Infestation Read online

  When Caden was ten years old, his parents had taken him and Aiden on a family camping trip to Bear Mountain. They’d left in the evening and were driving the last stretch to the campground at night, their mom white-knuckled over the steering wheel as she guided them along a narrow, twisting mountain road.

  And then the headlights of the car went out.

  Caden could still remember the utter darkness of that moment. It had been an overcast night, so no stars shone, no moon glowed. There was nothing but the pitch black of the sky and the inky stretch of road, and the terror that they might be heading straight off into nothing.

  When Caden had brushed against Patrick, back at their school’s Green On! assembly, he had felt something like that: the vast darkness of a midnight mountain road, and the fear that if he kept going, he might tumble over the edge and be lost forever. He hadn’t tried sensing Patrick again.

  Caden shivered and unplugged the coffeepot. And the microwave. And everything else he could see. Then he turned off the lights. The afternoon was fading, but there was still enough sunlight trickling inside, even with all the blinds down, for him to make his way down the hall and into his mom’s study.

  She’d lit several large pillar candles—black, Caden noticed, for protection—and had them set up around the room, their flickering light bouncing off the cushions they had just been sitting on, illuminating the boy lying on the floor, his eyes closed, mouth shut tight. His arms were crossed over his chest, making him look disturbingly like a corpse laid to rest. On his left thumb, a thick silver ring with a strange circular design seemed to soak in the candlelight like a succulent soaks in rain.

  Caden moved closer, watching his brother carefully. His chest rose and fell, so he was alive, but Caden still couldn’t sense him at all. What had happened to Aiden, trapped all that time in the Other Place? His mom said it was a prison containing some ancient evil, and Caden had seen the things that lurked around the edges—things with tentacles and too many teeth and an insatiable hunger for human blood. Yet somehow Aiden had survived in there.

  But maybe it had cost him.

  Caden remembered the Unseeing, the eyeless monster that had escaped from the Other Place to terrorize their town, ripping the eyes from children. And not just their eyes. When Caden had gotten caught up in the memories of the Unseeing itself, he’d experienced the way the creature devoured the souls of its victims after removing their eyes, leaving them empty vessels made of flesh and blood and nothing else.

  What if Aiden wasn’t really himself anymore?

  Caden looked down at his brother’s gaunt face and tried not to let his worry trickle out. His mom wasn’t as good at picking up emotions as he was. She and Aiden had never been empaths. But she could sense them if they were strong enough.

  Aiden’s eyelids flickered, his face contorting as if he were in pain.

  “Help me lift him onto the bed,” their mom said.

  Caden grabbed his brother by the arms while his mom grabbed Aiden’s feet, and together they carefully lifted him onto the small twin bed his mom kept in her study. She took off his shoes, then walked over and knelt next to his head, gently stroking her fingers through his short hair.

  “Do you think…” Caden stopped, swallowed. “Will he be okay?”

  “I don’t know.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t know what all he’s been through.”

  “Has anyone else ever spent time in the Other Place and survived?” Caden didn’t want to hurt his mom, but he had to ask.

  She hesitated, and Caden felt the cold, hard edge of a secret looming, waiting to be uncovered.

  Aiden’s eyes popped open, so abrupt Caden took a quick step back, and his mom gasped. Aiden stared up at the ceiling for a long moment. Then he slowly turned his head and looked at Caden and then their mom. “It’s so good to see you again,” he croaked.

  “Aiden!” Their mom threw her arms around him and kissed him on the forehead. “We thought… I thought…” She broke down, sobbing, her words a mangled mess, and Caden felt the outpouring of all that guilt and sorrow and relief like a river breaking free, washing itself out.

  “It’s okay, Mom.” Aiden put his own arms around her. “I’m back. Everything is going to be okay.” He looked over her head, his eyes meeting Caden’s. The candlelight flickered in them, washing them from brown to amber. It made him look strange, like something inhuman was staring out through the mask of his face.

  The hairs on the back of Caden’s neck prickled, a shiver running down his spine. And he thought again of that night on the mountain road when their lights went out, recalling the sharp burst of panic—that they would swerve off the edge of the cliff or crash into the trees on the side and die in a blaze of fire and pain.

  Only now, as he stared at his brother, did he remember that Aiden hadn’t wanted to go on that trip. His brother had been angry, so angry, when their parents packed them up anyhow. And when the headlights shuddered back on, Caden had caught a brief glimpse of their mom praying, their dad sobbing in relief, and Aiden sitting there beside him in the car, smiling.

  Aiden’s lips curved in that same triumphant smile now.

  Caden wanted to run and keep running, but he couldn’t move, pinned beneath his brother’s unearthly gaze.

  Bad things happened to people who crossed Aiden. And Caden had shoved his older brother into a dimension full of horrors. Horrors that had then fed on him for nine months.

  Things were definitely not going to be okay.

  5. RAE

  Rae trudged into homeroom like a zombie, her feet scraping across the tiled floor. She was exhausted. She had ended up taking too many puffs of her inhaler yesterday, so between the jitters from the medicine and the nervous energy from her brush with death at the lab, she’d been too full of adrenaline to sleep more than about five minutes last night.

  Caden was already there, sitting in his old seat near the front of the room. His black hair was as messy as always, matching the wrinkled black T-shirt and black jeans. He glanced up as she passed, and for a second their eyes met. And despite her weariness, Rae felt a jolt of energy, like electricity flowing between them. A connection forged through blood and adventure.

  Her heart lifted. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed being his friend this past week. Had he forgiven her for choosing Patrick’s internship over his help? Monday mornings were a perfect time for starting over.

  “Cad—” she began.

  But he had already looked away again, his eyes adopting a faraway glaze, like he was staring into the spirit world. For all Rae knew, that was exactly what he was doing.

  “Fine, whatever.” She stomped past him, the hurt inside her bubbling up like a fountain. She did her best to squash it back down again. She didn’t need Caden or his friendship. He could spend all his time with his ghosts, for all she cared.

  She flopped down in her seat next to Vivienne and Alyssa.

  “Rae-Rae,” Vivienne said. “Good to see you alive and well.”

  “If that’s what ‘well’ looks like, I’d hate to see her sick,” Alyssa said.

  “Nice to see you, too, Alyssa.”

  “Did you want to borrow some concealer? You look like someone punched you in the face.”

  Rae reminded herself that Alyssa had been through a lot recently. “That’s sweet,” she said dryly, “but no thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” Alyssa shifted closer, lowering her voice. “Did you know that no one here heard about the false alarm yesterday?”

  “Really?” Rae asked. That seemed pretty surprising. A nuclear meltdown at Green On! would have affected the whole town.

  “Apparently the alarms were restricted to the company itself. All of these people?” Alyssa indicated the students around them. “They could have been turned to ash and not even noticed.”

  “I’m sure they’d have noticed that,” Vivienne said, grinning.

  “You know what I mean.” Alyssa fiddled with the end of her blond ponytail,
frowning. “Even my mom didn’t know about it. And she usually knows everything.”

  Alyssa’s mom, Ms. Lockett, was the school’s vice principal. She ruled the hallways with her intimidatingly styled hair and ever-present clipboard. Rae had met her on her first day at school and had done her best to avoid her ever since.

  “Did you tell her about it?” Vivienne asked, her grin gone.

  “No,” Alyssa said.

  “Good. Because we signed those nondisclosures, and you could get in a lot of trouble—”

  “I said I didn’t tell her, Vivi. Jeez.”

  “Good morning, Dana S. Middle Schoolers!” the loudspeaker bellowed. “Happy Monday! Just a reminder that whistling is prohibited in the halls of the school. Humming is still allowed on a case-by-case basis. Apply to Ms. Lockett for a pass if needed.”

  “Whistling?” Rae scratched her head. This school had all sorts of weird rules, and it felt like they changed every week. Trying to keep track of them was like trying to run up a sand dune.

  “It’s extremely irritating,” Vivienne whispered.

  “But… humming isn’t?”

  “It depends on the person humming. That’s why you’d need to apply for a pass.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing ever. It made Rae wonder if the whole point of these ridiculous rules was to train students not to question the oddities in their town.

  “… will have Tater Tots today,” the announcements continued. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that our town has received enough reports to instate a code peach fuzz.”

  “Oh no!” a girl in the back said.

  “That’s terrible!” someone else added.

  “What is that?” Rae asked Vivienne.

  “It means animals are going missing. Dogs, cats. Possibly livestock as well.”

  “Oh.” Rae thought about it. “This, um, happens often enough to warrant its own code?”

  “It usually only happens once every couple of years,” Vivienne said. “But it’s good to be prepared.”

  “Every couple of years?” Rae was suddenly very glad she hadn’t convinced her mom to get her a dog yet.

  “Yes, keep Fido inside, folks, especially after dark,” the loudspeaker continued. “And finally, all of our Green On! interns, please make your way to room seven after the announcements conclude. Thank you!” The voice cut out with a long, eerie creak like the closing of a rusted door.

  Rae shivered.

  “I guess that’s our cue.” Vivienne hoisted her giant backpack up over her shoulders.

  As Rae passed Caden’s seat, he put his head down. Probably worried she’d try talking to him again or something.

  “Wow, that is a dark look,” Vivienne said as they left homeroom. “Why the fearsome scowl?”

  “Do you think being in this internship is a bad idea?” Rae asked, the words bursting out of her. “I mean, yeah, it could lead to a scholarship, and—” And Patrick had promised to help her find her dad. But Vivienne didn’t know about that. “And it’ll be an interesting experience,” Rae finished awkwardly.

  Vivienne gave her a sidelong look, like she knew Rae was keeping something secret. “I guess it just depends on your reasons for doing it.”

  Rae bit her lip and followed Vivienne and Alyssa down a hallway she’d never explored before. The lighting almost seemed dimmer over here, the floor strangely dusty. “Did your mom figure out what went wrong last night?” Rae asked, deciding a topic change was in order.

  “If she did, she’s not telling me.” Vivienne’s eyebrows drew together. “Something is up with her, though. She’s been super distracted lately. And my mom is never distracted.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened?” Alyssa asked. “She made some kind of mistake?”

  Vivienne shot her a look.

  “What? Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. And she definitely didn’t want Doctor Nguyen talking to Patrick about it.”

  “I don’t know,” Vivienne said shortly.

  Rae glanced between the two of them. Alyssa had confided in her that Vivienne seemed to be drifting away, changing into someone else, someone she barely knew. Rae could practically feel the gulf between the two of them widening. She might be in competition with Alyssa for the top spot in Vivienne’s friend list, but it still made her heart ache to see them growing distant. She knew what it felt like to lose a good friend.

  “Is that Blake up ahead?” Alyssa said. “I’m going to go walk with him.”

  “You do that,” Vivienne said.

  Alyssa glanced over like she wanted to say something else, but then she tossed her hair over her shoulder and sped up.

  Vivienne watched her go, her eyes narrowed. Then she sighed. “Sorry.”

  “You weren’t mean to me.”

  Vivienne ran a hand down her face. “I know. It’s just, my mom actually did have to talk to Patrick last night. And he was…”

  “What? Angry?”

  “He doesn’t really get angry. But very disappointed. And I don’t really like how Alyssa is throwing that in my face.”

  “I don’t think she meant to,” Rae said quietly.

  “Maybe not.” Vivienne stopped outside a plain wooden door. “And here we are.” She stared at it like it might leap out and bite her.

  “Should we, um, go in?” Rae asked.

  “Probably.” But Vivienne didn’t move.

  “Everything okay?”

  Vivienne gripped the straps of her backpack. “Yeah. I just… I had a bad experience in this room. I didn’t think I’d have to come back here ever.”

  “Bad… experience?”

  “Are you talking about the Emmett incident?” a boy asked behind them. Rae turned to see Nathaniel Cliff, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his baggy corduroy pants.

  “What’s that?” Rae asked.

  Nate’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “You don’t know?”

  “She hadn’t moved here yet,” Vivienne said.

  “This used to be one of the science labs,” Nate said. “Specifically, the fifth-grade science lab. They had a pet rabbit, Emmett, who stayed here throughout the day. Near the end of last year someone broke in at lunch and drained all the blood out of poor Emmett, then stuffed his corpse in a locker.”

  Rae felt sick. “Alyssa did mention something about that when I moved here,” she whispered.

  “It was pretty traumatic,” Nate said. “There was blood all over this room. No one wanted to study in here anymore, so the whole class was moved. And it’s been empty ever since.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled in an obviously ironic fashion. “So if you’re still wondering, yes. This internship is a tremendously bad idea.”

  “Were you spying on us?” Rae demanded.

  “I was walking behind you, and you’re loud.”

  “Hey, weren’t you the one who found the rabbit?” Becka had come up to the door and stood with her arms crossed, watching Vivienne.

  Vivienne’s expression didn’t change, but it was the kind of unchanging that stood out thanks to its lack of variation. Like Vivienne was afraid if she let something show on her face, it would be too powerful and would overwhelm her, so she was very carefully not showing anything. It reminded Rae of a person gripping a railing very tightly as the ground under them dipped and wobbled.

  She knew that look well. She’d done the same thing at her old school whenever she heard anyone gossiping about her or her dad. And since everyone seemed to want to gossip about it constantly, she’d had a lot of practice.

  It hadn’t helped that another engineer vanished at the same time as her dad. A woman, young and beautiful. Of course everyone assumed he’d run off with her. Even though, if they knew her dad at all, they’d know that was way less likely than government abduction.

  “Yeah, it was in my locker,” Vivienne said finally.

  “Did anyone ever figure out who did it?” Matt asked, joining them. Rae shifted over to give him more room. It was beginning to feel like that cramped elevator
here in this hallway.

  “No,” Nate said.

  “Emmett was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Vivienne said breezily. “Let’s go in, shall we?” She tugged the door open.

  “Wrong place and time?” Nate said, following Vivienne in. “He was a pet rabbit in a cage. It wasn’t like he had a lot of other options.”

  Rae tried not to imagine what it had been like for Vivienne, opening her locker to find that sad, dried-up thing. She was a little surprised Alyssa hadn’t mentioned that it was Vivienne’s locker when she’d told her about it.

  The room where it happened looked just like a normal science room, with a chalkboard up front and two large rectangular blocks made of some hard black stone that were tall enough for a group of students to use as a standing desk. Each block had a deep sunken basin and faucet at one end, and a strip of power outlets lining the middle. Above those desks hovered a metal chute that led up to the ceiling. The whole place smelled strongly of disinfectant—lemon scented—and something else, sharp and metallic. Blood.

  Rae shivered. It was just her imagination. There was no way that smell would have lingered here for a year. But she kept her arms wrapped around herself as she followed Vivienne, who glanced over at the desk that Alyssa and Blake were standing next to and then went to the other one. Nate joined them, leaving Becka and Matt to head to Alyssa’s desk. They all stood around silently, until Patrick Smith waltzed into the room.

  “Good morning, interns,” he said, stopping in front of the chalkboard, hands on his hips as he surveyed them. He looked exactly the same way he always did: dark, carefully styled hair, pale eyes, wide smile, and fancy black suit. He was young for a senior company executive, probably in his midtwenties. Rae’s older sister thought he was good-looking. Rae thought he was good-looking the same way a mountain lion was: powerful and dangerous, and best viewed at a distance. He glanced at her as if hearing her thoughts, and his smile dropped away like an unnecessary coat. “Ms. Carter.”

  Rae froze under that gaze.

  “I heard you had some trouble at the lab?”

  She felt her cheeks flush. “It was fine,” she mumbled. She didn’t like to think about how the other students had carried her out of there like a sack of dirty laundry. She especially didn’t like to think of Patrick hearing about it. She didn’t want him to believe she was weak.