Skylight (Arcadium, #2) (15 page)

“THIS FEELS
LIKE a bad idea,” I whisper as we creep into the dark.

No one
answers.

Our torches
expel small dots of light, spotlighting vague sections of concrete
wall and ground. I stumble over one of the train tracks and grab
Trouble’s arm. I decide not to let go, partly so I won’t trip again
and partly because I almost lost Trouble in a place like this on
our last journey and I can’t let that happen again. I look to his
face, to see if he’s afraid of the dark now, but only Trouble’s
hands are visible from the shine of his torch.

It’s weird when
you take something as important as sight out of the equation. My
ears are hyper sensitive: I can almost count every rock that shifts
under my footsteps, every particle in each breath released.

We descend into
the underground at a reluctant pace. We have to go right, following
the curve of the tracks, as the other direction is blocked off by
another thick metal fence. I think it leads to the above ground
stations — Flinders Street and Southern Cross. And I wonder how
many infected wander their platforms, just waiting for blood.

The tracks and
the sleepers and the holes around them make it difficult to walk.
Our torch beams criss-cross over the ground, only popping up every
now and then to make sure we don’t have any unwelcome visitors. The
tunnel curves gently, and I wonder what part of the city we’re
sneaking beneath right now.

Jacob stops
suddenly. Trouble and I walk straight into him. Kean bumps into our
backs. I didn’t realise we were all walking so close together. My
ears prick, and our torches spear into the blackness.

“What is it?” I
whisper, pointing my beam to Jacob’s face.

“Listen.” He
stares into the tunnel, one hand raised.

There’s only
one thing creepier than unidentified noises, and that is perfect
and suffocating silence. My heart squeezes tight, my muscles tense,
waiting for the inevitable sound.

“I don’t hear
anything,” I say.

“I do.” Jacob’s
voice is low and gritty and more concerned than I’d like.

We don’t dare
move. I frown, as if the expression will somehow help me to hear
better, and I wait, just clutching onto Trouble’s arm, the way Liss
used to hold onto me.

“I hear it,”
Kean says, from behind.

And then I hear
it too. It’s subtle, almost undetectable — a vibrating on the
lowest frequency of my hearing ability. The noise grows slowly and
we just stand there and listen, like we can’t run until we know
what it is.

“Something’s
coming,” Jacob says.

He’s right.
Soon after he says it, the ground starts to rumble.

“Infected?”
Kean says.

Jacob doesn’t
reply. He just shines his torch into the void. I shine mine on
Jacob.

Trouble
whispers, “Trouble?”

Suddenly the
volume spikes, like the noise just turned a corner, and the
acoustics propel the odd rushing sound at us with all its
might.

I take a step
back when I see movement. They appear out of nowhere, racing low
along the ground. Beady little eyes glow an eerie fluorescent
green, reflecting our torchlight. They forge toward us, completely
carpeting the floor, making creepy little squeaks like knives
scraping on bare plates.

The rats hit us
like a wave. There’s no time to run, nowhere to climb. I dig my
fingers into Trouble’s arm as they surge around my legs, bashing
against my shins, tails flicking about. The rats swarm over one
other, piling higher until they reach my knees. I can’t help it. I
scream.

Just because
they’re not infected people, doesn’t make them any less scary. Rats
bite and claw and climb and eat people’s eyeballs right out of
their sockets. I’ve seen the movies.

Their dull fur
covers every inch of ground. Their bodies squirm around me, moving
like an endless flow of warm sewage, but they don’t seem all that
interested in us: we still have our eyeballs.

Trouble pulls
me in tight and I repay him by accidentally swearing in his
ear.

I keep thinking
the rats are going to climb up my jeans and race up my back and get
stuck in my hair. It’s so gross. But then, as quick as they
arrived, the rats disappear.

I step back,
still shaking and shine my torch around to make sure I don’t have
any hitchhikers hanging off me. “Oh, wow,” I say. “That was
horrific,”

Jacob smiles
briefly, but it disappears when a blast of wind whips over him. My
hair goes wild and flaps about. The air tugs at my clothing and
roars in my ears.

Jacob turns,
suddenly illuminated by two glowing orbs racing toward us. The
entire tunnel shudders now and we all freeze in horror. My brain
can’t make sense of the scene, but within seconds we start
scrabbling everywhere. Arms fly up, legs are slow to move. We all
dive to one side, and Trouble half pushes, half drags me there. I
drop my torch as I slam into the awkwardly curved concrete wall,
and the lights spear past us, dragging a metal square-bodied
projectile after it, just centimetres from our bodies. Wind buffets
against us and I watch through strands of my swirling hair, as a
train — a real moving train with lights on and people inside —
flies past, heading to God knows where.

A second wave
of shock washes over me and the train slips away around the curve.
The air flutters about in its wake and eventually settles.

It takes us a
while to form words. “You have got to be kidding me,” I say. I
don’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream again. My brain wants
me to do all three at once.

“Where’s it
going?” Kean says, picking up my torch and handing it to me. “It’s
a dead end.”

“Did you see
the people?” I say, not specifically to Trouble, but I look at him
when I say it. He blinks.

“Let’s keep
moving, before it turns back and tries again.” Jacob leads us
away.

We find a small
flat walkway in the process of fleeing, one that runs along side
the tracks and takes us all the way to the first City Loop station.
My heart still pumps loudly from the rat incident.

“At least the
rats aren’t infected,” I say. I only know this because if they
were, we’d be dead.

Jacob glances
over his shoulder. “This is it.”

A wide
welcoming light bleeds into the darkness ahead. We approach in
single file, cautious.

The underground
station is just as I remember it — the platform sidewall is covered
in shiny blue plastic and the train side is decorated with big
white grilles. Fake white lights illuminate dull white floor tiles.
It’s bright and clinical, just like walking into a hospital. And
it’s completely empty.

Kean points to
the monitors above the empty commuter benches. They’re actually
working, displaying train times for five stations (two of them I’ve
never heard of): End of Line A, Parliament, Melbourne Central,
Flagstaff, End of Line B. The next train is in ten minutes.

Jacob holsters
his gun and jumps up onto the platform. It’s only now that I
realise how restrained he is with it. If the gun was in my hands
I’m sure I would have fired it into the rats.

Jacob’s eyes
never stop surveying the scene, even as he reaches a hand down to
me.

I stare at his
offering, then at him.

Jacob glances
down at me to see what the hold up is. He still has his gun
drawn.

Honestly I’m
surprised he even thought of helping me, because Jacob only
respects the strong and independent — the type that carry guns and
fire them without thought and actually hit their targets.

Jacob clears
his throat awkwardly. His dark eyes might even be unsure.

I take his hand
and he just pulls me straight up. As simple as that. One moment I’m
on the tracks and the next my feet touch down on the platform. Now
that’s strong.

“This is kind
of creepy,” I say, looking around as the others climb up. The
platform is long and narrow, stretching away from us.

It’s so weird
it is to see electric lights after relying on candles for so long.
I think we all keep looking at them — well, not Jacob, but the rest
of us do. We stare at them like wingless moths.

“It’s quiet,” I
say. “Are you sure it’s not further?”

All the exits
to the over ground stations are blocked with sturdy looking white
doors. Jacob peers at one of the flashy looking code box locks.

“Look
familiar?” he says to me.

They remind me
of Arcadium’s door locking system, just white instead of black.

“Now what?”
Kean says. He looks around, suspicious of everything. We walk the
length of the platform and find no way out, no sign saying push
this button so we can gas you before we let you in. Nothing.

Jacob shrugs
and his eyes search the space, lifting higher this time. They stop
and narrow, and I follow his gaze to a security camera currently
trained on us.

A loudspeaker
crackles to life and I just about scream — again.

“Well, hello
there,” a smooth young male voice comes out of speakers above
us.

I glance back
at Jacob. I grip my backpack straps like I’m skydiving but he’s
calm as usual. Really there’s no way to work out the danger level
of a situation by looking at his face. I should know that
already.

“Hello? Hello?”
the voice says again. “Can you hear me? Is this thing on? Testing,
testing — what? Oh… of course you can’t reply. Just wave if you can
hear me.”

There’s a brief
pause and then Jacob offers a curt wave. The rest of us just kind
of stare awkwardly at the camera, at the speakers, at the
emptiness.

“Wonderful. A
security team will be onsite to rendezvous in approximately three
minutes. In the meantime, feel free to take a seat and relax. And
if you’d just put your backpacks, anything from your pockets and
most importantly all of your weapons including those torches on the
ground please.”

We don’t move
from our huddled circle, unsure of what’s coming next — if we’ll be
dragged away at gunpoint, be shot with tranquilliser darts, thrown
into decontamination, isolated from one another, our bodies at the
mercy of a bunch of scientists.

We glance at
each other to see who’s willing to follow the rules and make
themselves totally vulnerable. It’s actually Kean that goes first,
shrugging off his pack and sliding it along the ground, just out of
reach. He kicks his metal pipe and torch away, and looks at me.

My eyes flicker
down and I let go of my bag. Jacob reluctantly slides his gun away,
then turns his sharp eyes on the platform exits. Trouble adds his
stuff to the pile.

Right on time,
one of the white doors pops open and six soldiers in dust-coloured
camouflage uniforms exit. They move slowly, almost meandering, as
if they’re just coming over for a quick chat before going back on
duty. Of course, they carry guns; deadly looking ones that span the
length of their torsos, require two hands to operate and come with
nifty red laser pointers. They walk in some kind of tight formation
then fan out quickly. I assume it’s in case they need to shoot us,
and right now they all have excellent vantage points to kill us
from.

“Anyone
injured?” The lead soldier barks. It’s not unfriendly, but it’s to
the point.

“No,” Kean
says.

I shake my
head.

“Are these all
your weapons and possessions?”

“Pretty sure,”
Kean replies.

The soldier
scrunches up one side of his face, trying to get something out of
his teeth using his tongue. He considers our faces, one at a
time.

“Alright then,”
he says after the pause, and he steps to one side, revealing a
small man that was hiding behind him the whole time. He’s lanky and
pale with freckled skin and fluffy curls of brown hair. The man is
young, maybe in his early twenties. He pushes his black rimmed
glasses a bare millimetre up the bridge of his nose with his
knuckle. He does it again, as if to check he got it right the first
time, or like some kind of nervous tick. He watches us, blinking
randomly.

Finally he
speaks. “Hello there.” His mouth flicks into a quick smile and then
flattens, all within the space of a second. “And welcome.” He
flicks his glasses again. “I’m Franklin, and if you’re looking for
safety, you’ve come to the right place.”

Jacob nods and
points to himself then each of us. “Jacob. Florence. Kean.
Trouble.”

Franklin looks
at each of us, narrowing his eyes and blinking as if he’s taking
our snapshots. “Lovely. Wonderful. Shall we? We just need to give
you a check up and then you can come on in. To the main site, that
is. We’re currently at our research facility, so don’t worry,
Skylight is much more impressive. Anyway, we best get going before
the train arrives.” Franklin leads the way through the door into a
glaring white corridor. What is it with scientists and white?

The soldiers
surround us, three in front and two behind. Their heavy boots sound
like a whole army of footsteps.

We make two
quick turns and stop.

“We’ll go in
two at a time from this point,” Franklin says. “Just so we don’t
have any mishaps. That bloody virus spreads so quickly, doesn’t
it?” He chuckles but stops when no one else laughs. “We just need a
blood sample and I’ll take you straight to admissions. Simple as
that.” Franklin puts his hand on the door and turns to Jacob.
“Would you like to follow me?”

Jacobs’s eyes
dart to me. “Ladies first.”

Kean steps
forward before I can say anything. “I’ll go.”

“Take Trouble,”
I say.

Kean’s
expression is set on seriously concerned, but he nods. “Just so
things don’t get out of hand,” he says to Franklin, “you should
know that Trouble doesn’t speak English. So go easy on him.”

Franklin and
the soldiers all look at Trouble. And Trouble just stares back.