Catch Your Death. Mark Edwards
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LOUISE VOSS AND
MARK EDWARDS
Catch Your Death
For the kids: Gracie, Ellie, Poppy and Archie.
Contents
Dedication
Prologue - Sixteen Years Ago
Chapter 1 - Present Day
Chapter 2 - Present Day
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9 - Sixteen Years Ago
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12 - Sixteen Years Ago
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Also by Louise Voss and Mark Edwards
Copyright
The world was on fire.
Or maybe she wasn’t in the world any more. Maybe this was Hell. The heat, the taste of sulphur on her tongue, the sickness, the torment. Screams rang through the air, relentless, monotonous, a one-pitch yell of despair. She opened her eyes and saw a figure stooping over her; a hovering devil, with flaming red hair. She tried to shout but all that came out was a rasping noise, and the devil’s face was close, the brimstone smell of its breath in her nostrils.
‘Kate. Kate, get up. Come on.’
She stared, blinked. Slowly, a face came into focus. Not a devil, but Sarah, her red-headed room-mate.
Sarah pushed aside the thin sheet that covered Kate’s body and took her by the hands, pulling her up. Kate’s pyjamas were damp and cold, but her skin was desert-hot. Her fever was nearing 105 degrees. Sarah was in a similar state, but she’d been lying on top of her sheets, too ill to sleep.
Kate’s bare feet touched the floor. It hurt. Everything hurt. Her body was a bruise, tender to the touch.
‘Come on.’
Kate could still hear the screaming, and put her hands to her ears to block it out. She’d only ever felt this ill once before, as a child. She had the vaguest memory of a nurse with black skin and kind eyes sponging her down with cold, cold water which dripped down her narrow heaving chest, and soaked the waistband of her pyjama trousers. She’d cried, weakly, at the ordeal. Cried for her mother, even though her mother was already gone.
She wished the nurse was here now, to cool her with water, to put out the fire that raged across her skin.
Her eyes fixed on the curtains. At some time during the night, as she drifted in and out of feverish dreams, she had seen little men with malevolent eyes swinging on those curtains. Sarah opened the door and, holding each other up, they stepped into the corridor. Kate had a vague idea that she was supposed to be angry with Sarah but she couldn’t remember why.
At the same time that Kate and Sarah left their room, another couple of young women emerged from the next room. Denise and Fiona, the Glaswegian girls they weren’t allowed to be in contact with, but had communicated with, talking and giggling like boarding school girls through the walls, figuring out ingenious ways to pass notes out of the windows, attached to the end of a cane Sarah had found in the Centre’s gardens.
‘Is it real?’ Fiona asked. Her voice was thick, her nose bunged up. Kate thought she was speaking a foreign language. Or maybe the language of Satan. What if these were all devils, taking her to be tortured, dragging her into Hell? She panicked and tried to pull away.
Denise caught her and she nearly fell, but the Scottish girl managed to stop her from crashing to the floor.
‘It can’t be a drill,’ Fiona said, answering her own question.
‘Let’s just get out of here,’ said Denise, leading the way.
She gripped Sarah by one hand and Kate, who kept pulling back, looking around her with wild eyes, by the other. Where was everyone else? Were they the last people left in the building?
‘We’re going to die,’ Kate said. ‘We’re going to die.’
Denise shushed her. ‘No. We’re not. The exit’s just around this corner. Come on, Kate. We’re nearly there.’
They turned the corner and came face to face with a wall of thick smoke.
‘Oh God!’
Kate emitted a small yelp of fear and struggled, but Denise held tight. ‘Calm down.’
They were all sweating now, as the corridors filled with heat, and the smoke pricked their eyes, bringing forth the tears. Four young women in their pyjamas; holding on to one another, paralysed by the most primitive fear of all.
‘We’ll have to go back,’ Denise said.
They turned round and ran – even the sickly Kate and Sarah, with Denise and Fiona holding their hands. They heard a crack