Ben stared at the scene in horror. Berserk didn’t even begin to describe Mr Canning’s behaviour. Somehow an ordinary day at school had transitioned into a nightmare.
The Head continued to chew on his grisly meal, staring coldly back at the two men with eyes that burned with a strange golden gleam. He made no attempt to flee or otherwise react to their arrival. Instead he behaved like a man whose mid-morning coffee break had been rudely interrupted by subordinates.
Ben tried to make himself think straight. He couldn’t be certain about the identity of the girl. She wasn’t one of the girls Ben taught. She was from Year 8 perhaps – Hannah or Harriet, or something like that. They were too late to save her, but they had to do something.
Mr Canning was middle-aged and pot-bellied, and Ben had never thought of him as remotely dangerous. But he’d been a keen sportsman when he first came to the school, and there was a madness in his eyes. It would be folly to underestimate him, especially considering that he’d just murdered this poor girl.
Ben was taller than Mr Canning and much fitter. He ran half-marathons regularly, and sometimes competed in triathlons too. He felt confident that he could handle himself in a fight, although he’d never had to test that hypothesis. Brian Lee was short, but taught after-school Judo classes and looked fit enough. Together, they ought to be able to handle the Headmaster if they had to. Brian Lee looked queasy though, and the Head had an air of calm about him that made him very dangerous. Since the girl was already dead, containment seemed the wisest approach.
‘Let’s play this quietly,’ said Ben. ‘We don’t want to provoke him.’
Brian Lee nodded in agreement. They separated, blocking the only two exits. Ben moved in front of an outside door, and Mr Lee blocked the way back to the main corridor.
Mr Canning watched them calmly. He seemed to understand what they were doing, but he made no attempt to push past them to escape. Instead he stood up, blood dribbling down his white shirt, and shuffled backward through the open doorway of his office, leaving the mutilated body of the girl in the hallway.
Ben breathed a sigh of relief. If they could just avoid a confrontation until the police arrived, there would be no need for any further violence. And surely even that idiot sports teacher Mr Johnson would have thought of calling for the police by now.
His hopes were dashed by a girl’s scream.
The Headmaster emerged from his office again, this time with a second girl. Ben recognized her red hair and freckled face immediately. Rose Hallibury, from the class he had just taught that afternoon. Her face was ashen, her green eyes wide and staring, but she seemed to be uninjured as far as he could tell. Mr Canning gripped her slim neck with one arm, wrapping the other firmly round her middle. Rose walked like she was in a trance. The Head guided her out into the middle of the corridor, then stopped. ‘Looks like I’ve been caught at last,’ he said. ‘And I haven’t even finished eating my dinner.’
The words shocked Ben. The Head had become so monstrous through his actions that he had seemed beyond human speech. The fact that he could speak about his actions in such a casual way seemed utterly chilling. And what did he mean caught at last? Ben pushed that thought aside.
‘It’s very bad manners to watch other people eating,’ continued the Head. ‘Go away and leave me to finish with Rose.’
Ben opened his mouth to speak, but his throat had dried and he had to swallow before he could form words. ‘Let her go, Headmaster,’ he said. ‘You can’t hope to escape.’
Mr Canning squeezed Rose tighter around the neck and she gasped. ‘Escape? That wasn’t my plan at all. The time for that would seem to be well past. No, I had merely hoped to finish my meal in peace, but you have interrupted me most rudely. Why don’t you and Mr Lee just go back to your classrooms and let me finish what I started?’
Ben shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Let her go,’ he repeated.
‘Or what?’ demanded the Head. ‘If you come near, I’ll kill her.’ He tightened his grip around Rose’s pale neck again. ‘I’ll kill her anyway,’ he laughed. ‘Like I killed the others. You can’t stop me.’
Others. The word hung sickeningly in the air between them.
Ben measured the distance between himself and Mr Canning. They were at least a dozen paces apart. He took a step forward and saw the Head jerk Rose’s neck to one side in response. The girl cried out and Ben stepped back.
‘Release the girl now,’ called Mr Lee. ‘Unharmed.’
Mr Canning laughed contemptuously. ‘Not much of a negotiator, are you, Mr Lee?’ he sneered. ‘What do you offer me in her place? She’s such a pretty little thing.’
Ben took another step forward before he even realized what he was doing. ‘Take me instead,’ he said. He raised his hands to show that they were empty.
‘Hmm,’ said Mr Canning. ‘You don’t look half as tasty as young Rose here.’ He bared his teeth and pressed them against the whiteness of her neck.
‘No!’ Ben stepped forward again, his hands raised high over his head. ‘Leave her alone. If you try to hurt her, Mr Lee and I will take you down. But if you release Rose, you can have me.’
Mr Canning paused, his teeth nuzzling against Rose’s slender neck. ‘To eat?’ he inquired.
Ben swallowed hard. ‘If that’s what it takes.’
‘Well, well, aren’t you the hero, all of a sudden?’ sneered the Head. ‘Ben Harvey, hero of Manor Road School. Won’t all the ladies be impressed! What a shame he had to die so horribly.’
‘No, Ben,’ said Mr Lee, putting an arm on his elbow.
Ben put out a hand to silence him. He took another step forward. ‘Let her go. I’ll give myself up.’
Mr Canning looked at him thoughtfully. ‘How can I trust you though? You’ll need to tie yourself up. Or better still, get Mr Lee to do it for you. There’s some rope in my office. Wait a moment.’ He disappeared back through the doorway, shuffling slowly backward, taking Rose with him.
‘You’ve gone mad too,’ hissed Brian Lee. ‘You can’t allow him to take you. It’s monstrous.’
‘I can’t allow him to harm that girl.’
‘What if it’s a trick?’
‘I have to take that risk.’
Mr Canning emerged from his office with Rose once more, kicking a short length of rope in front of him. He slid it across the smooth floor toward Mr Lee. ‘There you go. Tie him up. And make it secure. I’ll be watching carefully.’ He twisted Rose’s neck and the girl cried out again. ‘Do it now,’ he said.
‘Go on,’ said Ben, turning his back to Mr Lee, his hands crossed over each other behind him.
Mr Lee picked up the rope hesitantly. Slowly he wrapped it around Ben’s wrists and tied the ends into a knot.
‘Tighter!’ yelled Mr Canning.
Mr Lee pulled the rope tight. ‘Do you have a plan?’ he whispered in Ben’s ear.
‘Just to get the girl away from him,’ replied Ben. ‘As soon as he releases her, you get her out of here as fast as you can. Don’t worry about me.’
Brian Lee nodded, almost imperceptibly. ‘Good luck,’ he said.
Ben turned to face the Headmaster. ‘Okay, release the girl.’
‘Not so fast,’ said the Head. ‘First you come over here and sit on the floor.’ He pointed at a place a few paces in front of him.
Ben walked slowly, his eyes fixed on Mr Canning. When he reached the spot the Head had indicated he dropped to one knee, then onto both knees, and sat on the floor. The body of the dead girl lay splayed out nearby, her clothes ripped. Her torso was covered in bite marks.
Mr Canning twitched his mouth into a crude mockery of a smile, revealing a row of sharp teeth, saliva dripping from his tongue. Close up, the veins beneath his skin bulged and pulsed alarmingly. The whites of his eyes were visibly yellow, and his ruby lips seemed engorged with blood. ‘Very good, Mr Harvey. Aren’t you an obedient little puppy? I wish all my teachers were as tractable as you.’
‘Let Rose go now,’ said Ben. �
�I’ve done what you asked.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Mr Canning, but he seemed reluctant to release the girl.
Brian Lee took a step forward. ‘Release her now, man! You’ve got what you wanted.’
‘Yes I have, haven’t I?’ said Mr Canning. A sly look flashed across his face as he spoke the words and he spun forward, bringing his leg up.
Ben rose to his knees but the ball of Mr Canning’s foot impacted with his forehead, flinging him back against the wall. Pain exploded in Ben’s head, and his ears filled with a loud ringing. He collapsed onto his side and sprawled on the floor, unable to move with his arms tied tightly behind him. He looked up at Mr Canning as if through a red mist.
The Headmaster stood tall, an insane glee in his eyes. His mouth opened and closed, but the noise in Ben’s head blocked out the words. A smile spread across the Headmaster’s face. He pulled Rose’s neck toward him and opened his jaws wide to bite.
As Ben watched helplessly from the floor, Brian Lee shouted something. Then everything unfolded in a flash.
Rose kicked her heel backward like a mule, striking the Headmaster in the shin. He roared in fury and relaxed his grip on her long enough for her to twist out of his grasp.
Brian Lee rushed forward to take her, but he was too slow. Rose had already pulled a ball point pen out of her pocket, and before the Headmaster could react, she plunged the pen into his left eye.
The Headmaster staggered backward, the pen protruding from his bulging eye, blood spurting from the wound. His arms flailed helplessly in front of him.
Brian Lee dropped his head and barrelled straight into him, sending him crashing to the floor.
The last thing Ben saw before he passed out was the Headmaster writhing like a dying insect, still trying to draw the barrel of the pen out of his empty eye socket.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Manor Road, South London, waxing moon
Chris Crohn knew that he had to get out of the city soon to have any chance of survival. Events were escalating alarmingly and they were worryingly close to home. He’d been right about Mr Canning the Headmaster being a werewolf. He’d been at school today when the Head had attacked that girl. Only some quick thinking and even faster running had saved him from becoming a werewolf meal himself. Even Seth would have to believe him now.
First Mr Leigh the Geography teacher, now Mr Canning the Headmaster. He was certain that other teachers were infected too. Maybe some of the students as well. No way was he ever going back to that school.
It wasn’t just at school either. The number of events recorded by his werewolf-tracking app was growing exponentially and they were spreading across the whole of London. He’d identified a few hotspots in the initial stages of the outbreak, mainly south of the River Thames in Brixton, Croydon and Clapham, and north of the river in Kensington. But now the incidents spread as far as Heathrow Airport in the west and Gravesend to the east. They were appearing in other population centres too, like Birmingham, Leeds and even as far north as Edinburgh all the way up in Scotland. It was safe to say that the werewolf crisis was becoming a national epidemic.
The incidents had steadily stepped up in severity too, from casual sightings and near-misses in the early days, to officially-reported attacks and deaths. And still the authorities hadn’t realized what was really happening. The Beast, the Ripper, … why didn’t they just say the word? Werewolf.
By Chris’ reckoning, London would be overwhelmed with werewolves within months, perhaps even weeks. Other cities and large towns would fall like dominoes soon after. By the time the police and other agencies realized the true nature of the threat it would be too late to stop it.
It was probably already too late. His only hope now was to make it out into the countryside before the werewolves took over.
He spread out a large paper map on his bed. With all the computer equipment and survival gear filling his apartment, there were barely any other flat surfaces left, certainly none big enough to hold the entire expanse of the United Kingdom, including England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with every major city, town, road, river and mountain marked in ink.
The printed document was something of a throwback, yet in the short time that he’d owned a real paper map, he had come to appreciate its elegance and beauty. He loved the crisp feel of the paper in his hands, the way that it concertinaed open and closed, and the exquisite detail it presented to the knowledgeable map user. You couldn’t pinch or zoom a paper map, and any scrolling involved physically moving your head across its surface. In technological terms it was obsolete, and yet he felt a growing respect for its designers, who had made a two-dimensional model of the real world using such primitive tools and techniques. Plus of course it had the advantage of being always-on, with no need for a wireless network or even electricity.
In idle moments Chris had even begun to wonder if physical media might be the way of the future, and whether he ought to think about replacing his downloaded music collection with vinyl, like Seth had so often argued. But of course the werewolf apocalypse would render such questions irrelevant. There would be no music, downloaded or otherwise, once civilization had collapsed.
In the evenings after school finished and before Jujitsu class started, he had begun to draw markings on the map, indicating the spread of the epidemic. It was moving out from the capital in all directions, with road and rail links its primary means of propagation. His best bet was to avoid all major transport routes and travel off-grid into the wilderness.
England didn’t really have much in the way of wilderness, but there were still pockets of under-development, places where natural beauty, local protestors or a sheer lack of economic impetus had prevented too much building. The county of North Yorkshire had one of the lowest population densities in the country, and so did Herefordshire, close to the Welsh border. Chris’ grandparents lived in Herefordshire and he had fond memories of driving past its open pastures and through small market towns. The number of cows living there had always seemed to outnumber the people, and it would be a good place to live off the land after civilization had ended. He drew a large X in red on his 1:1,000,000 scale map of the British Isles and folded it back up carefully.
The main challenge was how to get there. Trains, buses and other means of public transport were no longer safe. A dismembered corpse had been found on a commuter train out of King’s Cross station earlier in the week, just another of the unsolved Ripper murders. No way was Chris getting on a train or a bus with werewolves on the loose.
Travelling by private car on minor roads would be by far the best option, but there was one problem. Chris didn’t own a car.
Seth did, however.
‘You can’t be serious,’ said Seth, when he came around to the apartment that evening. ‘Mr Canning, a werewolf?’
‘I saw it with my own eyes. He killed one girl and attacked another. He nearly killed Mr Harvey, the Biology teacher too.’
‘No way.’
‘I saw it myself, Seth. I nearly died.’
Seth flicked his long unruly hair away from his face. Was that a look of admiration in his eyes, or merely scorn? ‘What happened in the end?’ he asked.
‘Two of the teachers took him down and the police arrested him. They said he’d already eaten one of the girls.’
‘Gross,’ said Seth. ‘And was he actually a wolf?’
‘No,’ admitted Chris. ‘He was still in human form. It’s not the full moon until tomorrow night.’
‘So how do you know he’s really a werewolf? He might just be a sicko.’
‘Like Mr Leigh the Geography teacher?’ said Chris.
‘Yeah.’
‘And the Romanian man they said was the Ripper?’
‘Yeah.’
Chris glared at his friend. How stupid could someone be? ‘What about the Beast?’ he demanded.
‘There haven’t been any Beast sightings for about a month,’ said Seth.
‘Exactly,’ said Chris triumphantl
y. ‘Not since the last full moon.’
Seth flicked the hair away from his glasses. Chris could see that he was thinking it over carefully. Eventually he said, ‘Even if you’re right, I think it would be best to wait and see what happens.’
Chris shook his head in frustration. ‘No. It’s already almost too late. Surely you understand how exponential growth works. In the first week there’s just a single werewolf, then two in the second week, and four in week three. The increase is almost too small to detect. But after eight weeks there are two hundred and fifty-six, and after twelve weeks the number has exploded to four thousand and ninety-six. Do you know how many there are after twenty-four weeks?’
Seth thought for a minute, his brow furrowed in deep trenches. ‘One million, six hundred and seventy-seven thousand, two hundred and sixteen.’
‘Right,’ agreed Chris. Perhaps Seth wasn’t quite as stupid as he seemed. ‘Which means that everyone’s a werewolf, or else they’re dead. Everyone, that is, except us. But only if we get out now.’
‘And you want to travel by car?’
‘It’s the only safe way.’
‘And you have supplies and a tent and stuff?’
‘Everything we need.’
Seth stroked his beard. ‘Well, I suppose it might be prudent. Where did you say we should go?’
‘Herefordshire.’
‘I’ve never been there,’ said Seth. ‘What is there to see?’
‘Nothing. That’s the whole point.’
‘Hmm,’ said Seth, after a while. ‘Let me think it over.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
Upper Terrace, Richmond upon Thames, West London
Sarah Margolis was perfectly aware that she was watching too much TV, but she had gradually become addicted to it. She’d started recording serious late-night documentaries and watching them the following day when she was home with just Grandpa for company. It was all very educational. But since the old man’s company counted for very little and was tending toward zero, she had stepped up her diet, becoming an avid follower of chat shows, reality shows, quizzes, soaps, magazine-style shows and of course the twenty-four-hour news channels. She knew she should stop, but somehow the number of hours spent in front of the screen had grown, steadily becoming the central focus of her life.
Lycanthropic (Book 1): Wolf Blood Page 16
