Strangers in the Night (19 page)

He turned his back.

Trotted away from them.

“Please!” Mitts called out after Dag.

But Dag’s only response was to wave an arm in the air.

Mitts met Samantha’s blue eyes.

He saw the sorrow.

The despair.

Then he heard the hard, rusted-up hinges of the gates creaking into life.

* * *

Mitts stole out through the tiny gap in the gates.

Back out into the mist.

He could still hear the voice.

The cries for help.

He glanced back over his shoulder.

Samantha stood there.

She disappeared as the gates slammed shut.

Five minutes.

Dag would hold his gunmen off for
five minutes
. Once that time passed, they would shoot at anything that moved outside the gates.

Mitts trudged across the sodden earth.

He raised his head, listening out for the screams.

Only now did he truly realise
why
everybody in the Village lived in fear.

Why
they lived in a fortress.

An outside enemy.

Something which threatened them.

Strangers.

He wouldn’t forget the look of fear on Dag’s face for a long time.

Back in the holding area, Mitts would never have believed Dag capable of showing fear.

Not in company.

Mitts held his rifle up.

He stared through the sight.

Into the mist.

Looking for those shapes.

The ones which’d indicate the
creatures
.

The Strangers.

But he saw none of them.

He reached up.

Wiped the rain out of his eyes.

“Hello?!” Mitts called out.

He listened for a reply.

Ears primed.

Ready to head off in any given direction.

No response.

Mitts wondered how long had passed.

He wondered how many of those five minutes he still had.

He called out again.

“HELLO?!”

This time Mitts heard something.

“. . . Over here!”

Mitts jarred his head around.

Stared off into the mists.

He could make out a form.

He headed toward it.

As he drew closer, he made out features.

A man maybe five or six years older than he was.

Bald.

His rifle lay off beside him.

On the earth.

His leg had slipped down a hole.

Got stuck.

The man brought Mitts’s face into focus.

He broke out into a maniacal smile.

“Thank you!” he said, in accented English, and then, “Thank you! Thank you!” as if this outpouring of gratitude was where their struggle ended.

Mitts shouldered his rifle.

He looked over the man.

How would he do this?

How
would he do this?

The man was heavy-looking.

Surely twice Mitts’s weight.

Mitts crouched down. Ready to help the man free himself.

He had seen the man before.

He vaguely recalled having seen him in the kitchens.

Back at the Station.

Mitts got closer to the man. He reached out to take hold of his outstretched hands. He caught the thick scent of roast chicken clinging to him.

A warm pang passed through his chest.

Mitts clung on tight to the man’s hands.

He summoned all the force he could.

Pulled.

He wouldn’t budge.

A sudden flush of giddiness passed through him.

Nausea
.

Apparently noticing Mitts’s struggle, the man’s eyes widened.

He pointed over Mitts’s shoulder.

His mouth yawned open.

Revealing a dark pit within.

Mitts followed the man’s finger.

Looked past those well-chewed fingernails.

Out beyond.

There Mitts saw them.

Hundreds
of them.

Drawing close.

Appearing out of the mist.

Mitts breathed in.

The air felt cold now.

Much
colder than it had before.

His skin puckered into goose pimples.

The sound of croaking filled the air.

Surrounded.

They were
surrounded
.

Creatures appeared out of the mist on all sides.

No escape.

Mitts turned his attention back onto the man.

His lips shook.

He was jabbering away.

About something or other.

Prayers?

Mitts listened in closer.

The man’s voice was almost a whisper.

“Don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me . . .”

If Mitts ran now he might save himself.

Surely he had another minute to make it back.

Another minute before Dag ordered his men to recommence shooting.

He looked up, to the creatures again.

They loomed large in the mist.

He took in their faces—their
expressions
—for the first time.

In the Autopsy room, back at the Compound, the specimen’s face had been bloated.

Almost comical in appearance.

Now, though, there was nothing
comical
about their wide, beady black eyes.

Or their spiderlike fangs.

Or the spittle which hung down from them.

Either side of their torsos, stubby, whale-blubber growths hung off them like obese human arms.

Sulphur filled the air.

The bitter scent of urine.

He glanced back to the man.

His leg stuck in the hole beneath him.

His eyeballs swivelled about their sockets.

Mitts grasped hold of his rifle.

He stared along the sight.

But there were too many.

He
knew
there were too many.

It would be a worthless attempt.

As his finger rested against the trigger, Mitts felt something swill through him.

It reached his gut.

He felt the strength in his trigger finger give in a touch.

He knew that he
must
fire . . . that he had to put up some sort of a fight . . . and yet, he just couldn’t.

Already, it was too late.

He was surrounded.

An unbroken chain.

Mitts breathed in the sulphuric air.

He took it down into his lungs.

He thought back seven years, to when he had been in the Restricted Area.

Heard the rain pattering.

The sound of it carrying along the air vents.

He thought about the scent of disinfectant:

The room with the overalls.

He thought about the looks on his parents’ faces when he had found them:

Dead
.

When he’d found his little sister, Floo:

Dead
.

And
dead
was just how Mitts was going to end up.

He strained his eyes to look into the mist as it closed in on the two of them.

Could he see their faces?

His family?

His mother . . . his father . . . Floo . . .

Mitts breathed the sulphuric smell right down to his bones.

His knees buckled.

His mind ebbed free of consciousness.

He landed with a distant, damp
thud
on the sodden earth.

Sam America stood on the fringe of the little, tumble-down village. He cast his glance over the place another time. As he had walked out, to the edge of town, the clouds had bundled up into blackened cotton wool.

The rain had started to fall.

It fell heavily now.

Sam America knew he should find shelter.

What good was a superhero with a head cold?

He turned his back on the village for a final time, putting the place to rest within his mind, never to be thought of again except—
perhaps
—in unexpected dreams.

Then he heard it again.

Cough.

Cough.

Cough-cough.

Sam America cast a glance back over his shoulder. He took in the rubble, the fallen cottages. He attempted to string together just where the sound had come from.

Cough.

Cough.

Sam America shifted from his spot, now certain of where he had heard the coughing. He strode hard, through the rubble. Over the broken cobblestones.

As he drew closer, he heard heavy, bothered breathing.

The kind of breathing—Sam America knew; from experience—led to a speedy death.

He crouched down and worked quickly at the rubble. He grabbed hold of the chunks in his muscular grip. He tossed them away.

Sam America tore another couple of rocks free. And he found himself staring into a pair of eyes—eyes which caught what remained of the daylight.

Hazel-brown.

Blond hair.

Pale—
pale
—skin.

A boy.

A MIRACLE

M
itts thought
he might be suffering from déjà vu when he awoke.

Once more, he heard those whispering voices.

And—once more—he had had those strange dreams.

The ones with that superhero.

With
Sam America.

Mitts could see the redness of the sunlight up against the backs of his eyelids. He pried open one eye, and then the other. He was back in the room he had been taken to after he’d been ‘relocated’ from the holding cell.

On instinct, he glanced to the armchair beside his bed.

It was empty.

For some reason, he felt his heart sink a touch.

He had expected Samantha to be there, of course, but she wasn’t.

Still, he supposed he should’ve been glad to find himself
not
in the holding cell.

He turned on his side, pushing the duvet away. He realised he was dressed in only his boxer shorts.

In addition to those whispering voices, Mitts could smell coffee.

Its odour wafting about.

The door flew open.

Luca, bearing a tray of steaming scrambled eggs, appeared in the gap.

She smiled lightly at him as she trod inside.

She didn’t bother to close the door behind her.

He looked out into the corridor.

A white-washed wall. Smudged with marks.

“Good morning,” Luca said, with a smile.

She seemed more carefree than she had in their last meeting.

Maybe it had to do with the milieu, with the fact that he wasn’t in the holding cell this time.

Or perhaps it had been their impromptu bonding session over the drawings.

The ones which’d shown Mitts he wasn’t alone . . .

Luca set the tray down on the bedside table. He eyed the cup of coffee he’d smelled from before. Her lilac perfume had replaced the odour of coffee now.

Mitts thought about the bitter taste of coffee. Back in the Restricted Area, it had made him want to puke. Now, though, his body needed the caffeine to survive.

The eggs were white and fluffy—heavy on milk and black pepper—just how he liked them.

How had she known?

Had she . . . read his thoughts somehow?

Luca leaned over him, kissed him on the forehead. She blushed a little.

Mitts blushed too.

She rounded the foot of his bed and sat on the armchair. “Hero’s breakfast,” she said.

Mitts sat up, propping himself on his elbows. He felt somewhat exposed to only be in his boxer shorts. To be here, in the bedroom with Luca—
bare-chested
.

He felt a pair of stabbing pains in his skull.

He screwed up his eyes and reached up to his temples.

Laid his fingers over the pain.

Massaged.

“Don’t remember?” Luca said, still smiling.

Her lilac perfume caused Mitts’s nostril hair to tingle.

Breathing it in made the inside of his chest itch.

He strained his mind. Tried to dreg up the memories.

That only made the pain in his skull all the more intense.

He shook his head.

Luca combed her fingers through her smooth, sable hair.

She wore a pink ribbon in her hair. It brought out the colour in her cheeks.

“When the mist cleared Dag sent men out there,” Luca said, dialling her smile down. “Thought that it’d be an expedition to bring back a pair of bodies—we
all
thought that.”

The pain in his skull grew so intense that he began to shake. He had to
do
something. So he reached out for his coffee. Took hold of the warm cup. Sipped at the bitter liquid within.

He glanced back to Luca.

She continued.

“Dag said you’d both passed out; that you were lying on top of Yuvna.”

“ ‘Yuvna’?” Mitts said, taking another sip of coffee and then feeling another pair of stabbing pains at his temples.

Luca nodded. “The chef—works here, in the Station. Portly guy.”

Here she puffed out her cheeks and made a waddling motion with her arms down by her sides.

Despite his headache, Mitts couldn’t help but laugh.

He pulled himself back from his giddy outburst. “Is he okay?”

“He’s
fine
,” she said. “A little shook up, but who isn’t shook up these days?” She smiled faintly, then went on. “I guess the two of you had quite some introduction.”

Feeling the pains come on harder now, Mitts placed his coffee back down.