Outbreak (5 page)

Half-zombie

The colour drained from Sophie's face. ‘Maybe they want to turn him into a zombie too.'

The thought of Michael being turned into a zombie made me feel sick. He would be even more annoying! ‘We can't let that happen!'

‘Then we have to think. Where would they take—'

There was a noise outside Sophie's door. Then the handle turned and a voice said, ‘Soph? Is that you?'

Mr Knight's head appeared around the door. ‘Shouldn't you be at school?'

‘I forgot my lunch,' said Sophie quickly.

‘No you didn't,' said Mr Knight. ‘I saw you put it in your bag.'

A look of panic crossed Sophie's face. ‘It's Michael,' she blurted out. ‘He's disappeared.'

Mr Knight frowned. ‘What do you mean?'

‘We don't know for sure,' I said quickly, wishing Sophie hadn't told him. ‘But he's not in class and I know he went to school this morning.'

Mr Knight smiled. ‘You can both relax because Michael is here with me. He's out in the bus right now.'

My mouth dropped open.

‘I rang the headmaster this morning,' Mr Knight went on, ‘and asked if one of the students was available for an interview. It's for my latest book. Didn't I tell you it was set at the school?'

I nodded. I was so surprised I couldn't speak.

‘I'll take you guys to the bus and you can join us. The more kids I interview, the better.' Mr Knight disappeared into the hallway.

When he was gone, Sophie turned to me. ‘So Michael's not missing after all!'

I couldn't believe it either. How did we get it so wrong?

Still surprised, we stumbled out to the front yard. By the time we caught up with Mr Knight, he was walking up the rickety steps of the bus. Sophie and I exchanged an excited glance: usually, the old bus was out of bounds, although I'd been inside it once before. On that occasion, it hadn't been with Mr Knight's permission. In fact, I'd broken in through the back window.

The place looked just the same: there was a battered desk at one end, several filing cabinets, and weird posters on the walls. Mr Knight was a writer, so I guessed that explained why he was so strange.

‘Over here,' he said, leading us to the back of the bus. He bent down and swept
back a threadbare mat. Underneath it, set into the floor of the bus, was a metal handle. Mr Knight flicked it up, then poked his fingers through. He heaved at it and a section of the floor lifted out.

Sophie gasped as a rectangular hole opened up in front of us.

Mr Knight swung himself around and climbed down onto a ladder built into one side of the hole. ‘C'mon, Michael's down here,' he said, just before his head vanished.

‘I never knew this was here!' said Sophie excitedly. She crouched down and stuck one leg into the hole. When she'd found her footing on the ladder, she disappeared after her father.

I wished I could switch on my infrared vision. But even though Sophie knew I was a zombie, there was no way I could risk letting Mr Knight see my glowing zombie eyes.

I knelt beside the hole and swung one leg over the edge, then the other, and began climbing down the ladder.

Inside the hole, it was very dark. The ladder seemed to be bolted to a wall. There were twelve rungs.

‘Almost there, Ben.' Mr Knight's voice came out of the darkness behind me. Then he suddenly cried, ‘
Now!
'

Hands grabbed me from both sides. I was pushed backwards. Something caught my heel and I fell, landing heavily on my back.

‘AAAAGGHHH!'What was happening?

A rush of adrenaline flooded through my limbs causing my infrared vision to flicker on: I saw a barred door slamming shut in my face. I leapt up and grabbed the bars, rattling them in panic.

It's OK. It's OK, everyone,' said Mr Knight.

With my infrared activated, everything had turned a murky grey. It took my eyes
a few seconds to adjust before I could make sense of what I saw.

I was in a cage that stood at one end of a small room. Three figures were outside the bars; their warm bodies glowed bright orange in my infrared vision.

‘I'm going to switch the light on now,' said Mr Knight. His glowing form reached up to a switch on the ceiling.

I shut my eyes as the room was flooded with light.

My infrared slid away and was instantly replaced by my normal vision.

I opened my eyes and blinked.

Mr Knight was aiming what looked like a gun at me. Beside him were Sophie and Mrs Knight.

‘What's going on?' I tried to sound calmer than I felt.

‘Mum? Dad??' Sophie glanced from one of her parents to the other.

‘It's OK,' said Mr Knight again. He gave a heavy sigh and slid the weapon into his apron pocket. ‘Well, I suppose it's not OK, really.'

Mrs Knight looked over at him, then at me. ‘We
know
, Ben. We know your secret.'

‘What secret? Let me out!' I clutched the bars and tried to push the door open.

‘There's no way you can escape. The cage is designed to make escape impossible. Especially for your . . . your . . .
kind.
' She spat out the word as though she hated the feel of it on her tongue.

Sophie had gone very pale. ‘Why is Ben in a cage? You can't lock people up! That's kidnapping! And what
is
this place?' Panic was rising in her voice.

‘It's a long story,' sighed Mrs Knight. ‘Perhaps you should sit down so we can explain.' She gestured to the single chair that stood nearby.

Sophie perched on the edge of the seat. ‘Tell me now,' she said coldly, glaring at her parents. ‘Why is Ben in a cage? And where's Michael?'

‘Michael isn't here. I lied,' said Mr Knight flatly.

‘And Ben isn't who you think he is,' added Mrs Knight. I now noticed that instead of her normal clothes, she was wearing a pair of navy overalls.

‘He's a zombie,' interrupted Sophie. ‘I already know.'

Mr and Mrs Knight exchanged a glance.

‘Well, yes,' said Mrs Knight. ‘He's been infected. How or when it happened, we don't know.'

‘We wondered if you might already know his secret,' sighed Mr Knight. ‘But we couldn't understand why you would keep hanging around him if you did.'

‘Because he's my friend. He's . . . he's not
dangerous
!' said Sophie, staring at her parents angrily.

‘I'm only a
half
zombie,' I added. It was pointless to try to hide it now.

But the Knights ignored me.

‘This is going to come as a shock and it's not the way we wanted to tell you, but
everything you think you know about the world is wrong,' said Mrs Knight gently. ‘Zombies are real. There is a battle, a war, between them and us. And we are on the front-line.'

‘What?' Sophie looked from her mother to her father and back again. ‘Is this a joke? Dad's a writer. And you . . . you work at a nursing home!'

‘I'm afraid not.' Mrs Knight shook her head with a brief, sad smile.

Mr Knight moved closer and crouched down beside Sophie. ‘A couple of years ago, when we moved to Seabrook, we told you we wanted to live here because I was writing a book about the school.'

Sophie nodded miserably.

‘That wasn't true,' continued Mr Knight. ‘We moved to Seabrook because we believed there was going to be an outbreak here.'

‘An outbreak?'

Mr Knight nodded. ‘Pets were disappearing. Dogs mostly, which is always the first sign a horde is starting to form somewhere in the area.'

I remembered the dogs that lived in the tunnels under the school. I'd guessed they'd been changed into zombies by the person who had transformed me.

Mrs Knight continued. ‘When we first suspected that Ben was . . . infected, we thought about leaving. We knew you were friends and we didn't want you associating with him. But then we realised that he must know other members of the horde, which might give us the chance to catch a Lurker.'

‘A Lurker?'

‘One of the oldest, smartest kinds of zombie. They behave exactly like normal human beings so it's almost impossible to
catch them. In our experience, every outbreak begins with a Lurker. We thought if we watched Ben, he might lead us to it. We've never caught a Lurker before.'

‘But we knew the risks were high. That's why I always wear bite-resistant body armour,' added Mr Knight.

‘You do?' Sophie stared at her father in amazement.

‘Armoured fibre over a titanium core,' he explained, picking up the hem of his apron. Now that I looked more closely, I could see the apron seemed stiffer than normal fabric. ‘And of course, we upgraded the motion detectors in the house.'

‘You helped Dad do it this morning,' added Mrs Knight
to Sophie. ‘Although we told you they were smoke alarms.'

‘They're connected to a control panel inside the bus, which is how I knew you were here,' Mr Knight said.

‘We wanted to keep a close eye on him.' Mrs Knight nodded at me. ‘Just in case his zombie instincts got the better of him. The first sign is something like this — an attack on someone he knows. Thank goodness it wasn't you.'

‘But . . . who has he attacked?' asked Sophie in confusion.

‘Isn't it obvious?' Mr Knight glanced across at me. ‘That's why his brother is missing. Ben has attacked Michael.'