Undead (9780545473460) (21 page)

Before I can react, Alice has fallen upon the key. She runs to the tower door and thrusts it into the lock. Both Smitty, Pete, and I yell, “Noooooo!” and I catapult myself across the room, abandoning Lily, trying to reach Alice. She turns the key and opens the door. And then she's inside, and gone, with Pete hot on her heels.

Maybe they're right. Maybe this is our only way? As I make the decision, the door finally gives way and Michael comes barrelling in headfirst, slamming into Smitty, who rolls onto the floor and ends up at my feet. He doesn't stop Michael, who smacks into the kitchen table, whacking his head on the corner. He falls to the floor, dazed, barely moving.

Lily drops to the ground beside Cam. A second later Shaq appears and lets Grace in. She stands there, cow prod in hand. She sees the open tower door and her eyes flash.

Smitty drags himself to his feet and gently pulls me inside the tower. He puts his hand on the door.

“Good,” Grace says. “You opened the door. We won't hurt you.”

Smitty ignores her. “Lily, get up. Get Cam, come here.” His hand is firm on the door, ready to pull it shut.

On the floor by the table, Michael groans.

“Quickly, Lily,” Smitty says, pulling the door, narrowing the gap.

Lily crawls to Cam, who is silent and curled into a tight ball, his face in his little hands. “He's dead.”

All eyes flick down to Cam.

“He's not dead,” says Smitty. “He's ill. Pick him up, come over here.”

Everyone holds their breath. On the floor, Cam stirs. Head down, his stubby legs kick out, trying to find some hold on the floor. Lily cries with relief.

“See? He's fine,” Smitty says. “Carry him.”

A dark shape leaps out from the mudroom door. The dog, barking and snarling, teeth bared and pink gums moist. He goes for Cam, and Lily falls back, startled. The dog stops just short, but his agitation increases and he bounces and smacks his jaws at Cam.

It is Cam and Cam alone who is pissing him off.

“Oh my god,” Shaq mutters. “The kid. The kid is infected.”

“No!” Lily shouts.

Cam sits up and turns to face her. I see his face and feel a stabbing pain in my stomach. His chubby smile is black and twisted, his mouth oozing.

The dog keeps barking.

“Lily,” Smitty says carefully. “Leave him.”

“No!” she screams.

There's a scuffle by the table as Michael wakes up suddenly, like someone's thrown a bucket of water over him.

“The kid is infected!” Shaq shouts again, and Michael scuttles away into Grace.

Them on one side, Smitty and me on the other, Lily and Cam and the dog in the middle.

Cam makes an unearthly moan, like a baby buried alive, trying to cry the dirt out of its lungs. He holds out his arms to his sister, black blood running freely from his mouth.

“Cam . . . ,” Lily whimpers.

“Lily!” Smitty yells again.

But she holds her arms out to Cam.

Grace screams, “No!”

And as brother and sister embrace, Cam plants his milk teeth into Lily's trembling shoulder.

Michael and Grace leap forward. Smitty pulls me away from the door and slams it shut, locking us in the tower.

There is a
thump
ing on the door.

So muffled, it's like we're underwater. Maybe it's because of the thick door, but I feel like I'm floating above myself, spiraling somewhere on the ceiling — or above the ceiling, in the clouds . . .

“Bob. Bob.”

Smitty's shaking me lightly — or maybe it's really hard. Again, can't be sure. And then he's taking me by the hand and pulling me up the stairs. Winding stairs that are brightly lit, white, clean. This is not a castle; it's like suddenly we're in a spaceship. The stairs seem to go on forever. With every step I return to my body.

Here comes the dizzy. I sink onto the gleaming stairs.

“We left her.”

Smitty crouches by my side. “You saw her get bitten.”

I nod.

“Cam was infected.” Smitty sounds like he's trying to convince himself, but he doesn't need to convince me. There was no doubt about it. No tiny shred of doubt.

“They're not dead yet.” I rub my face with my hands and spring to my feet, head zinging with the rush of blood. “Grace said there's an antidote up there. We should let her in — she might still be able to help Cam and Lily . . .”

“No!” Smitty shakes his head. “She said it didn't work after someone has turned.”

“Lily, then!”

“We have no idea if Grace was even telling the truth.” He's firm.

“If there is an antidote, I'll go get it myself.” I push past him and stomp up the stairs. “I'm not leaving them without trying, even if Cam can't be saved.”

“We should have . . .” Smitty's voice sounds small and pained. “
I
should have taken better care of him. Or at least taken notice. Poor little guy.”

I stop short and cast him a look over my shoulder in surprise. The Smitty I know doesn't do Broken Down Doll. I don't know whether to be touched or terrified.

“You can't beat yourself up.” I risk putting my hand lightly on his arm. Our eyes meet for a second. “He must have been infected before we even met him.”

“Lily.” Smitty takes a breath, and briefly touches my hand. “There's still a chance the antidote will work on her. It takes different amounts of time for people to turn — Mr. T was almost instantaneous, the drones in the café a few minutes — but Cam took days.”

“Then we have to try!” I turn away and am hauling myself up the stairs again before I can think better of it.

I reach the top of the stairs and run through an arched doorway.

The room in front of me is no TARDIS out of
Dr. Who
, but it's a whole lot bigger than I would have guessed. It's circular with a vaulted ceiling and huge, elevated windows. Everything is white and shiny and new-looking, with desks and bookshelves hugging the walls below the windows, and a long slablike table in the center of the room. I think we've found Frankenstein Central.

“You're OK?” Pete's bent over a desk in the corner, manically fiddling with something. “Did you shut the door behind you?”

“No, we left it wide open, you dweeb,” mutters Smitty. “Thanks for caring.”

“Can they get in? What are we going to do?” Alice shouts from above. She's perching on a broad window ledge that runs almost the full circumference of the room and she's holding a phone up to the window, checking for reception. Heaven only knows which orifice she's been keeping that phone in for the last few hours . . .

I snatch at a cabinet door, then a drawer, flinging the contents on to the floor. “Where would they keep the antidote?” I rake through some shelves. And then I see it: a fridge. That's exactly where I'd be hiding my magic potions. I heave the door open to find shelves full of test tubes and syringes.

“What for?” says Alice.

“Too late,” says Smitty, and his words hang in the air like a bad smell.

He points to a cabinet by the doorway. Inside it are six small TV screens. Very much like the office at the Cheery Chomper. Exactly like the office at the Cheery Chomper. I shut the fridge and move toward the screens. There are different views of the courtyard, back and front doors, the main gate. And the kitchen.

Lily is standing facing the camera, swaying softly, as if listening to music. At first I think her eyes are closed, but then I realize her eyeballs have rolled back into her head and all I can see are the whites. There is a single thick string of dark saliva hanging off her chin, and as she sways, the dribble swings, too. Suddenly her arms shoot out at her sides, her wrists flexed and her fingers like claws, almost as if she's playing piano, the music in her head reaching a crescendo.

“What can you see?” Alice shouts from above.

Cam has gone. Everyone has gone. It's just Lily, or what used to be Lily.

“What's happening?” Pete calls from the desk.

My eyes are too dry for tears, and my heart is banging in my chest. And then there's a flash of movement behind Lily, and it's Michael with Smitty's dwarven ax held high above him, moving in on her . . .

“Switch it off!” I cry, and Smitty's hand shoots out and smacks the screen's
OFF
button. All goes blank.

Smitty punches the cabinet, then he turns on a nearby leather chair, wrestling it to the ground and kicking it across the polished floor.

“What the hell's going on?” Alice is reaching critical level.

“Cam turned and bit Lily,” Smitty says quietly, his chest heaving. “She turned, too.”

“Oh my god!” Alice wails. “Cam was one of them all along?” She casts the phone down onto the ledge, flings her head back, and
yowls
, sending up some kind of primal scream into the dying light, like every last vestige of hope is leaving her body. It's quite something. She should have got that out of her system a long time ago — like about when puberty hit. It could have made her a much more pleasant person.

I notice the phone she dropped was mine. Never mind. It's not like I was that fond of it anyway.

“I knew it,” Pete says. “There was always something off about Cam.”

“Really, Snowflake?” There is bitter venom in Smitty's voice. “How sickeningly astute of you.”

“What?” Pete counters. “It's not like I'm not sorry or anything. It's horrible.”

“At least it was quick.” I place a hand on Smitty's shoulder. “Lily, I mean.” In reality I don't know if what I've said is true, and Smitty knows it. Cam and Lily could be tortured, in pain, frightened, and half dead, being hacked to pieces by Michael. I dig my nails into my hands and try to banish the thought.

Smitty turns to me and holds my arms just like he did when he kissed me in the coal chute. For a second I wonder if he's going to kiss me again. Probably not appropriate right now.

“We've got to forget it,” he urges. “Hold it together and focus on getting ourselves out of here.”

I nod, trying to gather myself, to prevent meltdown.

He drops my arms and takes a step back. “Good, good.” He's bought it.

I trust myself to breathe again.

“We need to search this place,” Smitty says, gritting his teeth. “There's got to be something here that can help us.”

“Doing it already,” Pete snaps from the corner. “PCs” — he points at the desks — “checking them to see if we can get online.”

On each desk unit are a few scattered belongings, like little fragments of personality stamped into place in an otherwise sterile petri dish. On the desk nearest to me there's a tube of lemon-scented hand cream, and a picture of a glamorous blonde wearing sunglasses, her arm around a muscle-bound guy in swim shorts. Grace's desk. Clean and functional.

Smitty turns on the PC and hits a few keys.

A box leaps up:
PASSWORD
.

Smitty looks up at me. “Any bright ideas?”

He runs to the next desk and turns on that computer. I move to a third desk. The leather chair that Smitty attacked belongs here, and I pick it up and put it back in its place. It's an old-fashioned office swivel chair, worn and cracked, with what looks like horsehair sticking out of a hole in one of the arms. I sit down — it smells familiar somehow, of warm body — and turn to the PC. The hard drive is missing; it's been disconnected.

“Anything?” says Smitty.

I shake my head, halfheartedly fumbling through a cardboard box of belongings on the desk. Nothing useful.

“Pete?” Smitty calls out.

“Negatory,” comes the reply.

“Radio!” Alice clambers down from her perch on the window ledge. “Shaq said there was a radio.”

She and Smitty begin to plunder the room anew, desperation rising.

“Lies, all lies,” Smitty spits, pulling drawers open, rifling through shelves.

I can't bear this. I am so done with the mystery, and the raising and dashing of hopes. I lean heavily against the desk and push the box of belongings to the floor in despair. Something flutters out.
What is that?

“Oh, kneel down before me because I am Princess of Genius!” Alice has found something. I glance up; it's a laptop.
Great.
Another password not to guess.

My gaze falls again on the glossy rectangle that fell out of the box.
There's something odd . . .
I crouch down beside it. It's a photograph. I hold it up to the light, my heart drumming.

A little girl, four or five years old — no, she's four, I'm sure of it — sitting on a toy tractor, wearing blue shorts and a big grin. A happy summer holiday. A hot day, with a picnic, sticky-ice-cream fingers, and a wasp that flew into the jam . . .

“We're logged in!” Pete shouts. “And there's web!”

I look over to where the three of them are crowded together over the laptop.
Web?
But I'm not sure I can move. I stare at the photograph again. I must be wrong. This makes no sense at all.

“Bob, what's wrong with you!” Smitty yells at me. “We're online!”

There are no easy answers. I shove the photo into a pocket and force myself back into the moment.

“We have Internet?”

“In a sense,” says Pete. “However, that's not the end of the story.”

I hurry toward him. “Can you contact someone? Do people know what's going on here? Is it happening everywhere?”

“Hold your horses . . .” Pete is typing something furiously. “They would never make it easy for us, would they?”

“What do you mean?” Smitty is hanging over the back of Pete's chair, like it's all he can do to stop launching himself into the screen of the laptop.

Pete pauses, and plays with his head scab. “It's weird. And clever. I've never seen anything quite like it before.”

“What?” Smitty bellows in his ear.

Pete smiles up at him. “You know how your parents set controls on your laptop so that you can't look up how to make a bomb out of pipe cleaner or get hooked perving on bimbos?”

“Of course he does,” Alice sneers.

“Well” — Pete's smile widens — “that's what they've done here. They've set up restrictions so that we can't access any sites they don't want us to.” His smile fades. “Like anything at all, pretty much.”

“Nothing?” I ask. “You can't e-mail, either?”

“There's an e-mail server but it's password protected.” He hits a few keys. “No web access really, just a browser that won't let me browse. I've checked the history. There's only one website coming up. Something called Xanthro Industries.”

Smitty frowns. “What's Xanthro Industries? Sounds like some kind of drug company. Are they the bad guys?”

I feel the room start to undulate softly. For want of anywhere better, I sit down heavily on the floor.

“What's up with you?” Alice says, backing away from me, her eyes wide. “Do I need to get my knife out again? Are you going to turn?”

I shake my head. “No.” I snake my hand into my pocket and close my fingers around the photograph. The photograph of Roberta, age four.

Smitty looks down at me closely. “Xanthro Industries. You know what that is, don't you?”

I look up at him.

I nod.

“Xanthro Industries is the company my mother works for.”