Coldbrook (Hammer)(82)

‘Shit,’ Vic muttered. ‘Aircraft, you think?’

‘Yeah,’ Marc said. ‘Public and private aircraft, zombie stuck in the cargo hold. And don’t discount the speed of spread along roads. Drive for ten hours straight with your foot down, and you can get from Atlanta to Dallas. One car or truck doing that with one of those f*ckers trapped on board . . .’

‘So what the hell do we do now?’ Vic asked. A feeling of unreality descended, distancing him from events. If he thought about this too much, he’d go insane. It was not a conscious defence, but right then he welcomed whatever instinct was striving to protect him. He looked up at Marc, and at Gary where he sat with his feet propped against a desk across the room.

‘I did consider getting back to Coldbrook,’ Marc said. ‘The first disease vector came through there, which might help me examine the disease source. And if it meant me going through the breach to find out more . . .’ He shrugged.

‘Coldbrook’s locked down,’ Vic said.

‘You got out, you can get us back in,’ Gary said.

‘But still no contact from Jonah?’

‘No. But we can’t assume that he’s dead.’

Back to Coldbrook. Vic had done everything in his power to flee that place, and in doing so . . . He closed his eyes and shook his head, that sense of distance buffering him once more against the truth. It would have got out anyway, he was sure. Something like this couldn’t be confined.

‘But now . . .’ Marc said. ‘Now, I don’t know if it’s even worth trying. Just . . . don’t know.’

‘Not worth trying?’ Vic asked. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

Gary strode across the room and leaned on his shoulder, tapping at the keyboard. ‘As we said, there have been developments.’

Vic looked away from Marc and back at the screen. He’s scared. It was the first time he’d really seen that in him.

There was a new screen open on the laptop. It displayed a world map. There were red dots outside the USA.

‘You’re f*cking kidding,’ Vic said.

Mexico.

‘It was easy to expand the program to include foreign media,’ Marc said.

Cuba, Haiti.

‘But this could be a glitch? Are these confirmed?’

Guatemala, Belize, Costa Rica.

‘Not as definite as our own map,’ Marc said. ‘I’ve got no tap into any foreign military, for a start.’

Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Iceland.

‘This is just so shit,’ Gary said.

As Vic watched the screen, Lima grew its own red spot.

Feeling aimless and hopeless, Vic returned to their small room. Lucy had turned the small TV away from her daughter’s bed – Olivia lay there with her headphones on, playing on her Nintendo DS – and lay across the blankets with the remote control in one hand, ready to click it off the minute Olivia came to see. She knows I lied about the TV being broken, Vic thought, and he felt a sudden surge of love for his daughter.

‘Seen this?’ Lucy asked without turning to him. A man was being interviewed in a smart studio in Washington. He wore a suit and tie, and beneath his name on the screen was written Government Spokesperson. She had the sound turned down too quietly to hear but Vic could guess what the man was saying: Stay calm, help is coming, we’re working on the problem, and soon . . .

‘Then there’s this.’ She flicked to another news channel, this one cable. The live report was coming from Atlanta, the reporter apparently on top of a high building somewhere, and behind her the city was burning. All semblance of impartial reporting was gone. This woman was terrified, and shocked.

As Lucy nudged up the volume, the woman’s voice faded in. ‘. . . toll is catastrophic, the number of infected beyond counting. What you can see behind me is the result of aerial bombardment, and further north there are many people trapped in their homes, a few of them broadcasting by radio. The military won’t comment, and—’

Lucy turned the TV off. Olivia glanced up at her, smiled at Vic, then went back to her DS screen.

‘It’s the end, isn’t it?’ his wife asked. Vic sat beside her on the bed.

Vic thought of lying, but Lucy was too sharp for that. And he had already lied too much. ‘It might be. It’s beyond our shores now. Marc says there’s no way to stop the spread, and the only hope lies in a cure.’

‘They shouldn’t show that stuff on TV.’