Ghost of a Smile (9 page)

“Oh there are,” said JC. “Lots and lots. Which is why there are also a whole bunch of companies and governments lining up to pay serious money to the first people to come up with something useful. No questions asked. There's a quiet undeclared race on to produce something that will improve people. Superman, super-soldier, supergenius—all of them property, not people.”

“There's nothing here about what this particular drug was supposed to do,” said Melody. “I can't get into the science laboratories' files from down here. I need direct access. Which means we need to go further up and poke around . . . I can tell you that the new drug was administered to the volunteers around seven hours ago. So whatever went wrong, it went wrong really fast. I've got a list here, names and information on all the volunteers. Are you really a volunteer if they pay you and don't properly explain the dangers?”

“Depends how much they pay,” said Happy.

“Forty thousand pounds, for two weeks, plus bed and board,” said Melody.

“Chicken feed,” said JC. “That's what they usually pay for testing cold cures, hand creams, allergy meds. Presumably the company didn't want to risk drawing attention to what they were doing. How many test subjects were there, Melody?”

“Twenty. Ten men and ten women, ages twenty to thirty. Of course, some of them would have been given a harmless placebo . . . Testing took place on the second floor; living quarters for the test subjects are on the first floor. Laboratories on the third . . . no information on the remaining floors.”

“Something's coming,” Kim said suddenly, and they all looked around.

The air was suddenly colder, painfully cold in their lungs as they breathed it in. Something was sucking all the heat out of the room. An energy drain, to power some kind of manifestation. There was a growing tension across the lobby, as though something might break, or explode. Suddenly, footsteps started down the stairs at the far end of the lobby. Slow, heavy, and quite deliberate footsteps, descending from above. Each separate sound seemed to hang on the air, unnaturally long, as though reluctant to depart. JC gestured quickly for everyone to spread out at the foot of the stairs, blocking them off. He and Kim got there first, peering eagerly up the stairs, but there was no-one to be seen yet. Melody reluctantly got up from her computer and moved across to join them. Happy stood behind her, not quite hiding. They waited at the foot of the stairs as the footsteps drew steadily nearer, louder, heavier . . . and then, at the moment when whoever was making them would have had to come round the corner at the top of the stairs, and reveal themselves, the sounds stopped. The last of the echoes died away, and there was only the quiet, and the increasingly oppressive stillness.

JC and the others waited, tense and ready for anything, but the footsteps had stopped. Nothing to hear, nothing to see. JC ran forward and sprinted up the steps to look round the corner, but there was no-one there. No sign there had ever been anyone there. JC came back down the stairs, scowling.

Then the elevator bell rang.

They all looked round sharply, and JC led the way as they raced over to the other side of the lobby, to the single elevator. The down arrow above the door was lit, and the row of numbers showed that the elevator was descending from the third floor. The laboratories . . . JC gestured urgently, and they all spread out before the elevator doors. Happy moved to not quite hide behind Melody again, and she grabbed his arm and hauled him out beside her. They all watched the numbers descend, tantalisingly slowly. And then the bell rang again, and the elevator doors slid open, to reveal there was no-one inside. The elevator was completely empty. Happy let out a quick sigh of relief, looked away, then cried out as a uniformed police officer appeared out of nowhere, right in the middle of the lobby.

The others spun around, and looked to where Happy was pointing with a trembling hand, but none of them moved. Neither did the police officer. He stood perfectly still, unnaturally still, and stared at them all with unblinking, unwavering eyes. His uniform was perfect, not even the smallest tear or blood stain. Nothing to show how he had died. But none of them doubted for a moment that he was dead. They only had to look at his face.

“Just an ordinary police officer, a bobby on the beat,” said JC. “He should never have been sent into a place like this. He never stood a chance.”

“He's not breathing,” Melody said quietly. “Not even showing the smallest of involuntary movements. His face is . . . empty. Nobody home. And look at his eyes . . . He sees us, but not in a human way. Whatever's watching us through those eyes isn't in any way human.”

A second policeman appeared, blinking in out of nowhere, as though forced into existence by an effort of will. Again, quite definitely dead. To look at him was to know it, on an instinctive level. The two dead men stood utterly still, in the centre of the lobby. The temperature was dropping even further. JC and the others were all shivering now, despite themselves, their breath steaming on the air before them. No steam from the dead men's faces. No frost in the lobby, no ice; only the deep, deep cold.

The security men appeared next, snapping into existence one after the other, all across the lobby. Slamming in without warning, tall uniformed men in heavy flak jackets, all of them carrying guns. But the arms hung limply at their sides, as unmoving as any other part of them, gun barrels pointing at the floor. None of them moved in the least, or made any attempt to communicate. They simply stood and stared. But there was still something terribly menacing about them. As though they were waiting for the right moment to do something horrible.

It was their faces. Human faces weren't meant to look like theirs. The dead, knowing eyes . . . the complete lack of any emotion or expression . . . in faces that weren't dead enough.

“Look at the plants,” Kim said quietly. “Look at the potted plants.”

They all glanced at the plants, not wanting to take their eyes off the dead men for too long. The half dozen potted plants, which had been standing tall and proud when JC first led the way in were now shrivelling up and withering away. Rot and corruption set in, and curled-up leaves fell listlessly to the floor. Something had sucked the life right out of them to maintain the dead men's presence. The quality of light in the lobby had changed, too. The fierce fluorescent light now seemed strained, weakened, even infected. One of the policemen took a single step forward, his muscles stiff and awkward. Then one of the security men. And then all the dead men were advancing on JC and his team, from every direction at once, one slow step at a time. Their faces didn't change, their eyes didn't move, but there was still an awful, inexorable purpose about them.

“Stand together!” roared JC. “Back to back!”

JC and Kim moved together, as did Happy and Melody. Close enough that no-one could get between them, but not so much that they'd get in each other's way if push came to violent action. JC was grinning broadly. He was always happiest on a case when things started to happen. It meant the waiting was over, and the mission was finally under way. JC did so love to get his hands dirty, and get stuck into things. Melody had produced her machine pistol again and was waving it steadily back and forth to cover the approaching dead men. Happy was making loud, whimpering noises but stood his ground. If only because all the ways to the exits were blocked. In his own way, he, too, was happiest when things started kicking off, because at least then he knew where the danger was.

The dead men moved with ghastly, deliberate slowness, as though movement was something they only vaguely remembered. The security men still had their arms at their sides, the gun barrels pointing towards the floor, but the sense of menace and danger was even stronger. The tension on the air was so strong, JC could feel it crushing down on him, like an unbearable weight. He glared at the nearest dead man.

“Who are you? What do you want? Do you remember what happened to you here? Do you remember who you are?”

The dead man didn't react, as though words meant nothing to him. But his unblinking eyes were fixed on JC, and there was something in his face, a strange, alien essence that made all the hairs on the back of JC's neck stand up.

“Kim,” he said urgently. “Can you read them? Can you tell me anything about them?”

“There's nothing there to read!” said Kim.

“I'm not picking up anything, either!” said Happy, looking desperately back and forth. “It's like . . . there's nothing there! Except there is!”

“They're shells,” Kim said suddenly. “Just shells! They're dead, they're some kind of ghost . . . but they're not surviving personalities, like me. They're what's left, after all the life and all the energy have been sucked right out. Something really bad has happened to these people. Because they're not people any more. Something else is watching us, JC, through their dead eyes.”

JC nodded quickly, thinking hard. “Do they have any actual physical presence? Can they hurt us?”

“I don't know!” said Kim. “I've never seen anything like them before. They're what's left when you take the people out of people.”

“Terrific,” said JC. “All right, we do it the hard way, then.”

He strode quickly forward, leaving his team behind, walked right up to the nearest security man, and prodded him in the flak jacket with one stiff finger. And cried out in pain and shock, as his finger sank into the dead man, disappearing from view. He yanked his finger out and staggered back, clutching his injured hand to his chest.

“It's all right!” he said quickly. “It was just so cold . . . Like sticking my hand into the vacuum between the stars!”

“A complete absence of physical presence,” said Melody. “Interesting. Not only an image but also a hole in the world . . .” She put her machine pistol away and flexed her empty hands uneasily.

“Ow!” said JC, flapping his injured hand urgently. “Pins and needles! Sensation coming back! Ow ow
ow
!”

“If they're not really there, how do we stop them?” said Happy. “They are getting terribly close now, and not in a good way, and none of them look friendly! If anyone feels like doing something dramatic and violent, I wouldn't object in the least.”

“Don't let any of them touch you!” Kim said abruptly.

“What?” said Happy. “Why not?”

“I don't know,” said Kim. “I'm getting a strong feeling that would be . . . bad.”

“Terrific,” said JC.

“We should bring a canary in a cage, for situations like this,” said Melody.

“We are the canary in the cage!” said Happy.

One of the dead men surged forward, heading straight for Melody. His movements were jerky and graceless, like a puppet on unseen strings. He reached out with both hands, his unwavering gaze fixed on Melody. Happy lunged forward to stand between them. He thrust out a blocking hand, and scowled fiercely as he concentrated. The dead man exploded silently. The image flared up and was gone, as though it had never been there. All the other dead men stopped moving, frozen in their tracks, in mid movement.

“Very impressive, Happy,” said JC. “Would you mind telling us what it was you did?”

“A concentrated burst of telepathically projected disbelief,” said Happy, breathlessly. “My belief that he didn't exist overwhelmed Someone else's belief that he did.”

“Someone else?” said JC. “What someone else?”

“Haven't a clue,” said Happy.

“My brave bunny,” said Melody, dropping an arm across Happy's shoulders. “There will be special treats, later.”

“There are still quite a few dead men left,” JC pointed out. “Any chance you could manage that trick again?”

“Not a hope in Hell,” said Happy. “That one effort took pretty much everything I had.”

“You just can't get good help these days,” said JC. “Not to worry! Now I know those things are vulnerable, I think I might have the very thing . . .” He fished in a jacket pocket, pulled out a grenade, primed it, and tossed it neatly into the advancing dead men. “Guard your eyes, children! Flashbang!”

The grenade exploded in a blast of incandescent light. Even with their eyes closed and their heads instinctively turned away, JC and Happy and Melody all cried out as the brilliant light seared their eyes. The light snapped off, and when they could all see again, all the dead men were gone, and the lobby was completely empty.

“What the hell was
that
?” said Melody.

“The very latest in a long line of useful gadgets that I'm not supposed to have,” JC said easily. “An exorcism grenade.”

Melody looked at him dangerously. “An exorcism . . . Are you taking the piss?”

“The very latest improvement!” said JC. “Gets the job done in half the time! Holy light!”

“I know I'm going to regret asking this,” said Happy. “But how . . .”

“You make water holy by saying the right religious words over it,” said JC. “Why should light be any different?”

“It's thinking things like that that make my head hurt,” said Happy.

“Wait a moment,” said Kim, who hadn't been dazzled by the light at all, “How did you know that grenade wouldn't affect me?”

“Because you're with us,” said JC. “One of the good guys.”

“Have you ever tested that thing in the field before?” said Melody.

“Guess,” said JC.

“I'm not picking up any remaining traces of the shells,” said Happy. “Any chance that light destroyed them completely?”

“Not really,” said JC. “More likely, the light only chased them away.”