by Alex Scarrow
‘Something sweet instead of tasting of sea salt for a change,’ added Leon. ‘Count me in.’
‘Jesus, though. If they’re gonna bother to grow stuff, why grow rhubarb?’
Through the window Leon could see Adewale and Howard at one table. Finley and Kim, with half a dozen of the other kids on the island, were sitting together at their own table. Their little survival group had begun to fragment already, absorbed into the larger community. Which was fair enough. A good sign, really; they’d only been thrown together for a few days in that animal quarantine building – it’s not like they were bonded together for eternity.
Leon imagined he and Jake would remain each other’s wingmen; they seemed to have a lot in common and some indefinable camaraderie that worked. He also thought he would like to stay in Cora’s orbit. He admired the older woman’s can-do attitude. Cora reminded him a bit of Mum – maybe that was it.
Through the glass he could see Lawrence moving around from one table to the next with a clipboard tucked under one arm, smiling, laughing, stooping over and cupping his ear every now and then. He used the breakfast sittings as an opportunity to pass on the day’s various job assignments, to catch up with everyone, to hear out grievances, or settle them.
‘Hey.’ Jake nudged his arm.
‘What?’
‘There! What’s that?’ Jake was pointing towards the end of the jetty. ‘Out there on the water.’ Leon turned from the bustling scene inside to look out to sea. The mist was shrouding the end of the jetty but wasn’t thick enough to obscure it. He could see the faint outline of a mooring post at the end, the old flaking sign above it. He could just make out the lettering that announced: Non-permit holders are required to report to the harbour master upon tying up!
Beyond the signpost and safety rail, across the flat, lifeless water he could see something slowly approaching them. It looked like a low rowing boat. A dinghy. He could see the head and shoulders of a solitary figure bending slowly forward and drawing backwards, the oars dipping and rising gently.
‘Who is that?’ said Jake. ‘The fishermen should be in for the day by now.’
Leon shook his head. The seven boats were all tied up, their prows gently bobbing.
The rowing boat drew closer and clearer, and finally, as it reached the jetty, the figure stood up, wobbling uncertainly as it rocked, reaching out to grab the post as the dinghy thunked home under its own momentum.
‘Someone go in and get Lawrence!’ a voiced called out from behind them in the queue.
Leon rapped his knuckles hard on the window and the people inside looked up. He pointed at Lawrence and crooked his finger to indicate he was needed outside. He saw a woman cup her mouth and call his name. Lawrence looked up from a conversation he was stuck into. Finally he looked Leon’s way and Leon jabbed his finger towards the jetty.
The lone figure had slowly begun to advance down the wooden planking, passing the tied-up boats. There was something ominous about its ponderous steps. Leon instinctively felt trouble approaching. A dozen metres from where the jetty met the quay it stopped. The mist was still thick enough to shroud most of the detail. From what Leon could make out, the figure looked young.
The silence was broken as the door to the chippy was pushed open and Lawrence stepped out into the cool air. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘We have a visitor,’ said Jake, pointing at the figure.
‘Hello?’ called Lawrence. ‘Who’s that out there?’
The figure remained perfectly still, perfectly silent.
‘Who are you?’ shouted Lawrence. His challenge came out amid a cloud of breath. He took several steps forward. ‘Can I help?’ The sound of his feet changed from the crunch and scrape of gravel to a dull creak as he stepped on to the first boards of the jetty.
He tensed up and turned. ‘Someone call the Home Guard,’ he barked. He turned to look back at the figure. ‘Are you alone? Is it just you? Or are there any others?’
The figure finally stirred and answered him. ‘I am . . . I am not one of your people. I am alone.’ Leon thought he could hear some kind of an accent in the words: the clipped ends to words that suggested a second language was being spoken. More than that – it was a girl’s voice.
‘Alone? Where have you come from?’
‘I. Am. Not . . . a human.’ The words came out one at a time. Slow. Deliberate. It took another few seconds before anyone registered what she’d just said.
Leon heard gasps all around him. He heard the scrape of footsteps as someone hurriedly abandoned the queue and ran away into the mist.
‘I am not human . . . but I was.’
Lawrence was just a few metres away from the figure.
‘What do you mean by that? You’re infected?’
The figure cocked her head slowly. ‘I am remade. I was once called Camille.’
‘For Christ’s sake, get back, Lawrence!’ someone shouted. Several others joined in. He waved his hand behind his back to shush everyone down. ‘Your name’s Camille?’
The girl nodded. ‘I have a message for you.’ She looked at Lawrence, then over his shoulder at the others. Leon’s eyes met with hers momentarily as she scanned them.
‘A message for all of you.’
Lawrence backed up several steps and turned. ‘Someone get a bloody hose! Now!’
‘WAIT!’ Leon stepped forward. He joined Lawrence. ‘What’s the message? Who’s it from?’
‘From all of us.’
‘Us? What do you mean by “us”?’
‘We.’ The girl looked to one side and cocked her head for a moment, as if considering how to explain herself. Then she turned to Leon and continued. ‘You would call “we” . . . The virus and all those who have been remade by it.’
Leon heard more feet scraping on the gravel and receding into the distance as someone else decided they’d heard enough.
‘So you’re telling me . . . you’re the virus?’
‘Just a messenger.’
‘The virus . . . sent a messenger?’
‘Yes,’ replied the girl.
Leon and Jake exchanged a glance.
Leon was well aware that those who were infected could talk, act like normal human beings, not even knowing they’d become something else. But he’d never considered the virus as something separate that could communicate on its own, have an opinion, have an agenda. Something you could communicate with.
‘You’re saying the virus can talk . . . ?’ said Leon, doing his best to keep an even and calm voice. ‘Does this mean the virus is talking to you . . . right now?’
‘I am disconnected right now. I am just a messenger.’
Leon could hear footsteps approaching, then, out of the mist he saw two of the Home Guard dragging loops of a long hosepipe between them.
Leon turned and held a hand up. ‘Just stay back for the moment. Stay where you are! We’re talking here. That’s all that’s happening!’
He turned back to face the young girl again. ‘Perhaps you should tell us your message, then?’
‘The message comes from high-assembly-gathering-cluster . . . with agreement from all advocates . . .’ The young girl’s voice seemed to be modulating, fluttering uncertainly between feminine and masculine. ‘The message is . . .’
CHAPTER 30
‘Freya Harper! Present yourself to the guards at the front of the enclosure, now!’
She jerked awake as someone grabbed her shoulder and shook her. ‘They’re calling you, Freya!’
She blinked sleep out of her eyes. Through the tall, barred window she could see it was still dark outside. Every now and then slashes of light swung across the high corrugated iron ceiling of the old tobacco warehouse as a spotlight was swept along the outside of the building.
The announcement came across the PA speakers again, distorted, echoing, shrill, and now beginning to awake and annoy everyone inside. People were sitting up, groaning.
‘You better go up front before you piss everyone off!’ h
issed Shay, the woman Freya was sharing a mat with.
Freya planted her hand against the flaking wall, hefted herself up off the thin mattress and began to pick her way across the crowded floor lit only by the dancing light and shadows of the sweeping spotlights outside.
She made her way to the barred entrance at the front, miraculously managing not to tread on anyone’s outstretched hands or feet. There was a soldier in a biohazard suit waving around a small penlight to attract her attention. They’d all noticed over the last twenty-four hours that the marines had upped their biohazard precautions. Whether that meant good news or not was the subject of mutterings from one cot to another.
‘You’re Freya Harper?’
‘Yes!’ she hissed. ‘You can tell the idiot with the megaphone to stop barking out my name now!’
The soldier muttered something into a radio and a moment later the mix of a reverberating hiss and the hum of ever-threatening feedback snapped off.
‘There’s someone to see you.’
‘Who?’ She guessed it was Leon’s dad. She looked around. ‘Where is he?’
‘Mr Friedmann’s out in the exercise area.’
He produced some keys, unlocked the barred door, let her through. He nodded at the door that led out on to the basketball court. ‘He’s out there.’
She emerged into the cool glare of a floodlight standing outside the corner of the basketball court. She could see moths and flies caught in its beams and hear the chhh-chhh-chhh of the cicadas and the soft rumble and hiss of waves breaking nearby.
She wondered if this was another dream. She wondered if Grace was going to suddenly emerge out of nowhere again. Savouring the coolness as the gentle breeze teased goose bumps on to her arms, she looked around for her visitor.
‘Hey! Over here!’
It was Leon’s dad. She walked quickly over towards him.
A soldier was standing watch nearby and gestured with a jerk of his gun that Freya needed to keep a few steps back from the mesh.
‘Mr Friedmann? Why’re you here? What’s going on?’
‘Freya . . .’ he began. He looked sideways at the soldier, then took a step forward until he was up against the wire. He lowered his voice. ‘We got a radio transmission from the other survivors in New Zealand. It’s . . . I don’t know how to say this . . .’
Her heart jumped as she realized it had to be something about either Grace or Leon. Not Leon. Not Leon. Not Leon . . . Not dead. Please . . .
‘Just say what it is . . . please.’
‘Grace.’
‘Grace? She’s dead? She’s alive?’
Mr Friedmann said nothing for a moment as he stared at her. She sensed he was waiting for her to say something. But she didn’t know what. ‘Tell me!’
He looked over his shoulder at the guard, then gestured for her to walk with him a few steps. ‘She’s . . .’ His voice faltered. He cleared his throat, lowered his voice to little more than a whisper. ‘She’s one of Them.’
‘Them?’
‘The virus. She’s infected. She’s been turned into one of those copies. She’s . . . Jesus Christ, she’s been bodysnatched or whatever the hell the term is!’
Freya looked down at her feet. She realized she should have been rocked by that. Grace? But . . . she wasn’t and, deep down, part of her had hung on to a suspicion that it was too good to be true – Grace, turning up like she had at Everett’s castle.
Her mind was racing.
You knew, Freya. Come on, you already suspected this.
‘How . . . how do you know Grace is infected . . . ?’ she asked, stalling for more time to think.
‘We got a message from New Zealand today. They say she stepped forward as some sort of “ambassador” on behalf of the virus. The virus wants to negotiate with them!’
Freya looked up at him. ‘Negotiate?’
He grabbed at the mesh and it rattled in his grasp. ‘You came down to Southampton with her and Leon, didn’t you?’
She’d told him that. ‘Yes.’ She’d told him they’d been holding out in a Norman keep. She hadn’t told him about what had happened before that, though.
‘How long were you with them? When did you meet up?’
‘We met sometime after the outbreak,’ she replied. An edited reply. A simple lie to avoid telling him about all the horrible things that had happened to his daughter.
‘And you didn’t know? Jesus! You were living with each other and you—’
‘I don’t know how or when . . . Are you even sure it’s the same Grace?’
‘It’s my Grace,’ he croaked. ‘My little girl.’
You suspected. Come on, Freya, you had your doubts. You just didn’t voice them because Leon was so relieved to have her back. Right?
‘Was she different, Freya? Was she –’ he shook his head – ‘wrong somehow?’
Or maybe she’d never suspected back then . . .
But you suspect NOW, don’t you?
There’d been a moment, back in Emerald Parks, a fleeting moment in that sauna when she’d thought she’d glimpsed something ‘wrong’ dangling from Grace’s face. And, ever since then, Freya had written it off as something she’d imagined; that, or a lock of hair caught in the torchlight. Then everything had happened so quickly. They’d carried her away rolled up in a tarp, soaked her with diesel and set her alight. And the screams, those human-child-burning-to-death screams had all but erased what she’d glimpsed.
When Grace had turned up at Everett’s castle nearly two years later, the scars on her face and neck were all the proof she’d needed to confirm that here was Grace again. A miracle after that terrible fire, a shadow of her former self, but at least she was still alive.
‘Freya?’
‘It’s true, then. She must have got infected at some point. I didn’t know her well enough to be sure. But, I guess it might—’
‘When? At Southampton? Is that when it could have happened?’
‘Maybe. Could have been, I dunno, earlier . . . maybe. I don’t know!’
‘Freya . . . Freya!’ She looked back at him. His fingers were gripping the mesh hard, his knuckles bulging and white. ‘Listen to me! Is it possible she got infected and didn’t even know it? Is that how this happens?’
Corkie. Remember that grisly old bastard? That look of total astonishment on his face?
‘Yeah . . . uh, yes. We had some people who had that. They didn’t know they were infected. They just . . . It came out. They—’
‘Were they acting differently? Oddly? What?’
She shook her head. ‘They . . . they just didn’t know!’
‘So any one of us could be infected. You? Me? This soldier behind me?’ Mr Friedmann lifted his chin at the tobacco warehouse. ‘What about in there? Is there anybody in there who could be infected?’
‘Shit. I don’t know! None. Maybe everyone. I really don’t – They’ve been tested!’
He quickly put a finger to his lips. She closed her mouth.
‘The salt tests aren’t reliable,’ he said quietly.
‘What? How do you know?’
He leaned forward until his forehead gently bumped against the mesh. There was something in his gesture that worried her. Until now he’d looked in charge, confident. The one person she’d encountered since the outbreak who looked like he’d survive it untouched. He looked defeated now.
‘What is it?’
‘The virus can cross the sea.’
‘What?’
‘New Zealand spotted some large viral island, or ship, on its way over.’
‘Ship? How?’
‘I don’t know any more than that. The point is the sea is not the barrier we thought it was. We’re not safe here in Cuba.’
‘Oh God . . . we’re not safe here!’
Come on, Freya . . . you already know this. That voice in her head was getting too loud to ignore.
‘We’re all in trouble, Freya. I know. But . . . listen, there’s something else.’ He hesitated.
<
br /> ‘What?’
‘Trent thinks you’re all compromised. That you’re all infected. I think at least one person is, inside. One person who must be aware they’re infected.’
Freya? Come on . . . wake up.
‘Shit.’
‘I don’t know what Trent’s going to do next. I need to get you out of there before he does something stupid to all of you.’
‘Like what?’
‘He threatened to torch the warehouse.’
Her dream suddenly felt like a ghastly premonition. ‘Oh God. No. You need to get everyone out!’
‘I . . .’ He looked at the soldier standing nearby. There were others, a dozen of them, watching this conversation warily. ‘That’s not possible. I’ve managed to stall him for now. But, listen, I’m going to get you out, Freya. Then I need your help. I need to find out if we do have someone in there who’s here to talk on behalf of the virus! Before it’s too late.’
You know who that is.
‘You’ve seen more of the virus up close than anyone. The copycat humans? Is there anything, anything, that gives them away? Marks them out?’
You know, Freya. Come on, wake up.
That voice in her head. Grace’s voice.
Yes. I’m not a dream. You are awake. This is real. I’m with you. I’m inside you.
‘Oh shit, oh God,’ muttered Freya softly.
. . . And we’re not monsters, Freya. We can be negotiated with. We just want what’s best. That’s all. What’s best for everyone.
‘Freya?’ Mr Friedmann looked hard at her. ‘Are you OK?’
You’re infected, Freya.
She slowly began to back away from him and the fence.
‘Freya? Where are you going?’
‘I’m . . .’ She really didn’t know. She was taking steps backwards, recoiling at the realization. In shock. Confused. Frightened.
‘Freya.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Stay right there! Stay right where you are! I’m going to try and get you out.’ He turned to the soldier standing guard a few metres away. ‘Where’s your CO?’
The soldier pointed across to the far side of the court. ‘Over there, sir.’
‘Go get him. We’re getting this girl out of here. Right now.’