Blood Water

CHAPTER 30

‘What happened?’ James asked, nodding at the blood that had soaked through Waites’s sock, shoe and a large patch of his beige trousers.

‘It got me, the little bastard. It’s like it’s rabid, only worse. It went off this way. Look, there’s a trail of blood.’

They followed the red drops, James giving the teacher a hand as they went.

‘So you hurt it?’

‘Well, any normal dog would be lying dead on the floor right now, but that’s no normal dog. I’ve no idea how long it can last with that thing in its brain.’

‘God, please don’t let it be much longer. How’s your foot?’

‘My ankle’s torn to pieces. It’s bleeding badly too. We’ll have to stop and bandage it soon, but not until we’ve sorted this out.’

James looked down at Waites’s damaged foot. He was trying not to put any weight on it, and there was a squelching sound coming from his shoe.

They followed the blood trail further down the corridor, but it was so dark they had to stop and peer down at the carpet for spots of blood. Eventually James was kneeling down to make sure the trail continued.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I think they lead towards that door there.’

They both approached the open doorway leading into a large room that looked like a canteen, with coffee tables, sofas and a small kitchen area at one end. They could see a line of tiny red spots on the linoleum floor, arcing away round a cluster of tables and chairs.

James stepped gingerly into the room and looked for a light switch.

‘Be careful,’ Waites whispered behind him. ‘It’s not thinking like a dog any more.’

And as James began pondering the full meaning of these words, his fingers found the switch and flicked it on.

Sean’s next vision was from another perspective entirely. He was underwater again, except this time the water was dark and dirty, and he could see particles floating around in it. There was an immense feeling of pressure: something powerful was driving him forward against his will. Then there was light, and clouds and trees passed quickly overhead. With what felt like an explosion of sound and air, his face rose above the torrent and it was like crashing into another, more familiar universe.

He was now moving towards a riverbank, but it was only a gradual shift, and it seemed a long time before he was close enough to grab tufts of grass to pull himself out of the water. At first he was moving too fast and they slipped from his grasp, but then he was free of the current, and got hold of the bank and pulled himself out of the water, using the last of his energy. His body felt heavy, and there was water in his stomach – foul-tasting water that really shouldn’t have been swallowed. But he was out of the murderous river now; he had pulled himself free, perhaps just in time.

He tried to get to his feet, but he still felt so heavy. He had nothing left with which to move himself. Everything had been sapped by the cold water, along with something else; something Sean couldn’t quite put his finger on.

The sodden muddy ground shifted beneath his feet now as he dragged himself painfully forward. Then he was looking up, and saw a figure on the muddy slope, blurred by the rain, but definitely another human being. Sean knew the face, but he wasn’t used to seeing it like this. It was him – the boy was him – and Sean knew this was no hallucination because he now recognized the situation. It was a memory. Except it wasn’t his memory.

And as if triggered by this recognition, it suddenly evaporated away from him, leaving the familiar walls of the office.

The spots of blood led past several tables before disappearing in the direction of the kitchen. Waites and James waited a while, listening carefully, but all was quiet. James looked at the teacher as though awaiting his instructions.

‘You go first,’ Waites said. ‘Sorry, but you’re in a better state than me to tackle that thing.’

James nodded gravely at this, then crept slowly forward, tensed, ready to turn and run at any moment.

‘I tell you what,’ the teacher said behind him. ‘There’d better not be any more of these creatures around here… or we really are history.’ Ahead of him James stopped.

‘Er…’

‘What? What is it?’ As Waites drew level with him, he winced at the pain in his foot. It was badly inflamed now, and he could feel the blood still oozing out as he moved.

‘You know I found out something when I was in that guy Holland’s bedroom? It was a diary… I don’t know if everything in it was true – he seemed a bit of a messed-up character – but… he was always spying on Morrow, reading his notes and trying to interfere in his work. He mentioned something about finding… more… of these things. Maybe he went back to the place where Morrow came upon the specimen and found others.’

‘What?!’ Waites shouted, before he could stop himself. They both looked around and listened for any reaction to the noise. ‘Why the hell didn’t you say something?’ he went on more quietly.

‘Because the more people there are who know, the more chance that thing has of finding out. I don’t think it knows yet – or maybe it suspects, I’m not sure… But if it gets in my head it’ll know what I know. It’ll know where to find the others.’

‘But it was in Holland before. He was the first one it infected. Why didn’t it get the information from him then?’

‘Well, maybe it did. Maybe that’s why it came back here. But if that’s true, why is it messing about in here. Why doesn’t it just go and find the others? Maybe it was still learning how to possess other creatures, or it could see the others but couldn’t locate them… Does that make sense?’

‘God, I don’t know,’ Waites replied after a pause. ‘It’s clearly here for a reason. And if it got into your head, it might be able to locate its mates. Don’t tell me anything about their location then. Let’s just concentrate on this one; we can worry about the others later. Do you know how many there are?’

‘Quite a few, I think,’ James said; Holland had used the word thousands in his journal.

‘All right, we’ll worry about them later. Come on, let’s find this thing and kill it.’

James moved forward again, his way lit intermittently by flashes of lightning. He had the strange feeling of being in a horror film. Wherever the dog was, it was being very quiet. However, the thing inside it wasn’t stupid: it knew its host wasn’t ideal, so it was being more cautious now. James remembered Titus’s death in the laboratory. The man just fell apart when Sean kicked him, like there was nothing holding his insides together. He remembered too the cold, sickening sensation he’d felt at the sight of that thing wriggling into Sean’s mouth. It had been the worst feeling ever. What would happen to his brother now? Could he survive after even those few seconds’ exposure? James couldn’t bear the idea of Sean having to go through that agony. He knew that if the time came and there was no other option, he might have to—

He shook himself out of his morbid thoughts and tried to concentrate on the task before him. As he followed the bloody tracks, he readied himself to react to any attack. Waites managed to move silently behind him despite the pain he was in.

The drops of blood trailed along the kitchen floor to a space under the counter where there was a pedal bin and a couple of boxes of mineral water. Behind these James saw a glint from what looked like an eye. The dog didn’t stir. James kept his eyes on the space, beckoning Waites forward and pointing. He saw him nod, then look around for a weapon.

Waites slowly opened the cupboard in front of him: plates and a jug were all he could see. He tried the cupboard below: saucepans, frying pans and baking trays – much more like it. He chose a heavy iron frying pan for himself and gave James a sturdy saucepan. For a moment he felt ridiculous, but then told himself that they were simply doing whatever they could under the circumstances. They had no access to guns or… knives. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Although maybe blunt force was the best way to deal with this thing, and swinging a knife around in such a small space might be dangerous. At least with a pan the worst they could do was stun each other.

‘Right – how are we going to do this?’ Waites whispered, stifling a cry of pain as his foot protested.

‘OK… I’ll charge and scare it out. You hit it.’ There was a pause as they both thought this through.

‘Can he understand what we’re saying?’ Waites asked.

James thought about this. The creature had been inside several people now: it had talked through them, used their memories… It was now inside a dog, but could it still understand human speech? There was no way of knowing for sure, and they didn’t have time to test it out.

‘I don’t think it’ll make much difference,’ James said. ‘I mean, even if it does know what we’re going to do, there’s not much—’

The dog chose that moment to dart from its hiding place across the kitchen floor into the rest area. It scampered under tables and chairs, all the way to the windows at the far end.

‘Little bastard!’ Waites screamed.

Then they heard a thump, and when they turned to look back under the counter, they saw an arm. The hand was greeny grey, and the body it was attached to was surely no longer alive.

‘Jesus,’ Waites said. ‘Who’s that?’

‘I don’t know,’ James said after a shocked pause. ‘Should I check?’

‘You take a look, I’ll go after the dog.’

‘All right, but don’t tackle it without me.’

‘I’ll just keep an eye on it. Don’t be long. Just check if they’re alive or not. We’ll deal with them once we’ve sorted the dog.’

Waites moved painfully off after the dog, frying pan held firmly in his hand. James crept over to the storage space and knelt down. The body was that of a young woman in her twenties, though James didn’t recognize her. Her eyes were half open, her mouth agape, and James knew she was dead even before he checked for a pulse. She must have been hiding from Holland when he’d gone berserk – though it wasn’t clear what had killed her.

Poor thing, James thought. She was attractive, he could tell, even though she wasn’t looking too good right now. He was about to stand up when he saw her lower lip move. There was a sound too – air escaping from her lungs perhaps. Maybe she was still alive after all. He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a light shake. Her mouth opened wider, as if to say something, and that’s when the slimy black creature shot out from between her lips and straight into his mouth before wriggling its way up into his brain.