Coldbrook (Hammer)(143)

The little stream passed around Jonah’s feet and added its contributions of ice to the frozen sculptures that hung from the pedestal.

There were five other pedestals, leading off from his in a broad curve around the room. Two of them were empty, but the other three supported obsidian globes, depthless black orbs that swallowed the snow and gave back nothing.

‘Bloody hell,’ Jonah muttered into the gusting snow.

Breathing hard, he stepped forward and almost slipped on ice. Carefully, he descended from the pedestal: three steps to the floor, where the snow came up to his shins. He glanced back at the breach he had come through, ready to bring his gun to bear against any threat that presented itself. None of the furies from that world followed him, and neither did the Inquisitor.

There was no movement around him apart from the falling snow. Whatever had befallen this world had occurred long ago, or if it was still going on it was happening elsewhere. The massive holes in the roof seemed to have been punched in, not out, and he imagined the people of this Earth lobbing artillery shells at their Coldbrook facility from a distance in a vain attempt to close the breaches they had made, shut them off from the terrors pouring through. But by then it had already been too late.

Something rose across the room. It crackled and snapped as it pulled itself from the ground, frozen there, a sticklike figure made into a snowman. Jonah took a few steps towards it and put a bullet into its head. The snow was splashed red. All those years the fury had lain there dead, and its brains were still wet. Jonah wondered at its dreadful dreams.

He turned a full circle, taking in the whole huge room, intrigued by notions of the possible technologies hidden beneath the white blanket. But he did not have time to explore. That was not why he was there.

The Inquisitor stood at the end of the room in an open doorway. The space behind him was shaded and free of snow: a corridor, perhaps, leading deeper into this Earth’s Coldbrook.

Jonah backed away towards one of the other breaches. The Inquisitor advanced, matching him step for step. The wound on its shoulder had ceased bleeding, the blood by now a stiff black carapace. He hoped that the wound might even have left a scar.

I’m not running, he thought, because it was obvious that this was something that could not be escaped. So what was he doing? He felt the awfulness of the distances he had come.

‘Accept,’ the Inquisitor said.

‘No,’ Jonah replied, and he dashed at the next breach. He didn’t even pause for breath before walking through, though he did have time to think I wonder where all the others go?





9


‘It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong,’ Lucy said. ‘Maybe she’s just busy.’

‘Yeah.’ Vic had been trying to contact Holly and the phone rang and rang. Every time he blinked he saw Holly as one of those things, only now she was grinning with his dead sister’s grin.

‘What’s wrong, Daddy?’ Olivia asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said, smiling at his daughter. ‘You and Mommy are here, so everything’s fine.’ Lucy half-smiled and looked away, out of her side window at the wild mountainsides passing by.

Sean had taken over the driving, and Marc sat in the passenger seat with his laptop open. On the dashboard in front of him was the notebook with the handwritten list of names. There were at least eight people crossed off. Others had ticks beside them, and a few more had yet to be contacted.

‘Those names you’ve crossed off—’ Vic began, but Marc did not let him finish.

‘Dead.’

The silence in the vehicle was sombre. Beside Vic, Jayne shifted, groaning softly.

‘Just because you can’t contact them—’

‘This one,’ Marc said, voice loud and firm. ‘Radomyr Golovnya. Lives in Kiev. The Russians have used some unknown weapon along their western borders, and Ukraine and Belarus have been affected. So Radomyr, a brilliant physician, a man I once argued with for six hours about the common cold, is dead.’

He struck the pad with his pen, indicating another name. ‘Rob Nichols. Quiet guy, too humble for my liking – I mean, he was a f*cking genius. He lived in Wales, he and Jonah went to the same school but at different times. And I can’t reach him, and I know he’s dead, because I’ve seen what’s become of Cardiff.’

‘Phone lines and networks—’ Vic began, but Marc cut him off again, needing to name his dead friends to vent his rage and grief.