He lowered his hand and stepped back. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.
‘What’s it to be?’
Rows of orange street lights whizzed by, their glare reflecting off the windows of the car we were travelling in. I half sat, half sprawled on the back seat, my head resting against the cool glass. Whenever we hit a bump, my head would loll around for a moment, then thud against the window again. Maybe it hurt. I couldn’t say.
I slept fitfully, plagued by nightmares whenever I closed my eyes. When I woke, I’d catch snippets of conversation between Joseph and Ameena. They were both sat up front, but even through the fog in my head, I could tell they weren’t bonding well.
‘...can’t believe he trusts you. He’s got no right to trust you. He hardly even knows you.’ That was Ameena’s voice, all cocky and aggressive.
‘He doesn’t know you, either.’
‘Yes, he does! Besides, I’ve saved his life.’
‘So have I,’ Joseph said. ‘Yours too, actually.’
‘Shut up, you have not!’
‘Have so.’
They continued like that, bickering and arguing every time I woke up, until the sixth or seventh time, when I awoke to find Ameena leaning round in her seat, watching me. She smiled when I opened my eyes.
‘Dead yet?’
I tried to shake my head, but the pain was too much. ‘No,’ I said. It came out as a croak.
‘Good.’
‘How much further?’ I asked.
It was Joseph who replied. ‘Not far. Three, four minutes, maybe. Your mum’s in room forty-two. You’ll see her soon.’
I struggled into a slightly more upright position and looked out through the windows. Tower blocks stood like giants on either side of the road. There was a lot of traffic about, but it didn’t seem to be slowing us down. We crossed a bridge, passed a corner shop, a restaurant, a pub. I didn’t recognise any of it.
‘How do you feel?’ Ameena asked.
‘Been better.’
‘You’ve looked better,’ she said, studying my face. ‘The whole pale and sweaty thing isn’t really working for...’
Ameena stopped talking and just stared at me.
‘Whoa,’ she eventually whispered. ‘That was freaky.’
‘What?’ I asked. My lips felt cracked and dry. I licked them, but there was no moisture on my tongue.
‘Nothing, just a trick of the light or something,’ Ameena said.
‘What was it?’ Joseph asked. ‘What did you see?’
‘Nothing. It was just... For a second there it looked like I could see right through his head.’
Joseph swore loudly and slammed his hands on the steering wheel. ‘No, no, no, not now,’ he hissed. ‘Not already. It’s too soon.’
We both turned to look at him. ‘What?’ asked Ameena. ‘What’s too soon?’
Joseph didn’t take his eyes off the road. I felt the car beneath me speed up. ‘He’s slipping away.’
Ameena’s eyes went wide. ‘What, you mean... he’s dying?’
‘I’m dying?’
Joseph shook his head. From here I could see his hands on the steering wheel. The knuckles were white. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Something worse.’
‘Worse?’
Joseph didn’t answer.
‘You seem to know a hell of a lot about all this,’ Ameena growled. ‘What’s going on? What’s wrong with him?’
‘He’s infected.’
‘Infected? Infected with what?’
‘No time to explain,’ Joseph said. He sounded irritated. ‘We need to get him to the hospital.’
Ameena turned to look at me. Her head moved as a series of jerks. Her face looked blurred and hazy. When she spoke, her voice was muffled and faint. ‘Is there... Can they help him?’
He may not have spoken, but I couldn’t miss Joseph’s reply when he glanced over at Ameena. It was written all over his face.
‘You holding on in there, Kyle?’ he asked, looking at me in the rear-view mirror. My mouth was too dry to speak, but I managed to hold up a thumb for him to see. ‘Good lad,’ he said. I was jostled sideways as the car pulled round a corner and on to a much narrower road. ‘Not long now, it’s just up— No, no, no!’
‘What now?’ asked Ameena. Before Joseph could reply she said, ‘What happened to the engine?’
The car rolled slowly and silently to a stop. ‘They’ve killed it.’
‘Who has?’
‘I don’t know! Someone!’ Joseph roared. His voice was so loud it made even Ameena jump. ‘We need to get him in there,’ he said, a little more quietly. He nodded ahead, to where the hospital stood. ‘It can’t happen out here.’
Ameena began to speak, but he cut her off. ‘When I say, get out of the car and help Kyle up. We’ll both carry him. No arguments, we need to move fast.’
After a quick glance at me, she nodded.
‘OK. On three. One. Two.’
‘Three!’ Ameena cried, throwing open her door.
My door flew open next, and hands reached in for me. They caught me by the front of my jumper and dragged me out into the chilly night air. The blast of cold cleared away the cobwebs a little.
Now that I was a bit more alert, some of what had been said in the last few minutes began to sink in. I suddenly felt scared – a feeling that wasn’t helped when Joseph and Ameena hooked my arms round their necks and began hauling me along the darkened road as quickly as they could.
The large building ahead of us wasn’t, in fact, a large building at all. It was a collection of smaller buildings, every one of which seemed to come from a different period in time. Shiny glass and metal stood beside moss-coated stone. A low, squat grey granite structure lurked in the shadow of a red brick tower block. The hospital must have started off small, then been gradually added to over the years since then.
From what I could see, the buildings all seemed to be interconnected, but every single one of them looked out of place. It wasn’t like any hospital I’d ever seen before.
So why had they moved Mum here?
I was about to ask Joseph when I heard the whispering again. The same whispering I’d heard earlier in the night. It was louder this time, audible even over the laboured breathing of Joseph and Ameena as they ran with me towards the hospital entrance.
‘Voices,’ I said, the word coming out as a squeak. ‘Hear voices. Whispering.’
Joseph swore again. ‘How close?’
‘Close.’
‘He said he heard something before,’ Ameena chipped in.
‘What are they saying?’
I listened. The whispering came from every direction at once, hundreds of voices, all overlapping and tumbling together.
‘Kyle, can you hear what they’re saying?’
The closer we got to the hospital, the louder the voices became. They