by Alex Scarrow
‘Didn’t know?’ Dave shook his head. ‘Bollocks she didn’t know!’
‘I DIDN’T KNOW!’ she screamed at him.
‘You were the one begging to let that horse in, weren’t you?’ He turned to look at the others crowded outside the sauna. ‘Wasn’t she? She wanted to let that thing in! And when Ron said he was going to burn it . . . ?’
He turned back to her. ‘You knew. You bloody knew!’
She shook her head vigorously, sobbing. ‘No. No . . . I . . . I—’
‘Leave her alone!’ snapped Leon. ‘She’s horse-mad, OK? She’s always wanted one! She just—’
‘It’s not your sister, mate. Not any more.’
Leon swung a fist at him. The first time in Leon’s life that he’d ever thrown a punch. It was clumsy, slow and badly aimed, and it glanced off Dave’s cheek. Dave retaliated with a punch to his gut and Leon doubled over, winded.
‘Get him outside!’
He felt hands grabbing hold of his shoulders. He tried shaking them off, but then a knee came up sharply and smashed him in the temple. His head suddenly exploded with white noise and he was vaguely, dully aware of being dragged out of the stuffy sauna cabin and thrown down on to some rubber matting.
He gazed up at the glass roof of the tropicarium, everything blurred and spinning and refusing to settle into something on which he could focus. It was getting dark outside. That’s the one thing he could make out. Darkness was coming.
Oh, my poor, poor Leo . . . You’ve been knocked silly. Mum’s voice. From the time he’d bashed his head using a chin-up bar in the doorframe of his bedroom. Leo . . . you silly boy . . . Are you all right? He remembered being rushed to hospital and a junior doctor telling his mother he’d concussed himself and it was best he stayed in hospital overnight so they could watch him.
Over the ringing in his ears, he was vaguely aware of other voices in the background now. Shouts and screams and some ridiculous fight going on over something, but he was struggling to piece together what it was all about. Something important, though. Something immediate. Life and death.
Thumping, banging. And a screaming voice. He knew that voice. It was Grace. She was screaming his name over and over and over. And another female voice he vaguely recognized but couldn’t put a name to right now.
‘You can’t do this! No. Oh God! No. You can’t do this!’
He sat up, his head still spinning and now beginning to throb painfully, his ears still ringing. From the sauna he could see torchlight and shadows flickering around. He could hear Dave and Iain in there with her. The narrow doorway was plugged with everyone else, curious and frightened.
Freya appeared beside him. She crouched down. ‘You OK?’
Leon shook his head like a dog shaking off water. He pulled himself up, Freya helping. ‘What’s happening in there?’ he uttered groggily. ‘What are they doing to her?’
‘We’ve got to stop them! We’ve got to—’
Leon pushed himself forward into the pack of bodies around the door.
‘LEON! LEEEE-ON!’ Grace’s voice sounded muffled now, as if they were gagging her. He wrenched at shoulders in his way, pushing them aside to get back into the small sauna. But he needn’t have bothered.
Dave appeared in the doorway with a squirming green shape slung over his shoulder. It took a second for Leon to realize it was a tarpaulin wrapped round Grace.
‘LEON! HELP ME!’ her muffled voice whimpered.
He could see one of her small pale fists poking out from the tarp, thumping ineffectually against Dave’s back.
‘Put her down!’ Leon screamed.
Dave squeezed through the door and the curious crowd backed away from him as if he were carrying a hornet’s nest on his shoulder. Leon took advantage of the space ahead of him and charged forward. But once again he found himself down on the ground, blinking up at the spinning darkening sky. Something heavy landed on his chest. Big Phil. He was straddling him and his meaty fists were holding his arms down.
‘Mate,’ he whispered, ‘if you don’t want the same thing to happen to you, just stay there, all right?’
Dave strode past, Grace kicking and screaming over his shoulder. He was heading towards the storeroom. He saw Freya struggling a couple of metres away, Claire and one of the cleaning girls restraining her like prison guards.
‘Dave! You bastard! You can’t do this!’ Freya was screaming after him.
‘What’s he going to do?’ asked Leon, still not getting it.
Big Phil looked down at him, shaking his head. ‘Just be quiet, mate.’
‘WHAT’S HE GOING TO DO?’
The answer came, not from Phil, but from the sound of liquid sloshing in a gallon drum. He saw Iain walking in Dave’s wake, the drum held in his arms.
Oh God.
‘NO . . . NO . . . NONONONO!’ He tried to buck Phil’s weight off him, but there was too much bulk for his slender frame to shift.
‘Sorry, Leon . . . sorry mate . . . we’ve gotta do this.’
He ignored Phil. ‘DAVE! PLEASE! WE’LL LEAVE! WE’LL LEAVE!’ he screamed.
Dave carried on ignoring him and then paused by the storeroom door, waiting for Iain. Leon caught a glimpse of them discussing something, then his view was blocked by all the others making their way towards the storeroom.
‘Phil! For God’s sake . . . they’re gonna burn her! Let me go!’
He could see Big Phil didn’t want to think about that. Big Phil was more than happy just thinking about keeping Leon down on the ground. ‘Just shut up! Mate, please?’
‘Please! Please! Oh God . . . please!’
Leon could smell the diesel. He could hear it spattering the ground. He could hear Grace’s muffled screams increasing in pitch.
She smells it too. She knows what’s going to happen.
He twisted and squirmed and Phil’s grasp just got tighter as he braced himself. ‘It’ll be over quick.’
‘You can’t let him do this to her!’
‘It’s not Grace. It’s not your little sis.’
‘LET ME GOOOOOO!’
In the twilight gloom, he saw a glow of flickering amber. Leon caught a glimpse of flame . . . a twist of paper burning at one end. He heard Dave shout something over the top of Grace’s muffled screaming. The crowd took several cautious steps back, which allowed him to see more. Iain quickly pulled the storeroom door open, Dave tossed the soaking, squirming tarpaulin bundle in. Iain shook the rest of the diesel fuel out inside the room then hastily backed out.
And Dave finally tossed the flaming twist of paper in.
The door remained open. A second or two passed. Then with a soft whump, a rich orange glow spilled out of the open door. Dave, satisfied the bundle was burning, slammed the door shut.
Leon heard Freya screaming . . . then he heard himself screaming.
PART III
CHAPTER 46
‘He’s really nice. He’s got a good heart. You’d like him.’
Freya paused, the phone held to her ear as she stared out at the dark city from the balcony. ‘Yeah. Not too bad-looking. No Brad Pitt, of course. More like Big Bang’s Leonard. But, you know, he’s really sweet.’
She paused again, her head cocked, listening. ‘Yeah . . . I know. I know he’s messed up inside. I do know that. But who isn’t, right? We’re all a little screwed up in our heads these days. I mean, I saw you turned into gunk. Everyone who’s alive now lost someone they loved. Everyone. We’re all damaged goods one way or another.’
She clutched the phone to her ear, even though it was just a lifeless slither of plastic. Even if it had had any charge left on it, there’d be no point. There were no signals out there.
I know, Freya love . . . but just be careful who you attach yourself to. Boys can be so cruel . . .
‘Oh, God, I know all about boys, Mum. He’s not like that.’ She turned to look back into the dark bedroom. She could just about see his dark form spread across the bed. She could hear his heavy regular brea
thing. Fast asleep, for sure.
‘He’s just . . . well . . . I think I’m going to have to be the strong one for a while. He’s broken right now. So I’m going to look after him.’
And when he’s better again, Freya . . . will he look after you? Will he stay with you when you can’t walk any more? Feed you when you can’t swallow? Push you around in a wheel—
She laughed softly. ‘You mean dump me for someone way hotter? I don’t think I’m facing any stiff competition right now.’ She stared out at the dark city of Norwich. Not a single light. Not a single sign of life. ‘Anyway, it’s not like we’re going out or anything. We’re just friends right now. Survival buddies.’
She lowered the phone from her ear, losing interest in talking to her dead mum. Even as just a voice in her head, a voice from the grave, she was still suffocatingly protective of her fragile little girl.
‘I love you, Mum,’ she whispered, ‘but I’m a big girl now. I can take care of myself.’
She set her dead, useless phone down on the balcony coffee table and gazed at the cluster of tea candles set in the middle, the only man-made illumination in Norwich. The apartment they’d randomly picked was in a modern-looking converted five-storey canal-side warehouse, which Freya imagined had six months ago been occupied by groovy hipsters, metropolitan types – all trimmed beards, slim-fits and canvas deck shoes.
By day, the river below looked like a mottled tan-and-red mud bath. Every now and then its thin membrane surface ruptured as gas bubbled out. By night, it looked far more interesting. Beneath the membrane, faint green swirls of bioluminescence sometimes rippled through the gloop, like a submerged aurora borealis.
Freya had been concerned at the prospect of being this close to the virus’s presence. But Leon had made the point that the virus was everywhere. If it could make horses, even people, then it could get anywhere. Apart from the occasional swollen, intestine-like balloons floating on the breeze, they’d not seen the virus produce anything that could actually fly, so up here in the penthouse apartment seemed as safe a place as any.
A bridge ran over the river and on the far side was a football stadium – Norwich City Football Club – opposite a retail park with an untouched Sainsbury’s supermarket. Even though the stench inside of rotting freezer goods was almost overwhelming, the shelves were still fully laden with tins of food, bottles of soda and packets of painkillers that would last them years.
Here’s OK. For now.
Here would do while she waited for Leon to return to her.
She glanced back into the room – he was still fast asleep – then looked down at the faint every-now-and-then swirls of green in the canal below. She was no expert on mental health. She’d once known a girl at school who had been so relentlessly bullied online she’d had a nervous breakdown. That’s what this looked like to her. A collapse.
Too much. Just too much.
Burning Grace alive. Hearing her screams . . .
Freya crushed her eyes shut and urged her mind to move along quickly.
They’d been taken by Big Phil and dumped in a lay-by off the A11 . . . Phil had Mr Carnegie’s gun with him. He’d pulled it out to show her, and told her Dave had given him orders to ‘give it to ’em’. And by that he’d clearly not meant handing the weapon over.
She’d been waiting anxiously for something like this. Not just expulsion from the park, but a tidy out-of-sight-of-the-others finish for them both. Obviously Dave didn’t want to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.
Phil said he didn’t want to do it, actually couldn’t do it. He said he liked Leon and her, but they both had to go. He fired the gun twice in the air to get them walking, and probably so he could show Dave two spent rounds when he got back. Then he’d jumped back in the park’s car, turned and headed back down the road, grinding the gears noisily, the car lurching awkwardly. She’d watched it until it had disappeared, concerned that Phil might have second thoughts, come back and do what Dave had ordered him to do.
The A11 led to Norwich, and Leon had said something about his grandparents living somewhere nearby. So that’s what led them here.
Her mind flickered back to Grace. Skipping quickly past those horrific last few minutes, past that day, to the weeks and months before. Just a young girl. A cheeky, sometimes annoying, but mostly cute kid. Always smiling, always making others laugh with her ‘Little Miss Prada’ put-downs.
Freya wiped her damp cheeks with the back of her hand.
There was no frikkin way she was a snark.
This ‘slime from outta space’ – as good a theory as any – had managed to make a copy of a horse. Not even a great copy: up close, touching it, the game was given away. But to make a copy of Grace that even Leon couldn’t detect?
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.
Dave had murdered an innocent girl in the most horrific way possible.
CHAPTER 47
Dave stirred the charred remains with the toe of his boot. They’d left the storeroom firmly closed until the fuel had spent itself. There were a few cardboard boxes in the place, but the rest was cinderblock walls and a corrugated-iron roof, nothing that would catch and spread – a perfect oven, in fact.
He looked up at the pale grey sky. One of the roof support beams had been softened enough by the intense heat for it to buckle and collapse, bringing down about a quarter of the roof. The light angled down in thick shards that flickered with the last wisps of smoke slowly rising from the blackened concrete floor.
He could see chunks of carbonized matter that might once have been part of the fake horse, might have been part of the Fake Girl.
It didn’t have a name now. It wasn’t called Grace any more . . . That thing they’d burned was now known as the Fake Girl.
Apart from checking it once after the flames had died down, to make sure the fire wasn’t going to spread to the rest of the complex, the door had remained firmly closed and locked. No one had even gone near it, as if ignoring the door meant that somehow what had occurred here days ago had never really happened.
The mood in the park had become subdued. The Chinese family had packed their things and left. Ten fewer people now lived here than a week ago, and the place suddenly felt like a ghost town. Dave had tried to get their minds off it, to lighten the mood under the new management regime. He’d continued the ritual of Ron’s breakfast briefings, had even tried to get some team games going on the whiteboard in the canteen. But there was little appetite for it.
Sod ’em, then. He figured they’d snap out of it soon enough. Life goes on.
He looked around the blackened room. Some of the cinderblocks had been cracked by the heat. Beneath his boots the crisped bodies of some of those crabs crackled like unshelled prawns done far too long on a barbecue.
Nothing in this room could have survived.
He saw something on the floor, a dark lump the size of a fist. He squatted down beside it and poked at it with a pen. Soot flaked off and he saw it was the toe end of one of Fake Girl’s trainers. The rubber toe-tip had melted down to a puddle, but a small fraction of the vinyl material remained and the little swoosh logo.
So damned convincing, weren’t you? Complete with your trainers, your little pink backpack, your . . .
He felt a momentary wave of nausea that he’d looked at her as human.
He stood up and turned towards the door. Iain was waiting in the doorway, not willing to take even a single step inside.
‘Well?’
‘Nothing left,’ said Dave. ‘It’s all crisped to hell.’
‘The roof’s come in. What if the snarks get in through that?’
Dave joined Iain. He pulled the door shut behind him and turned the key in the lock.
‘We’ll just keep this shut up for good.’ He looked down at the narrow gap at the bottom of the door. ‘And we’ll board that gap up.’ He sucked air in through his teeth. ‘The storeroom’s no good to us anyway. We’ll call that “outside” now.’
Katrina shook her head. Dave will punish her for not being vigilant enough.
She’d come through to the reception area to refill the watering bucket in the ladies’ toilet. The first green shoots were showing in Mr Carnegie’s vegetable garden. Katrina now considered herself the principle custodian of the man’s dream to nurture and grow their own fresh vegetables. No one else seemed to be taking an interest in it. As with everything else, a gloomy lethargy had settled over this place like a fog. Toilet buckets were not being emptied, mealtimes were becoming a free-for-all. Hopefully things would pull together again soon, but until then Katrina was going to do her little bit and keep those green shoots going.
The last week had seen a stark change in the atmosphere of this place. The burning of that girl had affected everyone. There were two distinct groups in the park now: those who were convinced she’d been a creature disguised as a girl, and those who thought they’d all been responsible for allowing the murder of a child to happen.
Katrina considered herself to be firmly in the latter group along with the other cleaners.
She saw the new arrivals making their way through the car park, just as the fake horse had done, across the gravel and cautiously towards the front entrance. She saw them both at the same time as they glimpsed her through the tinted glass wall at the front.
So there was no ducking out of sight. They now knew someone was ‘home’.
A large slope-shouldered man and a small, much younger woman. They were pushing bicycles, their rear baskets stacked with bottles of drinking water. Unlike the horse, though, they didn’t look sick; they looked well nourished. Of course they did. There was food out there in abundance. Anyone armed with a tin opener was never going to go hungry. Not for a long time yet.
Instead of ducking down and hiding. Katrina approached the front and waved them over. ‘Come here!’ she shouted through the tinted glass. They walked their bikes over and lay them down just outside.