Coldbrook(42)

Vic Pearson punched the ‘off’ button and the car fell silent. Olivia snored softly in the back seat, and he wondered when was the last time he’d watched his daughter sleeping and wondered at her dreams. He hoped these were still good ones. Soon, he feared, she would see and know things that might banish childish dreams for ever.

‘Is that all because of what happened?’ Lucy asked from the passenger seat. Vic could not look at her, because he feared the accusation in her eyes.

‘It might be.’

‘But have you told anyone? Have you warned them?’

‘I told the sheriff.’

‘But beyond that?’

The road was long and straight before them, a snake of headlights and lamp posts, and none of them could know what they were leaving behind. He didn’t know, not really. Not yet.

‘Jonah will be onto it,’ Vic said.

‘But it’s spreading. Fast. Those shambling ghost things near Bryson City, do you think—’

‘Maybe!’ Vic said, harsher than he’d intended. Olivia mumbled something in her sleep, words he would never know.

‘Don’t snap at me, Vic,’ Lucy said, intending to castigate him. But her nervous voice betrayed her fear. ‘Bryson City . . . that’s twenty miles from Danton Rock, maybe more.’

Vic had been thinking the same thing. And the Scout troop north-east of Asheville, that was even further away in the opposite direction. He drove on into the night, but when he closed his eyes he saw the darkness of that ventilation duct and smelled the scorched odour of its lockdown.

‘Well, I want to know,’ Lucy said softly, and she turned the radio back on.

I let it all out, Vic thought. He needed to tell her. Everything that’s happening is my fault. I let it escape. But blame was bad enough coming from Jonah, and himself. He was not sure he could bear it from the woman he loved.

Some bland love song breezed into the car, and Lucy turned the dial in her search for more news.

‘. . . the Scout troop, and further reports are coming in of isolated violent incidents across the county. On the outskirts of Maryville a church has been found abandoned with blood splashed across its walls and floor. Police are suggesting vandalism, but eyewitnesses say that there are obvious signs of a struggle. Police in Newport have shot dead a man who was attacking and biting people on the streets. Not sure if that reads right, but . . . And here’s . . . . a new item has just been put in front of me, there’s a . . . a riot is going on in a suburb of Greenville, South Carolina. There are several fires reported, and the rioting crowd appears to be growing. And reports of . . . again, biting. This is NCRR Radio, more updates on these stories as they . . .’

‘Nothing about Knoxville yet,’ Jayne muttered to herself, turning the radio down. ‘I might still be okay. I might still make it.’ She concentrated on her driving, not too fast, not too slow, not wishing to attract the attention of the law. Her bite was raw and painful, and she had slipped on a denim jacket to cover it up. But she couldn’t risk being pulled over in case they checked and saw, and . . .

And what then? She didn’t know. Because those f*ckers had been zombies: she’d seen the movies and heard Tommy talking about the books he’d read, and she’d watched that guy taken down by the woman and his baby boy bitten, and then stand again as . . .

‘As one of them,’ she whispered. Tommy had stayed down, unbitten and ignored, because the guy had shot him in the head.

‘Tommy,’ she said aloud, and still the tears would not come. The fact of his death was firm with her, she had no doubts, yet it had still not hit home properly. The events surrounding his death still felt like some kind of mad dream, blood-filled and driven by painkillers and too much wine. She’d wake and tell Tommy about her zombie dream, and he’d laugh and massage her back to life as he did every morning, then go and smoke his joint.

She’d tried 911 four more times as she drove down out of the mountains, only managing to get through once. The guy she’d connected with had taken down the details, waiting patiently as she pulled over and cried as she relayed what had happened up in the car park. Then he’d confirmed that they’d get someone up there ‘when they could’. He’d signed off without taking her address or contact number.

Since then she’d driven with the radio on, because word always spread.

She thought about Ellie, her friend who’d already fled Knoxville ahead of these weird news reports. She had always been easily panicked, and seemed to take the world’s problems on her shoulders. Every week there was another Armageddon that she knew would be the end of her, from Ebola to swine flu, asteroid strikes to global warming, and for someone with such strength of character Jayne was surprised that Ellie could be so afraid.

‘Right to be scared of this shit, Ells,’ Jayne said.

And as she ran through a mental list once again – passport in my desk, couple of hundred bucks stashed in underwear drawer, credit cards, airport a twenty-minute drive from home – she spared a thought for her mother. It was rare that Jayne thought of her at all. She was a ghost in her past, scar tissue on her memory, and she could barely remember her face. That tie had been severed years ago. There were no more, and it was time to finish the journey she’d begun when she had left LA.

It was dark now, and Tommy was still lying dead in that car park. Mountain animals would be emerging from their hiding places, joining the shadows as they grew from the ground. She should never have left him there at the mercy of carrion creatures.