Needle, I think. Made me feel weird."
"And then?"
"I ran. Big one threw something - a firebomb I think. Hit me in the back." An odd manic grin now twisted Thomas's face as he heaved his next words out. "The big one said - he said - to come back - let them - finish it clean." A hideous wheezing laugh. "Crazy bastard. So I - ah - climbed across town. Here."
Magdalene gave him a truculent look, drew her hand away and wiped it on the back of her dress. Maybe she was wondering the same thing I was - had these crazy people followed him here? "What did they look like?"
"Like bastards." Thomas's voice faded out and he drooped, like all the puff had gone out of him. My finger ached where he had bitten me and I surreptitiously glanced at it. The bleeding had slowed, though the skin was still a ragged tear. My knuckle bore a ring of black where it had touched his skin. I wiped it against my skirt, then rummaged in my satchel for a purse pack of tissues to soak up the blood. I managed to extract one, spat on the paper and scrubbed at the wound. The black mark came off. The bleeding started again.
"Don't do that," muttered Gary, and he took my hand and stuck my finger in his mouth. I felt his tongue swirl over the wound before he pushed my hand back at me.
"Leave it this time. It'll heal faster," he said.
"Did your mum ever use her own spit to clean your face?"
Gary looked both bemused and faintly disgusted. "Yes."
"Did you like it?"
"Not after I was about three. Oh." Some moments later he thought of a comeback. "Mum-spit doesn't have healing properties. Mine does."
Which was true. Still. "Next time, spit on a hanky."
"Try not to let there be a next time."
Our conversation had, I thought, been quiet and unheeded, but I caught Smith watching us speculatively. He still had the blue bag in one hand.
"Shouldn't you be putting that in the fridge for Mundy?" I suggested.
The sound of shattering glass cascaded over whatever response he'd been about to make, this time coming from the downstairs bar. Smith cursed, thrust the bag at me and ran for the stairs. He had a gun in his hand, and for all I hadn't known he was carrying one, it didn't surprise me in the least. It frightened me though, more than anything else I'd seen. Guns were a more commonplace violence, and more alien to me than the undead. My life is weird like that.
Smith didn't get far. Two steps down, and three ear-splitting bangs - gunfire obviously - were followed by the gut-churning sound of a grown man's scream and its abrupt halt.
A body came flying up out of the stairwell. Up. At speed. It was Jack, arms and legs swinging floppily. He collided with Smith and they fell in a tangle of limbs at the top of the stairs.
You would think by now that I would know to run away from trouble; but I needed to know what was going on, and how thoroughly I was cut off from the only exit for those of us who couldn't climb walls. I ran to the stairs and peered into the dark.
A ghostly face resolved out of the gloom at the bottom of the stairwell. White blond hair framing a solemn, almost pretty countenance. Most of the details were fuzzy, but his eyes were intense.
"Be gone," he said, with a terrible smile. "Run, sinner, or be purged."
The words, in a strange accent, were ridiculous, like a schlocky horror film villain. I wanted to give him a librarian-glare. Surely you can do better than that, emo kid. I didn't get that far. He raised his hand, and in it was a bottle, filled part way with pink liquid. A rag was stuffed into the neck of it. That was less on the Dastardly Dan side.
Oh shit. So that's what a Molotov cocktail looks like.
"Abe?" A different voice roared out of the back room, hoarse and angry, "Where the hell are you? That wasn't the bloody plan! Get back here!"
The boy - Abe, I assumed - kept his eyes fixed on mine. He took two steps back, almost disappearing in the shadows, then a flame flicked on and touched the rag, which blazed into life.
"Run," he said, grinning, like even if I ran it wouldn't help, and he threw the firebomb up the staircase. I recoiled as it splintered on the top step and the fire bloomed across the stairs, the banister, the floor.
Smith had scrambled out from under Jack's motionless body. Jack remained unmoving as the corner of his coat began to smoke and burn. I reached for him, thinking to beat out the flames with my hands if I had to, but Smith shoved me back.
"No point now. Dead as a fucking dodo," he explained gruffly, "We gotta get out of here."
Poor Jack. When he'd bothered to speak to me at all he would mention his sister's wedding plans. His father's greyhounds. Once, his mother, out of hospital after a bad asthma attack and fretting that no-one had done the housework in her absence. Normal family stuff outside of his life as a bouncer for the bite club. Another dead body to add to the count in my head.
The bag felt welded to my skin, like I would never get rid of it. I wondered if Mundy was still alive to receive it. Wondered if it mattered to me if he wasn't. Found that it did, and didn't understand why. I don't like you Mundy. You're dangerous. You're a killer. If you're dead you probably deserve it.
Hands on my shoulders pulled me out of the numb reverie.
"We have to get out of here." Gary urged me towards the window over the blind alley. Thomas had gone, and I glimpsed Magdalene's flowing gown disappearing over the sill.
"Where is everyone? The girls?"
"Window," he said, jerking a thumb in a distinct signal that we should follow without delay. I picked through the glass and peered outside. A feeble fire escape ladder was bolted to the wall. Smith was at the bottom, the two girls close behind. Thomas was half way down, having trouble holding on, with the ladder wobbling ominously. As I watched, one side of the rusty railings tore free from the wall and Thomas, railings and all, fell twenty feet to the ground with a crunch.
Shit.
A wet hiss indicated the water sprinklers had come on - this place conformed to the fire code that much, anyway - but the room was filling with smoke and the stairs were consumed with flames.
"Not everyone's down there," I realised with a frantic stab of adrenalin.
"What?" Gary was dithering by the window, keen to be on his way and looking for hand-holds now that what was left of the ladder was hanging drunkenly off the brickwork.
"Beryl and that boy haven't come out." The room was rank with the smell of burned skin. The din of sprinklers and flames and shouting and sirens were overwhelming. All it needed to be a perfect representation of hell was for my mother to turn up.
Damn. Damndamndamn. First, I dropped the blue bag the two storeys to the ground outside and hoped that if we ever found Mundy he'd forgive any extra dents in his detached person. Then, ignoring Gary's protests, I ran to the heavy curtains and pulled them aside.
The boy's legs were kicking feebly from a booth. A vivid image of something I had never seen filled my skull. I didn't know where Priestley had killed him, but this was how Daniel had died. Kicking
