Coldbrook (Hammer)(94)

Four thousand miles away in Toronto, a woman dabbed at her mouth and excused herself from the table. She walked outside the restaurant as she answered her phone, pulling a cigarette from her pocket at the same time. It had been a weird night, marked with an almost manic need to indulge. It had reminded her of a movie she’d seen about what everyone did for their last night on Earth. It was f*cking terrifying, but the atmosphere dragged her on.

She paused as she saw the name on the display. Pressed connect. ‘Leigh?’

‘Emma! Emma, thank Christ, I thought you weren’t going to pick up.’

‘I’m at a restaurant.’ It was raining. She stood under a canopy with other banished smokers and lit up.

‘Good,’ Leigh said. ‘Good. I thought . . . I don’t know what.’

‘I’m not munching on brains yet,’ she said, and a couple of her smoking companions glanced her way. Emma glared back; she’d never been shy.

‘I know this is out of the blue, and we haven’t spoken for a long time, but—’

‘It’s been four years,’ she said.

‘Yeah. Sometimes feels like yesterday. Listen, are you safe? Do you have a plan?’

‘I’m fine,’ Emma said. ‘Leigh, I’d love to think this is all because you’re concerned about me, but I can’t believe that.’

‘I’ve always cared,’ he said.

She wondered where he was now, where his new wife and child were, and she was jealous all over again. ‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘Emma . . . I have some information about someone important. And you’re the only person I could think of who might know what to do.’

Emma closed her eyes.

Emma called her cousin – Tim Love, a cop – and told him about the immune girl in burning Baltimore. Before he headed out with his unit to Bethleham, where he would have his infected brains blown out by a bullet from Lieutenant Susco’s pistol, Love called a friend of his in the Baltimore PD. His friend called four people and ordered that they prepare for a rescue mission to Baltimore Airport, and one of those people – a corrupt Sergeant called Waits who was buried up to his ass in the city’s main drugs-distribution ring – called his mistress in New York to say goodbye. And he told her where he was going, and why.

The mistress was married to Nathan King, a writer and boozer. A troubled man, King had many acquaintances but only a handful of true friends. And one of those friends was an eccentric gay scientist the size of a grizzly bear, called Marc Dubois.

King called Marc, and told him what his wife had heard.





11


‘I knew she was getting it in the ass from someone, but a f*cking cop?’

Marc glanced at Vic and Gary. He’d switched the phone to loudspeaker as soon as King had told him the news.

‘What?’ Vic whispered, holding up his hands. Marc had gone white but something about his manner indicated excitement. Over the past few hours Vic had seen enough terrible sights with Marc to know how the man reacted to bad news. This was something different.

‘Say it again,’ Marc said. ‘I’ve got some people here who need to hear it.’

‘I said I knew the bitch was—’

‘Fuck it, Nathan, I don’t give a shit about who’s drilling your wife!’ Marc said. ‘The reason you called me. Me, of all people. The reason, Nathan.’

King told them what he’d heard. Vic listened to the rest of the conversation in a confused state, and not because he couldn’t hear the words. It was his heart. It had become a rock in his chest, a solid weight that he didn’t dare call hope. Immune! The online register had become a joke, with thousands of entries and thousands more red-lined ‘discredited’ markers. If this was true, the woman trapped in an aircraft at Baltimore airport – bitten, still alive, still human – might just be the most important person on the planet.

‘Vic?’ Marc said, and Vic realised the tall man had been talking to him.

‘Sorry. I . . . Yeah.’

‘I said, we should trust this. Her name’s Jayne Woodhams, and she’s not on the register. Doesn’t matter how it got to us, and I can’t imagine how King heard about it. He’s a drunken pseudo-philosopher, not a scientist. But . . .’

‘Immune.’ It was all Vic could say.

‘So what do we do?’ Gary asked. He was leaning back against a desk and wearing a big cowboy hat.