Coldbrook (Hammer)(74)

‘Got a cousin in Nashville,’ Gary said. ‘Top bloke. Barman.’

‘This just marks distinct outbreaks,’ Marc said. ‘Once they reach a certain concentration, the program fills in the surroundings.’

Vic waited a further couple of minutes until the program ended, frozen in time over twenty hours from when he had got out of Coldbrook. Then he sat back and held his hands to his face.

‘The military?’

‘As you’d expect,’ Marc said. ‘National Emergency, the Guard called up, doing everything in their power, blah-di-f*cking blah. Offered my services, they just said they had their own people. But they don’t have what we have – Jonah, and Coldbrook.’

‘Had,’ Vic said.

‘He’ll get back online. He has to.’

‘Haven’t they sent anyone to Coldbrook?’ Vic asked, realising that he should have asked Jonah.

‘I asked,’ Marc said. ‘They told me that information was classified. So I made a call, spoke to a guy I know. The term he used was clusterf*ck.’

‘And you’ve missed all the political shouting,’ Gary said. ‘National, international. Thanks to the Internet, the whole world’s watching this in real-time. All flights from the States turned back, north and south borders closed.’ He laughed out loud, a shocking sound. ‘Lot of good that will do! Like closing the borders to flies.’

‘What are these?’ Vic asked. Initially he’d believed that the scattered red dots elsewhere across the country might have been a fault on the laptop screen, or perhaps reports of false sightings. But the more he looked at them, the more they seemed to blink like red eyes.

‘Isolated outbreaks,’ Marc said. ‘Something like this doesn’t just spread evenly.’

‘But Jacksonville? Dallas?’

‘People run,’ Gary said. ‘Christ knows I would.’

‘I did,’ Vic said softly.

‘And that’s why the spread can never be stopped physically,’ Marc said. ‘Gary’s fly comment is pretty good, but still not accurate. There’s film all over the Internet of these things being shot, but short of building a five-thousand-mile-long wall to contain the whole area . . .’ He raised his hands despairingly. ‘There are planes, trains, cars, helicopters, boats. Those infected don’t show intelligence – certainly no more than a rudimentary memory, and perhaps a basic ability to learn through repetition. But they could be trapped in a hold or a car’s trunk. Or maybe the infection can survive for a time in spilled blood.’

‘Holy f*ck,’ Vic said.

‘That’s just what Marc’s been saying,’ Gary said.

‘I’ve been busy while you were resting.’ Marc dropped a leather notebook in Vic’s lap, folded open at a page filled with names. ‘Jonah and I . . . we’ve been friends since you were shitting your diapers. Don’t agree on everything, that’s for sure. He’s a stubborn old f*ck.’

‘You know him well,’ Vic muttered.

‘But one thing we’ve always agreed on is that there’s no politics or religion in science. No boundaries. Secrecy benefits states, but shared knowledge is the way forward for mankind. He’s already spoken to some of these people, but not all. He didn’t get through the list before . . .’ He shrugged.

‘Spoken why?’ Vic asked.

‘For help. There are scientists around the world working on this, and I’ve already established a direct line with some of them.’

Vic started reading the names on the list. Some had a tick beside them, a few were crossed out. He recognised a few from conversations with Jonah over the years – and he knew a couple more by reputation. Others he had never heard of, and there were a few names he could not even pronounce.

‘Robert Nichols, professor of cellular immunology,’ Vic read. ‘Lucy-Anne Francis, physical cosmologist. Kazuki Yoshida, thanatologist. Caspian Morhaim, microbiologist.’

‘You know so many interesting people,’ Gary said.

‘And a musician can say that?’ Vic asked. He felt a brief, vivid flood of optimism, fed partly by Marc’s actions and the knowledge of the people they already had on their side, ready to work as hard as they could until this was over. But perhaps it was also inspired by knowing that Marc was now in control.

‘So what’s the bad news?’ Vic asked.

‘That was it,’ Gary said. ‘For the f*cking terrible news, you’ll have to follow me.’