Coldbrook (Hammer) (32 page)

‘Is that a volcano?’ Olivia asked, shouting above the sound of the motor.

‘It’s a fire, honey,’ Vic said.

‘It’s very big.’

An hour out of Cincinnati, Gary shouted something unintelligible and the helicopter shook, rocked and dipped, accompanied by a terrific noise. Vic leaned across and hugged Olivia and Lucy towards him, an instinctive embrace. But Gary quickly brought them under control, and they could all hear his rapid breathing in their headphones.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Marc shouted.

‘Fighter jet,’ Gary said. ‘Barely saw it.’

‘I’m scared!’ Olivia said. ‘And Marc swore.’

Marc nudged Gary, then touched his headphones. Gary nodded and flicked a switch.

‘Okay, guys, here’s the news. I can’t raise Baltimore airport at all. I’ve spoken to two en routes – they’re the
centres that control air traffic – and neither of them were interested.’

‘Not
interested
?’ Vic asked.

‘One woman . . . I’ve never heard a controller sounding like that. It wasn’t even panic, it was more like resignation. She said the military has so much stuff up that it’s proving impossible for them to function.’

‘Meaning what?’ Marc asked.

‘Daddy?’ Olivia said, and Vic squeezed her knee.

‘Just grown-up stuff,’ he said.

‘It means we’re flying on our own,’ Gary said. ‘That’s no bad thing normally, but the way things are I won’t know what we’re flying into.’

‘Like that jet,’ Lucy said.

‘Like that jet,’ Marc echoed.

They fell silent. Olivia still held Vic’s hand, her grip hot and clammy with fear. Vic watched the dark sky beyond the windows, noticed that the moon was low and yellow, and wondered whether they would even see anything that might come to smash them to atoms.

America passed beneath them, burning.

IF WENDY HAD
come back to him as one of those things, Jonah would have understood. It would hardly have been a surprise – he’d seen them kill, he had shot some himself, and the images of their grinding teeth and rupturing skulls were imprinted for ever on his mind. His waking nightmares made him terrified to sleep. And if she had returned as the Inquisitor, he would have understood that as well. The Inquisitor was in his mind now, and sometimes Jonah believed that thing was steering his every action, subconsciously or not.

But Wendy came back as herself.

I’d never let you put that gun to your head
, she said,
sitting at the foot of his bed. Jonah knew that she was not real, yet he welcomed her here with him, reaching out and not quite touching. She seemed unaware of his distress, or his need for contact. She looked vaguely disapproving, as she had on those few occasions when he’d returned home after having drunk too much.

‘But I don’t know what else to do,’ he said.

There is always another way. You told me that when I was so ill, and I wanted to talk about—

‘No!’ Jonah said. He had never entertained the thought of helping her on her way, had never permitted her to talk about it. Many times since then he had felt the guilt of that, and had dreamed about the agony he might have saved her from.

You’re not in that much pain
, Wendy said, scolding.
So don’t you
dare
let yourself consider that
now,
Jonah Jones. There is always another way
.

Jonah blinked and Wendy disappeared.

Got to get away
, he thought. The gun sat on his bedside table, solid evidence of his despair. But he would not betray Wendy with such thoughts again, and even now they felt distant and alien to him, the remnants of a dream rather than of any real desire to end his own life.

How could he? After all this, after what they had done, how could he ever consider taking the easy way out?

Jonah stood and slipped the gun into his belt. He felt watched at every moment – turned quickly, saw shadows
at the periphery of his vision, heard breathing identical to his own – but there was no reason to believe that the Inquisitor was
always
there. Jonah had to believe that he was not.

What the Inquisitor was, why he was here, what he wanted of him . . . these were questions whose importance were secondary to Jonah’s survival. He could remain here and accept what this thing was doing to him, or he could leave. The choice was stark – and simple.

Jonah left his small room, carrying the heavy flashlight that illuminated the whole corridor ahead of him. He headed away from Control to begin with, slipping into the canteen area where the smell of food starting to rot was already evident. He could hear movement – scratching, shuffling, the gentle caress of material against metal – and he wondered how those creatures he’d locked in the walk-in refrigerator could know that he was here. Entering the huge pantry, he selected some dried food. Tins would be too heavy, and he’d be able to add water to the sachets.

Where am I going?
he wondered, but though the voice was his own he tried to ignore it for now. One thing at a time. ‘Jesus, I could do with a shower before I go,’ he said aloud, and he actually giggled. It felt good – but it sounded desperate.

There were canvas bags beneath the canteen counter, used to collect plastic and tins for recycling on the surface. One would be enough. He dropped the sachets inside, added a few small bottles of water, then returned to the common room and lifted the small bar’s flap. He’d all but finished the Penderyn whisky and the next best thing was a bottle of Jameson’s. Sighing, unscrewing the top, taking a long swig. As it burned its way down he remembered that thing’s image.

‘Fuck off,’ Jonah said. ‘Just fuck off!’ The sounds of movement from the canteen became more frantic, as did their calling. If he left those afflicted in the walk-in fridge for ever, would they always move? The thought was horrific, but he had seen that wrinkled, shrivelled creature that had come through and killed Melinda, and he recognised its age. In ten years or a hundred, whether or not he remained down here, others might venture down to discover where it had all begun, and they might hear the movement of creatures trapped behind the doors he had locked . . .

‘If there’s anyone left,’ he muttered. Since the power had gone out, he’d had no way of following what was happening on the surface. He was delaying what needed to be done, and he knew why – he faced a terrible dilemma.

He could go back through the garage, move the Hummer, and climb up through the ventilation shaft.
Follow in Vic’s footsteps, retracing the route this terrible contagion had taken.

Or he could go through the breach.

Jonah smiled. He took another drink, then screwed the lid on and placed the bottle in the canvas bag. There was no decision to be made. He was a scientist, after all. And perhaps the next couple of hours would see him and Holly reunited, and the culmination of his lifetime’s dreams manifest around him.

Jonah knew that he could do nothing more here.

The Inquisitor was waiting for him twenty metres from Control. Jonah dropped the bag and heard the clunk of glass hitting concrete.
Don’t break
, he thought and fire throbbed in his head. He kept hold of the flashlight and shone it directly at the man who turned, beckoned him to follow, and then disappeared into a perpendicular corridor.

Picking up the bag, Jonah smelled the stench of spilled whisky. The bag leaked. Good Irish dripped across the floor, the sachets of dried food were swollen from the fluid, and Jonah felt a terrible sinking feeling in his gut when he realised how unprepared he really was.

‘Oh, bollocks to it all,’ he said. The gun heavy and useless in his belt, Jonah held on to the wall and swung around into the side corridor, home to a plant room and three storage rooms. It was barely twenty feet long, and at
its end stood something that brought Jonah up short, winding him. He tried to breathe, but it was as though the air was gone from Coldbrook. He tried to rationalise what he was seeing, make sense of it, and though the true meaning was clear he could not yet accept it. It would take the Inquisitor and its deft touch to make him accept.

It would take surgery.

It was not a table, or a chair, but something in between. Hanging on hooks suspended from shadows were the elements of Jonah’s new face-to-be: bulbous eyes; a snout; a bristled film to cover his own scalp.

‘It is required that you accept,’ the Inquisitor said.

‘No,’ Jonah said.

‘You will never die.’

Jonah managed to laugh, because the Inquisitor spoke as if he was offering something attractive.

‘Fuck
off
!’ Jonah could not help looking at those other objects, wondering what they were. He guessed that they belonged inside him.

As Holly ran she thought of the horribly scarred man and what his presence might mean. And she wondered just what these people were, to experiment on their one true hope like that – having him bitten by a fury each
year to confirm that his immunity persisted. It was monstrous and inhumane, and it chilled her to the core.

They’re the survivors
, she thought, but even that was not quite right. Their parents had been the survivors, if their Fury plague really had been forty years ago. Drake and Moira were the survivors’ children, and this was the only world they knew. But that did not excuse them.

She followed the stairs back up to the room where she had been pretending to sleep, and inside she tipped a chair onto its side and heaved at one of the legs. She exerted an even pressure, wanting to break it slowly rather than smash it. She could not afford to be caught and making too much noise could attract unwelcome attention. The leg creaked, she strained harder, and finally it gave with a brief snap. About fifteen inches long, it was easy enough to carry.

The thought of striking anyone with it was horrible. But Holly took a few deep breaths and hefted the impromptu club in one hand.
I need Vic
, she thought.
I need Jonah. I need home
.

And, for the first time, the importance of Mannan’s immunity to her own world struck her like a bullet.

Someone was approaching.

Holly propped the damaged chair against the wall, fell onto the cot, and curled around the leg with her back to the door. She consciously regulated her breathing, all too aware of the thudding of her heart but unable to
slow it. The footsteps paused and she heard the creak of unoiled hinges. She feigned a comfortable sigh. The person passed by and continued along the corridor . . .

And the smell of food reached her.

They were taking more food down to Mannan.

She stood and moved to the door, and as soon as she heard the first footfall from the stairwell she dashed up the corridor. Fear drove her on and made silence impossible; her breathing was ragged, her footsteps clumsy and panicked.

She reached a place she recognised and saw the strange light emanating from the casting room’s side corridor. It hazed the air, flowing and ebbing as the images within played across those bizarre screens. She marched past the wide doorway, not slowing down, not risking a glance inside, trying to exude confidence and a sense that she belonged here. Once past the room she listened for raised voices but heard none. The casters were viewing her world’s apocalypse in stoic silence.

When voices mumbled from rooms, she passed them by. Reasoning that stealth and caution would make her more noticeable than brashness, she strode along corridors past other open doorways and found herself eventually in the upper caves where she had first woken in this Coldbrook.

She paused at the entrance to a wide communal space. Across this roughly circular area was a curtained opening,
behind which she suspected the door to the outside might lie. Either side of the opening were heavy shutters, planks of wood secured together with metal bands and suspended from thick metal hinges fixed into the stonework. And beyond these shutters, on either side, were racks of crossbows and bows, but no guns.

A man was sitting in the middle of the room, leaning back in a chair and reading a yellowed book. There was a low table beside him, on which lay a crossbow, a crumb-strewn plate, an oil lamp, and a horn-shaped object with a bulb at its narrow end.

Did they really still guard against the furies, after so long? Or was he there to keep on eye on her? Holly didn’t know, and she did not give herself time to dwell on it. The longer she waited to think things through, the closer she came to being caught. There was really only one way out, and she had to take it.

Stay, they’re safe, Drake is a good man, they’re the descendants of survivors, and in this world this place is Coldbrook!
The words were those of her own timidity, trying to make her stay. But while she listened to them all she could see was Mannan stroking himself as he came for her, and those bite-scars that made him, ironically, less than human.

As she strode across the cave’s rough wooden floor, the man lowered his book and started to turn around.

Holly swung her club hard, wincing, closing her eyes
at the last instant and aiming for a point behind his ear. The impact jarred through her hands and up her arms, and her own cry was almost as loud as the man’s. He shouted again, with pain and shock combined. Holly stepped back.

The man was still standing, one hand grasping his ear. Blood seeped between his fingers, and he worked his jaw as if he was trying to say something. But no words emerged. His eyes became unfocused, and as Holly raised the chair leg again he sank slowly back against the table, his free hand reaching around to slow his fall.

‘Sorry,’ Holly said. ‘I’m sorry.’ She shoved him away from the table and he sprawled across the floor, groaning softly and with his right hand still pressed to his head. She snatched up his crossbow and ran for the heavy curtain.

Beyond it was a short, narrow corridor, with several heavy wooden doors set in its wall. It was lit with a string of electric lights – the first she had seen other than those in the casting room – and at its end was a heavy metal door.