Blood Water

CHAPTER 29

Waites knew it was foolish, but he also knew that if he didn’t bend down and look under the bed he wouldn’t know exactly where the dog was and it might escape. Nevertheless, he did it as carefully as he could. The bedcovers only hung down a couple of centimetres below the mattress, so very little of what was beneath the bed was obscured. But even with the light on, the space there was dark – the animal might charge out towards him with its mouth open. He dropped onto all fours, ready to jump up again, and lowered his head.

All he could see was darkness. He would need a torch… Just then he heard the sound again, the sniff, only this time it seemed to come from somewhere behind him. Surely he would have heard the animal move. He stood there, frozen. There was another sound, but not a sniff this time: a low, unfriendly growl just behind his left foot.

Waites turned, and at that instant teeth buried themselves in his Achilles tendon, tearing through skin and flesh. He screamed and reached down towards his foot, only to trip over the dog, which remained clamped to him. He fell and grabbed vainly at the bed for support, landing in an awkward heap on the floor. He gritted his teeth against the pain in his foot as the dog bit down harder. Then he lifted his left leg before slamming the animal hard against the wooden board at the foot of the bed. He heard something break inside it, but its grip loosened only momentarily and its growl grew more menacing. Waites cried out again and took hold of the animal’s jaws in an attempt to prise them open – he was terrified that his tendon would snap with the incredible force of the bite – but the dog’s jaws wouldn’t budge. He kicked the animal against the underside of the bed board, hammering its head until it bled. Finally it let go and limped off, bleeding, out of the room and down the corridor.

Waites had to get up and follow it before it hid somewhere else. As soon as he put weight on his left foot, pain flared all the way up his leg. The tendon was very badly damaged and he would need to get to hospital soon before more permanent harm was done. He looked down at the bird cage and stand, and had an idea: the stand made a pretty good walking stick. He limped out of the room just as James came running down the corridor to meet him.

Sean stared at the door for a long time after his brother had gone, trying to imagine what was happening. He didn’t want to be sitting there, he wanted to be strong; he wanted to be upstairs with Waites and his brother. They would be angry if he left the room, would insist he return, but he would feel better if he went to help them. After all, three would have more chance of finding that thing than two. But at the same time, the odd pain in his head left over from the creature’s invasion was holding him back, and that in turn could hold the others back if he went to help them.

But something else was happening right now. The metallic taste had gone, yet something just as distasteful was happening. Images were flicking through his brain like a barrage of missiles, increasing the pain. Most meant nothing to him, making him wonder if it was just his mind reeling from the invasion, but some were familiar. They were like snippets of film. In one he was underwater, looking up at a huge face that looked like Dr Morrow’s. The doctor was smiling and saying something that Sean couldn’t make out, then reaching down towards him with a huge metal instrument. He was like a giant though – or else Sean was tiny. But the vision was vivid. Sean’s hallucinations the day after the race had been pretty real, but these were something new; these were caused by something quite different.

He got up and went over to the window. The rain hadn’t finished with them yet, and the wind was just starting up. Sean couldn’t imagine what conditions on the roads must be like now, and how far the floods extended. It would be hell down in the town now, but he would much rather have been a part of that hell than the one he was living here. This was a harder one to explain – a harder one to fix too. He might well not survive this one. If the sickness that had destroyed Dr Morrow, Mr Phoenix and Mr Titus was already in him, working its way around his system, gradually dissolving his vital organs, then he was already dead. Why not go upstairs and fight with the others? Why not take that thing on by himself? If he was already dead, at least he could go down fighting, rather than wasting away in this room on his own.

But that was the problem. He didn’t know. He didn’t know if he was dying or not, and that confused things. Just then another image came into his mind, and this one really made him pay attention.