Children Of The Mountain (Book 2): The Devil You Know (15 page)

I nod, like I’m taking all of this in, but in reality my mind’s reeling, still refusing to believe what I’ve just heard. I realize Hicks and Dr. Gilbey are both looking at me, like they’re expecting me to say something.

‘What can I do?’

Dr. Gilbey folds her arms across her chest and studies me. For a moment it’s like I can almost see the calculations being performed behind those cool, gray eyes.

‘Well, Gabriel, I have been working on a prototype for an antivirus. But before I can risk giving it to Magdalene it has to be tested.’

‘You need to help me find more furies, son. They have to be live ones though, functioning, like the one you ran into in that tunnel. The ones that had their circuits fried by what Kane did are no good to us.’

‘Is that what you were out looking for, when we ran into you?’

He nods.

‘We were on our way back from a hospital over in Catawba. Those are our best bet for finding what Doc needs. There’s places in them that would have been shielded, just like in the bunkers.’

Marv said we had to give the hospitals a wide berth. I always assumed it was on account of the bodies, but I guess he’d figured out what Hicks has.

‘How many do you need?’

She walks over towards me, her heels clicking on the checkerboard floor.

‘As many as you can get me, dear. The more I can test the antivirus the lower the risk to Magdalene when I give it to her.’

I look over at Hicks.

‘How many have you found so far?’

He pauses, like this isn’t an answer he much wants to give.

‘Not near enough.’

‘How many?’

‘Seven. Four that we’ve managed to bring back.’

‘And how many hospitals have you been to?’

‘Pretty much everything within a two-day hike of here.’ When he sees I need a number he adds: ‘Twenty-five.’

He scratches his jaw.

‘Yeah, it ain’t good. I’ll be honest with you son, the odds are long that a fury would have been hanging out in one of the shielded areas when the burst went off. Kane detonated the missiles at night, when most of them would have been out hunting. And there’s another thing, just so you know what you’d be signing up for.’

He looks up, fixing me with a stare from his one good eye, like this is something I need to pay attention to.

‘First few we caught we just walked up to them, zapped them with the baton and slipped a plastic gunny sack over their heads. It was all over long before they came out of whatever hibernation they put themselves in when they run out of food. Last couple of times they’ve come to much quicker. They’re getting to be a real handful.’

I think of the fury that chased me out of Mount Weather’s tunnel. Even the thought of going into whatever dark place we have to to find one of those things makes my blood run cold. But then I remember the last time I saw Marv. The sunken shadows around his eyes, his pupils impossibly dilated, flashing silver where the light caught them. The way his jaw worked, clenching and unclenching as he fought to control the madness that would soon be upon him.

I can’t let that happen to Mags.

‘How soon can we start?’

*

H
E COMES TO SLOWLY.

Somebody’s calling to him. It sounds like the girl but he lies still, keeping his eyes closed, trying to decide if it’s a trick. There’s something poking into his side. It takes him a second to work out it’s the food tray. He can feel the ridges and hollows of the compartments through his overalls, the soft squelch as the congealed beans press into the thin material. The tray is uncomfortable but if he moves it hurts more, so he stays where he is.

He’s had the stick before, but not for a long time now, and never this much. He lets his mind go to all the places where he thinks the prongs may have found him. His ribs definitely got the worst of it, but there’s something wrong with his insides too; it feels like somebody’s scrambled them all up. He wonders how many times the soldier hit him. He doesn’t remember anything after the first one. The stick makes his mind go blank, like someone’s found the switch that turns him off and flicked it. The soldier normally loses interest soon after that happens. He doesn’t remember that from his own beatings, of course. By then he’s gone; he’s nothing; just a rag doll lying on the floor of the cage, with no more sense of what’s happening to him than a stuffed toy set upon by an agitated dog. But he’s seen the soldier use the stick on the others and afterwards he can feel all the places he’s been hit. Right now there’s too many to count. The soldier must have been really mad to keep working him like that.

The girl’s still calling to him. He opens his eyes a fraction. She’s sitting by the bars, clutching her side like that’s where it hurts too. And now he hears another sound: footsteps on the stairs outside, still faint, but getting closer. He starts the count, even though he doesn’t know how many he’s already missed. He realizes how close he is to the front of his own cage; he’ll get in trouble if the soldier finds him here. He picks himself up, keeping his movements as small as possible to avoid fresh flares of pain. The tray that’s stuck itself to his overalls detaches and clatters to the floor.

The girl must hear the sound because she shifts her head in his direction and asks if he’s okay. When he replies his voice is little more than a croaked whisper.

‘Yes, but we have to be quiet now. He’s coming back.’

He sees her nod in the darkness, like she finally understands. She moves away from the bars. That’s good; she’s learning. He slowly shuffles to the back of his cage and presses himself into the corner to wait.

The soldier’s boots echo off the metal, growing louder as he descends. When he reaches the bottom there’s a pause and a click as the locks disengage and then a distant groan as the door opens. Somewhere at the end of the row of cages there’s the faintest glimmer of light and then the sound of the soldier’s boots scuffing the concrete, accompanied by something else: the hollow
clack-clack-clack
of plastic hitting plastic as he drags the stick along the bars. The beam’s getting brighter; it bounces along the aisle as he approaches. Johnny 99 pushes himself as far as he can into the shadows and tries not to cover his eyes. The cone of light stops outside his cage and then stretches out as the soldier places the flashlight on the ground. A plastic tray gets pushed through the slot in the front of his cage. The soldier uses the end of the stick to slide it forward, but he doesn’t withdraw it afterwards.

Johnny 99 eyes the prongs nervously. He doesn’t even want the food. He’d have no interest in it even if he hadn’t seen the remains of a wad of tobacco floating among the congealed beans. But in one of the tray’s compartments, next to his water, there’s the container with his medicine. The soldier rattles the stick impatiently against the sides of the slot but makes no move to pull it back.

‘C’mon 99. Don’t keep me waiting.’

The soldier will get annoyed if he doesn’t take his medicine but the metal prongs are only inches from the tray and he doesn’t want to go near them. He hesitates another moment and then reaches out as quickly as he can and snatches the container back into the darkness.

The soldier chuckles and then draws the stick back out. Johnny 99 unscrews the cap and drinks the contents. He gags as the bitter, metallic liquid hits the back of his throat and that causes a fresh burst of pain from his ribs but he presses his lips tight together and forces it down. The soldier will get really mad if he throws up the medicine and he has to go back up the stairs and get him another. He reaches for the plastic cup of water and washes the taste from his mouth. He’ll try and eat some of the food later, because that’s what you have to do so they’ll know you’re still okay and don’t need to go to the other room. But he doesn’t think he can manage any of it now.

He screws the cap back on the container and places it near the front of his cage so the soldier can collect it. But the soldier has already lost interest in him. He bends down in front of the girl’s cage and slides another food tray through the slot there. Johnny 99 stays back, keeping himself hidden in the shadows so the girl doesn’t see him. He really hopes she doesn’t do anything to provoke the soldier. But she seems to have learned her lesson. She’s crouched all the way at the back, just like he told her.

The soldier squats in front of the bars.

‘How you doin’ in there, darlin’?’

Johnny 99 can hear the smile in the soldier’s voice. He pushes the girl’s food forward with the stick. The girl backs up, like she’s frightened of the prongs too, but then without warning she launches herself forward.

The soldier’s taken by surprise; he manages to yank the stick back through the slot but as he staggers backwards he trips over his own feet and lands heavily on his elbows. His boots scrabble for purchase on the concrete as he tries to push himself out of the way. The girl’s hands shoot out through the bars but he’s just done enough to get himself out of her reach. Her fingers miss him by inches.

For a long moment the soldier just sits in front of Johnny 99’s cage, his chest rising and falling inside his sweat-stained fatigues. Strands of his thinning hair have fallen across his forehead and his cheeks are flushed, but there’s something else that’s bothering Johnny 99 now, a smell so heavy, so pungent that it makes him feel dizzy.

The soldier slowly picks himself up. He squats down in front of the girl’s cage again, only this time he keeps his distance. The girl makes no move to step back from the bars.

‘So, Corporal, scared of me?’

The soldier reaches for the flashlight, and that’s when Johnny sees it. The arm of his fatigues is ripped. He must have done it scrambling backwards to put himself beyond the girl’s grasp. His elbow pokes through the tear in the fabric.

Something flickers inside him, a feeling he has not had for so long that at first he does not recognize it. The pain from his ribs is forgotten. He crawls as quietly as he can to the front of the cage, even though some rapidly receding part of him knows this is not allowed. His hands slip silently between the bars (
definitely
against the rules,
definitely
) and reach out to the pale flesh that shows through the torn fabric. The baton’s right there. The boy knows he will be in trouble if he is caught now, but he is unable to stop himself. He is mesmerized by the heavy beads of bright red blood that have welled up all along the skin where the soldier has scraped his elbow on the concrete.

The soldier smooths back the strands of hair that have fallen across his face, oblivious to the small hands that reach out through the bars of the cage behind him.

‘And have you figured out why yet, Miss Smartybritches? I guess you must have to pull a stunt like that. But just in case you haven’t, you’ve got the same thing he has.’

The boy’s fingers stretch out, but just as they’re about to touch the soldier’s arm the soldier reaches for the flashlight. He swings it around and shines it into his cage. Johnny 99 scrabbles back as far as he can, but there’s nowhere to hide from the cruel beam. He pulls his hands up to block the light but in the moment before he squeezes his eyes shut he catches a glimpse of the girl’s face as she sees him for the first time. Her eyes widen and in that instant something passes behind them, a recognition of the horror the soldier has just described. The soldier holds the beam on him a few seconds longer then points it along the aisle and sets it down. When Johnny dares to open his eyes again the soldier’s reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a plastic vial just like the one he’s just given him.

‘See this here?’ He holds it up so the girl can see. ‘This is Doc’s medicine. Take it every day like you’re supposed to and the thing you’ve got inside you slows right down. Could take it months before it gets a good hold on you, years even. Look at 99 over there. He’s been with us a long while, haven’t you, boy?’

Johnny 99 thinks the soldier means to shine the light on him again. He raises his arms and tries to push himself further into the corner. But the soldier makes no move for the flashlight. He’s preoccupied with the plastic container. He turns it over in his fingers, watching as the pale liquid shifts sluggishly against the sides.

‘But see, without it, with the dose you’ve had, you’ll turn in three days, four tops. And Doc hasn’t figured out how to make people change back yet, so when that happens I have to come back down here with the baton and the catchpole and take you next door. Want to know what happens in there?’

The soldier waits for a response. When he doesn’t get one he continues anyway.

‘Well, first Doc takes a bone saw to the top of that pretty little head of yours and scoops out all the bits that interest her. After that, if you’re still ticking, of course, there’s another cage waiting for you, on the far side. You think it’s nice in here? Just wait ’till you see what we got for you in there.’

He pauses to let this sink in, then he holds up the plastic container again.

‘Now Doc says I have to watch you take this. I even have to fill out a little report, give her the exact time I saw you swallow it.’

‘That’s a lot of responsibility for a man with your abilities, Corporal. Let me know if you need any help.’

Johnny 99 thinks he hears her voice waver as she says it but even so he’s never heard anybody talk back to the mean soldier before. He covers his face with his hands, afraid of what will happen next. The soldier’s fingers reach for the stick and this time they close around it. For a moment he hefts it like he means to use it but then he stops.

‘Well that’s very kind of you, sugar, but I think I can manage. Now, today my report’s going to say you had yourself a hissy fit and refused to take your medicine. We’ll see how you feel tomorrow. Maybe if your attitude improves I’ll let you have one of these.’

He holds the container up a moment longer then slips it back in his pocket.

‘Or then again maybe I won’t.’

*

T
HE NIGHT CRAWLS PAST.