Will looked back at her. “What?”
“This is intelligence, Will. This is strategy and organization and leadership and God knows what else.”
Davies was shaking his head. “Holy Christ. The others are going to freak about this.”
“Then don’t tell them,” Danny said.
“How can I not tell them?”
“Okay, then tell them.”
“Ideas, guesses, wild theories?” Will asked, looking specifically over at her.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. They turn us by infecting us — the hosts — at a cellular level, changing our DNA to meet their needs. If they can do that, then this…might be child’s play. If I can get one of them back to the facility, I can run tests and find out more.”
Will glanced at his watch.
“How are we on time?” she asked.
“Nine fifty-three a.m. We’re still good.”
Danny said, “What now? Do we wake them?”
“How do we do that?” Davies asked.
Danny looked to Lara. “You’re the doc, Doc.”
“Third-year medical student,” she said, managing a slight smile back.
“Close enough. So how do we wake them up?”
“You’re asking me like this is normal,” she said. She looked around her again, at the pale, ossified bodies on the floor. There were so many, and each one looked more malnourished than the next. “I don’t even know what they did to these people, much less how to wake them up. Or if we even should.”
“What do you mean if we even should?” Davies asked. “We can’t just leave them like this. Right?”
“I don’t know what would happen if they woke up from whatever this…is. Look at them. This isn’t natural. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen if you force one of them awake.”
Will nodded. “Lara’s right. We’re wading through uncharted territory here.” He looked around the auditorium. “Maybe not all of them are asleep. Maybe we can find one that’s awake.”
“You want us to go through this graveyard?” Danny asked.
“You got a hot date?”
“Actually, yeah. Don’t tell Carly, though.”
“Let’s get started,” Will said.
She walked among the bodies. They were packed so tightly into every available space that there was barely any room between them. Even being as careful as she was, she still managed to step on an arm, then a leg, then an open palm. She felt horrible each time, expecting to hear bone snapping, and was relieved when she didn’t.
Could these people know what was happening to them? She had heard horror stories about coma patients who could hear and feel everything going on around them, but couldn’t speak or move to let someone know. It was a terribly debilitating existence, and she hoped and prayed it wasn’t the case here. She shivered at the mere possibility.
“Anyone having any luck?” Danny called from thirty yards away. “The only thing I’m finding here is Jack and shit, and Jack just took off for the hills and forgot to leave a letter behind.”
“None,” Will said.
“They’re all asleep here,” Davies added.
“Nothing here,” she said.
They spread out across the auditorium, with Will and Danny farther ahead. As she moved through the room, she realized she was wrong about there not being any space to walk. There were clear pathways through the auditorium, big enough to allow someone to go from end to end without stepping on the bodies. There was also a much bigger empty space along the right side wall, where the bathroom and offices were.
She was almost in the middle of the auditorium when she nearly stepped on an open palm. She carefully lifted her boot to step over the outstretched hand when it suddenly came alive and the fingers grabbed her around her calf, above her boot. She gasped sharply at the feel of cold fingers. She looked down at milky white eyes, like cream in a coffee mug, looking back up at her. The mind behind those eyes was very much alive, and she focused on the pale, cracked lips which quivered, trying to talk.
“I found someone!” she shouted.
She crouched next to the figure. It was a young woman, maybe in her twenties, with short pink hair and piercings in her nose and ears. She wore dark black clothes and a T-shirt and looked completely out of place among people in overalls and jeans. She also looked reasonably healthy, and her bones weren’t protruding dangerously out from underneath loose skin, her cheeks not quite as sunken as the others’. In a room full of skeletal forms, she stood out.
The woman let her hand drop back to the floor and let out a soft, relieved sigh.
Will and the others converged on her as she leaned over the woman. “Can you hear me? Say something if you can hear me. Anything.”
The woman struggled to speak, her lips trembling, but no words came out.
“It’s okay,” Lara smiled down at her. “We’re going to get you out of here, okay? Save your energy.”
Will crouched on the other side of the woman, careful not to step on an old man who was almost completely skin and bones and unconscious next to her. “How is she?” he asked.
“She doesn’t look like she’s been here as long as the others.”
He glanced up at Danny. “Give me a hand.”
Lara stood up and backed away as Danny took her place. They picked the woman up and carried her carefully across the auditorium. She lay weakly between them, like a mannequin with rubber arms and legs, head turned to one side, eyes wide with fear and uncertainty.
She and Davies followed them to the door, then back out into the hallway.
Will propped the woman against the wall, below a poster advertising a sale on yearbooks. He arranged her legs and arms and head for her as if she were a child. Danny held out a small canteen and dripped water between her lips. The woman struggled to swallow, desperate to take in as much as she could.
“How long have you been here?” Lara asked.
The woman stared at her while greedily swallowing more water. Finally, she leaned her head back and coughed. She whispered, her voice so low that Lara had to lean in closer to hear, “I don’t remember.” Her eyes darted left and right, then back to Lara. They looked alarmed, terrified. “Where am I?”
“You don’t know?”
The woman shook her head with difficulty.
“What’s your name?”
“Megan,” she whispered.
“They’ve been feeding off you,” Lara said. She gently picked up Megan’s left hand and held it up for her to see the teeth marks that ran up and down every inch of her arm like runaway train tracks. “Do you remember?”
Megan’s eyes widened at the sight of the teeth marks. She looked down at her right hand and tried to lift it, but couldn’t. “I remember…seeing them around me. I thought it was a dream. A bad nightmare.” Something occurred to her, and her eyes shifted back to Lara, anxious. “I have a friend, Tom. Did you…?”
Lara shook her head. “You were the first person we found awake. You might be the only one.”
“What about the others?” she croaked.
“We don’t know how to wake them, and we’re not sure if we should. It could be dangerous. We don’t know what’s happened to them, to you. I don’t want to do anything until I know more.”
Megan looked disappointed, but nodded.
Will tapped Lara on the shoulder. “I think I know where Elise and Todd went. Stay here with Megan. Davies and I will go make sure.”
She nodded.
Will and Davies went back into the auditorium. Danny stayed behind and took out a power bar. “Can she eat this?”
“Not yet,” Lara said. “Let her system get used to water first. Her body isn’t going to be able to accept solid food all of a sudden. We’ll have to reintroduce it to her one step at a time, no matter how much she wants it.”