“No. No, I don’t mean that.” Frustrated, she put the mug down on the table and stood up. “It’s gone from my head. It’s going from my head. I remember being outside, but I don’t remember getting there. And I don’t know what I was thinking when I was out there. Or how long I was out there.” The slightly high pitch in her tone showed her fear. “It’s all getting confused in my mind, like a dream.” She stared at me and then at George, as if he was a better bet for answers. “How can that be? How can memories from only minutes ago have vanished?”
For once it was George that paused and I cut in, taking inspiration from Oliver’s suggestion of earlier. “Maybe you were sleepwalking.”
She stared at me incredulously. “Sleepwalking? But that’s crazy!”
“Is it? You just said that you can’t really remember waking up or being outside. Sounds like sleepwalking to me.”
George’s wise old eyes narrowed and I knew he didn’t believe it any more than Maine on the other side of the room, but I figured he knew what I was doing. There was no need for Katie to be any more disturbed by this ordeal than necessary.
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“But I don’t sleepwalk. I’ve never done it.” Although her words were denying the possibility, there was hesitation in her voice. She wanted to believe it, and no one could blame her for that.
I shrugged. “Well, this isn’t exactly a normal situation, is it? It’s likely we’ll all react differently than normal.”
“But I went out there and there were widows there. Lots of them, waiting for me.” Her eyes flickered as she desperately sought a memory she could trust. “Weren’t there?”
Taking a quiet, deep breath I shook my head. “You said there were. In fact, you insisted there were. But I didn’t see anything out there.” I looked over to Maine and the rows of mercifully dark computer screens. “You were watching out for us. Did you see anything?” My voice was measured, but I hoped he was picking up what I was expecting from him.
“Nope. Just you two staring out at the fence. There was no activity at that end of the compound at all.”
Good man. I could forgive him the occasional drink on duty for the smoothness of that lie.
Katie’s eyes widened. “Are you sure? Are you sure there was nothing out there?”
We both nodded.
“So you see, sleepwalking is the only thing that makes sense.” I smiled gently at her, and eventually she nodded.
“Yes, I guess you must be right.” She sniffed, wiping her nose on the oversized soaking sweatshirt.
Standing up, George yawned. “What do you say we all go and try some sleeping again? I know my old bones could do with a couple more hours.”
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“Yes, me too. Let’s leave Oliver to the radio and get back to our beds.”
Katie followed us meekly as we crept back into the dark of the dormitory, and we stayed silent until we’d reached the girls’ rooms at the back. She said good night without turning to face us, and before I could even get embarrassed by her casual dismissal of me, the door clicked quietly shut. George and I exchanged a concerned look, but before we could vocalise our concerns in whispers, the door opposite opened. Jane and Rebecca were both awake, the small bedside light on.
Rebecca’s hands flew into a series of precise actions, her dark eyes focused on George. When she stopped he started, and he must have conveyed the events of the past hour pretty well, because she frowned slightly before continuing their silent conversation with elegant gesturing fingers.
I watched amazed before interrupting George’s flow with a nudge in the ribs. “When did you learn to sign?”
A small pinch of pain crossed his face and he shrugged. “My grandson was deaf.” For a moment his pain passed into me. He’d used the past tense. I guess George had decided it was time to come to terms with the probable fate of his daughter’s family.
Rebecca’s hands burst into life again and this time George smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Despite Rebecca being the one with the disability, I suddenly felt very left out.
“She says you’d better learn, because she doesn’t intend to write everything down forever.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I responded, aiming my words and raised eyebrows at the dark girl sitting cross-legged on
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the bed. She grinned at me, and once again I got the impression that I’d very much underestimated this woman.
“Is everything okay?” Jane sounded more curious than concerned.
“Sure it is.” I paused. “Why don’t you sleep in with your sister tonight, Jane? I’m sure she’d like it. I should imagine she’s been missing you over the past few days.” Ever since she kicked me out at any rate, I almost added.
The little girl shook her head adamantly.
“Why not, honey? Have you two had a row?”
“No, nothing like that.” Her expression was fixed and stubborn.
“So what is it? What’s the problem?” I perched on the side of the bed, and Jane glanced sideways up at me.
She wanted to tell me something, that was for sure. “Try me.”
She took a deep breath and blew her fringe up. “She smells funny. Bad funny.”
I looked at Rebecca, but she shrugged. What Jane said obviously didn’t surprise her, but she didn’t seem to share the little girl’s opinion.
“I didn’t notice anything. Are you sure you’re not just imagining it?” I wasn’t lying to make her feel better. I’d held Katie close to me coming back from the fence and sat close to her in the comms room, and she’d just smelled warm, sweet and feminine to me.
“I’m not lying. I knew you’d think I was making it up. I just can’t stand how she started to smell.” Her bottom lip stuck out slightly and trembled, making her look very much like a child. “I wish I could change the way it makes me feel. I really do.” She tucked her
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knees under her chin, hugging them closely, and her next words were so quietly sad I could barely hear them. “But she just smells so bad.”
Tears started to tumble down her cheeks and Rebecca stroked her hair.
“Hey, that’s okay. You don’t have to go. Stay here with Rebecca if you want to.” I hated myself for upsetting her, and wished I hadn’t said anything at all. “Katie’ll probably just go straight to sleep, anyway. You stay here.”
She didn’t look up from her knees. “Rebecca smells nice. She smells normal.”
George tugged me gently back, and nodding a good night at Rebecca, we closed the door, leaving the woman to comfort Jane.
The gloom of the unlit dorm washed over us again.
“What do you make of that?” I could barely make out George’s face, even though he was whispering close to me.
“I don’t know. I don’t like the sound of that smell. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” If I was honest, the whole of the night’s activities had left a twisted knot in my stomach.
Our creeping was unnecessary since by the time I’d reached my bed, it seemed that nearly all the dorm were awake. John was sitting on the top step of the open hut door, quietly smoking a cigarette, and Whitehead was perched nearby on the edge of Maine’s empty bed. For a couple of seconds, no one said a word, the atmosphere charged with curiosity.
“So, what’s going on?” It was Daniel that finally spoke, his thick-set body merely a dark shadow at the far side of the room, his naturally rough accent not allowing for any hint of concern.
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“Nothing, really. Don’t worry about it-just go back to sleep.” I was too damn tired to talk about it now, and definitely not with Daniel. Our little group of survivors was quietly and slowly dividing itself into two, one group that listened mainly to George, and the other-surprisingly and rather worryingly-seemed to take its lead from Nigel. That crowd was pretty much Daniel, Michael and Jeff. Dean sat somewhere in the middle, and seemed to be pretty unimpressed with any of us. Whitehead said he’d always been a loner. The small ember of light from his bed showed that he was awake and smoking.
“It didn’t seem like nothing.” Jeff had sat up, and I didn’t like the sullen accusatory tone that deadened his words. Ignoring him, I went over to the door and sat down alongside John, lighting a cigarette of my own. The rain had eased a little but was still coming down in a steady stream, and lit by the brightness of the floodlights it was a little hypnotic to watch, like staring into the flames of an open fire.
George’s mattress creaked as he climbed back under the sheets. “Well, it was something that turned out to be nothing, let’s put it that way. Katie just went sleepwalking and Matt got worried.” He yawned, and I wasn’t sure how much that was for effect or for real. “But everyone’s back in bed now, and no harm done.”
“Katie went sleepwalking?” The emphasis in Nigel’s voice made it perfectly clear that he was unhappy about it being one of the girls rather than one of us.
“Yes, Nigel, that’s what I said. Now why don’t we all get back to sleep before our chattering wakes Dave up?”
Dave was snoring steadily and I figured it would take more than one tense conversation to raise him,
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but Nigel grunted and laid down. “We should keep an eye on her. She hasn’t been acting normal lately. I don’t want to wake up and find her trying to eat me.”
“Oh, shut up, Nigel.” The words were out of my mouth before I realised I’d spoken my thoughts aloud, but the shock that someone as self-absorbed as Phelps had noticed Katie’s change in behaviour had thrown me completely. But at least I wasn’t the only one that was disgusted by his words.
“She’s hardly fat, is she, so I don’t think we’ve got too much to worry about there, do you?” Whitehead almost spat the words at Phelps.
“Well, you can’t be too careful.” Nigel lay back down, sulkily.
“I wouldn’t worry too much if I was you, mate. You’re just wishful thinking.” John didn’t turn round, but continued to stare out at the rain. “Katie’s got too much good taste to eat you.”
Chris Whitehead snorted boyishly at the barbed remark, and Nigel huffed beneath his covers.
“Well, we’ll see who has the last laugh, won’t we?” He hadn’t lost any of his supercilious shit, and I bit my tongue to stop me from escalating this into a full scale row. It was as if he wanted Katie to turn into a widow just to prove himself right. What the hell kind of a person would think like that? A fucking crazy person, that was who, and the worst part was that he actually seemed to have found some people who would listen to him, so that must make them pretty crazy, too. Fucking great. I smoked with fury until the cigarette was finished and then lit another one, staring out into the hectic night. When I looked up, having finally calmed down slightly, I noticed that Whitehead had gone back to bed, and the room seemed to have lulled
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into a round of deep breathing, hinting at most people being asleep, or very nearly asleep.
John still sat beside me, smoking steadily. After about another twenty minutes, he ground a butt out on the step beside him.
“He’s right, of course.” His soft voice was low. “We will have to keep an eye on her. But I’m fucked if I’m going to let a crazy bastard like that know that he may have a point.”
Standing up, he disappeared into the gloom behind me, and before long his steady breathing joined the others. Sitting there on the step, mesmerised by the rain and kept awake by my heavy heart, I felt very much like the last man alive. And in some ways I wished to fuck I was.
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Chapter Nineteen
“So, what shall we do? We can’t just sit here staring at it all day.”
Maine had been eager to let it in from the first moment Daniel had spotted it sitting down at the front gate twenty minutes previous. And maybe if there hadn’t been at least fifteen widows prowling nearby I may have been more inclined to agree with him. But as it was, the idea of opening up our defences wasn’t too appealing to me.
“Why aren’t they attacking it?” Whitehead’s scientific curiosity had forced his nose about four inches from the screen, as if he needed to be really close up to believe what he was seeing. What would he have done if our new arrival had appeared on one of the higher monitors? Climbed onto a chair to peer at it? Probably. I didn’t put it past him.
Oliver was twitching, rubbing his hands against his rough silver beard, eager just to press the access button on the panel, showing the kind of anxiety I’d expect of him around booze. It was quite endearing,
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really. And it seemed these days that he’d got his drinking well and truly under control. Yin and yang. World goes mad, Oliver Maine quits drinking.
“What’s going on?” Katie and Dave joined the throng around the screens that were our eyes to the outside world, Katie’s voice still blurry with sleep. It was eleven a.m. and they’d both obviously just got up. Not that that was a surprise. Although Dave was getting back to health pretty quickly, he still got tired fast, and as for Katie, well, since that sleepwalking night three weeks previous, I’d caught her trying to leave the dorm each one. George and I were trying to keep a vigil up, but it was difficult, and the night before she’d been out the door before my subconscious dragged me awake.
Looking at her rubbing sleep out of her eyes, I felt almost envious. Whatever was disturbing her nights had pretty much ruined mine. The dry taste of sleep deprivation seemed to have taken up residence in my mouth, and for a moment I didn’t know why I bothered. Part of me wondered if maybe I should just let Nigel find her outside in the rain. Why was I protecting her?
“Wow!” Her green eyes widened. “Hey, look at that, Matt!” Her eyes found mine and she grinned, all elfish excitement, melting my heart in two seconds. She worked on me. That’s why I was exhausting myself to make sure she was all right without her even remembering in the mornings. I grinned back, suddenly once again putty in her hands. She’d done just enough over these past few weeks to keep me dangling on a string. We’d even had one more night together, but it hadn’t compared to what had gone on before, and I was sad to find myself relieved to be back in my own