Skin Read online

  They had been attacked while I was out and now they were all dead and I was alive and I never should have left them and oh God the killers were probably still in the house and here I was shouting my head off and oh God oh God oh…

  When I turned into the kitchen, however, I was greeted by a sight so unexpected that it stopped me in my tracks.

  Perched on the table were Charlie and Amber. Still in their pyjamas, their faces were creased, their hair sticking up. They looked tired, but oddly serene. Most importantly, they were unhurt. Beside them was Colin. He too looked surprisingly calm, if thoroughly dishevelled. His T-shirt was torn around the neck, exposing his shoulder. In his hands was a baseball bat. As he turned to greet me, I saw he was sporting a split lip and rapidly swelling black eye.

  Before I could say anything, he shifted his weight, and for the first time I saw the bruised and bloody figure tied to a kitchen chair behind him.

  ‘We had a bit of trouble,’ Colin said.

  COLIN HAD BEEN dozing off on the sofa when he’d heard the car pull up. In his sleepy state, he’d assumed it was me returning from the food run. But something about the timbre of the engine was off. The speed it was travelling. The violent churn of gravel. He was up and on his feet before the first thump at the front door, scrambling for a weapon, when Amber had come through from the bedroom, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘Daddy, what’s that noise? Where’s Mummy?’

  Thump.

  ‘Go back in there and shut the door and don’t come out until I say so.’

  Thump.

  Before she could argue, there was a loud crack as the front door gave way.

  ‘Go!’ he’d yelled, reaching for the nearest implement to defend himself with, which turned out to be a plastic spatula.

  Seconds later he heard heavy boots in the hallway, a gruff voice calling out. ‘Sarah? Joshy?’

  Colin just had time to register the bedroom door slamming behind Amber, and then the man was in the living room, a baseball bat gripped tightly in his fist.

  Looking at the man now, unconscious and tied to the chair, I found it was difficult to see what he looked like. His face was too swollen to make out his features. Colin said that he thought he was younger than us. Twenty-five? Thirty? At the sight of Colin, he’d frozen. His lip curled.

  Then he started yelling.

  ‘Where are they? What the hell have you done with them?’

  ‘Listen, I know what this looks like. But you need to calm down. I’ve got my kids in the house,’ Colin had said, eyeing the bat. ‘Let’s just sit down and talk about this.’

  The man only snarled, though. ‘Your kids? What about my nephew? And my sister? What have you done with them?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything. Now if we could just calm down and…’

  The first swing of the bat swept a clock and vase from the mantelpiece. The second smashed the TV screen. ‘Where are they?’ the man screamed. ‘Where the FUCK are they?’

  Colin tried to explain that they were already dead when we’d got there, but it was hopeless. The man wasn’t listening. He didn’t want answers. He wanted revenge. He swung the bat again, this time connecting with a large antique mirror. It was then Colin dived at him.

  Unused to physical violence, Colin had quickly found himself pinned to the floor by the younger man, his fingers pressed around his throat. He was about to pass out when a small voice sounded somewhere above him.

  ‘Are you okay, Daddy?’

  It was Charlie, wide-eyed and pale.

  The unexpected interruption made both the men look up. It was then Colin took his chance, overturning the man and pummelling his face until he stopped moving.

  He’d been unconscious ever since.

  As Colin was telling me this, I occasionally glanced over at the kids, who were still sitting silently nearby. Amber avoided eye contact, her knees drawn up to her chest protectively. Charlie on the other hand looked utterly nonplussed by the situation. Bored even. He stared at the bloody intruder, stifling a yawn.

  ‘So what do we do with him now?’ I asked.

  Nobody answered.

  IT WAS MORNING before the man came around. With no better plan, we’d simply left him tied to the kitchen chair while we tucked the kids back up in bed and then crawled off to the sofa to sleep. Not that I managed to get more than an hour or so. Most of the night I lay there awake, tossing and turning while I thought about the man in the other room. I felt bad for him. How easily the roles could be reversed. It could have been Colin’s brother crossing the city to look for us, only to find another family squatting in our apartment. And how would he have reacted? Probably much like this man, I imagined. Confused. Scared. Furious. Still, I hoped he might at least wake up in a more reasonable mood. We would explain to him the sad news about the mother and child, and that we were staying here temporarily in order to protect our own children. Surely he’d understand that?

  The tone of his cries in the morning told me otherwise. We scrambled into the kitchen only to find Charlie already standing there, staring at the deranged man with the detached expression he’d worn the night before. While Colin tried to explain to him what had happened, I ushered Charlie back to his bedroom, where Amber was huddled on the bed, her eyes wide with terror.

  ‘Everything’s fine honey,’ I said, throwing my arm around her shoulder and giving her a squeeze. ‘That man is upset, but Daddy is sorting it all out now.’

  ‘Is Daddy going to kill him?’ Charlie asked, a little too eagerly for my liking.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Because I read that the quickest way to do it is to sever the carotid artery with a really sharp—’

  ‘That’s enough, Charlie,’ I snapped. ‘Nobody is going to kill anybody.’

  When I got back into the kitchen, however, I wasn’t so sure. While the man continued to scream obscenities, Colin stood nearby, a murderous look in his eye.

  ‘He fucking bit me.’ He held up his hand to reveal a deep gash. ‘Nearly had my finger off.’

  ‘Here, let me try.’

  The second I approached the man, though, he started hollering again, rocking his body against the chair so hard I was worried he’d tip himself over. ‘Murderer! You fucking people are all murderers!’

  ‘Calm down. Please. Just listen. We haven’t murdered anyone. We’re here because—’

  ‘Liar! You lying bitch! You’d better let me go before I call the police on the lot of you. Help! HELP!’

  It was hopeless. I returned to Colin, leading him through to the living room and shutting the door so we could hear ourselves over the man’s cries.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Well we can’t let him go,’ Colin said, holding up his bloody hand again. ‘The guy’s a cannibal.’

  ‘You don’t think we could convince him to leave quietly?’

  ‘Not without him attempting to kill us first.’

  I pursed my lips. ‘Well he can’t stay here. Amber’s freaked out enough as it is. Besides, there’s hardly enough food to feed ourselves, let alone a stranger.’

  Colin stared at me, shocked. ‘You don’t mean…?’

  ‘No. God, no. I don’t want to hurt him. He just needs to be somewhere that’s… not here.’

  We stood silently for a moment while the man continued to holler obscenities at us, his voice cracking with the force of his cries.

  ‘Look, why don’t we put him outside?’ Colin said at last. ‘Just for now. Just until we figure out what to do with him.’

  It was a terrible idea. But it was the only one we had.

  IT TOOK US almost half an hour to drag the man out of the house and into the garden. The first time we tried to move him, he screamed and thrashed so violently it was impossible to hold on. In the end, Colin had to threaten him with the baseball bat just to get him to stay still. It was strange seeing Colin like that, flecks of spit exploding from his mouth, the veins pumping in his neck as he thrust the tip of the bat into the man’
s face. I’d always thought of my husband as gentle. Meek, even. Yet now he seemed to be able to tap into violence at will, as if something dark and primal was rising in him. I thought back to the children I’d met at the shop. My knife at the boy’s neck. It seemed our capacity for brutality was far closer to the surface than I’d ever imagined. Unlike me, however, Colin didn’t seem to be in any danger of backing down. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d have almost said he was enjoying himself, his rage like a physical release after months of tension. Or perhaps he just liked the sense of power the bat gave him.

  By the time Colin had finished shouting, the man was subdued enough to get him outside, where we proceeded to position him as far as we could from the house, propping him against the fence at the very end of the garden. Once he realised we were serious about leaving him out there, he sagged forward in the chair, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference anyway.’

  I tried to nudge Colin towards the house, but he shook me off him. ‘What doesn’t make a difference?’

  ‘Anything. It’s all fucked. We’ll all be dead soon anyway. You. Me. Your children.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Colin growled. ‘They’ll work out whatever it is that’s making people sick and they’ll roll out a vaccine and—’

  The man made a noise like a broken engine, his black eyes bulging, his swollen cheeks growing redder and redder. For a moment I thought he was choking on something, until I realised he was laughing. ‘A vaccine? What are they going to vaccinate us against? Each other?’

  We stared at him, confused.

  ‘You mean you haven’t heard? They’re saying there’s a virus that makes you allergic to other people. Something in the air. Now isn’t that about the funniest thing you’ve ever heard. You people going on and on about protecting your family, when it’s your precious family who are gonna end up killing you.’

  ‘The air?’ Colin growled. ‘What do you mean there’s something in the air?’

  ‘Why should I tell you shit?’

  Colin raised the bat again, the same dark look clouding his face. ‘Because if you don’t, you’ll be sorry. That’s a promise, my friend.’

  ‘Colin, there’s no need to…’ I began, but he shook me off him.

  ‘No, Angela. There is a need. This guy turns up here and starts smashing up the place and then threatens my wife and children? He’s lucky to still be alive. Now I want him to tell me everything he knows about this so-called virus before I—’

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence. At that exact moment, the man chose to try and make his escape, springing up from the chair and lunging towards me.

  Later I would realise what had happened. While we’d been talking, he’d somehow managed to work his legs and arms free from the ropes. At the time, though, it was all just an explosion of movement. One minute he was tied to the chair, the next he was screaming in my face, teeth bared, hands outstretched to throttle me. To scratch and tear and pull and punch.

  To kill me.

  Only he never got that far.

  Because as he dived forwards, Colin fumbled for the baseball bat he’d kept tucked under his arm and swung it through the air. Straight into the man’s skull.

  The sound was sickening. Like a melon dropped onto concrete and splitting open.

  And then the man was toppling in slow motion, his torso wilting while his legs remained stubbornly planted to the ground, until at last gravity caught up with him and he crashed backwards onto the lawn. He twitched a couple of times, and then lay still.

  I didn’t speak. Didn’t scream. I was too shocked to make a sound. Colin, on the other hand, remained calm. He took a step forward and prodded the man’s chest with the tip of his boot. He could have been kicking the tyres of a car for all the emotion he showed. By now a fresh trickle of blood was streaming from the man’s ear, a dark pool forming on the grass.

  Colin shrugged. ‘It was him or you,’ was all he said, before he turned away and walked slowly back towards the house. ‘It was him or you.’

  NINETEEN

  ALL THE WAY back to the apartment, I seethed. I stewed. I simmered. The absolute nerve of that man. And the look on his face after he’d dropped the camera. The self-satisfied smirk. And the fact he didn’t even attempt to apologise. Not that I’d have heard him if he had, so quickly had I turned and stormed from the school, a string of curses reverberating from my mask. Well, one thing was for certain, that was the last time I’d ever see Jazz again. I’d been an idiot to think that a man like that was ever capable of behaving civilly. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Oh no. As far as I was concerned, the sooner the authorities caught up with him, the better.

  I was still in a foul mood by the time I eventually got back to my room, something that wasn’t helped when I slumped in front of my computer to discover I had no fewer than twenty-three missed calls, every single one of them from Colin. So much for not being missed.

  I let out a groan.

  I knew I should call him back immediately and offer some kind of excuse.

  My alarm didn’t go off and I slept in.

  I was ill with a cold.

  I had an important meeting at work .

  Instead, I stood up again and walked over to the kitchenette, procrastinating. Though the surfaces were already immaculately clean, I dug around under the sink and then attacked them with antibacterial spray, buffing them until the laminate gleamed and my arms ached. I remember reading a report online about the high rates of OCD amongst survivors. There were stories about people who showered five, ten, fifteen times a day. Or washed their hands over and over again until their skin was raw, their fingers cracked and bleeding. Though I wasn’t at that stage yet, I certainly recognised the impulse. My own tolerance for dirt of any kind had steadily diminished over the years, to the point where even the sight of a coffee ring or a crumpled tissue was enough to quicken my pulse.

  As I cleaned, I found my mind racing back to the haze of dust in the old school. The filth underfoot. The mud-caked surface of the onion. All that risk, and for what? In an effort to prevent myself from hyperventilating, I went to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water. As I sipped at the cool, filtered liquid, I remembered I hadn’t yet taken my medication that morning. I opened the cup board, and automatically began rattling the pills into my palm. Vitamin D. B12. Iron. Niacin and calcium. When I reached the last two, however, for some reason I paused. Picking up the tub for the green ones, the anti-depressants, I turned it around, reading the list of possible side effects on the back for the first time in years. Drowsiness, nervousness, insomnia, dizziness, nausea, skin rash, headache, diarrhoea, constipation, decreased sex drive, dry mouth, weight loss… The list went on.

  Back in the old world, I remember obsessing over what I put in my body. I would scan food labels, conscientiously avoiding anything that contained anything I didn’t recognise as ‘natural’. Sodium benzoate, sulphur dioxide, potassium bromate. Aspartame and acesulfame-K. Sorbitol and saccharin. It seemed that half the contents of the chiller aisle were out to kill me and my family. But it wasn’t just food I had to worry about. There were neurotoxins in our Tupperware. Carcinogens leaking from our carpets. From air freshener to oven cleaner, it seemed our homes were nothing more than overpriced deathtraps.

  Of course after the virus, most of my anxieties about that stuff evaporated overnight. It’s hard to feel uptight about hand sanitiser once you’ve watched the charred remains of your neighbours blowing down the communal hallway. Besides, it wasn’t like we had much of a choice any more. We ate and drank whatever arrived at the drop-off points. We took whatever medicine we were instructed to take. Yet as I stared at the warning signs on the medicine label, I felt the old concerns stirring in me. How long had I been taking them now? Four years? Even the kids were on them. And what benefit were they really having? It wasn’t like any of us seemed remotely happy.

  Very quickly, before I had chance to talk myself out of it, I t
ook both tubs and emptied their contents directly into the waste disposal unit, listening as they disappeared down the sides of the steel chute with a satisfying clatter.

  The second they’d gone, I felt a shudder of regret. Of panic. What if I got sick? Or had withdrawal symptoms. But behind those worries, I also felt a slither of pride at my tiny act of rebellion. Who was a do-gooder now, huh?

  Invigorated, I returned to my computer, finally ready to face Colin. Ready to lie.

  In the event, however, there was no need. For when Colin finally answered, he didn’t ask where I’d been. Rather, I was greeted by the unusual sight of my husband in a state of absolute hysteria.

  ‘It’s a disaster,’ he gasped. ‘I’m ruined.’

  I was confused. This was not the Colin I knew. Calm. Pragmatic. He looked like a mad man, his hair wild, his tie hanging to one side, his eyes manic.

  ‘Wait. Slow down. What’s happened? What’s ruined?’

  ‘Everything!’ Colin was practically shouting now. ‘It’s that fucking boy again. I know it. He’s gone too far this time. I swear, if I find out it’s him, I’ll… I’ll…’

  ‘Colin, stop. Get a grip. Breathe.’

  He looked directly at the camera then. His eyes were red around the rims. He took a couple of deep, juddering breaths and then nodded. ‘Sorry,’

  ‘It’s fine. What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know where to begin.’ He let out a groan, taking another of those huge, shivery breaths, like a boxer getting ready before a big fight. ‘Okay. So you know the latest project I’ve been working on?’

  ‘The beach thing? The magic gloves?’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘The application of kinaesthetic technology in a virtual environment.’

  ‘Fine. Sure.’

  ‘So, for the last few months we’ve been beta testing the product with a select group of clients, inviting them on short mini-breaks to the island. Just a few hours here and there so we can iron out any bugs in the program. And it’s been going well. Better than well. The response from the clients has been incredible. Almost too good. We can’t get them to log off. They want to stay there forever. Of course, my manager is delighted. Everyone is. In fact, things have been looking so good that we’ve been thinking about bringing the launch forward by a few months. And then this morning… This morning I got a phone call…’ His voice cracked, his words dissolving into a string of unintelligible sobs.