Bad Dreams (44 page)

He poked the finger out of the guard with a pencil, and rested the gun butt on the floor. He put the barrel to the bridge of his nose, and worked the trigger with his left thumb.

The gun was emptying itself into the ceiling a full minute later.

* * *

From the kitchen of Brian’s house, they heard the first shots. He flashbacked to Grosvenor Square, 1971, and the spurt of flame in the dark, Jean’s knee a shattered ruin, the goggle-eyed face of the teen marine with the shaking gun, the sudden rush of sobriety.

‘What the fuck?’ shouted Monica. Jason giggled at the bad word. Brian listened, and heard the typewriter noise again.

‘That’s not a rabbit hunt.’

Abigail had dropped her cup of tea. The mug had not shattered, but the floor was soaked.

They could not see anything, so they had to go outside.

‘Abigail,’ Brian said, ‘keep Jason here. Lock up. You can stay the night. If anyone but us comes to the door, pretend you’re not in. And keep him quiet if you have to gag him.’

The girl was trembling, an Alice overcome by Wonderland. He hoped she would be able to hang together.

‘You understand?’

‘Y-yes…’

Jason pulled at Abigail’s arm. ‘Can we watch a video, Abi, can we?’

Brian nodded, and the girl took his son into the living room. Jason was frisky, but unhurt. Thank God. It all seemed like a game. Monica had her coat on, and the door open.

He did not want to leave Jason, but there was no choice. He knew his son was safe; now, he should try to help Monica, to do what best he could for everyone…

Outside, the campus looked normal at first. There was no more shooting. As they walked towards the main buildings, they saw a lot of people milling about. There were a few Zombies around, but mostly it was just University people. A guy Brian knew from the School of European Studies asked him if he knew what was going on, and he had to shrug a ‘no’ at him. A girl was having hysterics by the Refectory, and three of her friends were calming her down.

Apart from the men in white, it could have been any late afternoon.

‘Where’s Lynch?’ Monica spat.

‘God knows. Where did the shooting come from?’

‘Shooting!’ said a bystanding student, taking it up and passing it on. ‘Shooting! Someone’s been shot!’

Brian knew this was how panics got started.

‘East Slope, I think. The Infirmary?’

The men in white started running at the same time, as if worked by magic. They must have intercoms in their suits. They were headed for the East Slope. And they had guns out.

‘I said no guns,’ Monica said.

Someone got in the way, and was knocked down.

‘Fascist bastards.’

The Zombie stopped, twenty yards beyond the fallen boy, and turned to look at the group of two or three angry students gathered around him. He had a pistol out, and his mask on.

‘Fascist
bastard
!’

A book flew through the air towards him, whirling like a discus. It glanced off his raised arm. The Zombie fired once, into the air above him. The group froze like a tableau.

‘Heav-
vee
!’

The Zombie pointed his gun at the kids for an instant, then turned and resumed running.

There was more shooting from the East Slope, impossibly loud now they were out in the open. As a man, the group of students hurled themselves flat on the ground like refugees from a ’50s civil defence drill, arms over their heads.

Monica was off and running, after the Zombies. Brian knew better, but had to go with her.

A klaxon sounded, and a loudspeaker voice started to read a bland reassurance he did not have the time or the inclination to listen to.

The place was becoming a battlefield.

* * *

Shaun Bensom did not believe in Finals. He had worked hard for three years, turning in essays, projects, original work. He had had practical experience in the summer vacs, on building sites and in a draughtsman’s office. He had proved everything he wanted to, and he knew his marks in continuous assessment were way above average. But why should his degree depend on the state of his stomach and his head on a single, solitary afternoon in May? What if he had ’flu? Or some personal crisis? And what if the paper – like last year’s – was entirely concerned with some obscure facet of claw-feed grinding he had no intention of ever getting involved with in his professional life? He had earned the title Engineer, and two hours bending his back over a desk would not make any difference. It would just be jumping through another hoop.

He had been walking up and down outside the exam hall since the others had gone in, crossing his picket line of one. His placard felt a lot heavier than it had done at first.

There were a lot of people running about the campus today, making a noise. If he had been inside, he would have found it bloody hard to concentrate despite the thick windows. Some street theatre group were playing spacemen all over the place, and waving toy guns. It must be like that Assassination game, where middle management stalked each other through the woods and shot their opponents with paint pellets.

No one was paying any attention to his protest, although he had heard some sniggering from the other students before the exam started. Hetty had said she would bring him a coffee and some salad rolls from the canteen when her tutorial was over, but she had not shown up. He was hungry. At least it was summer, and not quite freezing.

Over by the Humanities Block, the Game was getting out of hand. He saw a guy in leathers jump on one of the spacemen, and get his head kicked in. It was some sort of martial arts display. Shaun bet it hurt. The spaceman shot the leathers guy in the head, and even from two hundred yards, he could see there was an extremely large gobbet of red paint.

Silly buggers!

He wished he was back in his flat, passing joints with Hetty and Colin and Liz Donoghue. But he had his stand to make, his principles to uphold.

No one was looking. He rested his placard against a low wall, its message out so people could see, and lit up a fag. Under the cold sun, he felt sleepy.

The students inside would be on the home stretch now. All but the real dumbos would be through with the stress question and onto the plane drawing. Pencil-pushing geeks! Colin was in there somewhere. Sold out by his best mate, Shaun thought, what a world! Finals bring out the worst.

The spacemen were dragging off the leathers guy. He must be out cold. These martial arts people could get out of hand too easily.

He turned and looked at the hall. Through the plate-glass windows, he could see the rows and rows of desks, and the ranks of bowed heads. One or two smug bastards had finished already, and were sitting back, taking it easy. The real clever-clevers had finished, but were going through their papers making minor adjustments.

Colin was near the front, still writing. They had had an argument about all this last night and it had come down to Colin agreeing with everything Shaun said but still swearing he would sit his Finals.

‘After all, I want the bloody degree…’

Colin would be moving out of the flat soon if Shaun could help it. It meant losing Liz Donoghue and her dope connection, but principles were principles and he would stand by his.

Colin was slowing down. He put his pencil down, and rubbed his nose. Shaun saw it was bleeding.

That’s exactly what he meant! A chance nosebleed at this of all times, brought on by stress probably, and you knew no assessor in the world was going to give higher than a Third to a paper with blood all over it. It was so blatantly unfair!

Colin would agree with him now.

Blood was streaming out of both his nostrils, and he was smearing it over his face like a spreading moustache. He must not have a handkerchief. Colin stood up, and fell over. The desk next to his went down under him, and Gilly Walker – one of the few girls in the School – had to jump out of his way.

Colin must be having an acid flashback. He had spent his first year at University swallowing tabs like they were Polo mints.

Watching his flatmate writhe around on the floor, while chaos rippled out from him, was sort of funny, but a bit depressing. The glass was well soundproofed, so Shaun could not hear if there was an uproar or not. The invigilator was walking towards the incident.

Shaun turned his back on it all, and picked up his placard.

* * *

‘What is this?’

Monica shouted at the Zombies. They were crouched in ones and twos around the Infirmary Building, taking cover behind signs and steps. A few turned their heads, but generally she was ignored.

A window in the building was broken from the inside. Curtains waved and there was gunfire. A line of divots popped up in the tarmac of the car park, and the ambulance’s left rear tyre burst.

Monica felt herself going down, and for an insane moment thought she had been shot. But it was Brian, pulling her behind a rubbish skip.

‘What is this?’ she said again, to no one in particular.

The black Zombie with the walkie-talkie must be Lynch. He was buzzing orders into it.

There was quiet for a few seconds, then two Zombies stood up and sprayed the front of the Infirmary with machine-gun fire. Infinity loops of bullet pocks appeared in the walls of the prefab building. Brown hardwood flowers bloomed in the white-painted facade.

Answering fire came from inside the building, but it was random, directionless. A nearby shrub was whipped with bullets.

‘There’s someone crazy in there,’ Brian said.

‘Let’s get closer, talk to Lynch,’ she insisted.

‘No. He’s busy.’

More orders crackled. Monica could not make them out. Then Lynch was up himself, firing from the hip. His gun was bigger and louder than any she had seen so far. The Infirmary door, decorated in bright colours at the Kids’ Karnival last week, fell apart, and came off its hinges in pieces.

The Zombies dashed forwards. The first to the door bounced back, as if off an invisible wall, and Monica saw blood streaming from his chest.

Brian tried to push her head down so she would not see any more, but she fought him.

The Zombie was dead in the doorway, and something was moving inside the building. There were men either side of the door, backs to the wall, guns pointed upwards. One nodded to the other, and swung into the gap, firing wild. His gun must have jammed, because the noise shut off suddenly as he vanished inside. Monica thought he had been pulled into the darkness by something.

After a beat, the crazy people came out. Some had guns, most did not. They wore hospital gowns, pyjamas, doctors’ coats, even Zombie whites. And their faces were not real. Some were bleeding.

In the lead, clutching the captured Zombie by his crooked neck, was Cazie Bruckner.

Only she did not look like Cazie any more.

Lynch pulled down his mask and shouted, ‘Shoot the bastards, now!’

* * *

The man Cazie was holding got shot. She could feel the bullets punching into him. He was big, and she could hide behind him. Dead, he weighed more, but struggled less.

The rest of the world was in slow motion. She could see the bullets in the air, whirling as they came. The men in the white hoods had not a hope.

She knew a couple of the less important ones had been killed in the break-out. The new-made ones. She hoped Clare had come through. The others did not matter.

She had the dead man’s gun jammed through his armpit. Taking his weight on one hand, she got hold of the stock and started firing at the men in white suits.

The white stood out very nicely against the redbrick walls and green grass. Shooting them was too easy.

She slung the dead man away, hurling him one-handed. He came down twenty feet or more away in a jumble of awkwardly bent arms and legs.

The gun was all used up, so she threw it away.

The others had fanned out either side of her. Several of them were down, but most were off and running.

It would spread. They could not stop her.

She ran straight ahead, leaning out of the way of the bullets, swiping the white hoods aside. Each time she connected, she heard bones breaking, and the slow trickle of an internal injury.

Jesus, these were the days to be alive!

She vaulted a wall, and put on a burst of speed.

* * *

Lynch fired at the crazy bitch as she disappeared like a cat over the wall. Brick chips flew, but she was gone.

He took a damage reading. Three, no, four men down. The enemy – whatever the hell they were – had suffered more. There were seven dead things on the Infirmary forecourt.

Two of them were once his own men. Even with their masks off, he could not recognize them. He would pull tags later.

‘What is going on? What the fuck is going on?’

It was Flint, the student
Presidente
, with the nonentity from Jackson’s office. Damn civilians!

‘Epidemic.’

His men were regrouping. He would need more people to handle this.

‘Of what, Lynch?’

‘I told you, I’m not a scientist. They call it Batch 125, if that means anything.’

‘It makes people crazy, right?’

Lynch was not giving anything away.

‘What’s it
for
, Lynch?’

He looked at her, and saw fear inside her tough eyes.

‘Guess,’ he said.

* * *

Jason still had not calmed down. Abigail had had to go through ten or a dozen video tapes. He would sit for anything between three seconds and two minutes on fast-forward before deciding he wanted something different.

If she thought about it, she would be grateful for the distraction. She did not want to have to face up to whatever else was going on. Brian and Monica Flint had not been expansive, but whatever it was was very scary.

‘Hate this! Gimme ’nother!’

‘What do we say, Jason? Please?’

‘Gimme
’nother
!’

He was pushing his jaw out, trying to look fierce.

‘Jason.’

‘Gimme!’

He grabbed at her with both hands, sinking his little fingers into her middle. It hurt. She would have bruises.

‘Gimme!’