The Hunted (25 page)

Ed took a deep breath. He didn’t want any more trouble. He’d been praying that this trip wouldn’t end in disaster, in more deaths. He didn’t want to know what was on the other side of the door, but he didn’t want to leave Lewis there alone.

He hurried over. Went through. Saw Lewis standing ready. Saw two people slowly coming down the stairs. Old people. Old like he hadn’t seen in a long time.

Two women, one holding a candle, walking stiff and upright, the other sort of hiding behind her, very small, bent over, a frightened look about her, like a baby animal.

‘What do we do?’ said Lewis. ‘Do we kill them?’

‘Wait.’ Ed was thinking, trying to take this in. The old women didn’t look diseased. There were none of the usual signs – boils or blisters or sores – and their clothes were clean. Their eyes showed intelligence.

They didn’t look like a threat.

But they probably weren’t alone.

He had to be careful. Mustn’t make any more mistakes. Take no risks. Driving into the sickos on the motorway had been dumb. His fault they’d ended up with one of them on the roof rack. His fault Macca was hurt.

Should he just kill these old women and be done with it?

They looked impossibly old. He’d never seen people this ancient and wrinkled. Even before the disease. Their hair was white and wispy, their skin hanging off their bones, thin and dry, blue veins showing through it, their skulls all too obvious beneath.

They came closer and stopped near the bottom of the stairs, eyes fixed on the three boys.

‘What do we do, Ed?’ asked Lewis. ‘What do we do?’

‘Kill them,’ murmured Kyle.

Ed waited, trying to read the faces of the two old women. The one with the candle looked more alert, more intelligent, her eyes glinting.

He had to do something. Say something.

‘Hello,’ he said at last, feeling foolish. ‘My name’s Ed.’

‘Hello, Ed,’ said the woman with the candle. ‘I am Amelia. Sorry about the pantomime at the door. I wanted the chance to see you up close before I spoke to you. And my sister is nervous of strangers.’

‘This is weird.’

‘I’m sure it is.’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Ed went on. ‘Are you sick? What are you?’

‘We’re not sick,’ said Amelia. ‘We’re just old. The sickness didn’t bother with us. We weren’t worth it.’

‘How can we trust you?’ said Lewis.

‘Do we look dangerous?’ asked Amelia and she smiled at him.

‘There might be more of you.’

‘Oh, there
are
more of us.’

Lewis tensed. Kyle stepped forward, his axe slightly raised.

‘There’s no need for that,’ said the old woman. ‘Follow me.’

She came fully down the stairs and crossed the hall to a doorway opposite.

‘It’ll be a trap,’ Kyle muttered darkly.

Ed put a hand on Kyle’s shoulder, urging him forward. ‘Then we’d better be ready for anything,’ he said.

Amelia opened the heavy door and waited there for the boys.

‘After you,’ said Lewis as they drew near and she led the way through. It wasn’t as dark in the next room. There were three large bay windows down one side that let in a lot of light. Burning logs in the fireplace added an extra glow. Ed took it all in quickly.

It wasn’t a trap.

That was clear.

There were about twenty people in there, sitting in armchairs and at small tables, all ancient, shrivelled and shrunken. Some alert, watchful, others dead-eyed and slack-jawed. One or two lost in their own private worlds, rocking backwards and forwards, gabbling.

‘See,’ said Amelia and she blew her candle out. The smaller old woman was still clinging on to her, not understanding what was going on, fearful. Amelia gently stroked her hair as she talked. ‘I told you there were more of us. But we’re all the same. All just old. Harmless.’

An old man had got up from one of the tables and headed for them. He was bent over, walking with the help of two sticks, what was left of his silver hair neatly combed over his scalp. A smart blazer with a handkerchief folded in the top pocket. Glasses so thick they magnified his eyes.

‘Hello,’ he said when he got to them, turning to peer at
all three boys in turn. ‘How splendid to have some visitors. I won’t shake your hands. I’m liable to fall over.’

He chuckled.

‘This is freaky,’ said Lewis. ‘I ain’t talked to a grown-up in over a year.’

‘And I haven’t talked to a child,’ said the man. ‘Not for a long while. They leave us alone here. They’ve forgotten us.’

‘What is this place?’ asked Kyle.

‘It’s called The Beeches,’ said Amelia. ‘It used to be what you would call an old people’s home. I suppose it still is. A
very
old people’s home. And what brings you all here, I wonder?’

Ed had almost forgotten about the rest of his group, still waiting outside. They’d be getting worried.

‘Our friend is hurt,’ he said. ‘Can we bring him in? Do you have any medical stuff?’

‘I saw from the window,’ said the woman. ‘A bad business. I do hope he’s all right. We have some bits and pieces here. There’s a medical wing, not as well stocked as it once was. And Norman here used to be a doctor.’

‘A very long time ago,’ said the man.

‘He still remembers some things, don’t you, Norman?’

‘A little. But I forget more. I remember my training better than I remember what I had for breakfast this morning, to tell you the honest truth.’

‘You know perfectly well what you had for breakfast, Norman,’ said Amelia. ‘You had what you have every morning. What we all have. Porridge oats and sweet tea.’

‘What happened to your friend?’ asked Norman, his goggle eyes blinking at Ed.

‘He’s been bitten.’

‘By one of
them
?’

‘Yes.’

Norman tutted. ‘Then I’m afraid there’s not a lot I can do for him. I’ll try my best, but my best is not what it was. He doesn’t stand much of a chance, the poor devil. You’d better bring him inside.’

‘You won’t leave me, will you, Brooke? You won’t leave me here alone?’

‘No, of course not. I’m with you.’

Macca was in a bed, with clean white sheets, in a clean room. Ed hadn’t seen anywhere this clean, this gleaming white, for ages. It all felt like a dream. A dream of the old days. Norman – Dr Norman Hunter, to give him his full name – was sitting at Macca’s bedside. He’d tried to clean and close the wound, bandaged him up, and had stuck a thermometer in his mouth. He was waiting for the result now, slowly rubbing his dry hands together. The old doctor looked tired, his eyes drooping shut behind his thick glasses. Ed knew that it was bad. He’d read it in Norman’s face when he’d inspected the wound. Macca needed a proper hospital, with serious drugs and proper surgical equipment if he was to have any chance.

Brooke was sitting on the other side of the bed, holding Macca’s hand. Ebenezer stood awkwardly by the window, not sure what to say or do. The other kids, Kyle, Lewis and Trinity, were waiting downstairs in the empty front room. Amelia stood at the foot of the bed, her sister still stuck to her side. Amelia nodded to Norman, who gave her an uncertain look.

Amelia made a
hmm
noise and came over to where Ed was hovering in the doorway. She touched him lightly on the chest with her fingertips.

‘There’s nothing more we can do here,’ she said gently. ‘We’re just getting in the way. Come along downstairs. There’s a lot we need to talk about.’

When Ed followed Amelia into the front room, Trinity and the others looked at her as if she was an alien. They were still getting used to the fact that there was an adult who didn’t carry the disease. And Amelia stared back at Trinity in a similar way. This was strange for all of them. Amelia’s little companion shrank away from the children, evidently scared.

Amelia plumped up some cushions and settled on to a sofa with a weary sigh, and her shadow sat down beside her, holding on tightly to her hand.

‘I expect there’s a great deal you all want to know,’ said Amelia ‘And there’s much I want to know as well.’ She looked at Trinity. ‘Particularly about you two, my dears. But we shall come to that in good time. Shall I go first?’

‘Please.’ Ed nodded.

‘My name is Amelia Dropmore and this is my sister, Dorothy. She is eighty-seven years old, and I am ninety-two. Don’t mind her, she’s living a second childhood. The diagnosis was Alzheimer’s. She has been what they describe as “demented”, charming word, for twelve years. It’s a mercy for her, in a way, because she has no idea what’s going on. Her mind is stuck in the past. She thinks it’s the nineteen thirties and she’s a little girl and there is no sickness …

‘I am
not
demented. Before the sickness came Dorothy had been living here for eight years. I was still independent,
but I knew the place well. I visited her whenever I was able. Like everyone else I’d thought that was it. The world would carry on as normal, Dorothy and I would grow older, and pretty soon one of us would pass on, and then the other. Nothing to write home about. Just a slow dying of the light.

‘And then it happened. Our world did not carry on as normal. It was thrown off its axis. Altered beyond recognition. At first the staff here were really very good. They did what they could for the old folks. But one by one they either took sick, or simply stopped coming in in the mornings. Who can blame them? They all had loved ones. Families to be with. So in the end it was left to me to look after the ladies and gentlemen who live here.’

‘Why aren’t any of you sick?’ asked Lewis.

‘She don’t know, do she?’ said Kyle. ‘How could she know? She ain’t no scientist.’

‘I’m afraid you are quite wrong,’ said Amelia patiently. ‘I
am
a scientist.’

‘You’re joking me.’

‘What? You don’t think a woman can be a scientist? Or you don’t think an old person can be a scientist?’

‘For real? You’re a scientist?’

‘Yes. I trained at Cambridge before the war, in the Department of Experimental Medicine. And when war broke out I went to work for the government at the Medical Research Council in Mount Vernon in Hampstead. Churchill was terrified that the Germans might use chemical or biological weapons –’

‘I knew it.’ Kyle slapped the arm of his chair, sending up a tiny cloud of dust that hung in the air.

‘You knew what?’ asked Amelia.

‘That’s where the disease came from, innit? It was a weapon that got out, that went wrong.’

‘No,’ said Amelia and she slowly shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that. It would have been easier to deal with if it had been. We’d have known what it was. And we had no idea. It was a peculiar disease, like nothing any of us had ever encountered before. It came from nowhere, appeared overnight in a fully virulent form. And it seemed choosy – the young were spared, anyone under the age of fifteen, and the very old.’

‘That’s news to me,’ said Kyle, shifting uneasily in his seat.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Amelia. ‘When the world went to pieces, the old were vulnerable. No one to look after them, easy prey for looters and house invaders. Most were simply killed. In the fog of war it was hard to see what was going on.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Kyle. ‘I had some grand-parents living in Wood Green. Lost touch with them when it all kicked off.’

‘You’re saying older people aren’t affected by the disease?’ Ed asked.

‘Yes. People in their late eighties and over do not seem to have been affected. Several of us here are over ninety, and three are over a hundred. It passed us by. Why?’

‘Do you know why?’ asked Lewis.

‘We had theories. Perhaps old people had some degree of natural immunity to it, from some past infection. But that didn’t explain why no young people got it. Perhaps it only bothered with people who were strong enough to carry it. But that would assume that the disease had a degree of intelligence. Which is impossible. Or so we
thought. Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.’ She gave a stern look to Kyle which softened into a smile.

‘You interrupted me,’ she said. ‘Got me off the subject. An old schoolboy trick.’

‘Sorry.’

‘As I was saying,’ Amelia went on, ‘I worked for the government during the war, doing my patriotic bit, and after that I moved around. I worked in Germany for a period, and America. For a few years I was at the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at Middlesex Hospital. I was even on the Board of Health for a spell … Oh, you don’t need to know all this. Just listen to me! I’m a typical rambling old person, showing off how much I can still remember. Suffice to say, I spent my entire adult life researching diseases and the beautiful mysteries of the human body.

‘And thirty years ago I retired, although I remained on various boards and charities and health advisory committees. And I got old. And I thought my usefulness was over. Apart from looking after Dorothy here.’ She touched her sister’s hand and she smiled back at her.

‘So when the disease came into the world I looked on helplessly, wishing there was something I could do, some way I could help. Be careful what you wish for, that’s what they say, and they’re right, because the disease worked its evil magic. Doctors were dying, scientists, researchers, nurses … everyone except the very old and the young. Hospitals and laboratories were having to close down because there was nobody well enough to work in them. That’s when I got the call. Me and hundreds like me. Retired scientists, and doctors, and nurses.

‘It wasn’t publicized. Imagine the panic if it got out that the future of the world was in the hands of a bunch of rickety old-age pensioners. But it was the only way they could keep the labs going, keep the hospitals going; they had to bring us out of retirement. They asked for volunteers at first, but when it got completely desperate they made it clear that we had no choice. I was here when they came for me, looking after Dot. I hated to leave her, but there was no way round it.

‘When I went into the laboratory, I was shocked by what I found. It was desperate, simply desperate: sick and dying people trying to carry on working. And it was all no use: several of them went mad and did terrible damage to people and to equipment. It got so that if anyone showed even the slightest signs of illness they were barred from the labs. I tried to keep up – so much had changed since my day, there had been so many advances in technology and knowledge – but even so nobody had the faintest idea where the disease had come from, how it worked and how we might stop it.

‘The basic techniques were unchanged. We took blood samples and tissue samples. We worked with rats and guinea pigs and monkeys, and one by one we died. It was a race against time and we lost. The younger ones among us were the first to go. It was like a sort of ripple effect, working upwards through the ages. Until there were only us old crocks left. There were five of us in the end, all over eighty-five, all women, trying to run the laboratory. We didn’t stand a chance. We knew that even if we somehow did find a cure there were no doctors left, no nurses, no infrastructure. What could we do? We five old crones?’

‘And did you find a cure?’ asked Kyle, leaning forward now, looking hopeful.

‘No, dear. We did not.’

Kyle slumped back in his seat.

‘Did you find out how it worked even?’ he asked.

‘I probably know more about the disease than anyone else in England,’ said Amelia. ‘And here am I, ninety-two, weak and feeble and helpless. I haven’t got much longer on this earth. How I’ve got to ninety-two quite frankly I have no idea … and all I know will die with me.’

‘Unless you tell us,’ said Trey, and he and Trio crossed the room to sit next to her on the sofa. ‘We could write it all down, or something.’

Amelia smiled at him and placed her hand on top of his. She stared into his face, trying to make sense of him, and was just about to ask him something when Lewis butted in.

‘Is it like this all around the world?’ he said. ‘Is it this bad everywhere?’

‘As far as we know. Everything looked hopeless. We gave up in the end. We closed the labs and I came here to be with Dot. By then all the staff had gone. Dead or run off. It was just the old people. Left to die. But we didn’t die. Because, before I left the labs, I was able to do one last thing. I had ultimate authority: the government had given orders that anything I needed I should have. The work I was doing was that important. So I made one last order.’

‘What was it?’ Ed asked.

‘Come along,’ said Amelia, struggling up off the sofa. ‘I’ll show you.’