London Under Midnight (5 page)

    'Hey, you've been bitten, too. Look at your side.'

    'Don't let him near me again!' A woman with short blonde hair blundered past. She looked around as if she expected terrifying creatures to attack her at any moment. 'Don't let him near me!'

    A youth scrambled from the shallows, a dripping whirlwind of terror. He didn't use words; instead he screamed in mindless panic as he ran up the beach, cannoned off April, then sped away into the bushes. April recovered her balance only to find the man in the yellow shirt had grasped her wrist and then lifted her arm so he could examine the wound in her side.

    'What's happened to us? Look, we've all been bitten.' He roughly squeezed her flesh to open the wound. 'See? Teeth marks! They've gone right through the skin.'

    Now, that hurt. With a gasp April pulled away. Even so, she asked, 'Do you remember your name?'

    'Of course, I do. Do you think I'm crazy? It's…' His face muscles slackened as the shock hit. 'My name is…' He clenched his fist. 'It's… oh, God. Wait. I'll remember in a minute…' He backed away with his eyes down on the beach as if he would find his identity there.

    'You were there, weren't you?' This came from a woman with copper-coloured hair. 'Did you see what he did to me?'

    The image flashed back of this woman being held down on the wall at the edge of the river as the brutish figure sucked blood from her stomach.

    'Yes.' April stared into the woman's face. The expression of pure horror had the power to hold her. 'I was there. We-'

    'For God's sake, why didn't you stop him?'

    'We tried. My boyfriend-'

    'You bitch, you just watched, didn't you? You probably thought it was funny!' The woman backed away with her arms folded. She panted as if her lungs couldn't draw enough air into her body. 'Bitch,' the red-haired woman gasped. 'Someone should do the same to you.'

    'He did, look!' April pointed at her own side with the raw flaps of the wound raised above the skin. 'See? Everyone else has the same kind of wound.'

    The man in the yellow shirt appeared in a daze now. 'How did we get here? Why is the sun so bright?'

    'That's not the sun, it's the moon.'

    'You're lying,' he told her. 'Bitch. You must be in on this. Did you put something in our drinks?'

    Alongside panic a sense of violence crackled in the air as if that bunch of terrified victims on the beach were desperate to find someone to blame.

    'Listen.' The man pointed at April. 'She knows what's happening.'

    'I don't. I'm the same as-'

    The redhead glared at her. 'That woman stood and watched me being mauled.'

    'I didn't. My boyfriend tried to stop it. He was knocked down.'

    Fear drove these people now. They were desperate for answers. Approximately twenty men and women formed a circle around her.

    The man in the yellow shirt snarled, 'She said that was the moon. Look how bright it is? It's got to be the sun, so why's she telling us it's the moon? This is a trick. She probably drugged our drinks, then followed us outside.'

    April felt close to weeping. 'Listen to me. I'm just like you. I was attacked. I was thrown in the water. I woke up here on the island. Yes, that's the moon. I don't know why it's so bright.'

    'See, she knows all about it.' This was a kid in his teens. The denim jacket he wore had chains stitched to it so they clinked as he pointed at her. His bite mark disfigured his face. 'How does she know about an island?'

    The man in the shirt rubbed his stomach. The wound must have started its maddening itch. 'She knew I wouldn't be able to remember my name. There's a drug that does that to you.'

    'You were washed up here, like me,' April insisted. 'This is a Glory Hole for bodies. My brother said that the tides and currents gather objects-'

    'What the hell is the bitch talking about?'

    'Listen to me. Like coins, and stones of a certain size, the river currents grade them naturally and then deposit them on beaches. If you look down here all the stones are as big as coins.'

    'Watch her,' the youth warned, 'she's trying something.'

    'She's playing for time.' This was the redhead. 'Whoever brought us here is coming back so she's trying to distract us.'

    'I can make her talk.' The youth reached into his pocket and drew out a clasp knife. He took pleasure in easing the blade from its recess.

    'Please. You've got to believe me.' Nausea surged through April. For a moment she thought she'd vomit there and then. She took a deep breath. 'Listen. We were all attacked. We ended up in the water. The river washed us up here… this island.' She swallowed to push down that ball of heat rising in her throat. 'Washed up here. That happened to all of us.'

    The guy in the shirt screamed at her. 'Washed up here! We're not stupid! If we floated here, how come we didn't drown?'

    'I don't know… sorry… don't know.' Inside, she went from searing heat to ice. 'Something's happening to me.'

    'Wrong, sister,' spat the redhead. 'Something
will
happen to you.' She took a step toward her. 'I'm going to rip every hair out of your damn head until you tell us what's happened.'

    'Please.'

    The man in the shirt kneaded his stomach rather than rubbing it. Something was working on him, too. 'And if she doesn't talk then I'm going to break her neck.'

    A flush of heat ran through April's face as her stomach was hit by cramp. 'Doesn't anyone here remember their name?' She looked at the twenty faces. But now those faces blazed hostility at her. They could beat their fear by
beating
her. That was their solution. 'And aren't the colours too bright? They blaze at you, don't they?'

    'That'll be the effect of the drug you put in our drinks.'

    'I didn't spike any stupid drinks.' April couldn't stand straight now, the stomach pains were so intense. 'Don't any of you feel a sense of confusion? Like you've been spun around and around so much you…' A bitter taste flooded her mouth.

    The redhead lunged at her and grabbed her hair. 'Confusion? That'll be the drug. It's all adding up now. You drugged us, then you and your friends brought us here, didn't you?'

    'What about the bite marks?'

    'Fucking sadists, that's what you are.'

    The man in the shirt grinned manically. 'That's right. You were going to fuck us round and do something perverted but we woke up too soon. Now we're going to fuck around with you until you wish you'd never been born.'

    'But I'm the same as you! I'm a victim!' Overwhelming spasms ran through her. With them came searing heat and an urge to vomit.

    Only… the sensation was mutating inside of her. Mutating… that can't be the right word, she told herself. Only it was
mutating.
That's exactly the right word. This wasn't merely change in her stomach; this was mutant transformation. Her very guts seemed to writhe inside her. She clutched her belly as she cried out.

    The redhead who gripped her hair must have thought it was the pain in her scalp that did it. She nodded with satisfaction. 'See how you like being hurt. How about a bit more? Hmm?'

    She dragged April back by her hair. Only it wasn't her scalp that hurt.

    'Something's happening to me,' April gasped.

    'I'm going to make her tell us,' the man said. 'Before her friends come back… uh…' He pressed the heel of his hand into his midriff.

    'You feel it, too, don't you?' April felt the woman release her hair. The redhead backed away as she massaged her own belly with her two hands. 'What is it you feel?'

    The kid in the denim jacket muttered, 'It's the crap she gave us. I've got to eat something. Christ, I'm hungry.' He tried to laugh but there was fear in his eyes. Whatever affected April had started on him, too. The kid's throat muscles twitched.

    Instead of the people directing their anger at April Connor they moved about the beach in a restless way. Their expressions suggested they were preoccupied with what was happening to their own bodies. They were no longer interested in her, or their paranoid accusations. No, they were gripped by another obsession now… April licked her lips. The pain in her stomach morphed into another sensation entirely. Hunger. A desperate need to eat. A burning, screaming, shouting, overwhelming need: food, hunger, eat, satisfy. The craving to stuff food in her mouth was suddenly everything. It was the whole universe. What matters now? Damn it! Nothing matters now. If news arrived of the deaths of her mother, father, Trajan: it wouldn't matter. The necessity now was food.

    From the expressions on the faces of that bedraggled group on the beach that's what mattered to them. Can hunger be infectious? How can they all be hungry simultaneously? These thoughts still flitted through April's mind but the supernova of all sensation now was the incandescent hunger that raged inside of her. It didn't seem confined to her stomach. That lust to gorge blazed through her veins. And it was more than hunger; that need to wolf down food hurt. It became a living pain inside of her. Nothing mattered but food. Wildly, she looked round as if expecting to find mounds of roast beef on the beach. There had to be something to eat. If there wasn't she'd go out of her mind.

    
Out of her mind?
God, she'd left rational thought behind.

    Eating, eating, eating… that's all that mattered now. The others were the same. They ran along the shingle like a pack of hungry dogs. They even sniffed the air as if a hot meal waited for them close by. The kid with the denim jacket sped into the bushes to lift up branches; no doubt he hoped that he'd find a sizzling T-bone steak dripping its beautiful juices on the grass.

    The man in the yellow shirt shuffled on all fours across the beach; his hands picked amongst the stones with a fevered speed. She knew the overriding impulse that drove him; that if there was the slightest chance he'd find something edible there he'd search until doomsday. With a strange cry he snatched up a large stone. His expression was the same as an alcoholic knowing that next whisky might kill him, but his will power had collapsed. For a second he held the pebble that was the size of a peach in front of him. He stared at it in horror. His hands shook; tears streamed down his face. Then he opened his loose, pink mouth as wide as he could, stuffed the rock between his jaws, then bit down as hard as he could. The sound of his snapping teeth made April Connor flinch.

    Madness…

    And yet… and yet… the incandescent hunger that seared her entire body drove her to search the beach, too. It made sense. There had to be food here, too. The waves washed all kinds of things on to the shore. Why not food? Container ships full of meat lose their cargos from time to time. Images of dead fish being carried in amid the scum of high tide filled her head. Fat fish, bursting with moist, pink flesh.

    All around her, those men and women searched for food in the bushes, the reeds, the flotsam on the beach. The man still broke his teeth on the rock, screaming in frustration as he did so at his inability to devour it as if it were a hunk of chocolate. April scrambled to where waves lapped the shore. There she saw a little bank of dirt emerge from the falling tide. All of a sudden this struck her as an amazing sight. The moonlight made the dirt glisten; its silky texture captivated her. She approached it at a crouch as if terrified she'd somehow frighten it away, so it would be beyond reach. Gently, gently, gently she squatted beside it. Its smooth purity was unearthly. Instead of pebbles this was a velvety accumulation of tiny particles that had the texture and appearance of black sugar. 'Oh…' Just to look at it made her sigh with pleasure. The thought of sinking her fingers into the moist confection sent a dizzying whirl of anticipation through her. Nothing else mattered now but that juicy up-swelling of luscious black sweetness.
I'm so lucky,
she told herself,
all this is mine. Those idiots haven't noticed what's lying here under their noses.

    As she dipped her hands into it she couldn't stop the tiny kitten-like cries escape her lips. It was all she could do to stop herself screaming with joy at capturing this luxurious mound of candied blackness from the water. Every cell of her being glowed with pleasure. Her mouth was wet with anticipation at the first mouthful. April dug her hand deep into the mud then crammed it into her mouth. Munching those moist particles was sheer bliss. Her teeth crunched against the larger fragments. Swallowing was something else! It was pain and ecstasy all at the same time. The ball of cold matter squeezed down her throat, stretching the gullet until it almost split. But this is what she wanted… this is
everything
she wanted… Even the tiny voice in her head that told her she squatted in the water devouring silt was nothing to her. A gnat on the periphery of reality; nothing more. She prepared to savour the next handful of the glistening delicacy, which was deliciously speckled with fragments of crisp, white sea shell, when a hand grabbed her arm.

    'Let go!' she screamed. 'This is mine! Find your own!'

    A man's voice hissed urgently, 'Get away from here!'

    'You're not having any. I found it!' Using both hands she scooped mounds of the black sugary treat to her mouth where she sucked at it with a ferocity that was nothing less than gluttonous. Its flavors were chocolate, roast beef, red wine and a vivid honeyed nougat. She couldn't get enough.

    'Get away from here! Any minute now they're going to go crazy!'

    Something about that note of warning pierced the insane lust to eat. April looked down at the black stuff on her hands. Puzzled, she uttered, 'That's mud.' She wiped her lips. 'I'm eating mud?'

    'If you don't come now, I'm leaving you, and I don't fancy your chances once that thing comes down on them.'