Coldbrook(62)

‘The military?’

‘As you’d expect,’ Marc said. ‘National Emergency, the Guard called up, doing everything in their power, blah-di-f*cking blah. Offered my services, they just said they had their own people. But they don’t have what we have – Jonah, and Coldbrook.’

‘Had,’ Vic said.

‘He’ll get back online. He has to.’

‘Haven’t they sent anyone to Coldbrook?’ Vic asked, realising that he should have asked Jonah.

‘I asked,’ Marc said. ‘They told me that information was classified. So I made a call, spoke to a guy I know. The term he used was clusterf*ck.’

‘And you’ve missed all the political shouting,’ Gary said. ‘National, international. Thanks to the Internet, the whole world’s watching this in real-time. All flights from the States turned back, north and south borders closed.’ He laughed out loud, a shocking sound. ‘Lot of good that will do! Like closing the borders to flies.’

‘What are these?’ Vic asked. Initially he’d believed that the scattered red dots elsewhere across the country might have been a fault on the laptop screen, or perhaps reports of false sightings. But the more he looked at them, the more they seemed to blink like red eyes.

‘Isolated outbreaks,’ Marc said. ‘Something like this doesn’t just spread evenly.’

‘But Jacksonville? Dallas?’

‘People run,’ Gary said. ‘Christ knows I would.’

‘I did,’ Vic said softly.

‘And that’s why the spread can never be stopped physically,’ Marc said. ‘Gary’s fly comment is pretty good, but still not accurate. There’s film all over the Internet of these things being shot, but short of building a five-thousand-mile-long wall to contain the whole area . . .’ He raised his hands despairingly. ‘There are planes, trains, cars, helicopters, boats. Those infected don’t show intelligence – certainly no more than a rudimentary memory, and perhaps a basic ability to learn through repetition. But they could be trapped in a hold or a car’s trunk. Or maybe the infection can survive for a time in spilled blood.’

‘Holy f*ck,’ Vic said.

‘That’s just what Marc’s been saying,’ Gary said.

‘I’ve been busy while you were resting.’ Marc dropped a leather notebook in Vic’s lap, folded open at a page filled with names. ‘Jonah and I . . . we’ve been friends since you were shitting your diapers. Don’t agree on everything, that’s for sure. He’s a stubborn old f*ck.’

‘You know him well,’ Vic muttered.

‘But one thing we’ve always agreed on is that there’s no politics or religion in science. No boundaries. Secrecy benefits states, but shared knowledge is the way forward for mankind. He’s already spoken to some of these people, but not all. He didn’t get through the list before . . .’ He shrugged.

‘Spoken why?’ Vic asked.

‘For help. There are scientists around the world working on this, and I’ve already established a direct line with some of them.’


Vic started reading the names on the list. Some had a tick beside them, a few were crossed out. He recognised a few from conversations with Jonah over the years – and he knew a couple more by reputation. Others he had never heard of, and there were a few names he could not even pronounce.

‘Robert Nichols, professor of cellular immunology,’ Vic read. ‘Lucy-Anne Francis, physical cosmologist. Kazuki Yoshida, thanatologist. Caspian Morhaim, microbiologist.’

‘You know so many interesting people,’ Gary said.

‘And a musician can say that?’ Vic asked. He felt a brief, vivid flood of optimism, fed partly by Marc’s actions and the knowledge of the people they already had on their side, ready to work as hard as they could until this was over. But perhaps it was also inspired by knowing that Marc was now in control.

‘So what’s the bad news?’ Vic asked.

‘That was it,’ Gary said. ‘For the f*cking terrible news, you’ll have to follow me.’

‘Where to?’ Vic went cold, because the two men had suddenly grown grimmer than ever. The smoky air in the room felt heavy, loaded.

‘The roof,’ Gary said. ‘I saw the first fire to the south half an hour ago.’

They climbed to the wide roof together and stood at the parapet. It was dawn. To the east the horizon was smeared deep pink and orange, reminding Vic of Marc’s disease-spread program. And to the south, Cincinnati was already awake.

There were three spires of smoke, each arcing gently to the west and spreading into a high haze. Two of them were several miles away, their sources hidden by folds in the land and buildings in the city, but Vic could see the glimmer of fire at the base of the third column. It was perhaps two miles away.

‘That’s a new one,’ Gary said. ‘Closer.’

‘Bengals’ stadium ablaze,’ Marc said. ‘You know . . . everyone runs.’

‘What do you mean?’ Vic asked, but then he realised what Marc was getting at.

‘They run to survive, or they run to spread the disease. Those f*ckers’ main aim isn’t to eat f*cking brains, or whatever it is they do in the movies. They spread the disease, as quickly and widely as possible. This is no passive contagion.’