by Alex Scarrow
‘Well, they drove both back, so . . .’
‘That sounds coordinated,’ said Fish. ‘Planned, for sure.’
‘Do you think these crabs have –’ Naga shrugged – ‘I don’t know . . . leader crabs?’
The idea sounded ridiculous to Leon. From his experience of them, the things swarmed dumbly like army ants.
‘What, like, brain crabs?’ Fish snorted. ‘Big wobbly brains on legs?’
She could see he was mocking her. ‘Maybe. Why not?’
‘It’s more likely a form of crowd-source intelligence,’ he replied. ‘Like you see with schools of fish, or flocks of birds. Simple rule-set behaviour that each individual follows, but, applied to a crowd of individuals, it starts to look smart. Starts to look like a strategy.’
‘Oh, I think the virus has a strategy,’ said Freya. ‘I mean, it’s built a whole network of roots for starters.’
Fish tucked away his Nintendos. ‘Which is exactly what a tree does. You wouldn’t call a tree smart, though, would you?’
‘It doesn’t even need to be particularly smart,’ said Leon. They all looked at him. ‘If just one of those roots manages to grow across the moat, or up the wall, it’s gonna be game over for us.’
The bedtime horn finally sounded.
‘On that cheerful note,’ said Fish. He got up and folded his chair to take downstairs.
Naga did likewise. ‘Come on.’
‘You go ahead. We’ll catch you up,’ said Leon.
Leon waited until they were both beyond earshot, helped Freya on to her feet and began to collapse their chairs. ‘I haven’t seen Dr Hahn all day, have you?’
Freya shook her head. ‘I went to get some meds earlier. No sign of her.’
‘I hope she’s OK.’
They watched the others disappearing down the steps from the rooftop.
‘Leon?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’re right, you know.’
‘About what?’
‘One of those roots . . . that’s all it’ll take.’ Freya tucked one of the collapsed chairs under her arm and reached for her walking stick. ‘And if Naga’s right and the virus really did set a trap for Corkie’s men, then . . . it sounds like it’s starting to learn to make plans.’
Leon shuddered slightly. It might have been the cool breeze across the rooftop, or it might have been the chilling effect of her words.
He looked at her in the gathering gloom, ignoring the knight who was waving at them across the rooftop to get a move on. ‘You’re suggesting we leave?’
‘All I’m suggesting is . . . let’s not get too comfortable here.’
Grace waited until Leon had left the dormitory and the sound of his footsteps echoing across the gallery floor had receded. Downstairs in the main hall she could hear the dinner-duty group cleaning up noisily.
A part of her hated the secrecy, hated keeping things from Leon.
Once upon a time in another life, things had been different. She’d had her busy social life, and Leon had had his, for what it was. They’d been no closer than any other brother and sister. They hadn’t really had that much in common. The only time they’d really interacted was when she’d nagged at him for being such a loner weirdo.
At middle school, on the regular occasions they passed each other in the hallway between lessons, Grace surrounded by her gaggle of friends, Leon invariably on his own, they’d barely made eye contact.
Since Mom and Dad had split and they’d moved to the UK, however, they’d grown closer. Even though Mom had asked Leon to look out for her, walk her to school, she’d been the one looking after him. He wasn’t adjusting. He wasn’t coping. She could see him receding further and further into a shell of his own making.
And then the virus struck and they’d lost Mom . . . and Dad. Grace realized now that in the aftermath, Leon had become the surrogate parent. Had stepped up finally and become her big brother, her protector. And she finally understood how much she loved him, depended on him. Understood how strong he really was.
And now it’s my turn to look after him . . . again.
The bedtime horn had sounded. A few minutes from now, the women of this community would be coming in and the dormitory was going to get busy.
She sat up, hurried across to the open door of the dormitory, pulled it shut and then dragged the nearest bed a couple of metres across to obstruct it. Not as good as locking it, for sure, but if someone barged in it would delay them a second or two.
She hurried back to her bed, ducked down in the narrow space between hers and Dr Hahn’s, and lifted the dangling grey blanket.
The process was nearly complete. She could see in the gloom beneath the bed that the colony of builders had assembled a working frame around Hahn’s bones: muscle tissue and tendons. Across most of the carcass the first thin membrane of skin had knitted together, forming a gelatinous yet transparent seal. They would require several more hours to grow the additional layers needed for the membrane to become an opaque and convincing facsimile of human skin.
She reached under the bed and rested her hand lightly on the cadaver’s arm.
The head jerked sharply and turned to face her. Milky eyes without lids stared at her unflinchingly. Grace could see thick arteries pumping beneath the waxy skin, weaving across the mottled yellow bone of Claudia Hahn’s skull. They pulsed and bulged subtly like insect pupae, working more industriously than any normal human arteries to deliver resources to where they were needed as rapidly as possible.
Grace pulled on the arm gently, careful not to damage the fragile first layer of skin.
‘Come out.’
The cadaver flexed uncertainly. All four limbs called to action but as yet unrehearsed in their function. She helped it pull itself out from the narrow space beneath the bed. Sticky mucus-like strands of dead and redundant cells snapped from its back like the strong adhesive of duct tape. The body struggled to pull itself on to its hands and knees. Grace steadied it as the thing wobbled weakly, like a recently roused coma patient trying to comprehend the pitiful state of its useless atrophied limbs.
‘Come on,’ she whispered supportively, knowing that collaboration was taking place on a vast scale; billions of cells still linking up to their colleagues, attempting to comprehend their tiny role in a macrocosmic endeavour.
She pulled aside the blanket on Hahn’s bed revealing clean sheets now, but ones that would probably need to be cleaned again in the morning. She hefted the upper half of the body on to the bed. The cadaver’s legs scissored and kicked uselessly on the floor, unable to support the weight of its body just yet.
Grace lifted the first leg on to the bed, and pushed with all her strength against the base of the thing’s spine. The cadaver understood what was being asked of it and flexed the bony claws of its hands, grasping at the bed sheet and pulling to assist her.
Just in time she managed to roll it over on its side and lift it on to the bed. She could hear approaching footsteps on the gallery floor. She quickly pulled the blanket over the thing’s body, lifted its head up and stuffed a pillow under it. She pulled the blanket right up over the shoulder, up to where a half-formed ear was still in the process of knitting a cartilage frame. Grace quickly smoothed Hahn’s blonde hair down over the ear, covering it up.
The door to the dormitory banged open against the corner of the bed, and Grace heard a voice beyond squawking in complaint.
She took one last look at Hahn in her bed and tugged the blanket up a little higher until all that was visible was the thick feathery tresses of her hair.
‘Coming!’ said Grace. She hurried across the floor and shoved the bed aside. The door swung inwards and she saw Danielle standing outside with her hands spread wide with a WTF? look on her face.
‘Sorry, I—’
‘Did you move that bed across on purpose?’
She nodded guiltily.
‘It’s not your personal bedroom, you know, Grace?’
‘I just wanted some privacy, that’s all.
’
‘Yeah, well, we all have to live here, not just you.’
Grace stepped to one side to let her in. She could see the others coming up the stairs from the main hall, the rest down the stone stairway leading from the rooftop.
‘And shit!’ Danielle huffed loudly, wafting a hand in front of her face. ‘Maybe you should go use the washroom sometime soon.’
Grace held a finger to her lips. ‘Shhh.’
‘What?’
Grace pointed to Hahn’s bed. ‘Dr Hahn’s trying to get some sleep.’
‘We’ve all had a hard day.’ Danielle swept past Grace and headed towards her bed. The other women bustled into the dormitory after her. The room, so quiet all day long, now echoed with a dozen voices talking over the top of each other.
Grace saw Freya and Leon come down the steps from the roof, saw them exchange a few words and a brief hug. Then Freya caught up with Naga and they both joined the other women heading towards the dorm.
Freya saw Grace standing beside the door, smiled and waved. ‘Hey there . . . how are you feeling?’
‘Much better.’
‘You look better.’ They stepped inside and Freya noted the occupied bed in the corner. ‘Ah, there she is! I need to see her about—’
‘Claudia’s sleeping,’ said Grace quickly. ‘She’s not feeling too good.’
‘Uh, what’s up with her?’
Grace reached quickly for an answer. ‘Migraine. A really . . . really bad one.’
‘Oh. Poor thing.’
Naga clapped her hands together like a schoolteacher. ‘Hey! Come on. Keep it down, ladies!’ She nodded towards Dr Hahn’s bed. ‘The doctor’s trying to get some sleep!’
‘Well excu-u-use me,’ huffed Danielle on the way out again with a wash towel over her arm.
Freya walked with Grace towards her bed. ‘You coming with me to go get a wash?’
‘Not tonight. I’m still a bit . . . you know.’
‘Sure.’ Freya wrinkled her nose slightly. ‘But it might be a good idea in the morning?’
Grace nodded guiltily and smiled. ‘I know.’
Freya draped an arm round her shoulders and planted a sisterly kiss on her forehead. ‘Glad you’re feeling better, hon.’
CHAPTER 29
In the almost complete darkness of ‘lights out’, the transition between the ‘world outside’ and the ‘world inside’ was almost unnoticeable.
The sounds of the dormitory – whispered chattering across the room, someone snoring loudly – gradually receded and were drowned out by a momentary roaring, the auditory processing cells of Grace’s mind turning inward and ‘hearing’ the deafening bustle of activity. Red blood cells traversing the arterial highways like Manhattan rush-hour traffic, white blood cells weaving among them like canary-yellow New York cabs.
The senses Grace used for the outside world – compartmentalized into sight, sound, smell – blurred boundaries within her. She could ‘smell’ the passing strings of chemical traffic, packets of genetic data rushing to where they needed to be, ‘hear’ the microcosmic geometry of the world around her, like a bat senses its cave. ‘Taste’ the cells of her own consciousness coalescing, being shepherded together like schoolchildren on a field trip, to move as one extended block of awareness.
She navigated herself towards the place she needed to be, sensing trace cells that pointed the way to her location. And moments later the leading edge of her cluster recognized the first timid cells of the person she needed to talk to, orbiting round their core cluster like wary scrapyard dogs.
Grace constructed the illusion that had become their regular space.
Once again she was sitting on the infirmary gurney, and there, sitting on the stool beside her, was Dr Hahn.
‘Hello, Claudia.’
‘Grace.’ Her voice sounded different this time. Less confused, less lost. ‘They’ve been telling me things.’
‘Do you know what’s going on right now? Outside?’
Hahn nodded. ‘I’ve been remade.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And they’ve shown me so many other things.’ She shook her head and a dreamy smile eased itself on to her lips. ‘It’s a whole . . . incredible . . . universe inside us?’
Grace grinned. ‘It is incredible, isn’t it?’
‘It . . . It’s . . . wonderful. They showed me . . .’ She gazed out past Grace over her shoulder. Grace sensed Hahn reaching out beyond the illusion of the infirmary, replaying for her mind’s eye some of the things she’d glimpsed.
‘We’re not alone. We thought we were. But . . .’ Her eyes focused again on Grace. ‘I understand now. I see . . . “outside” we live such lonely lives. All alone, isolated. We move around in our own solitary . . .’ She struggled to find the right word. Then she had it. A way she could explain herself. ‘Like islands. Lonely, remote Pacific desert islands. But in here we’re all connected. One big land mass.’
Grace encouraged her with a nod.
‘I never understood how . . . sad, how lonely my life was.’ She shook her head. ‘I feel so sorry for Claudia.’
‘You’re still Claudia. You’re just a new Claudia. A Claudia Hahn that understands.’
‘She was blind, deaf, mute. She had no idea. No idea how beautiful life really is.’
Grace knew exactly what she meant. She could sense the emotion coming off the woman in waves. She had experienced the exact same moment of realization. To be ‘human’ was to exist in a bubble, a small world sealed within a wrapping of skin, a carpet bag of carbon atoms. Competing ruthlessly, sometimes brutally, with other lonely ‘bubbles’. A caveman existence. Fighting, squabbling, killing, eating. Micro-world fighting micro-world in order to survive long enough to pass on a genetic baton to offspring like some bizarre, cutthroat relay race. Only then, having passed the genetic baton along, to become completely redundant, no longer necessary to anyone. And, from there, to eek out a pointless existence until chromosome telomeres had worn down to exhausted nubs, and new cells became old cells, and decay and death eventually followed. Grace was pleased that Claudia Hahn now saw that too.
Life . . . as it was.
There was no death in here. No selfishness. No jealousy. No tribal rivalry. No wars. No genocides . . . No brutal slayings because of the colour of a skin, the choice of a lover, the name of a god.
‘I feel loved, Grace. For the first time . . . I actually feel loved. Is it crazy for me to say this?’
‘No.’
Hahn leaned forward and placed a hand on hers. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’
‘I want to help the others too,’ Grace replied. ‘Most of all Leon and Freya.’
Hahn nodded. ‘Yes, of course!’
‘This afternoon I spoke with—’
‘This afternoon?’ Hahn laughed and shook her head. ‘Afternoon. Evening. Day. Hour. These are strange things that mean nothing to me now!’
‘I know.’ Grace chuckled along with her. ‘Time’s so weird. Sometimes it seems faster on the inside, sometimes much slower.’ She carried on with what she wanted to say. ‘Freya visited me earlier and we talked. She said something that really frightened me.’
‘What?’
‘She’d kill herself rather than join us.’
Hahn cocked her head. ‘I understand why. It was very frightening. At first.’
‘Her and Leon. Both of them. They’ve agreed to kill themselves.’
Hahn sensed the waves of emotion coming off Grace. She got up and sat on the gurney beside her and hugged her.
Leon’s seen far too much of it. Seen the process up close. Seen Mom die. Seen Ava, the lady on the train and that other man changing slowly. He’s terrified of it.
She wanted them both to join. To give them what she’d already given to Claudia. A new life. Immortality. But she was terrified of losing them, terrified of what they’d both do if they became aware that they were infected. She could give them this, but only if they were alive. ‘They’ – the virus
– were not magicians; they could adapt life, but they couldn’t reverse death. If Freya and Leon did something stupid, they were going to be gone.
Forever.
Dust.
She turned to Hahn. ‘Claudia, will you help me?’
‘Of course.’
‘It means returning.’
‘Where?’
‘Out there.’
Hahn took a long, deep breath. Grace could hear her thoughts like a one-sided telephone conversation spoken too loudly in a quiet room. Here was her home now. Here was a wonderful place. Here was love. But Out There . . . ? It was lonely, cold. A desolate existence in contrast to this chemical commune.
‘Please, Claudia.’
Hahn eventually nodded. But Grace had already sensed her answer.
‘Of course, I will help.’
CHAPTER 30
Fourteen Months Ago
‘This is insane!’ Tom Friedmann stopped halfway across the USS Gerald R. Ford’s deck and turned to look at his assistant. ‘We need every goddamn ship we can spare. Particularly this one!’
His assistant was an earnest young ensign, who seemed to have miraculously kept his navy whites crisp and utterly spotless so far. ‘Sir, the president was completely adamant about this. None of the navy vessels will be allowed to go.’
Tom banged his fist on the notepad he was carrying and looked around. The carrier’s deck four months ago had been an untidy sea of civilian refugees. Now it was civilian-free. Two of the ship’s complement of F-35C jet fighters were on the deck being prepped for launch, the yellow-jacketed catapult officer making last-minute assessments on the wind speed and checks on the electromagnetic catapult.
The Ford was keeping two jets in the air around the clock, circling the clustered ships like sheepdogs herding a skittish flock.
‘Jesus. The Ford is the one ship we need.’ Tom looked around at the enormous deck. God knows how many civilians they could bring back aboard her. She was vast up top, and vast below. Not just people, but perhaps supplies: food, medicines, machinery. They could pack thousands of tons of payload aboard her and bring it all back to help out here.
‘The president’s not going to budge an inch, sir.’
