Текст книги "And All the Stars "

Автор книги: Andrea Höst

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Chapter Five

"Science Boy must live on this site," Noi said, as Madeleine fumbled with keys. The girl waved the tablet computer she'd brought along. "No wonder he fell down – no sleep."

"Did you find what's the best thing for Greens?"

"I found a big argument over it." Noi fell silent as Madeleine slotted one of the master keys into the lock and turned. The door opened an inch, then caught on a chain as sound spilled out: a television, the now-familiar voice of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation presenter based in Canberra. And a smell.

"Should we knock again?"

"Not if you want to get through this entire building this century. Watch out." After the Building Manager's office, they'd taken a side-trip to a maintenance room in the garage for, as Noi put it, a Ministering Angel Toolkit. This included an upright, three-shelf trolley they'd stacked with food, and a red and black pair of bolt cutters, which nipped through the chain effortlessly.

Madeleine pushed the door open, but neither of them made any move. The full impact of the smell was enough to guess what was inside.

"We're going to have to check," Noi said. "If we're doing this properly."

Before Madeleine could say anything the girl lifted her chin and walked into the apartment. Madeleine followed, calling out "Hello?" in case the smell hadn't told the whole story.

Two people were on the couch, sitting snugged together beneath a blanket, one man's head resting on the other's shoulder. They looked to have been in their fifties or sixties, and Madeleine could almost think them peacefully asleep if not for the waxy pallor, and the single fly which had found its way into the apartment, to spin joyfully in the corner of the smaller man's mouth.

Gulping, and then trying not to breathe, Madeleine looked away and found Noi opening the nearest door.

"Look in all the rooms, check the hot plates, turn off any running water, the TV, then out," the girl said, with a fixed determination.

"Hot plates?"

"Kitchen rules," Noi replied, shrugging. "But it's worth thinking fire prevention."

Madeleine moved to obey, finding no active hot plates, no running water, and no visible way to turn the television off. The remote was probably somewhere on the couch, and she felt bizarrely that it would be impolite to go hunting for it, disrespectful to disturb the dead. And she didn't want to touch. But Noi spotted a discreet cord, a wall switch, and was reaching for that when Madeleine said:

"Wait."

The TV showed a van crammed full of people and personal belongings driving toward a roadblock. The thin hum of the engine dropped, then picked up again. Then a tinkle, breaking glass, and the van screeched to a stop. Little chopped-off noises followed as it hastily reversed, turned, and accelerated away, one headlight punched out.

"Where is that?" Madeleine asked. "That's not here, is it?"

"That's everywhere," Noi flicked the power switch. "Come on."

Madeleine wanted to protest that Australians wouldn't do that, but couldn't. She followed Noi out and closed the door as the shorter girl wrote "D2" on a diagram she'd found in the building manager's office.

"I guess so long as we stay in the city centre we won't have to worry about that," Madeleine. "Everyone here would have to already be infected. Teaming up with that school is probably still a good idea, though."

"No, I'm glad you said no to that. Here." Noi picked up the tablet computer and passed it to Madeleine, then began pushing their trolley toward the next door.

The tablet was displaying a very recent post on the BlueGreen site titled "Blues dangerous?" It was a summary of stories of Blues hurting people, with repeats of the surge, or jolts of 'invisible lightning'. And two incidents, one in Singapore, the other in Norway, of Green survivors, thought to be recovering, who had been found dead after coming into contact with a Blue.

"I'd rather give it a few days," Noi said, as she rapped on the new door. "See what happens."

Madeleine read through the article in silence, then fumbled for the keys, painfully conscious of the patch of midnight and stars below her left eye, of the whole of her body feeling like velvet beneath the concealing dress. There was a lot still to learn about being Blue.

ooOoo

The apartments at Finger Wharf were grouped into two long parallel buildings, joined by a connecting roof over a massive central throughway where modern metal and glass sat strangely mixed with wooden walkways and arching old-fashioned conveyer belts preserved as decorations. There was a hotel nearest the street, and a smaller separate building enjoying the prime views at the northern end. Three hundred apartments, a hundred hotel rooms. Noi and Madeleine rapped on doors until their knuckles were sore, and then they used the blunt end of the keys, their shouts hello becoming cursory as they toured through death.

Most of the world – or at least this portion of Sydney – had died curled up on the couch, watching television. These were much easier to deal with than the handful who, like Madeleine, had ended up in their showers, finding some comfort from the pelting water. They were usually at least partially naked, the marbling of flesh and the beginnings of bloat difficult not to look at when reaching to shut off the water. The splashing left Madeleine feeling contaminated.

In one apartment the windows and door were so effectively sealed with tape and plastic that Madeleine swore she could hear the room inhale when they broke through. She had to wonder whether it was the stain or suffocation which had killed the small family inside. In a different apartment there were nearly a dozen people, with empty bottles – champagne, beer – everywhere, and a partially-eaten sheet cake where someone had roughly scrubbed off 'Birthday', and spelled out 'Apocalypse' with shining silver cachous.

Death had not come all at once. Most Blues had died quickly, but many of the Greens had obviously lingered over the past three days, so the sick-sweet aroma of rot was not always present, though there were often other smells. Bowels relaxed in death. A couple of times pungent incense made their eyes sting. In one bedroom scented candles still burned, set all around three little beds and three tiny occupants tucked up with toys, and favourite books. Noi and Madeleine blew out the candles, and found the mother in a bathtub of blood.

Out in the hall, Noi marked off the apartment, then slumped to the ground, and Madeleine joined her, shuddering.

"How long ago do you think she did that?" she asked the shorter girl. "An hour? Two? If we'd started at the other end of the building we could have saved her."

"Or just delayed her."

Madeleine hunched her shoulders, then pulled off her sandals and massaged her arches. Velvet against velvet. Over two hours, and so much more left.

"I thought we'd find more people. How can they have had one in five come through at that boarding school, while in forty apartments we were too late for the sole survivor?"

"One in five healthy teenagers with Science Boy playing head nurse," Noi pointed out. "We're trying to Nightingale the wrong demographic."

"Do you want to go on?"

With a sigh, Noi nodded. "Yeah. I'd obsess about it if we stopped now. About things like that family, except with one of the kids still alive instead. But eat something – don't let the hunger catch up."

They snacked on some of the nuts and dried fruit they'd brought along to offer to survivors, and Madeleine browsed BlueGreen while Noi sent some texts. There was an entire section devoted to Rushcutters Bay Grammar, one of a half-dozen 'major studies' cobbled together by whoever happened to have access to a large number of infected people.

"Looks like we're not being very original," Noi said, and held up her phone to show a Twitter feed for #checkyourneighbors.

Madeleine could wish for fewer neighbours, but nodded and stood up. "My cousin's apartment's the last on this row. We can put me down as a survivor."

"One less door to thump on, anyway."

There was a merciful run of empty apartments, and they moved on to the next level up.

"Who is it?"

The words had a horror movie quality, the barely audible sound sending Madeleine flinching backward, the keys she'd been lifting to the lock jangling.

"Hello!" Noi called out, with only a suggestion of a gulp. "We're checking for sur – for anyone who needs help. We have some food and bottled water, or we can bring milk if you want it."

"I don't need anything."

It was a woman, her voice hoarse, frantic. Madeleine and Noi exchanged worried glances.

"We can leave some things out here for you, if you'd like," Madeleine offered. "You don't have to open the door while we're here."

"Go away."

"All right. Sorry for – uh, we'll be in apartment 222 later, if you, um..." Madeleine trailed off as a thump made the door shake, as if the woman had hit it. "We're going now."

Noi hurriedly pushed the trolley down the walkway to the next door, then clutched Madeleine's arm.

"I don't know whether to laugh or scream," she whispered. "What the hell?"

"Maybe she somehow managed to avoid the stain. Of course she wouldn't want to open the door."

"She could have just said that." But Noi shrugged off her annoyance. "I guess we can at least chalk up another survivor."

"We still don't know everything that the dust does to people. She could be something new, changed in other ways."

"Don't say that after you told her your apartment number. Let's get on – I'm wanting some distance."

Madeleine rapped at the new door, far less casually, and called for longer than had become habit, before making a quick, nervous sortie and heading for the next apartment.

"Wait."

The strained voice was worse for being louder, sharper, and it was impossible not to jump, Noi even letting out a tiny, cut-off shriek as they spun in unison to see the previous door had opened, though there was no sign of a person.

"Take him away."

The faintest suggestion of movement followed, then nothing.

"I am freaking the shit out right now," Noi said, under her voice. "Are you freaking the shit out?"

"I'm...really looking for an excuse not to go in there," Madeleine said.

They approached the door like nervous horses, ready to shy at a moment's notice. Madeleine moved to peer around the corner, changed her mind and backed to the limit of the walkway, against the railing, so she wouldn't be in reach of anything which might be just inside the door.

"Can't see anyone," Noi murmured, craning for a look down an airy, white hall. She hefted the bolt cutters, adding: "It's going to turn out to be some scared little old lady and I'm going to look like the bad guy waving these around, and yet..."

"Let's get this over with."

Madeleine picked up a bottle of water, on the theory that it might make a distracting projectile, and followed Noi in. One of the smaller apartments, very neat and tidy, with the windows wide open, sheer curtains rippling. No-one in sight. Two doors shut, one open. Competing scents: pine, and rot.

"Oh."

Noi lowered the bolt cutter, gazing into a room dominated by a king-sized bed. A pale cream spread had been drawn over the occupant. Two steps and a twitch of the cloth and they had found an obvious candidate for 'him'.

"I almost wish she'd come at us yelling 'Brainnnsss!'. Then I could justify running away."

Madeleine nodded, staring at a thick-set man in his sixties, whose cheery strawberry-striped pyjama pants cut into a swelling stomach, the skin unpleasantly mottled. Probably one of those who had died the very first night.

"Could we even lift him?" she asked. "Where would we take him to?"

"One of the other apartments?" Noi was frowning, but no longer held the bolt cutters at ready as she worked through the problem. "I think it's doable. We'll need something to shift him with, but I've got an idea for that. Come on."

Calling out that they were going to get something to help, Noi led the way down to the wharf's echoing central hall.

"You head back to the restaurant and grab a couple of pairs of gloves. They should be in the box in the storage room to the left in the kitchen. Meet back at the elevator."

That was easily accomplished, and Madeleine found Noi had beaten her, and was lazily spinning a wheeled platform topped with a gilt metal framework.

"Luggage thing from the hotel," she explained. "All we have to do is get him off the bed."

The mystery woman hadn't shut them out. The dead man was still large and unwieldy.

"His arms and legs will trail off the sides," Madeleine pointed out, reluctant to touch the man even with gloves.

"How about this?"

Noi dragged the cover fully off the bed, then pulled out the near corners of the blue bed sheet. Catching on, Madeleine lifted the section of cloth nearest her.

"Hold your side a little lower," Noi instructed, then lifted hers, straining, and flopped the man onto his side in the very centre of the sheet. "Now if we tie the corners across, they'll be like handles."

It was still awkward, and moving him made the smell worse, but they managed to haul the sheet-bag to the side of the bed, and line the baggage cart up so the man could be pulled through the tubular metal frame to lie more on than off. They exposed a large stain on the mattress in the process, and Madeleine gagged at the stench of it, and hastily followed Noi as she pushed the cart effortlessly out of the apartment. After a moment's debate they returned and hauled the mattress out as well

"He's gone now," Madeleine called back from the doorway. "We...let us know if you need anything else."

She pulled the door closed and caught up with Noi and the cart, two doors down at one of the apartments they'd cleared already, to help her slide the heavy bundle to the floor. After bringing the mattress, and a quick detour to the apartment bathroom to abandon gloves and wash hands, they left the empty cart still in the room and shut themselves outside, heading back to their trolley of supplies.

"Time out for existential crisis," Noi said, sitting down. The words were light, but the girl grey, eyes squeezed shut, arms wrapped around her knees.

Madeleine sat down to wait, understanding that Noi was here because her home was filled with the bodies of her family, her wry good humour a façade of normality plastered over extreme grief. Madeleine's ongoing worry about her parents was a minor thing by comparison, and had lessened after last night's rain, though she wished she could get through to Tyler. Her phone was on its last legs, too, nearly out of charge.

A distant shout: "Are you two okay?"

Across the central hall, standing on the matching walkway of the parallel southern apartment building, was a girl in a dark purple gown and violet hijab, and a tall, hollow-cheeked man with a neatly trimmed beard, both of them loaded down with shopping bags. It was such an everyday, ordinary sight that Madeleine had a moment's dislocation, and told herself that there was no chance at all that they'd found an open supermarket.

"Yes!" Noi called. "Glad to see you! We've just been going door to door checking on people."

The man said something to the girl, who nodded, and called: "Good idea! Wait a sec and we'll come across!"

"I think our luck's turned," Noi murmured, as the pair took their bags into a nearby apartment – greeted by a weary, green-stained woman – and then made their way over.

"I'm Faliha Jabbour, and this is my Dad," the girl said, when they arrived. She was about fifteen, round-cheeked and blue-palmed. "What's the plan?"

Noi introduced herself and Madeleine, and explained their progress so far.

"So few?" Mr Jabbour asked, his English slow and heavily accented but understandable. "We must hope for better."

"We should do our floor first," Faliha said. "Check on Penny and Tesh."

Her father shook his head. "For the sake of safety, it is perhaps best to remain within quick reach of each other." He gave Madeleine and Noi a grave glance, clearly not wanting his daughter to face the apartment of friends.

"We can leap-frog," Noi said. "There's only one bolt cutter anyway."

Leap-frogging worked well, vastly speeding up their progress. Faliha knocked, called out, and unlocked the doors, but waited outside while her father checked the apartments. And soon they were joined by Carl, then Asha and Annie, Mr Lassiter, and Sang-Kyu: all the Blues in three hundred apartments and a hotel. There were also twenty-four Greens, most of them barely able to shuffle to their doors. Asha and Annie brought back to their apartment a Green boy only eleven or so – the youngest survivor Madeleine had seen so far – while Mr Lassiter, supplementing rusty high school French with a translation app, took in a very ill tourist who could barely speak English. The baggage cart was called into use again and again.

Once every room had been checked, all the Blues went down to the restaurants and sorted through them while Noi and Sang-Kyu cooked up a couple of massive vats of curry – one chicken, one vegetarian – discussing what constituted Halal with Faliha and what was vegan with Asha. And what their food prospects would be in a few weeks.

Madeleine helped clean up, watching their faces. Everyone red-eyed, smiles fragile. The sun was setting by the time they broke up to deliver curry and head to their respective homes. A gorgeous autumn evening, with a ribbon of smoke smudging the northern sky, and a mute tower of black watching, and waiting.

ooOoo

"What's your cousin like?" Noi asked, as Madeleine unlocked the apartment door. "Worth the hero-worship?"

"I guess. I don't know anyone else who is so resolutely…his own self, which is an odd thing to say about an actor. He says he only ever plays himself, though, just in very strange situations."

"An actor? Anyone I'd have heard of?" Noi parked the trolley of food, glanced around Tyler's spacious apartment, and fixed on the portrait. She gave Madeleine an incredulous glance, looked back, then said: "Okay, I so should have realised that. You've the same colour eyes. Why didn't you say anything when we were talking about him before?"

"Habit? Once people know I'm Tyler's cousin, that's all they see me as. My parents moved to Sydney so I could get away from people trying to be my friend or picking fights with me because of Tyler."

"Did you actually paint this?" Noi asked, picking up a brush.

"Yeah." Madeleine tried to sound casual, to not show how closely she was watching Noi's face.

"Shit, why would you need to worry about being thought of as just someone's cousin?"

"I think I'd have to do something pretty spectacular to overcome Tyler," Madeleine said, and laughed quietly at herself for liking Noi more because of the way she was looking at the painting, impossible as it was not to be that way. "I've been sleeping on the couch so I could see the TV," she added. "But there's a spare room if you want it."

"Couch is good," Noi said, glancing at the large leather half-square. "I don't suppose your cousin runs to enormous vats of bubble bath? I want to soak, but after this morning I need bubbles to make it not like that woman."

"There might be, but I should clean the floor again. I broke the mirror."

Noi followed Madeleine to the bathroom, stared but did not comment on the amount of damage, and opted to re-purpose some of Tyler's enormous supply of shampoo. While the older girl was in the bath, Madeleine found herself fussing about, fixing pillows and blankets, hunting through Tyler's clothes for things Noi could wear, anxious to please. Not her usual behaviour, especially when she was itching to get at her sketch pad, but nothing was usual. She moved about restlessly, spent a few minutes on the phone to her parents, then let herself do what she'd wanted for hours.

So many people. Small, quick sketches at first. Noi holding a cup of tea with little finger raised, outwardly serene. Fisher tumbled on the stair. Nash, head thrown back, ready for action. Pan, all grin. Gav, blushing but sure of himself. The woman in the bath, naked breasts bobbing in crimson. Faliha, knocking on a door, eager and afraid. Mr Jabbour, his smile sad. Carl, with an Iron Man physique, but hesitant, looking down and away. Asha, short blonde hair sticking up, checking warily over her shoulder. Annie, shoulders sagging. Mr Lassiter, superbly neat, running an absent hand over the close-cropped black fuzz on his head. Sang-Kyu, giving a thumbs-up signal.

This first rush done, she came up for air and discovered Noi curled beneath the quilt on the other half of the couch, already asleep despite the early hour. Madeleine hadn't even heard her come into the room, and wondered why she hadn't said anything. Or perhaps Noi had, and been ignored, as Madeleine was too used to doing when interruptions came when she was drawing. Stupid and rude of her, and not how she wanted to treat Noi.

The girl had pulled her mass of curling hair up into a topknot, but a few black spirals escaped to spring across her face and, captured by the image, Madeleine shrugged off her annoyance and began a new sketch, a very detailed one. Then she moved on to more pictures of Noi, and of the four boys and their apple-green car, and tried to decide if they were as likeable as they'd seemed, or if she was just reacting to the situation. Madeleine was used to distrusting people and holding herself in reserve, and yet she'd met Noi and teamed up instantly, and did not want that to end. She didn't even dislike the idea of joining the four boys at their school. Still, she could surely accept the need for allies without forgetting to be wary about relying on others.

When hunger and weariness finally broke through she snacked and showered, then killed all but the hall light. With the TV off, the city skyline became more dominant, blazing away at however many kilowatts per hour, keeping the corpses lit. Once again she heard a weird electronic music, almost like an untuned radio.

Had her mother sounded strange? Even though her eyes were sandy-tired, Madeleine couldn't make herself stop analysing their brief discussion. Had there really been something there, or was she just looking for the next disaster? The day's activity should have left her feeling, if not cheerful, at least hopeful. There were people around her who were friendly, and she'd solved the problem of food for a solid chunk of time. Instead of reassured, she was on edge.

A noise in the dark. Madeleine shifted, unsure if she'd been sleeping, and tried to process what she'd heard. A close sound, stifled and secret. A minute or more passed before she realised it was Noi, crying.

Pinned between a desire to do something, and knowing that nothing she might do could make any real difference, Madeleine lay listening to the muted betrayal of pain. If Noi was anything like Madeleine, she wouldn't want anyone to know she was crying anyway, so it was better to stay still and quiet, not go blundering in.

The question of whether that was the right way to treat Noi occupied her until long after the last tiny sob had faded.