Coldbrook(120)
Something rose across the room. It crackled and snapped as it pulled itself from the ground, frozen there, a sticklike figure made into a snowman. Jonah took a few steps towards it and put a bullet into its head. The snow was splashed red. All those years the fury had lain there dead, and its brains were still wet. Jonah wondered at its dreadful dreams.
He turned a full circle, taking in the whole huge room, intrigued by notions of the possible technologies hidden beneath the white blanket. But he did not have time to explore. That was not why he was there.
The Inquisitor stood at the end of the room in an open doorway. The space behind him was shaded and free of snow: a corridor, perhaps, leading deeper into this Earth’s Coldbrook.
Jonah backed away towards one of the other breaches. The Inquisitor advanced, matching him step for step. The wound on its shoulder had ceased bleeding, the blood by now a stiff black carapace. He hoped that the wound might even have left a scar.
I’m not running, he thought, because it was obvious that this was something that could not be escaped. So what was he doing? He felt the awfulness of the distances he had come.
‘Accept,’ the Inquisitor said.
‘No,’ Jonah replied, and he dashed at the next breach. He didn’t even pause for breath before walking through, though he did have time to think I wonder where all the others go?
9
‘It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong,’ Lucy said. ‘Maybe she’s just busy.’
‘Yeah.’ Vic had been trying to contact Holly and the phone rang and rang. Every time he blinked he saw Holly as one of those things, only now she was grinning with his dead sister’s grin.
‘What’s wrong, Daddy?’ Olivia asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said, smiling at his daughter. ‘You and Mommy are here, so everything’s fine.’ Lucy half-smiled and looked away, out of her side window at the wild mountainsides passing by.
Sean had taken over the driving, and Marc sat in the passenger seat with his laptop open. On the dashboard in front of him was the notebook with the handwritten list of names. There were at least eight people crossed off. Others had ticks beside them, and a few more had yet to be contacted.
‘Those names you’ve crossed off—’ Vic began, but Marc did not let him finish.
‘Dead.’
The silence in the vehicle was sombre. Beside Vic, Jayne shifted, groaning softly.
‘Just because you can’t contact them—’
‘This one,’ Marc said, voice loud and firm. ‘Radomyr Golovnya. Lives in Kiev. The Russians have used some unknown weapon along their western borders, and Ukraine and Belarus have been affected. So Radomyr, a brilliant physician, a man I once argued with for six hours about the common cold, is dead.’
He struck the pad with his pen, indicating another name. ‘Rob Nichols. Quiet guy, too humble for my liking – I mean, he was a f*cking genius. He lived in Wales, he and Jonah went to the same school but at different times. And I can’t reach him, and I know he’s dead, because I’ve seen what’s become of Cardiff.’
‘Phone lines and networks—’ Vic began, but Marc cut him off again, needing to name his dead friends to vent his rage and grief.
‘Kagiso, she told me that her name means “peace”. Johannesburg. It’s just . . . gone. They nuked it. Kagiso was the best paediatric-disease researcher I’ve ever met. Beautiful woman.’ He shook his head and touched another crossed-out name. ‘Caspian Morhaim, microbiologist. Kicked out of seven universities, four ex-wives, seven kids at the last count. Completely f*cking insane. Knows more about hot viruses than anyone. He once told me, “Ebola is my bitch.” Spends half his life in BSL-4 labs, then for kicks he bungee jumps and free-dives, just to clear his head. He worked in Galveston, University of Texas. And Texas is f*cked.’
Marc touched other names and shook his head again. The car remained silent for a while, all of them waiting for him to go on. But now the silence became a respectful goodbye to the dead they all knew.
He’s thinking of them still walking, Vic thought. He closed his eyes and could only picture Holly.
‘But there are others? You’ll get the help you need?’ Sean asked. They were climbing the side of a mountain, the road zigzagging through a heavily forested area. The truck and school bus followed, along with several more vehicles that had joined the column. Some of the Unblessed gang had taken to roaring ahead to clear the way, and often they’d leave a corpse or four by the roadside. Other times, the rest of the survivors would catch up to find the bikers shooting at shapes that were pushing their way through the undergrowth. No one thought that target practice was a bad idea.
One of the bikers was a huge man with incredible facial hair. Each time Olivia stared at him from the station wagon window he performed a clumsy dance for her that ended in a pirouette. Vic treasured the sound of his daughter’s chuckling and realised that he had not made her laugh since this nightmare had begun.
‘Help,’ Marc said. He turned in his seat to look at Vic and his family, and at Jayne leaning against the door. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I’ve got help. Some people are emailing me as much data as they can. A few are on the move like us, trying to survive. But they’ve said that they’ll send me information, opinions, theories, guesswork as long as they can. They’re making it their prime aim.’ He shook his head. ‘Some I believe, some I don’t. Prime aim . . . that’s got to be family, hasn’t it?’ He glanced at Vic. ‘Hasn’t it?’