New Title 1 (33 page)

“Oh, it’s you.” Belinda glared down at Chase. “What are you doing hiding in my garden?”

“Oh, I ... I came for those cakes.” Chase didn’t know what to say and she didn’t want to antagonise Belinda, not when she had
secateurs
in her hand.

“Cakes?”

“Yes, you invited me for tea and cakes.”

Belinda frowned. “I don’t remember that.”

“Well, if it’s inconvenient ...”

“No, no, if I invited you for tea and cakes, then tea and cakes you’ll have. But you won’t find them down the bottom of my garden, you silly girl.”

Shaking her head at her misfortune, Chase followed Belinda up the garden toward the house. She didn’t want to refuse in case Belinda
changed.

“Wipe your feet before you come in,” Belinda said, not heeding her own advice and leaving a muddy trail across the kitchen floor.

Chase wiped her feet on a mat and tried to avoid Belinda’s muddy route when she entered. The large kitchen felt warm and inviting. Saucepans hanging from hooks in the low-beamed ceiling knocked gently together as a breeze blew through the open door. The dried herbs hanging among the pans emitted a pleasant aroma.

“Well, sit down, sit down,” Belinda said, putting the
secateurs
and the deadheaded flowers on the table in the middle of the room.

Chase sat as Belinda went to the sink and filled a kettle with water.

As the wind picked up, a window banged somewhere in the house. Chase bit her lip as she watched Belinda take a large tin of cakes out of a cupboard, arranging them on a plate before putting them on the table.

“Help yourself.” Belinda put a small plate on the table and stared down at Chase with her arms folded across her chest.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll wait for my tea.” Chase said, trying to buy herself a bit of time. No way was she going to eat anything this mad woman had made, especially not when she knew the ingredients were genetically modified.

Belinda shrugged and turned to the kettle, which had come to the boil and switched itself off. While Belinda wasn’t looking, Chase took two of the cakes and quickly broke some crumbs onto the plate before dropping the cakes in her bag.

When Belinda turned back with two cups of tea, Chase licked her lips and ran the back of her hand across her mouth. “Very nice.”

“I thought you were going to wait for your tea?”

“They looked too nice to wait.” Chase smiled, hoping that Belinda believed her.

Belinda put the drinks on the table and fetched a bowl of sugar. Somewhere in the house, the window banged again.

“You’d better shut that window if you don’t want it to break.” Chase picked up her drink, letting it warm her hands.

Belinda sat down.

“The wind’s picking up,” Chase said.

Taking a sip of her tea, Belinda eyed Chase from above the rim of the cup.

“If the window breaks, it could be expensive.”

Begrudgingly, Belinda nodded her head and stood up. When she left the room, Chase quickly poured her drink down the sink and sat back down.

She heard the window slam shut, and a moment later, Belinda appeared at the door. She looked at the floor, and her face slowly flushed with colour.

“Mud!” Belinda frowned. “Where’s all that mud come from?”

“It was on your boots.”

As if she hadn’t realised Chase was there, Belinda looked up from the mess on the floor and glared at her. “You’ve walked mud into my house. Do I walk mud into your house? No respect. That’s the trouble today ...”

“No, it wasn’t me, you did it. Look at your boots!”

“Muddy bugger. Who are you anyway? And what are you doing in my kitchen?”

Chase stood up and pushed the chair back. The wooden legs squeaked across the tiled floor.

Belinda stepped into the kitchen and picked up the
secateurs
. “Muddy bitch. Mess my floor. I’ll show you.” She lunged across the table, snipping the blades inches from Chase’s nose.

Chase stumbled back. “I didn’t do anything,” she protested.

“Didn’t do anything.
Didn’t do anything
. Look at my floor. Filthy. Muddy mud.”

“You walked it into the kitchen, look.” Chase lifted her foot up to show that her boot was clean. “There’s no mud on my boot, see.”

“That’s because it’s all over my bloody floor. Muddy bugger. I’ll show you.” She charged around the table, knocking the deadheaded flowers to the ground.

Terrified, Chase fled for the door. She could hear Belinda running behind her, her footfalls loud on the tiles.

“Muddy bitch. I’ll show you.”

Heavy rain lashed down outside, distorting the view, as though it was all an illusion. Chase ran across the patio with Belinda screaming at her heel. Across the garden and she was at the gate leading to the lane. The latch felt stiff, but it moved and Chase flung the gate open and ran out of the garden, slamming the gate shut behind her to try and slow Belinda up. Although soaked, the rain was the least of her worries as she heard the gate bang open behind her.

“
I’ll teach you
,” Belinda screeched. “Breaking into my house and muddying the floor.”

As she ran down the lane, Chase forgot all about keeping out of sight. Her legs ached, but she couldn’t stop. After a moment, she recognised she was on the road where Mandy lived. Despite her age, Belinda kept pace, screaming obscenities as Chase ran up Mandy’s drive.

Just before she reached the house, the front door swung open and Mandy appeared. Adam stepped out behind her.

“Chase, what—” Adam began.

“It’s Belinda ...” Chase gasped. “She’s gone mad. She wants to kill me, she—”

Before Chase had time to finish her sentence, Belinda appeared in the drive, snipping the
secateurs
like a crab’s pincers. She ran up the drive, her bedraggled hair plastered to her face by the rain. Her floral print dress looked soaked, sticking to her like a second skin but it was her face that alarmed Chase. A mad glint twinkled in her eyes and tendons stuck out on her neck like taut steel wires. For a brief moment it looked as though her features changed, a subtle realignment of the flesh that made her look different, made her look sinister.

“The change,” Mandy said, her voice shaking.

A gunshot punctured the air and from the corner of her eye, Chase saw a flash of light. Belinda’s features contorted from madness to shock as the bullet entered her chest. She stopped running and frowned, lifting away her sodden dress and slipping her finger through the bullet hole in the material as though wondering what it was.

Mandy wailed.

 
“
My dress
,” Belinda screeched. “My
bloody
dress.” The mad glint returned to her eyes and she rapidly opened and closed the
secateurs
,
snip, snip, snip
, metal on metal, like huge incisors gnashing together.

Then she lunged at Chase.

Another shot rang out, hitting Belinda in the shoulder and spinning her round like a dervish. The exit hole was larger than the entry hole and Chase could see glistening shards of bone. Belinda turned back to face the house and raised her head with protracted slowness, her teeth bared in a feral snarl until a bullet entered her skull. There was no watermelon-like explosion as Chase might have expected, just a neat little hole in her cheek. She fell to the floor, still snipping the
secateurs
as her body twitched.

A deafening ringing echoed in Chase’s ears. She turned, shocked to see Adam with a pistol in his hand. Hardly able to hear herself speak, she said, “I don’t understand.”

“Sorry, Chase.” Adam shrugged apologetically.

Chase took a step back. ”You’re working with them.”

Adam held his hands up. “Calm down. Come inside out of the rain. Let’s talk this through.”

Mandy lay slumped in the doorway, her head in her hands.

Chase shook her head. “Do you think I’m stupid? Aren’t doctors supposed to
save
lives, not take them?”

Adam pursed his lips. “I did it to save you.”

“Bollocks.”

“Chase, you’ve got to believe me.”

Shaking her head, Chase backed further away.

“Look, you’re right. I do know what’s going on, but it’s not what you think. This experiment is for the benefit of mankind. Imagine it. A world without disease. How could I refuse to be a part of that after Nigel explained it to me?”

“What about ethics. What about the villagers you’ve been experimenting on. What choice did they have?”

“You’re right. We went about it the wrong way. It wasn’t meant to be like this.” He shook his head. “Things have been going wrong. You’ve got to believe me, Chase. I didn’t know this would happen, but we’ll sort it out, given time.”

“And what about Belinda? What about all the others who’ve died?”

“I know what you’re thinking, believe me, I regret it.”

“Do you really! How much are they paying you?”

Adam vehemently shook his head. “This isn’t about money.”

“It’s
always
about money.”

“Not for me.”

“And what makes you so special?”

“Look, come into the house and I’ll explain everything. You’ve got to trust me.”

“I haven’t got much choice when you’ve got a gun pointed at me.”

Adam lowered the gun and put it in his bag. “There, I’ve put it away. Please, you’ve got to listen to me. Please.”

Chase wiped rainwater from her face. Her head was spinning. She didn’t know what to do.

Suddenly a hand grabbed her leg. Startled, she looked down to see Belinda staring up at her with a contemptuous scowl. Her bloody fingers tightened their grip and Chase tried to shake her off, but Belinda had too tight a hold.

“
Muddy mud,
” Belinda spluttered through blood soaked lips, a bubble of blood bursting from her mouth and splattering her chin. Chase kicked her in the chest and yanked herself free.

On the driveway, Belinda coughed once and blood dribbled from her mouth as she exhaled her final breath.

“Chase, are you okay?” Adam stepped toward her looking concerned.

“What do you think,” she snarled.

“Look, come into the house out of the rain.”

Feeling she had no other choice, Chase walked into the house and helped Mandy to her feet. Adam shut the door behind them.

“We can’t leave Belinda lying out there like that.”

“That’s the least of your worries,” Adam said, locking the door.

CHAPTER 24

After exiting the building, Ratty and
Izzy
had slipped back into the fog. With no visible points of reference, they could be going round in circles. Shapes would appear, vague and indistinct before the fog devoured them. An alarm had started ringing in the distance, muffled and tuneless as though it was being strangled. Ratty surmised that their escape had been discovered.