by Amy Cross
“Try the engine again!” Freeman yelled
Turning the key, Lizzie felt the engine engage for a moment before it died. She tried again, with the same result, before pausing for a moment.
“This is hopeless,” she whispered. “We can't go anywhere.”
“Please God,” Kirsty said, her voice trembling with fear, “I believe in you, I swear. Just get us out of here!”
Turning to look at Beth, Lizzie saw the smile on the dead lips of her former friend, and slowly she felt a sense of defiance rising through her chest.
“Go to hell,” she continued, before turning the key again and again, each time bringing the engine to life for a few spluttering seconds before, finally, she tried again and this time the entire coach shuddered as the engine engaged.
“Are we moving?” Kirsty asked, her voice suddenly filled with hope. “Is it working?”
“Hang on,” Lizzie replied, pulling the gear level back before slamming her foot on the accelerator.
The coach lurched forward, almost knocking Beth down before Lizzie turned the wheel and began to drive across the bumpy road.
“Where do I go?” she shouted.
“Turn it around and head down!” Freeman yelled.
Driving forward, Lizzie saw a couple of undead campers stumbling straight toward her. Instead of swerving to avoid them, she kept going and closed her eyes as she ran straight over their bodies, causing the coach to bump for a moment as she drove past the top of the road and onto the muddy field. Opening her eyes again and turning the wheel, she began to drive in a circle until the coach finally faced the road again, and this time she drove forward, wincing as she knocked down a few more of the creatures. Up ahead, Beth was standing in the middle of the road, but Lizzie kept her foot down until, at the last moment, Beth stepped aside to let the coach go past.
“We're actually moving!” Kirsty shouted. “This is insane!”
“Don't slow down!” Freeman called out as he stumbled back along the aisle. “If you slow, you might knock the leads out again!”
“This road's too bumpy!” Lizzie shouted. “I feel like we're going to topple over!”
“We won't,” he told her, looking back to see that they'd cleared the last of the creatures. “Trust me, this thing is built to -”
Before he could finish, he heard a loud car horn nearby, and he turned just in time to see that two large trucks were racing toward them.
Slamming her foot on the brakes, Lizzie brought the coach to a halt just in time to avoid driving head-first into the other vehicles. She stared in horror as one of the trucks swerved sideways to block the road, while the other stopped and several soldiers jumped out.
“What's going on?” she asked, her mind racing with shock. “Where did they come from?”
“Who cares?” Crystal replied, stumbling toward the door. “They're here to save us!”
“And they have guns,” Lizzie whispered, watching as several of the soldiers took up position facing the coach.
“Never trust a soldier,” Freeman muttered.
“You have to help us!” Crystal shouted, pulling the emergency release mechanism that opened the door, before hurrying outside. “Thank God you're here, something awful has happened up at the camp!”
“Stop!” one of the soldiers shouted, aiming his gun directly at her.
“How did they know?” Lizzie asked as she and Kirsty climbed out of the roach, followed by Freeman.
“This is a code red situation!” one of the soldiers called out, making his way toward them with his gun aimed at Crystal. “Mount Everbee is on lock-down due to a high-grade military incident. No-one's allowed out.”
“Those things are monsters!” Crystal told him, stepping forward. “They're trying to kill us!”
“M'am,” he replied, “if you come any closer I'll be forced to restrain you.”
“My name is Crystal Wallace,” she replied, heading over to him, “and I'm the owner of this camp, I have full -”
“M'am!”
“You listen to me!” she shouted, suddenly sounding much angrier than before. “There is a situation here, but -”
Before she could finish, the soldier aimed his rifle and fired once, shooting a dart into her shoulder. She took a step back, let out a faint gasp, and then crumpled to the ground.
“As I said before,” the soldier continued, aiming his rifle at the others, “this is a code red military lock-down. Does anyone else want to argue with me, or are you guys going to start listening to what I want you to do next?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“This is bullshit!” Freeman shouted, banging on the cabin door. “If these assholes don't let us out of here right now, I'm gonna... I swear, I'll...”
“You'll do what?” Kirsty asked as she sat next to Crystal's unconscious body. “Face it, they're in charge now. At least the danger's over. I guess they just wanna quarantine us and shit like that, in case we've got, like, one of those things inside us. It kinda makes sense, in a way.” She checked her watch. “How much longer do you think they'll be with Lizzie? It's probably my turn next. Maybe they'll give me something for my foot, too.”
“I'm not an animal,” Freeman replied, taking a step back for a moment and eying the door as if he was planning something. “I will not be caged like this.”
“Listen, the -”
“Do you seriously think the government isn't behind this?” he continued, turning to her. “Are you that naive? Have you drunk that much of the goddamn Kool-Aid?”
“Why would the government release loads of weird little cancer mutants at a holiday camp?” Kirsty asked. “It doesn't make sense.”
“Black ops,” he replied, pacing over to the other side of the cabin before turning to look at the door again. “Psychological warfare. Experiments that have to go under the radar. You have no idea what kind of thing the government gets up to, kid. For all we know, it could be alien technology that they acquired from one of their research facilities in the Mojave, or something that was found in a prehistoric lake and accidentally revived.” He turned and saw the look of skepticism on her face. “You're just another sheep who follows orders and takes her information from the mainstream media.”
“And you seem like a total conspiracy theorist,” Kirsty replied, looking down at Crystal. “How much longer do you think she'll be unconscious? Whatever was in that dart, it's knocked her out cold.”
“Thank God for that,” Freeman muttered, before falling silent for a moment as he continued to study the door. He took a deep breath, as if he was trying to calm himself, and then he closed his eyes and began to mutter something under his breath.
“Dude?” Kirsty said after a moment. “Are you okay?”
She waited, but he offered no reply.
“Seriously,” she continued, “are you -”
Suddenly he opened his eyes and rushed forward, slamming his shoulder into the door and then falling back and crashing to the floor with a cry of pain.
“Yeah,” Kirsty muttered, “I don't think that's gonna work.”
“We have to get out of here,” he replied, getting to his feet. “They took my sister!”
“I'm sure she'll be fine. At least she's getting medical attention. Anyway, we're safe now. It's all over.”
“Over?” He turned to her. “How stupid can you be? This is nowhere near being over.”
***
“My name,” the man said calmly, sitting on the other side of the desk, “is John Lincoln. My job here is to assess the situation and determine the appropriate course of action.” He looked down at his paperwork for a moment. “So, your name is -”
“These things are real,” Lizzie said firmly. “You have to believe me.”
“I do believe you.”
“They killed everyone. Pretty much everyone, anyway. I know this probably sounds crazy, but you have to believe me, I'm not making any of it up. Ask the others.”
“I do believe you,” Lincoln said again. “Reall
y. I believe every word you've said to me so far, and I have no doubt that I'll believe the rest of what you have to say.”
She stared at him for a moment. “Really?”
He nodded, with a faint smile.
“How?” she asked. “I mean... Why?”
“First,” he continued, “I saw your video.” He held up his phone and began to play the video that Lizzie had uploaded a few days earlier. “Not many people pay attention to this type of thing,” he told her, “but it's kind of my job. I've been expecting a video like this to show up for a while now. I was praying it wouldn't, of course, but I'm a realist.”
“Do you know what it is?” she asked.
He paused for a moment.
“Do you?” she asked again.
“I do. Kind of.” He set his phone down. “That's the other reason I believe you, Lizzie. The truth is, I've seen these things before. Well, a version of them. Last time they were mostly a kind of off-white color, I have no idea why this latest generation has become jet-black, but that's something we can determine at a later date. The important thing right now is that this isn't the first time we, and I, have encountered them.”
“Where did you see them before?” she asked.
“That's classified information.”
“Was it Leadenford Hospital?” She immediately noticed a slight change in his expression. “I'm right, aren't I?” she continued. “The sacks in the forest are medical waste from Leadenford Hospital. Whatever this thing is, it got here in those sacks. Leadenford's the place that was destroyed by a terrorist attack a couple of years ago.”
“So they say,” Lincoln replied calmly.
“Is that story true?” she asked.
“Why wouldn't it be?”
“Because it seems like a hell of a coincidence.”
“It does,” he replied, looking down at his paperwork again for a moment. He paused for a few seconds, as if he was trying to decide how much to tell her, before turning to her again. “I was at Leadenford on the day that... things went wrong. As a matter of fact, I took a sample away before the place was destroyed. A sample of one of these creatures.”
“Terrorists didn't destroy Leadenford, did they?”
“No, Lizzie. Terrorists had nothing to do with it. If only. Terrorists, we could deal with.”
“So who was responsible?”
“Let's just say...” He paused, clearly a little uncomfortable. “Let's just say that some very difficult decisions has to be taken back then, and that a number of very good people died, including a man who I personally believe might have been able to help us eradicate the threat if a way had been found for him to live. The problem was, we considered the danger to be so extreme that only a scorched earth policy offered the level of protection we needed. In theory, that should have been the end of the story. The only sample of this thing was supposed to be the one in our possession.”
“But?” Lizzie replied.
“But we reckoned without Camp Everbee.” He paused again. “I'm still piecing the story together, but from what I can tell, it seems that for some months prior to the Leadenford incident, the hospital had been illegally transporting medical waste to this location. Obviously that waste had become contaminated at some point between the arrival of Dominique Ribery at the hospital and the decision to quarantine the site.”
“Who's Dominique Ribery?”
“That doesn't matter right now,” he continued. “What matters at this particular moment is that we need to contain the situation again. The approach we used at Leadenford would have worked if it hadn't been for the illegal waste dumping program. This time, we can't afford to have any loose ends.”
“So have you caught them all?”
“And who do you mean by that?” he asked.
“Them! The creatures!”
“We found some bodies behind the coach you were driving,” he continued, “and I'm sure we'll find some more in the burned-out building. We also found multiple bodies in some of the cabins, but as to whether we've managed to track down every last one of the infected individuals... Based on a preliminary head-count, we believe that a number are still at large. They most likely headed into the forest when we arrived.”
“You have to go after them!”
“We're working to coordinate our efforts with other agencies.”
“There's no time,” she continued, getting to her feet, “those things -”
“Sit down, Ms. Miller.”
“You have to listen to me!”
“I am listening to you, but you really need to sit down.”
“Or what? You'll shoot me with a dart?” She paused. “Or worse? Why don't you just blow the entire camp up, with all of us inside, and say it was another terrorist attack?” She waited for him to reply, but a slow sense of unease began to creep through her gut as she saw the expression in his eyes. “You wouldn't,” she stammered, “you can't, that'd be...”
“Please sit down...”
“That'd be murder.”
“Please,” he continued, clearly struggling to stay calm, “sit back down and we can discuss this like reasonable people.”
Taking a seat again, Lizzie stared at him. She didn't want to let him see that she was scared, but she suddenly felt desperately helpless.
“I need to know a few things,” he told her. “First of all, I need to know if you've had any other contact with the outside world since this incident began. I know you uploaded the video, but that was before we cut off all communication systems between the camp and the outside world. Have you spoken to anyone else, via any means?”
She shook her head.
“Good. And are you aware of anyone else from the camp having escaped?”
“I don't think so.”
“Okay.” He made a note on one of his pieces of paper. “So the situation has so far been contained. We have no indication that anyone made it past the perimeter, although obviously we can't rest on our laurels.”
“Apart from my video.”
“Which has been taken down. We're working hard to contain this thing, but for that to happen, I need your help.” He slid a sheet of paper over to her, containing a print-out showing the faces of all twenty-four people who had arrived for the camp a few days earlier. “I need you take his pen,” he continued, “and draw a cross through the face of every person who you know, for certain, was killed by those things. I also need you to draw a circle around the face of every person who you know, without any doubt whatsoever, has been infected. Don't worry, I know you probably have doubts, but don't question yourself too much. Just do your best.”
“I...” Staring at the photos, Lizzie felt a lump in her throat as she saw a picture of Laura staring back at her. As her eyes scanned the page, she also saw images of Todd and Beth, along with herself and a few other people she recognized.
“Please, Ms. Miller,” he continued. “I'm sure you can imagine that the world is in danger if these creatures get out. For now they're confined to Camp Everbee and its immediate surroundings, but the longer we wait, the greater the risk that they could reach a road, or a town. The consequences are unimaginable.”
Picking up the pen in her trembling hand, Lizzie paused for a moment before drawing a cross through Laura's face.
“Are you sure?” Lincoln asked.
She nodded.
“If you're not absolutely -”
“I'm sure,” she said firmly. “She's dead.”
“Did you know her?”
“She sacrificed herself for the rest of us,” she replied, with tears in her eyes. “When we escaped from the main building, she stayed behind and... I don't know exactly what she did, but a few minutes later the whole thing went up in flames. She wanted us to get a statue made in return.”
“Maybe that can be arranged,” he said with a smile. “Go on. Who else is dead?”
She drew a circle around Beth's face.
“She was infected?”
“I think she was the first.”
> “And as far as you know, is she -”
“She's not dead. Not unless you guys got to her.”
“We didn't.”
“Then she's out there somewhere.” She drew circles around a couple of other faces and then crossed them out, thinking back for a moment to when she'd run them down with the coach a few hours earlier. “I killed them,” she whispered.
“They were infected?”
“That still doesn't make it right.”
“You were defending yourself.”
“But what if they could have been saved?” she asked, looking over at him. “You've studied these things, right? Once one of those creatures gets inside a body, is there any way it can be extracted again? Can the person go back to normal?”
“That's not something we've tried yet,” he replied. “The integration of the creature with its host seems to be very complete, and it grows stronger over time. If we were to attempt a de-coupling, I think the chance of the host surviving would be very low indeed. The creature, on the other hand, appears to be remarkably resilient, so I think it might be able to move from one body to another without suffering any substantial damage.”
“I don't know about the rest,” she said, putting the pen down and sliding the piece of paper back to him. “I'm sorry, it was dark and I could barely see what was happening.”
“That's okay, you did a good job. This is a start.”
“So can I go now?”
“Go?”
“I've answered all your questions,” she told him. “I just want to get away from this place. I want to go home and forget that Camp Everbee even exists.”
“It's not as simple as that,” he continued. “A zero-access perimeter has been set up around the entire mountain for the time being, which means no-one is allowed in or out. I'm sure you can understand that we have to take every precaution, even if our measures might seem a little over-the-top.”
“But I'm not infected.”
“And how do I know that for sure?”
“Examine me.”
“I will, but I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for. Short of cutting you open to take a look, I don't know how to tell whether or not one of those things is inside you.”
