Coldbrook (Hammer)(140)

‘Fuck it!’ she shouted, clearing her senses with an outburst of rage. In the distance, from a direction distorted by echoes, she heard first one short hoot, and then another, both of them drawing closer.

It didn’t matter. She had the gun, and there was only one possible outcome. If Vic and the others can’t get down here, they might die. If they die, any chance at a cure is gone. If there’s no cure, my Earth dies just like all those others. The future depended on whether she could reach a Hummer, start it, and drive it a few feet.

It was so ridiculous that she might have laughed.

Left arm pressed across her stomach, her hand clasping the temporary dressing tighter to her right side, Holly started along the corridor again. She knew the complex well, not only the passageways and rooms but those spaces between and behind them where cable routes and plant rooms linked the facility together.

That was how she would beat the furies. Two left, but with her senses fading in and out she could not risk simply charging ahead blind. She had to balance speed with caution.

As she moved, something bothered her. A mistake. An idea that she had left herself open to danger. But she did not dwell too heavily on it, because that would divert her concentration.

Coldbrook was abandoned and run-down, and all but silent. There were only her footsteps, shuffled sounds whispering along a corridor stained with dried blood, scattered with items discarded in panic, the walls pocked with bullet holes here and there. And then there were the bodies.

They stank. The smell filled her nose. She tried breathing through her mouth, but that made it worse.

Pausing at the door of the common room, Holly held her breath and listened.

No footsteps. Nothing moved. Coldbrook’s lighting hummed softly, and deeper down was the constant presence of the core, a sensation more than a noise, betraying itself through the fabric of the place as it had ever since it had first been initiated many years ago.

As she reached for the door, her satphone rang.

‘Shit!’ Startled, she pulled her hand from her wound to go for the phone. Blood had dried against her hand and she ripped part of the padded trouser leg and tied dress away. The pain stabbed through her, and she dropped the gun.

Something banged against the other side of the door. It struck again and again, the lever handle flipping down and up, down and up. The fury was struggling to open the door, some fragmentary memory telling it what to do. Holly stooped for the gun, and then pitched forward as a fainting spell washed over her. Oh f*ck, not like this, she thought, and as the door creaked open behind her she realised she had lost.

‘Fuck f*ck f*ck!’ she shouted – pure rage, pure hopelessness, the most defined and lucid moment of her life so close to its end.

The door banged against the wall. Footsteps. She rolled towards the sound and screamed, but the thing stayed silent. The fury tripped over her and struck the ground head first, thrashing like a landed fish for a few seconds as Holly scrambled aside, kicking against it, pushing against the floor until she sat against the wall and the gun was by her side. She grabbed it up and held it in both hands, and then the fury turned to face her.

Sugg. Their chef. A calm, quiet man, he’d spent most of his spare time birdwatching in the mountains above them. Now he looked relatively untouched apart from a terrible bite on his left hand. But Holly knew there was nothing at all human about him, and she shot him in the neck. He fell back, lifted himself again, and she fired into his head. This time he lay still.

Panting as she tried to retain consciousness, Holly realised that the satphone was still ringing in her pocket. ‘Oh Vic, for f*ck’s sake,’ she breathed. As she plucked out the phone she heard several sets of running footsteps.

Moira must have released more than three furies.

Holly propped the phone between her knees and aimed along the corridor, back the way she had come. How many bullets?

The first person around the corner was Drake. He paused, took in the situation, then ran on. Moira came behind him, then several more Gaians. They were armed, sweating, grim-faced, and Holly thought they had been in a fight.

She did not lower the gun.

‘Take one more f*cking step,’ she said, voice husky with threat.

Drake raised his crossbow and fired in one fluid movement. From behind him three more bolts blurred along the corridor.

Holly did not even have time to close her eyes before the projectiles struck home.

The fury staggered three more steps through the doorway, bolts protruding from her throat and face. Her mouth worked, and a high keening emerged, something like the strange hooting Holly had heard before. The woman who had been Sam – Coldbrook’s accountant, who had famously arrived at their last Halloween bash dressed as Carrie, complete with a drenching of fake blood – fell close enough for Holly to touch.