Of all of them, it was Erika who found herself alone.
There were an odd number of students, and Caitlyn had attached herself to Paul almost before Mr. Sutton had finished speaking. Paul looked across the room at Erika, puzzled. He’d expected Caitlyn and Erika to pair up. After all, weren’t they supposed to be best friends?
But Caitlyn wouldn’t even look at Erika. And Erika didn’t want to be around Paul right now. So she told Mr. Sutton she’d go search on her own. He protested, but she went anyway.
She walked along the corridors with a quick step, hugging herself, eager to put distance between herself and Paul and Caitlyn. She could hear her own voice in her ears: Paul! Paul, get it off me! Paul!
She was ashamed. She knew Caitlyn was crazy about Paul. She knew that Paul liked her instead. She knew that she didn’t like Paul in that way. And yet, during that moment of utter terror when that creature had hold of her, it was Paul’s name she called, Paul she begged for help.
Little Miss Perfect. The damsel in distress, looking for a hero to save her. She’d tried to help out, and only ended up getting herself in trouble. Better if she just sat in the corner and let everyone else get on with things.
Ugh.
She was disgusted. She’d betrayed her friend, and she’d betrayed herself. She knew Paul liked her, so it was him that she reached out to. Not Caitlyn, or that little redheaded kid … Mark, that was his name. No, she’d gone for Paul.
That was why she couldn’t be around him right now. All her life she’d wanted people to see past her face. She wanted people to like her for who she was, instead of feeling jealous or using her as a route to the in-crowd. But when the chips were down, she’d acted just like they expected she would. She’d traded on her looks to try and save herself.
No wonder Caitlyn hated her. She hated herself right now.
Well, no more. Whatever happened, she wouldn’t do that again. She’d stand up for herself. She didn’t need anyone to look after her. Not her daddy, not Tom, and certainly not Paul.
She was stronger than they thought she was. And she was determined to somehow prove it to them all.
Caitlyn peered over Paul’s shoulder into the dark doorway, her heart fluttering for more reasons than one. Down the corridor, she could hear other students scavenging, kids let loose to raid the classrooms and labs. From outside came the muffled cries of the Infected as they roamed the campus. But here, there was only the two of them.
Finding herself alone with Paul was precious and rare. There were always other people around, getting in the way, and she never had the nerve to approach him directly when nobody else was nearby. She didn’t know what to say.
But for once, there was no Erika to distract him. For once she had him to herself.
Erika. Caitlyn couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d called out Paul’s name when that thing was trying to pull her through the window. Paul! Oh, Paul, save me! Save your darling!
Cow.
Paul reached inside the door and found a switch. The light came on, and what had been a black and forbidding place became a blank basement storage room full of boxes and surplus lab equipment. Caitlyn let out a little sigh of relief. She wasn’t the bravest of souls. She didn’t like the dark. But she’d have followed him in anyway, if she had to.
“Seems promising,” he said. He looked over his shoulder at her. “Wanna check it out?”
A little smile grew on her face. Thoughts of Erika were banished when he turned his eyes onto her. “Why not?” she said.
They went down the stairs into the storage room and got to it, rummaging through the shelves. She rummaged alongside him. Most of the boxes contained odds and ends like test tubes and pipettes, but Paul found a box full of orange rubber tubing, used to connect Bunsen burners with gas taps, and put it aside.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
He shrugged. “You can tie up door handles with it. Make tourniquets. That kind of thing.”
She tucked her hair back behind her ear and smiled nervously. She hadn’t thought of that. God, he was so practical.
She carried on searching, barely paying attention to the things on the shelves in front of her. She was more concerned with trying to think of something witty to say. Paul seemed quite happy to get on with the work of gathering supplies. She sensed that if she didn’t make an impression on him now, she’d miss her chance. She just couldn’t think how.
“All this …,” she said. “It’s all really messed up, huh?”
“Yeah,” he agreed neutrally.
“Why’s this happening to us?”
“Why?” he asked. He stopped searching and gave her a strange look — sort of sad, sort of intense; she couldn’t decide which. “Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a why. Stuff doesn’t happen because we deserve it or we don’t. It just happens.”
She sensed the tension in his voice, and felt like she’d brushed up against something personal. She was intrigued, but now wasn’t the time to ask. “Something must have caused this, though,” she said. “Something must have started it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But we might never know what it was. We might never find out. People drive themselves crazy looking for why and what happened and all of that, but in the end it doesn’t make any difference. You still have to deal with it, one way or another. Knowing where those things came from isn’t going to make us any less dead if they get in.”
She thought that was a curious reaction to her question, and wondered if she’d annoyed him somehow, or if it was linked to the secret he was keeping. “You think those people out there are dead?” she asked. “The Infected?”
He gazed at her a long moment; she had no idea what was going on behind those eyes. Then he looked away. “No,” he said. “But I think I’d rather they were.”
His tone chilled her. With all the fright and despair, she hadn’t really thought too hard about the nature of their enemies. But now she found herself wondering. Were there still people inside those things? Did they know what they were doing? Did they feel the slow creep of machinery as it took over their bodies?
Don’t, she told herself. It’s too horrible.
“Hey, look at this,” said Paul. He pushed aside some boxes in a corner of the room.
Caitlyn came over to see what he’d found. There was a large hatch in the floor. He crouched down next to it, then suddenly grinned up at her.
“A way out,” he said.
“Or a way in,” she replied.
“Or a way out,” he insisted. “Let’s be positive, huh?”
Positive? How can you be positive? There are metal ghouls walking around out there!
He pulled the hatch, and it came open. It wasn’t even locked.
“There are stairs here,” he said.
Caitlyn looked over his shoulder. He was right. Below the hatch was a crawl space, and set in the floor of that was the opening to a stairway. They could only see the first few steps in the light from the basement, but it was obvious the stairway was much older than the building above.
“It must go to the tunnels,” she said. Having the hatch open was making her uneasy. She expected something to come rushing up the stairs, out of that thick darkness.
“Since when did we have tunnels?” Paul asked, amazed.
“Oh, everyone hears about the tunnels at some point. School legend, you know? I didn’t think they were really here. It’s like that story about Billy McCarthy. You heard that one?”
“Yeah, I heard it,” said Paul. “Did you see a flashlight anywhere around?”
She looked about, and to her surprise, she spotted one almost immediately. A big yellow-and-black thing encased in toughened plastic, sitting on a nearby shelf. Pleased at her success, she handed it to him. He shone it down into the dark.
“So what do they say about these tunnels?” he asked, his voice echoing back.
“Oh, right. Well, er, when they first built Mortingham House, it was supposed to be a country manor or something
. The owners were a bit weird, so they had tunnels made to the outbuildings where the servants lived, so they didn’t have to see them tramping across the gardens or carrying stuff or whatever. But building this place bankrupted them, so it got turned into a workhouse instead. I guess the tunnels were already here by then, though.” She knelt down next to him and peered around inside the crawl space. “Look, you can see how it doesn’t connect up with the building properly. There must have been a building on this spot that they knocked down, and then they built the science block over it.”
“So this could go to the school building?”
“Might go anywhere,” she said.
Paul shone his light around a little more and then seemed to come to a decision. “Let’s go find out.”
“Wait, shouldn’t we … I don’t know, go back and tell the others or something?” She heard the words coming out of her mouth and mentally winced at how lame she sounded. “I mean, we should all stick together, right?”
Paul was already climbing down into the crawl space. “You go run it past Mr. Sutton if you like. I’m gonna see where this leads.”
His tone was dismissive, and hurt her. He wasn’t being nasty: He just wasn’t bothered whether she came with him or not. She couldn’t understand why he would be so reckless. Why was somebody who got along so easily with everyone always so eager to do things on his own?
She hesitated, thinking of the dark down there. It terrified her. She should go back. She should do anything but follow him.
But this was a test. A chance to prove herself to him. A chance to make him notice her, respect her.
A chance to show she was braver than Erika.
“Wait,” she said again, and this time he stopped and looked up at her. She swallowed against the dread that tried to prevent her from speaking.
“I’ll come with you.”
The tunnels were chilly and dank and crushingly dark. They smelled of earth and rot, and there was a musty animal odor in the air, which could only be mice or rats. Droppings were scattered in the corners.
Paul shone the flashlight on the droppings and stared at them for a long time. His face was grim and closed, as if he was considering something. For a moment, she thought — hoped — that he’d turn back, and she could go with him. But then he started walking.
“If you hear anything, tell me,” he said. “If you hear rats, I mean.”
Caitlyn was surprised by the tone in his voice. Tight, full of suppressed emotion. Was he scared of rats? Somehow, that vulnerability made her feel closer to him. As if she’d been given a glimpse into his secret self, and now they shared that knowledge.
Then she remembered what he’d said about seeing rats infected with the virus, and she just felt stupid instead, and even more afraid.
Paul had the only light. Aside from that, the blackness was total. The beam played over bare walls of old gray brick, mortar flaking to dust. Every so often, they passed little alcoves that were set into the wall at shoulder height. In one they found a rusted iron candle holder, but there was no candle inside.
Her imagination began to run wild. She pictured Infected things creeping up behind them, but since Paul had the flashlight, she couldn’t even shine it back there to look. It took an effort to slow her breathing, which was getting sharp and short.
She should never have come down here. She should make him take her back upstairs.
Don’t embarrass yourself. You’ve got to show him. You’ve got to show him you’re better than her.
Drawn by an urge for reassurance, she clutched herself to his upper arm. Surprised by her touch, he stopped and frowned at her.
“You alright?” he asked quietly.
The concern in his voice flooded her with warmth. Though she must have looked terrified, she steeled herself and nodded.
“Hold on to me,” he said, even though she was already doing just that. And they kept moving down the corridor, with Caitlyn attached to his arm, her heart thumping with the thrill of the contact.
The scratch and skitter of rodents sounded from up ahead. Caitlyn felt Paul go tense. She didn’t need to tell him. He’d heard it.
Paul suddenly jerked backward and pulled her aside as the creature burst into sight. He caught it in the beam of his flashlight: a fat black rat, racing toward them. Caitlyn let out a little scream as it bolted past them and ran up the tunnel.
It was just a regular rat. Paul let out a long, shaky breath.
“Let’s go back,” said Caitlyn hopefully, and was immediately disgusted with herself for wheedling.
He was tempted, she could tell. But in the end, he said, “We have to find out where this goes. We might need a way out if those things get into the science block.”
They moved on through the dark. Every step forward was another step they’d have to take to get back. Caitlyn prayed to whoever was listening that there was nothing worse than the occasional rat down here.
Up ahead the tunnel angled right, which Caitlyn guessed would take them toward the school building. They heard the sound of rodents moving again, but this time there were more of them. They weren’t running, just scratching about.
Paul shone the light around the corner, saw nothing, and went on. After a few steps they found a doorway to their right, and looked inside. There was a small room there, empty, with scraps of sackcloth decaying in the corner. Storage for servants’ supplies? Caitlyn didn’t know, and didn’t care to speculate. She just wanted to be gone from here.
The room was the first of a row of three doorways, after which the tunnel kinked left and went out of sight. The sound of movement was close by, quick little scrabbles now and then, the shuffle of shifting bodies. It was hard to tell how many there were, whether they were big rats or tiny mice. The corridor echoed, and seemed full of wet whispers. She looked over her shoulder again. Anything could be lurking in the dark back there.
Paul shone his light into the second doorway. The room beyond was as empty as the first, except for a few shelves that had split and collapsed. She could feel the muscles bunched in his arm, the tension there. He swung the beam up the tunnel, and onto the third doorway.
The scratching stopped.
For a moment, neither of them moved. They listened to the silence. The door was too far up the tunnel to see in, but the rodents had been alarmed by the light. She pictured them frozen there, sniffing the air, wondering what manner of thing had come down into the depths to disturb them.
“They’re just rats,” Paul said. At first she thought he meant it to comfort her, but then she realized he was talking to himself.
The rats stayed silent as they moved closer. He kept the light trained on the doorway.
Step after careful step, each one more tentative than the next. They reached the doorway. Paul shone the light inside.
And Caitlyn saw it.
At first it was almost impossible to tell what it was. The flashlight showed only a writhing, lumpy mass of flesh and fur and metal. Then she found its head, and suddenly oh dear God she could make out its shape.
The creature was huge, the size of a bear. It was vaguely ratlike in shape, but half formed, a mutated heap of animal and machine matter. Raw muscle stretched between metal components; dirty clumps of fur sprouted between plates of armor; servos whined as it raised its awful face to the light. Smaller rats were attached to its flanks, some of them partly absorbed into the body. Where their flesh had joined it seemed as if they’d melted into the larger mass. Tiny legs waved uselessly in the air; pink tails curled and flopped.
Blind, deformed eyes were set without symmetry to either side of a silver-toothed mouth. The jaws gaped wide and the thing squealed, shrieking at a deafening pitch, a savage and half-mechanical howl.
Paul staggered backward in the face of that hurricane of noise. As he did, he tripped against Caitlyn and fell. She was pulled down with him, her arm still wrapped around his. Paul’s hand swung out to balance himself, his flashlight hit the edge of the doorway, and with a tiny
plink the light went out.
The light.
Went.
Out.
Caitlyn was so stunned by the terror of the moment that it was all she could do not to scream. The impact of hitting the ground was nothing compared to the impact of losing her sight. The last thing she’d seen, the last thing she might ever see, was that monster in the room.
The monster that was still there, only a few yards away from them, somewhere in the blackness.
Paul scrambled to his feet, and so did she, and somewhere along the way she lost contact with him. She flailed, not daring to call out, not knowing which way she was facing. She heard the scratching begin again, the sound of tiny rat feet scrabbling uselessly, and a scraping noise as the thing hauled itself across the stone floor. Was it in front of her? Behind her? She couldn’t tell; she was too scared. Nearby she could hear Paul shaking the flashlight, whacking it with his palm, cursing under his breath. That way! Yes, he must be that way!
She reached out a hand in front of her, taking a frightened step in the direction where she thought Paul was. This was a nightmare, this had to be, and any minute now she’d wake up and find it was all a —
Her outstretched hand brushed against something. Something hard and cold and soft and bristle-furred. Something that twisted and moved as she touched it.
Pain blazed up her forearm. She screamed and pulled back. Clutching her arm to herself. And right at that moment, the light came back, and she saw the thing in front of her, in the doorway, its flank alive with rats that scratched the air mutely.
The light was coming from behind her. She turned and saw Paul. He grabbed her and pulled her, and they ran, hurtling headlong down the corridor in the direction they’d come.
Behind them, in the darkness, the monster screeched.
Up the stairs and out of the dark. They ran as if the thing was on their heels, their lungs bursting, desperate to escape. Paul went ahead, Caitlyn right behind him. He climbed through the hatch into the storage room, dropped the flashlight, and reached back for Caitlyn. She took his hand and was lifted through the crawl space. Paul slammed the hatch behind her.