Coldbrook (Hammer) (14 page)

‘Okay,’ the sheriff said eventually. ‘Okay.’ And Vic heard the decision in his voice.
He listened, he heard, and now I can go
.

‘Might only be one or two of them,’ Vic said.

‘We’ll need a statement,’ the woman cop said, and then the phone rang and she snatched it up. ‘Sheriff’s office.’ She was silent for a while, her eyes flicking from Blanks to Vic, back again. ‘Okay, keep the doors locked, get upstairs, we’ll be right there. Got a firearm? Okay. Okay.’ She hung up.

‘What?’ the sheriff asked.

‘Pete Crowther, the farmer. Says two men and a woman’re trying to break into his house. Says one of them’s had an arm torn off, and the woman looks like she’s bin run down.’ Her pretty face had paled, and she kept glancing at Vic as she talked. ‘Says they’re like animals, but quiet. ‘Part from the hootin’.’

‘Hooting?’

Vic backed towards the door, the sheriff staring at him, and when he felt the cold wood at his back the
policewoman came for him, still afraid but with a purpose in mind. She had one arm behind her back, reaching for her handcuffs.

‘Let the fucker run,’ Blanks said, and he stormed through a door behind the desk.

Vic turned and pushed his way out, feeling the policewoman’s stare on his back. When he emerged onto the sunlit front steps, Lucy was leaning from the passenger window of the RAV4, Olivia’s small face pressed against the back window.

‘What?’ Lucy asked immediately.

‘Nothing.’ Vic ran down the steps and around the front of the vehicle, and as he was opening the driver’s door he heard the roar of a motor. He climbed into the car and slammed his door, hitting the central locking button in case the sheriff changed his mind.
If he does, it’s pedal down
– the idea of fleeing the law was somehow more unsettling than anything. It was an indicator of how much had changed so quickly.
Three hours ago I was asleep
, he thought, and his dead sister’s face loomed at him again.

‘I love you,’ he said, turning to his wife.

She caught her breath, surprised. Her eyes watered. Vic leaned across to kiss her and, though she barely responded, she didn’t pull away.

‘Mommy and Daddy, loving it up!’ Lucy called, and Olivia’s laughter was the greatest gift Vic could have asked for right then.

A police cruiser emerged from beside the station and stopped directly in front of the RAV4. The sheriff sat in the driver’s seat, the policewoman beside him, and he stared at Vic as he spoke into the car’s radio. As he pulled away and powered off down the street, Lucy asked, ‘What was that all about?’

‘Out on a call,’ Vic said. He started the car and swung it around, and as he headed onto the road leading north out of town he hoped the sheriff had listened to the message he’d relayed from Jonah: shoot them in the head.

Says they’re like wild animals, but quiet
. Suddenly, zombies no longer sounded so absurd.

‘Look, Daddy!’ Olivia said, pointing, and Vic skidded to a stop. With the roads still quiet, the
whukka-whukka
sound of three Chinooks heading south-west towards Coldbrook was almost ghostly.

He drove fast and hard, trying to lay down distance between his family and whatever he had let escape.

It was nine o’clock in the morning.

Holly rose from her nightmare –

God help me, where did that come from? That thing, Melinda, the blood and screaming . . . Jonah’s hopeless gaze through the window. And the breach—

– and for a moment before she opened her eyes she believed that Vic was lying beside her. The narrow bed moved as he stirred, and she reached out to touch him, wondering why she couldn’t feel his warm naked body pressed close to hers. They were all given single beds in their quarters, and sharing had always been a cramped, sweaty affair. But she had liked it. Waking to Vic, sometimes she believed they could be together.

Her hand closed around something cool and gnarled, and when she opened her eyes she saw a wooden pole slipped through the stretcher’s canvas hoops, and remembered where she was.

The realisation struck her with a jolt, unreality flooding in as she struggled to find sleep again.
Back to sleep, escape this nightmare, and Vic’s waiting for me if I can only close my eyes and get
back to sleep!

The stretcher shook as those carrying it negotiated uneven terrain, and Holly opened her eyes once again. A thud of pain throbbed through her head. She tried to sit up. Something clicked nearby—

Their fingers, that’s how they communicate, I saw that just after—

—and the stretcher was lowered to the ground. She felt the rough ridges and contours of this place pressing through the canvas, spiking her buttocks and hips, and her elbow where she propped herself up. Memory flooded in as she looked around at the people who had saved her.

The arrow had struck the crawling woman just below the left eye, the impact sounding like wood striking wood, flipping her head back and to the side. She’d slumped down on the ruin, and suddenly people were all around Holly. She had not seen them moments before, and wondered whether they had been hiding or had been tracking her since she’d emerged from the breach. She’d barely had her wits about her then, after the violence she had seen.
None of this is real
, she’d thought.

But then a man and woman had approached her, and behind them were six more. They’d all carried weapons: bows and arrows, and crossbows. Most wore their hair braided tight to their scalps, and their clothes were loose and rough and all but colourless. They were utterly silent. Holly heard no breathing, no rustle of leather-bound feet through the long grass, no clink of metal on metal as they moved. And they seemed to communicate entirely by sign language, an incomprehensible twisting, clicking and flexing of fingers, shifting of hands, and facial expressions that might have been a background to whatever they ‘said’.

She’d looked at the dead woman, now nothing more than a dried husk, and wondered whether there were more.
One on its own might have been bad luck
, she’d thought,
but two means there
must
be more
.

The man had lifted his crossbow and aimed it at
Holly’s face, two fingers held to his lips. He and his female colleague walked slowly around her, looking her up and down, making her feel distinctly uncomfortable. The others stood back, at least two more aiming their weapons in her direction.

And then she’d realised what this was – the first meeting between different universes. This might be a version of Earth, but she was here from somewhere else. Jonah had said
It’s exactly where we are and a trillion light years away
. Holly had felt the muscles in her legs turning to water.

‘Thank God,’ she’d said. ‘Thank you. My name is Holly Wright and—’ She’d seen the look passing between the man and woman – shock, surprise, fear – and then . . . a faint whistling, like something sweeping quickly through the air. Then nothing else.

As if inspired by the memory, another wave of pain passed through her head. She groaned, lifted her hand and touched the tender bump just above her right ear. It was like setting a burning brand against her scalp. She winced and shivered as the pain lanced into her back and right shoulder. Closing her eyes, she wished it away.
Hit me over the head
, she thought, and she wondered how indifferent they were to hurting or killing her.
Here I am in another world, and
—

There was a slight change in the light beyond her eyelids. Someone was squatting beside the stretcher, she
sensed them there, and when she looked a woman was kneeling beside her. She was maybe thirty, black, short and muscled, attractive in a wild sort of way, and Holly’s first thought was a surprising
Vic would love her
. That made her smile . . . and the woman smiled back.

‘Wh—?’ Holly began. But the woman moved quickly, pressing two fingers to Holly’s lips and shaking her head.

Holly nodded her understanding and the woman took her hand away. She made several simple hand signals, one eyebrow raised. Holly shrugged and shook her head. The movement set the pain roaring once again. She cringed. The woman, appearing confused, pointed to the stretcher and to Holly. Then she stood.

Four of them lifted the stretcher and carried Holly across the top of the hill.

For the first time she was able to take in her surroundings. The tumbled building with
Exit
carved on one stone was gone, but it was possible that she was now further along the same ridge. She remained propped on both elbows, and they seemed unconcerned at what she saw, only what she said.
Maybe they’re mute
, Holly thought.
Haven’t ever heard anyone speaking
. It seemed likely, and that produced a feeling of disappointment that she could not shake. Had they really breached into a primeval world where language had barely advanced beyond a few hand signals? But she thought about the way the man had been shaping his hands again, the fingers splayed
and clicking, and it seemed easily as advanced as sign language back on her own Earth. The stretcher was rough but serviceable, and their weapons had proved their effectiveness. Surely they were as developed as her.

Holly looked beyond the people to the landscape they were travelling across. The sun was fully up now, and if seasons matched between the worlds she judged it to be early afternoon. There was a light cloud cover that smudged the sun into a yellowed pastel shade, and streaks of colour hung low to the horizon like a forgotten sunset. They were beautiful, but disquieting.

On a hillside far across the valley, picked out by diffuse sunlight, she saw more ruins.

Holly squinted and shielded her eyes, her right eye throbbing with pain. She tried to work out exactly what she was seeing. It could have been an exotic rock formation, limestone corroded by wind and rain into elaborate and misleading shapes. But she thought not. There was an intimation of regularity, though some of the higher structures had obviously fallen, the remains of their walls pointing skyward and piles of broken masonry at their bases. It looked like a collection of structures that had been smudged by a giant hand, their sharp edges blurred and order destroyed.

Close to one wall sat the skeleton of what might once have been a car.

Holly wished she could go closer, but the people were
heading down from the ridge into the heavily wooded next valley, and soon the ruin was hidden from view. Was
that a car?
she wanted to ask, because the possibility meant so much. One fallen building with an ‘Exit’ sign was puzzling enough but two fallen buildings, the rusted remains of a vehicle, bows and arrows, and shrivelled people rising from beneath undergrowth . . .

She looked at the people, smiling as the short woman who had tended her glanced at her. The woman smiled back distractedly, scanning all around as they walked. The others seemed alert as well, including the two people walking on ahead who had to concentrate on their route. Apart from the four carrying her stretcher, everyone else constantly looked left and right, sometimes turning and walking backwards for a few steps as if expecting to be ambushed at any moment.

Holly didn’t know what this meant, but none of it seemed good.

She was amazed at just how silently they were able to move across the ground, and how quickly. Their feet were clad in leather, tied tight so that no loose flaps struck at the ground. They picked their way instinctively, avoiding loose rocks or fallen branches or twigs, and when they traversed a steep slope there was only the slightest whisper of undergrowth. Birds sang all around them, crickets scratched messages from their hiding places in tall ferns, something whistled low and
continuously far away, and once Holly heard the patter of small, fast footsteps as an unseen creature fled the party. It was almost as if the land hardly knew that they were there.

The jacket worn by the man holding the stretcher’s front right handle had some sort of design on the back. It was a rough garment, its edges frayed and its seams held together by heavy stitching. Whatever was drawn on or sewn into the material had blended into it due to grime and time. Holly narrowed her eyes, squinting as a pulse of pain thrummed through her head once more, then looked away. She could not make it out.

The group paused abruptly and lowered the stretcher to the ground. Her carriers each unslung their primitive weapons – a bow and arrow, a crossbow, a short spear, a heavy spiked mace on a chain – and the several others arrayed around them hid behind trees or ducked into the waist-high ferns. The woman looked over her shoulder at Holly and held her hand out flat, pressing it down.

They waited like that for some time, motionless and silent. When Holly started feeling pressure on her bladder she closed her eyes and tried to will it away. She needed to pee but the feeling wouldn’t become urgent for a while.

A bird landed nearby, the size of a blackbird but with a dull orange chest and speckled white wings.
One much like this had been killed by the eradicator and stored in the breach containment area, and Holly thought of Melinda and what had become of her. She’d been passionate about her work, and sometimes when they’d shared a drink and a chat together in the common room or each other’s quarters Melinda had been almost unable to contain her excitement about what they were doing.

She held out her hand, hoping that the bird might hop across to her. But it flew away.

One of the two men further ahead stood and ran, crouching, into the forest, disappearing in moments. No one reacted, or moved. The woman looked at Holly again and pressed her fingers to her lips.

Holly nodded, suddenly afraid.
I want to be back in Coldbrook
, she thought. And then a shape appeared through the trees higher up the hillside and slightly ahead of them. It might have been a ghost, a human figure standing motionless while the breeze made waves of its tattered clothing and hair. The hair was long and clotted with mud and leaves. Holly held her breath, and the moment stretched into a painful stillness.

The pressure on her bladder increased and she shifted position, her clothes scraping across the stretcher’s rough canvas. Her pulse thumped in her head and lit up the pain there again – and then she saw the shape’s head turn, as if sniffing the air. Then it started moving, slowly
passing between the trees and swishing through the heavy green ferns, coming right at her.