Allison's house was only a couple of streets over from town centre where the worst of the chaos raged. Frankie wouldn't be able to see anything from the upstairs bedrooms, but there was a skylight in the loft that she hoped would give her a better view.
The loft hatch was located above the upstairs landing, between Allison's bedroom and her parents'. Frankie tugged on the pull-down ladder and it descended with a flurry of dust.
Her friends had followed her upstairs and were crowded behind her. Allison hadn't said a word; she leaned against Melly with a blank look in her eyes. Melly stroked Allison's arm, a repetitive soothing rhythm.
Vanessa eyed the ladder, her face unreadable. Frankie had expected Vanessa to challenge her on assuming a leadership role, but so far the other girl had stayed quiet. Maybe, in spite of her ice-queen façade, she was in as much need for someone to take charge as the others.
Frankie climbed the ladder into the loft. It was stuffy up there, the heat from the house having risen and invaded every dusty corner. Frankie clambered over a stack of cardboard boxes to reach the skylight. It was cloaked in cobwebs; she peeled them back away, scrubbing at the glass with her sleeve. She stood on tiptoes to peer out. From here she could just about see over the roofs of the houses around her, and into town centre. The jeweller's, where they'd first tried to hide, was almost directly ahead.
Becky's dead face briefly flashed through Frankie's head and she pushed the image away. She couldn't deal with it right now.
Town centre looked like a warzone. The streets were clogged with crumpled bodies, blood forming wide pools on roads and pavements, or splashed across shop-fronts and painted like grim artwork on the exteriors of cars.
But . . . Frankie frowned. She leaned closer until her forehead touched the windowpane. When she'd fled from the bus, the townspeople had panicked, scattering in a wild frenzy. Nobody was panicking now. They didn't seem to be doing anything. They just stood there in small clusters, mannequin-still except for the occasional coughing that racked them.
They were all sick, Frankie realised. But that didn't make sense. Earlier the sick people had been frenzied. They'd attacked like wild animals. What had happened to that terrible rage?
A young man careened around the off-licence on the corner, skidding to a halt a few shops over from the jeweller's. A group of sick people swung their heads in his direction.
A chill raised the hairs on Frankie's arms. "Run," she whispered. This couldn't just be a sickness, this was unnatural.
The young man tried to run but he wasn't fast enough. The sick closed in around him, blocking him in.
Frankie scrunched up her face. "This can't be happening," she whispered.
But it was exactly what had happened on the bus. Sick people had surrounded it, attacked it, tried to force their way inside. And when she'd fled into town centre she'd seen further attacks. Whatever this sickness was, it did more than give people a sore throat and a fever.
The young man's mouth stretched open in a scream as his attackers dragged him to the ground. They loomed over him, a pack of hyenas closing in on a kill. Bright blood spilled from their lips, pouring on the man's face. He screamed and writhed beneath them.
Frankie turned away, sickened. Maybe it was better that Vanessa and Allison's parents had died quietly in their own homes without having to face that kind of madness.
Except they might not have gone quietly.
Frankie didn't know anything about this sickness - what it did, how it worked. But what she'd seen of it so far looked painful.
She swallowed. That kind of thinking wasn't helping. Think rationally. Think logically. She turned back to the window. The young man had broken away from his attackers and was staggering down the road. Frankie hoped he escaped.
"What's going on?" Vanessa asked. She hadn't come all the way into the loft, just her head and shoulders poked above the hatch.
Frankie just shook her head. She couldn't find words to describe what she was seeing. She didn't understand it, her mind refusing to wrap around the horror of it.
Vanessa climbed into the loft. She shouldered Frankie aside so she could peer out of the window. "Jesus Christ," she whispered. "What's going on out there?"
"I don't know." Frankie's own ignorance scared her. How could they possibly fight this when they didn't have a clue what it was?
Vanessa turned away from the window. Her skin was pale, not her usual porcelain complexion, but a paleness born of shock and fear. She'd wiped away most of her smeared makeup but there was enough smudged liner under her eyes to make them look huge and haunted.
"What do you think we should do?" Vanessa said.
Frankie stared down at the floor. Asserting leadership was all well and good until she had to make the difficult decisions. They couldn't stay here, that much she was sure of. There was no way Allison could stay in the house with her dead parents.
The bulk of the madness seemed to be around the more heavily populated town centre; she'd only spotted a handful of sick in the quieter streets where her friends lived. Maybe if they were very careful they could move about town without being spotted. She still didn't know how contagious this thing was or what kind of contact passed the sickness on, but they couldn't take any chances by getting too close to anyone that had it. Especially not after seeing them attack people outside.
"Melly's house is the next closest. We need to go there." She couldn't bear the thought of finding Melly's parents dead too but Melly deserved to know the truth. Beth too.
Frankie's heart constricted. She knew Beth's parents: the girls had been friends since they were kids and Frankie spent almost as much time at Beth's house as she did at her own. If Beth's parents died, Frankie would have lost people that were practically family. She prayed it wouldn't come to that. Just because Allison and Vanessa's parents were dead didn't mean everyone was. She refused to believe it.
"And then what?" Vanessa wanted to know.
"We'll see if her parents are alive and then go from there." Frankie couldn't plot ahead until she had a better grasp of the situation. The most they could do now was take baby steps; tackle one problem one at a time.
Frankie hurried back down the ladder and told the others what they were going to do. Melly blanched, wringing her hands. She didn't say anything but it wasn't hard to guess why she was so scared - she didn't want to go home and discover her parents' bodies, as Allison and Vanessa had done. But not knowing was even worse.
"What about Benny?" Allison said. Her voice hitched when she said his name.
"We'll find him," Frankie said, though she didn't have a clue how. "But right now we don't know where to even start looking. We need to focus on the people we can find. Melly's house is next closest. We need to see if her parents are okay because if they are, they have to stick with us."
Assuming they weren't dead.
Frankie tried to think positive. Not everyone was dead and not everyone was sick. She and her friends were proof of that. If they hadn't caught it then there had to be other people who were sickness-free.
Another part of her prayed Melly's parents were alive so they could take over command of the little group. Barely an hour ago, Frankie had revelled in the responsibility of having the house to herself for an entire weekend. She'd thought about how adult it would feel. Now she longed for a real adult to come and take charge of the situation so she didn't have to.
"My dad won't be back from work yet," Melly whimpered.
Frankie stifled a groan. She hadn't considered that the people they were looking for wouldn't all be conveniently waiting for them at home. They were just as likely be lost out in the chaos.
One problem at a time, one problem at a time, she silently told herself. The first thing to do was to get to Melly's and see who, if anyone, was home. And preferably alive.
Beth straightened up from where she'd been hunched over by the wall. Her phone was in her hand. "I tried calling home but there's no answer," she said.
Frankie refused to consider the ominous implications of that. There were lots of reasons Beth's parents weren't answering, the most prominent being they just might not be home.
"I called their mobiles too," Beth said as if she'd read Frankie's mind.
Frankie didn't even ask how that had turned out, the bleak look on Beth's face said more than words could.
"And the police," Beth said.
Frankie suddenly felt ridiculously stupid. Almost an hour had passed since they'd got on that school bus, and in all that time she hadn't even thought of calling for help. She'd assumed, in her naïve teenage way, that help would just find them. That was how it happened on TV. The police just seemed to know when people were in trouble and they always got there in time to stop anyone getting hurt.
But in real life they hadn't.
People were dying and . . . something cold settled in Frankie's stomach. In all that time she hadn't heard a single siren. No police cars, no ambulances, nothing.
"What did they say?" Vanessa demanded.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?" Vanessa's voice rose an octave. "What the hell do you mean?"
"The line was dead," Beth said.
Frankie stared at the phone in Beth's hand. Like many teenagers her mobile was her lifeline, she relied on it for almost everything. The possibility that it was suddenly rendered useless . . . her brain couldn't quite process that.
"But . . . it's the police," Melly said. Like Frankie she couldn't seem to grasp the fact that the boys in blue might not be coming to help. That was what the police did. They couldn't just be doing nothing.
"Then call an ambulance. Call a fireman. Call the damn coastguard," Vanessa snapped.
"You don't get it." Beth spoke calmly but there was a haunted look in her eyes that chilled Frankie. "There are no Emergency Services. The line is dead. It's not that no one's picking up, it's that there isn't a line to reach them."