Kymiera

by Steve Turnbull

  They ate in silence, Melinda trying to absorb the new scheme of things.

  ‘So you’re, like, really strong, and tough?’ Melinda felt weird asking the question, it was unnatural. The idea you might talk to someone who was a freak was ridiculous. And yet she was one too, so what difference did it make?

  ‘Yeah, I have some bone condition that makes them denser and a lot stronger. Apparently that means I’m not likely to break a bone. At least before I die. And the muscles have compensated or something. They don’t talk to us about it.’

  ‘I make electricity,’ said Melinda. ‘And I can see it too.’

  Lucy glared at her then picked up a forkful of food and put it in front of her mouth. Just before she put it in her mouth she said, very quietly: ‘Don’t talk about anything they haven’t discovered for themselves.’

  Melinda did the same with her food. ‘Can they see us?’

  ‘Of course.’ She waved her hand in the direction of a camera. ‘Though I don’t know if anyone’s watching the feed.’

  ‘Why don’t they wear quarantine suits?’

  ‘We’re not encouraged to ask questions. We’re just lab rats.’

  ‘But the Purity are paranoid about infection.’

  ‘This isn’t the Purity.’

  ‘What are they going to do to me next?’ said Melinda.

  ‘Well, if it’s anything like me, they are going to try testing your limits.’

  Melinda went quiet. That didn’t sound very nice at all.

  Chapter 9

  Chloe

  ‘Have you got anything to eat?’ said Chloe. The fire had died back to embers but her clothes were back on and she was no longer shivering. She felt so much better that her hunger had returned with a vengeance. The last time she had eaten was yesterday evening.

  ‘Not much,’ said Julian. ‘And I never promised to feed you.’

  She looked around; she couldn’t even see where he might keep his food. Right now she was tempted to just take it from him, whatever he had. But she knew that would be wrong, and could probably resist the temptation. Probably.

  ‘What do you eat?’

  He looked up at her. ‘Anything I can find.’

  ‘Do you hunt or fish?’

  He laughed. ‘I look in bins for leftovers.’

  She shifted awkwardly on the stone. ‘I’m hungry. I’ve been hungry for weeks. Did that happen to your girls?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to talk about them.’

  She frowned. He was the one who’d brought them up in the first place. ‘Where can I get food?’

  ‘You could take your hat off and they’ll just pick you up.’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t want to be in the clutches of the Purity. Bunch of fascists.’

  Chloe got to her feet and started to pace. It didn’t stop the hunger pangs but seemed to trick her body into thinking she was doing something about it.

  ‘I was going to join the Purity,’ she said on one of the turns when she was walking towards Julian.

  ‘Well, it’s better to be the predator than the prey,’ he said. ‘If you can live with yourself.’

  She had had enough of his cynicism. ‘I need to eat!’

  ‘Then go out and find some food, why don’t you?’ he said. ‘And pick up some wood to replace what I’ve wasted on you.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘I’m not a charity. I saved your life. You owe me.’

  She had no answer. Her back ached. She stretched and felt the extra limbs in her back moving as well. She felt it ought to give her the creeps, but somehow it didn’t. Did the mutations of all freaks integrate naturally? So it felt like it was still just them?

  Maybe that’s the worst part, you didn’t feel different. It’s just what everyone else saw.

  She took a deep breath, trying to use the calming exercises Sensei had drilled into her all these years. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  She settled on her feet and felt her body relax. In through the nose, out through the mouth. There was a sound behind her. A tiny scuffling noise, and she saw it, outlined between the stones. Smoothly she bent her legs and crouched down. She kicked up a piece of brick half the size of her palm. She stood again in one flowing move.

  The rat moved and its claws scratched; she twisted at the waist using the turn to let fly with the stone. It struck the rat in the head and it dropped. She went over, and picked it up by the tail. Its body was about a foot long and pale. She brought it back to the fire.

  ‘That’s why I eat out of bins,’ he said. ‘Even that food is better than rats.’

  She glared at him.

  ‘Do you even know how to skin and gut a rat?’ he said. ‘Got a knife?’

  She slumped back down on her stone.

  ‘Nice shooting though,’ he said, ‘now if you could take down a duck, or raid someone’s chicken run. Maybe spear a fish?’

  Chloe looked longingly at the rat. She was almost tempted to take a bite out of it anyway. The look she gave it must have been obvious.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Julian. ‘Disease, for a start.’

  He stood up and went back to his box. He got it open and pulled out some papers.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to tell you where to get food nearby. The people round here put up with me as long as I’m discreet. I never cause any trouble. But there are other places, further away, where I know you can find something. I’ll tell you, you leave and I’ll never see you again. Okay?’

  She nodded reluctantly. The idea of travelling to get food did not appeal, but getting any food in some way did.

  He laid out the map for her. ‘You head away from the river until you come to Barton Road, and then head south. Keep going until you get to this big roundabout. Go along Davyhulme Road to Bowers Road then south. This brings you to the back of this hospital complex. They throw out some food there, and they have a lot of chickens, you might get some eggs.’

  She also noticed the green area beside it marked as a golf course. Manchester was not a big city like London, where you could walk for days and not come to the end of it. Julian’s home, if you could call it that, wasn’t more than a couple of miles from the city centre and only a little bit more to her parents’ house. But she felt as if she were a thousand miles away.

  She thanked him and, making sure she had picked up all her things, went to the exit tunnel. Julian did not come with her.

  ‘Don’t trust anybody,’ he said from the fire.

  ‘Even you?’

  ‘Especially me,’ he said. ‘I’m a survivor.’

  She was almost tempted to leave the dead rat to force him to deal with it, but somehow the idea of leaving potential food behind stopped her. There might come a time when she would happily chew its flesh.

  As she came out into the windy alleys and passages between the old buildings she felt it ought to be night, but it was still only shortly after midday and the sky was not dark. Flakes of snow whipped round corners or spun in eddies. She did not relish the thought of being caught outside if the weather decided to turn very cold.

  She saw no one as she made her way through streets of decrepit office buildings and then into residential streets that only housed ghosts.

  If she wanted to find Melinda and the other girls she needed a plan.

  She could just remove her hat. Instinctively she reached up and pulled it further down over her head. She needed something cleverer.

  Up to now the kidnappers had grabbed girls off the street, ones that were turning into freaks. Okay, that was just a guess, but the fact they had made such an effort to get her, three times, meant she was special in some way and the only thing special about her was being an infectee. They knew it, but somehow the Purity didn’t. That meant they had better information.

  So, the kidnappers knew she was turning into a freak before the Purity. What did that mean? Everyone
went for regular check-ups, but, as far as she understood it, she was mutating faster than normal, which was probably why she was hungry all the time.

  And the moment she thought about the hunger all the other thoughts were driven from her mind. All she could think about was food and filling the void in her stomach.

  The map suggested the hospital wasn’t too far, just a couple of miles if she stayed on the roads. Half an hour if she jogged. She opened up her pace, feeling the lightness on her feet as if she weighed almost nothing. Which she did. The thought occurred to her it might only take a strong gust of wind to blow her over. But then if she weighed so little she could probably land without much harm. She wondered what her terminal velocity would be if she fell off a building.

  She had no idea how to calculate that.

  She hit Davyhulme Road on the far side of the roundabout just as the map had shown. She could smell cooking food. Someone had an open fire and was roasting some meat. Her nerves screamed at her to be fed. She had to have it.

  Her eyes scoured the street. There was a residential area to the north of the road. Similar to the one where she lived. Like a village in the concrete wilderness of a dead city. A place where people gathered to pass their lives with some company and protection from the dangerous world that surrounded them.

  She dropped back into a walk. Found the next road and turned up it. The wind was coming in from the northeast so the smell of the food had been carried to her from that direction. She kept moving, found an alley between the streets and took that. The less she was seen the better. A dog barked in the distance.

  A fence separated her from the house from which the food smells were emanating, and its garden. She closed her eyes and listened. A woman talking, no, gossiping, to someone else. Three women in the kitchen. And the food was in the kitchen. If she didn’t hurry, they might eat it.

  What could she do? She needed a distraction.

  She turned and peered through gaps in the fencing. There was a washing line out back, heavy with clothes and sheets whipping in the wind. That was hopeful, nothing would dry in this. It was more likely to freeze. Still, having a lot of damp sheets in the house would be unpleasant.

  Moving further along the fence, to where it was one wall of the narrow passage along the side of the house, she leapt up the six feet and then jumped again to cling to the house. She felt the limbs on her back trying to move to help balance her. She wished they wouldn’t, she preferred them to be unfeeling lumps of flesh.

  The wind tugged at her but her fingers held her firmly to the wall, while her feet rested on a decorative ledge of tiles. She worked her away around to the back and, clinging to the upper window ledges, crossed to the far side where the semi-detached house joined to its partner.

  She dropped down to the fence here. The washing line was nylon and tied off with a simple knot.

  She undid it and let the washing fall to the frosty and muddy ground. In moments she was back up on the side of the building above the kitchen door.

  She waited.

  They didn’t notice.

  She could still hear them nattering away about inconsequentialities. There was only one thing for it. She rapped hard on the window she was clinging to. They might think the sound was from upstairs but they were certain to—

  There was a cry of ‘Oh no!’

  Moments later the kitchen door was flung back and all three women came rushing out. Chloe prayed they wouldn’t look up, but then why would they? One of them rushed to where the line had become untied while the other two, armed with a laundry basket, headed out onto the grass.

  There was no time to lose.

  Chloe dropped silently, slipped in through the open door and closed it gently behind her, keeping her head down. The door handle was one of those that locked if you pushed it up. She did it. To her the sound of the lock engaging seemed to echo around the room. But she heard no alarm from the women.

  Looking around, Chloe saw the open door of the oven where some hand-made burgers were waiting to be served. There were buns and fried onions. She found a bag, and just pushed the food into it. She licked her fingers after the burgers went in. Delicious.

  There was a banging on the door behind her. She didn’t need to look to see them outside trying to get in. They would probably go for the front door and although they couldn’t stop her, she did not want to be seen properly, or to hurt them. They had a working refrigerator.

  She pulled it open and threw everything else that looked edible into the bag.

  She ran for the front door and managed to get it open just as one of the women was opening the side gate. Chloe stayed at ground level, so as not to attract attention, and legged it.

  Chapter 10

  Michael Dark

  He continued to stare at the terminal screen long after the news report had shifted away from the events of Manchester during the previous night. At some point his wife had come to stand next to him and she was still there. Their fingers were entwined on his shoulder. As always he noticed how much smaller her hand was than his. Every time.

  The police had kept the press as far away from the battle as possible. There weren’t even any drone images swooping in and round. At least not at first.

  From a long distance away, but with a camera lens that could make that distance seem like the next house, the journalists had filmed the confrontation. They had spent considerable time on that. With the images of police and attackers falling, as the image flashed with each gunshot.

  It was like a war zone, or an action movie. But this was real and now. They had not seen anything even close to this since the plague and the riots.

  But that was not the thing that had held the Darks.

  The cameraman had spotted the figure coming out of the restaurant in the middle of the battle.

  They could not see that it was Chloe. There was little enough illumination, and it was a winter night. But they knew it was her.

  When they had discovered her missing in the morning they had gone back to the riffy tracker. They had watched the recording as her image disappeared from her room and then, a little while later, reappeared in the centre of Manchester. Near the restaurant.

  It was not that they had any specific indication that this dark figure standing outside the restaurant was Chloe, but they had no doubts.

  Then they watched her jump up the side of the building and climb to the top where there was even less illumination. They saw shadows, watched as burner beams raked the roof, and the arrival of the helicopter. It was unreal.

  And then she jumped to the next building. And the next, with the helicopter in pursuit. And then the next. Debenhams.

  Michael Dark did not fail to note the irony. The day he had refused to listen to Ali Najjar about his daughter they had been in the big department store. The day he had fought with the man who had tried to tell him the truth. The man who had died only a few minutes later in a crazy accident.

  Then the image had changed. Chloe and the helicopter were out of the no-fly zone set up by the police and the film crews were on the ball. A drone moved in. Its camera did not have the telephoto capabilities of the main one, but when it got in close the picture was much better.

  There was no doubt now it was Chloe. She climbed a ladder, went across to the other side of the building. The drone arrived there just as she threw herself off.

  His wife had screamed.

  They watched Chloe grab the helicopter and saw it fly off, too fast for the drone to follow.

  The anchorman had announced the police were in search of the freak and the terrorists engaged in the attack. But by that time the Darks were no longer listening. They stared at the screen without seeing it, heard the words without listening to them, and felt their lives fall away from them, as their own daughter had fallen from the roof.

  They were dragged back to reality when the image switched to a picture of their house. A dozen figures dressed in quarantine suits rushing up the path.

  ‘What’s ha
ppening, Mike?’

  There was a splintering crash of wood and glass. As if blown in on a gust of cold air, the figures on the screen materialised at the door.

  ‘Get down on the floor!’

  Mike turned towards them in bewilderment. His wife’s hand fell away from his.

  ‘Get down on the floor!’

  He blinked in disbelief at the weapons in their hands. He raised his.

  ‘Get down on the floor or we will use force!’

  Mike descended slowly to his knees. He felt Mandy doing the same beside him. She was crying.

  ‘Face down!’ The voice was slightly muffled by the material of the quarantine suit. He couldn’t see a face behind the smoked glass.

  There was the pounding of feet upstairs. Doors being smashed open.

  ‘They could just turn the handles,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Get face down on the floor!’

  A voice from above shouted. ‘Secure on first level.’ There was the sound of furniture being scraped across the ground.

  ‘Lie face down, now!’

  ‘Better do as he says, Mike.’

  Her voice sounded preternaturally calm. He wanted to protest but felt her hand on his shoulder pressing him into the floor. He went with it, although the blood was pumping through him and he just wanted to fight. The pressure of the floor against his chest seemed abnormal. The linoleum surface was cold against his cheek, and the frigid air flooding in made him shiver.

  ‘Hands behind your back.’

  He obeyed. The shuffling footsteps of two or three people drew close around them.

  ‘Where’s Chloe?’ said Mandy. There was a double thump, one following the other. Mandy gave a little moan of pain. Mike switched the direction of his head. She was there, looking at him but unfocused. A patch of red wetness showed in her hair near her ear.

  ‘Mandy?’

  Someone grabbed his wrists, put something round them, and pulled it tight. He cried out with the pain. Mandy jerked as one of the suited figures did the same to her. ‘What have you done to her, you bastards!’

  ‘Resisting Purity quarantine is an offence.’

  ‘But—’

  He was interrupted by someone shouting that the subjects were secure.