10. The Hospital

The room plunged into darkness as the creature lunged forward, hurtling into the lightbulb and sending it flying across the room, where it smashed against the wall. The glass fell over Aubrey like sharp little snowflakes, grazing her face with tiny microcuts. Ravi turned and looked at the creature, but before Aubrey could try to pull herself away, he grabbed her legs again and pulled her back. He got one leg over her torso and pinned her down with one hand on her neck, his knees pressing down on her shoulders. He flailed his other arm around in an attempt to find something on the floor. Why wasn’t he scared? The creature took a swipe forward towards him but slipped into the slick blood and smacked hard into the floor. Ravi held up what he had been searching for. It was the syringe filled with Aubrey’s blood. Her mind spun quickly through the ideas before she realised what he was going to do with it. The creature twisted its body, writhing around on the floor, trying to get up, but before it could, Ravi quickly plunged the syringe into its arm.

For a moment the creature stopped, frozen in place. Its head contorted sideways, milky eyes looking at the syringe as though it was trying to understand what had happened. It let out a small, sharp snarl and then recoiled backwards into the corner. Aubrey’s eyes were transfixed on its taut body as it began to thrash around at itself, reacting to the dosage of her blood. Surely it couldn’t be that simple? Human blood? These things ate humans, and though perhaps Ravi was the first to inject blood into their veins, the creatures were covered in open, rotting wounds. They must get covered in blood all the time. Why had hers been different? She didn’t have time to contemplate, as Ravi turned his attention back to her, bearing down all his weight onto her shoulders. He wrapped both hands around her neck, letting out a maniacal laugh.

‘You ruined my experiment,’ he said, blood dripping from his eye socket onto her face. ‘You stabbed my EYE out!’

His voice was seething with rage, and Aubrey suddenly felt more sorry for the creature in the corner than she did for Ravi. It didn’t have a choice in acting how it did – it was infected with a parasite. Ravi didn’t have that excuse. 

‘You INFECTED me!’ she tried to shout, but it came out more like a gargled hiccup. 

‘Well,’ he continued, sounding smarmier than before. ‘At least I can still control the conditions of your transformation. Lottie?’

There was no reply. In the midst of the struggle, it seemed Lottie had been able to escape out of the room unnoticed. The door was slightly ajar. If Aubrey’s legs were working, she would have used this moment to knee Ravi where it hurt - right in the balls - and then run from the room and lock him inside it. But her legs were like a foreign object, like the parasite making its way through her body, something that weighed her down, something that was going to kill her, sooner or later.

‘Lottie?’ Ravi hissed, his breath coming in ragged, angry bursts. He was met with silence, save for the wet squelching from the corner as the creature tore at its own flesh. He squeezed her neck tighter, pinning her against the floor.

‘Looks… like… you lost your… nurse,’ Aubrey spluttered, trying to twist her head to get out of his grip.

‘She won’t have gone. No, she knows what will happen if she runs away now,’ Ravi snarled, sounding more like a creature than a human. 

The Crawler started coughing. The coughs were thick, like something was stuck in its throat. The room was too dark to see properly, but dark shapes twitched and danced just beyond her sight, so she could tell it was moving again, more frantic than before.

‘Looks… like… your experiment didn’t... work,’ she gasped, running out of air. 

Ravi went still, and silent, and then loosened his grip.

‘Father?’ he said, softer than she’d ever heard him speak. His voice cracked, like that of a scared child. ‘Daddy?’

Aubrey seized her chance, driving her arms upwards and grabbing Ravi’s face. She pushed her thumb into the gooey socket of his eye, wriggling it around in the sclera. It felt like a thick, viscous jelly. He screamed in agony, trying to hit out at her again but missing and striking the floor instead. She might not be able to fight him off, but she could certainly try her best to hurt him in revenge for what he had done to her.

The creature roared and reared up onto its legs, driven into a frenzy by Ravi’s scream. It leapt into the air like a wild hare and barreled straight into Ravi, knocking him off of Aubrey and onto the bloody linoleum. She quickly dragged herself up onto her elbows and used her hands to propel herself backwards towards the door, watching as Ravi tried to kick the creature off of him.

‘Daddy!’ he was screaming, thwacking it with all his strength. It seemed weaker, yet angrier, than before the injection of her blood. 

Suddenly, a shaft of light illuminated the room. Aubrey looked upwards and saw Lottie standing in the doorway, a towering shadow against the yellow of the bulbs in the corridor. She was holding a large kitchen knife in her hands, which were trembling badly.

Ravi’s pleas for help and the creature’s gargling growls were mingling into one horrifying noise. Lottie surged forward with the knife and swiped it at the Invader, slicing at its skin. It stretched outwards to her, using Ravi’s body as a springboard to jump from. Lottie stabbed upwards and pierced the creature’s belly, a mixture of rotten guts and blood spraying over her. It landed next to Aubrey, who was feeling around on the floor for any sort of weapon, anything she could fight it with, but it looked at her, made a weird noise that sounded like a sniff, and then leapt over her, dashing out of the door.

‘No!’ Lottie screamed, running after it. ‘We can’t let it get out! The other kids!’

Aubrey pulled herself forward with as much strength as she could muster. Ravi was sitting up, holding one hand over his eye socket and grabbing towards her weakly with the other. She was right by the door, and just about managed to pull herself out enough to see Lottie wielding the knife towards the creature. It was headed straight for the doors that would lead it to the wing where the rest of the children were sleeping.

Suddenly, someone burst through the doors and smacked the creature back with something red. It was Neus, holding a fire extinguisher in her skinny arms, shouting at Lottie to get back. 

‘We have to kill it, or get it outside!’ Lottie yelled in return.

Behind Aubrey, Ravi let out a cry. ‘No! That’s my father!’

The creature was now snarling around in a circle, in between Lottie and Neus. Aubrey tried to crawl forward again. Her wheelchair was sitting idling in the middle of the corridor, like it had been waiting for her to return. She wouldn’t be able to get into it herself, but maybe with enough strength she could push it into the creature if it came near her again. Looking right down the long corridor, she saw a set of fire doors at the end, barricaded by a few heavy desks.

‘Where does that door lead?’ she called out to the two girls. ‘Does the door go outside?’

‘Yes!’ Lottie shrieked, still holding the knife out, both hands clutched around the silver handle. 

‘Lottie, you’ve got to run and open those doors! Neus, spray the creature with the fire extinguisher! Keep it against the wall for as long as you can!’Aubrey hoped the plan would work. If she couldn’t physically fight, then the least she could do was shout directions. Neus sprayed the extinguisher, and a blast of thick, white foam sent the creature against the wall with a splat.

Every inch of her body hurt now, and her vision was swimming. It looked like there were four Lotties running down the corridor towards her. Was this how it started? She watched as Lottie skidded to a halt by the door and started tearing the desks away from it as fast as possible. Maybe she too needed to get outside. What if she was a danger now? The last thing she wanted was to hurt anyone. Well, anyone else besides Ravi. There were still bits of his jellied eyeball stuck under her nails. 

A blast of cold air barrelled down the corridor. Lottie had yanked the fire doors open, and luckily outside seemed to be devoid of any Crawlers for now. 

‘Neus, run!’ Aubrey yelled, hoping the creature would follow her.

Neus didn’t hesitate. She peeled away from the creature, boots skidding on the foam-slick floor. As Neus approached Aubrey, Aubrey grabbed hold of her legs and pulled her down beside her, hoping the creature, with its senses blinded by the foam, would ignore her as it had earlier. The creature crashed around, banging into the walls and scrabbling against the slippery floor until it found its footing and started charging towards them. Aubrey pulled Neus into a hug, and both girls lay there, not daring to breathe. Aubrey didn’t close her eyes; she didn’t scream; she wasn’t scared. She watched it with narrowed eyes, daring it to come and get her.

Just a few feet away from them, the creature suddenly coiled back. Its skinny hind legs bunched together, claws tearing into the floor before it launched itself upward. For a second, the monster seemed to hang in midair directly above them. Aubrey stared up at its belly, seeing the gaping wound Lottie had caused with the knife, studying the way its entrails bulged, the way the skin almost ripped itself as it moved over the bones. It landed on the other side of them and made a beeline towards Lottie. Lottie sliced at it again with the knife, but it kept going for her, and so she thrust it as hard as she could into the creature's neck, kicked it in the stomach with her shoe and used her leg to push it out of the doors. She slammed them shut quickly behind it.

An eerie silence filled the hallway. Neus rolled out from under Aubrey’s arm and hauled herself up. Lottie, covered head to toe in the creature's vile secretions, ran back over and hoisted Aubrey up from her underarms. Together, Lottie and Neus managed to haul Aubrey back into her wheelchair. It was comforting to finally be back in the chair, a thought Aubrey found ironically funny. She looked up at the two girls, seeing four, five, six of them. 

‘What happened to her?’ Neus asked as Lottie crouched down, checking Aubrey’s pulse and brushing her hair out of her face. 

‘Ravi… Ravi injected her with this-’ Lottie stumbled over her words, unsure of what to say.

‘He infected me!’ Aubrey rasped, clutching at her ruined throat. ‘It’s a parasite that makes the adults turn into crawlers, and he injected it into me!” She looked desperately up at both girls. ‘I’m going to turn into one of those things!’

Neus stared back, her face contorted in horror. ‘Shit.’

‘Ravi doesn’t know what’s going to happen, not for sure’, Lottie said. Her voice was soft and sad. ‘But, Neus – you’ve seen outside. More than anyone. Have you ever seen a kid crawler?’

Neus shook her head. ‘It’s only adults.’

‘Maybe it won't work, maybe it only works on fully developed brains. He’s never gotten this far with a child subject - sorry, Aubrey - all the others were adults, back at the start of the invasion.’

‘What about Jack?’ Aubrey asked. ‘Your brother?’

Lottie shook her head. ‘That’s… different. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me!’ Aubrey crossed her arms, though they had begun to feel almost as heavy and dead as her legs.

‘It isn’t what you think, the way Ravi uses Jack as a threat; it has nothing to do with these things. He just uses it to keep doing his work, or he won’t let me see him. Turned him into a story to scare the other kids.’ Lottie sniffed. ‘He doesn’t know if you’re going to change.’

It wasn’t a comforting thought. She still had the parasite inside her, and even if she didn’t turn into a crawler, she might still have a reaction. She might die of a horrible illness. The parasite might burst out of her chest. Whatever it was, she couldn’t take the chance that she might turn into one of those evil things, not in here, where she might hurt people.

‘You have to get me out of here,’ she said, swooning in her chair.

There was a small series of crashes from the room Ravi was in, like he was trying to pull himself up and failing. He stumbled out of the doorway and collapsed to his knees in front of them. He was badly torn up, three long gashes across his face, an empty socket where his eye should have been, and soaked entirely in his own blood. Aubrey almost felt sorry for him now. He had been so powerful before, reduced to a pulp by his own experiments. But then she thought about the parasite, possibly making its way through her body, and she didn’t care one bit. 

‘You idiots!’ Ravi cried, punching a fist weakly into the floor. ‘That could have been our chance to fight this invasion. To cure our parents. And you let it escape!’

‘You’re lucky you’re not dead,’ Aubrey said, her voice escaping her into an echo that seemed to bounce around her head. 

He looked up at her, his singular brown eye focused on her, though it multiplied into a dozen. ‘You have to let me study you.’

She scoffed. ‘No way.’

‘You’re standing in the way of science! Of progress!’ He yowled.

‘I’m not standing in the way of anything,’ Aubrey mused, gesturing to her legs. ‘Sitting, perhaps.’

‘Lottie, wheel her back to my office. No, wing 5, the empty one. Now,’ he demanded, trying to stand up. He was too weak and flopped back onto his knees. ‘We need to measure the progress!’

‘No,’ Lottie said. Ravi grabbed onto one of her hands, but she smacked it away with the other. ‘No, I think I’ve had enough of being told what to do!’

‘You’ll never see Jack again!’ he threatened, but Lottie simply laughed.

‘You think you’re in the state to make threats? With your injuries? I think what you need is a long rest in bed, some painkillers, and some stitches. It’s good you taught me everything you know; you’re in good hands.’ Lottie helped him up, steadying him with one arm. ‘I think we need to get you into bed.’

 Neus dithered. ‘What about Aubrey?’ 

‘What if she turns?’

‘What if she doesn’t?’

‘Can we keep her here?’

‘We can’t lock her up, but we can’t risk it.’

‘Shit, she’s really shaking. Aubrey?’

Someone was shaking her, but she was half asleep. Ghostly images of decaying jaws flashed in her mind, spliced between her memories of before the crash, playing football at school, running home with Macey, dancing around in her room. I’m going to turn, her inner voice screamed. If I stay, I’m going to become one of those things, and I’m going to hurt someone. Was this it? Was it beginning? Everything felt very heavy, not just her legs. The world spun into stars, and the stars spun into a muffled hum, and Aubrey's hands slipped off the rims of her tyres and dangled limply. She could hear Neus’ voice, but it sounded like she was far away, underwater. She continued dreaming, seeing Macey just a few paces ahead of her, always just out of reach, and then the car. spinning out of control and crashing into the barrier, and then a farm in the middle of nowhere, being swallowed by the vicious jaws of fire.