then a shuffling and footsteps, then Mrs Rees, more placating than panicked. He tried in vain to make out the words. Then he remembered that the office window looked out onto the grounds. If he went out into the rain he might be able to look in and see what was going on.
Retracing his steps, he went past the stairs and ducked outside through the double doors, straight into the unrelenting downpour. Almost immediately his clothes were drenched once more. He tried keeping to the side of the building, but there was no cover anywhere. Soon he was trudging through a water-logged flowerbed just outside the headmaster’s office. He peeked carefully through the window, ready to whip his head back should the occupants turn round. At first all he could see was Mrs Rees’s back, moving in a strange fashion; then, as more of the room was revealed, he realized that she was hugging the headmaster, a fierce, determined expression on her face. Mr Titus looked more confused than scared, wondering what on earth had come over her and trying to detach her without causing offence. Then, as James wondered what he should do – stay and watch or go and find the others – he saw something odd in the small washroom that was attached to the headmaster’s office…
The creature would have infected Emily Rees if she hadn’t knocked herself out. But as it wriggled onto her body, it had decided that it needed someone stronger; someone who could help it find the answers it sought. It needed something – something it had been seeking for a long time – and it was sure the key to it was in this school somewhere… But where? It had slid away from the teacher’s inert body and oozed up to the basin, squeezing itself back into the pipe. It had heard voices mention a headmaster. In Phoenix’s mind it had come across this word too. It referred to someone in charge, in control. And from Phoenix it also knew the location of this individual’s office.
James made up his mind: he ran back round into the building, then along to the headmaster’s office. He burst in to find Mrs Rees crying on the shoulder of the headmaster, who was consoling her as best he could.
‘James?’ he asked when he saw the boy.
‘It’s in there… in the basin!’ James pointed to the small washroom.
‘What is?’ the head asked, detaching himself from Mrs Rees.
‘The thing! The specimen from the study centre!’
‘The what?’
‘It can’t be,’ Mrs Rees insisted. ‘It’s inside me. It attacked me. Oh God, what’s going to happen to me?’
‘But…’ James was confused. ‘But it can’t be. You wouldn’t be in control of yourself if it was.’
‘But it was on me, in the staff toilets. I could feel it on my face before I passed out.’
‘I saw it through the window,’ James insisted. ‘It’s in there.’
‘What’s in there?’ Titus asked, sounding like he was losing patience with the whole matter. He went into the washroom, switched on the light and looked around. ‘Well?’ he asked, turning back to James. ‘There’s nothing—’
At that moment it dropped from the skylight above them, partly because its target was in exactly the right spot but also because the light had startled it. It dropped onto Titus’s face and slipped effortlessly into his mouth before he could do anything about it. He began thrashing about and making choking sounds, staring wide-eyed at the other two, imploring them for help.
Sean was wondering where James had got to and was about to ask Waites, when the teacher went over to talk to three remaining pupils, who were huddled around a mobile phone, reading a text message.
‘Listen, guys, you’d better go home now,’ he told them.
‘But it’s pouring, sir!’ the boy said. ‘We can’t go out there.’
‘Yeah. Besides, me and Steve live out of town,’ said one of the two girls, ‘and Emma’s still waiting for her dad to get here. Mr Titus said we had to stay here because it wasn’t safe to go outside.’
‘Yes, well, we have a situation here now that means you’d be better off taking your chances outside. Is there a friend’s house you can go to until you can get lifts home?’
‘We could go to Stacey’s – she lives in town and said we could go there if we couldn’t get home.’
‘Fine,’ Waites said. ‘Go to—’
His last words were cut off by a loud and horrifying scream. He quickly shared a knowing and anxious look with Sean, then turned back to the three startled pupils and said: ‘Go! Now!’
‘What the hell was that? What’s—?’
‘Just go,’ Waites ordered.
They scooped up their bags and coats and headed for the exit, exchanging confused and frightened glances. Waites and Sean rushed out into the main hallway, then down the corridor towards where they thought the scream had come from. There was no one around, but Sean had the distinct feeling that something awful was very close by, possibly watching them at that moment. Then came a loud bang, like a heavy object being knocked over, and they turned in the direction of the headmaster’s office.
Suddenly everything went quiet again. They looked at each other before proceeding, neither really knowing what to expect. Could James be in there with Mr Titus and Mrs Rees? Sean wondered. He didn’t like to think what might have happened. As they approached the door, they heard what sounded like scratching on the other side, then saw the handle being twisted.
The door burst open and a very pale-looking Mrs Rees lurched towards them. They parted to avoid her, and watched in shock as she crashed into the window behind them. Neither Sean nor Mr Waites knew what to do; they just stared as she turned round, crying with fear and shaking her head in disbelief.
‘It’s in him now… Oh God.’ Then she turned and ran down the corridor towards reception.
At first Sean and Waites were too stunned to move. They looked back at the office door, which was still ajar. Through the gap they could see only a sliver of window and the rain beating down outside.
‘Come on,’ Waites said. ‘There’s two of us. We can do this.’
‘She said “him”,’ Sean muttered as though to himself. ‘Did she mean Titus or… James… ? Where is he?’
‘I don’t know… But we have to stop this thing… somehow.’ Waites carefully reached out and p
ushed the door open, trying not to make a sound. They could see papers, books and stationery strewn around; on the floor were shards of glass and a mound of dirt where a photograph frame had smashed and a plant had been knocked over. It was only when they were over the threshold that they caught sight of James standing over Titus’s body in the far corner.
Oh no, Sean thought. Please… No…
CHAPTER 17
‘We need to lock it up,’ James said, still staring at the body slumped in the corner. He turned to look at Waites and his brother, who were still standing in the doorway. ‘We need to do it while he’s unconscious.’
Waites and Sean hesitated. The determined but scared look in James’s eyes suggested he was still untouched, but how could they be certain? They approached him cautiously, and Waites helped him hoist Titus to his feet.
‘Careful,’ James whispered, as though worried the creature might hear. ‘It might come back out at any second.’
‘What happened?’ Sean asked as they supported the unconscious headmaster by draping his arms around their shoulders.
‘I was watching them from outside when I saw that… thing coming out of the tap. I ran in here to stop it but… I was too late. Once it was inside him, I pushed him and he fell against the wall, banging his head. I don’t know if he’ll be out for long, but we need to get him locked away before he – or rather it – wakes up.’
They dragged the headmaster out of the office and into the corridor, past the windows overlooking the school playing fields. Sean groaned inwardly. The rain seemed to be coming down even harder than before. How was that possible? How could there be so much water in the sky? It looked like night out there too, even though the sun wasn’t anywhere near setting yet.
‘Where are we going to put him?’ Sean asked.
‘How about the cupboard in the chemistry lab?’ James suggested. ‘We can lock him in there.’
‘Yes, but there’s too much dangerous stuff around,’ Waites said. ‘And there’s a window too. He might escape. I know, we’ll put him in that cupboard in the hall where the chairs are kept. It’s secure and there are no windows.’
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