Coldbrook (Hammer)(15)

Panting, he dragged the gun box from beneath his bed and clicked though the numbers on the coded lock. The M1911 pistol went into his belt, along with three extra magazines. He hadn’t fired it for almost a year, when he’d hiked to a range high in the Appalachians to see how stale his shooting had become. He’d still been pretty good. Holding the pistol, feeling the rough grip, smelling the gun oil: it felt like a statement of intent.

The siren screeched again and again, and it could only be turned off from Control or Secondary. Jonah hadn’t reached Secondary yet, though it must only be a matter of seconds. And in Control, perhaps they were too busy.

‘Holly,’ he said out loud, and he thought back to the last time he’d spoken her name in this room. She hadn’t been here since the evening they ended their affair, when they’d sat together for half a night and had drunk three bottles of wine. Holly, you’re too special for me to lose, he’d said, and if we carry on I will lose you.

But your family are more special, she’d said. And she understood fully, she really did. That was why he still loved her. The sex was no longer there, but the friendship was priceless. Vic hoped that, if she was still alive, she would understand what he had to do now.

He had to abandon her.

‘Control’s locked down, can’t get in anyway,’ he whispered, justifying this new betrayal, thinking of the silent image of blood and shooting. ‘Whatever came through is trapped.’ And despite trying to convince himself that was true, his need to get his family as far away from here as possible was so pressing that it made him dizzy. Because he had always been afraid that something terrible might happen, and there was no telling what had just been released.

Vic left his room and slammed the door. At the junction, he looked left at where the corridor curved around towards the staircase leading down to Control and up to Secondary, and right at where it dog-legged away from the core and towards the common room and garage. He hesitated for only a second, and then turned right.

With every step he ran further from his professional responsibilities and the alarm screamed at his betrayal.





6


Alex shot Melinda five times. She fell back still biting, and the guard captain yelled as her teeth tugged away part of his face. She flipped onto her back and writhed for a second, bloody hands shoving at the motionless intruder from beyond the breach, and Holly thought, That’s it, she’s dead now, I’m sure I saw her spine—

Melinda sat up again, pushing with one hand and seemingly unaware of her new, terrible wounds.

‘Alex!’ Holly shouted, as if the captain would need warning about this pitiful, bloody wreck. But Alex was leaning back on his knees with a terrible, disbelieving look on his face. One hand still aimed the pistol at Melinda, the other was pressed against his cheek and jaw where she’d bitten him. He leaned further back, legs bent almost in half at the knee now, head almost touching the floor, and the gun made a metallic tink as it dropped from his hand. He grew still.

‘Sir!’ another guard said, moving closer.

‘Back,’ Satpal said. ‘Stay back! Can’t you see . . .?’

‘See f*cking what?’ Holly said, and then the cosmologist was at her side. She could smell the sweat on him, the fear. She wondered if she smelled the same.

‘She can’t be getting up,’ he said softly. And Holly knew that he was right. No one leaks that much blood and lives. No one . . .

‘Sir!’ another guard shouted, the one that Alex had sent away to fetch dressings to tend Melinda’s wounds. He stood close to the breach floor now, staring down at the massive pool of blood and the figures at its centre: the intruder, motionless with most of his head missing; Melinda, sitting up fully now, one arm propping her as she tried to get to her feet; and Alex, hand fallen from his face, horribly contorted and motionless.

‘What the f*ck do we do?’ another guard said. He was standing ten feet to Holly’s left, pistol aimed at Melinda, his face pale. ‘Sir, what do we do?’ Holly realised that he was directing his questions at Alex.

The captain suddenly tensed, then raised himself back to a kneeling position. His mouth worked, but only a soft humming sound emerged from it. Holly could see his teeth through the wound in his cheek.

‘Shit,’ someone muttered. They could all see that the soldier’s movements were wrong.

‘We’re locked down in here,’ Holly said. ‘Two of you keep watch on the breach in case . . .’ She shook her head. ‘You.’ She nodded at the guard with the field dressings. ‘What’s your name?’