The Anomaly Read online

  “She’s really not feeling good,” Pierre said. “That’s why it took us so long. Sorry. We didn’t find anything anyway.”

  We got Gemma to the middle of the room and onto the ground. She sat there hunched up, arms tightly crossed. Molly laid the back of her hand against Gemma’s forehead.

  “She’s got a temperature.”

  “Christ,” Ken said. “Gemma—what’s the problem? Is it the flu or something?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, yeah. I ache all over. But…”

  She moved her hands away from her stomach, revealing how bloated it was. “I’ve got terrible gas, too. It’s tight like a drum. And really painful.”

  “Your sandwich was the same as ours, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you haven’t eaten anything else?”

  She looked up. Her face was drawn, eyes cloudy. “No.”

  “Gemma, look—it’s no big deal. If you had something stashed in your bag and kept it to yourself, it doesn’t matter. We just need to figure out what’s wrong with you.”

  “Fuck you, Nolan. Of course I didn’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “I…” Abruptly she turned her head and threw up.

  Nothing much came out, but the smell was sour and rank. Molly pulled a spare T-shirt out of her backpack, helped wipe around Gemma’s mouth. Then it happened again. Three strong retches, subsiding into dry heaves.

  “Oh shit,” Gemma said, her voice guttural and clogged. “I really do not feel good.”

  “I’m pursuing this for one reason only,” I said. I knew I was sounding like an asshole. It didn’t matter. “If this is the flu or something, chances are we’re all going to get it. It’d be better to know ahead of time.”

  Gemma took the T-shirt from Molly and wiped ineffectually around her chin. Her hair was hanging in rats’ tails over her forehead and down her cheeks.

  She breathed in, out, in, out. Looked like she was going to retch again, but didn’t. She winced, long and painfully, and crossed her arms back over her stomach.

  “Okay,” she said. “I had no food. But.”

  “But what?”

  “When I asked you about where to go this morning?”

  “You needed to go to the bathroom.”

  “Right. I went. And when I was done, I was thinking I didn’t know how much longer I could go without a drink, and I was already halfway there. So.”

  “Halfway where?”

  “The pool,” Ken said glumly. “Fuck. She went and took a drink from the pool. Christ, Gemma—didn’t you see the way the water was?”

  “I didn’t really look. I just scooped some in my hands and drank it quickly.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know. Half a pint? Maybe more.”

  “What’d it taste like?”

  “Not good. Muddy. Metallic. But I was so thirsty. And Nolan drank some when we found it, and he seemed okay.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us earlier?”

  “Because I felt okay then.” She stopped talking suddenly, as if about to throw up once more, but stifled a belch instead. “I do not feel okay now.”

  “So,” I said. “I guess that means it’s not the flu. It’s a stomach bug from contaminated water. You are going to feel like utter crap for a few hours, Gemma. But then it’ll be done. Moll—how much water do we have left?”

  “Just over half a bottle. Between all of us.”

  “Feed her a third of it. A mouthful at a time, five minutes apart. If she vomits again, stop immediately.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I grabbed the bigger light. Then, as an afterthought, my phone as a backup. I really didn’t want to get stuck without light in that tunnel again. “I’m going to try the cave we found—see if there’s an exit at the other end.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Of course. Oh, and Gemma—you were right.”

  She looked up at me blearily. “About what?”

  “There’s something in here with us.”

  “Awesome.”

  I turned to Ken. “You ready?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Take Pierre. He’ll be twice as fast. And that fissure is no picnic for the fuller-figured gentleman.”

  “Okay. Keep a light on in here. If you see anything…shout.”

  “Bollocks to that, mate. If I see anything, I’m just going to eat it.”

  A couple of us laughed, but it sounded hollow in the darkness.

  Chapter

  39

  We could tell before we got to the room that the smell had become worse in the meantime. Much worse. We started to get a taste of it while we were still twenty yards away. Once inside, it was so acrid that it made your eyes sting.

  “What the heck?” Pierre had pulled his T-shirt up to cover his nose, and his voice was muffled.

  I did the same. It didn’t help a whole lot. “Something’s changing here, too. Earlier we found a cave at the far end, with some paintings on the walls. In the time we were there, it seemed like the floor in here loosened up a little. I wasn’t sure about it then. But yeah, it’s clearly happening.”

  “But how? And how can a layer that thin smell so bad?”

  I walked into the room, feeling as if I was having to physically fight against the stench. Within seconds my feet were sticking to the floor, and the farther I went, the tackier it became. After a few yards it was half an inch up my shoes and like trying to walk in old molasses.

  “Christ,” I said, giving up, stepping back. “That’s why. Because the floor isn’t level. It slopes like in a swimming pool, getting deeper toward the other end. The surface only seemed flat because the liquid in it was solid. And now it’s not.”

  “Are we really going to wade into that crap?” Pierre and I were close together now, huddling, as if that would somehow help. He was squinting, his eyes streaming. “I mean, I’ll do it if we have to,” he said. “Of course. But—”

  “No. We have no idea how deep it gets. That’s going to have to be a last resort.”

  Pierre was blinking rapidly against the stinging. “Aren’t we kind of at the last-resort stage already?”

  “Not quite. And I’m not embarking on it without warning the others what we’re doing.” I nodded back toward the door. “Come on. Screw this.”

  “So what do we think that stuff is?” Ken asked quietly.

  He’d come and taken a look. We then returned to the main room, and were sitting in darkness, twenty feet from the others.

  “I’ve been assuming it’s some kind of fossil fuel, crude oil or something. Which could have explained why it caught fire at some point. But I say that in total ignorance of what that kind of material looks and smells like, and where it’s found. I don’t actually care what it is. What I don’t get is why it’s liquefying.”

  “A chemical reaction.”

  “Okay, obviously, but what’s causing it?”

  “We walked across it a few hours ago,” Ken said. “So I’m thinking it’s probably us. Again. As with everything else.”

  “We’re going to have to grit our teeth and tackle it anyway. You know that. There’s nothing else to try.”

  “But if it’s ten feet deep at the other end, then we’re fucked, mate. We can’t swim in that kind of gunk—not even Pierre. And if you walk into it until it’s up to your neck, then you’re never going to be able to get out of it again. It’s too viscous.”

  “We need to float something on top.”

  “Right. But you’ve forgotten that whoever designed this game didn’t give us any props, Nolan.”

  “Fuck.” I stuck my head in my hands. My brain felt as if it were splitting down the middle. “If only that light hadn’t run out when we were there before. At least we’d know if there was anything worth trying to get to.”

  “‘If only’ a lot of things,” Ken said. “And none of them are any bloody use to us now.”

  There was a groaning sound. We watched as Molly moved out of shadow into
the dim glow around Gemma, and put her arm around her. There was the sound of dry retching, a rasping croak in Gemma’s throat, and then another louder moan.

  “She’s getting worse.”

  “Yeah,” Ken said. “The first mouthful of water came straight back up, so we stopped. She’s going to have to let the bug pass through her system, however dire that makes her feel, and however long it takes. Right now, even if we did find a way out, I don’t think she could move.”

  I lit one of the ever-dwindling supply of cigarettes and we passed its red glow back and forth in silence. Toward the end I looked at Ken. He met my gaze and held it.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you,” he said as we finally looked away, “but I ran into Kristy a few weeks back.”

  “Okay.”

  “She was sitting outside the Peet’s on Third. By herself. I said hi. We chatted. I asked if you two had talked recently. She shook her head. Said: ‘It’s over.’”

  “Gee,” I said. “Thanks, Ken. Fuck’s sake. Why would you even tell me that?”

  “Because she said it the same way you do.”

  “Which is?”

  “Like it’s not over.”

  I stared at him, unsure whether to be angry or very sad.

  “We’re dead when we’re dead, Nolan,” he said, reaching over to pat me on the cheek. “And not before.”

  We sat in silence for a while after that. Generally you get a reliable sense of the passage of time, but my mind was working so much more slowly than usual. I couldn’t be sure how long it had been before there was a sudden noise—a groaning cry, much louder than the ones before. Louder, and more urgent.

  Pierre and Molly were leaning over Gemma by the time Ken and I got over there. Gemma was on her knees, bent double, arms wrapped tight around her waist.

  She made a dire croaking sound, the noise of someone whose stomach is in spastic revolt but has nothing else to give.

  “This isn’t getting better,” Molly said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with her.”

  “She has to be getting out the other side by now,” I said. “She’s empty. The water she drank this morning is long gone from her system. Maybe this is just a final—”

  The croaking sound came again, morphing this time into a harsh, jabbering belch. It had extraordinary force and didn’t sound like it was the tail end of anything.

  I crouched next to her. Put my arm around her back. The heat coming off her skin was intense. She was making a continual low moaning sound, and seemed to be trying to screw herself up as tightly as possible, as if every muscle in her back and limbs was contracting.

  “Gemma,” I said, “it’s going to be okay.”

  She belched again, a long, rasping bark, releasing an appalling smell.

  She jerked her head up. Her cheeks and forehead were soaking with sweat, hair matted. “Oh,” she said.

  It wasn’t to me, or about me. At first I wasn’t sure she even knew I was there. But then she said my name, twice. Her voice sounded like an old woman’s.

  “Gemma, let it out.” I remembered that I’d already said those words to someone, at a point earlier in the day. “Try not to cramp. Let it out.”

  I went to pry her hands away from her abdomen, only then realizing how incredibly swollen it was—bulging so much it was straining the buttons on her shirt.

  “The gas is putting her gut muscles in spasm,” I said. “She’s got to get it out.” Gemma was strong enough to pull her hand back, returning it to her stomach. I had a flash memory of being a child, in bed, with gut pain—and how nothing but the feel of my mother’s cool hand on my stomach had seemed to help.

  So I put my hand on her belly, as gently as I could. She screamed. Her head was right next to mine and the scream was so loud I thought my eardrum would burst.

  “Sorry,” I said. I pulled my hand away but she screamed again. And again. It wasn’t me that had made her scream. It was something else.

  I looked up at the others but saw only blank faces. None of them knew what to do about this, either, how to relieve this pain. None of us had children, and so we didn’t even know how to pretend we could make it better. When it came to this kind of thing we were all still children ourselves.

  She opened her mouth to scream again but another of the barking belches came out instead. The smell was even worse than before. The noise tailed off into the most dreadful sound I’ve ever heard from a human being, an animal mewl of agony.

  She toppled over, knocking the light away and flipping it over, making everything dark.

  I reached for her, feeling her burning skin against mine again. Found the light and turned it. Gemma was on her side now, face screwed up tightly. She was hyperventilating.

  Then her eyes opened wide. Her breath was hitching—uneven. A bubbling sound leaked out of her throat. She was staring at me. Her mouth was moving but I didn’t know what she was trying to say.

  A clot of dark blood gushed out of her mouth.

  Her eyes grew wider.

  Her arms tensed, hands knotting into claws. More blood belched up into her mouth, but without the force to break clear, leaving her gurgling as she tried to scream.

  I hurriedly pulled her onto her side, into the crash position. I stuck my fingers in her mouth to try to clear the backlog, but it kept coming. It just kept coming.

  She choked.

  She died.

  Chapter

  40

  I tried everything I knew, everything I’d seen on TV. I pumped her chest, rolled her over, pumped again. It made no difference.

  What do you do when that happens in front of your eyes? I stayed there, kneeling beside Gemma, feeling like I was in some kind of bizarre and dreadful play. Her body was sprawled as if she’d been hit by a car, neck twisted by her final spasms.

  I gently rolled her onto her back.

  Her eyes were open, staring flatly into the darkness. Her chin and throat and chest were covered in blood and bits of tissue that she’d vomited up. The smell was terrible, a combination of a bloody, metallic tang along with something richer and much worse, presumably something torn inside.

  I finally knew what it seemed I should do next. It felt absurd, but I did it anyway.

  I laid my fingertips on her eyelids, feeling the warmth of them, and pulled them down. One moved more easily than the other, and for a moment she was caught in a grotesque wink. Then they were closed.

  I got up. It seemed inconceivable that the thing at my feet could have housed the smart, determined person we’d known.

  We stood around Gemma’s body in silence and then Pierre picked up the light and we all walked to the side of the room and sat there in a row, our backs against the wall.

  My head hurt like it was going to burst. I assumed that after a while Ken would ask for a cigarette, but he did not. This was beyond even that source of comfort.

  “What are we going to do?” Pierre asked eventually.

  “About what?”

  “Gemma. What are we going to tell people?”

  “Nothing,” Molly said. She turned to look at him. “Don’t you get it? We’re not leaving this place either.”

  It was later. Five minutes, ten, maybe more. Perhaps a lot more. I was aware of being hungry, of stomach muscles cramping in protest. It felt like a distant concern. Water was the issue. There were a few mouthfuls left, but when it was gone there’d be nothing to hold out as a carrot for getting through the next few hours. Plus I don’t think any of us wanted to return to Gemma’s body, not yet, and that’s where the backpacks were.

  I felt desiccated, two-dimensional. I was aware of Ken sitting a yard away, eyes open, head nodding. Then my vision seemed to white out, and I couldn’t have told you whether I was awake or asleep, where I was, or even who.

  Some time later, Ken lifted his head.

  The movement was obscure in the dimness, but enough to focus me back. I blinked, eyelids gummy, and turned my head, assuming he was looking at me.

  He wasn’t.
He was staring into the room, frowning.

  The other two were curled up asleep against the wall. The glow from the lamp—which should have been turned off, we were wasting power we couldn’t afford—reached ten feet into the room. Maybe twelve, though by that point it was a warming of the darkness rather than real illumination.

  That darkness sparkled softly, its blackness a challenge the retinas couldn’t handle, seeming to billow like a curtain caught by a soft breeze.

  Something moved in it.

  I blinked, hard, assuming at first that it was illusion. And when I opened my eyes all was darkness once more.

  But then there was another movement. There was a shape standing there. For a split second I thought it must be Feather.

  But it wasn’t. It was an animal.

  It took a faltering half step into the low light.

  It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen. It was the size of a big cat, a puma, and moved like one, but its head was more canine in shape, mouth and eyes open wide. A very large tooth curved down from each side of its upper jaw.

  Fully awake now, I glanced at Ken. “Are you see—”

  “Yeah,” he whispered. “I am.”

  We weren’t quiet enough. The animal’s head snapped toward us, as if sensing danger. Or prey.

  Then it stepped back into the darkness, vanishing as if it’d been erased.

  We were on our feet quickly and quietly.

  “Are we doing this?” Ken said.

  “Yeah.”

  We moved cautiously toward where the animal had been. Or had seemed to be. Only moments after it had disappeared, it was hard to believe it had ever been there. I realized we didn’t have a light with us but I had my phone in my pocket. As we hurried toward the nearest passage I turned it on. We paused at the entrance and waited for the phone to boot.

  “This is the one with the stinking room, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know,” I realized. “Pierre scoped it out early yesterday. He was all about the room that smells. I’m not sure he even said what else was down here. He didn’t get to the end.”