Paper Children (Phoebe Harkness Book 3)

by James Fahy

  Emergency lighting.

  It bathed the ward in a bloody wash, dimming and brightening in pulsing time to the ongoing wail of the alarm system.

  The vampire reached down in the deep gloom, offering his arm. I grabbed his wrist and pulled myself to my feet. “What’s happening?” I said over the din.

  Coldwater was gone. We were alone in the crimson shadows. She had taken the confusion as an opportunity to flee. I don’t know how she had gotten out of the room so fast, in the few confusing seconds of blackness, but this was her little kingdom. She could probably feel her way around it blindfolded. As I stood, and the backup systems of the place started to slowly reboot, one by one, the many monitors behind Allesandro began flickering back to life, casting him in silhouette.

  “She’s gone,” he said. He turned to face the screens. “What is this, Doctor? Some kind of emergency system? It’s like someone trigged an alarm.”

  “Allesandro…” My eyes were widening as they roamed the screens. On every one of them, the same low, pulsing red light, the same failsafe systems. This was happening everywhere throughout the facility. And as part of the emergency reboot, every door on automatic mechanisms, on every screen, was open.

  In one screen, standing stock still in the pulsing blood-light, a hunkered shadow in a dark corridor filled with pipes, Dove’s ghoul was staring up at the camera, looking more devilish than ever in the wash of red light. As we watched, it raised its hand and waved slowly to us grinning.

  “He cut the power,” I whispered. “To all the systems. Allesandro, the holding pens…”

  On other screens, the monitored rooms which had held the masses of infected Pale stood empty. Their doors wide. My eyes flicked frantically from screen to screen.

  I looked from lab to stairwell to corridor. Everywhere in the ruby dimness there was movement. Fleet shadows flitting past the cameras in the gloom. A lot of them.

  “He released the Pale,” the vampire said. “They’re running loose down here. He followed us down and he means to kill us all down here. Us and Coldwater. To stop us getting back to the surface where I can stop his parade. He knows you’ve come for me. He knows I’m the only one strong enough to stop him.”

  I grabbed his wrist and pulled him away from the screens, dashing back through the ward between the beds and the door through which Coldwater had disappeared. Did she know she was running into a dark maze which even now was being overrun with the Pale? Spreading out through the corridors like a virus running through veins.

  “We have to go!” I said. “Really, really right now!” Far off, echoing through the abandoned, underground facility, I could hear distant howls and screams, nightmarish grunts and whoops, echoing down the empty tunnels. They were coming for us.

  “The children,” Allesandro said, as we plunged into the corridor beyond the control room. “Your friend, he knew his way back to get them out, yes Doctor?”

  I tried not to think about that. Twelve weak and disoriented children, lost in the dark down here, with fifty or more infected Pale spreading out at great speed in the warren all around us. Chase Pargate was a capable man. I’d seen him take down Pale before. But this time there were too many. He wouldn’t be able to protect the kids. There was only one way out of this place. We had to get back to the elevator.

  There was no sign of Coldwater in the corridors ahead. With the lights gone, and only the faint red-gleam of the strip emergency lighting replacing it everything looked unfamiliar. I struggled to remember which way we needed to go. Had we come down one storey from the room I had found Allesandro in? Two? I had no real idea how big this place was.

  “This way,” he said, leading off swiftly into the darkness. I followed at a run, arms outstretched for balance to find the walls on either side in the gloom. The siren was still blaring, its urgent wail making my heart pound. The walls were so dark, lit as if by fire. I felt as though we were running through volcanic tunnels, lit by the angry glow of magma. I’d been buried alive with this vampire once before. But at least then it had only been the two of us. The old saying, ‘two’s company, any more than three is a ravenous zombie horde’. I didn’t want to die down here. I didn’t want any of us to die down here.

  No-one would ever find us.

  “How do you know where we’re going?” I yelled over the siren as the corridor spat us into a three-way intersection, a crimson light embedded in the ceiling here spinning, throwing panicked light and shadow around frantically. He plunged into the darkness of another tunnel, his feet ringing on metal steps that led upwards.

  “I’m following Coldwater’s scent,” he said. “If anyone knows the quickest route out of here, it’s that slippery rat.”

  We had ascended a floor. I had lost my bearings, but I was pretty sure we were now back on the level where I had found the vampire restrained. The tunnels, with their ceilings filled with long, overlapping nests of pipes, were wider here. They looked longer and more endless than ever in the new near-darkness. Several of the pipes were hissing steam, some result of pressure changes due to the system shutdown no doubt. It only made visibility worse, and their shrieks as we passed by them were alarming. It was like running through the worst haunted house on Halloween, except here, it wasn’t actors dressed as monsters to jump out and scare you. There were actual demons in the dark. I could hear them, screaming and howling around us.

  With the echoes and the background noise, it was impossible to tell how far away they were or what direction they were coming from.

  I wished I’d had the presence of mind to pick up Coldwater’s dropped gun. I might hate them, but anything would feel better than nothing.

  Several times we stopped suddenly, when one of us spotted something, and dragged the other into the shadows of an intersection, pushing ourselves as flat as we could in the darkness. Wedged between hissing pipes, we hid and held our breath as two, or sometimes three, thin, incredibly fast shapes raced past corridor openings, only inches from us.

  The Pale were running wild, screaming and chittering, searching for prey. They were much faster than I’d expected. There was no leisurely zombie-shuffle, they flew down the corridors, mouths gaping, the flashing red light mercifully illuminating their ruined features and white, staring eyes only in strobing flashes when we saw them.

  I was thankful for the darkness. We hadn’t been caught yet, and we were making progress. With shaking hands, several times as we scurried through the bowels of the facility, I tried to call Chase. He wasn’t picking up.

  Barging through a set of swinging doors, Allesandro and I found ourselves in a stairwell. It wasn’t the one I’d come down on my way in, but all roads lead to Rome. It went up. That’s all that mattered to me.

  We made it halfway up without incident, but on the second turn, something leapt down from above, a portion of shadow detaching itself from the handrail above our heads. It barrelled out of the darkness and knocked Allesandro off his feet. In the flashing darkness, I saw the Pale creature that had ambushed us, rolling around on the staircase, its thin arms and legs scrabbling and wrapping around the vampire like a monstrous white spider as they wrestled across the stairwell corner. Its head darted forward again and again, gnashing, snapping at his face while he struggled wildly beneath it.

  I’d seen plenty of the Pale before. Many more than I cared to. They were all skeletal, they were all grey and monstrous, with ruined faces and bald, shrivelled heads. But I’d never seen one this size before. The small creature, a bundle of feral instincts, of primal rage and cannibal fury, it had been a child once.

  This is what the Seraph project looked like. For all her talk of building a brighter future. Coldwater’s greater good, thrashing around in the darkness like a creature possessed. Pale children.

  Overcoming my revulsion, I threw myself onto them, grabbing the monster from behind and dragging it off, just as Allesandro pushed it away from beneath, grunting. His face was scratched and bloody in the shadows, his fangs bared. Between us, we prised the sm
all abomination from him, still howling and thrashing, its arms and legs lashing out at both of us. Allesandro caught it by the neck, and with a heave, cast it over the stair rail.

  It fell down the central gap of the stairwell, still shrieking and snapping its bloodied teeth. Down into darkness below.

  I was shaking everywhere. I forced myself to stop staring down, to turn and help the vampire stand.

  “Are you hurt?” I said. The deep gouges on his cheek were already closing however. Vampires cannot be infected with the Pale virus and they heal fast.

  He shook his head, steadying himself on the handrail. There was a scrabbling noise far below us, deep at the base of the spiral staircase. We both looked down. The thing down there wasn’t dead. Even now it was skittering back up to us, on all fours. Over the siren’s wail, we could hear its nails clattering on the metal steps in the dark. Its hissing rage.

  “It’s coming back up,” he said. “We have to go.”

  We ran to the top of the stairs, our feet ringing on the metal risers, lungs burning. The top spilled us out into a large room, and Allesandro slammed the door firmly behind us. A quick glance showed me this room was filled with filing cabinets and other mundane office furniture. It must have been the room Chase had found earlier, Coldwater’s makeshift office, which meant we were now on the upper level.

  Between us, we heaved and pushed over one of the filing cabinets, which fell with a heavy cacophony and blocked the doorway behind us just in time. We heard the Pale slam into the other side with force.

  As we backed away, breathless, it cannoned into the door again and again, furious and hungry, making it shake in its frame. I heard it roar with anger, a high, rattling monkey-like shriek. It sounded as though it was tearing its own vocal chords. It probably was.

  “Come on,” I insisted. “We have to keep moving. The noise will draw more of them.”

  Beyond the room, the corridors up here were pristine. No more dampness, no pipes, no leaking steam vents.

  Bleached hospital walkways, still bathed in the bloody low-light of the emergency system. Small grilles set in the ceiling at intervals like sprinkler systems.

  When Chase and I had first entered on this level, down from the crypt, it had seemed cold, ghostly and silent. Now the walls looked blood-painted, throbbing like a beating heart with every pulse of the emergency light. We set off to the left. I could hear crashes and bangs through the walls. The Pale were up on this level too. Some of the rooms past which we ran had porthole windows, and I glimpsed the monsters inside as we fled, trashing equipment, tearing at furniture and each other, sending medical apparatus tumbling and smashing onto the floor.

  After several twists and turns, avoiding the creatures, ducking under doorway windows, careful not to be seen, we came to an open arch.

  “Shit!” I panted, as we passed through, both staggering to a sudden halt. “This isn’t right.”

  It had spilled us into another stairwell, much wider and larger than the one we had ascended. This one only led down into crimson-tinged darkness. We peered over the rail.

  “We must have got turned around,” I gasped, out of breath. “This place is impossible.”

  Before the vampire could reply, the siren stopped abruptly.

  The sudden silence was oddly deafening, and we both froze.

  A voice, calm and clearly pre-recorded, came over a hidden tannoy system. I could hear it echoing not just above us, but in the corridors behind and every room.

  “System failure,” the voice intoned calmly. The sounds echoed eerily in the deep stairwell. “Catastrophic containment breach has occurred. All personnel must exit the facility immediately. Decontamination will commence in ten minutes, and counting. This is not a drill. Repeat, decontamination will commence in nine minutes and fifty-five seconds, and counting. Proceed to exit one.”

  I stared at my companion.

  “What the hell does that mean?” he asked.

  “It means that this… is the end of the line,” a voice replied behind us. It was a deep, monstrous gurgle, more of a growl than speech. We both turned. Standing in the doorway behind us leading back from the stairwell to the corridor, stood Dove’s ghoul, cracked black skin and wide, unnatural smile. Its smoking bulk blocking the doorway like a golem. And in front of him, held tightly to his chest, struggling and choking in a headlock, Coldwater was caught.

  Chapter 35

  At the sight of the ghoul, Allesandro started forward, but I grabbed his arm, staying him. We had our backs to the stairwell, and the drop below.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Coldwater was struggling in the thing’s blackened arm, her hands clawing at the rotten meat ineffectually. Her eyes were bulging as she struggling in vain not to choke.

  “If you’re holding her hostage against us, that’s a bad card hand, arsehole,” Allesandro growled. “Go ahead and kill the bitch. I was planning on doing so myself anyway.”

  The creature’s dead eyes rolled in its skull, narrowed in what looked like amusement. Its grip around Coldwater’s neck tightened, making her gurgle. Its grim smile widened.

  “Found a little rat… running around the rat maze,” it rasped. Its voice echoing down the stairwell.

  “Ten minutes until what?” Allesandro asked it. “What’s decontamination?”

  It turned its horrible, clownish head to me, ignoring the vampire. “Safety measures,” it growled. “Shut off the power. All the monsters are free now.”

  “This place is designed to stop them getting out,” I said. “To stop anything getting out. In ten minutes, this entire place will be flooded with nerve gas.” I had seen the grilles in the ceiling. I knew how this worked.

  It giggled, a hitching, high chitter, clearly amused. “Night night, little ones.”

  “Dove,” I said to the monster. “I know you’re in there driving this fucking thing. I know you got what you wanted out of Coldwater. You’re king of the vampires now. You won. No honour amongst thieves, right?”

  With its other hand, the ghoul reached up and stroked Coldwater’s face affectionately with a dark claw. “You call me a monster,” it sniggered. “This one here, she’s the worst kind. Fooling herself. I have no illusions. She’s served her purpose. Can’t let any of you up to the surface, not tonight. You’ll ruin my fun.”

  “Afraid to face me in person,” Allesandro said. “Brave talk when your words are coming out of someone else’s body. Why didn’t you come down here yourself?”

  The grin dropped from the creature’s collapsed face, as its scarred and sun-blackened head whipped round to the vampire. “I’m a busy man,” it said. “In a parade right now. We’re almost at the end. Near the theatre. It’s a shame you won’t see the big finish I have planned. It’s going to be a killer.”

  Coldwater’s eyes met mine. She looked terrified, gagging and choking, wriggling like a worm on a hook. There was something close to pleading in her eyes. Was she asking me for help? After effectively sentencing me to death, and everything else she was culpable for? The children… Griff… Dee. I felt nothing but coldness toward her. She deserved to be in the embrace of this hellish thing, down here in the dark. It was where she belonged. With the other monsters.

  But we had to get past the ghoul. The clock was ticking. I had to distract it.

  “Why the girls?” I demanded, staring the creature in the face. “I get the devil’s pact with her. You bring her homeless kids, she stabs you in the head with a psychic booster. Give and take. You even brought her Melodie Cunningham Bowls. But what were the other abductions for?”

  It blinked at me, its smile slowly returning, spreading out across its face. It looked like the Cheshire cat, melted from a few hours in a kiln.

  “Winterbourne girl…” it gurgled. “Favoured child of a Mankind Movement family. And the Adamola girl, high-profile innocent from the GO supporters camp? Simple. Outrage. On both sides.”

  It licked its teeth with a long, rotting tongue.

  “You wanted a
s many people in the streets tonight as you could get,” Allesandro said.

  “It was you who anonymously leaked those kidnappings to the press just in time for the festival?” I added. “You want chaos, panic and disorder.”

  It nodded slowly, its voice a deep wet gurgle. “It’s going to be a big show.”

  “You didn’t get the Winterbourne girl though,” my vampire pointed out. “The Bonewalker girl stopped you and took her away.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I realised. “She hasn’t turned up. He only needs for them to be missing, He only needs the anger of humanity, the fear.”

  I was still holding Allesandro’s arm. I could feel it tense beneath my own, could taste his desire to rush forward and tear this walking corpse to pieces. “And Celeste?” I asked. “You took her from Oscar Scott’s house tonight, Dove, where is she?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about her, Doctor,” the ghoul rumbled merrily. “She’s with me. She’s going to be part of the show.”

  “You’re the lowest creature to ever walk,” the vampire at my side said, murder under his tone. “You betray your master. You sell me off to that wretch in your arms. You steal power. You don’t even have the courage to commit your crimes in your own skin. To make a ghoul out of your own kind… whose body have you desecrated this way?”

  “You don’t recognise it?” the ghoul snickered. Of course it would be impossible to recognise a vampire who had been killed and then repeatedly strolling around in the sunshine. It was a charred husk, a pitiful thing, in its harlequin outfit.

  “One of your favourites I think. Roberto, Ronaldo, something with an R. After I disposed of you, began my takeover, he was the first to resist me.”

  Allesandro was clenching his jaw.

  “Riccardo,” he said grimly.

  “Rolled him with my new found strength,” the creature explained. “Struggled, of course. New wings. Got a little…physical.” The clawed hand moved from Coldwater’s face to stroke the too-wide smile of the ghoul itself. “We fought in the bar. Cut him a new mouth with a broken bottle. Once I raised him, he was fun to walk in.” It giggled again, Dove’s unstable laughter emanating from the corpse of the very vampire he had killed.