Contagion

by Teri Terry

  I follow the sounds of people, along a hall and up some stairs to a big open area that goes up and up, through all different levels of the ship. It is like a makeshift hospital in Disneyland—people with burns scream in pain under chandeliers and glass stairs.

  There seems to be just one doctor, and a few nurses. They look panicked, like they’d like to jump into the sea to escape.

  A man walks toward one of the nurses. He’s pale; sweat pours from his brow. He slumps and falls to the deck.

  CHAPTER 3

  SHAY

  THE PHONE FINALLY RINGS.

  Mum rushes to it so fast she almost trips, and I’m along at her heels.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  Her face breaks out in a smile, and she gives me a thumbs-up.

  “Thank God. Yes. All okay?” A pause. “Come to us. We’ll make room.” Another pause. “Well, the offer is open. Okay, yes. Love you, Davy. Bye.”

  She hangs up the phone, stands there, head down, saying nothing.

  “Well? Tell me!” I say.

  But she can’t answer. She’s been dry-eyed all these hours, and now she’s crying.

  “Tell me!”

  She draws in a shuddering breath and looks up. “They’re all fine. Little Shona has broken a leg falling over in the rush to get away from the fire, and Davy thinks their house was completely destroyed. But they’re all fine.”

  “And? Aren’t they coming here?”

  “No.” She frowns through her tears. “He said he couldn’t talk for long, that others were waiting to use the phone. He said something about needing to stay in Aberdeen for now. I can’t imagine why. He’s always hated it there.”

  “Well, apart from a broken leg, they’re all right. That’s the important thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Of course.” She’s still crying, holding on to me.

  We eat something and lie down. Together, in Mum’s bed, her hand clinging tight to mine even as she sleeps.

  CHAPTER 4

  CALLIE

  SO THIS IS ABERDEEN.

  I wander around the dock area first. There is a procession of ambulances, sirens wailing as they hurtle toward us. Doctors and nurses sort out who must go first, but they don’t look like the doctors and nurses from underground: they look like they really care about the people they’re trying to help.

  I’ve had enough of screaming and pain, of the ill and the dying. I want to get away. There is no one I’ve seen that I recognize from underground, but they were all suited up when I knew them, so they’d be hard to pick out. Dr. 1 could be anywhere; more than that, he could be anyone. If he wanted to blend into the crowd to get away from this place, he could disguise how he walks and go right past me, and I’d never know it. There’s no point hanging around here.

  And the city is mine to explore.

  There are loads of big impressive buildings away from the screaming: sort of white or off-white, made of something like stone. The sun is low in a clear sky now, and where it glints off the buildings they are sprinkled in silver fairy dust.

  I wander down streets of shops and restaurants. Is it possible to be hungry when you can’t eat? I think I am. I watch people eating dinner in cafés and wish I could try things. They wouldn’t see me; I could just grab things off their plates, have a bite, keep it if I liked it. But of course I can’t even pick anything up.

  There’s a family in a pizza place. A picture-perfect mum, dad, and four children—from a baby to a boy about my age. I sit at the table with them and play pretend: that they are my parents, my brothers and sisters.

  But it doesn’t feel right or real, not for long. It’s getting dark now, and I leave. None of this feels right, these well-dressed people out for dinner, smiling and talking to each other. Instead I wander away, down darker streets.

  Below a bridge, a group of teenage boys passes a bottle around. A girl is with them; they pass her the bottle and laugh when she gags.

  I feel more at ease here and stay a while to think.

  What next? I can go anywhere, see anything. No one can catch me, no one can stop me. They can’t even see me. The only person who could was that man on the island who was dying.

  Unable to stop myself from trying again, I wave my hand in front of the girl’s eyes; nothing registers. She lolls to one side, then wobbles as she tries to sit up straight again. One of the boys helps her and puts an arm around her shoulders. She’s getting drunk. Are they getting her drunk on purpose?

  The one with his arm on her shoulders starts kissing her, and now I’m furious. That is just so wrong.

  Stop it! I scream at him, as loud as I can. And he stops, a puzzled look on his face. His friends laugh at him, and another one of them reaches for the girl, pulls her toward him.

  Angry heat rushes through me, intense and wild. I throw myself at him, into him.

  The other boys scream, get up, start to run, the girl staggering behind them.

  There’s a rush of heat, of flames.

  The boy screams. Flames erupt from inside him and he burns everywhere, at once.

  He stands, staggers for the water’s edge, but fire consumes him before he reaches the water.

  He falls.

  CHAPTER 5

  SHAY

  THE SCHOOL BUS is approaching before Duncan appears, as if he’d hung back, around the corner, until he saw it coming.

  He’s on crutches? So I really did have him on the ropes. My boot must have done a good job on his foot.

  He avoids my eye. His nose is taped and his face is a mess of bruises, and everyone crowds around him. He starts telling a crazy story about how he interrupted some burglars robbing his house and that he gave worse than he got. Everyone cheers.

  Huh. As if he’s testing me, to see if I’ll contradict him, he glances over from across the bus after we get on. One eyebrow—the not-swollen one—raised. I sort of half nod.

  The guy is a total lowlife; absolutely true. He’s been bugging me ever since I got here, and getting worse.

  But what Kai did to him still shocks me. If he hadn’t half killed him, we could have called the police and maybe gotten that jerk chucked in a cell. As things are, I almost feel like he has something on me. I don’t like it.

  “Shay?” I turn. It’s Amy—not a friend. She’s smiling.

  “Yes?”

  “So, who was that lad you were with on Saturday? He was cute.”

  Many eyes turn my way now.

  “None of your business.”

  She smiles sweetly. “Well, I heard you were making up some big story that you saw that girl who went missing last summer and that she was his little sister. That’s going to extremes to get a boy, isn’t it?”

  I keep quiet, face like stone.

  “And I also heard you’ve got some kind of genius memory.” She titters along with her friends, and they just seem so childish with Calista being missing and what happened on Shetland. Don’t they even care what happens outside of their own little corner of the world? At least they’ve decided not to believe what they heard about my memory. Somehow I’d rather they thought I was a liar than a freak.

  The bus stops again, and Iona and others get on. She sits next to me, an eyebrow raised.

  “Tell me: whatever has happened to Duncan?”

  “Well. He says he interrupted some burglars at his house and chased them away.”

  “Oh, does he? What a load of shit.” She looks at me closer. “There’s got to be more to this story, and I have a feeling you know it.”

  I shake my head.

  “I’ll use my investigative skills to get it out of you later.”

  Iona pulls the newspapers out of her bag. Obsessed with being a journalist, she always reads them on the long bus ride to school in Callander. I pounce on one of the papers with more enthusiasm than usual, hoping there’ll be something new on Shetland.

  She sees where I’m looking. “It’s beyond terrible,” she says.

  “My uncle lives there. We didn’t know if they were
okay for most of yesterday until he called from Aberdeen.”

  “Ah, poor you,” she says, and squeezes my hand. “I thought you looked a little upset.”

  We pore over the photos of Shetland, covering most or all of the front page of every paper. I hunt through the words, but there is only speculation. No answers.

  “What the hell happened?” I say.

  Iona shrugs. “They say they don’t know. The authorities must know something by now; what is it they don’t want to admit?”

  Sharing the corner of one front page: “Boy Dies of Spontaneous Combustion.” I mean, really? How can they print such nonsense alongside the real tragedy that is Shetland?

  Iona is tsk-tsking under her breath.

  “What?”

  She holds up a back page. “It’s this group of weirdos. Seeking planning permission to build what they’ve already built: some sort of commune up Rannoch Wood way. It’s part of a network springing up all over the US and Europe. Other places too.”

  I peer over her shoulder. “What are they? Religious weirdos, or just general-purpose ones?”

  “They call themselves Multiverse. No one seems sure what they’re about; they keep to themselves and don’t cause problems. My sources tell me they worship truth.”

  I’ve stopped reacting when Iona refers to her sources. There are networks she taps into, mostly people with too much time on their hands who lurk on the internet. Much of what they say is garbage, but every now and then she hears something real before it hits the news.

  “Well, I guess worshipping truth is okay.”

  “Yeah, but whose truth?”

  “That’s too much for my brain on a Monday morning, Iona.”

  She flips back to the front section of the paper in her hands and passes it to me. “This one has more on Shetland.”

  I take it from her. There are bodies waiting for identification or for relatives to be notified. Some areas haven’t even been checked yet. There are heartrending lists of the missing: whole families, presumed burned in their sleep. I wonder if any are people I’d passed in the street when we were visiting my uncle, if any are their friends.

  And there is a list of the confirmed dead, some with photos.

  Near the end is one I really didn’t expect to see.

  “It’s him!” The shock makes me say it out loud without meaning to.

  Iona looks up. “It’s who?”

  I fold the paper around the square and stare at the small photo carefully. I have to be right about this; there is no making a mistake, not on something so important.

  Iona studies his face alongside me. “Looks like a mean guy.”

  Receding hair. A small scar by one eye. A belligerent look. There’s no swollen eye or shiner, but that was a year ago, after all, and who knows when this was taken.

  It’s him; I’m absolutely sure of it. The man who drove away with Calista.

  I hunt through my bag but can’t find my cell. “Call my phone?” I ask Iona.

  She rolls her eyes. “What have you done with it this time?” She calls it, but there is no ring inside any of my pockets or my bag.

  “It must be at home,” I say. Iona holds her phone out to me with a resigned look.

  “Thanks, you’re the best.”

  She pulls it away when I reach for it. “There’s a condition. You have to tell me what’s going on.”

  I glance around us. It may look like they’re all ignoring us as usual, but there are ears everywhere. “Not here—later.”

  “Fine.” She gives me her phone. I remember Kai’s mobile number—of course I do. I paid particular attention when he texted me that he’d gotten back to Newcastle on Saturday night.

  It rings three times, four times, then…“Hi, this is Kai. Leave a message!”

  Damn. I bite my lip. “Hi, it’s Shay. I’m using a friend’s phone. In today’s Herald, page two, the third from bottom left, see Brian Daugherty? It’s him. The man I saw with your sister. You can reach me on this number until four p.m., or I’ll be home and have my phone after about five thirty. Bye.”

  Iona raises an eyebrow. “So, then. Is there something else you want to ask me?”

  “Is it okay if I keep your phone today?”

  “Is there any guarantee you won’t lose it?” She shakes her head and sighs. “Yes, you can have it. But you’re in deep shit if you lose it.”

  CHAPTER 6

  CALLIE

  I WATCH THE SCENERY go by through the train window. Once I’d really thought about it, it was obvious what I should do and where I should go. Home. Newcastle. I found the train station in Aberdeen and listened to people until I worked out what to do. I found the right platform from the signboards and got on a train to Edinburgh. There I changed to this one to Newcastle.

  It took me a while to find an empty window seat. After what happened last night under the bridge, I don’t want to sit too close to anybody in case they go up in flames. That was so weird. Maybe it had nothing to do with me. Maybe it was just that boy’s moment to spontaneously combust—some sort of act of God. It’s not like he didn’t deserve it.

  Beyond knowing I need to get to Newcastle, I’m confused; my memory seems weird and splintered. Some things are there, like when I could remember how much I loved the sea, how the water felt splashing on my feet—something I can’t feel anymore. But others aren’t. No matter how hard I concentrate, I can’t think where we lived. I can’t picture the house, or my room, or anything in it.

  I can see my brother, Kai, in my mind, and my mother too, but they’re sort of flat. Like something is missing, but I don’t know what.

  And that’s about it.

  Whatever they did to me in that place in Shetland has messed me up. Duh—very true, since I’m dead. But beyond that, as well; my memory is like cheese with holes in it. Or worse, cheese with holes in it that has been grated, then mixed up out of order.

  Can I put it back together?

  And where am I going to go when the train arrives in Newcastle?

  I try to relax, to let my mind float, to see if anything will come to me. If I can’t remember where we lived, is there some other place I could find my family?

  Kai played soccer, but I don’t remember where.

  How about Mum? She’s a doctor. Yes, that’s it—a doctor! And she works at the university.

  What university? Well, how many can there be in Newcastle?

  I guess I’m going to find out.

  The more I want to remember, the more it seems to slip away like the countryside out my window, and I get sadder and sadder. I want to cry but I have no tears, and somehow that makes it worse. There’s no way to let it out.

  Rain starts to fall, and there is a whisper in my mind, a forgotten voice—tears from heaven. Rain is tears from heaven. Who used to say that?

  Maybe heaven is crying for me because I can’t, not anymore.

  CHAPTER 7

  SHAY

  IONA’S PHONE VIBRATES in the middle of math. I peer down under the desk. It’s Kai.

  I raise my hand, show the phone I shouldn’t have on in class. “I’m sorry, Miss. It’s my relatives from Shetland. I have to take it.”

  She nods, sympathy in her eyes. Guilt twists at my lie as I race for the hallway, but this is important—and not something I want to explain in front of the class.

  “Hello, hello?” I say, afraid he’ll have hung up by now.

  “Shay. It’s Kai.” His voice is warm and eager, and a thrill rushes through me to hear him say my name. “I’ve got the paper. You’re sure that it’s him, this Brian Daugherty?”

  “Yes, completely sure. It’s him.”

  “All right. I’m calling Detective Dougal. Are you able to meet if he wants to see you?”

  “Of course.”

  “What number should I reach you on?”

  “Uh, this one, for now,” I say, with a mental sorry to Iona. “I’m not sure where my phone is. I’ll text you when I find it.”

  “What if you r
eally need it one day? Promise me you’ll find it, and keep it with you.”

  Even though the words sound like Mum, the concern in his voice warms me.

  “I will. I promise.”

  CHAPTER 8

  CALLIE

  BY THE TIME THE TRAIN PULLS INTO NEWCASTLE, I’ve formulated a plan. Of sorts.

  I’ve gone up and down the train, looking for passengers the right age to maybe be university students. I listened to one group, then another, until I found one talking about some party in Edinburgh they’re coming back from and trying to come up with a good excuse for missing a seminar this morning.

  They set off on foot from the station, and I follow, looking all around us—hungry to recognize this city as mine. They stop across the road for coffee, and while I wait I spin up and down the road, but nothing is familiar.

  The day has turned gray; gray sky, gray streets. It starts to drizzle, and when they emerge with their coffees, they hurry on.

  We walk up a long street, shops on both sides, and down more streets, and it starts to rain harder.

  Then finally we round a corner, and I see the sign: The University of Northumbria.

  Where would Mum be? She’s a doctor—Dr. Tanzer. So is there a medical school? But then I’m gripped by confusion, as one of the students says something about Dr. So-in-So in the English department. Is Mum a doctor-doctor, or a doctor in something else? How can I not know this? My guts—or where they’d be if I had any—swirl in rage and panic.

  I stop following the students and drift into one building, then another, hoping something will feel familiar, will guide me to where I want to go. But nothing. Maybe I never came here.

  Nothing seems medical, and I float around, building to building, in increasing circles. That’s when I see another sign across the road: Newcastle University.