He sleeps in there.
Grace listened carefully to the sounds of the castle at night. Even after the last of the women had finally stopped whispering and dropped off to sleep, the place seemed alive with noises. The gentle thrum of the generator outside, the soothing shhh of the breeze stirring the distant treeline. The men’s and women’s dormitories playing an orchestra of snores and wheezes.
The building itself creaked, the floorboards across the gallery particularly so.
She saw Hahn waiting for her outside Everett’s study door, as they’d arranged. Grace held out her hand and grasped the doctor’s wrist. As their skin touched, it began to liquidize and meld together. The vein at the base of Grace’s thumb opened and spilled information across the join between them into an artery in Hahn’s wrist.
Information exchanged in perfect, still silence. They both closed their eyes to concentrate.
Freya says he has a big radio in there.
It is an old army one, Grace.
And it could be picking up messages from many other survivors?
Everett has said there has been nothing on it for over a year.
Freya thinks he’s lying.
Why would he do that?
He is afraid. Too afraid to leave the castle.
Hahn was no longer a frightened and confused guest in this new microcosmic world. There was no need to construct the familiar environment of the infirmary. Her fluency in the chemical language was improving, if not yet complete.
Claudia. We/they have to know for certain if there are other survivors. Especially enough others to be able to put together a rescue plan.
There was mention of a message when those two first arrived. But Everett was certain it was old. What if there are other survivors, Grace? Can’t they be left alone?
It’s important. They have told all of us that their work could be destroyed, undone, by survivors if there are enough of them. Those who are left could still be dangerous.
What are we going to do?
I need to know if there are radio messages.
Everett was dreaming about the good ol’ days. Not about the time before the virus came, but the time five years before that. When he’d been a somebody. A self-made rags-to-riches man.
Good times while they’d lasted.
His woolly consciousness slowly spun itself together. He was vaguely aware someone was talking. At first he was certain it was the tail end of his dream. But then he heard the soft, almost whispered, voice speaking to him again and he realized he wasn’t alone.
‘Everett?’
He blinked his bleary eyes open. The room was not wholly dark. A glow from the floodlight outside leaked in through the lead-lined window and cast diamond shadow patterns across his study.
‘Who—’ he started to grunt.
A hand clapped tightly over his lips and a small dark figure loomed over him.
‘Shhhh . . . It’s me, Mr Everett.’
The voice was small and childlike . . . and familiar.
‘Yes, it’s me. Grace. Stay still,’ she answered his widening eyes. ‘Claudia, is there a light?’
A moment later the lamp on his ‘campaign’ desk clicked on and Everett jolted in his bed.
It was the girl, all right, crouched down beside his cot and leaning over him, her face so close he could feel her breath on his cheeks.
But she was transformed horrifically. The burn-scarred side of her face appeared to be melting, as if the flames that had once caused those marks had returned. Strands of pastel-pink flesh were dangling from her cheek and jawline like drizzled icing from a cake, swinging and finally dropping in thick gelatinous globules on to his bare, hairy chest.
‘Jesus . . . B-bloody . . . You’re a bloody krak—’ he started to say. She pushed her hand more firmly against his mouth, shutting him up.
‘You have to be very quiet,’ she chided him softly, ‘or you’ll wake the others.’ Another hand came into view. It was a hand only in the sense that it was located at the end of her wrist. He tried to focus on it to comprehend what he was seeing.
Where a young girl’s pink Mini Mouse watch strap might have been, her skin had changed from a pale hue to an angry inflamed septic red. Where the ball of her thumb should have been, the skin had torn as if she’d been stabbed by a serrated blade, and dark rivulets of blood were trickling from the wound.
The ragged flesh of the cut moved with a will of its own, parting like theatre curtains as something bulged and pushed its way forward. He could see it emerging, a growth small and lumpy. For a second he thought he was witnessing the knobbly end of her ulna bone pushing through. He’d seen something like that during a rugby game once: a shattered knee cap and the shards of a femur poking through the skin.
The thing emerged from the wound and continued extending towards his face. He struggled under the girl’s small hand, but she was surprisingly strong.
Another figure came into view. It was Dr Hahn. ‘Don’t resist,’ she said. ‘You need to sit very still, Major Everett.’
The bloody protuberance unfolded, flower-like, in turn giving birth to a tiny spine that glistened cleanly and swept forward to rest just a few centimetres short of his bulging eyes.
‘We don’t want to hurt you,’ said Grace. ‘I promise. But we do want to ask you something. And you have to be very honest.’
He glanced from her to Hahn, meeting her gaze, hoping the doctor was somehow waiting for the right moment to step in and put a stop to this.
‘My brother said there was a radio message about a big rescue mission,’ Grace started with a matter-of-fact manner, the tone of a little busybody settling a petty playground dispute between school friends. ‘And he said that you’d told him that was all a load of silly nonsense because you’ve not heard anything on your radio.’
She lifted her chin slightly, looking down her nose at him like a disapproving schoolteacher. ‘Now, you have to be honest with me, Mr Everett. Is that true?’
His eyes flickered back on to the sharp glistening spike hovering just in front of him, so close to him now he couldn’t actually focus on the tip of it. It was a threatening blur.
‘Don’t shout the answer,’ she said. ‘Whisper it quietly. Were you telling the truth?’ Grace lifted the pressure of her smothering hand ever so slightly.
‘Yes! Yes! I was telling the truth—’
She pressed her hand down again to hush him. ‘Hmm. I’m not sure I trust you.’
Everett glanced again at Hahn, his eyes pleading with her to help him. But she shook her head. ‘I am with Grace, Major. Just be honest with us and we will leave you alone.’
Oh my God . . . She’s one of them. They’re both . . .
Hahn smiled. Guessing what he was thinking. ‘Yes. We have both been infected. But I am still very much Dr Hahn.’
‘Be honest. That’s all you have to do.’ Grace lifted her hand again slightly.
‘Please don’t hurt me!’ he gasped quickly.
She pressed down again to silence him.
‘I think we’re going to have to try your radio anyway.’ Grace cocked her head. ‘Can we?’
Let them. Jesus Christ. Let them turn it on. Let them play with it. They won’t get anything.
He nodded quickly.
Hahn wandered from the bedside, across the study, to the table beneath his window. The army-green radio set sat in a metal carry-rack: a panel full of cryptically labelled buttons and a small LED screen.
She’s no idea how to use the thing.
Hahn squatted down, inspected the panel for a moment, then found the power switch. She pressed it and the radio came alive, small green diodes blinking.
‘Now what do I do?’
The hand was lifted from his mouth again. ‘You h-have to hit the digital analogue mode button. Then the one n-next to it. That takes you through the f-frequencies.’
Hahn nodded and followed his instructions. ‘There’s no sound.’
Everett carefully raised a hand and pointed. ‘H-headphones. There.’
Hahn picked up a heavy set of army headphones and pulled them over her ears. She began to turn the dial through the frequencies. In the quiet of the room, Everett could hear the steady hiss of white noise leaking out as she clicked through. He prayed he’d remembered to do that precautionary thing the last time he’d listened in.
‘Is there anything?’ asked Grace.
Hahn shook her head and kept turning.
‘There’s nothing out th-there . . .’ Everett whispered. ‘It’s a w-waste of time.’
‘Shhh,’ said Grace. She pressed her hand down on his lips again to hush him.
A minute passed in silence, just the repeating click of the dial and an endless hiss, and Everett was beginning to hope there might be some way out of this for him. These two creatures might have just come here to learn the truth, and then having done so would disappear into the night never to return. Perhaps even leave the castle alone once and for all.
If only . . . God . . . He’d remembered to do it.
The girl was looking at him as they waited. ‘I bet you’re surprised at how good we’ve got at looking human, aren’t you?’
Everett looked at Grace and nodded.
‘Are you thinking there are others of us here?’ She smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s OK, Mr Everett. It’s just me and Claudia, I promise.’
Hahn finally pulled the headphones off. ‘There is nothing, Grace. It is just white noise. Everett’s right . . . there’s no one out there.’
Everett did his best not to gasp with relief. The girl looked disappointed. He wondered if she’d been hoping to catch him out, to have enough justification to thrust that hovering spine deep into his right eye.
‘Hang on, let me try something . . .’ Hahn stood up, leaned over the rack and peered at the nest of cables emerging from the screw-in sockets at the back
No . . . Shit. No. No. No.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Grace.
‘I’m checking to see if the cables are all plugged in properly.’ She checked through them, one after the other. ‘This one . . .’ She leaned further over, squinting to try to read the socket labels in the poor light.
Everett felt his guts turn in a queasy loop.
‘Not sure what this one is . . . but it is very loose. Almost completely unscrewed.’
Oh God . . . Oh please. No.
She twisted it tight, pushed the rack back, then squatted back down. The dial clicked once again as she began to turn it. Again, click, and the hiss of white noise leaking from the headphones.
Click . . . hiss . . .
Click . . . hiss . . .
Click . . .