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.”
Of course, as soon as I say it, I wish I hadn’t. Because now all three of them are scuttling away from me like I’m public enemy number one.
“Your mother?”
Pete is looking at me with extreme disgust, like I’ve just taken a dump in his mouth. It’s almost funny. I feel a giggle well up inside of me, but push it down. Going all fruit-loopy now is not going to help.
My mother. My mother.
“Xanthro Industries is a pharmaceutical and biotech company.” Pete has one beady green eye on the laptop, the other on me in case I leap up and bite his head off.
“No kidding.” Smitty’s eyes are fixed on mine. Without a flicker.
Pete nods, reading. “They make drugs. Experimental drugs. Including the contents of Veggie Juice, I’m betting?” He’s swaying, quite literally reeling, with shock.
Reel all you like, Pete, you won’t touch what’s going on inside my head right now. The first feeling is sheer un-frickin’-believable flabbergastery — but the second feeling is even weirder. The feeling that I’m not surprised.
Because Xanthro Industries is basically responsible for everything that’s wrong in my life. The company kept my mother away from birthdays, school plays, and the umpteen times I had a boo-boo and needed her there to kiss it better. They uprooted us to the US, then worse, dragged us back to the UK. They made my mother work so hard for so long that she — a doctor — never noticed my dad was sick until it was way too late. So, really, the idea that Xanthro Industries should be involved in a zombie apocalypse does not surprise me one tiny bit.
But the idea that Mum’s involved? Ever since I hit my teens, I’ve been convinced that my mother was a nightmare, but I put that down to hormones. Hers and mine. It’s not like she’s über-evil or anything. And yet now it all makes stomach-lurching sense: the long trips away, the tiredness and stress etched into her face. The photograph, her lingering smell on that leather chair. She’s been working here, at the castle.
But did she do this? Did she make those monsters?
“What’s the story, Bob?” Smitty’s voice is calm but serious.
I look at the three pale and angry faces across the room.
“I have no idea what’s going on.”
Wow, that sounds super-convincing. Actually makes it sound like I masterminded the whole thing.
“Look.” I scramble to my feet, and they all take another step backward. “Why on earth would I be here — in the middle of everything — if my mother had been involved in this? Why would she put me in danger?”
“Ha!” Alice snaps. “If you were my daughter, I’d do the same.”
“Wrong,” I snap back. “As much as things with my mother are . . . difficult, she’d never risk losing me.” It’s only when I say it out loud that I realize it’s true. “Not after last year, not after my dad dying. It would be too much for her.” I feel a lump forming in my throat.
Smitty’s face softens a little. “Your dad died?”
“Six months ago.” My breathing almost stops. It’s the only good way to keep those pesky emotions down; just don’t breathe and you can fool yourself it doesn’t hurt. “He had cancer. Which is kind of ironic, seeing as my mother’s an oncology specialist.”
“A what?” Alice clearly thinks I’m making this shit up.
“A cancer doctor,” Smitty mutters.
Alice shakes her head. “Your dad carked it? Great sob story, you loser.”
“Shut it, Malice!” Smitty shouts.
I feel my shoulders inching up around my ears. “My mother researches cures, does clinical trials. But she doesn’t grow zombies in a lab.”
Pete crouches down on the floor, engrossed with the laptop again. “They were creating a drug here at the castle, for sure. There are some notes, fragments of e-mails. I don’t pretend to understand it, but it’s something to do with activating dormant antibodies with a chemical stimulant.”
Alice finds time to roll her eyes. “Oh, spare us the science bit.”
Pete glares at her. “This is all the science bit, you ignorant donkey.”
“Stand down, Batgirl and Lady Shiva.” Smitty walks toward me, then turns back to face Alice and Pete. “Bobby’s kosher. So her ma works for some evil drug corporation. Big fat deal. She nearly got chomped good and proper more times than either of you.”
I’m grateful, of course. My shoulders drop a little as he stands by my side. I risk a look, and our eyes catch for a second. Thank you. Alice sees the shared glance, and groans sarcastically. Smitty ignores her.
“Whatever you believe about Bobby, think about looking after yourselves. Grace said there was some kind of antidote here. We should look for it. At the very least it will give us something to bargain with if the bad guys show up.” He strides over to the wall. “Aren’t there any lights in here? This spooky shadow crap is getting old.”
We look for a switch.
I think he’s persuaded them not to kill me — yet.
“Got it!” Alice finds the switch and flicks it.
There’s a loud bang. I don’t so much hear it as feel it; the tower walls shake and the floor vibrates.
“What did you do?” cries Pete at Alice.
“Nothing!”
I shake my head. “That was something outside.”
Alice is already scrambling up to the window ledge, with Smitty close behind.
I run across the room to the security camera screens. Smoke is obscuring the pictures, but I can make out people outside, dozens of people — at the gates, at the front door, and many more in the courtyard. My heart leaps. The army! They’ve found us at last. Guns a-blazing, they’ve come to rescue us!
Then the wind changes direction and the smoke clears. There’s an oil drum burning — that must have been the bang we heard, not army guns. The grainy black-and-white figures are stumbling and clawing the air. Their heads are lolling. The dog is there, too, barking and snapping at the figur
es agitatedly.
It’s not an army.
The hordes have come home.
Alice’s screams from the window confirm it.
Smitty, flattened against the glass, cries out, “There’s Pube-Face!”
I look at the courtyard screen again. Michael is holding what looks to be a gas can in one hand and a makeshift torch in the other, waving it at the mob.
“Oh my god!” Alice is pressed against the glass beside Smitty. “He is so dead.”
“But not Undead.” Pete joins me at the TV screens, standing a little farther away than he would have ten minutes ago. “Yet.”
As we watch, Shaq emerges from the Ski-Doos’ stable. Even with the blurred resolution on the screen, I can read his look of desperation. They can’t escape on the Ski-Doos. I feel for the spiky lump in my pocket. I have the keys.
The hordes advance.
Michael looks like he’s screaming for Shaq, who has disappeared back into the stables. Or maybe he’s shouting for Grace, who is nowhere to be seen. Maybe she’s fared better with her cattle prod, or maybe she was standing too close to the oil drum when it went off. Or maybe she’s already one of the hungry crowd.
Shaq appears again. But it’s not because of Michael’s screaming. Cam is clinging to his leg, clinging with arms, legs, and teeth, latched on, immovable. Shaq can’t run far with a three-year-old zombie on his leg, and he falls just clear of the door.
The crowd moves in. Michael flings gas wildly from his can, and waves his fiery torch, but the liquid splashes over nobody but him. And then, inevitably, he lights up like a beacon, the flames whipping up over his head. He hurls the torch away from himself, his arms lifted in a useless effort to extinguish the fire, silently dancing a jig on our black-and-white TV screen.
I turn away.
Smitty, who caught the whole episode at the window in Technicolor, turns away, too.
“We have to get out of here, we have to go now!” Alice jumps down from the ledge.
I hit the button to turn the kitchen camera on again. Black smoke oozes thickly from the door leading to the mudroom. What are the chances? Michael’s last action was to throw his torch into the castle and set us all on fire.
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