Breeding Ground

by Sarah Pinborough

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The peaceful spell could never have lasted, and it was only two days later that it started to break, the inevitable no longer needing delay. I woke up suddenly in the night, not sure if it was thunder outside or maybe the sound of the door clicking shut that had forced my eyes open from my deep sleep. My heart thumping slightly, I lay there in the dark and listened for anything unusual, but the only noise outside was that of the rain hammering down on the roof of the building. That wasn’t enough to wake me. We’d all got used to that steady noise over the past few days.

  Frustrated at finding myself wide awake, I peered at the glowing hands of my watch. It was three o’clock in the morning. The only shift working would be in the comms hut. The final perimeter patrols were always done by midnight, and the next one wouldn’t go out until five. So who could have been going outside? No one. It must have just been some fragment of a dream that woke me. Not that I could remember dreaming anything at all. I lay there for a moment or two, listening to the torrent of nature outside, and the soft breathing and snoring of those around me. My sheet was soaked with sweat, but at least the air didn’t seem any hotter than the night before, which was a good thing. Unless, of course, I was just getting used to the heat.

  Sighing, I quietly got up and padded out into the corridor and then into the bathroom, needing to splash some water on my face. I didn’t bother with the lights, not wanting to disturb anyone else’s sleep. I headed straight for the sinks, their pale sheen glowing slightly in the gloom. Turning the taps on, it was good to feel the coolness of the liquid rubbing into my skin. At least the floor was cool. Maybe if I could get my temperature somewhere back down near normal, I’d have half a chance of getting back to sleep. Turning round, I leaned against the enamel sink, trying very hard to ignore the memories of what Katie and I had done in that room not so very many nights before, and enjoyed the sensation of the water drying on my skin before heading back to bed. Out in the small hallway, my eyes couldn’t help but stray towards Katie’s room. I paused as I stared. The door was open. That wasn’t like Katie at all. Creeping closer, thinking I would just pull it shut if she were sleeping, but secretly hoping that she was awake and maybe ready to talk to me, I reached for the handle.

  “Katie?” I whispered the word in the doorway before peering in. The bed was crumpled, but empty. Stepping inside, I whispered her name again, but it was obvious she wasn’t there. So where the hell was she? Feeling more perplexed than alarmed, I turned to the other private room. The door was ajar. Surely there wouldn’t be room for all three of them in the tiny single bedroom? I pushed the door open slightly. Jane was there curled up in her makeshift bed, the covers kicked off, and Rebecca’s long, slim body was stretched out beside her in a vest top and pants, the sheet pushed to the bottom of the mattress. Her vulnerability made her look even more beautiful, and despite wondering where Katie was, I stood and watched her sleeping for a moment before stopping myself, feeling slightly embarrassed at my invasion of her privacy.

  Returning to the dorm, I sat on the edge of my bed. Katie had been on the last patrol of the night, so she should have been in bed by half-twelve at the latest. My eyes having adjusted to the darkness, I studied the beds around me, looking for one that was empty, but the only flat mattress I could pick out was Oliver Maine’s, and he was on comms duty. So whoever had been on patrol with Katie was sleeping. So where was she?

  Muttering angrily under my breath about how it was none of my business and why the hell did I care, I dressed quickly in jeans and T-shirt and slipped out, pulling the door shut behind me. I grimaced as the water hit me, the hot rain no longer shocking, but no less unpleasant than it had been that first night. The flood-lights were thrusting brightness into the night, but whichever direction I stared, I couldn’t see Katie, so I jogged over to the comms building. Maybe she couldn’t sleep either and had gone to have a chat with Maine. It was plausible, but it didn’t ring true. Katie had been too moody recently for me to believe she’d go in search of company. Or maybe it was just my company that she was avoiding; that was a pretty likely possibility.

  As I stepped into the hut, Oliver Maine waved his gangly arm at me in such an overenthusiastic way that it could only prove without a doubt that he had been fast asleep only moments before.

  “What are you doing up? Is everything okay?” He shuffled some bits of paper around on his desk as I approached, probably more to remind his dazed and awake self of where he was and what he was supposed to be doing than to look efficient, and I noticed the overflowing ashtray and the small bottle of whiskey placed almost hidden by the far leg of the desk. No doubt some of that had been added to the strong black coffee in the pot. Well, this was no time to pull Maine on his drinking. I figured he’d cut down hugely since all this started and I’d rather have him like this than shaking and shivering and wondering when his next drink would be coming. Whatever Maine had been in his previous life, in this one he was trying to make good, and the odd Irish coffee wasn’t going to make much of a difference.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I was feeling more and more unsettled now that Katie was missing from here, too. “Katie’s not in her room. Have you seen her?”

  “No.” Lighting a cigarette, he smiled sheepishly, rubbing his beard. “I think I dropped off for half an hour or so, but I’d have woken up if she’d come in here.”

  “Well, if she’s not here, and she’s not in the dorm, then she must be out there.” My agitation was now turning into concern. Where the hell was she?

  “Jesus.” Maine was wide awake now and a flash of self-disgust at his napping shot through his eyes. “Why would she want to go out in this weather? Is she a sleepwalker?”

  “No.” Although the truth of the matter was that I didn’t know. Maybe she was.

  “Well, if she’s out there somewhere, we should be able to pick her up on the monitors.”

  We scanned the screens, looking for the flashes of red that signalled heat and movement.

  “There!” Maine pointed, the gold watch and bracelet jangling together on his leathery, tanned wrist. She was moving through the trees towards the back of the compound, far into the half that went without flood-lighting. She wasn’t running, but moving fast, determined, heading God only knew where. Glancing at the surrounding monitors, there were no signs of any widows on the other side of the perimeter fences, and I did a double-take before I could believe it. They’d maintained a steady vigil every night, so their absence should have been a cause for some kind of alert, but that would have banked on Maine being awake. Great.

  “Where the hell is she going, Matt?” There was a note of uncertainty in Oliver’s voice that unsettled me. He sounded nervous of her. And if Maine found her behaviour disturbing, then what Nigel and some of the others would make of it, I didn’t want to find out.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to go out there and get her. Let’s keep this to ourselves, shall we? She’s probably just sleepwalking like you said.” I nodded at him, hoping he read between the lines of what I was saying, and he winked back. A serious gesture of trust, rather than his normal gregarious twinkle, and I knew he was onboard.

  Going outside, I jogged down past the pond and back to the wide main road that divided the compound into two halves. The weather had become worse since I’d got up and the wind whipped the heavy rain into me, forcing my eyes into a squint as I peered into the darkness ahead, getting my bearings. The idea of travelling into that pitch blackness wasn’t appealing to me, even though logic dictated that there was nothing hidden in there apart from Katie, and that if there had been any breach of the perimeters the alarms would have been raised. Still, I felt like an astronaut about to venture alone onto the dark side of the moon.

  “Shit.” The word tumbled out of me as a fork of lightning broke the sky in two; only a couple of seconds later, thunder groaned, trying to keep up. Great. The weather was going to be getting worse before it got better, but then that had been the pattern of th
e week, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Having prevaricated enough, I crossed the road, heading out on a diagonal path. The monitors divided the enclosed area into a grid system, and I knew from where we’d spotted Katie that she was heading for the fence where there was the least amount of trees and shrubs on our side. What if she was sleepwalking and she touched the fencing? There was nothing people-friendly about the electric charge that was running through the thick wires. She’d be dead by the time she let go, if the power hadn’t thrown her back to the dorm. Neither image was particularly pleasant. I passed the eerie shapes of abandoned buildings that we’d chosen to leave unused in darkness—they seemed to stare at me accusingly and I pushed my legs into a run, annoyed at my own imagination for making me so jittery.

  My legs were burning by the time I’d done about four hundred metres and I slowed to a jog as I started to pass by the overhanging trees. There was no path out this way, and I could only imagine that these wooded areas served not only to make the work surroundings more pleasant but also to keep out prying eyes. A little ahead and over to my left I could make out the looming tower of the radio pylons as the lightning gave me a moment of light. The pylons only had a bank of hedges between them and the high fences, so I knew I must be getting near to where Katie was.

  Finally, I came into the clearing and stopped, the sweat and rain combining to stick my thin T-shirt to my skin. The fencing here was three deep but had no solidity, mainly a mesh of crisscross wire, and I could make out the trees on the other side, hulking dark shapes menacing us, the branches seeming to reach out greedily. I stared, my focus coming a little further forward. Katie stood only a foot away from the first fence, her back to me, hair slick against her face, the heavy water having straightened it, making it even longer down her back. Her sweatshirt and joggers sagged, waterlogged, and I wondered briefly how heavy they must be to wear soaking. What on earth had made her dress like that to come out here? But then what on earth had made her come out here in the first place?

  She must have heard me coming up behind her, but she hadn’t moved.

  “Katie?” I kept my voice low as I came alongside her. She didn’t respond, but kept staring at the fence, her brow furrowed with concentration.

  “Katie?”

  “Shhh!” One slim finger flew to her lips. “Shhh. Listen.”

  Pausing for a second, I tried to pick up whatever she was listening to, but there was only the rain and my own heavy breathing. This was ridiculous.

  “What?” I couldn’t keep the edge of frustration out.

  “Can’t you hear them?” She sounded incredulous. “Can’t you hear them? They woke me up.” For the first time her eyes flashed in my direction, and I could see that she was crying. “Can’t you see them, Matt? They’re out there.”

  My stomach tightening, I followed her eyes into the gloom while wrapping one arm round her shoulders and firmly pulling her back a few steps from the fence. I didn’t need to ask who they were. She didn’t resist, but kept staring, chewing on the nails of one hand. It took me about thirty seconds or so until I finally picked out the first sheen of that awful translucent skin followed by a bank of glowing red eyes.

  “Jesus.” Suddenly they were everywhere, creeping out of the camouflage of the trees and bushes, some in the branches, some wrapped round the trunks of the trees. How could I have missed them? My skin crawled and I dragged us back further. I could feel Katie trembling next to me as the widows hissed and prowled angrily in front of us, their annoyance at being held back by the electricity obvious.

  “They’re waiting.” She whispered into the wet air. “They’re waiting for something. Can’t you tell? Can’t you feel it? They’re waiting for something.” The desperation in her voice chilled my heart. I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but what she said was enough to scare me.

  She let me lead her back to the comms room, her head on my shoulder, her sobbing adding to the moans of the storm around us. But despite our physical closeness, there was no real sense of contact. Something had come between us, something to do with the widows, and that made fear eat at my insides. I figured it probably terrified her, too. At least her body felt slim and firm beneath her clothes. Surely she would be fine. She had to be.

  Things haven’t finished settling down yet. We’re still in the beginning. John’s words echoed in my head. They’d never really left since he’d spoken them outside the scout hut. Who the hell knew what could happen next? And something had happened to Katie tonight, there was no arguing that.

  I was glad to get back to the bright side of the compound and relieved to see George sipping coffee alongside Maine.

  Oliver stood up, freeing a chair for Katie. “I didn’t wake him. He came in just after you left.” He was obviously concerned that I might think he’d broken our trust.

  “That’s okay, mate.” George was different from the others. I couldn’t imagine keeping anything from him.

  “I woke up when you left the dorm, and it was too damned hot to get back to sleep.” George Leicester was refilling his coffee mug and slipping a large measure of Maine’s whiskey into it. “And then my old man’s curiosity just got the better of me.” He put the cup into Katie’s hand and wrapped her fingers round it, ensuring it was gripped before he let go. “There you go, love. Get that inside you and you’ll feel better.”

  Maine handed me a mug and I sipped the steaming, heady liquid, standing in silence for a few moments while Katie’s sobbing slowed down to just the occasional hitch in her breathing.

  “What happened, Katie?” George pulled his chair close so he was facing her on the same level. “What made you go outside in the middle of the night? What upset you?”

  Her tears were drying quickly, but she chewed on her bottom lip. “There was something . . . something buzzing in my head.” Pausing, she took another mouthful of the coffee. “It woke me up.” Her voice was getting stronger. “At least I think it woke me up. I’m not really sure.”

  “Why aren’t you sure? Was there something else that might have woken you up?”

  “No. No, I don’t mean that.” Frustrated, she put the mug down on the table and stood up. “It’s gone from my head. It’s going from my head. I remember being outside, but I don’t remember getting there. And I don’t know what I was thinking when I was out there. Or how long I was out there.” The slightly high pitch in her tone showed her fear. “It’s all getting confused in my mind, like a dream.” She stared at me and then at George, as if he was a better bet for answers. “How can that be? How can memories from only minutes ago have vanished?”

  For once it was George that paused and I cut in, taking inspiration from Oliver’s suggestion of earlier. “Maybe you were sleepwalking.”

  She stared at me incredulously. “Sleepwalking? But that’s crazy!”

  “Is it? You just said that you can’t really remember waking up or being outside. Sounds like sleepwalking to me.”

  George’s wise old eyes narrowed and I knew he didn’t believe it any more than Maine on the other side of the room, but I figured he knew what I was doing. There was no need for Katie to be any more disturbed by this ordeal than necessary.

  “But I don’t sleepwalk. I’ve never done it.” Although her words were denying the possibility, there was hesitation in her voice. She wanted to believe it, and no one could blame her for that.

  I shrugged. “Well, this isn’t exactly a normal situation, is it? It’s likely we’ll all react differently than normal.”

  “But I went out there and there were widows there. Lots of them, waiting for me.” Her eyes flickered as she desperately sought a memory she could trust. “Weren’t there?”

  Taking a quiet, deep breath I shook my head. “You said there were. In fact, you insisted there were. But I didn’t see anything out there.” I looked over to Maine and the rows of mercifully dark computer screens. “You were watching out for us. Did you see anything?” My voice was measured, but I hoped he was pic
king up what I was expecting from him.

  “Nope. Just you two staring out at the fence. There was no activity at that end of the compound at all.”

  Good man. I could forgive him the occasional drink on duty for the smoothness of that lie.

  Katie’s eyes widened. “Are you sure? Are you sure there was nothing out there?”

  We both nodded.

  “So you see, sleepwalking is the only thing that makes sense.” I smiled gently at her, and eventually she nodded.

  “Yes, I guess you must be right.” She sniffed, wiping her nose on the oversized soaking sweatshirt.

  Standing up, George yawned. “What do you say we all go and try some sleeping again? I know my old bones could do with a couple more hours.”

  “Yes, me too. Let’s leave Oliver to the radio and get back to our beds.”

  Katie followed us meekly as we crept back into the dark of the dormitory, and we stayed silent until we’d reached the girls’ rooms at the back. She said good night without turning to face us, and before I could even get embarrassed by her casual dismissal of me, the door clicked quietly shut. George and I exchanged a concerned look, but before we could vocalise our concerns in whispers, the door opposite opened. Jane and Rebecca were both awake, the small bedside light on.

  Rebecca’s hands flew into a series of precise actions, her dark eyes focused on George. When she stopped he started, and he must have conveyed the events of the past hour pretty well, because she frowned slightly before continuing their silent conversation with elegant gesturing fingers.

  I watched amazed before interrupting George’s flow with a nudge in the ribs. “When did you learn to sign?”

  A small pinch of pain crossed his face and he shrugged. “My grandson was deaf.” For a moment his pain passed into me. He’d used the past tense. I guess George had decided it was time to come to terms with the probable fate of his daughter’s family.

  Rebecca’s hands burst into life again and this time George smiled.