The Anomaly(67)

Then her eyes opened wide. Her breath was hitching—uneven. A bubbling sound leaked out of her throat. She was staring at me. Her mouth was moving but I didn’t know what she was trying to say.

A clot of dark blood gushed out of her mouth.

Her eyes grew wider.

Her arms tensed, hands knotting into claws. More blood belched up into her mouth, but without the force to break clear, leaving her gurgling as she tried to scream.

I hurriedly pulled her onto her side, into the crash position. I stuck my fingers in her mouth to try to clear the backlog, but it kept coming. It just kept coming.

She choked.

She died.





Chapter

40



I tried everything I knew, everything I’d seen on TV. I pumped her chest, rolled her over, pumped again. It made no difference.

What do you do when that happens in front of your eyes? I stayed there, kneeling beside Gemma, feeling like I was in some kind of bizarre and dreadful play. Her body was sprawled as if she’d been hit by a car, neck twisted by her final spasms.

I gently rolled her onto her back.

Her eyes were open, staring flatly into the darkness. Her chin and throat and chest were covered in blood and bits of tissue that she’d vomited up. The smell was terrible, a combination of a bloody, metallic tang along with something richer and much worse, presumably something torn inside.

I finally knew what it seemed I should do next. It felt absurd, but I did it anyway.

I laid my fingertips on her eyelids, feeling the warmth of them, and pulled them down. One moved more easily than the other, and for a moment she was caught in a grotesque wink. Then they were closed.

I got up. It seemed inconceivable that the thing at my feet could have housed the smart, determined person we’d known.

We stood around Gemma’s body in silence and then Pierre picked up the light and we all walked to the side of the room and sat there in a row, our backs against the wall.

My head hurt like it was going to burst. I assumed that after a while Ken would ask for a cigarette, but he did not. This was beyond even that source of comfort.

“What are we going to do?” Pierre asked eventually.

“About what?”

“Gemma. What are we going to tell people?”

“Nothing,” Molly said. She turned to look at him. “Don’t you get it? We’re not leaving this place either.”



It was later. Five minutes, ten, maybe more. Perhaps a lot more. I was aware of being hungry, of stomach muscles cramping in protest. It felt like a distant concern. Water was the issue. There were a few mouthfuls left, but when it was gone there’d be nothing to hold out as a carrot for getting through the next few hours. Plus I don’t think any of us wanted to return to Gemma’s body, not yet, and that’s where the backpacks were.

I felt desiccated, two-dimensional. I was aware of Ken sitting a yard away, eyes open, head nodding. Then my vision seemed to white out, and I couldn’t have told you whether I was awake or asleep, where I was, or even who.

Some time later, Ken lifted his head.

The movement was obscure in the dimness, but enough to focus me back. I blinked, eyelids gummy, and turned my head, assuming he was looking at me.

He wasn’t. He was staring into the room, frowning.

The other two were curled up asleep against the wall. The glow from the lamp—which should have been turned off, we were wasting power we couldn’t afford—reached ten feet into the room. Maybe twelve, though by that point it was a warming of the darkness rather than real illumination.

That darkness sparkled softly, its blackness a challenge the retinas couldn’t handle, seeming to billow like a curtain caught by a soft breeze.

Something moved in it.

I blinked, hard, assuming at first that it was illusion. And when I opened my eyes all was darkness once more.

But then there was another movement. There was a shape standing there. For a split second I thought it must be Feather.

But it wasn’t. It was an animal.

It took a faltering half step into the low light.

It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen. It was the size of a big cat, a puma, and moved like one, but its head was more canine in shape, mouth and eyes open wide. A very large tooth curved down from each side of its upper jaw.

Fully awake now, I glanced at Ken. “Are you see—”

“Yeah,” he whispered. “I am.”

We weren’t quiet enough. The animal’s head snapped toward us, as if sensing danger. Or prey.

Then it stepped back into the darkness, vanishing as if it’d been erased.



We were on our feet quickly and quietly.

“Are we doing this?” Ken said.

“Yeah.”

We moved cautiously toward where the animal had been. Or had seemed to be. Only moments after it had disappeared, it was hard to believe it had ever been there. I realized we didn’t have a light with us but I had my phone in my pocket. As we hurried toward the nearest passage I turned it on. We paused at the entrance and waited for the phone to boot.

“This is the one with the stinking room, right?”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know,” I realized. “Pierre scoped it out early yesterday. He was all about the room that smells. I’m not sure he even said what else was down here. He didn’t get to the end.”