Coldbrook (Hammer)(155)

Coming back to you, Lucy and Olivia. The thought drove him on. The steering wheel thudded against his hand as the wheels tried to take them in a different direction, and he could feel a terrible vibration through his feet from the steering column. His daughter and wife were warm and alive. He would touch them again. They’d made it to Coldbrook and were inside, safe, protected, waiting for him to return.

As they left Danton Rock he hoped the going would be easier, though it appeared that most of the town’s inhabitants were leaving as well. Some were following the road, but most of them seemed to be taking a more direct route, crossing the hillsides and passing through the wooded areas between the town and the Coldbrook valley. As though they were being called.

There was a blue Ford on its roof beside the road.

‘One of ours,’ Chaney said. A man and child stood beside the car and at their feet was a woman’s body, still half inside the broken door. Two zombies walked past the car, and Vic thought, They can smell their own. The little girl ran at the bus. Vic accelerated and did not look back.

From behind him came the steady crying of traumatised children, and the deeper sobs of adults. Mrs Joslin’s body had been wedged beneath two seats, but her blood on the floor was still wet. The two Unblessed had taken seats, one at the rear of the bus and one halfway down. They stared stoically ahead, neither of them catching Vic’s eye in the big rear-view mirror.

‘This the right you mentioned?’ Chaney said.

‘Yeah.’ Vic edged the bus as far to the left as he could, then started a gentle right turn. As he’d guessed, the bend was tighter than the bus could take and inevitably they would hit the bank rising from the road on the left. But where he’d remembered a sheer bank it was actually shallower. Too shallow to nudge them off.

‘So . . .?’ Chaney said, holding onto the back of Vic’s seat.

‘Best sit down,’ Vic said.

A man stood on top of the bank, silhouetted against the sunlit sky. His tangled hair was a blood-soaked halo.

‘You’re sure this will—?’

‘I want to see my wife and daughter again,’ Vic said. ‘There’s no way that won’t happen. Make sure everyone’s holding on. Ten seconds.’

The bus’s left wheels left the road, rumbling across rough ground, and then they started climbing the slope.

Please don’t turn over, please don’t flip, Vic thought. But he didn’t know who or what he was asking.

The bus tilted to the right, and Vic turned as far in that direction as he could. The steering wheel thumped at his hands, the impact travelling up his arms and wrenching his shoulders, and the noise was tremendous. Rocks scraped against the chassis, kids cried out, the windscreen starred and shattered, and then the front end slipped down the slope and bounced back onto the road. Vic wrestled the wheel as the big vehicle rocked back to the left. He banged his head on the side window, cursing. Then they settled, still moving, and—

something’s wrong

—the bend eased ahead of them, and as the kids cheered and clapped Chaney slapped him on his painful shoulder. Then Vic saw hands across the bottom of the windscreen’s frame.

The man from the top of the bank reared up and came at him, pulling himself through the shattered window.

Vic pressed himself back into the driver’s seat, and then the man’s face exploded sideways. Vic’s ears rang, and Chaney reached past him to push the body back out, grabbing the wheel as the bus drove over him, struggling to keep them straight, his shotgun wedged across Vic’s lap where it had fallen.

Vic leaned forward and grabbed the wheel again, nudging Chaney aside with his shoulder. Vic was shouting – he could feel his mouth open and the pressures in his throat – but he could barely hear his own voice. He could feel a trickle of blood from his right ear.

Chaney laid one big hand over Vic’s and squeezed. The gesture was intimate and gentle, and welcome.

Coldbrook came into view a couple of minutes later. And any relief Vic had thought he might feel at seeing that place again evaporated.

The compound was crawling with the walking dead.





15


‘I see you coming down the road!’ Holly said as soon as she answered Vic’s call.

‘Lucy and Olivia?’

‘They’re fine. Down in Coldbrook.’

Vic sighed and closed his eyes. They’re safe!

‘Jayne’s here too, but she’s . . . not well.’