Coldbrook(83)

After a few minutes Holly paused and listened for any sounds of pursuit. Surely they’d know by now that she had escaped? When she thought she’d gone far enough she turned up the hillside, heading through sparse tree cover for the ridge. She’d always had a good sense of direction, and she had a positive feeling about where she was heading. She could not remember in detail every part of her journey on the stretcher, but this somehow felt right. She paused and turned every couple of minutes, trying to locate a view she might have seen before.

On the ridge she tried to find her bearings. Another ridge across the valley cut a recognisable line against the faint moonlight, spiked here and there with more trees than she was used to, yet it was a place that she knew from her own world. And closer, the slope she was about to take down from this hilltop swept towards the valley floor in a familiar bowl shape, home to a narrow creek and a chattering stream, slopes clothed with trees. She had come climbing here once with Melinda, searching for old birds’ nests, and both of them had been in awe of the wilderness around them.

The wilderness closed in on her now, though, and awe was tainted with fear.

She moved down from the hilltop into another dip in the landscape and crossed a stream, lifting the hem of her shapeless dress and gasping at the water’s coldness. On the opposite bank she paused, and thought she heard footsteps.

Holly inhaled sharply and held her breath. She looked around, but could see no one, nothing. Animal, she thought, but that brought no comfort at all. It could be anything.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Holly?’ she whispered, but nothing replied, nothing ran at her.

She continued across an open area of hillside, noticing a dense woodland that began thirty metres down the slope from her. She was certain she remembered this from her journey here, but back then it had not felt so threatening. Now she sensed things among the trees, things that smelled like old stale clothes thrown out.

Just spooked, she thought. And as she tried convincing herself of that, she saw them.

Several figures came out of the shadows, little more than shadows themselves. It took only moments to see what they were, and Holly cried out in fear, firing the bolt already loaded into the crossbow. It whispered uselessly away into the darkness. They shuffled uphill towards her, and she was glad that the poor light hid their features.

She sprinted to put distance between herself and the stumbling furies. She didn’t know whether they could run, had no idea if they could track her by her scent. She knew nothing about them and her fear was like a cold rock in her stomach. She had a growing certainty that she was going to die in this older, deader world.

Seeing the furies made her more aware of shadows across the hillside where there should be none, movement that might or might not be plants shifting in the breeze. She paused for a moment and tried to reload the crossbow – there was a rack of six bolts on its underside – but dropped the bolt and cried out as her finger caught in the mechanism. She picked up the bolt and ran on.

It was difficult for Holly to admit that she was lost. Everywhere she saw views that she might have seen when they’d brought her here. But when she followed a gurgling stream in the hope that it might be the one running past the breach, and found herself among ruins, she could no longer deny the truth.

At first she was not quite sure what she was seeing. The mounds were uneven, the plant growth thick. But then she saw an obvious wall on her left, its upper few feet camouflaged with a few lone ivy tendrils, its blocks square and even.

Holly tried to place where she was in relation to her own world – if the hillside had been similar to that location on her Earth, then these ruins should not be here. But she and Drake had failed to pinpoint precisely where the two worlds’ realities had parted and become differing possibilities, and this could be anywhere.

She moved on, because she still sensed the worst dangers were creeping up on her from behind.

It must once have been a small town at least, because the deeper in she went, the more regularly spaced the ruins became. There were house-sized buildings with roofs stripped away and few walls remaining upright, larger structures with sparse steel ribs stark against the sky, and a set of sharp curves that froze her to the spot. Rusted, one of them missing its upper portion, their shape and design seemed unmistakable, and she had always known them as the Golden Arches.

‘McDonald’s?’ she whispered, almost laughing. ‘Fucking McDonald’s!’ But Holly could not pause to wonder. All around her there was movement in the shadows.

She plunged ahead, following what had once been a road. Now was just a clearer pathway between ruins, turning slowly to the left and heading uphill to the shoulder of a narrow valley. For a moment it seemed familiar, and she was struck with a peculiar sense of déjà vu, a disconcerting feeling that she was not doing any of this of her own volition. She had walked this way before.

Holly tripped, staggered forward, found her balance, and then tripped again. She dropped the crossbow and put out her hands, cushioning her fall against a wall. She gasped and breathed deeply a few times, trying to calm her galloping heart. And then whatever was moving made itself heard.

Nails against stone, bone against brick. And the ground around her feet shifted.

Fuck f*ck f*ck – she pushed herself upright and snatched up the crossbow. Something bumped against her shoe. She staggered back a few steps and watched a figure rising, arms splayed against the wall, bony fingers clawing at the ivy-covered brickwork.