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.
Matt ran towards her. He didn’t know what he was going to do, just that he had to do something. He heard his father shout at him, but ignored him. The soldier who had hit the girl with his gun turned, saw him crossing the lawn, and started to move, a shout of warning issuing from his lips. But he wasn’t quick enough; Matt slid on to his knees beside the broken girl and looked at the woman in the biohazard suit.
“Can I hel—”
The girl’s arm flashed out and slid across his throat. Matt felt a millisecond of resistance as her fingernails dug into the smooth skin of his neck, then it was gone, and an enormous spray of something red burst into the night air, soaking his chin and his chest.
There was no pain; just surprise, and a suddenly overwhelming tiredness. Matt stared at the dark liquid squirting into the air, and only realised it was his own blood as he fell gently backwards on to the patchy grass of the lawn. It pattered thickly on to his upturned face, and as his eyes closed he felt hands pressing against his neck, and heard one of the soldiers telling his father that this had never happened.
Chapter 5
INTO THE DARKNESS
Jamie Carpenter dreamt of his father.
When he was ten his dad came home from work, holding his hand under his coat, and disappeared upstairs without saying hello to his son. Jamie’s mother was visiting her sister in Surrey, and after a moment he followed his father, treading on the balls of his feet, taking the steps one at a time, slowly.
Through the half-open bathroom door he saw his father standing with his right hand in the sink. There were spots of red on the mirror and the white porcelain.
Jamie crept across the landing. His father was running the hot tap over his hand, grimacing at the temperature. He turned the tap off and reached for a towel and Jamie saw his hand. There was a long bloody cut running from his wrist to his elbow, and in the middle of the gash something dark was sticking out, dirty brown against the red.
His father dabbed the blood away from the cut and slowly reached into the wound. He gritted his teeth, then pulled the dark object out of his arm, letting out a sharp grunt as it came free. Jamie stared. It looked like a fingernail, more than an inch long, sharp and curved like a talon. A chunk of ragged meat hung from the thick end of the nail, glistening white in the bright light of the bathroom.