Adam appeared in the doorway. He swept the room with his small, suspicious eyes, studying the four of them. Erika was quietly choking back sobs and clutching herself.
“All done?” he grunted.
“All done,” said Paul.
Adam nodded. “Then that’s the last of the windows. Looks like we’re sealed in tight.” And he disappeared off down the corridor.
Mark felt a shiver pass through him as he listened to the whistling wind. Looks like we’re sealed in tight.
Other people might call it trapped.
Outside, they heard the buzz-saw shriek of one of the creatures, rising over the storm. It was answered by several more.
They were out there. Paul could see them.
The storm had died, leaving the campus glistening in the yellow glow of the electric lights that stood on poles or in recesses along the pathways. Though it was dusk now, the passing of the storm made it seem a little less dark than before, and he could see all the way out past the wall that surrounded Mortingham Boarding Academy. Beneath a steel-gray ceiling of cloud, the ridges of the valley stood stark and sharp in the last light.
He sat at an upstairs window, crammed onto a wide sill. A Design and Technology lab. The room was chilly and empty. Benches and drawing boards stood silent in the light of the fluorescent bulbs.
All over the campus, things were moving. They were getting faster. Faster and smarter.
He’d watched it happen as he sat up here alone on his perch. At first, they’d been shambling things, some of them barely able to stand. They staggered about snatching at anything that came within their reach. They pawed at walls when there was a perfectly good doorway a few steps away. They were practically mindless, and they jerked and lurched as if they were only just in control of their own bodies.
But some of them were moving with purpose now. Instead of wandering aimlessly, they traveled in packs of three or four. He’d seen a group of them running across the campus, hunting down something or someone he couldn’t see. The creatures in packs didn’t crawl around or scratch at doors they couldn’t get through. He could see them prowling about, looking for ways into the buildings.
He heard the smashing of glass from somewhere over on the other side of the campus. A thin scream rose into the darkening sky.
There were other kids out there. Other kids who’d holed up just like the students in the science block. Except some of them hadn’t barricaded themselves in quite so well.
He thought of Erika. With everything going on, she’d been pushed to the back of his mind, but now that he had a moment to think, she came back to dominate his thoughts.
He’d helped to save her, hadn’t he? And what thanks had he got? When he asked if she was okay afterward, when he put out a hand to touch her arm and comfort her, she just gave him an icy look and walked away. Hadn’t she screamed out his name when the creature was trying to pull her through the window? Hadn’t she begged him for help?
But he couldn’t get mad at her. Not Erika. The whole time he’d been at this school, she’d been the one good thing he’d found. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t interested in him. His world might have fallen apart, but at least there was her, reminding him that he might one day feel again, that he might one day let himself care deeply for someone. Not yet, perhaps. Not now. But one day.
Paul looked down on the creatures roaming the campus, and he smiled.
He’d been right all along. The world had turned over again. One moment, everything was cozy and normal, and the next … nothing was normal. He saw the shock and bewilderment on the faces of the other kids. They couldn’t understand how it had happened.
Last time the world had changed, Paul wasn’t ready for it. This time, he was.
So this is how it’s going to be from now on, eh? Nothing sure, nothing certain? Well, alright then. I can deal with that.
He felt good. He actually felt good. At first he’d been horrified by what had happened to the janitor, knocked off-balance by the shock of it. But that had worn off now. In its place was a strange sort of excitement.
Ever since his parents had died, he’d been sleepwalking. But suddenly the world seemed alive with possibilities. It had shown a new side, and this one was hard and sharp, not dull and soulless like before. He liked it better that way. He’d rather have danger he could do something about than safety he was helpless against. The whims of fate couldn’t be battled, but these creatures could.
So bring it on, Paul thought fiercely. Bring it all on. ’Cause I don’t really have a lot to lose, these days.
He heard footsteps at the door to the classroom and looked up. There, in the doorway, was the shabby, lanky figure of Mr. Sutton.
“Paul. There you are,” he said.
“Here I am.”
“Are you alright?”
“I’m just fine,” he said, and he meant it.
Mr. Sutton gave him an odd look. “We’re having a meeting downstairs. To decide what to do.” He paused, then added, “We all need to work together now, Paul. As a team.”
Paul didn’t say anything to that. He just got down off the windowsill and followed him out.
They gathered in a classroom downstairs, arranging themselves on chairs and tables in a semicircle around Mr. Sutton. He was the only teacher. There were about fifty kids here, none of them older than fifteen.
Mark was among the oldest, along with Paul, Adam, Erika, and Caitlyn.
Mark was surprised at how few they numbered. He wondered briefly how the rest were doing, and where they were. Then he made himself stop thinking about it.
“Alright, everybody,” said Mr. Sutton, clapping his hands together. “Now, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all had a bit of a scare —”
Some kid began to blubber. “Quiet!” Adam barked. The kid froze and shut up. “Teacher’s talking,” Adam said with a threat in his voice. The kid nodded dumbly and looked back at Mr. Sutton.
“Yes, thank you, Adam,” said Mr. Sutton uncertainly. “Anyway, the point is, everyone’s a bit shaken up, but let’s not lose our wits, eh? You’ve all done a very good job in sealing up this place, and from what we’ve seen so far, those things outside aren’t especially bright. They can’t get in. We’re safe here.”
There was a general sense of relief at that. Some of the kids smiled bravely at one another.
“Sooner or later, someone’s going to come and rescue us. I know this academy is very, er, remote, but the worst-case scenario is that we’re stuck here till Monday morning, when the rest of the staff come ba —”
The blubbering kid burst into tears at the thought of that, which set off a couple of girls, too. Adam drew a breath to yell at them but Mr. Sutton held up his hand and shook his head. Adam deflated, looking disappointed.
Mark decided that Mr. Sutton wasn’t all that great at this speech-giving lark.
“Now, now! It won’t come to that, I’m sure. More than likely the police will hear about it very soon, and everything will be alright. In the meantime, we have water, and there’s enough junk food in the vending machines to keep you hyperactive for days. I can’t stress this enough: We’re safe in here. Nothing’s going to get you.”
The kids gradually stopped crying, though some of them still glanced uncertainly at the boarded-up windows. The shrieks of the creatures outside could occasionally be heard over the sniffling in the classroom.
“Meantime, let’s work on how we can help ourselves,” said Mr. Sutton. “First thing’s first, what do we know about what’s out there? Come on, everybody, chip in.”
“They’re zombies!” piped up a thirteen-year-old with freckles.
“They’re not zombies,” said his pudgy companion.
“They’re slow and stupid, and when they bite you, you turn into one of them,” argued Freckles. “Sounds like zombies to me!”
“Zombies aren’t made of metal,” replied Pudge snottily. He folded his arms as if the case was closed.
“They’re cyborgs, then!” said Freckles
, who was getting frustrated.
“They’re not cyborgs, buttface. You don’t get infected with cyborgitis.”
“They’re both,” said Mr. Sutton before a full-scale fight could break out. “And they’re neither. I spent a bit of time studying one of those beetles that was found this morning. In fact, it was so amazing, I was planning to take it to a professor friend of mine in London tomorrow. I suppose we’re a bit past that now.”
“So what are they?” asked Erika, brushing her hair back behind her ear.
“Well, I only have limited equipment, but the best I could make out is that it’s some kind of virus causing this. It turns organic matter — flesh, bone, chitin, fur — into something resembling metal. But it doesn’t behave like any virus I know. It builds structures, like circuits. It’s like it’s operating under some sort of control, or like it somehow knows what it’s doing.”
“But how’s that possible?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Sutton. “But I do know this. Those people out there, they’re infected. And maybe infected people can be cured.”
Mark didn’t hold out much hope of that, but it was a nice touch, and it made everyone feel a bit better. Some of them had friends out there who hadn’t gone home for the weekend. At least his own friends, Andrew and Graham, would be safe at their parents’ houses. He felt a bit guilty for not having thought about them till now.
“Infected,” said Freckles, nodding to himself. “The Infected. I like that.”
“Yeah,” said Pudge, nodding along. “Cool.”
Mark stared at them. While most of the kids were upset or shocked, these two appeared to be taking it rather well. In fact, he wondered if they thought it was all just a video game or something. Maybe it was better if they kept believing that.
A Year Ten boy raised his hand. He had an impractical emo haircut that was slicked forward so that it almost covered his face. Mark wondered if he ought to trim that a bit, get some peripheral vision back. Monsters could sneak in from the side and he’d never see them coming.
“Johnny,” said Mr. Sutton, acknowledging him.
“Eddie Grant and Jason White got bitten by beetles at lunchtime, right? Jason White didn’t turn until hours later. But when those things were running about outside, people they bit changed in, like, minutes.”
“Eddie Grant got sent home!” one of the younger kids wailed. “What if … what if he spread it, too?”
“Let’s worry about ourselves for now, eh?” Mr. Sutton said hastily, before the implications of that could sink in. “Concentrate on getting out of this little muddle.”
“Mr. Harrison was scratched by a dog,” Paul said, dragging the conversation back to its previous track. “Took him about half an hour to change.”
“It must depend on the severity of the wound,” said Mr. Sutton, who seemed grateful to be on safer ground again. “The worse it is, the more the infection gets in, and the faster you change.”
“But why are they attacking people at all?” asked Caitlyn, who was sitting up on a table, swinging her legs and looking anxious.
“I suppose the virus makes them do it,” said Mr. Sutton. “Since it needs organic hosts to multiply, it needs to spread itself by bite or scratch. So it makes its victims aggressive. Like rabies.”
“Like zombies!” Freckles said triumphantly.
“They’re not zombies!” Pudge cried. “He said!” He thrust a finger at Mr. Sutton, and then began to sulk.
Something heavy scratched along the outside wall of the classroom.
Everyone fell silent immediately. The atmosphere went taut. Some of the younger kids clutched at one another.
They listened as the dragging noise moved along the wall. Slowly, slowly. Like something metal was sliding against the bricks, moving in jerks and scrapes.
It reached a window. Shrieked along glass.
The window gave way with a smash and a tinkle, and something thumped against the boards on the other side. Several of the younger kids screamed and scrambled away, pressing themselves against the far wall, where Mr. Sutton stood.
“Sssh!” he was saying. “Sssh! It’s alright.”
Mark was astonished at how calm Mr. Sutton seemed to be. Inside, he must have been as terrified as the rest of them, but you’d never have known it from his manner.
Silver fingers pawed at the planks, slipped through the gaps. The kids screamed and cried anew, but the planks held firm. The thing outside thumped and pulled at them a few moments longer, and then stopped.
The wind whistled through the gaps in the planks. They heard the sound of something trudging away, feet squelching on the wet grass.
And it was gone.
“They’re not zombies, they’re Infected,” Mr. Sutton reminded them quietly. “But that doesn’t matter, because they can’t get in.”
Some of the kids made reluctant murmurs of agreement. Slowly they settled back to their seats. They’d seen the barriers in action now, and despite the scare, they felt a little safer.
“So what are we going to do, then?” asked Erika impatiently, once the frightened whispers had subsided. “Just sit here?”
Adam gave her a sharp glare, warning her not to use that snappy tone. He seemed to have set himself up as Mr. Sutton’s enforcer. Incredible that he didn’t see the irony. The boy most likely to get expelled had suddenly started acting like a prefect. Although Mark reckoned that a prefect was just another kind of bully, so he actually suited the role pretty well.
“Well, let’s look at what we have,” said Mr. Sutton. “We have one of the best-equipped science and technology labs of any school in England, for a start. Surely we can make use of that somehow.”
“I can build a foxhole radio,” Mark said. It came out louder than he’d intended, more like an eager squeak. Suddenly everyone was looking at him. He felt his face grow hot.
“You’ll have to explain to us what that is, Mark,” said Mr. Sutton gently.
“Um …,” said Mark. “Well, in World War Two the American GIs used to build these little sets made out of junk so they could listen to radio stations. All you need is a few odds and ends like cardboard tubes and thumbtacks and wire. You don’t even need to plug it in: It’s powered by radio waves.”
“No way!” gasped Pudge, who was now staring at Mark as if he were the fifth member of the A-Team.
“Er … yeah. It’s pretty easy if you know how.”
“We’re in a valley,” Paul pointed out. “Our phones don’t get a signal here. Is a radio going to work?”
“It should,” said Mark, who was growing in confidence by the second. “Radio waves are different from phone signals. They bounce off the atmosphere, which means they’ll get over the valley walls.”
“Can’t we listen to the radio on our mobiles?” someone chimed in.
“Tried that already,” muttered somebody else.
“Mobile radio runs off the same signal you use to make calls,” said Mark. “It won’t work here. We need to do it the old way.”
Caitlyn hunkered forward. “When that thing reached through the window in the lab, you flashed it with your camera….”
“Er, yeah,” said Mark. “Yeah, I did. I noticed it when I took some photos of the beetles earlier. They freeze if they get flashed with bright light.”
“He’s right,” said Paul. “I saw it happen to one of them when lightning struck.”
“Me, too,” said Caitlyn. There were general murmurs of agreement from others who’d seen the same.
“How many of you have mobiles with flash cameras?” Mr. Sutton asked. Only half a dozen hands went up, including Caitlyn’s. Most kids in Mortingham only carried mobiles in order to play app games in their free periods, or to take the odd photo. In such a remote valley, they were useless for anything else.
“Well, then,” said Mr. Sutton. “It seems we have a weapon. Not much of a weapon, but —”
“Still a weapon, though,” said Paul with a grin.
His unexpected opt
imism infected the others. Mark saw the first beginnings of hope spreading among the group. Some of them even smiled.
Mark opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. He didn’t want to seem boastful, or a teacher’s pet. But Mr. Sutton had spotted him.
“You were going to say something else, Mark?” he prompted.
Why not? thought Mark. “I can make some flash bombs, if you like. They blind you for a few seconds when they go off. Might work the same as a camera flash.”
“Cool!” said Pudge, who was now fully convinced he was living a video game.
Mr. Sutton actually laughed. He clapped his hands together with delight and pointed at Mark. “Boys and girls, this is why you should be paying attention in science class. Of course, while I officially disapprove of schoolchildren messing about with dangerous chemicals, unofficially I think that’s a brilliant idea. Well done. I’d better come help you out, though, just to be safe.”
Mark glowed. Some of the younger students watched him with naked admiration in their eyes. He was a little embarrassed to be the center of attention, but at the same time, he loved it. They noticed him. Even Paul seemed to be looking at him with new respect.
The mood in the room had turned around. Instead of being victims, they were taking the initiative back. Even these small things made them feel less helpless.
“What about the rest of us, sir?” Erika asked.
“We should search the science block,” said Paul before Mr. Sutton could speak. “Top to bottom. Collect anything that might be useful: flashlights, batteries, whatever. Reinforce the doors and windows. Make sure there’s no way in that we haven’t blocked up. It’s not just people that got infected, remember. I’ve seen rats that had the virus, and we’ve all seen the beetles. They can get in through places that others can’t.”
“That’s a good idea, Paul,” said Mr. Sutton. “That’s exactly what we should do. Everybody find a partner, and I’ll assign you to a task.”
They started to mill about, pairing up, motivated now. Mr. Sutton walked over to Mark and dropped a comradely hand on his shoulder.
“Looks like it’s you and me in the lab, Mark. Let’s get to work.”