instructions. Sometimes they were just for one person, some name we didn't know being ordered to go somewhere we'd never heard of. Sometimes he'd order boats out to sea, maybe to recruit more Infected. His presence was everywhere, in total control of the island.
That was why, after that first day, we stayed in the apartment. Between us we had enough food to last a week, and we'd managed to get a few bottles of clean water from a river on our way up. We were safe inside for the moment, out of sight of the cameras. But we knew that one day Ash's voice might be issuing instructions about us, and suddenly we wouldn't be invisible and there'd be nowhere to run to.
The others wanted to leave the island. 'Our boat's toast,' I told them on the second day in the apartment. 'There's no way we can salvage it, we'd need to steal another – one of the Infected's. How much do you want to bet that as soon as we get close to one of them they'll start paying us some attention?'
'I'd bet a few dollars,' Haru muttered sourly. He'd been twitchy and ill at ease ever since we'd arrived.
'Do you want to bet your life?' Kelis asked dryly and he scowled at her and shook his head.
'Can I just say that if Haru wants to risk his life, I have absolutely no objection,' Soren said. 'Why don't you go steal a boat on your own, and if it works we'll all join you?' For some reason, the big Swede had taken an intense dislike to the artist.
'We need to figure out what's going on here,' I said. 'Work out who's controlling them and how we can stop them.'
A lie, of course. I knew damn well who was controlling them. What I wanted to find out was why. That was why I'd chosen this apartment, right here in the centre of Havana on one of the city's small hills. It had a clear line of sight to the biggest building in the district: Castro's old headquarters. I was sure that was where Ash would be holed up. He'd replaced the old dictator's cult of personality with his own, torn down Castro's posters and put his own face all over the island. Why wouldn't he take the old man's home too?
So I made sure that we stayed in the apartment, out of sight of the cameras, and watched. I had to find out what Ash up to, how he was spreading a Cure that was no longer needed and why it had turned the Infected into whatever they were. Most of all, I needed to know what his long-term plan was. Because if I knew one thing, I knew that he had one. I'd silenced the Voice in my head, but Ash had embraced it, and the Voice had always had a plan. I'd just never listened to it long enough to figure out what it was.
So we waited, and we ate as little as possible, and we sweltered in the humid air. But day after day, no vehicle came or went from Castro's palace. I didn't see a single person walk through its gates. Nothing happened, nothing changed. The Infected carried on walking the streets, slowly rotting away, and I learnt absolutely nothing.
And after six days, we were short of water and even shorter of patience.
'This cannot carry on,' Ingo said on the sixth night. Our stock of candles was running low. Just one was flickering on the table now, casting everyone's faces in a dim, devilish light. Ingo's eyes were entirely shadowed, his face unreadable.
'The boy's right,' Soren said. 'If we wait here any longer we'll have to start eating each other.' His eyes strayed to Haru.
'We can't stay, we can't leave – what can we do?' Haru said.
'We need to understand,' I insisted. 'We can't risk going out there till we know what we're up against. I need to study one of the Infected, up close.'
Kelis frowned. 'But you've already done that. And you told me you found nothing.'
I felt a quick twinge of guilt, swiftly suppressed. What was the point of telling the truth about the Cure? It wouldn't get them off Cuba any quicker. 'I'm talking about a live specimen,' I told her.
Haru laughed. He stopped quickly enough when he saw I wasn't joking. 'Are you crazy? I thought the whole reason we'd been hiding out here was not do draw any unwanted attention.'
I stared him down. 'They wander off on their own plenty of the time. And the cameras aren't everywhere. There aren't any in the street behind this apartment – that was why we chose it. All we have to do is wait until one of them goes down there alone.'
'And then?' Soren said. He was sitting in the furthest corner of the small room, a congealed lump of darkness. But I could hear the click-click-click as he compulsively disassembled then reassembled his rifle, a nervous habit that had become almost constant in the last few days. 'What do we do then?'
I shrugged. 'Capture them.'
I wasn't winning the crowd over, I could tell. Even Kelis looked sceptical. 'How do you catch something alive when it doesn't feel any pain? That's the thing about them, isn't it – no fear and no pain?'
I nodded. 'There's something wrong with their nervous system – I could figure out that much from the corpse. But they've still got one, and anything with a nervous system can be anaesthetised.' I held out the ampoules of Suxamethonium I'd liberated from the chemist along with the anti-psychotics. 'This paralyses all voluntary muscles. Put enough of that into anyone, even one of the Infected, and they'll drop like a stone.'
'Yeah?' Soren said. 'And did you get a tranq gun along with the drug?'
'No,' I told him, smiling slightly. 'I thought this way it would be more of a challenge for you. Remember,' I added more seriously, 'the infection's blood-borne only – touch can't transmit it.'
He stared at me blankly for a long second, leaning forward into the candlelit so that it caught highlights in his blond hair. Then he leaned back and laughed. 'Why the hell not? It's not like I've got anything better to do. But I've never given an injection – you'll need to get up close and personal yourself if you want to put that stuff into them.' I noticed he didn't mention that the person giving the jab would also be the one most likely to get sprayed with any blood.
'Yes,' I said. 'Won't that be fun?'
Nothing on earth would persuade Haru to join in our little adventure. Besides, I'd seen him in a crisis already – I'd feel safer if he was nowhere near us. Ingo came though, as impassive as ever. He was almost like one of the Infected himself, all his emotions dialled down near zero.
Ingo took up position in a first floor apartment in the same block as ours. The window gave him a clear sight line up and down the alley and we left him with the nearest thing we had to a sniper rifle. Insurance policy. If something went wrong, he could take out the Infected before it did us any damage.
Yeah, right. Still, I felt better for knowing he was up there.
Kelis was crouching in the shadows at the far end of the alley, where it opened up into one of those big, nondescript squares that might once have been pretty before Communism had turned it into something proletarian and bland. Once the Infected was through she had to make sure it couldn't turn back. Her gun was holstered. Instead she had opted for a pool cue, something that could incapacitate without killing. She was holding it like she'd used one before, and not for potting the black.
Soren and I were halfway down the alley, standing in doorways to either side. If more than one Infected came through we'd let them pass and hope that they didn't see us, or that if they did they'd treat us with their usual indifference.
But if one came down alone, we were ready. Soren had his usual two guns in the waistband of his jeans. In his hands he was holding a fishing net. We'd had to chance a trip out to the harbour to get it, just me and Kelis, clinging to the shadows and shrinking back from the Infected whenever they passed us. A big risk, but probably worth it. It was our best chance of subduing one of them without doing permanent damage.
Then it was just me and the Suxamethonium. I looked at the needle in my hand, a fragile little spike, and thought that as plans went it lacked a certain finesse. I carried on looking at it, and sometimes at Soren, who was as patient as a rock, or at Kelis, fading into the distant shadows, as hour after hour passed with no sign of the Infected.
Could they know what we had planned? Was there any way they could have overheard us? I had the sudden, nasty thought that the apartment might be bugged and Ash could know everything that we said and did. My mind worried at the thought, teasing it apart, finding it more and more convincing as the morning brightened into noon. The sun arcing to blaze down directly over the alley.
When it finally happened, it happened fast. She was an old woman, hair entirely grey, body bent and frail, but she moved like greased lightning. She was past Kelis before we even noticed she was there. From the startled expression on Kelis' face I thought she might have fallen asleep leaning against the wall at the end of the alley, but with a soldier's quick reflexes she snapped out of it and took up her position blocking any escape.
No need. The old woman showed no intention of turning back. God knows what she was running to, or from.
