Coldbrook (Hammer)(56)

There is no wasted talk within the small group, and also no apparent destination ahead of them. Jonah feels a spike of desperation, but there is a confidence among the people that he cannot deny. They know where they’re going, he thinks, and then a tall old man stumbles and cries out.

For a moment the group slows, but then one of the women shouts and they run on. She stays behind with the old man, and Jonah, unseen, remains with them.

The man says something to the woman, and even though Jonah cannot understand the words he knows they are soft and loving. She smiles, then reaches behind her shoulder and whips something through the air. As the man’s head tilts away from his neck on a fountain of blood, Jonah tries to open his mouth in a silent scream, and—

The shrill ringing of the satphone smothered the sound of thundering feet, and Jonah snapped awake. He’d nodded off while leaning back in a chair, his legs crossed and feet propped on the control desk, and the first thing he saw was the creature sitting on his legs. Silhouetted against the screen display of the breach chamber, it presented the same silhouette as before: spiky scalp, protruding mouth. Its hand was extended, fingers clasped around a blood-red object which waved tendrils like those of a sea anemone.

Those ideas that all struggle is hopeless, those are its thoughts.

Still swathed in the residue of sleep Jonah asked, ‘Just what the bastard hell are you?’

The shape shifted slightly, and Jonah saw the stains of tattoos across its forearms, old ink smudged by time beneath pale skin. It turned on his outstretched legs to face the other way, and its robe fell open to offer a candid, grotesque view of its genitals. It was a long time since Jonah had seen another man naked, and it added to the shocking surrealism of the moment.

The thing – the man – turned his head towards the viewing screen. Jonah glanced that way, saw the view of Accommodation with the three closed doors, and then he felt the subtle weight lift from his legs. He closed his eyes briefly before looking again.

The strange man had gone. Left him alone. So alone, and the only thing he craved now was company. Jonah looked around Secondary, finding it hard to catch his breath as he tried to comfort himself with the idea that it was a dream. But he could still feel the cold wet kiss of those tendrils against his scalp.

He snapped up the satphone as it trilled again, but when he answered the caller had signed off. Marc Dubois, the screen said, but Marc could wait because he was only a voice. Jonah looked at the screen again – those closed doors, hiding things he might want to see, or not – and then ran a check of the route between Secondary and the relevant accommodation wing. No walking things, no shadows. It seemed clear.

Panting, he checked the pistol and stood by the door, staring through the small viewing pane at the silent corridor beyond. He’d dragged the two bodies from out there and locked them in a store cupboard but there were still splashes of brain and dried blood on the floor and walls.

He ignored the mess and ran.





2


I wonder if they feel any different, Jayne thought. When they change. When they rage. I wonder if they know they’ve changed. She glanced at the sleeve of her jacket, beneath which was the bandage, and beneath that the bite, and knew that she had not transformed.

Jayne was a frequent student of death. There had been her brother’s murder, and her mother’s own living demise contained within the murky depths of bottles of cheap wine. And the churu had driven Jayne to consider suicide many times, whether in idle speculation on a cold winter’s afternoon when Tommy was out working, or a more serious analysis of the route she could take, and the implications, during those less frequent moments of real despair. Mostly she cast those thoughts aside with a shake of the head, and then went to find something that made her life worth living – the books she enjoyed reading, the food she was adept at cooking, Tommy’s unconditional love.

But she often considered what death meant, and she was sad at the thought of everything she was being so easily wiped away.

Now there were these things that seemed to be beyond death. And that changed everything.

Her arm throbbed as she steered the old Toyota into a parking space. The wound had stopped bleeding, but she could still feel the sharp imprints of that woman’s teeth, their points piercing her skin and digging down into the meat of her. If Jayne hadn’t been lucky, the woman’s teeth would have pressed together, scraping across bone and ripping away a chunk of her arm. And what germs do I have? she wondered. What infection did she plant in me, and is it still in me now? She switched off the car’s engine, sat motionless for a while, and decided that thinking about it too much would be the end of her.