‘What do you expect?’ he said, still not able to find it in himself to be civil. ‘They’ve dragged everyone out of their homes at gunpoint and locked them in a school gym. Hardly going to be a fucking party, is it?’
She chose her next words carefully. The last thing anyone needed was Scott kicking off and causing another scene. Keep him sweet. Keep everything together. Keep it all ticking over like I always do.
‘What do you think’s going to happen?’
‘How am I supposed to know?’
‘What are they trying to protect us from?
‘You’ve read the card, same as I have. Biological hazard.’
‘I know that, but Dez said he was talking to the doctor… he was saying something about this being something to do with all those deaths… about them being linked.’
‘Yeah, that’s what he reckons.’
‘So are we going to be okay, Scott?’
‘Well there are plenty of soldiers around. Don’t know what good all those guns’ll be against a bloody biological hazard though.’
‘And are we going to be okay?’
‘You tell me.’
She was about to speak again when Phoebe interrupted her. ‘I still can’t see him, Mum.’
‘Can’t see who?’
‘Dad. If they’re bringing everyone here, then he should be here too, shouldn’t he?’
Michelle stood up to comfort her daughter and help her look. Scott lay back and stared up at the high roof of this expansive gym, counting metal struts and ceiling tiles, doing everything he could not to get drawn into their impossible conversation. He wished he hadn’t found Jeremy. It would have been easier not to know. He’d have to tell them at some point, and then they’d—
—a sudden commotion erupted on the far side of the leisure centre, near to the rapidly depleting stack of supplies. Scott got up fast, scrambling to his feet. He couldn’t see much through the sudden chaos. Many other people were up now, though most remained defiantly rooted to their own pockets of space.
It was different on the other side of the gym. There people were trying to get out of the way, both from whatever it was that was happening and also from a mass of soldiers who were wading through the crowds. Their weapons, this time, were held ready to fire.
A bubble of space had opened up around a woman lying on the floor. Her body was convulsing, limbs flailing, kicking and lashing out. All around her people were trying to get away, grabbing at their bedding and supplies, desperate to move but finding their progress impeded by other people all doing the same. Two soldiers without weapons, wearing slightly different suits – medics or scientists, perhaps, Scott thought – approached the woman writhing on the floor.
‘I’m not getting involved,’ Dr Kerr said, appearing by Scott’s side. ‘It’s Edie Fitzpatrick. She’s epileptic. That’s all this is. They’ll realise soon enough.’ Scott just looked at him and the doctor anticipated his unspoken questions. ‘I know, I know… Hippocratic Oath and all that… Thing is, they’ll help her and I know she’ll be all right. They know who we are and I’m sure they’ve access to as much medical information as I had, more probably. Until someone tells me exactly what’s going on here, I’m not helping anyone.’
‘Don’t blame you, Peter,’ another voice said. Scott thought he recognised the man, though he wasn’t immediately sure where from. Then it dawned on him. It was Sergeant Ross, out of uniform. Strange how much attention he’d previously paid to the uniform, not the man, Scott thought. ‘Mr Griffiths,’ the police officer said, acknowledging him.
‘Sergeant.’
‘Care to tell us what’s going on here, Dan?’ the doctor asked.
‘I was going to ask you the same question.’
‘Hold on,’ Scott said. ‘How can you not know? You’re the bloody police, for Christ’s sake.’
‘This hasn’t been a typical investigation…’ the sergeant began to explain.
‘You can say that again. Fucking amateurs. You arrest me, spend a day trying to get me to confess to crimes I know fuck all about, then just turn me out again without a frigging word.’
‘What was I supposed to do? Like I said, Mr Griffiths, this hasn’t been a typical investigation. We thought we were looking for a serial killer, and you have to admit, you gave us more than enough cause for concern…’
‘You treated me like a bloody animal. You’d decided I was guilty before you’d even—’
‘That’s enough,’ the doctor said, scalding both of them. ‘Don’t you think we’ve enough to worry about without fighting amongst ourselves? How much do you know, Dan?’
The Sergeant rubbed his eyes. He looked around then answered Dr Kerr in hushed tones. ‘Not as much as I should do. You know what it’s like yourself, Peter, we’re at the arse-end of nowhere out here. It still takes forever to get the information you need. It shouldn’t, but that’s how it is.’
‘What kind of information?’ Scott asked.
‘Test results. Forensics.’
‘It would have helped if you’d listened to me,’ Dr Kerr said, clearly disgruntled.
‘I know, and I’m sorry.’
‘I said we were missing something crucial. All along I was trying to say that…’
‘I know you tried, and I’ve apologised. With the benefit of hindsight we—’
‘But you just dismissed everything I told you. Bloody hell, Daniel, the gender of the victims should have made it clear.’
‘Gender?’ Scott interrupted. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Male, female, male, female… it’s what we were saying earlier. This thing is a parasite, transmitted sexually.’
‘We were almost there,’ the policeman said. ‘We’d found foreign DNA traces on all the bodies, but we didn’t spot the pattern.’
‘What pattern?’ Scott asked.
‘On most of the bodies we found traces of the DNA of someone else, but we didn’t know who because none of them were on the database. It took us a while to work it out… longer than it should have. The DNA belonged to the next person to die, you follow? But there were never any signs of a struggle, that’s what threw us. Just blood and genital mutilation.’
Dr Kerr took off his glasses, breathed on the lenses, then cleaned them on his jumper. ‘Scott here saw an attack today. Tell him, Scott.’
‘I wouldn’t call it an attack,’ he said, picturing Jeremy and the woman. ‘It looked like…’
‘Like what?’
‘Like consensual sex, just out in the open. Two people having sex, oblivious to everyone and everything else. It was after they separated, though… it was like he’d been torn apart. Just like all the others.’
‘Who?’
‘My wife’s ex. Jeremy Williams.’
‘He was staying at the pub last night, and I’ll put money on him having been with young Heather Burns,’ Dr Kerr whispered. ‘It’s like I said, some kind of parasite. Will you listen to me now?’
‘Explain,’ Sergeant Ross said.
‘The parasite needs a body to survive. When it’s taken what it needs, it has to find another host. What Scott saw this morning, what you’ve seen the aftermath of, was that transmission.’
‘So what you’re saying,’ Scott interrupted, ‘is that this thing needs blood or whatever, and when it’s taken what it needs from one body, it’s passed on to the next through sex?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
‘You make it sound like a vampire,’ he laughed, unable to quite believe what he was hearing. The doctor looked serious.
‘Vampyrrhic. That’s actually a pretty good way of describing it.’
‘I’ll go get a fucking crucifix,’ Scott said, and he almost walked away from the ridiculous conversation.