Coldbrook (Hammer)(131)

They approached the final door that Jonah knew led to the outside, and he grabbed Drake’s arm. The other man turned quickly, startled, ready for an attack. Jonah smiled and held up his hands.

‘You’ve already killed me, Drake,’ he said. ‘I just want to say something.’

‘Say it quickly,’ Drake said. He was looking behind Jonah, nervous and unsettled, and Jonah knew what he was looking for. He’ll be here soon, he thought, but not just yet. The Inquisitor needs me on my own. Because Jonah had plans beyond those that Drake had made for him.

‘I’ll do my best to carry this through, even though you took the choice from me. But you have to promise to help my friends. They’ll need access to Mannan and they might need protection. And they’ll do their best to come up with a vaccine.’

‘Of course,’ Drake said. ‘A cure is something I can never give up on.’

‘Holly will make sure –’ Jonah began. Then a look that that chilled him crossed Drake’s face.

Jonah shoved him against the door. Drake grunted, wincing when his head was bashed back against the metal. ‘What have you done to Holly?’

‘Stopped her following you through. I didn’t want her involved, seeing what I had to do to you.’

‘Stopped her how?’

‘Moira stayed behind to tie her up.’

Jonah sighed, missing Holly even more. ‘Tell her . . . tell her you asked me, and I agreed to all this,’ he said.

Drake nodded, and Jonah felt the respect between them growing again. Drake was a scientist and a ruthless man, ready to compromise his own morals for the greater good. Was that reprehensible or admirable? Jonah couldn’t decide. He didn’t have forty years of living as a survivor to influence his choices.

Drake opened the door, and cool night air sighed in.

Eight men and women came out with them into the darkness, and they walked silently towards the head of the valley. Though none of them spoke, Jonah could sense the respect they held for him. A few glanced his way now and then, as if to imprint him on their memories. Perhaps they’d tell their children and grandchildren of how they had seen the man carrying the Inquisitors’ doom in his heart.

After an hour walking through the night, he saw the bulky angles of a building on a shoulder between two mountains, several hundred feet below the ridge line and on the moonward side. It reminded Jonah of a coal mine on a hillside back home.

‘Jonah,’ Drake whispered, ‘is it following?’

‘I have no idea,’ Jonah said. ‘You said yourself, it’s not all-seeing.’

Drake glanced at him, worried.

Jonah smiled. ‘Yes, Drake. It’s following. Has been for a few minutes.’

They moved off again, climbing the ridge until they were level with the large structure, then cutting across the hillside. Shale slopes whispered in the darkness as they dislodged stones, and shapes scattered to hide in shadows as they approached.

Jonah slipped his fingers inside his shirt and fingered the small wound on his chest. It was two inches below his left nipple and towards the centre of his chest, and it felt more like a boil than an entry wound. Its head was smooth and warm to the touch, and hard – when he pressed it the nodule sank into his loose old-man’s skin but hurt only a little. If he took a deep breath, he could feel the small charge inside surrounded by fury blood. Before they parted company Drake would give him the trigger.

He felt curiously detached from the thing in his chest. It was not a part of him. If anything, it was a part of Drake’s desires and destiny, not his own.

At a silent signal the eight people spread out across the slope, four above and four below the point where they had stopped.

‘I’ll take you from here,’ Drake said. ‘There are traps.’

Jonah felt stares on him as he and Drake walked towards the building, but no one spoke. Perhaps they were so used to moving silently when they were outside that they could not bring themselves to say anything.

The last time Jonah glanced back, the people had merged into the shadows.

It took another few minutes to reach the structure and as they drew near Jonah could make out the haphazard nature of its construction.

‘They started building quickly around the breach. Then later, after The End when the survivors made their home in Coldbrook, they decided that further protection was needed. Walls and traps. Safeguards. It’s become something of a ritual for us to build some more onto this every three years.’ Drake pulled an object from his shoulder bag and handed it to Jonah.