Harrison looked from her to the barrel of the Browning, and slowly lowered it; but not completely. His instincts were yelling at him again. There was something about her that didn’t hang right, but he couldn’t tell yet what it was.
‘I thought the place was empty,’ he said.
‘It is…apart from me.’ She smiled.
‘And you are?’
‘All alone,’ she said dreamily.
‘No. Your name. What’s your name?’
‘Casey,’ she said. ‘Casey Faraday.’
‘Ah.’ He remembered her from the dossier. She was one of the Waincraft group. Casey Faraday. Twenty- nine. Married. Degree in computing from Loughborough University. ‘What happened to the others?’ he said.
‘They left me here. They went to get help.’ She was speaking as if her voice was a recording being played back at slightly the wrong speed.
‘Help? From where? I’ve just flown over the island. There’s nothing here…apart from a few sheep, and I doubt they’d be much good for anything.’
She smiled at him. ‘Why are you here?’ she said.
‘I told you. I’m here to help. A rescue mission. The KDC sent me to airlift you off the island.’
She continued to smile but there was vacancy in her eyes. Nothing behind the smile; nothing much of anything at all. ‘What happened here, Casey?’ he said.
She turned and walked away from him. ‘Bad things,’ she said. ‘Very bad things.’
He started to follow her. ‘Care to tell me about it?’
Her pace quickened. She shook her head. She reached a room and ducked inside.
‘Wait!’ he called after her but the door slammed in his face. He stood there for a moment, indecisive. Then he grabbed the handle and pushed it open.
The room was empty.
He flicked on the light. He was in a bedroom. Clothes were strewn over the bed and hanging from the back of a chair. ‘Casey?’ he called. But there was no one there. He was standing with his back to the only door. The window was closed and there was nowhere for anybody to hide. Yet he’d seen her come in here.
He was about to turn and leave when he heard a small peal of laughter. ‘Damn it! This isn’t a game. Where are you?’
‘In the walls…in the air…I’m everywhere.’
He heard the voice, close to his ear, but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. ‘Okay. Please yourself. You play if you want to, but don’t waste my time.’
A small draught tickled the back of his neck. He spun round, raising the gun, waving it in front of him. There was nothing there behind him, but the door was now closed. ‘What the hell…’ He grabbed hold of the handle and yanked it down, at the same time pulling at the door, but it refused to budge. The laughter again, feminine, excitable.
The blow came from nowhere, from out of the air. Something smashed down on the back of his neck, sending him sprawling onto his face. Dust from the carpet stuck to his lips. He wiped them with the back of his hand and rolled over onto his back. The pain in his neck was excruciating, sending hot spikes of agony up into his skull. He groaned and stared up at the ceiling.
‘You shouldn’t have come here.’
A male voice this time, but whether he’d actually heard it or whether it sounded only in his head he couldn’t tell. He used the bed to pull himself into a sitting position and looked about the room once more. It was still empty, but there was something different. The air seemed charged, pregnant with menace. The blow to the back of his neck had made him drop the gun. It lay on the carpet a yard away. He reached for it but it spun away from him as if it had been kicked out of his reach. And then it rose into the air, spinning slowly end over end. Finally it stopped, the barrel pointing at the bridge of his nose, and gradually the trigger was pulled back. He could see it move, as if an invisible finger was depressing it.
He threw himself backwards a split-second before the gun fired. His head cracked against the floor but the bullet missed him and punched a hole in the small pine cupboard by the side of the bed. He kicked out and caught the gun with the toe of his boot, sending it flying through the air. It hit the wall and clattered to the floor.
Harrison sprang to his feet, ignoring the pain in his head, and ran to the door. He yanked at it again and this time it opened, the sudden release making him stagger backwards. He regained his balance and ran from the room and along the landing to the stairs. There was only one thought in his head now. He had to get back to the helicopter and get the hell off this island. Casey Faraday and anyone else in this stinking place could look out for themselves.
‘Wait!’
He was halfway down the stairs. He stopped and turned to look back at the landing. Casey Faraday was standing at the top of the stairs. She was naked.
‘What is this?’ Harrison said, furious now. In some way her nakedness only fuelled his anger. ‘Cover yourself up,’ he said, his strict Baptist upbringing resurfacing. ‘Now!’
Casey started to descend the stairs but, although he could see her drawing closer, he could not see her legs moving. It was as if she was gliding down towards him. And she seemed to be bathed in a shimmering light that was throwing her in and out of focus.
He rubbed at his eyes, trying to see her clearly, but even as he watched her she was starting to change.
Her breasts were sinking back into her chest, the small bush of pubic hair dissolving. The features of her face were smoothing out, becoming bland, anodyne, and the hair was starting to fall from her scalp, leaving a shiny bald dome in its place. Her eyes had rolled back into her head until only the whites were showing, but the gaze was fixed upon him.
He shuffled backwards, finding the next stair, stepping down. He wanted to turn away from her, wanted to run, but the white orbs in the expressionless face held him, and sapped his will.
It was no longer Casey Faraday descending the stairs towards him, but a featureless, sexless creature, white, impossibly thin. Even the ears had disappeared, leaving only smooth skin behind.
He misjudged his next step. His foot caught the edge of the riser and twisted painfully. He cried out and started to fall, but long, thin arms embraced him and held him. The mouth in the blank face was lipless and white, but it opened in a red shriek and buried itself in his neck. Skin and muscle tore, blood poured out of his severed artery and splashed down the leather of his jacket.
CHAPTER TEN
Jane Talbot squinted slightly in the bright lights of the office. Cold, hard and brittle; those were the words she used to describe the chrome and white decor and the antiseptic, almost futuristic look of the desk, the chairs and other office furniture. It was also the epithet she used to describe her boss, Simon Crozier. She sat on a white leather and chrome chair, designed for elegance rather than comfort, facing Crozier across a glass-topped desk. The desk was another design conceit — smoked glass supported by a chrome-plated tubular steel frame, and Crozier kept the desk clutter to a minimum. There were two white telephones, a small laptop computer and a black leather file, positioned at right angles to the edge of the desk, and nothing more. The glass was polished to within an inch of its life and nothing, not even a thumbprint or a flake of dandruff marred its pristine surface.
How different, she thought, to the desk in her office at home with its clunky, antediluvian computer that hissed and wheezed and made hard work of all but the most simple word processing tasks; the piles of unkempt, dog-eared paperwork that never seemed to reduce in size no matter how many hours she put in trying to clear them; the cracked plastic telephone with the answer phone that refused to record messages; and Amy’s headless
