Coldbrook(66)

‘What the f*ck was that?’ Holly said.

‘Take a breath, Holly,’ Drake said. ‘And look around. This is the heart of our Coldbrook.’

Holly looked closer. The woman wore a simple robe similar to a hospital gown and lay on a large flexible bed that was moulded perfectly to her body. Above her, where the image had seemed to be projected onto the air, hung a framework of clear loose pipes. They looked like unobstructed flows of water, but Holly guessed they were held in place and shape by whatever forces contained the clear bed. Leading up from the framework into the ceiling were thicker pipes, dark and solid. Small sparks flared and died along them, leaving the surfaces and performing tight orbits before fading away. She stretched up to get a better look, but Moira touched her on the shoulder.

‘Don’t get too close.’

‘Is she the one who . . .?’ the prone woman asked.

‘Her name’s Holly,’ Drake said.

‘That was my world,’ Holly said softly, pointing to where a vague haze still hung in the air. ‘So she was there, seeing it? My world?’

‘I’m so sorry, Holly,’ the woman said, and she averted her eyes as if ashamed.

‘What is all this?’ Holly asked.

‘Our version of what you called a breach,’ Drake said. ‘There’s more to see. Gayle?’ Drake asked.

‘About seventy miles north-west of here,’ the woman said softly.

‘That all came from what happened in Coldbrook?’ Holly asked. But no one answered, because they knew she was coming to terms with what she’d just seen.

‘We can show you more,’ Drake said, nodding towards the rest of the room. Heavy curtains hung as dividers, but beyond Gayle – the woman still lying meekly in front of her – Holly could now make out variations in the room’s lighting, and colours beyond those curtains.

‘More?’ she said. And though what she had seen was terrible, she nodded and followed Drake.

Spread throughout the large room were men, women, and some children, perhaps a dozen in total. Half of them were twitching in their fluid beds while images played in the air above them. The projection’s outer extremes would flex and bend, pipes leading up into the ceiling sparking and whipping from some unseen influence, and the sleepers were connected to the screens with more of those fluid connections, watery snakes squirming through the air. The remaining people lay in deep slumbers. They all looked exhausted, and Holly wondered briefly whether they were here against their wills. But Gayle had apologised to her, and she’d heard a level of admiration in Drake’s voice. Maybe these were the only people in Gaia’s Coldbrook who were able to do this. And whatever these devices were, they showed her how her own world was dying. Though the images were silent, she could imagine every scream of pain and roar of destruction.

She saw a field, crops trampled by hundreds of running people. In the distance she could just make out the first regular shapes of buildings, the only taller structure a church spire. They were running towards a small town.

Rushing through an indoor market, stalls crashing and crushed, jewellery and paintings, books and pots, sculptures and other craft items trampled into the floor, as sellers and customers alike were caught and bitten.

And then she saw the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. One of her favourite buildings, now it had bodies scattered on the lawns, windows smashed, and smears of blood across its light brown fa?ade. People were rushing from the main entrance, and she knew what they all were.

It was then that Holly realised that these sights were viewed through a zombie’s eyes. Somehow, the people lying around her were seeing the downfall of her Earth through the eyes of monsters.

‘How does this work?’ she asked. ‘Where is your breach generator? I don’t understand.’

‘You walk into our world from another, and you don’t understand?’ Drake said.

‘But these things . . . this technology.’

‘Quantum bridges. I’ve read my father’s notes, and he handed down most of his knowledge. Once they learned how to stabilise micro-black holes in the lab they could draw through gravity lines. You thought we were backward?’

‘No, no,’ Holly said. But perhaps she had in the beginning, just a little. She’d seen bows and arrows, basic clothing, and people living in holes in the ground.

‘Come with me,’ Drake said. ‘It’s best not to talk too much in the casting room. It’s tiring work, and sometimes to watch it can be . . .’ He shrugged.

‘Draining,’ Moira said.

Holly nodded, feeling a surge of anger. But that faded quickly, replaced with a hollow hopelessness and a feeling of guilt that she was the one who’d escaped.

‘Please,’ Drake said, holding out his hand in invitation. ‘We’ll tell you what happened here. As much as we can, at least.’

‘As much as you can.’

‘We don’t know everything. It was before most of us were born.’

Holly shook her head. All the parts made sense, but together the big picture was a blur, a confused reflection of what she had seen happening on those strange screens. It all started here, she thought. That first zombie came from here.

And for Earth to become like Gaia was now the best she could hope for.

‘No one from here has ever travelled to an alternate Earth.’ Drake had just prised a door open and they stood in a ruined room, the concrete walls crumbled with damp, metal reinforcements rusted and protruding like rotten teeth. A series of glass pipes were strung horizontally across one wall, many of them holed and smashed. Furniture was simple and functional. The room was lit by several hanging oil lamps, though electrical wires protruded from holes in the ceiling.