The Fury (21 page)

Waking was easier this time, apart from the dull ache that sat in every muscle. Brick sat up, rubbing both hands through his hair and yawning so hard his jaw popped. Beads of light pearled through the cracks in the boards over the windows, hanging on the dust and revealing Daisy on the sofa, Cal lying on the floor beside her, both still fast asleep.

What had happened last night? They’d sensed something, or someone. It had been Daisy’s idea to try and send them a message, a mental picture of Fursville. It had seemed like a good idea in the dead of night, but daylight had a habit of bringing reality with it, common sense. Brick felt his cheeks burn at the thought of the three of them standing hand in hand in the middle of the restaurant beaming psychic baloney out across time and space.

He made his way towards the door, careful not to nudge any of the chairs or tables. He increased his speed once he was out in the corridor, hurrying past the peeling menus and special-deal posters –
Upgrade to a large haddock or cod for an extra 30p!
– and down the steps into the foyer. The light here was brighter, making his eyes sting, and he was almost glad to be back in the service corridor that led towards the fire exit.

Until he reached the basement steps.

He stopped, his heart jackhammering in his throat. If Lisa was alive –
Of course she’s alive, it
’s
only been a day and she
’s got
food and water and just don’t think about her injuries, Brick, don’t even think about them
– then this was about as close to her as he could get without her going nuts again. Without her getting the Fury.

He cleared his throat, then he called out her name. The word was a sigh, deafening to Brick but too soft to carry. He looked right and left, trying not to think about what might have happened if she’d got out, if she was loose inside the building. He imagined her hands reaching from the shadows, those broken fingernails scraping down his face.

Something moved behind the oil-black darkness at the bottom of the steps, a shuffling thump.

‘Brick?’ Her faint voice almost knocked him to his knees. His eyes burned again, tears flowing before he even knew he was crying –
Thank God, thank God she’s alive, she’s okay
– and he put his hand against the wall, hoping that somehow his touch might travel down into the basement, warm against her cheek. ‘Please let me out,’ it sounded like she was speaking through a mouthful of toffee, but she seemed stronger than she had yesterday. ‘Brick? It’s not too late.’

‘It’s okay, Lisa,’ he called back. ‘There are more of us now, we’ll think of something together, okay?’

‘Please Brick, just let me out and we can talk about this, I’m not . . . I’m not angry at you.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know you’re not. I know you don’t understand. I don’t either, but . . .’

But what? But he’d find a way to fix it?
Because you’re a scientist, yeah? Because you’re really clever, because you can work all this out then put that genius head of yours into gear and make everything better? Right.
He slapped his hand against his forehead, knocking the voice away.

‘I will,’ he answered it. ‘I will fix you, Lisa. I . . .’

I love you
, the words were there, but his mouth didn’t know how to shape them.

‘I’ll make it so things are like they were,’ he went on, those three unspoken words burning a hole in his throat. ‘I swear I will. Just hang on, remember to drink, I’m right here, I won’t leave you.’

There was another thump, a crash this time, and at first Brick thought Lisa was throwing herself at the door again. He took a step back, trying to get out of her radar, or whatever it was that set off the Fury. It was only when he heard it again – a pounding, like fists on wood – that he realised it wasn’t coming from the basement.

It was coming from outside.

It’s the police, they’ve come for you.

He moved down the corridor towards the fire exit and crept under the chains, his whole body on alert, ready to bolt at the first sign of a flashing blue light. He was fast, he could outrun them.
Can you outrun the dogs, too? The helicopters?
But there were no sirens, no loudspeakered demands, no thunder of chopper blades. There was just that same rattling thump.

Brick swallowed, realising that his head was filled with the same muted numbness as the previous night – that weird inverted silence. With that realisation the fear sloughed away. Whoever was out there, it wasn’t the police. He started across the overgrown path, walking past the crazy golf and the one-eyed giant squirrel, heading for the seaward side of the park. By the time he’d reached the storage sheds that ran along the back of the pavilion he could hear a voice too. The sound of the sea disguised the words but he was pretty sure it was a girl.

‘Hello?’ he called out. Maybe he should go back, wake the others. He could get the gun, too, just in case. But despite his nagging worries he didn’t feel in any danger. He walked alongside the nine-foot tall fence, boarded with the park’s old ride signs and advertising hoardings. The one with the ‘Hook-a-duck’ picture on was rattling hard, and when he stopped beside it the girl’s voice was clear.

‘Is anyone there? Let us in.’

Us?
Brick thought, wondering again about the gun.

‘Hello?’ he said. The pounding stopped, leaving the park eerily quiet. For some reason it was colder here too, like he was standing next to an open fridge. ‘Who are you?’

‘We need help,’ the girl said. He could hear her shivering. ‘My brother is hurt.’

The girl, whoever she was, hadn’t gone rabid. She wasn’t snarling at him through the fence. That had to be a good thing.

‘There’s a way in,’ he said. ‘Go left. About fifty metres or so down there’s a break in the fence. I’ll meet you there.’

He set off without waiting for a reply, jogging until he reached the engineering workshops. He ducked down the alley between them, moving the NDYFLOSS AN board and squeezing past the wire. The sun was just lifting up over the horizon, already dazzling, and he capped a hand to his forehead, peering through the shadow to see two people walking down the beach. The girl was a little younger than him, dark-haired and pretty, her face so pale it was blue. A mosaic of bruises and blood coloured her face and neck. She was almost carrying a boy, his arm around her shoulder, and as they got closer he saw that they had the same face.

‘You maybe want to help?’ she snapped.

Brick grunted, trotting towards them. He was about a dozen yards away when the cold hit him, like he was running into a winter storm. Goosebumps broke out over his arms and he could see his own breath, ghost-like in front of him. He stopped, wrapping his arms around himself.

‘What the . . .’ Then he saw the dusting of ice that covered the boy’s face, crystals hanging from his lips and his eyelashes. His skin was grey, and although his eyes were open they had been frosted over.

‘Hurry up,’ said the girl. Brick started forward again, slower this time. His whole body was shuddering, the cold actually burning him. He manoeuvred himself around the side of the boy, ducking under his free arm and taking his weight. It felt as though he’d just buried himself in a snowdrift. The girl eased herself out, standing away and rubbing flecks of ice from the side of her face. ‘We need to get him inside,’ she said.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Brick asked through his clacking teeth. The girl fixed him with a look as cold as her brother.

‘That’s exactly what you need to tell me. Because I want an explanation, and I want it now.’

Daisy couldn’t work out how the boy could be so cold and yet still be alive. Brick had carried him into the restaurant a few minutes ago, waking her. He’d shushed her off the sofa she’d spent the night on and laid the boy there, running off to find something to put over him.

‘It’s going to be okay, Schiller,’ said the girl who had walked in with him. She knelt beside the boy. She was wearing just a short skirt and a top. No wonder she looked so frozen. Her face was very pretty, other than the bruises, but there was something in it that made Daisy feel uneasy. It was probably just because she was a stranger.

‘I’ve found a couple more,’ said Cal, walking over with a handful of candles. He placed them on the coffee table beside the sofa, lighting them from one that was already burning and using the wax to stick them to the wood. The flames seemed reluctant and Daisy didn’t blame them – the air was so cold that even fire had to feel it. It would be easier to take the boards off the windows and let the sun in, but Brick had told them they couldn’t do it in case people noticed and came snooping.

‘Who are you people?’ the girl asked.

‘You were attacked, right?’ Cal said. ‘By complete strangers.’

The girl stared at Cal and even though half a dozen candles burned, her eyes stayed dark. Daisy felt some of those strange, translucent ice cube images clinking in her brain. She tried to get a better look at them but they bobbled just out of reach.

‘Right?’ Cal said when she didn’t reply.

‘And you saw our message online?’ added Brick as he staggered back into the room, peering over a mountain of linen. He dumped it all at the head of the sofa and the girl began to sort through it, shaking out each tablecloth before layering them over the boy, tucking them under his motionless body. His cold had turned the damp inside the sofa to a sheen of ice which glittered like diamonds. Daisy blew out puffs of cotton wool breath, watching them dissolve into the air for the few minutes it took for the girl to finish.

‘Schill, can you hear me?’ she said, getting to her feet and blowing on her blue fingers. The boy didn’t respond, his glazed, frozen eyes staring at the ceiling. He was wrapped up tight, like a mummy. She put her hand to his forehead, then turned and glared at Brick as if this was somehow his fault. ‘Message?’ she said after a moment.

Brick looked at Cal, then at Daisy, and when nobody else spoke he finally turned back to the girl.

‘We left a message, online, saying for people to come to Hemmingway if they’d been attacked.’ He floundered, running his hands through his hair. ‘You didn’t get it?’

More clinking ice cubes in her head. Daisy saw a field, and the heavens falling – burning flecks of stars. The boy was there, the girl too. And she could sense
herself
in the picture, her voice weird, like she was listening to it on a badly tuned radio.

‘You heard us,’ she said. ‘Last night, we told you to come here and you did.’

The girl looked down at her, scowling. She took a deep, shuddering breath that appeared like a thought bubble. Daisy could almost read it, the emotions there packed tight – fear and anger and a great deal of confusion. She felt sorry for her.

‘Look,’ said Cal. ‘The truth is we don’t know any more than you. I don’t think so anyway. Let’s go outside, get some air, some sunlight. We can talk about it there. Yeah?’

They all shivered through another moment of awkward silence, and in it Daisy saw an ice cube vision float through her brain, the same one she’d seen last night only now much clearer. This one was full of fire, so real that she felt like putting her hands to it, thawing them out on its heat. But there was something bad about it, something she didn’t quite understand. The image shifted, melting, and Daisy thought she saw the park, Fursville, lost inside the flames. And the girl, too, in the centre of the inferno. Then the images split apart, fading into the guttering candlelight of the restaurant.

‘Okay,’ said the girl. She tucked the tablecloths around her brother’s neck and whispered something into his ear before looking at Cal. ‘Lead the way.’

Cal walked from the room, the girl following, then Brick. Daisy trotted after them, wondering if it was safe to leave the boy here swaddled in cloth next to half a dozen candles. It wasn’t that which was making her uneasy, though. The ice cubes had gone but they’d left something unpleasant in her head, a feeling that she couldn’t quite shake even as she left the darkness of the restaurant and stepped into the brightness of the foyer.

The new girl was dangerous.

They sat on the roof of the pavilion, eating crisps and bread and taking turns to tell their stories.

The tall ginger boy went first, stuttering through his tale involving a psychotic girlfriend and an attack in a nearby garage. He was the one who had found this place, Fursville, and he was reluctant to share it. That didn’t come across so much in his words as in the pauses between his words, slight hesitations in which Rilke seemed to be able to peer inside that copper dome of his and get a sense of what he was really thinking. Of course it was probably a hallucination brought on by exhaustion – she’d been awake for well over twenty-four hours now. If that was the case, though, then what was it that made her lean forward when he had finished speaking and say:

‘Your girlfriend, she’s still here.’

The boy’s mouth dropped open, his cheeks blazing, his fist crumpling up the slice of bread he was holding.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he muttered. ‘Of course she’s not.’

She didn’t have to read his thoughts to know that was a lie.

The sun had hauled its lazy bulk up from the horizon and daylight splashed across the roof, giving the four of them long, thin shadows that spilled over the edge. It was filthy up here, the spaces between the ventilation stacks and air conditioning units and aerials covered in bird mess and rotting debris. But there were comfy moth-eaten director’s chairs that the park’s staff had long ago dragged up here and the view wasn’t bad. If you looked to the left, that was, over the crests of the fake waves and across the flat, featureless land all the way to a distant factory. In the other direction lay the sea, the same one Rilke had spent all night on. She didn’t want to look at it ever again.

Still, at least it was warm, and getting hotter by the minute. It occurred to her that they should fetch Schiller and leave him out in the sun, but it would be safer inside, at least until they knew what was going on. Out here the world seemed too big. Anything could happen.

‘What’s your story, anyway?’ The ginger one asked, aggression in his voice.

‘Hang on,’ said the other kid, the one wearing tracksuit trousers. He was conventionally good looking, but beneath his messy hair his face was featureless and bland.
He’s soft
, thought Rilke.
He’s a pushover
. He wiped crisp crumbs from his lips, saying, ‘Let’s stay friendly, okay? My name is Cal, Callum. This is Daisy. She’s, what, eleven?’

‘Nearly thirteen,’ corrected Daisy. ‘I just look younger, that’s all.’ The girl offered a nervous smile and Rilke returned it.

‘And that’s Brick,’ Cal went on, nodding at the ginger kid.

‘Why Brick?’ Rilke asked. She took another piece of bread from the open bag, tearing off a sliver and putting it in her mouth. She felt like she was literally starving, but she didn’t want to show weakness by scoffing down half a loaf.

‘Because my dad’s motto is never hit anyone with your fist when you’ve got a brick,’ he growled.

‘Nice,’ she said.
Neanderthal
.

‘What’s your name?’ asked Daisy.

‘Rilke,’ she said. ‘Rilke Bastion. The boy in there is my brother, Schiller.’

‘Your parents liked poetry, then,’ said Brick, which threw her. How did a caveman like him know that they were both named after German poets? He smiled smugly. A smile that said,
Didn’t expect that now, did you?
Daisy coughed politely, diffusing the tension.

‘My parents, they . . .’ the smaller girl started, and in that pause Rilke’s brain filled in the gaps. She didn’t see it so much as just feel it, the weight, the awful gravity, of two dead people in a bed. Daisy’s face had crumpled like a paper bag left out in the rain and Rilke had an urge to go to her, to wrap her arms around her. Girls had to look after one another. But Cal beat her to it, and she seemed to find strength in his arms.

‘My mum, she didn’t want to hurt me,’ Daisy went on. ‘She was ill anyway, she had . . . cancer in her head. It made her act strange. She . . . she took my dad, then herself, so they wouldn’t hurt me. Then the ambulance people tried to kill me, pushed me out the window.’ The girl looked at the boy who held her. ‘Cal found me. He saved me.’

‘Nearly didn’t, though,’ said Cal, giving Daisy a squeeze then letting her go. He told his story more smoothly than the others, as if he’d rehearsed it in his head. When he’d finished he looked at Rilke. They all did. ‘Now you.’

What could she say? She didn’t have a clue what had happened. The only reason she was so calm about it all, so logical, was that the full force of it hadn’t sunk in yet. None of it felt real. Maybe none of it
was
real. Maybe they’d got to the party and someone had slipped her some acid, ecstasy. Maybe all this was just a bad trip. She finished her bread then shrugged, more to herself than to the others.

‘We got attacked at a party, a rave. Then suddenly we moved, we were in another . . . I don’t know. Anyway, we managed to get away. I heard . . . no,
felt
you guys speaking to me so I brought my brother here. I thought you would know what was happening. I thought you’d have answers. I thought you’d be able to help us.’

Out of nowhere it hit her, a tidal wave of panic and fear and utter helplessness that sluiced through her brain. She clamped her teeth together until the feeling washed away. She couldn’t afford to look weak in front of these people. Not now, not ever.
It’s too late
, she realised, seeing the way Daisy stared at her, as though her thoughts were flashing across her forehead. She got to her feet, turning her back on them. It was starting to get hot, ridiculously so.

‘We know what you know,’ said Cal behind her, and for a second she thought he was admitting to the ridiculous notion that they could read minds. ‘That people are going crazy. That they’re filled with . . .’

‘The Fury,’ Rilke finished for him, the word not hers. She wondered if maybe it went both ways, if she could steal their thoughts too.

‘Yeah, the Fury. It doesn’t seem to affect them unless one of us is close. Then they just go mental, try and kill us. They seriously try and rip us to pieces.’

‘But afterwards they just go back to doing whatever they were doing,’ said Brick. ‘They go back to their lives, like nothing has happened. They totally forget that they went psycho. If you can get away from them, if you get out of their radar, then they’ll leave you alone. I think so, anyway.’

A couple of squabbling gulls flapped onto the roof, ogling the strangers warily before taking off again. Rilke turned back to the others.

‘What about Schill?’ she asked. ‘Why is he so cold? What’s happened to him?’

They looked at each other, and she could sense the vast, black gulfs in each of their thoughts. They didn’t have a clue. She shook her head, disgusted.

‘So why bring me here?’

‘Because we’re safer when we’re together,’ said Daisy.

That’s it?
She had to bite her tongue to stop from saying it out loud.

‘It’s the only way we’ll find out what’s going on,’ said Cal. ‘The more of us there are, the quicker we’ll find answers.’

‘Well I’m here now,’ Rilke snapped back. ‘There are five of us, where are the answers?’

A memory from the previous night swam back into her thoughts, the image of somebody driving a car, somebody else running through the woods. She shook her head, knocking them loose.

‘It’s not just us, is it?’ she said. ‘There are others coming.’

Brick smiled without humour, leaning forward in his chair and resting his head in his hands.

‘You have no idea.’