Department 19

Jamie turned away from the lift and examined the intercom panel. There was a small button at the bottom of the metal rectangle, and he pressed it and waited. He was about to press it again when a voice suddenly emanated from the intercom, making him jump.

“Code in.”

Jamie leant towards the intercom and spoke into the metal grid.

“I don’t know what that means,” he said, and was embarrassed by the tremor in his voice.

“State your name.”

“Jamie Carpenter.”

There was a long pause.

“Proceed,” the voice said, eventually, and the huge airlock door unlocked with a rush of air.

Jamie took the handle in his hand, braced himself for the weight of the huge structure and pulled. The door slid open smoothly, and he stumbled backwards, gripping the handle to stop himself falling. The door was as light as a feather.

There must be some sort of counter-balance. I bet you couldn’t open it with dynamite if it was still locked.

He stepped through the door and into a white room not much bigger than a decent-sized cupboard. There was a second door opposite the one he had just come through, which he pulled shut behind him, and waited for the second set of locks to disengage.

Nothing happened.

Panic jumped from nowhere and settled in Jamie’s throat. He was locked in, trapped in this tiny space, an unknowable distance beneath the ground. Sweat broke out on his forehead and suddenly it seemed that the walls were closer than they had been when he walked in. He put his hands out and touched the walls with his fingertips, waiting for the sensation of movement, but there was none.

Then the lights went out, and he clamped his teeth together so he didn’t scream.

A second later he was bathed in purple ultraviolet light, as small hatches in the walls opened and flooded the tiny chamber with a rushing white gas.

Then it was over, as quickly as it had begun. The lights came back on, and the second door clunked open. Jamie threw himself against it, pushing it open with his shoulder, spilling out of the – coffin, it was like being in a coffin – room.

He gripped his knees with his hands, doubled over, breathing hard. When the panic had subsided he stood up and looked around. He was in a long, narrow corridor, brightly lit by square fluorescent lights set flush into the ceiling. To his right was a flat white wall, to his left was a small office behind thick transparent plastic. Ten metres down the corridor he could see square floor-to-ceiling holes that had to be the cells, running in parallel down the length of the cellblock. A white line was painted on to the floor on each side, a metre in front of the cells.

He turned to the office. Behind the plastic a soldier, wearing the now familiar all-black uniform, sat at a metal desk. He was looking at Jamie with a strange expression on his face, an uncomfortable mix of anger and pity. Jamie supposed the latter was as a result of what had happened to his dad; he did not know what he had done to elicit the former. But when the man spoke, his voice carried no hint of conflict, just the clipped vowels and tight consonants of anger.

“You here to see the new one?” he asked.

Jamie nodded.

“She’s at the end on the left.”

Jamie thanked the man and turned towards the cells, but the guard spoke again.

“I’m not finished,” he said. “There are rules down here, no matter what your name is. Understand?”

Jamie turned back to the office, his face flushing red with anger. The guard saw this, and smirked.

“Oh, you’ve heard of rules, have you?” he said. “Bet you learnt about them from your dad. That right?”

“What’s your problem?” snapped Jamie, and the guard flushed a deep crimson. He lifted himself halfway out of his seat, his eyes fixed on Jamie’s, then appeared to think better of it, and sat back into the chair.

“Don’t pass them anything, don’t tell them anything about yourself, don’t step across the white line,” he said. “Press the alarm next to her cell if there’s trouble. If you’re lucky, someone might come.”

With that, he looked away.

Jamie walked past the office and between the first two cells. They were empty, but a surge of panic shot through him when he examined the one to his left. The entire front wall of the cell was open; no bars, no glass, nothing. He looked down the corridor and saw that all the cells appeared to be the same. He stepped back to the plastic-fronted office and the guard spoke immediately, without looking up.

“It’s ultraviolet light,” he said, his voice utterly disinterested. “We can pass through it, they can’t.”

“Why not?” Jamie asked.

The guard raised his head and looked at Jamie.

“Because they’ll burn into a little pile of ash if they do. Their cells are vulnerable to UV light. It’s why they can’t go out in the sun.”

He lowered his head again, and waved a hand dismissively. Jamie clenched his fists, bit his tongue and walked back down the corridor.

The first two cells on either side were empty, but the third on the right was occupied. A middle-aged man, neatly dressed in a dark brown suit, sat in a plastic chair at the rear of the cell, reading a thick paperback book. He looked up as Jamie passed, but said nothing.

As he made his way down the cellblock he became aware of a distant noise. It sounded like the howls mating foxes made in the fields behind his house, an ungodly shriek, high-pitched and ugly. As Jamie walked past empty cell after empty cell, he realised it was getting louder, and by the time he stepped in front of the last cell on the left, it was almost deafening.

The girl who had attacked him in the park, and then again in the hangar, was crawling back and forth across the ceiling of her cell, like a horribly bloated fly. She was almost unrecognisable from the girl he had met the previous day; her eyes gleamed a terrible red, her clothes were torn, and she was caked in blood that had dried to an even brown crust. Her head was thrown back, the muscles in her neck standing out like thick strands of rope, and the guttural howling that was issuing from her snarling mouth made his head swim.

He breathed in sharply. He couldn’t help it; the terrible thing crawling across the ceiling was so revolting, so utterly unnatural. She heard the intake of air, and her head snapped round, the red eyes fixing on his own. Even through the shrieks, a flash of recognition flickered across her face, and she screamed anew, louder than ever, staring directly at him.

Suddenly the shrieking stopped and she fell from the ceiling, landing on her knees on the floor. She looked at him for a long silent moment, then began to howl again, her eyes never leaving his.

In the wall next to her cell was a round red button that Jamie assumed was the alarm. Above it was an intercom panel with a small silver button beneath it. He pressed it and waited.

With a crackle, the guard’s voice, clearly annoyed at being disturbed, came on the line and asked him what the problem was.

“What’s wrong with her?” Jamie asked.

The guard swore heartily down the line. “Don’t you know anything?” he asked, sharply. “The hunger is on her.”

“What’s the hunger?”

“For Christ’s sake. She’s hungry. Is that clear enough for you? She wants blood. It drives them mad if they go without it for too long.”

“Then give her some blood,” Jamie said.

The guard laughed. “Why would I want to do that?”

“What use is she like this?” Jamie said, fighting to keep his temper. “If you let this hunger make her crazy she won’t be able to tell me anything useful. Just give her some blood.”

“Those aren’t my orders,” replied the guard.

Jamie looked back into the cell, and stifled a scream. The girl had silently crossed the concrete floor and was staring at him from the other side of the ultraviolet barrier, her inhuman face only inches from his own. She was twitching and trembling uncontrollably, her whole body vibrating, her red eyes dancing with madness. She opened her mouth and tried to speak to him.

“Pleeeeeaaarrrrrrsssssssssse,” she slurred, her mouth slack, her jaw working fiercely trying to form the words. “Teeerrrrrllllllll yooooo eveeerrrrythhhhiiinnnnnnnng. Doooooooo annnnnnythhhiiiiinnnng.”

“If you don’t give her some blood,” Jamie shouted into the intercom, “I’m going to put my arm through the barrier. And then you can explain to Admiral Seward what happened.”

This girl might know where my mother is. I don’t care if you have to throw a bucket of blood into the cell from across the corridor, I need to know what she knows.

Silence.

Jamie could picture the guard in his office, weighing the decision, not wanting to have to explain anything to Admiral Seward, especially not how someone had been eviscerated in one of the cells on his watch.

“I’ve called my superior,” the guard said eventually. “It’s his decision. He’s coming down now.”

“OK,” replied Jamie. There was a pause, and then the guard spoke again.

“You know, what I said to you before, I was just—”

“I don’t care,” interrupted Jamie, and the intercom fell silent.

Jamie stood in front of the girl’s cell and watched her. She had crawled across the room and curled herself into a tight ball on the narrow bed that ran along one wall. She was moaning rather than howling now, a deep sound that Jamie could feel through the soles of his feet, and every few seconds she lifted slightly into the air, before flopping back down on to the white sheets.

“So you’re Julian Carpenter’s son,” said a voice beside him, and he jumped.

For God’s sake, stop being so easy to creep up on.

He turned towards the source of the voice and looked into the handsome face of a man in his forties, dressed in the same black armour as everyone else he had met since arriving at the base. The man was carrying a small metal case and regarding him with open curiosity.

“That’s right,” Jamie replied. “My name’s—”

“Jamie. I know. Mine is Major Paul Turner. I’m the Level H duty officer. I understand you want to give this prisoner blood?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jamie. The sir came naturally; something about this man made him nervous.

“Tell me why I should let you do that. Bearing in mind that she almost killed one of my colleagues last night. And tried to kill you.”

“That doesn’t matter now,” Jamie said. “I need to know what she knows. All that matters is my mother.”

Major Turner regarded him with the merest hint of a smile on his face.

“I knew Marie,” he said, and Jamie gasped. “Met her several times. She was a good woman.”

“What do you mean was?” demanded Jamie, colour rising in his face.

“Sorry. Poor choice of words,” replied Turner. “I knew your father as well. We were friends. Did you know that?”

“No,” said Jamie. “I didn’t know that.”

The two looked at each other, the space between them thick with a tension that Jamie didn’t understand. Eventually Major Turner unclipped the latches on the metal case, reached inside and withdrew two pouches of dark red blood. He tossed them lightly to Jamie, who caught them, never taking his eyes off the man.

Turner returned his gaze, then said something beneath his breath that Jamie couldn’t quite make out, turned smartly on his heels and walked rapidly back along the cellblock towards the exit.

‘Prove me wrong.’ It sounded like he said, ‘Prove me wrong.’

He turned back to the cell. Larissa was still on the bed but now she was sitting upright on the edge of it, her eyes fixed on the plastic pouches in his hands. Jamie looked down at them and felt a sudden terrible disgust. He threw them through the barrier. They never made it to the concrete floor; Larissa moved like mercury across the cell, plucking them out of the air and dropping to her knees. She tore the top off the first one with her gleaming, pointed teeth, and Jamie turned away as she tipped it up and squeezed the contents into her mouth.

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