by Amy Cross
“So there were two zombies,” the operator said calmly, “and now there are three. Let me guess, there'll be four in a minute or two?”
Looking past the others, Kay saw that the door back down into the club was still open.
“Not if I can help it,” she replied.
“I'll send someone to check on you,” the operator continued. “In the meantime, can you make your way to the club's entrance and meet the officers there?”
“I'll do my best,” Kay replied, before slowly lowering the phone.
She had one shot at this.
Part of her wanted to scream, but everyone else down on the street was already screaming and yelling and partying, so she knew she wouldn't be heard. Not in time, anyway. And even as the girl and Greg and Colin advanced toward her, Kay was already telling herself that she wasn't going to let a bunch of assholes get their hands on her. No-one was coming to help, but she figured she was much faster than the others, and she told herself that all she had to do was slip between them and then she had a clear run to the door.
Put like that, it almost sounded easy.
“Okay,” she whispered under her breath. “You can do this.”
She paused for a moment, and then she bolted forward, ducking down as she managed to slip past the outstretched hands of the three zombies. She stumbled slightly and almost fell, but she managed to keep her momentum going and finally she reached the middle of the roof. Instead of stopping to look over her shoulder, she ran toward the door, and for a moment she thought she was actually going to get back to the stairwell.
And then, suddenly, the entire building shuddered and tipped slightly to the left, and Kay watched in horror as the door swung shut.
“No!” she screamed, struggling to stay on her feet but finally getting to the door and grabbing the handle, only to find that it would no longer turn. “Somebody open this thing!”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“This is illegal!” Javier hissed as he followed Merrie through the undergrowth, trying to get closer so he could grab her arm and pull her back. “You're going to get into trouble!”
“What are you, a boy scout?” she replied, keeping her voice low. “Anyway, I thought you were worried about someone up here too.”
“She can look after herself,” he muttered. “If she wanted me around, she'd have stayed at the studio.”
“This place looks deserted,” Merrie said, finally dropping to her knees and peering out across the patio. “I was expecting loads of people partying. Some pool girls, at least.”
She waited for a moment, but the only movement came from reflected light that rippled on the surface of the swimming pool. A warm breeze was blowing across the villa, and a few seconds later Merrie looked up and saw that that tops of the nearby palm trees were swaying slightly.
“So is it, like, just some rich dude who lives up here?” she asked.
“I'm sure he has staff-members to help him,” Javier replied as he knelt next to her.
“I don't see any security.”
“There are cameras. Everywhere.”
“What about girls?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought these rich guys usually had girls hanging around in bikinis.” She paused. “My mate Kay actually wants to be one of those girls. She's nice, but she can be a bit of a slapper sometimes. Once, we were at a club in Lewisham and this rugby team -”
“Do I need to know this right now?” he asked. “I'm sure there are cameras everywhere.”
“But no actual people,” she pointed out. “Maybe he doesn't want people up here to see what he's doing.”
“What are you talking about?” Javier asked. “He's not doing anything. He's just a rich guy who lives on a hill. And if he doesn't want anyone seeing anything, why did he hire Ruth to work here?”
“Everyone needs someone to help out around the place. Maybe he wanted someone who wouldn't ask too many questions. Someone a little dumb. Someone expendable.”
“Ruth isn't dumb,” Javier said through gritted teeth, “and she's certainly not expendable.”
“I'm going in.”
“What do -”
Suddenly Merrie got to her feet and starting making her way across the patio, heading toward the main part of the villa.
“Stop!” Javier hissed, and then he sighed as he realized that there was no way he could hold her back. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered under his breath, watching as Merrie walked past one of the palm trees and began to head around the edge of the swimming pool. “This is not how normal people do things.”
For a moment he considered going after her, but then he spotted a camera on one of the far walls and he realized that maybe he'd already done enough. Merrie was clearly going to be stopped sooner rather than later, so he figured he should just go back to the car and wait for the inevitable moment when she'd be ejected from the property. Or, if the police ended up being called, he could try to explain what was happening. Then again, he supposed his face was probably already caught on at least a few of the cameras, which meant there wasn't much point backing out. Merrie would get caught eventually, and then the camera footage would get checked, and then he would be implicated.
And then he saw something moving on the palm tree that Merrie had just passed.
At first he thought it was a snake. A thin, long black snake. Then he saw that several more of these 'snakes' were starting to slide down from high up in the tree, and he realized that some of the snakes – they looked more like tendrils, really – were starting to dangle freely in the warm night air. Whatever they were, they certainly weren't snakes.
“Hey, come back!” he called out, while trying to keep his voice low. “Hey! Stop!”
As he said those words, he saw more of the black tendrils starting to curl down from other trees as Merrie walked past.
“Wait!” he shouted.
Figuring that she couldn't hear, he hesitated for a moment before finally getting to his feet and hurrying out across the patio. All he wanted was to grab Merrie and pull her back, but as he passed the first tree he suddenly had to step aside as one of the tendrils flicked and lashed out at him, missing his face by only a few inches. Shocked, he watched as the tendril turned in the breeze, and he saw that one edge was marked by what looked like a razor-thin ridge.
Stepping back to make sure that he was out of range, he looked up and saw several thick, bulbous black sacs lodged high up in the tree.
“What the...”
He stared for a moment, before turning and hurrying past the pool, desperate to get to Merrie. She'd already reached the villa and was trying one of the doors, but Javier quickly reached her and pull her arm away.
“Are you insane?” he snapped, before looking around to check that nobody had – yet – come out to stop them. “We have to get out of this place right now. Something's really screwed-up here.”
“Judy's here,” she replied. “I know it.”
“You don't know any such thing!” he said firmly. “I've indulged your dumb little theories so far, but now it's time to leave. Did you even see the things in the trees?”
“What things in the trees?” she asked, before looking past him and seeing several more tendrils lazily uncurling themselves and dropping into view. “Tell me those aren't snakes.”
“They're not snakes.”
“Then -”
“Snakes would be okay,” he continued. “Snakes, I wouldn't be scared of. Whatever those things are, I wish they were snakes. Now come on, we have to get out of here and call the police. There's no signal up here, but this is definitely a situation for the actual, real police.”
“My sister -”
“Screw your sister!” he replied, cutting her off. “Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, not really. But if your sister was stupid enough to come up here, then she's going to have to look after herself until help arrives!”
“And what about your friend?” Merrie asked. “Sounds like she definitely decide
d to come here.”
“You don't know what you're talking about.”
“I know you're in love with her,” she replied. “Don't even try to deny it. I can see it in your eyes, and you wouldn't be standing here with me right now if she was just a friend.”
“She's nothing to me,” he told her. “Not now.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“I'm not going to justify myself to you,” he added. “I barely even know you.”
“Fine,” she replied, “but I'm still not going to leave here without my sister. And I'm not going to justify myself to you!”
Pulling away from him, she turned and hurried around the side of the building, quickly disappearing from view. Javier hesitated, still not wanting to be anywhere near the villa, and then he listened to the sound of Merrie struggling through the bushes. At the same time, his words from a few seconds earlier were now ringing in his ears.
“She's nothing to me. Not now.”
He felt ashamed.
Deep down, he was still worried about Ruth; and deep down, he knew that something seemed wrong. He figured he could piggyback on this Merrie girl's lunacy, claim he was only trying to restrain her, and yet maybe catch a glimpse of Ruth and see for certain that she was okay.
“Wait a moment!” he sighed finally, before heading around the corner to follow Merrie. “Hey, crazy girl, you -”
Stopping suddenly, he saw that she'd climbed up onto the back of some kind of ventilation unit, and that she'd somehow managed to open a small window.
“I don't hear any alarms,” she noted with a faint smile. “Maybe this place isn't as high-tech as they'd like everyone to think.”
With that, she hauled herself up and through the window, leaving Javier to sigh as he hurried after her.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Wake up.
Judy's eyelids fluttered slightly as her thoughts began to coalesce, and then finally her eyes opened fully and she found herself staring at a completely white surface. Something felt very wrong, as if her head wasn't quite attached properly to the rest of her body, and then suddenly a man stepped into view and looked up at her face, and she realized what was happening.
She pulled on her wrists, but she was strapped too securely to a metal board that had been suspended from the ceiling.
She was upside down.
“What the...”
“There's no reason to be scared,” the man said with a smile. “My name is Andreas Velucci and I am here to ensure that you fulfill your destiny. I have already examined you, and I have determined that you are a prime, unsullied specimen. In fact, your purity puts me to shame. Which is why you are so important.” Reaching up, he put a hand on the side of her face. “Your coming has been long promised. All the other specimens, even the most basic, recognize your role here tonight. They're becoming agitated. They're stirring. They anticipate what comes next.”
“What are you talking about?” Judy asked, still feeling a little groggy as she began to panic. She pulled again on the restraints, only to find that she was still being held firmly in place. “Who are you? What is this place? I want to go home! I want to talk to my sister!”
“Fear is natural,” he said as he began to open the front of his shirt, revealing the huge slit that ran down his chest. “In a way, fear is good. It shows that you're fully aware of the gravity of this situation. If you weren't at least nervous, I'd be starting to think that you're an imbecile.”
“I don't want to be here,” Judy replied, pulling even harder on the restraints. “Let me down and let me out of here, or I swear I'll -”
Before she could finish, she saw several thin black tendrils starting to slide out from the slit in Mr. Velucci's chest. She stared with a growing sense of horror as more and more tendrils emerged, some of them thicker than the first, and finally the tendrils began to extent up toward her own exposed torso.
“What are those things?” she gasped. “This isn't real. This has to be a dream!”
“This is a perfectly beautiful moment,” he explained, although he was sounding a little breathless now. “A new age is coming. The future has arrived. The Pure One is ready to emerge.”
With that, he began to laugh, as more and more tendrils rose up from his chest and began to slither against Judy's body, caressing her skin as something else began to stir deep in her chest. And as Judy screamed, the tips of black tendrils began to start pushing out from inside her body.
***
“It was no-one,” Mr. Ford said as he carried a tray along the corridor. “Just some travelers who wanted directions. They knocked on the door and I answered, and I sent them on their way.”
“Oh,” Ruth said, walking alongside him as they approached the double-doors at the corridor's far end. “I mean, cool. Sorry, it's just that for a moment I thought I heard a voice I recognized.”
“I find that highly unlikely.”
“It wasn't a guy named Javier, was it?” she asked. “I just -”
“You must stop these thoughts now,” he said, suddenly, stopping and turning to her, blocking her way. “Free your mind of the past. You're on the verge of seeing the future now, Ms. McCoy, and you can't go forth into that future if your thoughts are still trapped in the past.”
“I know,” she replied, “but -”
“Everything is in place,” he added. “Your arrival here has coincided with the arrival of a perfect specimen. Even as we speak, Mr. Velucci is working on the specimen and ensuring that it receive the necessary encouragement. By the time the sun rises in the morning, the whole world will have entered a new phase. And your job -”
“What do you mean by a new phase?” she asked cautiously.
“And your job,” he continued firmly, “is to assist me as I, in turn, assist Mr. Velucci. As a child of one of the original martyrs, your loyalty is not in doubt, even if you have not yet given yourself entirely to the project. Now, please, will you open the door?”
Although she still didn't quite understand, Ruth nevertheless headed to the double-doors and pulled them open. As soon as she did so, however, she realized she could hear a woman sobbing and crying out in the distance, and she froze for a moment as the sound continued.
“All new things are difficult at first,” Mr. Ford said as he stepped past her, “but I assure you that this suffering has value.”
“Are you hurting someone in there?” Ruth asked. “You can't do that!”
“Sometimes the best medicine involves pain,” he explained. “I need you to go to my office and fetch the equipment from the refrigerator. Ensure that you don't allow any of the containers to open. Bring them here and then use the intercom to let me know that you have arrived. And don't take too long. It's very important that we complete our work within the next few hours.”
“Well, I...”
She paused, but now the screams had ended and she heard only silence.
“Sure,” she said finally. “I'll get the stuff you wanted.”
“I knew I could count on you,” he replied, before turning and heading along the corridor. “Hurry, Ms. McCoy. The future is waiting.”
“Sure,” she muttered, and then she let the doors swing shut before taking a step back.
For a moment, she considered turning and running. At the same time, running would mean going back down into town and admitting that this had all been a mistake. She'd run away from new things all her life, and she'd ended up never achieving anything. This time, she told herself, she was going to stay the course and push through her fears, and she was going to try to be part of something that actually mattered. And she trusted both Mr. Velucci and Mr. Ford, and she figured that they couldn't be doing anything too bad. Sure, a woman had screamed, but people screamed during childbirth and other normal events, so she decided to just do her job and hope for the best.
Heading back along the corridor, she tried to put her fears out of her mind. And then, just as she was starting to feel a little more confident, she stopped as she
saw a pair of legs and a butt sticking out of a vent at the top of a nearby wall.
“Who the hell are you?” she gasped.
The legs – which clearly belonged to a girl – wiggled for a moment.
“Ruth?” a familiar male voice called out from somewhere deeper inside the vent. “Is that you?”
“What the hell?” Ruth whispered. “Javier?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“What are you doing here?” Ruth gasped as Javier finally – and a little awkwardly – lowered himself from the vent.
“Ask this maniac!” he snapped, dusting himself down. “We crawled in through a window and somehow we ended up coming out through a vent. How does that even happen?”
“I got lost!” Merrie shouted angrily. “It happens to the best of -”
“Quiet!” he hissed, putting a hand over her mouth. “How much attention do you want to draw to yourself?”
She pulled away and spat something from her lips.
“Your hand's really dusty!” she told him. “Just so you know!”
“You can't be here,” Ruth said firmly. “You're going to get me fired!”
“It's her fault,” Javier replied. “She's a mad English girl. I only came here to try to stop her.”
“Yeah right,” Merrie said. “Is this the so-called friend you kept claiming not to care about?”
Javier turned to Ruth, who in turn met his gaze for a moment before turning to Merrie.
“I'm going to get you out the back door,” she explained, “and then with any luck you can leave the property before anyone notices you.”
“Not before I see my sister!”
“Who?”
“My sister! Judy! I know she's here!”
“There's no -”
Stopping suddenly, Ruth realized that she must mean the girl who'd a little earlier. She figured she should probably deny everything, but for a moment she couldn't quite work out what to say. She'd always been a terrible liar.
“I can see it in your eyes,” Merrie continued, “and I can feel it in my gut. Judy's here, and I want to see her. Now!”