When she was satisfied that she wasn’t being watched, she slipped away from the door, leaving it open a crack, and moved toward the row of cells to the right of the tower.
It wasn’t a long journey, but she forced herself to take it slowly, trying to appear as casual as possible. She hadn’t seen either of the old woman’s sons; nor the bald man who often seemed to be by Annie Holloway’s side, but Claire knew they were out there somewhere. Probably watching over the people who filtered slowly into the courtyard. Instinct told Claire to run, but running would be more likely to draw attention, so she bit her lip in concentration and walked slowly.
She didn’t take her eyes off the cells, as if she were hiding under a blanket, terrified of the monster that lived in her closet; certain that if she couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see her.
You’re not a baby anymore, Claire.
Her mother’s voice in her head, soothing and full of laughter. She could almost picture her eyes twinkling as she said the words, and she let the memory give her strength, trying desperately not to throw light on the thought that lurked in the shadows at the corners of her mind.
Mum’s eyes don’t twinkle anymore.
Mum’s eyes are gone.
Claire was grateful when she reached the cell unimpeded, mainly because reaching the cell meant breaking a train of thought that seemed like it was headed in a bad direction.
“Linda, did you get it?”
Claire whispered the words, and felt a little odd addressing the woman by her first name. Not so long ago all adults who weren’t her parents had been Mr-this or Mrs-that.
She heard a soft exclamation through the small viewing window.
"What the fuck?"
Rachel's voice. Claire was glad to hear it. Rachel was scary, but in a good way. Scary the way her mother had been that time when Claire almost wandered out onto the road in front of a speeding bus.
“What does she mean?” Rachel asked. “Get what?”
“I’ll explain.”
Linda’s voice.
Claire frowned and shot a worried glance behind her. This didn’t seem like a good time for Linda and Rachel to start having a conversation.
“Do you have it?” Claire whispered again, a little impatiently, rising onto her tiptoes to peer into the dark cell.
Linda looked startled to see Claire’s face appear right in front of her, and she opened her mouth to speak.
But the noise Claire heard didn’t come from Linda’s mouth. It was a man’s voice. Behind her.
“Hey, what are you doing over there?”
Claire felt the blood draining from her face.
"No time!" Claire yelled, thrusting her hand through the bars. "I need it now!"
She heard footsteps behind her, rattling across the stone courtyard like machine gun fire. Closing fast.
A small cylindrical object slipped into her palm.
“Be careful with th—” Claire heard Linda begin to say, but her words were drowned out by the deeper voice that spoke behind her.
“What have you got there, girl?”
Claire turned and saw Bryn Holloway standing a few feet away, staring fiercely at her; a hungry grin twisting his face into a frightening mask. She stood and stared at him, wide-eyed and unresponsive.
He took a menacing step toward her.
"I said what have you got there, girl?"
She held the syringe behind her back.
“Better hand it over, unless you want to get hurt.”
He took another step toward her. One more, she thought, and he would be able to grab her, and it would be over. She would let her father down.
Claire nodded, reached out a hand toward Bryn...and bolted past him.
She felt fingers clutching at her sweater, and for a moment thought that Bryn had enough of a grip to halt her in her tracks, but then with a jolt she was free, and running like she was back in Aberystwyth; like her mother was chasing her and death was coming at her from all angles.
*
Michael sat alone in the tower and cursed himself for letting his daughter go. In a lifetime of bad decisions, with every second that passed he became more certain that this was the worst of all.
Stupid.
Selfish.
There was no other way.
Sitting in the gloomy half-light, every second felt like an hour.
Until he heard the commotion outside; the hammering of footsteps. More than one set of feet was headed in his direction. All hopes of being able to plan his next move evaporated instantly, and he knew as the thumping feet approached that he was going to have to wing it.
For a fraction of a second he thought about John, and about how much he missed the man. John’s ability to fight had always been there; a stable foundation that ran underneath every action Michael took. He had always been able to rely on John if things turned physical.
But John was dead.
Michael’s heart began to keep pace with the approaching footsteps.
And then the door burst open and Claire hurtled inside, half-gasping for air and half-screaming.
She was just a few steps ahead of Bryn Holloway. Claire ran past Michael's wheelchair, cowering behind him as Bryn came to a stop in front of them, panting heavily.
He stared accusingly at Michael, and for a moment time seemed to stand still.
Do it.
"Good," Michael said almost amiably. "Don't get me wrong, the other one's a prick, too, but I sort of hoped it would be you."
Bryn's mouth dropped open.
"What the fuck did you say, Crip—"
Bryn was halfway through the word and reaching for the shotgun that hung at his hip when Michael sprang from the chair, praying with all his heart that his weak legs would not collapse underneath him, and slammed his knuckles into the man's teeth.
Before the awareness of pain had even reached Bryn's eyes, Michael gave in to the rage and the darkness and threw a flurry of punches from the past, all the way from the corridor of blood and bone into Bryn’s stunned face, raining his fists down onto the man before he had a chance to react.
Bryn slumped to the floor, and Michael fell on top of him spitting out jabs like a machine, slamming the man's head into the stone, barely even aware that the cracking noise he heard was Bryn’s skull.
He only stopped when Claire's voice penetrated the gathering fog in his mind.
"Stop, Dad, you'll kill him!"
She sounded scared.
Of me?
Michael paused, his bloodied right fist raised, and looked down at Bryn.
A bubble of blood and saliva burst on the man's ruined lips. He groaned softly.
"You're right," Michael said in a trembling voice. "He’s no good to us dead."
Claire nodded, her eyes wide and fearful, and she held out a shaking hand.
"They're not zombies, Dad. They're people. It won't bring them back." Claire said.
Michael blinked.
She hadn't been scared of him. Just that he might lose control and ruin his one chance.
She really does know what I plan to do.
He reached out and took the object that Claire held out to him, lifting it up to catch the failing light. A syringe filled with the blood of Linda's patient. Annie had taken the bait, as Michael had known she must. If Jason was sick; if she let him die of some common-or-garden infection, she would lose the most powerful weapon she had, the one thing that elevated her far beyond the people she controlled.
Michael did not doubt for a second that Annie had been suspicious about his suggestion that she release Linda, but he knew that sometimes suggestion had an allure that rendered people powerless to resist. Annie had released Linda because she had to demonstrate her control over Michael. She was compelled to take his own scheming and shove it back down his throat.
Michael had often got the impression that John Francis had thought him manipulative, and maybe he was. What else could a man without working legs in a world of relentless violence be?
Linda had come through for him. He didn't want to think about what she had been forced to do to Ed; about what effect it might have on her. In time she might come to hate him for including her in his plan, but there was no time for Michael to think about that. All that mattered was that now he had a weapon too, one that had been concealed inside Annie's own, like opening up one of those multi-layered Russian dolls to find a hand grenade hidden inside.
Jason's blood.
Michael studied it.
In the gloom it looked almost black. Toxic.
Like poison.
Chapter 19
It felt like waiting for the executioner’s blade to fall.
Kyle had been aboard the McIntosh ship for three hours in total, and around two hours since Sanderson and Patricia had begun to reduce the dose of drugs being administered to the mutation in tiny increments, and with each passing minute the pervasive feeling of dread began to increase.
Sanderson had theorised that as the mutation neared consciousness the pheromones being emitted would actually decrease in potency, and the feeling of creeping anxiety would naturally dissipate, but Kyle’s churning gut informed him that the scientist’s theory was bullshit.
He couldn’t shake the notion that everything Sanderson had said was bullshit. Far-fetched nonsense designed to conceal what was really going on. That would fit with Chrysalis Systems’ modus operandi perfectly.
It didn’t really explain the dread he felt on the ship, though. Nothing did. The only feeling that ever came close for Kyle was a one-off experiment with psychotropic drugs not long after high school had finished. Magic mushrooms, he had been told, were harmless and fun, but to him the experience had been one of out-of-control terror, like he was stuck aboard a driverless train travelling at full speed toward the end of the line.
Maybe I’ve been drugged, he thought.
Or maybe the dread he felt now stemmed more from common sense than drugs or Sanderson’s invisible area of effect. Common sense that raged inside him like an inferno; just his body’s way of trying to communicate to his mind that being aboard the ship—and by extension the entire fleet—was dangerous in the extreme, and that if at all possible he should investigate his options for getting the fuck away pronto.
For a while, upon deciding that the best course of action to quiet his racing nerves was to distract himself, Kyle tried to engage the tiny crew of the McIntosh ship in conversation, but was met with staccato answers and haunted stares that just made the tension knotting his stomach all the worse.
He discovered that there was a further crew member he hadn’t yet seen. That member—Rick—was currently on ‘watch duty’, which apparently consisted of sitting in a room adjoining the one that contained the mutation and scrutinising a bank of monitors and machines connected to the apparatus that held the creature in stasis.
It didn’t sound like a bad job to Kyle, but the hushed tones and furtive glances of the soldier who described the detail to him suggested otherwise.
Whether or not Sanderson’s farfetched story about some supernaturally powerful creature was true or not, it was clear that the crew on the ship believed it wholeheartedly.
Beyond hearing about Rick’s lonely, and apparently terrible duty, information was sparse, and had to be dragged from the crew word-by-reluctant-word.
The mutation, they said, had been brought in by chopper and its cage set up by a team that had since departed.
Sykes’ team had been flown in from the Conqueror and stationed on the McIntosh ship for ‘a few days’. They made it sound like a lifetime. They told him the bare minimum about the layout of the ship: mutation in a cargo hold at the front, living quarters in the middle, engine to the rear.
The few who answered his questions—mostly Sykes and Williams, a man that Kyle quickly came to regard as Sykes’ second-in-command—seemed happiest talking about the mundane. About the ship. Where they came from. The past. Anything that took their minds to some other place.
Just when they had begun to open up to him a little, a question popped into Kyle’s mind that seemed harmless enough; just one of those things that, once answered, prompted a nod and immediate storage in the part of the mind where forgotten memories go.
“What does McIntosh mean?”
Sykes fixed a horrified gaze on Kyle, and the atmosphere that had been slowly defrosting dropped back to somewhere near absolute zero.
“You don’t know? Who it is? Was?”
Kyle shook his head and Sykes let out a rueful chuckle.
“Fucking bastards. That’s how they operate, you know, the fuckers at the top. The ones that did all this and left us with the wreckage. Nobody gets to know the whole story. Everyone has their own little job to keep them busy. Just enough facts to get by. It’s not a secret when everyone involved knows a tiny piece of the story. Then it doesn’t exist at all. Compartmentalised, see?”
Kyle was surprised at the man’s sudden philosophising, but he didn’t let it show. He nodded encouragement at Sykes to continue. Despite the uncomfortable nature of the conversation, he had a feeling that he was finally getting the truth, or at least some part of it.
“You came from the Conqueror. I did too. Most of the people over there, the grunts like me and you anyway, know fuck all about anything. Just that the world’s gone to shit and we’re what’s left. Those who do know, well, they ain’t saying shit. But we did this. Sullivan and his people. This was all planned. Only when you run across people with information you weren’t allowed to have can you start to put it all together. This isn’t some terrible disease. Not even an accident. There are people on these ships that will tell you this is like that test they did a few years back, remember? Smashing atoms together or some shit and there was a chance they might destroy the planet?”
Sykes fixed his gaze on Kyle, and for the first time since they had entered the ship Kyle saw a flicker of something other than fear in the soldier’s eyes.
Sykes shook his head grimly.
“It’s nothing like that. Not some side effect. This was all planned. By the few fuckers that do know everything. And you know what that means?”
Kyle shook his head slowly.
“We’re not survivors. We’re the fucking bad guys,” Sykes spat bitterly. “The proof of that is caged up on this ship. McIntosh is—was—Jake McIntosh.”
Sykes studied Kyle’s eyes, apparently expecting to see recognition staring back at him.
“The Painkiller," he said plaintively when Kyle did not respond.
"The fucking serial killer from a couple of years back, remember? Papers were full of that bastard for an entire year. What they’ve got locked up here isn’t just some unfortunate bastard who happened to get infected. It’s the sickest fucker to ever walk the face of the Earth. That’s who we’re guarding. Now, you tell me: if we’re the good guys in all this; if we’re the plucky survivors, then what the fuck are we doing with a guy like that?”
Kyle lowered his eyes, searching his memory.
He had a vague recollection of the whole Painkiller thing in the press, partly because the name had always struck him as ridiculous, like the tabloid writers that revelled in conjuring up such stuff couldn’t even be bothered to try anymore.
He remembered a few lurid headlines that gleefully reported some of the sickest crimes Kyle could imagine. He hadn’t paid much attention at the time: the news was always full of the worst aspects of humanity, and with each year either humanity got worse or the news got more desperate and hysterical; in some ways it didn’t matter which. Either possibility just made him feel glum about the world.
In any case, Kyle hadn’t followed the story closely. He’d been too busy dealing with his little brother’s slow crawl toward a sheer cliff of paranoid mania, hoping he could claw Tom back from the precipice and ultimately following him over it.
And finding that the drop led to the truth.
Tom was right about everything, paranoid or not.
It’s not paranoia if the
y’re really out to get you. The phrase had once been a cliché, back before everything had fallen apart. Now it felt to Kyle more like a rock-solid, inescapable truth.
If there remained any chance of him doubting his strange little brother, Sykes’ earnest testimony put paid to it. The more Kyle learned about the ship and McIntosh and Project Wildfire, the less he felt he understood.
Tom did understand, though. He always had.
Kyle had a sudden intuition that Tom had abandoned all hope of stopping Project Wildfire the moment he had driven a tyre iron deep into Russian skull and brains in an underground car park. Maybe even before then. Perhaps Tom had always known that the chances of two brothers from South London affecting machinery as gargantuan as Wildfire were near-zero.
Kyle nodded at Sykes absent-mindedly, and stared thoughtfully at Tom.
As always, Tom sat alone, as far away from the nearest humans as possible. Kyle had serious doubts that, before the disastrous encounter with a Russian thug named Volkov, Tom had physically interacted with anyone other than his older brother in years.
Riddled with guilt that he had abandoned his little brother to deal with their parents alone, Kyle had been forced to care for Tom after their parents had died in a car crash.
If his mother and father had died at home, Kyle would have suspected that Tom had killed them, and he wouldn’t have blamed him for that one bit. Their parents were what some would once have described as stern or authoritative. As society had begun to focus more on—and better understand—child abuse, the Robinsons would have been bestowed with far less complimentary labels.
Except, of course, for the fact that society didn't give a shit about what went on in the Robinson house when the front door was locked at night.
But Tom hadn’t killed them. By the time Kyle’s parents wound up decorating the radiator grille of a speeding truck, Tom was already a shut-in. Kyle moving home to help his brother was inevitable.
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