Coldbrook(79)

The mistress was married to Nathan King, a writer and boozer. A troubled man, King had many acquaintances but only a handful of true friends. And one of those friends was an eccentric gay scientist the size of a grizzly bear, called Marc Dubois.

King called Marc, and told him what his wife had heard.





11


‘I knew she was getting it in the ass from someone, but a f*cking cop?’

Marc glanced at Vic and Gary. He’d switched the phone to loudspeaker as soon as King had told him the news.

‘What?’ Vic whispered, holding up his hands. Marc had gone white but something about his manner indicated excitement. Over the past few hours Vic had seen enough terrible sights with Marc to know how the man reacted to bad news. This was something different.

‘Say it again,’ Marc said. ‘I’ve got some people here who need to hear it.’

‘I said I knew the bitch was—’

‘Fuck it, Nathan, I don’t give a shit about who’s drilling your wife!’ Marc said. ‘The reason you called me. Me, of all people. The reason, Nathan.’

King told them what he’d heard. Vic listened to the rest of the conversation in a confused state, and not because he couldn’t hear the words. It was his heart. It had become a rock in his chest, a solid weight that he didn’t dare call hope. Immune! The online register had become a joke, with thousands of entries and thousands more red-lined ‘discredited’ markers. If this was true, the woman trapped in an aircraft at Baltimore airport – bitten, still alive, still human – might just be the most important person on the planet.

‘Vic?’ Marc said, and Vic realised the tall man had been talking to him.

‘Sorry. I . . . Yeah.’

‘I said, we should trust this. Her name’s Jayne Woodhams, and she’s not on the register. Doesn’t matter how it got to us, and I can’t imagine how King heard about it. He’s a drunken pseudo-philosopher, not a scientist. But . . .’

‘Immune.’ It was all Vic could say.

‘So what do we do?’ Gary asked. He was leaning back against a desk and wearing a big cowboy hat.

‘Someone has to get her and keep her safe,’ Vic said. ‘There’s that place in Atlanta, the disease place. Get her there.’

‘You’ve seen what’s happening in Atlanta!’ Marc said.

‘Have you heard from them?’ Gary asked.

‘No,’ Marc said, shaking his head. ‘I know a dozen people at the CDC. Can’t reach any of them. The phones just ring.’

‘So where else?’ Vic asked.

‘You know where else,’ Marc said. ‘I told you, I’m the best disease expert in the northern hemisphere.’

‘I thought you were boasting,’ Vic said, but he was thinking of Lucy and Olivia, and how safe they might be in that sparsely furnished room.

‘Here,’ Gary said.

‘Yes,’ Marc said. ‘We’ve got to fly to Baltimore and bring her back.’

It was Marc’s idea that Lucy and Olivia should go with them. Vic’s sense of relief when the phorologist suggested that they should stay together was immense – there was no way he’d ever have left them behind, but the thought of confronting Marc over that had troubled him.

Olivia knew that everything was wrong. She grasped her rag doll Scruffy in her left hand, and its hair was wet and stringy from where she’d been chewing. But how could he explain so that she would understand when he didn’t understand himself?

‘Where are we going?’ Olivia asked.

‘You ever been to Baltimore, honey?’ Gary asked.

‘Uhhh . . .’ Olivia glanced up at Vic, then shook her head.

‘Well, we’re going to visit a lady there.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Jayne,’ Gary said.

‘But can we fly in the dark?’

‘My helicopter is special. It’s called an Agusta 109 – very nice, very expensive – and it has computers and electronic gizmos and other magic stuff, all there to tell us whether it’s safe to fly, and whether there’s anyone else close by.’

‘Magic.’ Olivia looked at Gary and giggled uncertainly.

Marc entered the room, a heavy bag over one shoulder, and when Vic offered to take it Marc shook his head. ‘Not now,’ he said quietly.

Gary made a pantomime of putting on his cowboy hat and leaving the room, then turned back and knelt so that he was on Olivia’s level. ‘Say, honey, you want to come and sit in the pilot’s seat?’

‘Yeah!’ the girl said.

‘Is it safe?’ Lucy asked.

‘It’s fine,’ Marc said. ‘I’ve just been up there to check.’

Olivia and Gary left, and Marc placed the bag on a desk. The desk’s legs creaked, and Vic saw the sheen of sweat across the man’s forehead. He knew what he was carrying.

‘I hate guns,’ Lucy said, moving to Vic’s side so that their arms pressed together.

‘And I hate zombies,’ Marc said, hefting the bag again. ‘Shall we?’

Olivia was sitting in the helicopter wearing the pilot’s helmet, its dark visor down, while Gary sat next to her, running through a pre-flight check. Vic saw her through the windshield and felt an intense gratitude. How Gary had managed to get her across the roof and into the machine without her seeing or hearing any of the chaos below, Vic did not know. But he would have to thank the man later.