Coldbrook (Hammer) (43 page)

Frowning, Drake nodded.

‘So how does all this work?’ Jonah said, touching his bare chest. As Drake began to explain, Jonah watched the shadows.

The Gaians of Coldbrook looked at Jonah as if he was some kind of Messiah, an irony that did not escape him.
I’ve come to save everything
, he could have said, and the crazy bastards might even have bowed down before him.

As he and Drake walked, Jonah thought about those he was leaving behind, Holly most of all. A precious friend, almost a daughter. She deserved an explanation and a goodbye, but he could give her neither. That made him sad. Soon he would exist only in Holly’s memories, as Wendy did in his own.

They approached the final door that Jonah knew led to the outside, and he grabbed Drake’s arm. The other
man turned quickly, startled, ready for an attack. Jonah smiled and held up his hands.

‘You’ve already killed me, Drake,’ he said. ‘I just want to say something.’

‘Say it quickly,’ Drake said. He was looking behind Jonah, nervous and unsettled, and Jonah knew what he was looking for.
He’ll be here soon
, he thought,
but not just yet. The Inquisitor needs me on my own
. Because Jonah had plans beyond those that Drake had made for him.

‘I’ll do my best to carry this through, even though you took the choice from me. But you have to promise to help my friends. They’ll need access to Mannan and they might need protection. And they’ll do their best to come up with a vaccine.’

‘Of course,’ Drake said. ‘A cure is something I can never give up on.’

‘Holly will make sure –’ Jonah began. Then a look that that chilled him crossed Drake’s face.

Jonah shoved him against the door. Drake grunted, wincing when his head was bashed back against the metal. ‘What have you done to Holly?’

‘Stopped her following you through. I didn’t want her involved, seeing what I had to do to you.’

‘Stopped her how?’

‘Moira stayed behind to tie her up.’

Jonah sighed, missing Holly even more. ‘Tell her . . . tell her you asked me, and I agreed to all this,’ he said.

Drake nodded, and Jonah felt the respect between them growing again. Drake was a scientist and a ruthless man, ready to compromise his own morals for the greater good. Was that reprehensible or admirable? Jonah couldn’t decide. He didn’t have forty years of living as a survivor to influence his choices.

Drake opened the door, and cool night air sighed in.

Eight men and women came out with them into the darkness, and they walked silently towards the head of the valley. Though none of them spoke, Jonah could sense the respect they held for him. A few glanced his way now and then, as if to imprint him on their memories. Perhaps they’d tell their children and grandchildren of how they had seen the man carrying the Inquisitors’ doom in his heart.

After an hour walking through the night, he saw the bulky angles of a building on a shoulder between two mountains, several hundred feet below the ridge line and on the moonward side. It reminded Jonah of a coal mine on a hillside back home.

‘Jonah,’ Drake whispered, ‘is it following?’

‘I have no idea,’ Jonah said. ‘You said yourself, it’s not all-seeing.’

Drake glanced at him, worried.

Jonah smiled. ‘Yes, Drake. It’s following. Has been for a few minutes.’

They moved off again, climbing the ridge until they were level with the large structure, then cutting across the hillside. Shale slopes whispered in the darkness as they dislodged stones, and shapes scattered to hide in shadows as they approached.

Jonah slipped his fingers inside his shirt and fingered the small wound on his chest. It was two inches below his left nipple and towards the centre of his chest, and it felt more like a boil than an entry wound. Its head was smooth and warm to the touch, and hard – when he pressed it the nodule sank into his loose old-man’s skin but hurt only a little. If he took a deep breath, he could feel the small charge inside surrounded by fury blood. Before they parted company Drake would give him the trigger.

He felt curiously detached from the thing in his chest. It was not a part of him. If anything, it was a part of Drake’s desires and destiny, not his own.

At a silent signal the eight people spread out across the slope, four above and four below the point where they had stopped.

‘I’ll take you from here,’ Drake said. ‘There are traps.’

Jonah felt stares on him as he and Drake walked towards the building, but no one spoke. Perhaps they were so used to moving silently when they were outside that they could not bring themselves to say anything.

The last time Jonah glanced back, the people had merged into the shadows.

It took another few minutes to reach the structure and as they drew near Jonah could make out the haphazard nature of its construction.

‘They started building quickly around the breach. Then later, after The End when the survivors made their home in Coldbrook, they decided that further protection was needed. Walls and traps. Safeguards. It’s become something of a ritual for us to build some more onto this every three years.’ Drake pulled an object from his shoulder bag and handed it to Jonah.

‘And this will be the trigger,’ Jonah said.

‘Might feel strange to you.’ Drake placed it in Jonah’s hand. ‘Squeeze hard, and the pod beside your heart will burst.’ Warm, the size of a peanut, flexible, still Jonah sensed a solid centre to the item. He nodded and placed it carefully in his jacket pocket.

Drake led him inside. Jonah had no sense of leaving anything behind, perhaps because everything he had was already a world away.

They passed through a series of doors – most of them locked – passageways and arches, working their way deep into a labyrinth of concrete and rock. Drake took a route that was clear only to himself, and here and there he held up a hand and went about making their way safe. Some traps were basic: tripwires firing spring blades and primed
crossbows; false floors above deep, spiked pits; hidden triggers that anything unaware could activate and which would bring spikes or blades or crushing rocks down upon them. Other traps were more mysterious to Jonah: slow-flowing waterfalls that Drake had to divert, their effect unknown; openings haloed by weak light, the air within sparking softly. Jonah wanted to ask about every single one, his scientist’s mind alert. But there was no time for investigation.

As they went deeper, they came across the first trap that had been triggered.

‘From here, it might not be safe,’ Drake said. He aimed his light into a pit. Jonah looked and saw an old scarecrow-like thing down there. It was impaled on several long, thin spikes, and now it squirmed at their presence, clicking in its throat. Its face jutted out, leathery skin stretched over a bony forehead. Drake fired his crossbow and stilled it.

‘Here,’ Drake said. He delved into his bag and handed Jonah his pistol. ‘I’ll guide you to the breach, and protect you. Beyond there you might need this.’

‘How far?’ Jonah asked, still looking into the pit.

‘Three traps.’

A shadow closed on Jonah and pulled back again. His Inquisitor, letting him know it was there. He sensed no alarm radiating from it, no fear that Jonah was running away. He guessed that it could follow him to the ends of the Earths.

They went on, and each of the other three traps held the remains of a Neanderthal fury. Two were dead, their heads ruined. The third was pinned against a wooden frame that had sprung from the wall and been pushed back by those that had come after. It lifted its head at they approached and Drake destroyed it.

Jonah was amazed once more at the fury’s decayed state. It was over forty years dead, yet it had still had the ability to move and the will to spread its disease. He experienced a moment of panic that made his heart flutter and caused him to lean against the passage wall.

They walked on and soon passed through a final doorway in a thick stone wall. The wooden door had been pulled to one side, its top hinge pulled away from the crumbling rock.

‘I’ll reset them all on the way back out,’ Drake said.

‘I know,’ Jonah said.
And I’ll be committed to this
. But he hadn’t for a second thought about turning around. This might have been forced upon him, but, though he could never believe in fate or destiny, his mind was set.

‘This is it,’ Drake said, and for the first time Jonah heard a weakness in his voice. Awe did that, perhaps. And maybe fear.

The breach was in front of them, set into the original hillside like a black diamond. Light did not escape it: it neither shone nor glowed. It was simply a blackness in the shadows thrown by Drake’s torch.

Jonah held out his hand to Drake, and they shook.

‘They’ll write poems about you,’ Drake said.

‘Poems? Christ. I’m Welsh. Give me a good song any day.’

Drake laughed sadly, not quite understanding. ‘Good luck, Jonah.’

Without another word Jonah passed through, and his greatest journey began.

Jayne surfaced slowly from the churu coma, her senses coming alive as her pain grew. She felt as if she’d been torn apart and thrust back together again. The roar of the helicopter’s motor had stopped, replaced now with screaming and other, more terrible sounds. Something dripped. Someone cried, and it sounded like a little girl.

Jayne opened her eyes, and even that hurt. Groaning out loud, she lifted her hands and checked her body for wounds.

There was blood on the back of her head, but she didn’t think that it was hers.

‘Sean?’ she said, glancing to her left. Sean was gone. His safety straps were cut, and his absence seemed unnatural.

She closed her eyes, trying to process what she’d seen just across from her. Then she looked again.

The guy, Vic, was dead. Head flung back, from the chest up he was red. His mouth hung open, and blood dripped from between his teeth. His little girl was standing with her back to him, less than three feet from Jayne, tugging at her mother’s safety straps.

‘Hey,’ Jayne said.

The girl staggered a little, kicking something on the floor, letting out a wretched cry.

Someone screamed again, and the wrecked helicopter seemed to shake.

The woman – Lucy, Jayne remembered, the name coming to her even though she wasn’t sure they’d even been introduced – was whimpering as she wrestled with her straps.

‘Hey,’ Jayne said again. The woman looked up, her eyes wide. Her face was misted with blood, but it didn’t seem to be her own. She blinked a few times, glanced above and behind Jayne, and started moaning.

The little girl stood back and kicked the thing on the floor again. She froze, crying, and then a sharp metal snap signalled Lucy’s freedom. She snatched up her daughter and pressed her face against her chest before jumping through the hole where the cabin door had previously hung.

Jayne looked down at the thing on the floor and realised it was a head.
Not Sean, not Sean
, she realised, because this dead person was white. The head was
smashed and the only reason Jayne managed to keep from screaming was that it was looking away from her.
At least he’s safe now
, she thought, and then she did scream.

The dead man opposite her lifted his head and looked at her.

‘No!’ she shouted. ‘No, he’s one of them, no, help me,
help
me!’

From somewhere behind her came more anguished screaming, and then she recognised Marc’s voice calling Gary’s name again and again.

Sean appeared in the doorway, streaks of vomit across his chin and down his chest. He climbed in, shielding Vic from Jayne’s view, and—

‘Get your gun out!’ she shrieked. He held her, leaning in and ignoring the vomit as he pressed close, whispering into her ear that it was all right, she was alive,
alive
!

‘He’s not one of them,’ he said. He half turned. ‘Vic! Vic!’

‘Yeah,’ Vic said somehow. Jayne struggled against her straps, pushing against Sean to move him aside so she could see. She’d heard Vic talking, but she had to see.

Vic’s eyes were a startling white against the blood and other stuff coating his face. He spat, retched.

‘No more puke,’ Sean said. He put one hand on Vic’s chest and brought a knife around, and for a moment Jayne thought he was going to put the man out of his misery.

Sean sawed and hacked at the restraining straps.

‘Your family,’ he said, and Jayne saw Vic stumble from the wrecked aircraft and fall to the ground outside.

‘Sean? I saw his head. I saw Gary’s
head
.’

Sean glanced down and then came for her, putting himself between her and what she didn’t want to see again. Behind her, Marc’s shouting had ceased, and now she could hear him whispering. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying.

‘Got to cut you out,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry you as best I can, but you can’t—’

‘Marc,’ Jayne said.

Sean glanced behind her. ‘Saying his goodbyes,’ he said, and he went to work on her straps. His eyes were wide, and she wondered what he had seen.

‘There,’ Sean said as the straps fell away from Jayne. She slid a little to the right, not realising until then that they’d come to rest at a tilt. He did not apologise as he slung her arm around his neck and lifted.

Jayne half turned as she stood, and she strained to see over her seat into the pilot’s cabin. Lights were still on across the control panels, the windscreen and its framing had vanished, and she could see Marc in silhouette, hugging his lover’s headless corpse. Stunned, speechless, she let Sean help her from the helicopter and down to the ground.

They’d crashed fifty metres from a road that skirted
a large lake and had taken down several small trees in the process. Debris lay scattered across the rocky slope, and there were several deep gouges where the chopper’s rotors had struck and dug into the ground. Vic sat on a splintered tree, hands resting on his knees as he stared at the ground between his feet. His wife knelt next to him, and their daughter stood in front of them and hugged them both.

‘Mummy, Daddy,’ she said, over and over. ‘Mummy, Daddy.’ Jayne was pleased that the family was still together and when Sean eased her arm from around his neck she would not let him go.