Arcadium (23 page)

I pull it out,
turn it on and this time I jog up the stairs; the narrow torch beam
bounces off the metal.

It’ll only take
Adrian about ten minutes to scrounge us up some lunch so I have to
be quick. I don’t want him to come looking for me.

I lean over the
railing and hold out the torch. The instant the beam hits the
contents of the trolley I reel back, sucking in a huge gasp of air.
Decaying arms and legs cross over each other, faces stuck in
torturous hungry snarls stare up from the dark. Twenty sets of
infected eyes glint in the torchlight like they’ve still got life
left in them. But everything is still in the trolley. Still and
dead.

The room is
full of trolleys. Full of dead infected. Hundreds of them. Right
below our feet the whole time.

I step back so
fast I forget I’m on steps and when my foot moves there’s nothing
left to support it. I tumble over and over, rolling sideways down
the stairs. Clattering fills the air and I land on my side, sliding
onto the concrete ground. I don’t feel hurt but then I’m probably
too much in shock to feel anything but horror.

In seconds I’m
on my feet and sprinting, weaving through the trolleys full of
infected people.

I’m still
clutching the torch as I kick the broom away and speed out into the
corridor. Behind me the door slams shut but I can’t stop running. I
have to find Kean and Trouble. Now.

Chapter
20

The air changes
and becomes thick and sharp like rotting food. I follow the hallway
straight down and suddenly burst out into an open room. I slide to
a stop and heads look up at me from piles of rubbish. A few seconds
pass and they return to their work, sorting through mounds of mess
with yellow-gloved hands.

Someone stands
up straight and locks eyes with me. It’s Trouble. Confusion slides
across his expression as I jog over. I switch off the torch so I
don’t call even more attention to myself.

When I reach
him I almost knock him over. Trouble pulls off his gloves and puts
his hands on my shoulders. I stare at him, feeling my arms
trembling, and can’t think of how to explain it, not even to
someone who understands English. I don’t even really understand
what I’ve just seen.

He drops his
chin and in a low voice whispers, “Trouble?”

I nod.

“Hey, Trouble,
over here.” We both look up at the call and Kean beckons us with a
quick wave of his hand. He’s standing behind a huge metal dumpster,
shielded from the rest of the workers.

Trouble still
has his hand on my shoulder and we walk over. He drops his hand as
soon as we’re behind the dumpster and it’s like passing a baton:
Kean grabs my face with both hands. His touch has this weird
calming effect on me.

“What’s going
on?” he says, glancing between us.

My mouth hangs
open for a second. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

“Why, what
happened?”

“I just found a
room full of dead infected. Hundreds of them.”

Kean blinks and
stares straight at me as he processes.

“And we have a
new room mate, Jacob. He says he came from another place just like
Arcadium but it blew up. He said there’s a self-destruct mechanism
in case things get out of hand. Kean, we’re sitting on a freaking
time bomb.”

Kean drops his
hands away and steadies himself against the dumpster.

“I don’t know
what it is but I get the feeling Jacob knows more than he’s telling
me.”

“So…” Kean
glances at Trouble. Trouble is just watching intently, eyes
flicking between us. “What do we do?”

I take a deep
breath. “I don’t know. But I’m supposed to meet Adrian in a few
minutes. He wants to hang out in the surveillance room.”

Kean’s eyes
narrow but he doesn’t say anything for a long while. We just stand
in the shadow of the dumpster, huddled together.

“Why don’t we
have a family meeting tonight and decide. If we’re leaving, we’ll
need a plan. In the meantime we just carry on, pretend nothing’s
wrong.” He nods for Trouble and looks back at me. “Try not to look
suspicious.”

“Tonight
then.”

“We should get
back to work before the slave driver finds us slacking off.” Kean
pauses, one hand still cradling my face. “Hey, it’ll all be
fine.”

I nod.
“Yep.”

Kean peers
around the dumpster. “Go,” he says.

I walk back out
the way I came and when I reach the bottom of the stairs I pause
and glance over at the biohazard door. I tuck the small torch into
the waistband of my trousers and head on up.

Adrian is
waiting at the surveillance room door with two brown paper bags. He
looks me up and down and then frowns. “What happened to you?”

“What do you
mean?” I ask looking down and I see what he’s talking about. When I
fell down the stairs I’ve managed to slide through gross blue
greasy stuff and it’s all down the side of my uniform. I feel
nauseous, and try not to think about what it really is. “Oh, that…
I slipped on some rubbish juice.”

Adrian crinkles
his nose and moves toward the door. “Why don’t you go change your
uniform and I’ll get lunch ready.”

“Yeah. I’ll be
quick.” I turn and head to the bathroom, grateful for the moment
alone. Act normal, I keep telling myself but there’s so much going
on in my head: images of the dead bodies in the trolleys, and
Jacobs’s ominous words, and the thought of flashing blue
lights.

I find another
uniform and scoop it up in my arms. I sit on one of the benches and
stop for a moment. Liss and Henry are here somewhere, sealed behind
glass and unaware of everything, and Kean and Trouble are stuck in
the basement wading through revolting rubbish. No wonder they look
tired and demoralised all the time. It’s horrible down there. A
dungeon.

I put my palms
against my forehead and close my eyes. How could this be so wrong?
How could I be so blind? Arcadium was supposed to be our
destination, our saviour, our safety. And maybe it is on the
surface but underneath it’s just as volatile as outside. Is there
nowhere safe anymore? Is there no one we can trust?

I pull in a
long slow breath and let it out. That’s when I realise, we can only
trust ourselves. Just the five of us. Because not one of them
slowed me down, not one of them tried to kill me, not one of them
tried to talk me out of this crazy idea. They trusted me and I
trusted them and that last night at the hotel was the best I’ve had
in forever.

I try to think
of something else, like lunch, to calm me down. I dump the dirty
uniform in the laundry bin and go back out into the corridor.

I knock lightly
on the door and it pops open straight away. Adrian has the lunch
spread out on the desk and goes back to the computer, searching for
something.

“Turns out
scientists do like cake.” He holds up a slice of banana bread,
staring at the screen still. When I sit down he looks over and
grins. “That smells better.”

“Ha, ha,” I
say, snatching the banana bread slice from his hand. “What are we
watching?”

“The new guy’s
entrance. It’s pretty cool.” Adrian stops typing and points at the
monitor. He sits back in the chair and bites into a wrap of some
kind. “You met him yet?” he says, with his mouthful.

“Yeah, he
scared the crap out of me this morning.”

Adrian laughs
and takes another huge greedy bite. It kind of reminds me of an
infected person chowing down on a meal. Adrian sits up suddenly.
“Here, here. Watch this.”

I stare at the
black and white monitor. Nothing happens straight away but soon a
small figure walks into view. Infected people hover around
aimlessly but as soon as they see his movement they all jerk into
action. Jacob keeps walking, even as they run at him. He reaches
with steady hands into his jacket, pulls out a gun from each side
and starts shooting.

Infected heads
explode and the bodies drop to the floor. There’s no sound but I
flinch with every shot. Jacob keeps on walking as if he’s
invincible, walking straight toward the elevator. Once inside he
turns around and I swear it looks like an action movie. Jacob
raises his gun and shoots three times, stopping the onslaught with
pinpoint precision. And then he calmly reaches for the elevator
button. As the doors shut he puts down the guns, sits on the floor
and moments later he passes out.

“How cool is
that? Look he even puts the safeties back on before he sits down.
What a champion.” Adrian looks over. “Not bad, huh?”

“Just because
he looks a little bit more organised than we did…”

“A bit!” Adrian
throws his head back and laughs. “What’s he like?”

I shrug and
bite into my cake. “I don’t know. He seems alright.”

“Bad ass?”

“Yeah,
totally.” I finish chewing. “So there’s no one in decontamination
now?”

Adrian scans
the monitors and points one out. “Nope. All clear.”

“And have they
found a cure yet?”

Adrian takes
another bite and shakes his head.

“What about
that thing they were talking about when I was stuck in the
cupboard?”

Adrian gives me
his best sour look. “You mean when you almost got me in deep
trouble?”

I just smile
and finish off the banana bread.

“They’re still
working on it. Normally it takes a day and they find it’s nothing
but the labs have been buzzing for a while.”

“Must be good
then.”

“Eh, don’t
know, don’t care.” He chews noisily and finishes the last of his
wrap. “Check it out,” he says, pushing something toward me. “When
was the last time you had yoghurt?”

I pick up the
tub but I’m still thinking about his lack of desperation for a
cure. “Don’t you want to live outside again? In the real
world?”

Adrian wipes
his mouth and sits back. “This is the real world. Besides, I’m
going to be the ruler of this place one day. In the normal world
I’m nothing but here… here I’m king.”

I have to look
away. I pretend to watch a monitor out to the side but really I’m
just hiding the panic I feel. Sometimes it’s easy to think Adrian’s
just a lonely kid and feel sympathy for him, but then he has these
moments and I wonder how different he really is from his father. At
least Doctor Harding is looking for a cure. Adrian’s just looking
for his tiny kingdom to rule.

“Spoon?” Adrian
says. I don’t answer him straight away and he taps me on the head
with it. When I reach for the spoon he lets me have it but grabs my
hand instead. I freeze and panic flutters within me like an aviary
of alarmed birds. Adrian’s skin prickles against mine, his fingers
tighten in an acid grip. All I can think of is Kean’s soft lips
against my forehead.

I yank my hand
back, put my foot against his wheely chair and shove him away.

Adrian’s eyes
narrow but his lips still carry a smile. “Careful,” he says,
wheeling himself slowly toward me. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds
you.”

I drop the tub
of yoghurt and it clatters to the floor. “I’ll feed myself then.” I
shoot to my feet and rush out the door. I don’t even care anymore
what he thinks.

I never turn to
see if Adrian is following, I just run straight back to my sleeping
quarters and slam the door.

I pace the
length of our small grey room a few times before slipping into my
bunk and pressing myself right up against the wall. If I close my
eyes strange images dance behind my lids: Adrian and his tight
grip, discarded bodies, creepy sour smelling basements.

So I keep my
eyes open, staring at the bunk above me. Hours pass like this. I’m
just waiting for the others to return, drawing out a plan in my
head. Once together we can head out to the rooftop, go down the
fire escape and climb the back fence into the houses. From there we
can run, find a car. We’ll have to start again, collecting food and
water, but it’s possible and doable and the only choice we have. I
won’t allow Liss to die in a concrete coffin surrounded by crazy
people.

At three
o’clock the door opens and Trouble walks in. He doesn’t see me
though, and just sits on Henry’s bed, looks up at the clock and
sighs. It’s weird because he’s not supposed to finish work for
another three hours.

I don’t know
why I don’t just come out straight away. I feel like I’ve intruded
on a private moment of Trouble’s solitude and I don’t want to jump
out and scare him.

His dark eyes
seem hollow, he looks pale too, but since we haven’t seen sun in
two weeks I’m not surprised. Trouble stretches out his fingers and
looks at his hands.

The door flings
opens. I can’t tell who it is, just a set of white shoes and white
trousered ankles, but Trouble’s eyes go wild and confused.

In seconds
there’s another set of white shoes and in a flash Trouble’s on the
floor, face down, being dragged out by his legs. He doesn’t even
have a chance to make a sound but he does grab the bunk ladders on
either side. Now he sees me. We lock eyes and I don’t need a
translator to know he’s scared.

I can measure
the time that passes in three hammering heartbeats. A foot kicks
out at Trouble’s hand, breaking his grip, and I catch a glimpse of
white lab coat. With his grip broken, Trouble grapples with the
concrete floor but they drag him straight out. His eyes never leave
mine until the door slams shut.

The scuffling
sound fades and I lie blinking, trying to work out if I’d imagined
it or not. But I can still see his fingerprints frosted onto the
metal ladder bar.

I jerk into
action, rolling out and bursting into the hallway. I follow the
sound to the right and it takes me straight to the corridor leading
to the laboratories. I run down it and as I reach the glass door,
Trouble is just disappearing around the corner. I stop, wondering
if I should dare to punch in the code and follow. But suddenly
scientists spill out of an office and follow Trouble’s trail, their
backs toward me.