The Drift, page 3
‘So, what’s up?’ Carter asked, as casually as he could.
Miles regarded him coolly. Carter had seen corpses with a warmer gaze than Miles.
‘Someone has been stealing stock.’
‘What?’
Miles opened a drawer in one of the cabinets. Inside, row upon row of packets – antibiotics and painkillers.
‘Looks pretty well stocked to me.’
Miles delved beneath the top row of packets and selected one from the bottom. He opened it. And held it upside down. Empty.
‘I’d say about half of the packets have been tampered with.’
‘What about –’ Carter nodded at the refrigeration unit.
‘I couldn’t see anything missing so I decided to randomly test some of the vials.’
‘And?’
‘Several contain a placebo.’
‘Like, not real plasma?’
‘Water.’
Carter felt his tension notch up. The next question was obvious.
‘How? I mean, you’ve got the only pass.’
‘That we know of.’
True.
‘Which brings me to our other problem,’ Miles continued.
‘There’s another problem?’
‘Jackson is missing.’
Carter stared at him. ‘What? Are you sure?’
‘He didn’t sleep in his room last night. I can’t find him anywhere.’
Carter considered. Jackson was probably the person he knew least well here. A quiet, self-contained man in his late thirties. Teetotal, vegan. Fond of yoga and meditation. Despite that, Carter had never had a problem with him. But then, there wasn’t enough there to have a problem with. The man was a ghost.
‘You think he’s the thief – and he’s cut and run?’
‘Maybe. But to where?’
Miles had a point. There was only the village. The airfield was an hour away and just one narrow, twisting road ran in and out. And where would Jackson get a vehicle? That left the cable-car station. But that wasn’t really an option.
‘Maybe it’s not what it looks like,’ Carter asked. ‘Maybe he’s just … taking a hike?’
Miles gave Carter a look. ‘Without his snowsuit?’
Another good point.
‘We keep this between us for now,’ Miles said. ‘If something has happened to Jackson, it’s bad for morale, especially after the unfortunate incident with Anya.’
Unfortunate. Right. Carter swallowed. ‘And if we find him?’
Miles’s lips curved. Carter’s balls crept up into his throat.
‘Then he’s a dead man.’
Hannah
The survivors gathered at the back of the coach.
The dead were mostly at the front.
Hannah had checked on them all herself. Five young men and women who would not see their next birthdays. Death had been sudden, and violent. That was often its nature. There were no beautiful corpses here. There seldom were.
It was fortunate, in some respects, that most of the students on the coach were strangers or casual acquaintances. Apart from the man and his sister, who were still huddled together on the floor at the back, no one was crying for a partner or best friend. On the other hand, none of them had any reason to look out for each other. Every man or woman for themselves. That could be a problem. Of course, right now, there was a far bigger one. But Hannah wasn’t prepared to broach it with anyone. Not yet.
In addition to her Aryan helper, the dying girl and her brother there were three other survivors: an athletic-looking young man with dark hair and a blandly handsome face, a slender girl with short, brown hair and glasses and a lanky youth with a ponytail and facial piercings, the puker. They talked among themselves.
‘How are we getting out of here?’
‘Have you seen the storm? We’ll freeze to death out there.’
‘We might die in here.’
‘So, what are we supposed to do?’
‘I can’t believe they took our phones.’
‘I can’t believe no one smuggled one on board.’
‘How long will it take them to find us?’
‘Oh God. We can’t be stuck here all night. Not with dead people.’
Hannah could have told them that the dead were the least of their worries. The more immediate concern was going to be the drop in temperature. It was already getting cold in the coach. They all had thick jackets and jeans on, but not thermal snowsuits, and if they were stranded here overnight, hypothermia could set in rapidly.
Other concerns – food. They had snack packs prepared by the Academy, and water. But those supplies were only supposed to be for lunch. They might need to make them last much longer. There was a toilet and, despite its awkward, lopsided position, it should be usable, so those needs would be taken care of. For now.
Outside, the snow was still piling up on the coach, the glass. How long before it buried the vehicle from view? The storm might cease before then, giving them more options. Or equally, it might not.
‘Okay. Everyone – quiet down!’
The tall blond man stood and stared around at the students. Despite them all being a similar age – Academy students ranged from eighteen to twenty-three – he had a commanding presence and the group slowly hushed.
‘Firstly,’ he said, ‘to make communication easier, I suggest we introduce ourselves. I am Lucas.’
‘Josh,’ the athletic young man said.
‘Ben,’ the pierced youth followed.
‘Cassie,’ said the slender girl.
‘I’m Hannah,’ Hannah said.
She glanced behind at the young man tending to his sister. He looked up.
‘Daniel – and Peggy.’
‘Very good.’ Lucas nodded. ‘Okay. The situation is this: we can’t call for help. We can’t get out.’
‘Great pep talk, man,’ Ben muttered.
‘What about the emergency exit?’ Josh asked.
‘It’s stuck,’ Hannah said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Try for yourself.’
Josh rose and disappeared up the coach. Within a few seconds he was back.
‘Yeah. It’s busted.’
‘Fuck,’ Ben cursed.
‘And it appears that we are not equipped with the necessary tools to break the windows,’ Lucas continued.
‘Say what?’ Josh queried.
‘The emergency hammers are missing,’ Hannah said.
‘Christ!’ Ben rolled his eyes. ‘I can’t believe they put us on this heap of shit.’
A valid observation, Hannah thought. The coach was old. The Academy hadn’t replaced its transport in some time. Perhaps it hadn’t been deemed a priority. Most students arrived by limo or helicopter.
‘It’s a moot point,’ Lucas stressed. ‘None of us would survive for long out there in this storm.’
‘So, what do you suggest?’ Josh asked.
‘Sit tight and wait for rescue to come.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’
‘We reassess. We may be able to find a way out. In which case, we nominate the two most capable people to try and get help. But there’s no point sending anyone out there if they’re not going to survive.’
‘He’s right,’ Hannah said. ‘We’re better off waiting.’
‘And why should we listen to you?’ Cassie demanded, eyeing her coolly.
Hannah noted that the girl hadn’t questioned Lucas’s authority. She kept her voice pleasant and reassuring: ‘I’ve done some training in crisis management.’
She hadn’t exactly, but her father had.
‘In a situation like this,’ Hannah continued, ‘our best bet is to stay where we are, at least until the storm has passed. We have food, we have shelter, and most importantly we have each other.’
‘You want us all to hug?’ Cassie asked sarcastically.
‘Yes,’ Hannah replied. ‘Because our greatest challenge if we are stuck here tonight is going to be the cold. We need to keep together to maximize body warmth.’
‘You think we’ll be stuck here that long?’ Ben asked, looking worried.
‘Maybe. It might not be possible to send rescue until the storm has eased.’
‘They will send rescue, won’t they?’ Cassie asked, directing her question at Lucas.
‘Yes,’ Lucas said, so emphatically that even Hannah almost believed him. ‘Why go to all this trouble to get us out, to safety, just to abandon us now?’
It made sense, but Hannah knew that part of the reason the Academy was so keen to get the students out was so it had no liability for any more deaths.
Ben raised a hand, and this pleased Hannah because it meant that the group were accepting her and Lucas as leaders of a sort, and that would make things easier.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘Should we, like, check if any of the others have phones, just in case?’
‘By the others, you mean the dead?’ Hannah said.
He looked awkward. ‘Well, yeah. And, I mean, they don’t need their jackets or their food, do they?’
Hannah glanced at Lucas. It was a good suggestion.
‘We should make use of all available resources,’ he said.
‘So, who’s going to, you know …’ Josh said.
‘I will,’ Hannah said.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Lucas offered.
She nodded. They walked up the coach.
‘Actually, I wanted to talk to you,’ Lucas said in a low voice.
‘And I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Okay.’
‘You go first,’ Hannah said.
‘Did you notice anything about the dead?’ Lucas asked.
‘How do you mean?’
‘They’re all students, yes?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘And all the survivors are students –’
‘Your point?’
‘Where’s the driver?’
She stared at him. Of course. She should have noticed. Where was the driver? Careless, Hannah. She looked around, as if he might suddenly pop up from behind a seat. Surprise!
‘That’s impossible,’ she said.
‘Do you remember what he looked like?’ Lucas asked.
Hannah frowned. She had seen the driver outside the coach, smoking, as she boarded, but she hadn’t taken much notice. He had been short, she thought. And slim. That was about it.
‘Not really.’
‘But you don’t see him here?’
She looked around again. ‘No.’
‘Then there are only two solutions. There is a way out –’
‘Or?’
‘He escaped out of the emergency exit and disabled it afterwards.’
‘But why?’
‘Why indeed?’ Lucas smiled. ‘Now, what was it you wanted to tell me?’
Hannah swallowed, a little thrown by the sudden change of subject. ‘We have five dead students.’
‘Yes?’
‘Four, as you would expect – trauma from the crash.’
‘What about the fifth?’
Hannah led him forward. In one seat, a frizzy-haired youth was sprawled, a sizeable bloody dent in his head.
‘He probably died from blunt force trauma to the head,’ she said.
Lucas looked at her quizzically. ‘So, he also died in the crash.’
‘Yes, but … he was already a dead man walking. Look at his eyes.’
Lucas bent forward. She heard his sharp intake of breath. The student’s corneas were a distinct pinky-red. Redeye.
Lucas paled. ‘But we were all tested?’
The tests were supposed to be foolproof.
‘Something must have gone wrong,’ she said.
‘Verdammt. Do you think –’
‘No way of knowing until someone else displays symptoms.’
‘You just told them all to hug.’
‘Or we might die of hypothermia.’
‘But we could infect each other.’
‘It’s too late to worry about that. We’ve been breathing the same air, touching the same things for hours now. Either we’re lucky … or we’re not.’
She let this realization settle.
‘So, even if rescue comes,’ Lucas said slowly. ‘Some of us will die.’
He was smart, but he still didn’t get it.
Hannah shook her head. ‘If rescue comes, and the Department realizes there’s an infection on board … none of us will make it to the Retreat.’
Meg
The dead man’s name was Sergeant Paul Parker and she had worked alongside him in Homicide. Later, they were both transferred to Infection Control and Public Unrest. Or as everyone in the division called it: ‘Shoot and Burn’.
‘You’ve got to remember, Hill, they’re not like us. We’re doing them a mercy.’
A mercy. Yeah. Meg remembered. Sometimes she wished she could burn those memories. Scoop them out like a lobotomy. Forgetting could be a mercy too.
Of course, all of that was incidental now because the name on the lanyard tucked beneath the man’s snowsuit read: Mark Wilson – Security.
‘Who is he?’ asked Sarah. ‘Is he okay?’
‘His name is Mark Wilson.’ Meg repeated the lie. ‘And he’s dead.’
Sarah clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Oh my God.’
‘How?’ asked Sean.
Good question. She touched his neck. Not for a pulse. Meg knew when dead was dead. More to get an idea of his body temperature. Cool, but not yet cold and waxy. She reached for his arm and lifted it. Still loose and flexible. So rigor mortis hadn’t set in which meant he had died recently, probably within the last couple of hours.
‘Could it be a reaction to the drugs we were given?’ Max asked.
It was a good suggestion. Reasonable even. Meg knelt beside the body. Just a body now. Not Paul or Mark or whatever he had been calling himself. She examined his face, his mouth. A mouth she had kissed. Out of lust, loneliness, convenience, desperation. Never love. Not even at the start. Relationships have been built on less. But they needed more to survive.
Now she parted his lips and peered inside, looking for traces of vomit, an indication of overdose. No vomit, but she could see blood around his teeth. She could smell it too. She frowned. Then she reached for his snowsuit and unzipped it. Underneath he wore a white thermal T-shirt. Or what used to be a white T-shirt. Now, the front was stained maroon.
‘Holy shit!’ exclaimed Karl. ‘Is that blood?’
‘Yeah.’
Meg gritted her teeth and edged up the T-shirt, grimacing slightly at the stiffness of the blood-caked fabric and the feel of it pulling away from flesh. The wound was just below the breastbone. Between the second and third ribs. A strike to his liver, she thought. Precise, fatal.
‘He’s been stabbed,’ she said flatly, and turned back to the group.
They stood around her, looking frightened and confused. Their predicament, the sway of the stranded cable car, momentarily forgotten in the face of the dead man. Meg wondered if any of them had seen a dead body up close before.
Even with everything that had happened over the last ten years, some people were removed from the true horror. They saw bodies on the television, of course. Or at least they saw what the media wanted them to see. But many rural areas had been spared the worst of the outbreak. As had those rich enough to live within one of the private gated communities that had sprung up outside the major conurbations. If you didn’t live in the cities, you might never have encountered the carnage up close.
‘Why would someone do that?’ Sarah asked in a wavering voice, clutching at her crucifix.
Meg shrugged. The woman’s constant near-hysteria made her want to be brutal with her. ‘Who knows? But they knew the best place to stab him to make the wound fatal – unless they just got lucky.’
‘You seem to know a lot about knife wounds,’ Sean said.
‘I used to be a police officer,’ she admitted.
‘Used to be?’ Karl asked.
‘Yeah.’
She stared around at them, challenging them to ask her more. No one did. Everyone had a past these days. And no one wanted to discuss it.
‘Can you tell how long he’s been dead?’ asked Max. ‘I presume he must have been stabbed before we boarded.’
‘And they just put a dead body on here?’ Karl said.
‘Maybe no one realized,’ Sean said. ‘We all thought he was asleep, right?’
Meg looked back at the body. It was possible no one had noticed, but it seemed unlikely. Perhaps they just didn’t care.
‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t been dead long. No more than a couple of hours, I’d say.’
‘What other alternative is there?’ asked Sarah.
‘One of us stabbed him,’ Karl said, looking at Meg. ‘That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’
‘But we were all unconscious,’ Sarah said.
‘Supposedly,’ Max said.
Sarah threw up her hands. ‘This is ridiculous. No one stabbed him. None of us even knows him.’
Meg remained silent. Sarah folded her arms as if to say, ‘There you go then.’
Max scratched his chin. ‘Of course, the assumption that he was killed before boarding does not preclude the possibility that one of us is responsible.’
Sarah stared at him. ‘What?’
‘He means,’ Sean said, ‘just because one of us didn’t stab him on board doesn’t mean we didn’t kill him before we got on.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’
Max looked at Meg. ‘Bearing in mind, one way or another, we are going to be stuck with each other for some time, I’d like to be sure no one here is carrying a weapon.’
‘We all had our belongings confiscated,’ Sean said. ‘I mean’ – he looked down at his snowsuit and boots – ‘these aren’t even my clothes.’
Meg considered. Then she started to unzip her snowsuit. Underneath she was wearing a white thermal T-shirt and shorts. Just like Paul. Not hers. She had been re-dressed while unconscious. She pulled her boots off then stepped out of the snowsuit, immediately shivering.
‘What are you doing?’ Sean asked.
‘Proving I have nothing to hide.’
She threw the suit at Sarah. ‘Check the pockets.’
