by Amy Cross
She closed her eyes and tried to listen to her thoughts, but a moment later she heard – instead – the sound of a door opening.
Turning, she saw a figure watching her from a doorway.
“Are you alright?” the man asked.
“No,” she replied, before getting to her feet. “I'm about as not-alright as I've ever been in my life.” Reaching into her bag, she took out her phone and brought up a picture of Judy, which she then showed to the man. “I know it's a long-shot, but is there any chance that you've seen this girl?”
The man paused, before stepping forward and – in the process – moving slightly into the light.
“I haven't seen her in my life,” he said, before tilting his head slightly as he looked at Merrie, “but you seem familiar. Weren't you and some other girls with Greg earlier?”
“My friend Kay likes him,” Merrie said cautiously.
“Javier,” he replied, stepping closer and reaching out to shake her hand. “If your friend is missing, I'm going to assume that you've already wasted some time at the police station, getting ignored and told to come back another day.”
“They were completely useless,” she replied. “And she's not my friend. Well, she is, but she's my sister. Her name's Judy.”
“Have you tried calling her?”
“She left her phone behind.”
“Have you looked online to see if there's anything in the area she might have gone to? Some kind of party or event?”
“I didn't think of that.”
“Come inside,” he said, gesturing for her to go through into the building's brightly-lit interior. “I haven't had a customer all evening. You can use my computer in peace, without all this yelling and screaming. I'll even make you a cup of coffee or tea, if you like.” He paused. “Sorry, it's just a suggestion. To be honest, I'm trying to distract myself from something.”
Merrie opened her mouth to tell him she couldn't take him up on the offer, but then at the last second something held her back. If she turned this guy down, what would she do instead? Wander the streets for hours on end? Call Judy's name? At least if she went inside, she could take a moment to think things through, and she could maybe even bounce a few ideas off a fresh mind.
“I just need to go back to the apartment and check she hasn't come back,” she said finally, “but then... Sure. I could really use a cup of tea.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I have to stay here,” Cally said, kissing Emma on the cheek before putting a finger on her chest, right over her heart, “but I'll always be in here.”
“Can't you come with us?” Emma asked.
Cally shook her head, and then she stood up and led her over to the door.
“You have to go with this nice man. Tell him where Daddy lives, and everything'll be fine. He's got kind eyes, sweetheart. He'll look after you.”
“Don't worry, Mummy,” Emma replied, before giving her mother another hug. “Everything'll be okay.”
“Everything'll be okay,” Ruth whispered now, as she remembered that final moment when she'd seen her mother for the last time.
She has so many questions.
What had happened to her real father?
Why had she been taken to Scotland?
Had her mother really died at Leadenford, or was there a chance that somehow she'd escaped?
And how had she – Ruth, or rather Emma, or whichever name she chose now – been guided to the island of Mallaca?
There was so much that didn't make sense, or that made sense only in brief, frustrating snatches. Obviously something must have happened in Scotland, and obviously something had prevented her real father from coming for her. Other than that, she had no idea how her true identity could have been kept secret for so long. As much as she told herself that she'd been at the heart of some huge conspiracy, she couldn't help but consider the alternative: that she'd been a complete idiot, that she'd let the wool get pulled over her eyes far too easily.
Hearing a faint slithering sound, she turned and looked over toward the swimming pool. She told herself that the sound had been all in her head, but then she heard it again and she realized this time that it seemed to be coming from several directions at once.
Keen to get out of her own thoughts for a moment or two, she wandered out across the patio, past the lights that were bringing a glow to the evening air, and then she stopped next to one of the palm trees and waited for the sound to return. Which it did, just a few seconds later.
Looking up, Ruth realized that the sound had come from somewhere high up in the tree.
And then, just as she was about to convince herself that there was no reason to worry, she spotted something slithering between the leaves at the very top of the tree, and then she took a step back as she saw a single thin tendril loop down and hang in the air several feet above her head.
“What the...”
For a moment, she could only stand and stare as the creature continued to stir. Clearly this was similar to the creature that she'd seen slipping out of the girl's belly, although this particular creature looked larger. Fatter, somehow. And as the tendrils continued to slide across one another, she heard what sounded like a very faint rattling sound coming from somewhere deep in the knot of glistening black appendages.
Suddenly a drip fell from the tree, landing just a few feet away. Looking down, Ruth saw that the creature had released a dark blob of liquid that was now dribbling down into one of the gutters.
“Gross,” she whispered. “Did it just poo?”
***
“Drones,” Mr. Ford said dismissively as he carried a metal canister over to one of the counter-tops and set it down. “Nothing more than that, Ms. McCoy. They hide and sleep in the treetops during the day, avoiding the heat. At night, they stir in the cooler temperatures, but they're really nothing special. They're contaminated.”
“Contaminated by what?” Ruth asked.
“They're impure.” He untwisted the top of the canister and removed it, allowing curls of gas to escape from inside. “They came from human bodies that had been poisoned. The chemotherapy and radiation harmed their development, but Mr. Velucci couldn't bring himself to destroy them so he kindly allows them to remain on the premises. Functionally, however, they're little more than vegetables.”
“Okay,” Ruth said cautiously, “but the ones in the -”
“It's the pure specimens that are of value,” he continued. “The ones that grew strong and proud. The others are useful primarily for research. I've learned a great deal from them. Such as this particular beauty.”
Reaching into the canister with a pair of tongs, he carefully began to remove a set of black tendrils, finally producing the glistening black bulk of the creature's head and setting the entire body down onto the counter.
“This was removed from a twenty-two-year-old male who had, in the past, been treated for lung cancer,” he explained as he began to delicately arrange the tendrils around the main, knotted core. “The male died at one of Mr. Velucci's facilities in the United States, at which point the creature was excised and sent to us here. Unfortunately, there was not much we could do. By the time we got to it, the creature had been flooded with poisons that were designed to kill it. It's a miracle that the creature survived at all, but that's a testament to its sheer strength and vitality. What a magnificent specimen it would have been, if only humanity had not done its utmost to fight the inevitable. We helped it to live for a while, but in all honesty its only use now is as a research subject.”
“It's alive,” Ruth whispered as she saw some of the tentacles flexing slightly.
“Subdued, but yes, alive.” Mr. Ford set the tongs aside and picked up a scalpel. “The gas in the canister renders the creature docile while not causing any damage to the internal structures. This means that my work is more reliable.”
“But what are you -”
Before she could finish, Ruth saw that he was pressing the scalpel's tip into the creature, and sh
e watched with a growing sense of horror as he cut the main knot open. At the same time, she couldn't help but notice that the creature was twitching more wildly now, and she even heard a faint clicking sound. She knew it was crazy to feel sorry for something so hideous, but she actually felt as if this whole experiment was wrong.
“Is it in pain?” she asked.
“It's too stupid to feel pain.”
“But you're killing it!”
“I doubt it even understands the concept of death. As I told you already, it really was very badly harmed during its time in its human host. It had a brain once, or rather a distributed consciousness, but the damage was too extreme for recovery to be possible. Now it's no more than a -”
Suddenly the creature twitched again, knocking the scalpel with a tendril while emitting a brief, high-pitched squeal.
“You're torturing it!” Ruth gasped.
“I'm doing no such thing.”
Before he could make another incision, however, the creature wrapped another tendril around the scalpel and pulled it away. Mr. Ford struggled to free the blade, but finally he had to resort to slicing the scalpel through the tendril until the tip fell away. Dark, slimy liquid dribbled from the severed end, and the creature squealed again.
“I thought you worshiped these things,” Ruth stammered. “I thought you cared about them!”
“Only the pure specimens,” he replied, as he began to cut straight through the creature's central section, causing more black slime to ooze out as the tendrils flailed and then fell still. “The rest, such as this one, are worthless.”
With that, he used the scalpel's tip to carefully lift a thin black thread from the creature's corpse, and he then twisted the thread until it broke in the middle.
“I must know everything about them,” he continued, “if I am to usher in their golden age. If I am to serve the Pure One when it emerges.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I don't get where else she could be,” Merrie muttered as she sat down at the desk in the tattoo studio. “If she's not at the apartment, she's either hurt or...”
She brought up a web browser and began typing into a search engine. She'd done this several times already, of course, with no luck, but she figured that maybe – eventually – she might stumble onto something useful.
“Or what?” Javier asked, before starting to pour hot water into two cups.
“That villa up on the hill,” she continued. “I've heard crazy things about it. People don't go up there and disappear, do they?”
She typed a few more search terms into the computer, before turning and seeing that Javier was focusing on the tea. After a few seconds he glanced at her, and she could immediately see that he was concerned about something.
“Spill,” she said firmly.
“All I know is that Velucci is the richest man on the island. He might even be one of the richest men in the whole world, although he shuns the limelight entirely. I think I read once that he made his money in the aerospace industry, but that he sold the whole lot for billions before coming to Mallaca. And whatever he does up there, he keeps himself to himself.” He paused. “I actually know someone who works up there. A friend. Well, she was a friend once.”
“Can we ask her if she's seen Judy?”
“I can't just call her up.”
“Why not?”
“It's complicated.”
“But -”
“It's complicated!”
Sighing, Merrie turned back to the computer.
“I've tried typing a few things in,” she explained, “and I keep drawing a blank. I can't believe more people aren't talking about this island.” She scrolled down a page of search results, then she clicked through to a second page. “I feel like I'm constantly circling something that I'm not actually seeing.” She paused, before clicking on a link and being taken through to a bare-bones website filled with large chunks of text. “There's something on this site, though. It's about that Velucci guy and...”
Her voice trailed off as she began to read.
“Found anything interesting?” Javier asked, as he carried the two cups of tea over to join her.
“I think this was written by someone crazy,” she replied, although she scrolled down the page and continued to read. “It's trying to link Velucci to some kind of international plot. It's going on about incidents where the military had to intervene to stop zombies.” She rolled her eyes. “As if anything that nuts could happen without getting into the news. This lunatic's claiming that a whole hospital got blown up because of this stuff.”
“Sounds unlikely,” Javier said as he crouched down and looked at the screen.
“Apparently this kid was involved,” Merrie continued, as she scrolled down to a grainy image of Emma Briggs.
“Stop!” Javier said suddenly, before squinting as he leaned closer to the screen.
“What is it?” Merrie asked.
“Nothing.” He pulled back. “She just looked familiar, that's all. Something about the eyes, but I guess I'm imagining it.” He stared at the image for a moment longer, hoping that the sense of familiarity would dissipate; if anything, however, it became stronger. “It's nothing,” he murmured. “It can't be.”
“Basically,” she continued, “this site is saying that outbreaks have been occurring all around the world, and that governments have been working together to keep the whole thing under wraps.” She turned to Javier. “Do people actually believe stuff like this?”
“Everything gets believed by someone,” he pointed out. “That's one of the reasons I stay away from the internet. It lets lunatics find one another.”
“But this is insane,” she said, looking back at the screen. “Maybe stuff could be covered up in the past, but that was before social media. Are you seriously telling me that a bunch of zombie shit could have been going down, and no-one tweeted about it? No-one put anything up on Facebook or Instagram? I mean, you basically can't keep a secret these days. My gran started shagging a guy down the street last year. She's not even on social media, and it was still all over everyone's news feeds.”
“Your gran started -”
“Never mind,” she continued. “Too much information. The point is, this stuff's just unbelievable.” She scrolled down a little further. “According to this part, Andreas Velucci is deeply involved in all this crap. He's the head of some kind of religion that's trying to celebrate these zombies. Or they're celebrating something that's inside the zombies, or...”
She read a little further, and then she spotted a sound file. Clicking, she waited a moment for the audio to buffer.
“It's all true!” a female voice screamed suddenly, bursting through a haze of static as other voices shouted in the background. “Ask Lizzie Miller! They took her away to a secret base and no-one's heard from her since! Not even her parents! Ask the government about Lizzie Miller! Ask why she -”
The voice was briefly interrupted by what sounded like a scuffle.
“Shut her up!” a man could be heard shouting. “Get her out of here!”
“They don't want anyone to know!” the original voice yelled after a moment. “They're hiding the truth from everyone, they're -”
There was a sudden burst of static, and then the recording ended.
“That was... intense,” Merrie said, still staring at the screen.
“Velucci's not a man to be trusted,” Javier said sternly. “Everyone knows that. Everyone looks up at that villa and knows that something isn't right.”
“And you've got a friend who works there?”
“She only just started.”
“You have to call her. Ask her about my sister, just to make sure that she isn't mixed up in all of this!”
“She won't answer my calls.”
“Try again!”
“You don't understand,” he said with a sigh, “it won't do any good.” Grabbing his phone, he brought up Ruth's number and dialed, and then he waited for her to answer. The call rang for
a moment before being rejected. “See? Ever since she went up there, she's been avoiding me. I think you have to accept that whatever's going on up there, it's nothing to do with your sister.”
He waited, but Merrie was reading another section of the website.
“Cancer,” she whispered finally.
“Huh?”
“According to this site, the zombie thing is connected to cancer.”
“You said it yourself, that website is -”
“I think my sister has cancer.” She turned to him, and now there was fear in her eyes. “I've been ignoring it, pretending it's not true, but she's definitely sick. I think she has some kind of cancer, maybe in her tummy, and she's been trying to hide it. Maybe she's been ignoring it as well. But this seems a bit like a weird coincidence, and right now it's the only possibility that I can look into.”
“You're grasping at straws.”
“Straws are all I've got.” She got to her feet. “I'm going up there.”
“To the villa? Don't be ridiculous.”
“I'm going up there, and I'm going to ask to look around.”
“There's no way they'll let you in.”
“Then I'll climb over a wall!”
“That place has security,” he told her. “Velucci's no idiot.”
“If my sister's up there, then I'm going after her,” she replied. “It'll be easier if you help me, but I'm willing to go alone. So what's it to be? Are you coming or not?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“You're crazy!” Greg said as he pulled Kay through the door and into a quiet, private corridor in Apocalypse. “Come on, there are cameras everywhere.”
“I don't see any cameras,” she said with a grin, before reaching down and starting to unzip his fly. “Anyway, you don't strike me as a shy kind of guy. What's wrong? Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?”
“You're drunk.”
“So are you.”
“Listen, we -”