Department 19
He could never have articulated to anyone, least of all his mother, the hole his father’s death had left in his life. Jamie loved his mother, loved her so much that he hated himself for the way he treated her, for pushing her away when it was obvious that she needed him, when he knew he was all she had left. But he couldn’t help it; the anger that churned inside him screamed for release and his mum was the only target he had.
The person it deserved to be aimed at was gone.
His dad, his cowardly loser of a dad, had taken him to London to watch Arsenal, bought him the Swiss Army knife he could no longer bear to carry in his pocket, let him fire his air rifle in the fields behind their old house, helped him build his tree house, and watched cartoons with him on Saturday mornings. Things his mum would never do, and he would never want her to. Things he missed more than he would ever have admitted.
He was furious with his father for leaving him and his mum, for making them leave the old house he had loved and move to this awful place, leaving his friends behind.
Furious for the glee he saw in the faces of bullies at every new school he was forced to start, when the whispers began and they realised they had been presented with the perfect victim: a skinny new kid whose father had tried to help terrorists attack his own country.
Furious with his mum, for her refusal to see the truth about her husband, furious with the teachers who tried to understand him and asked him to talk about his dad and his feelings.
Furious.
Jamie emerged from his thoughts and saw the sun high in the sky, struggling to push its pale light through the grey cloud cover. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and saw that it was nearly midday. Ahead of him a flattened trail led up the embankment into a small park, surrounded by tall birch trees. The park was always empty; it was one of his favourite places.
He sat down in the middle of the grass, away from the trees and the short shadows they were casting in the early afternoon sun. He hadn’t picked up his packed lunch because he would have had to go into the kitchen and deal with his mother, so he had filled his backpack with a can of Coke and some chocolate and sweets. The Coke was warm, and the chocolate was half-melted, but Jamie didn’t care.
He finished eating, tucked his bag under his head and lay down and closed his eyes. He was suddenly exhausted, and he didn’t want to think any more.
Fifteen minutes. Just a nap. Half an hour at the most.
“Jamie.”
His eyes flew open and he saw black night sky above him. Sitting up, he rubbed his eyes and looked around at the dark park. He trembled in the cold of the evening and his skin began to crawl as he realised he was sitting at the point where the shadows cast by the trees met one another.
“Jamie.”
He whirled around. “Who’s there?” he shouted.
A giggle rang through the park.
“Jamie.” The voice was lilting, like his name was being sung and allowed to echo through the trees. It was a girl’s voice.
“Where are you? This isn’t funny!”
The giggle again.
Jamie stood up and did a slow turn. He couldn’t see anyone, but beyond the first ring of trees the park was pitch black, and the trees themselves were wide and gnarled.
Plenty of room for someone to hide behind.
Something was tapping at the back of his mind, something to do with a girl and a window, but he couldn’t remember.
Something crunched underfoot, behind him.
He spun round, heart pounding.
Nothing.
“Jamie.”
The voice was closer this time, he knew it was.
“Show yourself!” he yelled.
“OK,” said a voice right beside his ear and he screamed and turned, fists flailing. He felt his right hand connect solidly with something and adrenaline roared in his veins, then froze.
On the ground in front of him was a girl, about his own age, holding her nose. A thin stream of blood was running on to her lip, and he saw her tongue flick out and lick it away.
“Oh God,” Jamie said. “I’m so, so sorry. Are you OK?”
“You dick,” the girl sniffled from behind her hand. “What did you do that for?”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Why did you creep up on me?”
“I was just trying to scare you,” she said, sulkily.
“Why?”
“For fun. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Something else was rattling around Jamie’s mind, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Well, you did scare me. So, congratulations, I guess.”
“Thanks,” snorted the girl. She held out her hand. “Help me up?”
“Oh, sorry, of course,” Jamie replied, and reached down and pulled her to her feet. She brushed herself down, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and stood in front of him.
Jamie looked at her. She was very, very pretty, dark hair tumbling down her shoulders, pale skin and dark brown eyes. She saw him looking and smiled, and he blushed.
“See anything you like?” she asked.
“Sorry, I wasn’t staring, I was just, er…”
“Yes you were. It’s OK. I’m Larissa.”
“I’m…”
Tumblers fell into place in Jamie’s mind and fear overwhelmed him.
“You used my name,” he said, taking a step backwards. “How did you know my name?”
“It doesn’t matter, Jamie,” she said, and then her beautiful brown eyes turned a dark, terrible red. “It doesn’t matter any more.”
She moved like liquid, covering the distance between them in an instant. She took his face in her hands, with a grip that felt horribly, immovably strong.
“Nothing matters any more,” she whispered, and he looked into her red eyes and was lost.
Chapter 3
ATTACK ON SUBURBIA
“I can’t do it.”
The voice sounded like it was coming from a hundred miles away. Jamie struggled to open his eyes. He was lying on the grass, the girl called Larissa sitting next to him. He tried to crawl away but couldn’t move. His limbs ached, and his head was full of cotton wool.
“Damn it, I just can’t,” she said, apparently to herself. “What’s wrong with me?”
He forced his eyes open, and looked at her. Her eyes were brown again, and she was looking down at him, a gentle expression on her face.
“Who… are… you?” he managed. “What did you do to me?”
She lowered her head.
“You were supposed to be mine,” she said. “He said so. But I couldn’t do it.”
“Your… what?”
“Mine. In every way.”
With a huge effort Jamie forced himself up to a sitting position.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter.” She looked up at the sky. “You should go,” she said, looking back at him with sadness in her face. “They’ll be there by now.”
A tidal wave of adrenaline crashed into Jamie’s system. “Who? Where?” he demanded.
“My friends. You know where.”
Jamie leapt to his feet and looked down at Larissa.
“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he asked, his voice trembling. In his mind’s eye he saw a face at a window.
She nodded her head.
Jamie turned and sprinted out of the park, running as though his life depended on it.
Please not my mum. Please don’t let them hurt my mum.
When Jamie reached the end of his road his heart was pounding so loudly in his chest he though it might explode. His vision was greying, the muscles in his legs screaming, but he pushed through the pain and sprinted the last fifty metres to his house and pulled himself round the gate post and towards the front door.
It was wide open.
He ran into the hallway. “Mum!” he yelled. “Are you here? Mum!”
No answer.
He ran into the living room. Empty. Through into the kitchen. Empty.
No sign of her.
He ran up the stairs and pushed open the door to her bedroom. The window above her bed was open to the dark sky, the curtains fluttering in the evening breeze. Jamie ran across the room and put his head out of the window.
“Mum!” he screamed into the inky blackness. His right hand slipped on something on the ledge and he looked down and pulled it away. Red liquid dripped down his wrist.
He looked at the windowsill. There were two small pools of blood on the white surface, and more smeared across the glass of the open window.
Jamie stared in horror at his hand, then something came loose in his head as he realised that his mother was gone, and he put back his head and wailed at the sky.
And miles away, high in the dark clouds, something heard his cry and turned back.
Time passed. Jamie had no idea how long.
He couldn’t stay in his mother’s room, couldn’t look at the blood, horribly bright against the white paint and the clear glass. Somehow he made it downstairs to the living room. He was sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the wall, when he heard something come through the front door and close it softly behind them.
He was beyond fear now. He was numb. So he just watched as the tall, thin man in the grey suit walked into the room and smiled at him with teeth like razorblades, his dark red eyes shining in the gloom.
“Jamie Carpenter,” the man said. His voice was like treacle. “It is a supreme pleasure to finally meet you.”
The man bared his teeth and took a step towards Jamie, and then the front door exploded into sawdust and an enormous figure, holding what looked like a huge pipe, stepped into the living room doorway.
“Get away from him, Alexandru,” the massive newcomer said, in a voice that shook the entire house.
The thing in the grey suit hissed, and arched its back. “This is not your concern, monster,” it spat. “There is unfinished business here.”
“It will stay unfinished,” the figure replied, then pulled the trigger hanging below the pipe. There was an enormous bang, like a giant balloon being burst, and something sharp exploded out of the weapon and flew across the room so fast it was a blur, trailing a metal cord behind it. Alexandru leapt into the air, impossibly quickly. The projectile smashed a hole in the wall of the living room, before retracting as rapidly as it had been fired, spiralling back into the end of the pipe.
The creature in the grey suit hung in the air, its eyes blazing with anger. It snarled at the figure in the doorway, then smashed through the big window at the front of the house and accelerated into the sky.
Jamie hadn’t moved.
The giant darted to the window and craned its enormous neck in the direction the thing called Alexandru had disappeared.
“He’s gone,” it said. “For now.”
It turned to Jamie and in the light of the living room he got his first look at his saviour, and cried out.
The huge figure was a man, at least seven and a half feet tall and almost as wide. He had mottled greyish-green skin, a high, wide forehead and a shock of black hair above it. He was wearing a dark suit and a long grey overcoat. A wire ran up his sleeve from the end of the pipe he was holding and disappeared somewhere over his shoulders.
He walked forward, and as fear and loss started to shut down Jamie’s mind, he saw two wide metal bolts sticking out of the sides of his neck. The man extended his hand towards him.
“Jamie Carpenter,” he said. “My name is Frankenstein. I’m here to help you.”
Jamie’s eyes rolled back white and he fainted into sweet, empty darkness.
Chapter 4
SEARCH AND RESCUE
STAVELEY, NORTH DERBYSHIRE FIFTY-SIX MINUTES EARLIER
Matt Browning was sitting at his computer when it happened.
He was working on an essay for his English literature class, a comparison of the speeches by Brutus and Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, typing quickly into his aging laptop, when something thundered out of the sky and crashed into the small garden behind the terraced house he shared with his sister and his parents, throwing dirt and brown grass into the evening air.
Downstairs he heard his mother shriek and his father slur at her to shut up. In the bedroom next door his little sister Laura started to cry, a high wail full of confusion and determination.
Matt saved his work and got up from his desk. He was small for his sixteen years, and skinny, his brown hair flopping across his high forehead and resting against the tops of his glasses. His face was pale and close to feminine, his features fine and soft around the edges, as though he were slightly out of focus. He was wearing his favourite crimson Harvard T-shirt and dark brown cords, and he slid his feet into a pair of navy Vans before walking quickly across the small landing and into his sister’s bedroom.
Laura was lying in her cot, her face a deep, outraged red, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth a perfect circle. Matt reached into the crib and picked her up, resting her against his shoulder and quietly shushing her, bouncing her gently in his arms. There was a glorious moment’s silence as she took a deep breath, then the cries began again. Matt crossed the tiny room, pulled the door open and headed downstairs.
In the kitchen at the back of the house his mother was frantic. She was wearing her cream dressing gown and a pair of pale blue slippers and flitting back and forth beneath the two windows above the sink, peering into the dark garden and telling her husband over and over to call the police. Greg Browning stood unsteadily in the middle of the room, one hand pressed against his forehead, a can of lager in the other. He looked round as Matt walked into the kitchen.
“Shut your sister up, would you?” he grunted. “She’s giving me a headache.” Then he turned back to his wife. “Will you stop flapping and take the damn baby?” he said, his voice starting to rise.
Matt’s mother quickly took Laura from Matt and sat down with her at the table.
“Get the phone for your mother.”
Matt lifted the phone from its cradle on the wall next to the door and passed it to his mum. She took it with a confused look on her face.
“Now you can call the police while me and Matt go and take a look in the garden.”
“No, Greg, you shouldn’t…”
“Shouldn’t?”
Matt’s mother swallowed hard.
“I mean, don’t go out there. Please?”
“Just shut the hell up, OK, Lynne? Matt, let’s go.”
Greg Browning opened the door to the back garden and stopped in the doorway, listening. Matt walked over and stood behind him, looking over his father’s shoulder into the darkening sky.
The garden was silent; nothing moved in the cool evening air.
Matt’s father took a torch from the shelf beside the back door, turned it on and stepped out on to the narrow strip of patio that ran below the kitchen windows. Matt followed, scanning the dark garden for whatever had fallen past his window. Behind him in the kitchen he could hear his mother trying to explain what had happened to the police.
His dad shone the torch in a wide arc across the flowerbeds that bordered the narrow strip of lawn. At the edge of the grass the beam picked out a flash of white.
“Over there,” said Matt. “In the flowerbed.”
“Stay here.”
Matt stood on the patio as his father walked slowly across the threadbare lawn. He inhaled sharply as he reached the edge of the grass.
“What is it?” Matt asked.
No reply. His father just kept staring down into the dark flowerbed.
“Dad? What is it?”
Finally, his father looked round at him. His eyes were wide.
“It’s a girl,” he said, eventually. “It’s a teenage girl.”
“What?”
“Come and look.”
Matt walked across the lawn and looked down into the weed-strewn flowerbed.
The girl was lying on her back in the dirt, half buried by the force of her landing. Her pale face was smeared with blood, and her eyes and mouth were grotesquely swollen. Black hair fanned out around her head like a dark halo, matted with mud and clumped together in bloody strands. Her left arm was obviously broken, her forearm joining her elbow at an unnatural right angle. Her light grey shirt was soaked black with blood, and Matt realised with horror that there was a wide hole in her stomach, along the line of her abdomen. He saw glistening red and purple, and looked away.
“It looks like someone tried to gut her,” his father said quietly.
“What is it, Greg?” shouted Matt’s mother from the kitchen doorway. “What’s happening?”
“Shut up, Lynne,” Greg Browning replied automatically, but his voice was low, and for once he didn’t sound angry.
He sounds scared, thought Matt, and crouched down beside the girl. Despite the damage to her face, she was beautiful, her skin so pale it was almost translucent, her lips a dark, inviting red.
Behind him his father was muttering to himself, looking from the sky to the ground and back again, searching for an explanation for why this girl had fallen into their garden.
Matt placed his hand on the cool skin of her neck, checking for a pulse, knowing he wouldn’t find one.
Who did this to you? he wondered.
The girl opened her swollen right eye and looked straight at Matt. He screamed.
“She’s alive!” he yelled.
“Don’t be stupid,” shouted Greg Browning. “She’s—”
The girl coughed, a deep spluttering rattle that sent new streams of blood running down her chin. She turned her head towards Matt and said something he couldn’t make out.
“My God,” said Matt’s father.
Matt pushed himself up off the grass and slowly approached his father’s side. He looked down at the stricken girl, who was moving her head slowly from side to side, her lips curled back in a grimace of pain.
“We have to do something, Dad,” said Matt. “We can’t leave her like this.”
His father turned on him, his face full of anger.
“What do you want me to do?” he shouted. “The police are on their way, they can deal with it. We shouldn’t even touch her.”
“But Dad—”
Greg Browning’s face twisted with rage and he raised a fist and took a step towards his son. Matt cried out, covering his face with his forearms and turning away.
“You’ll be quiet if you know what’s good for you,” his dad grunted, lowering the fist.
Matt looked at his father, his cheeks flushed red with shame and impotence, his brain alive with hatred. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, when a deafening roar filled the evening air and a squat black helicopter appeared over the trees that stood at the bottom of their suburban garden.
Matt covered his face and did his best to remain upright as the helicopter’s rotors churned the dust and dirt of the garden. He could see his dad shouting but could hear nothing over the thunder of the engines and the shriek of the wind. He craned his neck, his hands shielding his eyes, and watched the helicopter disappear over the roof of their house.
Matt turned and raced towards the house, past his mother who was standing motionless at the back door, through the kitchen and the narrow corridor and towards the front door.
Behind him he could hear his dad shouting his name, but he didn’t slow his pace. He flung the front door open in time to see the black helicopter lowering itself on to the grey tarmac of the road, its rotors whirring above the parked cars that lined their street.
Matt’s dad appeared behind him in the corridor, grabbed his son’s shoulder and spun him around.
“What the hell do you think you’re…”
Greg Browning’s voice trailed off as he stared out into the street. Matt turned and watched as a door slid open in the side of the helicopter and four figures emerged.
The first two were dressed all in black and looked like riot policemen, their uniforms covered with plates of black body armour, their faces hidden beneath black helmets with purple visors.
Both were carrying submachine guns in their gloved hands.
Behind them followed a man and a woman in white biohazard containment suits, their faces visible behind the thick plastic of their masks. Between them they were carrying a white stretcher.
They cleared the helicopter and quickly approached Matt and his father. The first of the figures – soldiers, they look like soldiers – stopped in front of them.
“Was an emergency call made from this house?” it asked. The voice was male, and didn’t sound much older than Matt’s.
Neither he nor his dad answered.
The soldier took a step forward.
“Was an emergency call made from this house?”
Terrified, Matt nodded his head.
The black figure turned to the others and beckoned them towards the house, then pushed past Matt and Greg Browning and disappeared into the hallway. The rest of the new arrivals followed, leaving Matt and his father in the doorway. They stood there, staring at the helicopter with no idea what to do, until Matt’s mother started to scream and they turned and ran into the house.
They found her in the kitchen, holding Laura in her arms, the two of them screaming in unison. Greg Browning ran across the room and took his wife in his arms, whispering to her, telling her everything was going to be OK, telling her not to cry. Matt left them by the table and walked out into the garden.
The two soldiers were standing either side of the girl, their guns lodged against their shoulders and pointing at the sky. On the ground, the man and woman in the biohazard suits were examining her.
Matt walked towards them, but before he was close enough to see what they were doing the nearest soldier turned towards him and levelled the black submachine gun at his chest. Matt froze on the spot.
“Please stay where you are, sir,” the soldier said. “For your own safety.”
“What’s going on here?” said a small voice from behind Matt. He was too scared to move, but he craned his head over his shoulder and saw his dad standing on the narrow patio. He looked like someone had deflated him.
“Take your son into the house, sir,” the soldier said.
“I want to know what’s going on,” Matt’s father repeated. “Who are you people?”
“I’m not going to tell you again, sir,” the soldier replied. He sounded as though he was reaching the limit of his patience. “Take your son inside. Now.”
Greg Browning looked like he was going to reply, but thought better of it.
“Come inside, Matt,” he said, eventually.
Matt looked from his father to the soldier pointing the gun at his chest. Behind him he could see the other soldier and the biohazard team watching him. He was about to turn and do as his father said when the girl lifted her head from the flowerbed and sank her teeth into the arm of the man in the white plastic suit.
All hell broke loose.
The man screamed and wrenched his arm out of the girl’s mouth. Blood pumped out of the ragged hole in the plastic, and splashed across the lawn.
The second soldier swung his gun. The heavy stock of the weapon crashed across the girl’s chin, and she instantly stopped moving, as though she had been turned off.
The soldier who had been facing Matt lowered his gun and turned to his colleagues.
“How bad is it?” he yelled.
The woman in the biohazard suit had knelt down next to her partner and was examining the wound. She looked up at the sound of the soldier’s voice.
“It’s bad,” she replied. “We need to get him out of here.”
“Bag the subject,” the soldier said. “Do it quickly.”
“There isn’t time. He needs clean blood, right now.”
“He’ll get it. Bag the subject.”
The woman stared at the soldier for a fraction of second, then let go of her colleague and laid the white stretcher flat on the lawn.
“Help me,” she said to the other soldier.
The soldier crouched down and took hold of the girl under her shoulders and pulled her out of the flowerbed. Matt gasped as he saw the damage to the lower half of the girl’s body.
Both her legs were snapped mid-thigh, the white bones piercing the blood-soaked black skirt she was wearing. Her left foot was horribly twisted at the ankle, and the right was missing three toes, the red stumps bright in the fading light.