Page 64 of Monsters within Men
“Just Habib.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yup.” Noah’s frown as he gripped the steering wheel suggested otherwise. “Right then. To the elusive Oliver.”
Oliver was the only person Zeke knew that lived in a proper house. The population of London, which had always been full to bursting, only increased in the last decade as millions of survivors poured into its relative safety. His friend lived in a beautiful yellow Victorian, one of many brightly painted three-story townhouses in an affluent part of town. Noah automatically got out to follow him, and this time, Zeke didn’t ask him to stay in the car. He wanted him with him for this.
As they approached the red door, his dread compounded inside him. For some reason, Oliver clearly didn’t want to talk to him. He’d left at least ten messages over the last few weeks, all unanswered.
“Hello?” he shouted through the letterbox, when nobody answered the banging from the dragon-shaped door knocker. “Is Oliver home?”
He was moments from giving up when a shadow passed over the frosted glass. The door opened a slither.
“Are you that friend from the lab?” a woman’s voice asked. One brown eye, heavily set into lined skin, peered at him.
He nodded. “Mrs Thompson? We’ve met a few times before. It’s Zeke.”
Oliver’s mother exhaled a long sigh. She unlatched the door and ushered them through. Noah introduced himself as they walked along a narrow corridor. Mrs Thompson travelled around the rectangular island in the middle of the kitchen, folding her arms as she looked between them. Looking at her closely now, Mrs Thompson was not how he remembered her. Usually bouncy curls sat greasy and limp around a haggard, grey face and deep purple patches underneath her eyes suggested sleepless nights.
The woman narrowed her eyes at him. “You look well,” she said, strangely, as if it annoyed her.
“Where’s Oliver?” He swallowed nervously. A sudden urge to flee gripped him as a foreboding sense of danger seeped through the room. Noah pressed his hand into the small of his back and he leaned back into the comforting touch.
“He’s upstairs. Follow me.”
Mrs Thompson silently strode off, leaving them to hurry after her. Noah threw him a quick, questioning look as they traipsed up the spiral staircase. The woman didn’t knock as she entered Oliver’s bedroom.
He knew at once that something was amiss. A sticky, stale, putrid smell hung in the air, even though an open window blew fresh air into the room.
Oliver lay still on the bed, eyes shut. A pale, gaunt face peeped from under his duvet.
“Oliver?” Zeke whispered, but more to Mrs Thompson than his sleeping friend.
“Doyouknow what they gave him?” Oliver’s mother was visibly shaking.
He blinked at her.
“Disgusting,” she spat out. “You’re going to stand here and play innocent, just like that Rebecca woman.”
“I-I… have no idea what’s going on. Is he ill?”
“Ill? Ha! That’s one way of putting it. He’s barely spoken in days. The hospital admitted him for a while, but sent him home when they couldn’t do anything. The one private doctor I managed to get over here to see him had no clue what to make of it. I swear to God, if they ever let that man out of prison—”
“Doctor Harding didn’t do this!” Zeke said, gesturing wildly to Oliver.
A grunting sound came from the bed. Oliver’s eyes flickered open.
“Zeke?” came a weak, gravelly voice. He shuffled forwards to linger awkwardly near his bed. Noah stopped pressing against him to move into the corner of the room, and he felt his absence like a lost tooth.
“How are you?”
“I feel like shit,” he croaked, while Mrs Thompson rushed to pour him water from a jug. “Areyouokay?”
“What? Yes, I’m fine. I mean, they’ve drafted me into the military, thanks to Doctor Harding’s arrest, but I’m technically fine.”
“Wow. That’s… good. I thought you might be like me. You know, since he injected you as well, I mean.”
Mrs Thompson and Noah’s eyes bore into the back of his neck, prickling his skin. The unwanted truth that he’d been trying to lock deep, deep inside his brain broke free, growing into a tangled vine, wrapping itself firmly around his mind. It wasn’t possible. Doctor Harding couldn’t have caused this, surely? He wanted to scream, to pull Oliver out of the bed and shake him until he said he was lying, that he was fine and it was just a mistake. He sank to his knees. As they hit the floor, Noah rushed over to him, squeezing his shoulder from behind.
