Coldbrook (Hammer)(63)

‘Bastard,’ Jonah said. He looked for a gunshot wound in the man’s chest, but was not surprised to see none. The man had retreated to the end of the corridor, and stood staring at him, unmoving.

He comes from through there, showing me what happened to his world.

But why?

Jonah was rational and in full control of his faculties, though events were running away with him, and the idea of madness had seeped away. Yet while he had an answer for the raging things – which required irrational leaps of science – he had no answer for this.

He raised the gun and fired again. The man snorted – his mask emitting skeins of mist or steam – and then he walked calmly out of sight.

‘Tell me what you want,’ Jonah said after the noise of the gunshot had echoed away. But there was only silence.





5


In some ways, Marc reminded Vic of a younger Jonah, though he looked nothing like him – Jonah was thin and wiry, Marc was heavily built and strong. But there was a grace about him, an inner strength. Perhaps knowing more about the world than most people gave him a peace of mind that many others lacked.

Vic stood in Marc’s office doorway and looked inside, and he was amazed. The room was piled high with loose-leaf files, sample jars, DVDs, books, and magazines and newspapers yellowing around their edges. A desk was pressed against the rear wall, and there was a small sofa with a coffee table in front of it, both of which were also homes to boxes of files and papers. Marc was at his desk, working on a laptop. Vic saw the satphone beside him and wondered whether the phone networks were still down.

‘You lied about the rabbits,’ Vic said.

‘Your daughter hates me now?’

‘No. She just wanted rabbits.’

‘Right.’ Marc continued what he was doing, and it was half a minute before he spoke again. ‘Come on in.’ He still did not look up.

Vic entered and stood awkwardly in front of the loaded sofa, looking around the room and smelling the mustiness of time. ‘You work in here?’

‘Only when someone releases a plague that threatens the world.’

‘Doesn’t happen much, then.’

‘Threw it together myself – well, paid to have it done. This used to be an old water-pumping station and its offices. A grey concrete block, so no one’s interested in it. And, because it’s remote from the university, Jonah always called it my bunker.’

‘So what’s it for?’

‘Times when I need somewhere private to work. Lots of personal stuff stored here that I wouldn’t want the university to see. And it’s a retreat. I wanted to be prepared, just in case something like this ever happened.’

‘And it has a helipad on the roof?’

Marc smiled. ‘Personal reasons.’ He tapped away on his machine for another minute, leaving Vic standing. Then he glanced over his shoulder, nodded at the sofa, and said, ‘Just dump all that on the floor.’

Vic cleared the sofa and sat down.

‘Your family resting?’

‘Yeah.’ He’d left Lucy and Olivia in the small room that they’d been assigned. Olivia had fallen fast asleep, and Lucy had said she was going to take a shower and change. Maybe she’d rest, maybe not. Vic had told her that he didn’t know how long he was going to be. She hadn’t replied.

Marc stood and stretched, then pulled open a drawer in his desk and produced a bottle of Knob Creek and two glasses. Vic couldn’t help smiling. So very much like Jonah.

‘This is being prepared?’ Vic asked. He couldn’t hold the implied criticism from his voice – he might be guilty, but he had never been meek.

Marc actually looked hurt. ‘Did it using my own funds. It isn’t the f*cking President’s White House bunker, but yeah, it’s being prepared. There’s water and food to last several weeks, a lab and a communications room in the basement – which can be isolated, if needs must. Very secure from the outside. Air conditioning, hermetically sealed doors . . . lots of other stuff.’ He waved one hand. ‘Don’t want to bore you.’ He handed Vic a glass, sat beside him on the sofa, and poured.

Vic took a grateful drink and winced as the bourbon burned its way down.

‘So what is it you do, exactly?’

‘Lots,’ Marc said. ‘But what’s pertinent to our current f*cked-up situation is my research into disease vectors.’

‘You think this is a bug?’