Coldbrook(33)
‘Hooting?’
Vic backed towards the door, the sheriff staring at him, and when he felt the cold wood at his back the policewoman came for him, still afraid but with a purpose in mind. She had one arm behind her back, reaching for her handcuffs.
‘Let the f*cker run,’ Blanks said, and he stormed through a door behind the desk.
Vic turned and pushed his way out, feeling the policewoman’s stare on his back. When he emerged onto the sunlit front steps, Lucy was leaning from the passenger window of the RAV4, Olivia’s small face pressed against the back window.
‘What?’ Lucy asked immediately.
‘Nothing.’ Vic ran down the steps and around the front of the vehicle, and as he was opening the driver’s door he heard the roar of a motor. He climbed into the car and slammed his door, hitting the central locking button in case the sheriff changed his mind. If he does, it’s pedal down – the idea of fleeing the law was somehow more unsettling than anything. It was an indicator of how much had changed so quickly. Three hours ago I was asleep, he thought, and his dead sister’s face loomed at him again.
‘I love you,’ he said, turning to his wife.
She caught her breath, surprised. Her eyes watered. Vic leaned across to kiss her and, though she barely responded, she didn’t pull away.
‘Mommy and Daddy, loving it up!’ Lucy called, and Olivia’s laughter was the greatest gift Vic could have asked for right then.
A police cruiser emerged from beside the station and stopped directly in front of the RAV4. The sheriff sat in the driver’s seat, the policewoman beside him, and he stared at Vic as he spoke into the car’s radio. As he pulled away and powered off down the street, Lucy asked, ‘What was that all about?’
‘Out on a call,’ Vic said. He started the car and swung it around, and as he headed onto the road leading north out of town he hoped the sheriff had listened to the message he’d relayed from Jonah: shoot them in the head.
Says they’re like wild animals, but quiet. Suddenly, zombies no longer sounded so absurd.
‘Look, Daddy!’ Olivia said, pointing, and Vic skidded to a stop. With the roads still quiet, the whukka-whukka sound of three Chinooks heading south-west towards Coldbrook was almost ghostly.
He drove fast and hard, trying to lay down distance between his family and whatever he had let escape.
It was nine o’clock in the morning.
6
Holly rose from her nightmare –
God help me, where did that come from? That thing, Melinda, the blood and screaming . . . Jonah’s hopeless gaze through the window. And the breach—
– and for a moment before she opened her eyes she believed that Vic was lying beside her. The narrow bed moved as he stirred, and she reached out to touch him, wondering why she couldn’t feel his warm naked body pressed close to hers. They were all given single beds in their quarters, and sharing had always been a cramped, sweaty affair. But she had liked it. Waking to Vic, sometimes she believed they could be together.
Her hand closed around something cool and gnarled, and when she opened her eyes she saw a wooden pole slipped through the stretcher’s canvas hoops, and remembered where she was.
The realisation struck her with a jolt, unreality flooding in as she struggled to find sleep again. Back to sleep, escape this nightmare, and Vic’s waiting for me if I can only close my eyes and get back to sleep!
The stretcher shook as those carrying it negotiated uneven terrain, and Holly opened her eyes once again. A thud of pain throbbed through her head. She tried to sit up. Something clicked nearby—
Their fingers, that’s how they communicate, I saw that just after—
—and the stretcher was lowered to the ground. She felt the rough ridges and contours of this place pressing through the canvas, spiking her buttocks and hips, and her elbow where she propped herself up. Memory flooded in as she looked around at the people who had saved her.
The arrow had struck the crawling woman just below the left eye, the impact sounding like wood striking wood, flipping her head back and to the side. She’d slumped down on the ruin, and suddenly people were all around Holly. She had not seen them moments before, and wondered whether they had been hiding or had been tracking her since she’d emerged from the breach. She’d barely had her wits about her then, after the violence she had seen. None of this is real, she’d thought.
But then a man and woman had approached her, and behind them were six more. They’d all carried weapons: bows and arrows, and crossbows. Most wore their hair braided tight to their scalps, and their clothes were loose and rough and all but colourless. They were utterly silent. Holly heard no breathing, no rustle of leather-bound feet through the long grass, no clink of metal on metal as they moved. And they seemed to communicate entirely by sign language, an incomprehensible twisting, clicking and flexing of fingers, shifting of hands, and facial expressions that might have been a background to whatever they ‘said’.
She’d looked at the dead woman, now nothing more than a dried husk, and wondered whether there were more. One on its own might have been bad luck, she’d thought, but two means there must be more.
The man had lifted his crossbow and aimed it at Holly’s face, two fingers held to his lips. He and his female colleague walked slowly around her, looking her up and down, making her feel distinctly uncomfortable. The others stood back, at least two more aiming their weapons in her direction.