Unfed (5 page)

Pete looks at me, his goggles glinting in the reflected light. “You’ve been out cold since the crash?”

“Apparently.” I bat my eyes at him. “And can I just say, you’ve really let the place go since I was last conscious. I mean, I black out and there are just a handful of zoms stomping through the snow, and then I wake up and an entire country has been quarantined. Talk about sloppy.”

Pete pushes his chair away from the desk and rolls into the middle of the room in a way he clearly thinks is impressive. “They had me in isolation for a week. Same with Russ.”

I pull out a bunch of files from the top drawer of the cabinet, place them on the floor in front of me, and start skimming through them. Most of it is pretty boring. I look at Russ. “So you were on the bus, too?”

He nods. “We were on our way back home from Aviemore. School trip. In fact, I remember seeing your school there. I recognized you all when we picked you up on the road.”

“And Pete has filled you in on our story so far.”

He nods again. “The Cheery Chomper café. The apocalypse happened on your lunch break. Some evil corporation called Xanthro created a zombie virus. Intense. Sounds like you guys were pretty amazing, outwitting the students in the castle and escaping.”

“Yep. We were.” I wonder how Pete has pitched it to him. Probably heavy on the Pete-as-leader side of things. I smile when I think how I
could correct that, if I was feeling nasty. Pete reads my mind and shoots me an anxious look.

“We had rooms on this ward, too.” Pete takes over the story rapidly, before I get a chance to burst the bubble. “They let us socialize in a communal room during the day. We exchanged information, which was negligible. I think they may have been listening in on our chatter.”

“And Martha ‘counseled’ you?” I replace all the files and move on to the second drawer.

“Basic post-traumatic stress therapy,” Pete says. “Probably designed to find out how much we knew.”

“So what’s your story?” I look at Russ.

“Not much to tell.” Russ shakes his head. “A little while before our bus picked you people up, we stopped at a garage and there was this bloke with free cartons of juice. The teacher took it, started to hand it out just before we ran into you. Then you know the rest. We crashed.”

I’m still leafing through papers when suddenly something jumps out at me from a sheet in a file marked
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
. My name. And Alice’s.

I stare at the words, but nothing makes sense. I need to read this, and read it in private. I fold the paper, shove it surreptitiously into my fleece pocket, and jump right back into the conversation before anyone can realize what’s happened.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Russ. “Your buddies. Do you know what happened to any of them? Were their … bodies … brought here?”

He shrugs. “Martha wouldn’t tell me any specifics. I’m guessing they died. But who knows.” He shivers. “I just hope I don’t bump into any of them out there.”

“Yeah. That does suck,” says Alice. “Especially when they try to bite
you and you have to cut their heads off. Or run over them. Or burn them to a crisp.”

“Thank you for reminding us, Miss Sensitive,” Pete mutters. He scratches the side of his Mohawk with his stubby fingers. “Martha wasn’t exactly forthcoming with very much information to either of us. She told me there were only four survivors, and that everybody had to be given time to recuperate quietly.” He looks at me. “I guessed that you were one of them. I watched her face especially carefully when I said your name. It’s all about the microexpressions, you see.”

“That right?” I say.

“And Alice,” Pete says. “I saw her file on the desk in here one time. I knew she’d made it. I guessed she was in isolation because her wounds were too extreme.”

If I had hairs on the back of my neck, they would be standing up about now
.

“Wounds?” Alice says. “I don’t have any wounds!”

“What did the file say?” I ask Pete.

“What do you care?” Alice glares at me.

“I couldn’t see anything,” Pete says sadly.

“Ha!” Alice points at me.

“Could be they kept her locked up because they couldn’t risk the social unrest,” I mutter. I wave my hands in mock panic. “‘Do not unleash the Alice!’”

“At least I’m fully dressed.” She glares at me.

“And how!” I flash her a grim grin.

“Yeah, well — I’m not ill. You were in a coma. There’s clearly something wrong with you.”

The folded-up paper is burning a hole in my pocket . .
.

“The only thing that is wrong with me is that I’m with you,
Malice
.”

She jabs a finger at me. “Do not start calling me that again!”

“Hey, that reminds me. Smitty,” Pete interjects, throwing me.

“What about him?” I snap.

“Is he here, have you seen him?” he says. “And” — his face brightens — “your mum. She must be able to help us. She did a pretty good job of that last time. Oh god.” Realization dawns across Pete’s pale face. “Four survivors from the crash. We are the four.” He reaches to put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Bobby.”

I spring up off the desk. “Forget it, Pete. If you want to make me feel better, get back on that computer and find us a way out of here, and fast!”

I stride off to the bathroom and slam the door behind me.

OK, so that was a little cheap of me, and Pete probably didn’t deserve it, but I was getting majorly claustro in there. The truth is, I’m exhausted. I’ve never known tiredness like it, so much effort required to even keep upright. Like those six weeks of Sleeping Beauty didn’t quite take the edge off.

And above all, I need to read that paper.

I get it out of my pocket quickly and scan the words that wobble in front of my wired eyes.

Persons of interest re O/vc retrieval … highest priority … individuals to be kept in strict isolation until further notice . .
.

And then Alice. And then me.

A list of stuff — drugs? Tests they’ve given us? I have no clue what these words mean.

For a double doctors’ daughter, I ought to know more than this.

I shove the paper back in my pocket and lean my forehead against the mirror. It feels blissfully cool. I’m running a fever, I’m sure of it. Maybe I
am
sick. In so many ways it would be easy if I just crumpled here, in this bathroom, into a bag of bones and skin with virus oozing from every aching pore.

“
Get over it, Roberta . .
.” Smitty whispers in my ear.

“And you can shut the hell up, too!” I yell at him. “Unless you say something helpful, don’t say anything at all!”

I wait for him to reply, but he doesn’t.

I look at my reflection. I’m really not coping well with the St. Gertrude’s Experience. Am I going insane? Is this cold turkey or am I on the turn? I look at the dark spikes of hair beginning to poke out of my hairline. Maybe it will grow back curly, if I’m here long enough. I wonder what I’ll look like then.

In the mirror’s reflection, something behind me catches my eye. I turn around to get a better look.

Above the toilet, up on the wall, is a familiar-looking plastic grating.

Thanks, Gertie. A way out? I take it all back.

OK, recess over
. I gingerly put the toilet lid down and climb up on it, reaching up to remove the grating. Putting one foot on the cistern, I can just about pull myself up and look into the air vent. Leaning forward, I push my head and shoulders into the gap, my legs and still hanging out into the room below. There’s a breeze on my face; I can’t see much, but I can see enough. Ahead is one of those fans, set into the vent. No thruway. How totally annoying.

“Found something?”

I bang my head on the roof of the vent. Twisting round a little, I can see Russ standing in the doorway.

“No.” I rub my head, and realize that from where he’s standing he’s got a front-row view of my butt in all its underweared glory. I hurriedly turn around on the cistern, and as I put a foot down on the toilet lid I slip,
my hand grabbing at a towel rail to help break my fall. But all that happens is I break the towel rail; a length of shiny metal comes away in my hand, and I fall to the stinky linoleum floor at the base of the toilet bowl.

“You OK?” He reaches out to pull me up, but I decline to be pulled.

“I’m good, thanks.” I push myself up to my feet, brushing off bits of plaster from where the towel rail came out of the wall.

“No way out up there?” He quietly shuts the door out to the control room.

“That’s right.” I pull at my fleece.
Gah
. Why couldn’t my leggings have survived the bus crash, too?

“Least you found a weapon.” He nods at the towel rail in my hand. I look down at it, too. He might be right. “And I know you know how to handle yourself.”

“Fnarr, fnarr!”
Smitty’s voice pops into my head, and my cheeks flush red.
“Don’t you just, Roberta!”

“Don’t believe everything Pete tells you,” I mumble, sitting down by a cold radiator.

Russ looks at me intently and my face gets redder than red. “Actually, it’s not that. I remember seeing you in action.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “You do? How come?”

He drops to his knees and then sits beside me, back against the wall. “You ran me down.” He looks at his feet ruefully, then glances at me again through thick eyelashes. “On the mountain at Aviemore. There I am, doing a decent job beating my friends on the last stretch of the trail” — he leans in, as if confidentially — “and some crazy ninja whooshes up behind me and wipes me out. As you can imagine, my friends thought that was pretty funny.” He purses his lips in a mock pout. “Then it turns out she’s a girl, and that makes things even better.”

I think I do remember. There was this guy, totally out of control, making with the loco erratic turns in front of me … but ultimately, the collision was my fault for not reading him right. You can only control what
you
do, not other people, my dad used to say. So protect yourself, and don’t let yourself get into a situation where your fate is in someone else’s hands.

“I’m sorry.”

“No worries.” He smiles. His body is closer now; we’re side by side, but somehow he’s maneuvered himself so that we’re almost touching. “The only thing you bashed was my pride. Oh, and my rep with my friends.” A shadow moves over his face. “Then again, it’s not like any of them are worrying about that now.”

“I’m sorry about that, too,” I say lamely. I scratch at my bald head, then remember how it must look, and stop.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “You had a friend on that bus, too … Smitty? And — oh god — your mother was on there as well?”

“Yeah.” I shuffle, uncomfortable.

“Hey, I don’t want to pry —”

“No.” I turn to him. “I don’t think things are …” I struggle to find the words. “… quite what they seem. There’s a story I have to share.”

“Yeah?” The brown eyes lock onto mine again. “I’m all ears.”

“Well, with Pete, too,” I say.

Russ frowns. “Sure you’re happy with the others knowing?”

I stare at him. “Alice already knows. And Pete, well, I trust Pete.”

Russ’s eyebrows shoot up. “You do? That surprises me.”

Now it’s my turn to frown. “Why? He’s an annoying little geek sometimes, but I’d trust him with my life. He’s kind of, well … after what we
went through last time, Pete and Alice, for all their faults, they’re kind of family.”

“Wow.” Russ chuckles and shakes his head. “I had no idea. I mean, he’s a great bloke and everything, but he is really interested in that virus, really wants to know all about the Xanthro people, what’s happening outside, who’s in charge.”

“Yeah?” I say, surprised. “He’s talked about that with you?”

“All the time. Kind of made me a little nervous.” He smiles at me again and pats my arm with his large hand, then springs to his feet. “But that’s great. Good to have friends in all this.”

“Sure,” I say, standing and moving to the mirror, just to have something to do. “Gimme a moment, and I’ll come through and spill the beans.”

Before Russ can question me any more, Alice bursts in.

“Get out! Get out!”

Russ leaps into action, grabbing the towel rail from my hands and brandishing it.

“Did they get in?”

“No!” Alice rolls her eyes and pushes past him. “I’m going to puke!” She just about makes it to the toilet in time and bends over with a series of little heaves, like she’s regurgitating a particularly stubborn fur ball.

“Oh god, Alice.” I put a hand out to rub her back, then think better of it. “Are you OK?”

“Blueberry yogurt,” she splutters, then heaves again. “Go. Away.”

I look at Russ, he hands me back my towel rail, and we thankfully follow Alice’s order.

*  *  *

Back in Martha’s room, Pete is still working at the computer. Russ is right, he has always been fascinated by all the Xanthro stuff, but that’s no need to doubt him … is it?
Course not
. That’s just the way he rolls. I plant my almost-bare butt on the desk beside him, and there’s an attractive suction noise. I try to cover it with a kind of half cough.

Pete looks up at me with his big green eyes. “I’m sorry, Bobby.”

At first I think he’s talking about the weird thigh-fart I just made, but then I realize he’s still stinging after I flounced off.

“ ’S fine.” I cut him off and reach down into my boot. “So, I have stuff to share … I know Mum isn’t dead, and I’m pretty sure that Smitty’s alive and kicking, too.” I say. “At least, they were when Mum wrote me a message.” I hold out my phone.

“Whaat?” Pete gasps. “You got a text?”

I shake my head. “Someone — has to be my mother — inputted a load of contacts into my phone book. With these really weird, bogus numbers. It turns out the numbers are a kind of code. At least I think they are.”

Pete practically wets himself. “Have you cracked it?” Oh, he really hopes I haven’t. He’s so desperate to do it.

“Yep.” I enjoy the brief look of disappointment on his face. “Well, partly. In the first one, the numbers correspond to letters on the phone’s keypad. When you type them in with predictive text, the words pop up.” I try to shrug off the geekisms. “Kinda thing.”

Alice slinks through the bathroom door, holding a wodge of tissue up to her lips.

“I’m still alive. Thanks for caring, everybody.”

“Show us the message, Bobby!” Pete ignores her.

Alice sees the phone and rolls her eyes. “Oh, you’ll love this.”

“So what does it say?” Russ urges me.

“I’ve only worked out the first one.” I switch on the phone and tap into the contacts.

“And?” Pete says.

“It says ‘Find Smitty.’” I bite my lip.

They both stare at me.

“Give it to me!” Pete’s Mohawk wobbles a bit as he stretches out an arm.

“Easy, tiger.” I automatically close my hand tight around the phone.

“Show me.”

OK, so I am quite excited to show him. Sharing this with Alice was about as gratifying as trying to explain long division to a panda. I show them the entries.

“Marigold and … Poffit?” Russ says. “You know some interesting-sounding people.”

“Yeah.” I falter a moment, but there ain’t no getting round this one. “That’s how I know it was Mum who put the names in here. No one would know about Marigold and, er, Poffit, apart from her.”

“And they are?” It’s Alice, of course. Calling from her corner. Because she knows it’s going to be embarrassing.

“Marigold is my grandmother’s cat.” I wince. “And Poffit … Poffit was my, er, lovey.” I flush red, try to laugh it off a little. “You know, the thing you carry around with you when you’re a kid.”

“Security blanket?” snorts Alice. This is way better than she had hoped.

“Got it in one, genius,” I snark back.

“OK, so obviously no one would know about that apart from your mum,” Russ steps in, to avoid things going catfight between the Malice and me. But somehow, that only makes it more mortifying.

“Look.” I try to move things on by going into the “Marigold” entry. “Here’s the ‘Find Smitty’ message. 3463764889. You type that number in like you’re texting, it comes back as ‘Find Smitty.’”

Pete grabs for the phone to try it, and I let him. He lets out a whistle as he gets the same result. “It works.” His white-blond head nods slightly as he types in the numbers a second time. “She’s telling the truth.”

“Of course I am,” I snap. “Now let’s turn it off before the battery runs out.” As if on cue, the phone beeps a warning. I hold my hand out for Pete to hand it to me.

“That’s clever,” says Russ. “She’s smart, your mum.”

“Smart enough to keep it simple so I’d understand it.” I gimme-gimme with my hand at Pete, but he ignores me.

“We copy out the numbers.” He casts around for pen and paper. “We can easily work out the letters; then it’s a simple anagram at worst.” The phone beeps again.

“It’s going to die!” I call out.

“It’s fine,” Pete counters. “They go on like this for ages before they actually conk out.” He finds a pen at last and starts pressing buttons on the phone. “Oh.”

“Pete!” I scream at him. “It died, didn’t it? Great job.” I collapse back down on the counter with another nekkid-butt squelching noise, but this time I don’t care who hears it.

“Doesn’t matter.” He looks at the phone’s bottom. “We’ll get a charger. It takes the generic sort. And I know exactly where there is one.”

“Where?” I refuse to get excited.

“The nurses’ station.”

“The wuh … ?”

“The big desk in the corridor that we crouched behind.”

I blink at him. “The big desk in the corridor. The corridor that is currently swamped by zombinos.”

“Quelle marvellouse!”
Alice treats us to one of her best flounces. She looks at me. “Go fetch, then.”

“What?” I hold my hands up. “As in, out there, with them? Slow your roll, girl.”

“It’ll be easy!” Alice shouts.

“So you go!” I shout back.

“Like that’s going to happen!” she screams at me.

“I’d like to see the day!” I scream back.

“I’ll go,” Russ says quietly.

We all look at him. Then we look at the screen. Then at him again. He smiles.

“I will. I’ll go. Simple,” he says, and he walks over to some pegs in the alcove. “Look what Martha keeps handy for those special occasions.” He holds up a dark-colored jacket and raps it with his knuckles. “Reinforced. Kevlar.”

“Bite-proof …” I mutter.