Serial Sunday: The Galton Horror II

School was doing a trip to Galton Spaceport on Monday. Dr Barrington himself was going to show the Year 11 classes around the Shackleton 3 probe. And because he’d been out too late, Gunnar’s parents kept him home that day: “you’re not having a treat.”

That pissed him off. A little bit of trouble and they seemed to think he was in danger of mutating into one of the bad kids, like Amy Collins on her third suspension or Trevor McCoy who would have been suspended if his dad didn’t know the headmaster. All Gunnar did all day was study, avoid bullies, and read stuff about space, and they thought he was a bad kid because he was out late once?

Francis promised to tell him if there was anything cool or weird on the school trip.

Francis didn’t reply to any texts, calls, or emails that evening.

***

The next day at school, the entirety of Year 11 stood together at one end of the playground like a cluster of birds. Everyone but Gunnar. Years 7 to 10 were still in their sprawling huddles, talking and fighting and kicking balls around, but you could see them glance every so often at Year 11.

Everyone was standing together. The loose alliances of cool kids and uncool kids, the wealthy and the council housing kids, the footie fans and the unpopular thickos: all were gone, and a single unified mass took their place.

And they all turned as one to look at him.

Francis was one of them. Francis was one of them with Trevor McCoy. 

A brief, impotent surge of anger hit Gunnar: “So you can organise a big stare! Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

Anger was good. Anger stopped him being unnerved. Anger told him his best friend had betrayed him for a chance to one of the gang and that was all this was. Anger stopped him thinking that it was impossible for that many teenagers to do such a smooth movement simultaneously.

Anger lasted until his first class, Religious Education, the class that always—always—was a rowdy zoo. Not today. Everyone was quiet. Everyone was silent.

You couldn’t tell what anyone was thinking.

Mrs Evans talked about communion for five minutes before she started to falter now and then, checking back at the class as if waiting for the big joke. It was ten minutes before she started to sweat badly enough that you’d notice it. Fifteen minutes before she kept looking from blackboard to class to blackboard to class in confusion and fear. She looked at Gunnar, the only one who looked back and said with his eyes: I don’t get this either.

Seventeen minutes, she was stumbling over her words. Nobody acknowledged this blood in the water. It was like everyone had decided at once that it simply wasn’t relevant. Or like they were machines shut down and waiting to be started up again.

Twenty minutes in, Mrs Evans stammered out that everyone was to read some chapters now. Gunnar tried to read but the words ran before him. This was wrong.

Every class was like that.

On the final period of the day, he simply didn’t go. He hid in the toilets until it was time to go home and then he fled.

“How was school?” his mum asked when he came in.

“Fine,” he lied because what could he say?

***

TV was ads for executive phones that could access the internet, and Red Dwarf with cinema-level CGI, and news that Serbia had withdrawn from Kosovo after the RAF’s new missiles ripped them apart with “accuracy beyond any comparable force”. Gunnar watched it without really registering.

Something was going on and he couldn’t tell what, and he couldn’t tell why. And why wasn’t anyone else noticing? Nobody else in Galton thought it was strange?

Maybe they did but felt nobody would believe them either. That would be the most annoying thing in the world, if everyone knew something was up and stayed quiet for fear they were the only one.

Before bed, he typed a series of increasingly outlandish words into Yahoo to find if anything like school had happened anywhere else, if it was some disease or prank.

There was a cheap website about “ZOMBIES OF SHEFFIELD” talking about strange behaviour from factory workers that was a bit like what had happened. He looked through it eagerly, but the website kept saying everything was due to barcodes. “The country has taken the MARK OF THE BEAST!!” What?

Another website was called Enemies Within, warning about “a strange movement in London”. It hadn’t been updated in seven weeks, the hyperlinks were broken, and the images had been taken down. He wanted to believe the webmaster had just got bored.

It couldn’t be due to the spaceport then. If it was affecting people all over England, then it must be something else doing it. Everything happening at school after the visit was just a big coincidence. He said that to himself until he believed it, but within two seconds he was back to knowing better.

He thought about texting his best friend to ask him and was too scared about what he’d hear back.

***

The next day, Amy Collins was back in school, scrawny and rat-haired and always looking like she was looking for a fight. Her third suspension had been for… well, rumours always circled with Amy. Fighting, drugs, bringing a knife to school, sex in the toilets; if it was something bad, everyone knew she did it. Whether she actually did was irrelevant.

She was simultaneously one of the crapper bullies and one of the better ones. Sure, she was mean and spiteful and would come after you from nowhere; but everyone knew she was horrible, she wasn’t popular, and she didn’t have important parents like Trevor. Nobody ever told Gunnar that maybe he should try being friends with her.

When Gunnar reluctantly entered the playground, Amy was screaming something at the Year 11 cluster. She was targeting her usual two cronies and alleged boyfriend. They were staring back at her, saying something that made her scream more. Finally, she said the rudest words Gunnar knew and stormed off.

It looked like she was ready to storm back out of school when she saw him. Then it looked like she blamed him for it.

“What’s going on, spaz?” she snarled. “What’re they doing and why aren’t you doing it?”

A brief spurt of fear ran through him: Amy Collins is after me. And then he thought, what’s she got that’s scarier than what’s happening?

“I don’t bloody know,” he said. “Everyone was like this all day yesterday. It’s been like this ever since they went to the Spaceport. I didn’t go and whatever this is, nobody’s telling me.”

“You didn’t go? You’re a geek, why didn’t you go?”

“Parents grounded me. Why were you out?”

“Suspended for having sex in the toilets, like you wish I’d do to you,” she sneered, clearly lying to be shocking and aggro, and he couldn’t help it: he laughed.

She didn’t like that and yelled at him to stop, and that made him laugh more. All this ‘bad kid’ stuff, what the hell, was this all it was at the end of the day? Some rude words and a waved fist?

“They’re scarier than you!” he said between laughs. “Don’t you get that? It’s impossible for you to be as scary as them! People are coming out of the Spaceport all weird and other people aren’t coming out ever and you’re just a girl who swears a lot!” 

She stared at him. There was a slight twitch to her eye, like she was clamping down a reaction. He thought it was anger until she said, slowly, carefully: “What d’you mean, people aren’t coming out?”

“I mean what it sounds like! Every night, buses take people in and they don’t come out and I don’t know where they’re going and I think it’s happened some other places too!”

Amy went quiet for a while after that.

“We gotta find out then,” she finally said. Like it was obvious. “Or have you already done something?”

“What the hell could I do? I’m fifteen.”

“Wuss,” she said and spat on him. “Okay, Bulk, okay, we’re going to sort this out. We’re going to follow my plan and I’m going to sort it out.”

***

The plan, in totality, was to just go in, take photos, and then show them to people. She had nothing else. She didn’t even know which people to show it too. Gunnar agreed to it anyway for the simple reason that there was someone, anyone, even if it was bloody Amy Collins, who knew something odd was going on and could tell him what to do, that there was some way to make sense of it. Some way to fix it.

It was much later, too late, when he realised that Amy was just as terrified as him and just as confused as him, but the way she dealt with her fear was always to attack. She had no good plan or special ideas; she didn’t have any street smarts that would be useful, just like she didn’t have book smarts; she wasn’t even particularly strong. All she was doing, all she was ever doing, was being aggro to feel better.

But they were both in too deep before that occurred to him.

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Charles EP Murphy is an author who, among other works, wrote the books Chamberlain Resigns, and other things that did not happen and Comics of Infinite Earths for Sea Lion.