Berserk (34 page)

With Natasha gone from his mind, his grief came in, rich and full and heavy. He cried great shaking sobs for his dead wife and son. Jo was the love of his life. And Steven, gone for so long yet still there, a memory refreshed by the renewed hope Tom had harboured. He could not bring himself to hate Sophia and Lane for what they had done, and that felt wrong, because without that his rage had no direction.

Perhaps one day he would find one.

He cried also for what he had lost, because he had life. Maybe sometimes he had thought it worthless, meaningless, vapid, but life was for living, and he missed the simplicity of that. A kiss on his wife’s cheek in the morning; watching a pair of nesting birds whilst stuck in a traffic jam; the swaying of trees as a cold northerly wind brought snow; the smile on Jo’s face when she came home to a meal he had cooked; the taste of wine; the feel of sunlight on his scalp; scraps of clouds catching the setting sun and promising a good day tomorrow. And that desire for a life in music, more distant than his dead son and yet haunting him with fading tunes.
enjoyed

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“North,” Sophia replied, and it hit him like the last line of a mournful song.

He had no idea what tomorrow would bring. Sunset had passed, leaving only pain and the taste of blood behind. Below all the pain he felt remarkably alive, but he sensed that life now had a whole new set of rules.

He should have been dead. But life was no longer just for living. He was with Sophia and Sarah and Natasha now – he was infected, as much a product of Porton Down as they – and he had fallen between the lines.

* * *

When she awoke Natasha said, “Daddy?” Tom gathered her up and held her to him, and he felt warmth in her flesh, welcomed the way her child’s body shaped itself to his hug. Sophia glanced at him in the mirror, and though he saw tears in her eyes for her lost husband and son, he also saw something else. Neither she nor Sarah smiled – they were too tired for that, too overwrought, too exhausted from the healing process – but still he was sure. He saw hope.

* * *

Everything Natasha’s mother had told her was wrong. The berserkers had no history, other than their time at Porton Down. They had no heritage or culture, no place living alongside humanity down through the centuries, and they had no Home. But now that she was with her new family, it seemed as though things had changed. They could create their own place in the world, living between the lines and existing in shadows, becoming a part of legend if that suited them. They had a chance to write their own history.

And it had only just begun.

* * *

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim’s been published for ten years now, and you can find out loads about him at his website www.timlebbon.net. He’s the author of over thirty books, including the Noreela series of fantasy books (
Dusk, Dawn, Fallen
and
The Island
), the NY Times Bestselling novelization of the movie
30 Days of Night,
and several books with Christopher Golden, including
The Map of Moments
and the forthcoming
Secret Journeys of Jack London
for Harper. He has also written several screenplays and some TV proposals. He won several prestigious awards, and some of my work has been optioned for the big screen. His most recent book is the novelization of the film
Cabin In The Woods.

* * *

Preview of:

TONIA BROWN’S -
BADASS ZOMBIE ROAD TRIP

One

Somewhere just outside of Buhl, Idaho

Dale Jenkins snored like a wild animal on the prowl. At first he chuffed in great swells of exasperated grumbles, mounting and climbing those scales of throaty growls until, as if spying his dream prey, he peaked with a gargantuan, heart-stopping roar. At the apex of this outburst, his snore would stall, his sleep engine seizing as Dale choked and sputtered. After this minor struggle, he would settle down again, and the whole process would recess for a few moments of blessed peace. Before long, the grumbles would begin anew, escalating into growling, and so on and so forth. Windows shook in their sashes, neighbors beat upon the walls, small animals wailed in the streets, and Dale always snored on in utter, somnolent bliss.

* * *

Jonah eyed the slumbering giant seated beside him in the car, and wondered how he was going to stand a whole week of being so close to that racket. Dale snored and snored, drawing deep, rattling breaths that drowned the sound of the car’s engine with their magnitude and power. Tired of the perpetual motion of this snoring machine, Jonah sighed—extra long and extra loud—but it was no good. Dale, dead to the world, as it were, sat with his arms crossed, shoulders slumped, and head resting to the left. This put the sleeping man’s mouth—that terrible instrument of throaty bellows—aimed directly at Jonah’s ear. Unable to stand one more snort, Jonah poked the sleeping beast in the ribs, mid-roar. Dale coughed and sputtered, then shifted his weight from one rump cheek to the other as he rolled away from Jonah and returned to his slumber unperturbed.

“Wake up!” Jonah shouted, and gave Dale a punch on the arm for emphasis.

Dale awoke with a start, leaping in his seat far enough to bang his head—which wasn’t very far, considering the few scant inches between the tall man’s crown and the Focus’s roof. “What? What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m bleeding.” Dale stopped rubbing his head long enough to stare at his palm before returning his fingers to the wound. “I’m definitely bleeding.”

“You’re not bleeding, you idiot. And you’re not listening to me, either.”

“I’m listening. And I reminded you before we left that I fall asleep on long trips. You’ve been around me long enough to know that.”

“We left the house ten minutes ago. You drive longer than that for a beer run. This duo thing is never going to work if you don’t take it more seriously.”

“Band,” Dale said, following this with a wide, cavernous yawn. “Stop saying duo. We’re a band, not a duo. Duo sounds gay.”

“I said duo, and we are a duo because the word ‘band’ implies a lot more members. Not just two morons playing guitar.” Jonah lowered his voice as he mumbled, “And not very well.”

“Hey!” Dale protested. “We play plenty good between us. If you’d practice more instead of spending so much time at work, we’d be even better.”

“One of us has to have a real job making real money, or we’d be out on the street in a month.” It was an old argument, and one Jonah knew neither of them would win anytime soon. But he fell into the routine all the same. “We can’t all be professional bums.”

“I’m not a bum.” Dale straightened, ever so slightly, again a hard feat given the small space between his head and the car’s roof. “I’m a musician. It’s just hard to find work.”

“Not if you are willing to actually work. As in
work
work. As in get your hands dirty washing dishes or cleaning out toilets work.” Jonah watched as Dale yawned yet again. “Speaking of not working, why are you so tired?”

Thanks to the sixth sense that comes from spending so much time with a person, Dale was correct. Jonah was about to deliver a lecture, though he didn’t know why. Dale never seemed to listen or learn from the exchanges. But these little sermons tended to leave Jonah with a vague sense of accomplishment. (Either that or superiority, Dale could never be sure.)

Jonah drew himself to his full righteous-fury height. Which wasn’t much, since he was sitting. And very short. “Once a year, Dale. I only get vacation once a year.”

“Look, Carla wanted to give me a going away blow job, and before I knew what was happening, it turned into a going away fuck. Not that I’m complaining.” Dale smiled wide before he added, “Then Barbara came over and it turned into a going away—”

“Enough!” Jonah raised his hand, cutting Dale off mid-description. “I don’t need to hear the torrid details of your carousing. It isn’t like I couldn’t hear your antics all night long. The point is, you pulled an all-nighter before a trip, and now I am left to do all the driving. Again.”

Jonah cursed under his breath and mumbled, “I swear, it’s like living with Ron Jeremy.” Louder, he said, “I’m talking about responsibility. I’m talking about follow-through.”

That was true. Weird, but true. Dale, while quite enthusiastic about playing his guitar and attracting groupies and then having loads of sex with said groupies, had proven lackadaisical on the business end of things, as was his usual
modus operandi
. Then, out of the blue, he booked the pair a single night performance at a small casino in Reno. Jonah suspected there was an ulterior motive to playing in the distant city, such as the obligatory trip to Vegas when they were done with the job.

“Yeah,” Jonah agreed. “I guess what I mean is that I’m just tired of being the only grownup in this relationship.”

“Relationship? Jonah, seriously, you sound like my mother now. If I wanted to live with my mom, I’d dig her up and move into her coffin. Now shut the fuck up about it already.”

“Yuck,” Jonah said, as he stuck out his tongue in disgust. “What ugly rhetoric.”

“And stop speaking French; you know I hate that.”

Speaking French
was a code phrase, one of many the pair shared in times of distress.
Speaking French
was Dale’s way of saying that he didn’t understand a word, or a set of words, or an entire situation. It wasn’t the language of France that Dale hated. No. What he really hated was being made to feel stupid, which was an easy feeling for the poor man to achieve, because, truth be told, he wasn’t very bright. Where Jonah considered himself a little above average in intelligence, he considered Dale to have all the brainpower of a piece of cheese. (And that depended on the cheese. Some of the moldier ones had enough live cultures to give Dale a run for his intellectual dollar.)

After a few minutes of silence, Jonah nodded at an envelope surreptitiously tucked in the passenger visor, and asked, “Are you gonna open that or not?” He knew that it had been surreptitiously tucked away, because he had done the surreptitious tucking.

Dale raised his gaze to the envelope and snorted. “No, thank you. That’s why I threw it out. I thought I told you to leave it in the garbage.”

“Really? I don’t think you did.”

Which was a lie. Dale had in fact told Jonah that very thing, more than once, and Jonah heard every word. But Jonah couldn’t just leave it in the trash, because his curiosity was piqued by Dale’s refusal to open it. That, and Jonah was a sucker for all things that arrived by mail. He found mail to be a cathartic outlet for his pent-up frustrations and constant self-loathing. Ads for car dealerships, unwanted credit card offers, even chain letters—he didn’t care as long as it was something physical he could open and read and relate to. In the day and age where everyone conversed by text messages or emails, Jonah was in love with the old fashioned notion of a handwritten note. Even something as simple as a thank you card was a small treasure to Jonah, something worth saving, because it took more effort to produce than just pointing and clicking.

Eyeing the envelope again, Jonah said, “I wonder who it’s from.” He had been wondering this very same thing for three full days, because there was no return address.

“I don’t,” Dale said, as he pulled his cell phone free from his trouser pocket. “But that might be because I already know.”

Jonah hung in that empty space of verbal pause, that thin area where one awaits an explanation, hoping to receive it without having to ask for it. The pause stretched into almost a full minute before he realized there was no explanation on its way. Jonah was left to ask, “Who is it from?”

“That so?” Jonah wondered if Dale and Clare were on the outs, and, if so, why Jonah didn’t know about it. “You should see what she has to say.”